Cottage Norman's Conquest

Originally published in What’s Brewing November 2004

Note this beer may no longer be available in a bottle conditioned version.

Origin: West Lydford, Somerset, England
ABV: 7 per cent
Buy from Specialist suppliers, regional Tesco

Cottage Norman's Conquest

Back in the mid-1990s this superb Somerset ale seemed poised to lead the bottled beer renaissance. When Cottage Brewery founder Chris Norman and his wife Helen dreamed up the rather high concept of a beer called Norman’s Conquest at an original gravity of 1066, they couldn’t have known the result would prove such a hit, snatching Champion Beer of Britain in draught form only months after it first appeared in 1995.

Seeing the potential in a bottled version but short of capacity in their then tiny plant, Cottage contracted out to Thomas Hardy. Bottle conditioned Norman’s Conquest was duly launched in some style at Fortnum and Mason in November 1995, at a time when the mainstream media seemed to be taking beer seriously for once: the Guardian raved, and Oz Clarke and Jilly Goolden rhapsodised on the BBC.

But the food and drink editors soon went back to glugging their supermarket Chardonnay, and Cottage ran into consistency problems. For a while Norman’s Conquest was brewed and marketed by Hampshire Brewery, then disappeared altogether in bottled form.

Eighteen months ago it made a welcome return, this time produced in house by a newly expanded brewery, and bottled at IBS, successor to Wessex Craft Brewers. Cottage’s Mark Dearman promises to build on its renewed success with at least three new bottled “classic ale styles” and a packaging upgrade by next spring.

Conquest is a beer that’s difficult to pigeon-hole; hardly the “barley wine” it’s sometimes designated, it’s more an idiosyncratic old ale with shades of a Belgian double. A grist of Maris Otter pale, crystal and chocolate malts and Challenger hops results in a beer that the label now describes simply as a “strong ale”.

It pours very dark ruby, with a fine, persistent yellowish head, and a roasty aroma with leather, vanilla, banana and cigar ash. It’s creamy in the mouth, with rich malt loaf and winey fruit and traces of raspberry, apple and brown sugar. Tar, chocolate, and hoppy, flinty flavours give some dryness.

The long finish has roast flavours coming to the fore over more malt loaf, hops and dry bitter chocolate on the tongue, and late cigar smoke and geranium notes.

All in all, the new Conquest seems at least as good as the old and should be just as well suited to fly the standard for fine British beer — if only the superplonkers of the media could be persuaded to wake up and smell the hops more than once a decade.

Try also Dent T’Owd Tup (filtered), Hog’s Back Wobble in a Bottle, Val-Dieu Brune (Belgium) 

Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/cottage-normans-conquest/11408/