Cornish Gribben
Wooden Hand Brewery

Bottle. Medium amber colour. No head.
Light toffee malt. Some fruit discernable.
Taste as it smells. Buttery notes. Stewed cabbage.
Medium body. Decent carbonation.
Everyday English Bitter.

A 500ml bottle with a BB of Feb 2018. Purchased recently from Home Bargains. Judging by the image of the tower on the label, this beer is named after Gribben Head in Cornwall.

A: Poured into a tulip pint glass. A deep amber colour with good clarity and plentiful carbonation. Forms a decent head of white foam that lasts for a minute or so before subsiding to a patchy surface layer.

S: Aroma of vague grainy malt with hints of biscuits, mild stewed leaves, overdone veg and a faint twang of fermented apples. Not great.

T: Tastes of grainy malt with notes of biscuits, husks, stewed leaves, overcooked veggies, mild ale yeast and a vague hint of solvent. Very dry; a moderate bitterness upon swallowing and a harsh finish.

M: Mouthfeel is smooth and dry, with prickly carbonation and a thin, watery body. Aftertaste of acrid stewed leaves/veg, husky grain and yeast.

O: A decidedly subpar beer. Looks alright, while the aroma and flavour are bland and flawed. Mediocre body. It comes across as homebrew rather than professionally made beer - the overall character is watery and unsatisfying. Not brilliant and not worth your time.

 

Bottled
Pours a clear golden body with huge foaming thick white head that stays
The aroma is lovely reminds me of small brewers and homebrew stills
Flavour is a proper old fashioned bitter

 

Coming in a 500ml brown glass bottle, BB 09/2013, served cool in a straight imperial pint glass. Note: the back label suggests the ingredients include “chocolate”(!) and sugar in addition to Maris Otter palt malt and Challenger, Fuggles and Goldings hops.

A: pours a slightly translucent dark amber hue, coming with a thin layer of off-white beer head to last, on top of rather fine carbonation.
S: on the nose, the initial impression is “sickly sweet”… showing notes of burned cane sugar, sweet orangey-citrus, a touch of brown-sugar mixed ginger tea, and boiled sweet root veggies… Not pleasant, to say the least.
T: thin bodied and rather spritzy, the taste feels as if it was filtered multiple times to reach a state where it’s almost clean (or bland!) and void of flavours; given a very very close observation, a rather low-profiled malty theme struggles to get through, accompanied by random acidity likely from the malts & yeasts and followed by a simplistic, herbally bitter finish where, again, no particular hop aroma or taste seems to be retained.
M&O: the mouthfeel is watery-thin and unnecessarily spritzy, weak-bodied, and lacking flavours everywhere. All in all a beer I very much will avoid by all means in the future… (how can it be so bland, I still don’t understand, given such a colourful ingredient profile aforementioned?!)

Hand-pulled pint in the Wolverhampton Wetherspoons on 6th Oct 2012.

The beer is a thin looking clear golden colour, the white head also thin, but it did leave some good lacing: so the condition of the beer was fine.

I've struggled with beers from Wooden Hand in the past but thought I'd give them another go: maybe their beers don't travel too well?

This one was bland as well though: floral hop and mild biscuity malt on the nose, with a fruit orchard feel to the taste, but add some metallic hints and a dry hop finish, I almost couldn't finish my pint (but I manfully saw the liquid off). Body depth was weak and watery, this isn't a wholesome brew or even a well balanced tipple, it lacks 'umph'.

Doubt I'll be having another beer from these boys.