Hook Norton Twelve Days (Cask)

Brewed by Hook Norton
Style: English Strong Ale
Banbury, England

Serve in English pint, Snifter

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Cask handpump at the Swan in the Rushes, Lougborough. Dark chestnut colour with a creamy white head. Aroma of malts and caramel. Sweet, fruity, roasted malty flavour. Full bodied. Very good.

[Cask conditioned] Dark chestnut coloured. Malty aroma with nots of dark fruits. Malty, sweet, caramelly and nutty flavour with notes of raisins. Warming and tasty.

[Cask at Charlie’s Bar, Copenhagen] A deep chestnut colored beer with a small off-white head. The aroma is sweet with notes of malt and caramel. The flavor is quite sweet with notes of roasted malt, caramel, nuts, with only a slight note of bitterness in the end.

Cask. Dark brown colour. Stable, white head. Slightly sour aroma. Malty, sweet, slightly roasted flavour. Peppery, bitterish aftertaste.

A nice mellow winter beer in the typical HN mould - subtle flavours and smoothly drinkable. I got intense caramel and some jammy, plummy fruit in the nose, then the taste followed this with additional bitterness to balance it out. Some liquorice and warming alcohol. Not the most tasty winter beer but when on form it has a lot of interest that needs to be looked for - it doesn't jump out at you like some others. (cask)

UPDATED: DEC 28, 2005 Jan, 2004. <a href=http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/59/590 Catford. This is one of those beers I’ve been wanting to try for some time, and I was so pleased to see it on the pump. I had a few anxious moments as the barman was pumping it up - it was frothing all over the place as though it were the bottom of the cask. He stopped pumping and put the foaming glass on the counter only half full. I was fully expecting the words, "It’s finished." But he just sighed, got another glass and tried again. More foam. More pumping. More foam. More pumping. Until at last he put a soaking wet glass on the counter in front of me - full to the brim. I smiled in relief! And what a nice beer it is. Good dark malty flavours - not top quality - a bit salty, and the flavours are little limited in range - but nice enough. The body is reasonable, but the beer does comes over more like a dark lager than a dark ale (not helped in this case by being served a bit too cold). And the salty taste becomes irritating after a while. I took the sticky glass in my hand and patiently warmed it up. The flavour marginally improved, but didn’t lift into top quality. A decent ale, never-the-less. [3.2]
Dec, 2005.<a href=http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/s/18/181 Welling.First impression - lots of sweet malt, lots of alcohol, sweet. Then the hops sneak through the crusty sugar, adding a dark edge, but that intense sweetness keeps asserting itself. There’s good stuff in here - the sugar dipped raisins and chocolate dipped plums, but the whole is so dominated by the sweet, sweet, drippingly sweet, oozingly sweet, walking knee deep in sugar sweet malt, and then by the boom, boom, boom, look at my oily biceps alcohol, that I didn’t enjoy this as much as I hoped I would. [3.0]

Hook Norton's Twelve Days is aimed as a winter warmer in the keg but is more generally available in bottle. It has a strong dark malt flavour and is very nutty in character. In the keg it has a fruity, plummy taste, but in the bottle the pasteurisation seems to have reduced its appeal a little. Not high on hops, but there is a fine lingering taste left in the mouth. It would benefit geatly by being bottle conditioned, when I believe it would be a classic. Overall a very enjoyable Christmas ale, this was the 2001 vintage bottling that was tasted.

Sampled cask conditioned at Oliver Twist, Stockholm.
Deep ruby. Fruit and hay in the aroma. Sweet with loads of chewy malt, but still with light, soft mouthfeel. The finish is salty with notes of licorice and flowery hop bitterness.