Originally published in What’s Brewing September 2004
Origin: St Austell, Cornwall, England
ABV: 4.8 per cent
Buy from Supermarkets, brewery’s pubs, mail order
Website www.staustellbrewery.co.uk
St Austell Clouded Yellow
Clouded Yellow from St Austell, Cornwall’s only surviving traditional family brewery, must have one of Britain’s most evocative beer names. The clouded yellow is a butterfly, Colias Croceus, originating “in Europe and an uncommon yet much appreciated migrant to Britain” says the label, hinting at the beer’s exotic inspiration. But the name is also apt if interpreted literally. Clouded Yellow had a lucky escape — it could have been called Hagar the Horrible, the name under which it first appeared as a festival special back in 1999.
Brewer Roger Ryman had decided to have a go at a Bavarian-style wheat beer, but didn’t want to risk letting Bavarian yeast — responsible for many of the distinctive fruity and spicy flavours in these beers — loose in his brewery. Instead he tried using spices and flavourings, a practice strictly verboten in Bavaria, of course, but enthusiastically espoused by the brewers of that other great wheat beer country, Belgium.
A bottle conditioned version of this intriguing hybrid — mercifully renamed — won the Tesco Spring Beer Challenge the following year, and became a regular line. The recipe was tweaked further in 2003, reduced slightly in strength from 5 per cent, made rather less clovey and packed in more elegant green bottles.
It’s brewed from Maris Otter pale malt and malted wheat, hopped with Willamette and additionally flavoured with vanilla pods, cloves, coriander and maple syrup. Although brewed in Cornwall, it’s bottled at Hepworth’s in Horsham.
The beer is indeed yellow, and — if you pour with the traditional swirl — clouded, though less so than its continental inspirations. If this offends your delicate British sensibilities, the label suggests you can also pour it clear, but I think you’d be missing out.
There’s a thick, fine white head and a gently creamy, spicy and wheaty aroma with vanilla and banana tones. The very fruity banana and peach palate has emerging notes of vanilla, herbs and drying hops, none of which dominates.
The finish is mainly dry, with a deeper bitter tang that blends well with the vanilla flavour. There are late notes of orange peel, apple pips and cloves.
The beer is notably less spicy than it was, but still complex and unusual, and arguably more appealing. The brewery is keen to stress its suitability with food, recommending it with a Thai curry, but it’s also well worth drinking on its own, perhaps al fresco on a late September afternoon
Try also Baladin Isaac (Italy), Baltika 8 (Russia), Kaltenberg König Ludwig Weissbier (Germany), Salopian Puzzle
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/st-austell-clouded-yellow/5731/
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