It was my Dad’s birthday a few days ago. He has always liked Adnam’s Broadside and he has always been partial to a whisky. So for his birthday I decided to get him a bottle of Spirit of Broadside, a 43% bottle of distilled Broadside. Anyway, while that was on order I decided I’d make the most of the postage costs and buy myself some beer while I was at it. I looked through the whole Adnam’s website and a few things caught my eye, however there was only one thing out of them that you could buy as a single bottle (I’m not going to get an entire 12 pack of a beer that I don’t even know that I’d like!).
As you could probably tell from the title the beer that I did end up getting was Sole Bay. A beer which was first brewed to celebrate 350 years of brewing. It turns up in it’s own tin which is all snazzy and what-not. The whole thing is a very stylish affair with dates on a timeline printed on the tin and on the bottle, which is both corked and caged (obviously I’m not suggesting it might be a crown cap and caged, that would be silly).
OK, what you actually want to know: It pours a mid amber sort of colour with a decent amount of carbonation and an off white head. I can’t say that I got a huge amount off the nose, a slight biscuit-y note, nothing huge. The taste was very sweet, a little banana but mostly a malty sweetness. In the shpeal on the website it said about adding lavender into the end of the fermentation, not all that noticeable either. There was something else in the mix which I couldn’t quite put my finger on which reminded me of ginger beer, and don’t think ginger, it wasn’t that.
I have to say, although there was nothing wrong with per se, I was hoping for something a bit more bold from this beer. Very enjoyable, although I don’t know if it quite justifies the price for me.
Overall Rating: 7 / 10
Available at www.adnams.co.uk