Castle Eden brewery
ABV: 5.5%
Origin: Castle Eden, Durham, England
Website: www.cameronsbrewery.com
First published: 8 January 2001
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. For more about Castle Eden and what happened to it, see the introduction to my review of Castle Eden Special Ale.
The beer challenge run by the Tesco supermarket chain continues to put interesting and imaginative British beers on the shelves. Durham-based Castle Eden apparently got commended for this beer, described as “dark amber coloured with a clever twist of orange”, in the Autumn 2000 competition. Flavouring beer with orange is such a clever idea lots of other brewers have thought of it, but this brew, which is not bottle-conditioned, turns out to be a paler colour than “dark amber” might suggest.
There’s a lovely initial bouquet of flowery hops, summery fresh orange peel and, more distantly, fresh varnish and mown grass. In the mouth the orange-peel flavours are underlined by a certain oiliness of texture, making it very smooth on the tongue; underneath the aromatic fireworks is good pale malt and a late-emerging hoppy edge to give a tangy swallow and a moderately sustained tangy-fruity finish.
Some British beers taste of oranges anyway – usually in the form of dark marmalade, but the refreshingly light and zingy orange here is unusually effective, even if ‘clever’ isn’t quite the right adjective.
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