Skip to main content

Advent Calendar Window 5 - Cheddleton Christmas Ale


"And like some drunken Elvis singing
I go singing out of tune
Singing how I've always loved you, darling, and I always will
Oh when you're still waiting for the snow to fall
It doesn't really feel like Christmas at all"



The idea of these self-indulgent posts was to produce quick reviews of my Christmas-themed beers, with a little background into their style, brewery and how I came by them. Of course, it's becoming increasingly difficult to write these quickly without looking like an amateur beer blogger who picked up the keyboard this morning and began writing beer reviews as if he were the first to think of such an idea. 

I'm further embarrassed by Window 5's beer from Staffordshire brewery - their Cheddleton Christmas Ale. As far as I'm aware this beer is brewed differently each year and this is from 2013. I say as far as I'm aware for two reasons: 

1) Reading other people's reviews I see that at least one previous batch was 5.5% whereas this is only 4.6% 
2) The Staffordshire Brewery website sure as fuck doesn't want you to know that they ever brewed this beer and doesn't even reference it's existence. 

In fact, much of this brewery's website seems to reveal them to be more of a homebrew store rather than a functioning brewery. However, this Christmas Ale seems to have popped up in many places, including John Lewis and has frequently been presented in large bottles, though this is just a regular 500ml. I'd like to give you a little more information, but this brewery has turned this into a Holy Grail style quest for knowledge, so let us seek together to see if we discover something incredible... 

Staffordshire Brewery - Cheddleton Christmas Ale - 4.6%

Sitting in the class a dark, tawny colour, this looks and smells thicker and more indulgent than the strength suggests it might be. There's plenty of cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, ginger, fudge and walnuts on the nose. Despite all those spicy nose promises, the taste is a little different. Those clove tones still come through a little but are controlled by a balanced maltiness. What is more, there is a great big fresh hoppiness in the middle that mixes with the spices to create a little smokiness but delightful bitterness on the tongue. The long finish though really brings all those malt and hops on the tastebuds together with the spices that fight their way over on the finish. It's a mix of emotions through this. It starts off tame, becomes incredibly indulgent in the middle, but by the end becomes cloying and irritating. At one point I wanted to give this 4.5 on untappd. By the end I'm considering giving it a 3. I have no idea what to make of it. It has all the right factors to make it delicious but something just isn't working. 

Good job you learnt so much from this review,,,

Christmas Spirit Rating: 39%. Christmas is not a time for utter confusion. 

Revisit: Very Bad Elf and Insanely Bad Elf from December 2012. There may be another Bad Elf this year...
or 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Children and Dogs in Pubs and Bars

  I once took my niece to the pub. She was either 1 or 2 years of age. I often looked after her on Saturdays and on one of our weekly walks, for the first time, I stopped by the local pub, mainly because my friend was there with his daughter of similar age. The two kids got on well together and it was a lovely couple of hours; a perfect showcase of adult friends and their children existing in public houses. But my sister was furious. She didn’t rant or rave but her lips were purser than a 90s children’s show teacher. It was here that I learned of the effect that our childhood had had upon her. She recalls many an afternoon being bored in the corner of pubs that our Dad had dragged us to, arms folded in the corner with nothing to do, and she doesn’t want the same for her children. The idea of her first born being taken to pubs infuriates her; fearful that they would be subjected to the same unhappy experiences that she was.  I don’t recall those times in the same way as my s
Post a Comment
Read more

"They Had Their Issues, So..."

      There’s a set of garages to rent as storage units near my workplace. One of them is taken by a local florist that uses it to store flower arrangements for various events, that are more often than not funerals.   As such, at least once a week at 8am I will pass a car being loaded up with flowers arranged into heart shaped patterns or the letters M U M. It is a grounding reminder that, as I mentally grumble my way through the upcoming arbitrary grievances of my ordinary working day, a group of family and friends locally is going through the hardest time. It provides much needed perspective on days when I could do with being reminded of all that I have to be thankful for.   These little moments explain to me why it is possible for us to share a communal loss when a celebrity passes away. Grief is often a personal and lonely experience, shared between a minority of people in your life. When a co-worker loses a relative or friend, it has little affect on me, bar signing of
Post a Comment
Read more

The Ten Pubs That Made Me - Part 3: Dr Okell's / My Foley's Tap House and Leeds

A pint in Mr Foley's Tap House from December 2022     This is Part 3 (the fourth post) of an ongoing project. Please see the beginning of Part 0 for details.    Come the end of this journey, there may be a lesson in procrastination that I am unlikely to heed. These posts stem from a list that I made three years ago and a series that I embarked on 18 months ago. We’ve only now reached a 30% completion rate and with this post we are back to fail for the second time.   This odyssey began with a trip to Mr Foley’s Tap House in February 2022 – named Dr Okell’s bar on my first visits in 2005 – only to discover that it was closed. It did reopen by the time that the post was coming out and I managed a brief visit in December 2022. However, my July 1 st 2023 trip to Leeds, on which this post is based, is met with this sign at the door of the bar:      A quick check of social media shows an Instagram post from the day before (June 30 th ) announcing the closure of the
Post a Comment
Read more