Wednesday 5 January 2011

Day 40, Beer 40 - Lymestone Brewery's "Foundation Stone"

Today's Beer





Name – Foundation Stone


Classification – Golden Pale Ale

Strength – 4.5% ABV



Verdict - At A Glance

On the eye – Radiant, warmest gold.

On the nose – Very refined. Young Mr Malt and the fair Miss Hops are clearly on very good terms.

On the tongue – A delicately poised tussle between high and low flavour themes. Riveting stuff!

On the subject – Based in the former premises of the legendary Bents, Staffordshire's Lymestone Brewery was a bold step taken by Ian Bradford after his 18 years brewing at Titanic. This beer alone implies that this step was a giant leap for beer-kind.

On the market – Outside of the UK Midlands, online is the way to go. Mine was supplied by The Real Ale Store which, yes, does happen to be in the UK Midlands.

On the whole8.5/10



Full Review

This beer drinks like a walk in the woods.

It's a liquid autumnal stroll through a moist English copse, where the berry bushes swell with plump, over-ripened fruit, and the well trodden early fallen leaves issue forth their sumptuously earthy twang – and this is just the beer's flavour I'm dealing with here!

The fragrance is quite a different matter - far more tropical and zesty, more of an equatorial coastal forest than a misty English glade.

The mix of all this, though, results in a beer of such varied, nature-extracted richness that it simply forces you to become both satisfied and entertained.

It's a fun drink experience, more 'fun' than many beers manage to be, but it should be added that this is the sophisticated, cultured kind of fun I'm talking about. Its more of an amusing university lecture than a piece of music hall slapstick.

I liked this beer an awful lot. It instantly made me - for want of a better word - 'happy', and it kept me feeling that way till the very end. Without a doubt it has set me upon a (woodland) path in search of the next beer on Lymestone's list.

And I will not be walking along that path.

I will be sprinting.


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