Skip to main content

Beer Advent Calendar Window Fifteen - Red Hot Poker



As the start of the post-craft year of 2016 begins, I can't wait to get back to good wholseome beer with good wholesome brewers. You know what phrase I want to revitalise next year - microbrewery. Everyone now is a macro or a craft, macro or a craft. I want next year to be the return of microbrewery. Are you a macro? No. Are you craft, then? No wafflefodder, we're a microbrewery but still making some damn tasty beer. 

Tatton Brewery from Kuntsford are not at Indy Man Beer Con. They aren't subject to SABMiller bids. They won't be forming some part of an extensive Cheshire Beer Expo 2016. They are one of many making consistent beers in cask and bottle that seem to be unfashionable. Part of me wants to love this year old Red Hot Poker that has made it into my Beer Advent Calendar (it is their Christmas beer,) but part of me expects to hate it. 

 "That's what it's about isn't it? I mean, that's what it's always been about..." 

Tatton Brewery - Red Hot Poker 6%

It's an absolutely lovely clear amber (don't let the picture fool you), like the head of John Hammond's Jurassic Park staff, with little redeeming head. The nose has an interesting mixture of orange jelly and pork gelatine; then comes quite a floral spice mix blend, like a candle rolled out exclusively for Christmas. The taste is a little stale at first, tasting rather tart with an unbalanced amount of ginger and clove. But as it settles it develops into quite a fruity little number, cherry-like at times with plenty of nutmeg in the aftertaste. It isn't boozy and the rather thin body means it goes down well. But it's tasty; bitter when it needs to be and spicy in a manner I like my festive beer. There's a nice woodland berry flavour to round off a decent Christmas beer. I only seemed to take five or six sips in the first half hour of pouring, but after it has settled I drink the rest remarkably quickly, enjoying it very much. 

Surprisingly good? Yes, I think that's fair, but another win for solid made beer. 

Mince Pie pairing rating: 7/10 - there's enough fruit and spice in both to compliment each other well 

Best paired with: White Christmas - you expect to hate it, but actually... 


Comments

Tatton Brewery said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
18 December 2015 at 07:24
Tatton Brewery said…
Bloody hell! Is 2016 really going to be post-craft, or is that just a Christmas wish? Anyway, thanks for the review. We would be happy to let you have a fresh bottle - I suspect the "pork gelatine" character comes with age, which is generally undesirable for filtered beers. Cask is currently available in all good pubs near you - depending on the definition of "good", and "near", I suppose. Anyway, it's a cracker. Christmas cracker. Geddit? If you use that one, there'd better be a cheque in the post...

What you tasted (pigginess aside) is what we designed. That is art of real brewing, in my opinion. Bandwagons? Wheels fall off.

P.S. Err... "Kuntsford"? Not the approved spelling, though I am sure it has been used on occasion.
18 December 2015 at 07:25
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

THE STATE OF CASK part 2: The Cask Consumers

In what has become one of the most written about subjects amongst beer communicators for a long while I am going to follow on with my own thoughts about cask beer. Yet these ideas are formulated from potential posts I've been writing the odd paragraph about for around 18 months but never managed to construct into something relevant.  I have much to say on the subject; so much so that rather than making this into one enormous read I've split it into three sections regarding the current trends and effects on cask beer as I see it.  Today I look at the problem with consumer's and the immunity of one Timothy Taylor's Landlord. Part 1 can be read here . On the first Saturday morning of June 2016 I travelled to Stockport Beer Festival with my Aunt Marie and Uncle David; famously more traditional beer drinkers. They enjoy a day out in Stockport as, coming from Dewsbury way, they don’t actually see much beer from my side of the Pennines, incl...
16 comments
Read more

WHEN CELEBRITIES DIE - THE INFINITY OF PUBS

    Recently I was stood outside Huddersfield Railway Station waiting for my Replacement Bus Service. I was eating much needed food from a nearby fast food outlet and contemplating my next move. Other match-goers had gone home but I had over 50 minutes to wait for my bus. We’d already been to a few of our post-match regular spots and so I was contemplating somewhere new or different to pass the time now.   I stood in St George’s Square, behind the statue of Harold Wilson, and pondered where I should waste my next hour. And pondered and pondered. After deliberation that ate into much of my allotted time, I walked down to the familiar setting of The Sportsman, realising that there wasn’t anywhere different to go at all.   But whilst I deliberated, I cast my eye over the currently scaffold-covered George hotel opposite the station; a place I had been in once with my Dad. It’s downstairs public bar had stood as a firm and available option to match-goers fo...
1 comment
Read more

BEER INDUSTRY PERSONNEL - COME TO DADDY!

Around 7 months ago I started dating a pub manager. It was inevitable in many ways. Amongst the perks that come with being involved with somebody on the other side of the bar, came the dread of how to react in future to the interactions involved in bar work.    It isn’t a situation I’ve been in before so it has required adjustment. I’ve never had a partner pull up a chair in the office and stare at me through part of the working day whilst occasionally ordering goods from me. So you don’t want to interfere in your partner’s work whilst still getting to enjoy the pub.   You don’t want to suddenly take up a spot on the bar where you make gooey eyes at each other with every pull on a hand pump. You don’t want to be one of those possessive teenagers, watching like a bar hawk and scowling at any intimidatingly handsome pair of arms that makes your other half roar with laughter. You want to separate their work from your social life and allow everything to sti...
11 comments
Read more