When bottle-conditioned ale goes wrong
Posted on Monday, December 15th, 2008 at 12:05am. #
I poured away a full bottle of beer today.
Tesco happen to do a rather nice “Finest” Bottle Conditioned Ale. Marked with the “CAMRA says this is real ale” stamp on the back, it’s a pleasant, strong-ish, ale – brewed by O’Hanlons, who know a thing or two about good beers. Bottle-conditioned ale has a bit of yeast in it, and continues fermenting right till you drink it. It’s supposed to keep it fresh-tasting.
Sadly, the one I had was suspiciously cloudy. Not “it’s got yeast in it so of course it’ll be cloudy”, but the suspicious cloudiness of a beer past its best. The beer was also flat, with almost no carbonation. A quick taste confirmed it – the tart, unpleasant taste of a badly-conditioned beer. It was undrinkable. It went in the sink.
I know a thing or two about beer – but I wonder how many people wouldn’t have realised that this beer was off? I’ve drunk a few pints in my time from pubs which have been off – and taken quite a few back. I don’t fancy my chances taking this back to Tesco and explaining how bottle-conditioned beer works to customer services, so I suspect the £1.44 for the pint will go down to experience; but it was disappointing to have a bad pint from Britain’s favourite shop.
Curiously, the current issue of Beer magazine from CAMRA has an opinion piece from two different writers about bottle-conditioned ale. One for, one against.
I’ve never had a bad pint until today, and normally buy bottle-conditioned if I can. But, perhaps to paraphrase the children’s rhyme… when it’s good, it’s very good indeed, but when it’s bad, it’s horrid.
