Originally published in BEER March 2006
Beer sellers: Meadow Farm Shop
See previous post for more Welsh beers. Note Cwrw Castell has since been discontinued.
ABV 3.8 and 5.6 per cent
Origin Conwy Town, Conwy, Wales
Buy from local outlets, brewery (tel 01492 585287)
Website www.conwybrewery.co.uk
Conwy Cwrw Castell
At the opposite, northern end of Wales is another relatively new micro that takes its bottling seriously. Set up by former home brewer Gwynne Thomas in 2003 and originally experimenting with bottling off site, it now boasts its own bottling line installed with the aid of a grant from the Welsh Assembly Government.
Now all the beers are available in both cask and bottle conditioned form, and the bottles do well in local outlets, including restaurants, hotels and even youth hostels, venues that wouldn’t take cask ale but are still keen to offer guests a distinctive quality local product. The Spar convenience store chain has also been helpful and numerous local branches take the beers.
Cwrw Castell, or Castle Bitter for those who can’t handle w’s used as vowels, commemorates Conwy’s most celebrated landmark, the 13th century castle that is now a World Heritage Site. It’s a good ordinary bitter made with traditional floor malted barley, Pioneer hops in the copper and Cascade for the aroma.
This is a rich golden amber beer with off-white lace and a cheerful flowery geranium and blackcurrant aroma with just a touch of sulphur. The light sweetish palate has lots of fruit and a very faint roast note, developing orange and other citrus flavours and ginger syrup with a good brush of hops.
The lingering finish is tangy with the blackcurrant notes returning over biscuity malt and gently bittering hops. Again a straightforward beer, and at a quaffing gravity, but cheerful and very enjoyable.
Conwy Telford Porter
Telford Porter is a quite different proposition: a strongish brew lent a dark reddish brown colour by dark malts and roasted barley, with a smooth off-white head. The aroma is gently fruity, roasty and slightly oily.
You can taste the roast on a dryish and herbal palate with distinct liquorice notes and a dash of brown sugar – I also detected something like that old fashioned soft drink, Dandelion and Burdock.
The finish starts pleasantly fruity and turns tangily drying, with more roast, burry hops and those persistent herbal flavours again, plus a touch of floweriness. Overall this is a subtle beer that captures the style but lacks the aggressive flavours of some modern porters.
Intriguingly, Telford Porter is subtitled “Historic Ale No. 1” – Gwynne aims to produce a series of beers linked specifically to the history of Conwy. This one pays homage to the beers that might have been drunk when Thomas Telford built the famous suspension bridge across the river Conwy to the castle back in 1826.
Recognising that dark, strong beers based on old recipes might delight knowledgeable beer lovers without setting the mass market alight, the brewery didn’t expect vast sales for the porter – but in fact it’s proved one of their more successful lines.
No doubt one of the reasons was the explicit link to local heritage. The beer is a great example of a microbrewery making the most of its strengths by producing a quality product that unashamedly carries a sense of origin and place, in direct opposition to the sort of brewer that thinks it doesn’t matter if a beer named after its home town of Hoegaarden is brewed in Jupille. Iechyd da!
Read more about these beers at ratebeer.com:
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/conwy-castle-bitter-cwrw-castell/30814/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/conwy-telford-porter/54050/
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