Blue Anchor Spingo Special

Brewed by Blue Anchor
Style: English Strong Ale
Helston, England

Serve in English pint, Trappist glass

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Bottle conditioned, 330ml, aged 6 yrs. Cloudy brown with beige head. Being drunk in honour of Birminghams promotion from The Championship to The Premier, Yeehah. Smooth but sweet beer with an earthy, yeasty note. Absolutely volcanic on opening. Toffee, caramel. Not great, but who cares, i’m celebrating.

Tasted this at the Paisley Beer Festival in April 2006. Cask, gravity dispense. Dark mahogany in colour with a thin open white head which disappeared rapidly. Strong aroma of moist maltloaf. Dark malt complexes give strong sweet notes of Dundee cake, treacle toffee, maple syrup and banana. Dry prickle of hops and dessicated raisins add flavour to the booming aftertaste. Finish is dry and vineous with a strong flavour of liquorice coming through. This was the joint winner of the PBF 06 and well deserved, as its a cracking strong ale. Highly recommended.

Cask at the Blue Anchor, Helston. Pours dark reddish with a tiny head. Aroma of red ripe fruits, alcohol as well. Taste is smooth, moderate sweet berries and toffee, quite a different beer.

Bottle. Dark brownish-amber. The aroma is dark rich fruits adn some oxidaztion, possibly diacetyl. Soft, very fruity, grape-like front, moving towards a maltier, almost bubblegummy character. Rustic and unusual.

Bottle from the brewpub. Is red, nice color. Aroma is overripe cherries, cinnamon, clove, and something else, like bay leaf/laurel or another aromatic herb. Is really quite nice considering I’m sure this would be better from the cask. It’s dry, spicy, with lots of kirsch aroma. Later aroma and flavors of cherry seeds, ground up into the mash. Interesting, and certainly special to drink.

UPDATED: APR 14, 2010 BC, 6.6% according to the bottle. Here it is in my glass: the famous Spingo all the way from Helston, via somewhere else (Castle Bottling, Lostwithiel). Mind-altering aroma of seafret, spice trade galleon encrusted with cowpats, paper bag confectionary- specifically rhubarb and custard and a kind of brittle, pillow-shaped, Werthers-like item I remember my Mum buying by the quarter from the local newsagent over 25 years ago, and haven’t thought of since. Fuck, I feel old all of a sudden. If this is brewed without spices, it’s a work of genius, in reality I suspect it’s got a shitload of clove and ground ginger in it. Either way, blind and from the aroma alone I’d wager everything I own it was brewed in Belgium: bonus point. Flavour-wise: spices taking over, stilling everything into a pleasantly mulled, dentists’ chair mushiness; attractive underlying biscuit (spiced, Swedish), Hershey’s Peanut Butter Cups, damp mildewed books, shipwrecked oak beams. Yeah, underwater Swedish dentists’ chair on a spice trade galleon that went down in Cornwall 300 years ago, raised and rolled through a field full of cow shit. ’Terroir’ Oz would call it. As mentioned by Fin, it pours itself a good 10mins after taking the cap off, but otherwise it’s creamy, ruby, beige-collared and completely well-behaved. Hats off to the brewers for getting it bottled elsewhere. Quite a trip.

Cask at the Blue Anchor. Deep red with a beige head, woody and dark chocolate aromas continue into the body, with fruitcake and red fruit notes and a sweet syrupy midnotes. A lot of bitter in the aftertaste. Not very well balanced. There’s a nice beer in here somewhere, but it’s hidden rather too well.

Cask-conditioned at the Cornish Beer Festival, The Star, Bath 17/7/08. This was a reddish-amber and badged at 6.7%. Spingo special could never be accused of blandness - I found it to be a sweet English strong ale with plenty of toffee and red fruit, with accompanying moss and lichen by the shovel load, giving rise to some real earthiness by way of contrast. A half pint was great to experience a classic English beer. A pint would have been challenging, a session too much. Fortunately I had the half and enjoyed it.

Bottle, Westholm Londis store, Goring-on-Thames, Oxon consumed 18-05-08 Dark brown, cloudy with huge off-white frothy head, which continued to froth out of the bottle 5-10 mins after I had poured half the bottle into my glass. The taste is somewhat unusual, Glens right with the earthy, yeasty description but to be fair it also reminds me of my last attempt at homebrewing i.e. shockingly amateurish. I’ve argued with others before on the forums about Cornish beer on the whole being average or worse save for the odd exception this lends weight to my argument. The label proclaims this to be the famous Spingo and Jack at Westholm stores was so excited about this beer, I really think that I need to get the homebrew kit out because I feel that this is really quite poor I’m afraid to say.

slightly clowdy brown, with a toffee caramalised malty nose and flavour,nicly balanced