Shropshire Gold
Salopian Brewing Company Ltd

From cask at Peter Kavanagh’s in Liverpool. On the lighter side of the style, faint malt profile and lightly hopped finish. An easy drinker but not the most flavorful.

 

Cask conditioned at The Lord Rosebery, Scarborough. ABV was 3.8%. Golden brown colour. Fairly fruity and malty aroma and flavour, decent hops throughout. Nice.

500ml bottle, served cold. Clear, golden colour with just a couple of stray bubbles. The creamy, white head leaves rings of lacing. Rich honeysuckle aroma. Taste is floral, leafy and has a hint of heather honey. Bitterness is light. Medium/light body and a slick mouthfeel with a long dry-ish finish. An excellent quality, heavily hopped, English golden ale. Super refreshing and very easy drinking. Much praise deserved for building so much flavour and character into 3.8% ABV. This would go down a storm in a country pub garden on a hot summer day, particularly on cask.

 

 

Salopian Brewing Co. "Shropshire Gold"
cask via handpump @ Fly In The Loaf, Liverpool, UK on 1 May 2015

Notes: 3.8% ABV. Once the "milkiness" of the pull has settled it's a clear golden with gleaming yellow highlights beneath a frothy head of white. Very good head retention and better than average lacing. The aroma displays bready/grainy malt and floral and grassy hops. There's a touch of fruitiness and an edge of mineral to it as well. In the mouth it's light-medium in body and remarkably smooth and supple (this is cask via hand pump). The flavor follows the aroma: it's biscuity with golden caramel and a touch of honey, and nicely balanced by a very firm bitterness that anchors it but allows the malt to step forward. Dry finish with some lingering malt and leafy and floral hops lingering.

 

 

 

Pristinely clear and golden. Snow white head, but not much of it. Very simple, subtle aroma, but also very nice. Possibly the most honey I've smelled in a beer that isn't actually brewed with it. The honey is huge. It's so sweet it almost goes into toffee territory, but lime, orange, tea, and dandelion aromas suggest a pleasant hop balance.

Plain Jane on the palate, but perfectly refreshing. Fresh malts. Crisp hops. Then back to fresh malts again. It tastes the way a malthouse smells. Grainy, dusty, grassy, sweet. This could almost pass as a sort of English pilsner – it has the same balance, the same purity of flavor, even similar carbonation and dryness. It's not the most interesting beer out there, but you could do a hell of a lot worse, especially on a warm summer's day.

This beer is brewed some 12 miles up the road from my place: pleased to see it came 3rd overall in the CAMRA 2011 Beers of the Year Comp 2 weeks ago.

This review is of a hand pulled cask pint, poured into a UK pint sleeve glass at the excellent 'White Hart' in Shifnal.

Light golden copper body with a good firm head of white foam sat on top. The lacing left on the glass telling me it was in good condition.

The smell was of floral hops with an undercurrent of caramel malt sweetness becoming stronger as the beer warm in the glass.

The taste was a good, hop front and finish, with the maltines from the aromas being evident too. This is a well balanced beer and very easy to drink.

I've been to the brewery (in an old creamary) and they are lovely people who produce this brew: 50% of turnover is now Shropshire Gold, so it must be selling.

On cask locally, served in a traditional dimpled pint mug

Pours with a light yellowy body, quite hazy with a little bit of sediment. Theres also what appears to be hop leaf floating around. Thick tight white head with good retention, some patchy lacing

Smell, after seeing what appeared to be hop leaf floating around I was backed up by the nose. An amazingly fresh english hop aroma. From homebrewing I can say its like smelling a combination of dried hop flowers and the hops just as they go into the boil. Some grassiness and a little bit of bready malt

Taste, crisp and very fresh hops, solid bitterness however not overpowering, lots of hop character. Bready biscuity malt on the finish followed by more english hops

Hugely flavour for a beer of this size. Tonnes of fresh hops, this tasted like a very fresh firkin