Old Dairy Brewery - Wild Hop

When I first picked this up I thought to myself "ha! Wild Hop, eh? I bet this is going to be some sort of crazy hop combination like... Fuggles and... Uh, fuggles..." and I kept on thinking that this was going to be a drink with big flavour right up until I poured it, picking the most "wild" glass from my collection that I could, though it turns out that that's just a Leffe glass and my glass collection is a bit boring. However, upon actually reading the bottle, the "wild" element comes from the fact that the hops used in this beer are hops that grow WILD near the brewery... Which is a MILLION times more exciting! I imagine that I've probably tasted every hop in one way or another when you consider how much beer I actually drink. I may not have known I was drinking it at the time but it was there. This is new ground, this is a patch of wet concrete, this is a chalkboard in the children's section of a bookshop!

So, has the concrete been tampered with? Has someone drawn a set of comedy breasts on the chalkboard?

Well the pour is a little slow out of the blocks but when the head catches up what you get is a sticky, clinging, web of head that I've not encountered before. It's dark brown in colour and opaque with mild carbonation. The smell is very soft, very subtle but there are intriguing hints of bread and grapes. It's hard not to feel like Marco Polo or Neil Armstrong, I feel like I'm doing something that no-one has ever done before even though I'm sure several hundred (thousands? I don't know ODB's (yes, I call them ODB. It's because I'm so fly!) sales figures,) have.

Wow that's got a really bitter opening gambit that mellows into citrus and, of all things, a marshmallow flavour that I really didn't expect. The body, as I have come to expect, is creamy and has a good mouth feel but the star of the show are those hops because they stretch the limits of what's acceptably bitter in a beer from a company that makes deliciously mellow, even handed and subtle beers. It does mellow out, though this affect is generally attributed to something called Neural Adaption (look it up,) so once you become used to that initial shock it does become a completely different beast, it transforms into a creamy pale ale with a poignant bitter beginning, middle and end.

A thoroughly enjoyable beer that really makes you think about Old Dairy Brewery. They lull you into a false sense of security with beers like Sun Top, Copper Top and Silver top which are subtle, sweet, enjoyable and everything you could want from a beer...








(This is a dramatic pause.)








...THEN BAM! HOW ABOUT SOME WILD HOP?! WAKEY WAKEY TASTE BUDS!!! IT'S TIME TO DRINK SOME FIRKIN (replacement for a swear) BEER!!!

Food suggestion: Words. I ate the words of doubt I spoke when I first saw this beer.

Drink this if you like: Nothing really has the creaminess of an Old Dairy Brewery pint but when I drink this I get a similar sensation to when I drink Kipling by Thornbridge, which is odd because they're not really that much alike but oh well, you get what you pay for with this blog.