Whitstable Bay

As I mentioned in another post, my brother in law is in town. Being an average Australian fellow, he has not had any exposure to real ale before and I thought a light refreshing ale with a 'down under' flavour would appeal to him. In this sense, I picked up a couple of bottles of Shepherd Neame's Whitstable Bay Organic Ale (4.5% abv) from Morrisons.

This beer is organic and is brewed with organic British malt and organic hops from New Zealand. For those who are slightly out of touch, New Zealand has the most exciting and promising new varieties of hops in the world. The new varieties such as Nelson Sauvin and Saaz D put the US varieties to shame and readily available despite the alleged 'world hop crisis'.

Anyhow, moving back to the beer! It has a slightly sweet malt flavour, with a nice dry bitter aftertaste. the kind of beer that you want after mowing the lawn on a hot summers day (which need not apply in the UK!). Anyhow, the verdict from the brother in law? "It's ok, but not as good as Tooheys Extra Dry". You can't win them all!

Whitstable bay is brewed at Shepherd Neame's brewery in Faversham. they have a website which is pretty good. I am also on the lookout for some of their delicious Porter which started to get distributed last weekend.