A Taste of Old Blighty: Elbow Patches by Working Draft Beer Co.

Had fate/the pandemic not intervened, the Frau and I would have spent some time last year in London. In anticipation of the trip, I did some preparation such as memorizing Imperial measurement units and so I now know my weight in stones. I also put in a lot of practice on London vernacular speech. E.g.:

"Let's go down the pub for a piss up!"

"A pint of your best bitter, guvnor!"

"Cor, that's a good ale!"

"Last call is 11 o'clock?! Bloody hell!"

No doubt we would have fit right in with the locals.

The trek would have afforded us the opportunity to head to some pubs and indulge in some English beers and/or ales. While I am quite ignorant about beer generally, it is especially the case with brews from the British Isles as evidenced by my recent encounter with an English style porter. Over there you find a whole different type of porter in addition to milds and bitters - beers with little carbonation served at warmer than straight-out-of-the-refrigerator temperatures. Pubs and their beer engines are guarded day and night by CAMRA members who are like the Hells Angels and they help preserve the beer and brewing heritage that has accumulated over the centuries.

Not really but I hear that some CAMRA chaps can really be pains in the arse.

Despite the prevalence of adjunct lagers today, people on these shores in 1776 weren't swillin' Bud. They were drinking beers based on English styles no doubt adapted to circumstances in the colonies. For example, it seems that molasses was a popular ingredient back then. George Washington is reputed to have been a homebrewer of no mean skill but I'd bet his brews were English styles or adaptations thereof.

While contemporary American brewers have leeched pretty much anything English out of the IPA outside of those three letters, you'd probably have to look elsewhere for the influence of English brewing here. The amber ale comes to mind and, from what I've read, it's a variation on the English pale ale. A lot of beers apparently are members of the pale ale family. I take it this is because "pale" ranges from gold to brown – basically anything is pale that's not obsidian here. One beer style that isn't obsidian in color is the ESB.

I figured that, if Henry VIII wasn't quaffing ESB as he went about looking for new wives and ridding his lands of Catholicism, then at least Charles Dickens' characters were drinking the stuff after cleaning chimneys and emptying their chamber pots into the Thames. But no.

The ESB dates back to the late 1960s when the venerable English brewer Fuller's introduced their Winter Bitter in 1969. It was rechristened an ESB a couple years later, it seems. Extra Special Bitter sounds right to my ears but Extra Strong Bitter also passes muster from what I can tell. It sounds like ESB was born as more marketing gambit than new style back when The Beatles were breaking up. (Not unlike the IPA here these days.) I mean, it's not like there weren't headier than average bitters out there.

So what's a bitter? My understanding is that it's simply a type of pale ale that's more bitter than the mild. Not 100 I.B.U. lunacy, mind you, just more hops to balance the maltiness of a mild.

Recently the folks at Madison's Working Draft Beer Company brewed an Extra Special Bitter called Elbow Patches. Having finished off a 4-pack of English porter, I figured it was time to move onto an ESB. This was Elbow Patches Chapter 2 and I'm not sure if this means that it's their second batch of the beer, their second ESB recipe, or something else. I don't associate Working Draft with English beer styles (no, hazy IPAs don't count) but they may be the Barclay, Perkins & Co. of Madison for all I know.

My pour of Elbow Patches yielded a large, light tan head that was in no hurry to go away. This was surprising because I thought the ESB was one of those beers that was supposed to be very lightly carbonated. My picture above isn't great so I will note it was copper colored and clear.

Working Draft notes the beer was brewed with Fuggle and East Kent Goldings hops. They provided a herbal scent while the Pale and Crystal Maris Otter malts smell like biscuit along with a raisin-caramel sweetness.

I could taste the herbal hoppiness, though it wasn't particulary bitter, but a more than moderate sweetness tasted like pear rather than caramel to me. There was a really nice nutty flavor that reminded me of raw pecans as well as a fairly strong leathery taste. While it didn't taste very fizzy, that is, it didn't taste like a bunch of bubbles were rolling across my tongue, the beer had a quite noticeable astringency to it.

That nutty/leathery flavor lingered and was joined by some hoppy bitterness and a hint of residual sweetness after the liquid had gone down into my guttiwuts.

A friend of mine who lived in London for a spell commented to me that he thought this was a fine beer but not flat enough. I agree. Although I liked Elbow Patches, I wish it tasted a bit less astringent. For me, it detracted from the beer's nice sweetness – not too much, not too little. Similarly, I loved the nutty taste but felt that the leather flavor was a little overpowering. I would prefer the flavors to be more balanced. Having said that, I truly appreciated the herbal hop and nutty tastes which I feel are in short supply these days. Here's hoping there's a chapter 3.

Junk food pairing: I did my tasting on a Sunday so, if you cannot find any appropriate crisps from England, open a bag of Old Dutch Prime Rib potato chips. Er, crisps.