Godfathers
Itchen Valley Brewery Ltd

Very smooth and light. Best from glass.

A: Served an amber color with a small head and some lacing.

S: Mild herbal and spice aroma with some citrus.

T: Mild taste of citrus and malt with some sweetness. Nice tangy bitterness and a fairly dry finish.

F: Fairly light body, refreshing and nicely balanced. has a bit of character.

O: Good session ale. well crafted from a small brewery.

Enjoyed a pint of Godfathers on the recommendation of a staff member of The White Horse, on Parson's Green. Good call!

Pours like deshredded orange juice with a shot of red Kool-Aid mixed in. Smell isn't much to write home about, pinch of wheat bread, maybe a hop or two.

But, this is the best sub-4% beer I've ever had. Subtle, but very tasty, & fairly simple. Gritty hops mix in with mild, fleeting malts. Easy, low carbonation, smooth, bare-bones bitter finis.

And that's it. And it's good. Don't know what magic was worked on this beer to separate it from the pack of similar cask ales that have been uniformly unimpressive, but this is a winner. Very good beer, & one that you could quaff until the cows stepped over you.

(Notes of 23/06/09) Purchased at the latest Hampshire farmers' market in Andover, where the brewery stall staff said that this beer hadn't been bottled for a very long time until lately. This bottle-conditioned version, at 3.8%abv., is packaged in a 500ml brown bottle, BB JUN 2010, served cool in a straight imperial pint glass. NOTE: the draught version won the 1998 Campion Beer of Britain Bronze Medal; the ingredients include pale crystal malt, wheat, Progress W.G.V., Goldings and Fuggles hops.

A: pours a nearly 100% clear, burnished dark orangey tawny hue, coming with a restrained off-white fluffy head and very mild carbonation - a good sign of spot'on bottle-conditioning~~
S: balanced and charming - the aroma is 50-50 b/w the Fuggles/Progress' wet-earthy plus Goldings' citric notes and mildly caramely maltiness, while a clear trace of aromatic oolong-tea stays on the side. A swirl gives rise to faintly peachy/apricot notes, while other fruitiness such as pale dates and burned tangerines also springs to mind.
T: from the beginning, the taste proves proudly dry and hoppy on the citric-earthy side, leading towards a long finish where biscuity pale malts contribute a fulsome and charming aroma of considerable depth (with a touch of boiled lotus roots) to complement, or in fact contrast, a light bite of intensifying-ly dry and tannic hop bitterness. A faint hint of burned malt is also in the end, not easily separable from the hop bitterness, but I'm not sure if this is used at all.
M&D: the overall flavour profile is not so much complex as pleasantly quaffable and balanced, where the medium-bodied hop bitterness manages to keep my palate just about "hooked" at the end of each sip. The mouthfeel is refreshing with only natural soft fizziness at play, faring well against a light-medium body of this feather light weight ale. I can appreciate the Itchen Valley's bottle-conditioning quality that is going only consistently stronger, as I've witnessed during the past several years living in Southern England. Despite being bottled in a nearby cidery (actually!), the beers are free from any problems of infection and the line is now being extended to accommodate even this long-thought discontinued RAIB! Way to go, Itchen Valley!