Greene King Very Special India Pale Ale

Formerly brewed at Greene King
Style: English Strong Ale
Bury St. Edmunds, England

Serve in English pint, Trappist glass

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UPDATED: JUN 20, 2011 April, 2011 Hmmm. This works. I’m not really a big fan of strong pale ales with dollops of hops, but this is damn fine ale. The beer has been sterile filtered, so the flavours are not messed around. The hops don’t taste like cardboard - they taste fresh and peaking with flavour, and the malts taste fresh and creamy with good toffee notes, rather than the plastic boiled sweets flavour you get from pasteurisation. It’s a strong beer, and pale ales tend to taste a bit plastic, a bit like glue, with thin alcohol notes, like paint stripper, when moving up the abv scale, but this just holds off that at 7.5%, so there’s a gentle warmth and an awareness of alcohol, rather than any burning or scorching. The malts are fine, like good aged wine - there’s character, and robustness, and pleasure, and a sense of quality malts. Clean biscuit, honey, toffee, rum, touch of banana, vanilla, peach, butter - all sorts! Really very pleasant, and lip-smacking. And the hops are soaked into the malt to give an aged beauty to the whole thing. The hops aroma is really quite fine. Again, good quality ingredients have been used, and it shows. The hops smell fresh and distinctly English, with notes of blackcurrants, warm straw, old sacks. The hops bring in delicate fruit flavours of orange and grape, and touch of pepper. Oh, this is fine stuff indeed. A real pleasure. I could drink more of this. Really could. Stunning. [4.5]
June, 2011 This is fairly typical bottle British strong ale, and I’m not sure of the reason for my excessive enthusiasm last time I had this. The malt is pleasant, but just a little too clean. And there are too many vegetable and plastic notes for comfort. It’s a bold, clean malt with pleasant biscuit and caramel flavours, and there is a good dose of bittering hops, and the balance of the two works, but this is not an exceptional example of a strong bitter, and it does taste too processed. [3.1]

50 cl bottle @ Kitty’s. Rated on 26.02.2011
Aroma has some bready malt, fruits and toffee typical to english ales. Flavour has some malt, caramel, toffee, and ripe fruits. Not very IPA-like, just an english strong unusually high on hops.

Clear 355cl bottle of a deep golden amber beer, best before the end of Mar 2011. Reviewed on 13th Feb 2011. Poured into a Greene King badged chalice. Looked fine, clear and bright, on top a small wispy white head. Malty aroma, hides the hops completely, the taste follows, very little hop content to be found until the mouth begins to dry towards the end of the sip. Interestingly different in my eyes, certainly the sweetest, maltiest IPA I’ve ever had. I am not a fan of the way Greene King conduct their bussiness, but some of their beers are good: this one being typical of the type I like (on the fairly sweet side and malty).

Bottled, 355ml, from Tesco, Banbury. Orange gold with short lived head. Caramel malty beer, thankfully without the G.K twang, biscuity with a sweetish, leafy hop lurking around. Nothing that says ’This is Very Special’ apart from the label, it’s a tad on the boring side.

Bottle at home, from Morrison’s. Pours a clear amber-brown, couple of fingers of white head that quickly dies. Clear bottles are always a bit ominous, so it loses an appearance point for that. Aroma is alcohol, some dark fruity malt and some hops. Taste is largely similar, rather bitter finish which attempts to balance out the rather sweet initial taste, but the lighter fluid notes from the alcohol drown most of it out. The alcohol presence and character is akin to what I expected from Sink The Bismarck!, not a 7.5% beer. Still, decent for the price, I suppose, and it has an endearing name, like they want you to like it. Sadly, it’s not exactly great (though not offensively bad).

Aroma is fruity and a bit oaky. A general malty presence is felt but it is strongly counterbalanced by some slightly acidic fruity tones. Then the finish becomes a bit woody and dry. Misses the fresh hoppiness associated with an IPA but still nice.

Had high hopes for this one, sadly, most of them were dashed! Clear amber, but lacks head, little in the way of nose/aroma other than a hint of malt. Palate is dominated by the hefty alcohol, there’s some malty sweetness and hoppy notes underneath but the whole is totally out of balance. Bought from Morrisons, won’t be buying it again tho!

With a name like that it better be! It wasn’t. Clear gold with a medium off white head. Dusty cupboard cleaned out type aroma with some grassy hops and caramel. Some orange jam but little fruit, alcohol. Thin odd finish. Didn’t really care for this at all.

7.5% amber colour with a thin head, citrus hop and malt aroma, strong hop and alcohol taste.

335 ml bottle, cool. If you’re famiiar with Greene King beers, it would be your 1st brewery guess in a blind tasting.Nice fruit & nut toffee aroma and flavour. Maybea little sweet and sticky in the mouth, but a nice dry bitter finish. Eminently drinkable for the ABV

Bottle. Brown little white head. Uncomplex. Dry finish. Better than I expected.