Name - Pure Ubu
Brewer - Purity
Classification - Premium amber ale
Strength - 4.5% ABV
Verdict - At A Glance
On the eye - Possibly the best looking beer I've ever seen.
On the nose - A very finely poised battle between buttery sponge cake malts and citrus/ginger hops.
On the tongue - Dry, creamy and generally delightful.
On the subject - Warwickshire based but with a truly global reach via their distribution network, the 'own-brewed' beers of this company look set to become well known fixtures on supermarket shelves worldwide.
On the market - Purity beers have been criminally rare for too long - but that is slowly changing with major players like Tesco now stocking the range in selected stores. Try the brewery's own online shop.
On the whole - 8.5/10
Full Review
I used to find it rather odd whenever an ale was described as being 'creamy.'
This was partly because I don't actually like cream all that much, but I'm pretty sure that even if I adored cream - I wouldn't really appreciate it showing up in my beer.
However, over the years, I've gradually cottoned-on to what it means for a beer to be creamy, and Purity's Pure Ubu is as good a candidate as any to demonstrate why 'creaminess' in an ale can be a very wonderful thing.
Of course, a good creamy beer has very little in common with thickened, sweetened milk - it's really in the rich and smooth consistency of the liquid that the similarities lie - and this very sophisticated brew has that particular quality in spades.
In fact, the flavour of this drink could hardly be less like cream. Dry, bitter, with punchy spiced fruits and dazzling citrus undertones - all bonded together by some lovely smoked-caramel malt which never dominates but is always present, and what a very welcome presence it is.
There's a dried fig sweetness there too, which is so cleverly pitched that I deemed it worthy of a paragraph all of it's own.
It's a lovely beer, this.
But, by some distance, the very best thing about this drink is - speaking quite frankly - its jaw dropping sex appeal. As my 'On the eye' section has already hinted, this beer sits in the glass like some liquid supermodel on a coffee break - utterly gorgeous in an off-guard, unassuming, un-showy kind of way.
It is effortlessly but quite mesmerically beautiful.
Apart from all the other attractive elements of this beer's appearance - there is a shade of soft deep red at play here that you'll never witness anywhere else in the world. Neither nature nor science has ever produced this remarkable hue before.
What a gorgeous drink this really is.
It looks more like a fine ale than any such beverage that my feeble human mind could ever conjure-up - even in it's very wildest imaginings.
In truth, what it actually looks like is the most magnificent English ale ever brewed.
And, when all is said and done, that's really not too very far from what this beer proves to be.
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