Friday 25 July 2014

Beer #279 - Greene King Yardbird

Yardbird is a apparently an ‘innovative brew’ that has been ‘hand-crafted’ by…uhh...Greene King. Despite visiting The Compton Arms in Islington pretty much every Wednesday for the last 18 months or so I’ve managed to avoid drinking this beer, which they have both in bottles and on keg, until now. I’m very sceptical of the attempts being made by larger UK breweries to worm their way into the ‘craft’ beer market, if only out of principle. But this week, this week I thought I’d give it a try. First thing to note is that this ‘American-style IPA’ is not really an American style IPA at all. I’m not sure what the thinking was there, do they think people wouldn’t know what an American-style IPA actually tastes like? Odd. Anyway, this doesn’t. It pours a dark brown and mine was served in a fancy-ish stemmed glass, nice. The aroma is of dark fruits, it smells pretty malty and has a medicinal hint to it. There is quite a lot going on flavour-wise but mostly it’s bit strange. I found it sweet and very definitely malt-forward with strong caramel and dark fruit dominating, resembling a fairly standard English ale with a bit more tang. The marketing blurb proclaims that it is ‘packed full of hops’ but where they put them I don’t know. It was by no means a bad beer but for me it was too sweet and it really isn’t what it says on the tin. 

Brewery: Greene King
Country: United Kingdom
ABV: 4.0%

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