Old Mother Nature is a cruel mistress at times. The nights are drawing in, the mornings are getting wetter, I’m dreading the clocks going back and then – as if to poke a wound – it starts to warm up. Compared to the terrible summer we had, it’s almost tropical in London at the moment. High’s of 28; where was this weather in August!
Rest assured, it is definitely autumn now, and as we hurtle towards Christmas, it’s time to draw a line under the summer 52 Weeks Beer case. We draw that line with a bottle of York Minster Ale from the York Brewery.
I visited York brewery on a Twissup earlier in the year. Their Centurion’s Ghost ale is great (I wrote about it here). I can force them into a nutshell with this: two flagship session ales, both with pale malt and crystal malt, both with challenger hops, one is called “Guzzler”, the other “Yorkshire Terrier”. Yeah?
York Minster is amber in colour, ‘flame’ if you like, with a slight haze to it. The aroma is very slight. This isn’t even that cold in my glass, but it’s offering very little. Ammonia again, must be me, but I get that hair dye, hairdressers, bathroom-after-the-missus-has-coloured-her-hair aroma. What is that!?
In the mouth it’s quite thin bodied, tart and there’s a tanginess to it. The finish is bitter, bitter in a real prickly, sharp kinda way. There’s some biscuity malt character right on the back end. I can’t taste any obvious faults in this, nothing by way of an infection or bad fermentation or anything like that, it's just lacking in something major to comment on.
Help me out ...
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