Greene King Abbot Ale (Cask)

Tap at Black Cat Pub, Lido di Jesolo, Italy: Hazy deep amber coloured beer with creamy malty taste and sweet bitter finish.

Cask at the Crown, Beeston, Notts. Abbot is a brown beer with a very malty, fruity aroma. This carries over to the flavour which is rich with soft fruit, caramel and sultanas. The finish is bitter with floral and citric hints. It breaks my heart to give a good rating to a Greene King beer, but there it is.

Clear brown, slight head. Little aroma. Light body and carbonation. Fruity and hoppy foretaste.

Handpulled cask at the Railway, Bushey, Watford. I’ve probablly drunk hundreds of pints of Abbot over the years, coming from Hertfordshire where GK have many tied houses and dominate the free trade. It has not been particularly consistant over the years but the best examples that I can remember were at Rayments pubs in the late 1970s when the Furneaux Pelham brewery used to fine Abbot ale from Bury St. Edmunds for its own pubs. That tasted far better than the Biggleswade brewed version that was available in most of Hertfordshire. Today, Abbot ranges from bland and uninteresting (like GK IPA) to a fairly respectable complex fruity, well balanced ale. It really is hit or miss. The example that I had today, in a GK pub was excellent, though at £3 a pint (£1.21 more than a local Spoons) it should have been!

I believe this is what I had at the Abbot On The Hill - I thought maybe it was a brew made for them. Brownish colour, small fruity-malt aroma. Not bad taste, a bit sweet with some bitter.