MeridianFC
01-16-2004, 01:10 PM
Who: Yours truly
What Wye Valley/Dorothy Goodbody's Winter Tipple
4.4%abv
Why: Cask night baby
Where: The Reef (Washington, DC)
When: 15 January 2004; 2100-0000
I never got the straight answer as to whether this was properly called Wye Valley or it went under the Dorothy Goodbody name, though in the end it doesn't matter it's the same brewery. For some reason some of their brews go under one name and some under the other for reasons that have never been made clear to me. I've previously sampled the Dorothy Goodbody's Our Glass, which to be honest I didn't care for, but that's another review.
The beer was served cask, gravity dispense from right on top of the bar. The handling was impeccable. The appearance was a very clear deep red. The light is kind of low at the Reef so there could be subleties of color that I'm missing out on. The beer had dropped very bright, the head had medium to large soapy looking bubbles. The head dissipates pretty quickly. The nose was a blast of hop with a hint of typical cask type fruit.
The first taste (the temperature was perfect) was a sharp, tanic, hop bitter smack upside the head. Not in the sense of the 1,000ibu IPAs, but like chewing on a bit of dried hop flower. The bitterness overwhelmed the beer, but there really wasn't a lot of hop flavor. The body was decent, though maybe a little thin. After the first wave of hop-ness the beer kind of disappeared. Several of the folks I was drinking with agreed with my assesment that the hop flavor seemed to be completely divorced from the rest of the beer. The other barely discernable tastes did not meld with that initial onslaught of bitterness. It was really strange, certainly for a British beer. If you let the glass get plenty warm, you can coax out a very minimal malt taste, but after a few glasses the bitterness just numbs your palate. There wasn't much aftertaste, a tiny bit of vague fruit and chalky hop bitterness residue like taste. It's like the beer came to a stop sign, hit the brakes and slid a little past the line, but not enough so's you'd really notice.
I was really wanting to like this one, having looked forward to a good British cask beer for weeks, but I don't think I can really recommend this, even to hopheads. This no other dimension to this than some disembodied pure bitterness. It wasn't terrible and I managed to neck a few pints, to help the cause you understand, but I was dissapointed. Almost universally amongst the friends I was with, who represent a fairly wide swath of palates, agreed that the Winter Tipple just didn't do IT, IT being whatever beer is supposed to do.
What Wye Valley/Dorothy Goodbody's Winter Tipple
4.4%abv
Why: Cask night baby
Where: The Reef (Washington, DC)
When: 15 January 2004; 2100-0000
I never got the straight answer as to whether this was properly called Wye Valley or it went under the Dorothy Goodbody name, though in the end it doesn't matter it's the same brewery. For some reason some of their brews go under one name and some under the other for reasons that have never been made clear to me. I've previously sampled the Dorothy Goodbody's Our Glass, which to be honest I didn't care for, but that's another review.
The beer was served cask, gravity dispense from right on top of the bar. The handling was impeccable. The appearance was a very clear deep red. The light is kind of low at the Reef so there could be subleties of color that I'm missing out on. The beer had dropped very bright, the head had medium to large soapy looking bubbles. The head dissipates pretty quickly. The nose was a blast of hop with a hint of typical cask type fruit.
The first taste (the temperature was perfect) was a sharp, tanic, hop bitter smack upside the head. Not in the sense of the 1,000ibu IPAs, but like chewing on a bit of dried hop flower. The bitterness overwhelmed the beer, but there really wasn't a lot of hop flavor. The body was decent, though maybe a little thin. After the first wave of hop-ness the beer kind of disappeared. Several of the folks I was drinking with agreed with my assesment that the hop flavor seemed to be completely divorced from the rest of the beer. The other barely discernable tastes did not meld with that initial onslaught of bitterness. It was really strange, certainly for a British beer. If you let the glass get plenty warm, you can coax out a very minimal malt taste, but after a few glasses the bitterness just numbs your palate. There wasn't much aftertaste, a tiny bit of vague fruit and chalky hop bitterness residue like taste. It's like the beer came to a stop sign, hit the brakes and slid a little past the line, but not enough so's you'd really notice.
I was really wanting to like this one, having looked forward to a good British cask beer for weeks, but I don't think I can really recommend this, even to hopheads. This no other dimension to this than some disembodied pure bitterness. It wasn't terrible and I managed to neck a few pints, to help the cause you understand, but I was dissapointed. Almost universally amongst the friends I was with, who represent a fairly wide swath of palates, agreed that the Winter Tipple just didn't do IT, IT being whatever beer is supposed to do.