Amber Ale Sky

Yesterday morning was bizarre - a red dust cloud had descended across Sydney. It looked like you were viewing the world through a beer glass, James Squire Amber Ale of course!
The dust has since blown away, but its legacy is left as a blanket of dirt all over the car and my wife stuck in Melbourne due to her flight being cancelled yesterday afternoon. Looking out my office window now, everything appears to be back to normal. My boss made the comment/lame joke yesterday that he is seeing the world through rose coloured glasses - I responded that its like looking through beer goggles, except the fat chicks are still fat and the ugly girls still ugly!

Duchy Originals Organic Ale

A unusually warm mid Autumn day saw myself and my wife out for a stroll and some lunch along the Thames path between Hammersmith and Putney. Intending to grab some lunch we decided to pull into "The Crabtree" which is basically a gastro pub which prides itself upon calling itself, a "bar and fine dining hall". Any pub that goes into the 'above' gastro game should be offering 'above' pub level meals and 'above' pub level service. Upon going to the bar to order some potato wedges and a nachos (hardly fine dining), I was told there would be at least an hour wait on food. Now this is a pub that is trying to pass itself off as a restaurant. How would a restaurant go if it told its diners that they had to wait at least an hour for basic food? Its inexcusable - and lack of available staff or its unexpectedly busy is not an excuse. To all gastro Owners out there that suffer from this "PULL YOUR SOCKS UP". Anyhow, I managed to order a beer and a glass of wine for the Mrs.

Duchy Originals Organic Ale is an interesting beer to say the least. The beer itself is nice, an amber ale/ESB that gets the style right and ticks all the boxes, no complaints there. What is interesting is the source of organic ingredients.

A bit of background on Duchy's Originals:

Duchy Originals was started in 1990 to market the produce of the Prince of Wales all-organic farm at Highgrove. The concept of the farm was to prove (or not) the commercial viability of organic farming and if successful, to encourage others to follow suit. As if proving the profitability of organic foods were not enough, as if employing 100’s of people directly and indirectly as well as seasonal workers were not enough, the company also gives away all it’s profits to charity (the Prince of Wales charity incidentally). To date, this sum comes to millions from the 70+ products in their range. This ale is the first alcohol based product they have produced. To show how deeply the Prince and his achievements are embraced by the Organic community, the Soil association has made him their patron. Moving stuff indeed, I wondered if he offsets/deducts his donations to charity against his genuinely profit generating interests, but that's besides the point!

So the malt used in brewing comes from HRH's property, but who brews it? Prior to the brewing of this organic ale, the organic barley from Prince Charles' estate was used to make Wychwood Circle Master. This was brewed by on contract Brakspear's of Henley until they closed in Autumn 2002. After the acquisition of Brakspear's by Wychwood, and the emergence of the Duchy originals brand, HRH decided to commission Wychwood to brew Duchy Originals Organic Ale and the results in the beer you are reading about today. My only beef has more to do with the Crabtree than the beer itself. My pint was served in a plastic pint glass rather than a proper glass one. Sure the crabtree has a large beer garden, but it was hardly busy and it was even less likely to get broken. I hate drinking out of plastic and basically its unacceptable - once again the Crabtree need to get their act together. Anyway I am starting to rant. The bottom line HRH's beer is as good as his ears are big, and the Crabtree is as good as a fart in an elevator.

Linky

Lancaster Amber

This was the last of the beers that I sampled on St Georges day. Lancaster Amber (3.7% abv) is an American Amber ale styled beer with strong fruity hop notes and a mild barely apparent bitterness. This combination makes for an easy drinking full flavoured session beer without having to have too high an abv. The beer poured a deep golden colour with low carbonation. Of the three beers I had on this day, this was probably the most dissapointing, however that does not necessarily say much, as all the beers at 'The Castle' were in excellent condition, its just that the calibre was set rather high. This is still a good beer to try if you see it on somewhere. Website

James Squire Original Amber Ale

James Squire Original Amber Ale (5% abv) is an Australian produced Nut Brown Ale from Lion Nathan's Malt Shovel brewery. This is the beer that may have pioneered the Australian Boutique beer industry and is certainly the first commercially successful bitter that has hit the scene since I became of age. Michael Jackson, aka "The Beer Hunter" has written this article about the beer, the brewery and the hertitage.

