Two new twists on our ever-popular Pintail… Taste guide: Light golden pale ale with a citrus, orange flavour and slight spiciness 3.4% abv
When something as popular as Pintail why change it? Indeed so, you can rest assured Pintail is here to stay as is, after all you just love its combination of the soft, fruity New Zealand Motueka hop, combined with the tasty Norfolk extra pale Maris Otter malt.
However, we are often asked how about it could be brewed with UK hops. So, for one month only throughout June you will be able to try PinTRAIL and LIGHTFOOT ‘23 which put the UK twist to the test.
The short version of the story is that Linky from The Plasterers Arms, in Norwich approached us and asked if we could brew a slightly lower abv version of Pintail which they could use as the session beer as part of the City of Ale Trails. (BTW Find out more about City of Ale here).
Essentially this involves using the exact same proportions and combinations of the malt for the beer – just slightly less of it. However, this also provided the opportunity to put the UK hop question to the test.
We approached our good friend Jon Stringer at hop Merchants Charles Faram and asked of they could help.
Jon loved the idea and had some new, experimental UK hops which are part of the company’s ongoing hop development programme – we just love Ernest and Harlequin hops which have rose to great popularity thanks to Charles Faram. The new hops proposed are so new they have code names so the attractively named CF162 and CF325 were proposed to give similar citrus notes to their New Zealand peer Motueka.
To further push the boundaries on UK vs New Zealand comparison we mirrored the hopping quantities and timings as used in Pintail just using the new UK hops instead. We do confess to a tiny little bit of cold feet in that we added just a touch of Admiral and Harlequin hops as belt and braces to support the 2 new hops. Quite simply because until we have brewed with them we were brewing into the unknown.
The PinTRAIL version will be available at The Plasterers from 25 May and throughout June. This is exclusive to that pub, after all it was their brainchild, however they cant take the full brew and so we will be adding some additional hopping to some other casks to create a subtle change to LIGHTFOOT and this will be available at pubs across Norfolk and Suffolk.
Let us know what you think!
Available w/c 22 May