Hogs Back Brewery - TEA

"49p for a bottle of traditional English Ale?!" I thought to myself whilst wandering past staff shopping, doing a cheesy double take at the top shelf as if an imaginary, yet very tolerant, person were watching and applauding, "Oh wait, TEA, I tried that once and it was as bland as wall paper paste... But it is 49p, I best buy 6."

To be honest I'm glad I gave this beer a second chance, it's not going to set the world on fire and with a pour not unlike putting muddy pond water into a soda stream, it would be easy to write this beer off from the get go. It doesn't retain any head and what head it does have fizzles away like a shandy that's been left out in the sun for a day. It does, however, have something that a lot of ales, especially, do not and that is character. It's hard to describe it, but you can imagine someone in a dilapidated farm house working really hard to brew this... They may not have the best tools, the best hops or the cleanest water... Or be particularly smart, but they're trying their best dammit! That's probably not the reality of the situation at all but you can tell that someone has loved this beer once.

Light blackberry tones that remind me slightly of summer pudding and a light and playful taste that somewhat mismatches it's dreary aesthetics and it does suffer from having a nettley, muddy, almost fibrous quality that makes it difficult to down a lot of it at a time, at least more difficult than it would be to down beers like Hofbrau, which I could literally inhale; though near the end of the pint it does take on a creaminess that it could have done with at the begining. However, because it's only 4.2%, this does make this the perfect session ale for the elderly, maybe that's what they've been doing... Whenever they say they want "TEA" it actually just means they want to go out for a pint. Crafty old buggers!

Food Suggestion: It's got enough sweetness in it to justify you having it with cake or biscuits.

"TEA and biscuits vicar?"
" Hells yeah! Let's get rat arsed!"

Drink this if you like: Pretty much anything by Shepherd Neame, it's similar to their Whitstable Bay and Late Red. Fans of Black Sheep and Theakstons will also find similarities in this.