Exporting It Sounds Like a Good Idea
Written: Sep 12 '00 (Updated Sep 18 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Looks great, smells good.
Cons: No guts, no heart, no soul.
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| beerfly's Full Review: Shipyard Export Ale 2404b |
If looks could sell...
Shipyard is the brainchild of Alan Pugsley, the Johnny Appleseed of east coast American craft brewing. I first met Alan in May of 1991, when he was the brewer at Wild Goose, back when it was still independent. My wife and I were on vacation, headed down to the Outer Banks, and stopped in Cambridge, Maryland, to find the brewery, located in an old cannery. It was a few days before Memorial Day and about 94 degrees, and there was Alan, wearing a pair of shorts and Wellington boots, shoveling half a ton of spent grain out of the mash tun.
It was a turning point in my life. Not because of the beer, though the Goose Amber we had was great, but because I had been homebrewing for about four years at that point and thinking about taking a shot at one of the breweries that were starting to pop up. Phew! I took one look at the sweat, and the stink, and the utterly manual labor, and said "Forget that, maybe I'll write about it." Thanks, Alan!
Anyway, Pugsley didn't stay at Wild Goose much longer, and even while he was, he was consulting and on the road. Alan was working with a British brewer named Peter Austin, who worked the Ringwood brewery in Hampshire. Austin and Pugsley spread the Austin/Ringwood brewery idea around the world, and put quite a few in the eastern U.S. and Canada. Common attributes include kettles encased in firebrick, a "hop percolator" (a steel vessel plumbed into the pipe leading from the brewkettle to the heat exchanger, where whole hops are dosed with hot water to make a hop "tea" that the hot brew passes through, picking up lots of hop aroma), and Ringwood yeast.
A lot of crud has been written about Ringwood yeast. You'll hear that it's awful, that it will make beer that tastes buttery ("diacetyl" is the byproduct that causes this, and some will refer to this directly), that all Ringwood beers taste the same. The nicest things you may hear about it is that it is distinctive, and that it makes good dark ales and ESBs, where "a little bit of diacetyl is allowed."
Horsestuff and nonsense. Ringwood, like any yeast, needs a bit of knowledge to be used properly. Given a proper diacetyl-absorbing rest period, it is as clean as any yeast, and much hardier and flavorful than most. Is it distinctive? I reckon I could lay examples of Ringwood beers in front of any critic that they wouldn't pick out as Ringwood-brewed. Brewers who know it, love it, and produce excellent, true to style English-type ales with it.
So Shipyard is, of course, a Ringwood yeast brewery. Pugsley founded the place with Fred Forsley, who had been running Federal Jack's, a brewpub in Kennebunkport (yup: Ringwood). They used some of the Federal Jack's beers, and made Shipyard. They've since added others. Some of them I like. Some of them...
Shipyard's Export Ale "looks like a beer." It's a classic: golden body, foamy white head, beautiful streams of bubbles rising through the glasslike clarity of the beer. Even my somewhat clumsy pour has produced a glass of beer worthy of a photo shoot.
It's not just a pretty face, either. There's a nutty note to the malty/hoppy aroma, and a somewhat fruity zest to it. It's hard to pull any hop out of the nose, but that's okay.
Let's have a sip. Well... Now I'm not so entranced. This is pretty thin stuff, almost watery. Everything dissipates pretty quickly, leaving only a fizzy kind of flat bitterness on the tongue that's extremely disappointing.
Now, I know that there are supposed to be quaffable, refreshing session beers. And Shipyard's Summer Ale is pretty good in that respect, as is the Redhook Blonde I reviewed on epinions ("A Blonde With Some Substance", http://www.epinions.com/fddk-review-3BBC-54341BD-39124858-prod3). But this stuff is just plain thin, weak, airy. It's gone in a second, no linger at all, and not much in that second, either. Light ale?
I like Shipyard in general, and their Fuggles IPA and Chamberlain Pale Ale in particular, but this one falls way short of the mark for me. Of course, it's probably a big seller.
Why don't people want to taste their beer? Why don't people want to taste their food? When did people become fatigued by the complex, the challenging, the subtle, and decide to settle for the dull and the reliable? I fight it every way I can. No safe snoring for me.
No need to finish this one. I'll save my day's calorie intake for something flavorful.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
beerfly
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Member: Lew Bryson
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 88
Trusted by: 79 members
About Me:
One bourbon, one Scotch, one beer, eh? I'll take Kentucky Spirit, Scapa, and HopDevil.
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