Traditionally there are two things the Americans can’t do. One is make a car that goes round corners and the second is brew ale. The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company have been brewing since 1980 and their Pale Ale is the flagship beer of the brewery, winning several awards over the years.

This grabbed my attention because ten years ago, I was in the Sierra Nevada mountains, hurling myself down a snowy hill like a maniac. As for the idyllic picture on the bottle, the region really looks like that. I was also drawn to the beer as you can get three bottles for £4 in Tesco. Bargain.

There’s quite a gentle aroma to this drink however it’s barely present at all, you have to really shove your nose into your glass to pick it up. The beer has a pleasing rich golden colour, clear to the eye.

Most importantly the taste is one hell of a surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting, having never drank an American ale. There’s a slight hint of a fizz to the drink which initially plays on the tongue. A bit like a faint memory of popping candy. Once you get used to the taste, you realise you’re drinking a pleasant pale ale. Not mind blowing in anyway but certainly above average. We’re in pure summer beer territory here. Light and hoppy with tingling citrus undertones.

There’s no real aftertaste to speak of but you won’t worry about that, you’ll be too busy opening the next bottle. I’d gladly drink this all night long. Bad news is that was my last bottle.

america · Beers · pale ale · sierra nevada

What would wine be like if it had grown up English? Or, to put it another way, what would real ale be like if it was French? What I’m getting at is this: the French like to make things complicated. Paris, for instance, has 3 seperate underground rail networks all on top of each other, while it’s only possible to utilise the language over there properly if you know the gender of a coffee table.

This love of needless complexity is best demonstrated via wine through which the French have taken the relatively simple process of fermenting grapes to make a pleasant alcoholic beverage and infused it with all sorts of rules and guidelines about what wine should be consumed with what food and a style of writing tasting notes that would leave James Joyce in his ‘Finnegans Wake’ days breathless with their impenetrability.

Meanwhile in Blighty, the brewing industry has been missing out on this trick for years and has only recently tried to gourmet itself up and now it seems every bottle worth it’s salt comes with a flowery description of the rapture you’ll recieve when you shove the drink into your face. Which makes tonight’s beer all the more intriguing.

From the label on the back of a bottle of Purity Mad Goose (current frontrunner for the coveted Badpoo award of ‘Beer That Sounds Most Like A Peter Gabriel Era Genesis Album Title’) and you’ll find a thorough breakdown of what’s gone into the brew- Maris Otter, Caragold and Wheat Malt with Hallertau brewing hops and Cascade and Willamette aroma hops since you ask- but beyone that the preview of the taste is limited to ‘great hop character and citrus overtones’ which you can pretty much deduce by reading the words ‘Pale Ale’ on the front.

Frankly, I’m not sure this will do anymore. We live in a world where not only are our alcoholic drinks dissected in tasting notes before we actualy taste them, but film trailers handily condense all the good bits of a movie into 2 crash-bang minutes and TV shows actively promote what’s going to happen in them just so people will tune in to see exactly what they’ve been told would occur actually occurring. Now I find I’m venturing into a bottle of beer without a detailled guide and full set of directions.

It’s a good job, then, that this is a belter. And that’s all I’m going to tell you- go and try it yourselves. If the people at Purity want to keep a little mystery alive before you taste their wares than I’m not going to spoil the party. Except to say that it’s got a great hop character and citrus overtones.

However, to finish, we can take a different cue from the world of wine and discuss what sort of thing this drink would be a perfect accompaniment for- much in the same way that we all know Merlot is nice with steak and it’s a terrible faux pas to drink a dry white while eating a Mars Bar. Here’s a few examples of things which would be enhanced by a pint of Purity Mad Goose:

- Chicken
- Fish
- Pork
- Crisps
- Nuts
- Watching ‘Cheers’
- Doing the hoovering
- Juggling
- Yelling
- Life

Beers · mad goose · pale ale · purity · review