Redeemer

Every so often a beer comes along that makes you sit up and pay attention. The experience of a deep draught catches you by surprise and induces you to hold the glass before you at arm's length and stare in slight bemusement. Thornbridge's Kipling invoked just such a reaction in me. Never have I smelled such a potent and promising hop bouquet coming from a glass. The smell of fresh tropical fruit was so satisfying that I doubted the flavour could back it up. It did. In spades. The malt is on a par with the hops for freshness and body creating a beer that was designed to be guzzled.

The golden hue was threaded with haze, a sight in the past usually attributed to age or poor storage and generally foretelling an unpleasant experience before the glass got near your mouth. It now suggests the polar opposite. Haze in a great many commercial craft beers and all home brew nowadays is invariably chill haze and suggests a light touch filtration. This is almost always a good thing; it means that no flavour has been stripped from the beer. While beer can still taste exceptional after filtration, eliminating it altogether leaves the beer in its natural state. Cask ale lives like this all the time of course, but it is becoming more prominent in bottled beer and some keg. The most important aspect is perhaps the drinking public's acceptance of beer throwing a slight haze. Sure, those who slug pints of lager purely for the neurochemical effects will still baulk at a hazy pint but the steadily growing cohort of craft beer lovers are not at all put off. It is almost reassuring to see haze, and many brewers wear the unfiltered badge with pride.

This beer is what craft brewing is all about. It tastes as much like beer as Bud Lite doesn't. That makes for quite an experience.