1001 Beers: Old Brewery Pale Ale

Beer Number 45: Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale

This beer is one of the more common ones in this book. Not saying that there are a ton of hard to find beers, it really depends how you look at it, but you do not have to go to a special bottle shop or specialty store to pick it up. You can find this one in most, if not all grocery stores that carry just a small amount of beer. I have never had this one before but I have been a fan of their Nut Brown for some time now. Let us see how this one comes out.

Other brewers have stainless steel squares and some are even round, but tradition means much at Sam Smith's and its squares are not only square but made with Yorkshire stone, too. Other aspects of the brewery's traditional means that the grist of pale and crystal malts is boiled in traditional mash tuns and the hops are Golding and Fuggle; added late these bring a dash of spice to the beer. The yeast has been used at the brewery for more than one hundred years, and its vigor and vitality create the beer's rich, frothing, foaming head in the fermenting room. The original well at the brewery, sunk in 1758, is still in use, and the brewing water for Old Brewery Pale Ale is drawn from deep underground. The brewery even has that rare unicorn of brewing, a cooper, who still makes and repairs all the wooden cask that are used to serve a cask-conditioned version of Old Brewery Pale Ale in many of the company's pubs.

I had mixed expectations for this beer. I did not expect it to be anything like the Pale Ale that we have here in the states, but I thought since my palate is probably wrecked it would be underwhelming. I tend to prefer milder beers but you just don't get them over here. More Hops & More ABV is what "We" say. This beer actually shocked and pleased me.

I tried to put it in the closest thing I had to what I feel would be the traditional glass. Not in the right volume but I think I got there, close enough. A very nice, clean copper hue with a huge off white head that left a beautiful lace all the way down the glass. I should have snapped another pic of it, like the last time I had beautiful lacing. It did fade rather quickly, though. Bready and a pretty sweet toffee in the nose.

This is where the beer got interesting. It had a great body! Nice and full. Very creamy, toffee and herbal characters. A lot of dark fruits, which was very surprising. It then got a little acidic and vinegary... It really worked though. I do not know how to explain that one. I want to try another bottle and see if that was just my tongue playing tricks on me. And throughout the whole beer there was that nice, bready quality which backed the whole beer up.

Tasty. I very much enjoyed this one and it is definitely on my list of beers to try again. 1001, we have found another winner.

956 Bottles Of Beer To Go!

Cheers!