Beer Old Wives Ales New Tricks ESB

For the second Old Wives Ales beer to make it into bottles, the foursome opted to go with their take on the classic English ESB (Extra Special Bitter). It offers a nice literal link with their other bottled beer, Hair of the Dog, as the name refers to teaching an old dog new tricks. In this case, they're referring to the use of New World hops in what otherwise appears to be a pretty faithful recreation of what you'd find in the UK (albeit with higher carbonation than you'd get from a cask pulled pint in an English boozer).

Yet this isn't a venture into the New World hoppiness of, say, Hargreaves Hill's ESB, perhaps the classic Antipodean reinvention of the style. Instead, while the Aussie hops add some peachy tones and a touch of citrus to the aroma, they don't distract from what is, at its core, a beer with its feet firmly planted in front of the fire, amid the scattered crumbs of pork scratchings, in said English boozer. Thus it's nutty, caramel and toffee malts to the fore, reined in by a dry and earthy background bitterness.