Sharp's Brewery horizontal tasting.

Recently I was lucky enough to win a crate of Sharp's beers. I won't go into the details other than to say it involved an equality and diversity dilemma of fiendish complexity.

It gave us the opportunity for a beer tasting night. I've heard the term vertical tasting used a few times, particularly in relation to drinking a range of years of Fuller's Vintage Ale. I suspect it's comes from the world of wine and as such is alien to our culture. And now I'm getting on a bit I prefer to sit down anyway.

So we went for a horizontal tasting, different beers, no particular years, just drink til your fall over, which fits in much more with British beer culture.

Every one we had during the evening was bottle conditioned. There was a brewery conditioned Doom Bar in the box too but that got used for cooking.

 

Cornish Pilsner: Pleasant enough for a lager, slightly sweet.

Single Brew: Pale, lively, balanced. Pleasant easy drinking.

Sharp's Special: Bit thin, but more flavour than the previous two.

Chalkies Bark: Mild ginger flavour. Floral. The lovely Lisa reckoned it would go with a curry rather than a lager.She must be getting into this food and beer pairing thing.

Chalkies Bite: Smokey bacon. Belgian.

Honey Spice Tripel: honey flavour, sweet, belgian, could do with more spice.

Quadrupel Ale: We'd saved the best til last, this is really good. Beautiful ruby plum colour. Balanced, got sweetingness but not cloying. Fruity. I could spot the Simcoe, a hop I'm not fond of but it really works here.Starts sweet but dry finish so not sickly. The lovely Lisa told me to make a note of this one, as she might want some more.

After that things to a bit messy.

 

We foolishly carried on drinking other stuff, and soon it was time to carry Lisa to bed. The horizontal tasting had been a success!