Abbot Reserve is now released just in time for winter – its all in a weeks work for John Bexon
Well, autumn is giving way to winter, and everything is cold and clammy and damp. Fortunately for you, we have just the answer. Last week we released our new seasonal ale, Abbot Reserve. Reserve uses exactly the same recipe as regular Abbot, but it’s brewed to 6.5% alcohol by volume rather than 5%. More alcohol means the flavour is even more intense, and the stronger fermentation creates even more fruitiness. Just the thing to keep the cold at bay, but at that strength it’s definitely a sipping beer! And evidently you people like it as much as I do, because it’s flying out of the brewery gates.
Ingredients are very much on every brewer’s mind at this time of year, and last week I had another hop sampling session with one of the hop merchants who supply us. We were looking at Bramling Cross, a very rare variety which we use in Ruddles Best and County for its blackcurranty fruitiness, and at Fuggles, a spicier variety which we use in Abbot. I have to say that yields have not been good this year, especially of Fuggles. But don’t fret: I have enough to see us safely through, and we’re encouraging growers to plant more bines so there’ll always be plenty in future. Anyway, the good news is that despite low yields, the quality is superb. The aroma of the Bramling Cross was incredibly intense – in fact I think it’s the best Bramling I’ve ever rubbed.
English hops, as most beer lovers know, come mainly from Kent-Sussex and Herefordshire-Worcestershire; but actually a tiny proportion of our hops are local. The Suffolk Hop Company was set up in 2002 at Peasenhall, not far from the brewery, to revive the ancient tradition of hop-growing in East Anglia. They grow a variety called First Gold which they sell to a hop merchant in Worcester. We use First Gold in the Ruddles range and we get it from the same merchant who buys their crop, so a proportion of our hops do indeed come from Suffolk, albeit via Worcester! I’ve also had more meetings with our malt suppliers. We use malt made almost entirely from local barley, mostly Tipple spring barley, so although we sometimes have to buy in from further afield we do everything we can to keep our food miles to a minimum.
As with hops, barley quality has been very good this year; and fortunately the yield has been good too. Prices rocketed in 2007, which was a very poor year. We absorbed the price increases rather than put up the price of your pint, even though energy prices shot up at the same time. We’re always juggling various factors to keep prices as steady as we can, but the one thing we won’t do is compromise on the quality of our ingredients. Beer is all about flavour, after all, and we can only get the flavour we want and you deserve by using the best ingredients.
