Shepherd Neame - Spooky Ale

Yes, yes, I realise that it's almost exactly the furthest day away from any given Halloween that it could possibly be excluding the rather sobering thought of mass extinction but I thought I'd haunt you a little bit with a gimmick beer from Halloween 2012 by Shepherd Neame... Spoooooooooky Ale. Though it's just called Spooky Ale, I felt the extra o's gave it a much more sinister and ethereal edge. This beer was donated to me by my colleague and fellow beer-o-phile Jo Dale who, I quote, said "yeah, it's alright, I'll bring you a bottle..."

...High praise indeed!

I have issues with Shepherd Neame, good and bad, though more recently they are mostly bad, though they made up for it when I drank 1698, but little can make up for them closing down my favourite pub. I probably shouldn't bring reasons other than beer into the judgement of their work, but I'm going to because critics without bias are really quite tedious!

Spooky Ale pours VERY well, it looks exactly how a nice dark ale should look, it's got a murky brown body and a thick, resilient, white head and if you pour it into an old man, dimple, mug, then you could easily fool yourself into thinking you were part of the cast of Emmerdale. It smells of, and this is an odd one, it smells a bit like when you go fishing, it smells like all the different aspects of nature culminating into a frothy brown fluid. That taste has a little of the sweet shop about it but then it has a bitter finish that is slightly cloying and an odd after taste that feels a little synthetic. It is, by no means, the worst beer I've ever had but does it come up to the bench mark I set long, long ago (sometime at the end of last year,) is it as good as Tribute by St. Asutell? No. It's interesting after a fashion and appropriate for Halloween but if this was just another beer in their range then I don't think it'd stand up on its own, if pitched as a main stay for their range then I don't think it would even make the cut. Sheps have a history of doing this, I've noticed that the Christmas brew has changed several times in the last 3 or 4 years, slowly turning into some watery mess that I would not, in good conscience, even give to a man who was about to die of thirst or use to extinguish a dog fire for fear that the dog may end up smelling like shame and disappointment.

I am so appreciative for the opportunity to try this but, yet again, Sheps fall short, not by much but it does definitely fall short, it's just another case of a Sheps beer looking better than it tastes, which is a shame. They should just reduce their range down to the ones that are actually any good like 1698, early bird and late red and stop making stuff that will make them a bit of money because they'll lose loyal customers and they'll have to sell more of their pubs.

Food suggestion: Fig rolls! When was the last time you had a fig roll with a beer? Never?! What! Get ye to a shoppe! Get ye to a shoppe and buy ye'self a figgy roll!

Drink this if you like: Spitfire... I guess, and Bishop's Finger and all the other NOTHING beers at the bottom end of the Sheps range that people seem to like for no good reason other than they have patriotic or slightly perverted names... And they're relatively local.