Harvey's Best (?)

How far back are you going? Even when I was part of the staff team at the GBBFs in Brighton in the mid 80s Harvey's tasted like potato water.

It's never been one that travels well - it tastes noticeably worse the further away from Lewes you go, but I've had it in a dozen different places this year and it's now got this almost sour edge to it that wasn't there last year.

One of the side trips was to Lewes (and the brewery)

The Mild still tasted like "tater water" I could have said it was a north-south taste divide but for the fact that the Gales Mild was so wonderful we drank the Basketmakers dry each time he restocked. (On one occasion those gathered there moved on from mild and then bitter until the pub had no beer)

You could drink Greene King IPA instead...

I'm glad *you* said that!

(cos I nearly did but thought better of it!)

IME their beer travelled well enough to their excellent Royal Oak pub, near London Bridge.

I hadn't ever heard of the 'spud water' jibes - (I do remember hearing that Tolly's used potato & onion starch to supplement the malt!). MikeMcG

It seems to be particular to me, in that there's a particular breed of beer that tastes just like potato water. I dunno if it's a fault in the brewing process, or a particular combination of ingredients. I first noticed it with beers from a brewery in Leigh Sinton, Worcestershire (Baileys? now that's going back a bit - about 25 years) and since then it pops up every now and then. Harveys being a notable example.

Now if you can taste cabbage water in a beer then it's definitely off!

there's a particular nasty woody taste that I find in cask beer every now & again, I think it's in beer that's become old/oxidised, but not yet turned to malt vinegar, but the more usual flavour brewers describe oxidised beer as is 'wet cardboard' - though as I've yet to taste wet cardboard (or similarly smelt a skunk, in order to recognise the flavour of 'light-struck' beer) I don't know how helpful the descriptor is. I do know that my tastebuds are fairly insensitive to some off or 'even on' flavours, e.g. diacetyl (butter/butterscotch), though I am getting better at this one.

On a Brewlab taste training course, we were given samples of Darwin beers, each had a measured amount of artificial 'off flavour' added (oxidised, light-struck, acetobacter, lactobacillus, etc) the trouble for me was in part that I perhaps don't have a very sensitive palate so the flavourful base beer was for me stronger than many of the off flavours we were being rtained to spot!

Interestingly (well, OK maybe only to me ?) other taste trainers use the most consistently clean but bland beer they can find - guess which beer? - UK-brewed US-Bud! which I'm told has a hop bitterness level of around the same point at which the average person can just taste the bitterness!

I wonder whether the trouble was also maybe that I'm used to drinking fairly unusual beers, (Lambic, Orval, Strong Suffolk, Oud Bruin & Flanders Red, etc) so some of the off flavours in the right beer might not see so 'off' to me? MikeMcG

Harveys is all right , its all those beer from M....M,

I always refer to it as "old fence posts" In some cases there is a slightly phenolic tinge too.

Nope, I'm not familiar with the M...M brewery - am I being dense? MikeMcG

its a location ? Masham

Your world is back to front.

Never really enjoyed the ordinary Theakston's Best / XB, but apart from them I've very rarely had a Masham beer I didn't enjoy - including 'dead' bottled beer (as the beer purist might call the products of either firm).

MikeMcG

The Priory Arms in Stockwell (SW8) has it as a regular, and while I've not been in to check in pretty much the past year, I'd still claim it's as good as anywhere closer to Lewes.

The problem for most people is that the beers from both breweries actually taste of something (other than 'tater washings). It's a common theme in Yorkshire brews and with the newer firms probably[1] stems from the brewers dislike of the flavourless products that had appeared from big brewers.

[1] I say probably only because I haven't talked to many of the brewers in Yorkshire. Those I have spoken to profess a dislike for bland beer and produce distinctly hoppy pale bitters. Historians will note that the original taste of Stones bitter was very hoppy and very pale ("almost with a tinge of blue" was my fathers description.) and extremely popular.

agreed - there's loads of good flavourful beer coming out of Yorks micros (& some of the established family brewers have major differences in flavour to other regions - brewed in stone/slate/steel squares with the diacetyl toffeeish/buttery flavour that can impart which IMO is very pleasant in small quantities & gives an approachability & roundedness to Yorks bitter).

That said I wouldn't say that in general Yorks beers have so much flavour that they would put the average ale drinker off. Nor (as I said before) have I heard anyone talk disparagingly of Masham beers in particular (& am still confused about the need for the use of the 'expletive deleted' term - "Mxxxxm")

ha! I love that description! (suspect I'm too young to ever have had a decent pint of Stones) cheers MikeMcG

snip original posting

In my local real ale pub, he puts Yorkshire beers on with monotonous regularity and they fly off the bar :-)

Long may it rain in Yorkshire and that is from a Lancastrian :-)

Dave

Stones was a yellowish, very bitter beer, brewed to quench steel workers' thirsts.

As a Sheffielder, I recall it well, and I'm sure your S.O. does too.

I don't remember the tinge of blue, though.