He was some character. James Squire, of Kingston, near London, was a highwayman, convicted of robbery with menace in 1785. Althoughhe had stolen nothing more than chickens, he was sentenced to be transported tothe British penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia. The convict ships also brought hops, and Squire seems to have been the first person to grow them successfully in the new colony and to brew beer there commercially. He eventually owned extensive hop gardens and a brewery and pub called the Malt Shovel, at Kissing Point, near Sydney. The romantic-sounding location seems to have been appropriate; in the course of his life, Squire had at least four wives or long-term mistresses and begat a dozen children.
Today's revived Malt Shovel brewery in Sydney is in a former furniture factory dating from 1900. This brewery was established in 1988 by an American, Chuck Hahn, who once worked for Coors. He left the United States when he was headhunted for a senior post with one of the major Australian brewers. Hahn had worked in Colorado in the early days of the microbrewery movement, and has since done much to encourage the production of more flavourful beers in Australia, which is better known for light-tasting, sweetish, lagers. He operates his brewery under the ownership of the Australasian group Lion Nathan. The main entrance to Hahn's brewery is through the brewhouse, with brass handrails and traditional copper kettles. They were acquired second-hand, but are in beautiful condition. They were in the midst of being polished by the crew when I first visited the brewery in 1992. At the time, the brewery's flagship beer was the hoppy Hahn Premium. This is now made at the larger Toohey's brewery, also in Sydney and owned by the same group. I returned in 1999, to be a judge at the Australian International Beer Awards. The beer chosen Best Australian Lager and Grand Champion turned out to be Hahn Premium. On that visit, I also revisited Chuck's brewery, which was in the process of being relaunched under the name Malt Shovel (having been known before as the Hahn Brewery). A guest bar, open to the office, had been installed, and the whole place reminded me somewhat of Anchor Steam, in San Francisco. I tasted from the tank a maltier, spicier lager called James Squire Original Pilsener. I would later be sent a fresh, orangey-tasting, Belgian-style Summer Wheat Beer, brewed
as a special. But the toast of the day was the newly launched James Squire Original Amber Ale, which was being served cask-conditioned in the brewery bar. This distinctive brew is made from three malts (pale, crystal and Carapils) and three additions of hops (using Tasmanian Pride of Ringwood and Willamette) and a top-fermenting yeast that has been used in Australia for 125 years. James Squire himself has been gone for 180 years, but his story is kept alive by the beer. A series of back-labels charts his progress . . . from thief to brewer, constable, banker and eventually magistrate. His headstone said that he "lived respected and died lamented." PS: In the 2000 awards, the brewery received medals for the Pilsener, the Amber Ale and the new James Squire Porter, which I have yet to taste.
TASTING NOTE: The designation Amber Ale is to be taken seriously. This brew has a full, amber-red colour. It also has a full flavour, though it is restrained and soft in body. It has an attractive, cinnamon-like hop character in both the initial aroma and the balancing dryness of finish, but in the middle the emphasis is more toward a malty creaminess and a melony, marmaladey, fruitiness. Very refreshing.
FOOD PAIRINGS: A fruity, full-flavoured ales goes best with red meat. Chuck Hahn, a keen promoter of beer-and-food pairings, suggests kangaroo. Having myself eaten this meat many times in Australia, I agree. If your neighborhood food market does not run to kangaroos, try lamb.

You can find out some more at the Lion Nathan website here. I also suspect that they are now brewing this with a lager yeast? Does anyone care to comment?