Review: St Peter’s Winter Ale

St Peter’s Brewery
Bottle
6.5%
http://www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk/

If any brewery is attempting to break out of the musty, fusty world of beards and pullovers that dominates real ale in Britain, it has to be St Peter’s. Their beers lurch into Belgian territory nearly as often as the Wehrmacht with elderberry, lemon and ginger brews, while their Clerkenwell pub, The Jerusalem Tavern, mixes oak panels with suited pavement-overspill. And even their bottles, a weighty recreation of a 1770 original, have an aesthetic charm beyond mere function.

They are also experimental brewers, recreating long-forgotten varieties and even attempting some other soon-to-be-forgotten fads such as gluten-free beer. But this Winter Ale isn’t going to be the one to unite the pin-striped City types and the cardigans from CAMRA. At 6.5% it’s strong but insubstantial; winter ales should be warming, but here the booze is just a background note.

Instead, the flavour of this mahogany-shaded ale reminds me of Marmite. That’s right, Marmite – that Berlin Wall of yeast-based taste, dividing brother from sister and father from son. There is something in the thin, sweet, malt flavour that reminds me of the smell of burnt-toast soldiers too. Marmite, toast and alcohol? Unless you’re Shane McGowan most of us avoid beer at breakfast.