“The most enjoyable thing about making this beer for me is being able to try it at every stage possible,” says Evans, who joined the brewery from the Manchester-based Alphabet Brewing Company in 2018. Turner’s “The Fighting Temeraire”, which is now nearly 200 years old and seems to have become more ghostly and poignant with age. They remind me of one of my favorite paintings, J. This is the beauty of tasting these vintages. According to Alexander and beer writer Roger Protz, two years ago the vintage tasted like brown sugar and sherry, as well as a suggestion of Dundee cake (a traditional Scottish fruit cake). 2014 is light amber and gleaming, with hints of demerara sugar on the nose, some sherry notes on the palate, with a definitive sweetness and a dry and bitter finish. On the nose of the 2009 I note light caramel, dried fruit, and a hint of toffee, while the palate is nutty, bitter, and dry, with some alcohol fierceness present. There is a flurry of rich fruity notes on the nose, alongside another suggestion of Marmite, while Evans picks up a hint of cayenne on the palate. This is also clear in the glass and reddish mahogany in color. After the 1996, we move on to the 2000 vintage. I’d also say that as most of the production still goes to the U.S., it is the pull of that market and the reputation it has gained there that has fed the desire to keep it going.”īack in the boardroom, our vertical tasting continues. “I’d add that being Lees, once a tradition is established, they rather like to hang on to it, especially if it shows the brewery in a good light. “I rather think that enjoy the quirkiness of the beer and the sense that they are doing something out of the ordinary,” says Alexander. The beer was distinct from the rest of JW Lees’ output. “It was likely that my first tasting was in a local pub around 1993 when the landlord-long moved on-treated a few CAMRA members to some bottles that had been condemned as out-of-date by his stocktaker. These would likely have been some of the early bottlings, and I recall the sweet, marmalade and honey taste as well as the evident alcohol.” “It is probably fair to say that it is Lees’ best-kept secret, at least in the U.K.,” he says. Peter Alexander, a Middleton-based CAMRA Chairman and beer writer, recalls a memorable early encounter with Harvest Ale, back when he moved to the area in 1993. It has always been the same grist, same yeast every time, and as Michael said, every beer can be different … All our other beers have to be consistent, because the best tasters are in the trade. “We initially collected it at the original gravity so we never measured the strength. “We knew it could be strong, and we used to say we would boil the bollocks off it, meaning that it was a three-hour boil,” he says, which would serve to deepen its color and create more caramelization. Wood was also at the same dinner, and recalls that Harvest Ale “started off as a bit of fun. With this in mind, the two of them talked at the dinner about doing something that was going to be the best of British beer and would only be brewed once a year.” were brewing some very strong, premium, expensive beers. beer market then, Heineken was 3.4% ABV, and people were drinking other weak beers, but the continental breweries who were marketing beers in the U.K. “My dad, who was brewery chairman, and the then-head brewer Giles Dennis were at the annual Institute of Brewers dinner,” says William Lees-Jones. The seven Harvest Ale vintages we will taste are the aforementioned 1996, plus the 2000, 2009, 2014, 2020, and two iterations of the 2021 version, one of which was fermented with yeast cultured from the very first Harvest Ale of 1986. Photographer Sean McEmerson and I are joined by head brewer Michael Lees-Jones and his cousin William Lees-Jones, who is the brewery’s managing director master brewer Tom Evans former brewery manager Paul Wood, who began in 1972 and currently brews specials on JW Lees’ pilot kit and marketing manager Jonathan Lloyd. There are seven of us around the table, overlooked by paintings of past members of the Lees family, which adorn the wooden panels. Now, some 25 years later-on a drizzly December morning in the boardroom at the Manchester brewery-we are tasting history, and using all our senses to discover what time can do to a beer. independent beer were Bitter and Golden Ale, though the green shoots of the IPA revival were starting to sprout. When the 1996 Harvest Ale from JW Lees was brewed, the dominant styles in U.K. It isn’t unreasonable to consider this beer a time capsule. From Barons to Barrels with Captain Pabst.Message in a Bottle with Brewery Ommegang. Beer is Labor with East Brother Beer Co.Let Go or Get Dragged by Jerard Fagerberg.Ferments at Low Temps by Stephanie Byce.
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