Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

Jamey kindly gave me some of his ESB when we were doing a production of Annie together a few weeks back and I finally have a chance to drink some.  Jamey warned me that it is VERY carbonated and he was right.  I almost had foam all over the desk, if not for his warning and my cat-like reflexes in sucking down the foam . . .  Just like college again, but I digress.  On to the beer.

The beer appears as a very deep copper, much like a Fuller's ESB.  It is mostly clear, with a little bit of cloudiness, either from a little yeast or protein haze, I am not sure.  A thick pillowy foam lingers for a while on the beer.  It is very pretty.  It is hard to get a good smell of the beer, around the foam, but once the foam clears it has a pronounced hop character.  Earthy and a bit of spice, very nice hop smell.

The ESB tastes very prickly on the tongue, due to the amount of carbonation.  This is similar to the carbonation in champagne, though with coarser bubbles.  At Jamey's advice, I knocked a lot of this out through repeated swirling of the glass.  Underneath was a nice beer, with a good amount of hops and a solid hop backbone.  I would like a bit more malt complexity, as the malt was a bit one dimensional, but it is still a solid beer.  And, while there was too much carbonation, the beer maintained a really nice head on it, which is something I always have trouble with in my beer.

Cheers, Jamey, and thank you for sharing!