26 November 2011

Pen-Lon Cottage Brewery (Cardiff) [By @SpectreUK]


Cinabar brought me these two beverages back from her holiday with her mom in Cardiff. Pen-Lon Cottage Brewery began in a farmhouse kitchen set in Ceredigion, in West Wales, in 2006. The brewery has won seven Welsh True Taste awards, including two gold awards. Pen-Lon has twelve different beers available, including several ales, two stouts, and a lager. All their ingredients, such as barley malt grains, whole hops, and yeast, are sourced locally or within the United Kingdom, and contain no artificial colours or flavours. Pen-Lon doesn’t use chemicals during brewing, and their beverages are vegetarian and vegan friendly.

Heather Honey Ale

This all grain beer is brewed with barley malt grains, whole hops, yeast and pure honey from the Welsh mountains. The label on the bottle states that every August and through September the slopes of the Brecon Beacons flourish with the purple flowers of the Ling Heather. At 4.2% volume, this golden ale had slight sediment from the yeast in the bottom of the bottle. The ale had a strong sweet honey smell on opening. The sumptuous honey smell carried through with a powerful sweet flowery honey taste to the beer. This beer had a heavy yeast taste with a hint of bitterness after the initial honey hit, and the aftertaste seemed to coat the mouth with a pure heather honey flavour. I’ve tasted Heather ales before, and been more than pleasantly surprised, and this ale was no exception. To use heather flavoured honey in the brewing is an ingenious idea. I reckon this ale would be perfect for a “hair of the dog” early morning beer after a night on the tiles, and would wash down a couple of pieces of toast and honey for breakfast. Even Cinabar liked it! This would be the Teddy Bear’s choice of beer, and I’m sure even the calm and placid Yogi would tear your arms and legs off for it!

Chocolate Stout

I must admit I’ve been converted to chocolate beers ever since I tried the Chocolate Meantime beer sometime ago. This all grain stout consists of whole barley, barley malt grains, roast barley, whole hops, yeast and chocolate. On opening, this 4.5% volume stout had a heavy dark chocolate smell to it. Jet black in colour, this stout had an initial thick malt and strong chocolate taste. There was a roasted barley middle taste, followed by a dark chocolate aftertaste. This chocolate stout had a glorious chunky heavy filling feel to it, and was definitely one of the best stouts I’ve tried during my blog writings. I reckon it would go well as a late night treat or a pudding stout. It could easily be enjoyed during a roast beef meal with gravy and Yorkshire pudding, or a warming stew to help stave off the winter’s chill.

Two new fruit beers have recently been released, which are; Torwen Dark Fruit Beer and Torddu Pale Fruit Beer. I’m sure Cinabar will hunt high and low to buy these two beers to torture me with as soon as she can. Having said that, after the excellent quality of the two beverages I reviewed above, I may be pleasantly surprised…
By Spectre

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