Brewery: Adnams | Location: Southwold | Find them: Adnams Southwold
Adnams is a well-known brewery located in Southwold, Suffolk. If you don’t know much about Adnams, I highly recommend this video about their history and their innovative approach to brewing.
Back in May, we were down in Suffolk for a wedding. While we were there, we popped over to Southwold, where we visited a handful of Adnams pubs and tried as many of their cask ales as we could fit in.
As well as trying many of their beers during our stay in Suffolk, we bought a few home with us too.
In June, we tried their collab with Northern Monk (Ghost Faith) alongside the two beers that inspired it - Ghost Ship (Adnams) and Faith (Northern Monk). It was nice trying them together, and you got some flavours from both Ghost Ship and Faith in the Ghost Faith. An excellent collab.
In July, we moved on to our random selection of Adnams beers. These were beers we saw in the Adnams shop that we thought were too intriguing not to try. And so in one of our New Brew Thursday sessions, we sampled four very different beers.
Wild Hop Amber Beer 4.8%
This was a truly delicious beer with lots of fruit cake and treacle flavours. I was actually sad when I finished it because I’d have happily had loads more.
Brewer’s note: Wild Hop Amber Beer is brewed with Pale Ale, Malted Wheat and Acidified Malts and hopped with locally gathered Wild and Garden hops including Fuggles, Goldings, Bramling Cross and Sovereign.
This exciting new beer is brewed with fresh (green) hops donated by the public, which produce fantastic clean, fresh, grassy, pine and citrus flavours and aromas, capturing all the excitement of the year’s hop harvest. To add complexity we have used some Saison yeast in addition to our 'house' Adnams yeast which adds a peppery spiciness.
Old Ale 4.1%
I was worried we might have peaked with the wild hop ale, but this was another excellent beer. It was stout-like but with dark treacle flavours.
Brewer’s note: This is a mild ale style beer brewed with East Anglian pale ale and Crystal malted barley and Boadicea hops. It’s dark red/brown in colour with an aroma of caramel and nutty chocolate. The toffee and chocolate also come through on the palate along with hints of red fruits, all balanced by a smooth bitterness. A traditional speciality winter warmer with flavours of fruit, malt, roast grain, and a hint of caramel.
Old Ale is based on one of Adnams’ oldest beer recipes which dates back to 1890. It was crowned Champion Beer of East Anglia 2013 by CAMRA.
Big Skies Double Dry Hopped IPA 4.8%
Leaning more towards a west coast IPA, this was orangy, piney and juicy with just a little bit of bitterness. Another lovely brew.
Brewer’s note: Suffolk is famed for its never-ending landscapes and even bigger skies. They’ve inspired our Double Dry Hopped IPA, which uses hops like Mosaic and Simcoe to help us soar to great heights. It is expansive, intense, and awash with vivid colour.
Generously dry hopping twice increases the complexity and overall intensity of Simcoe’s resinous pine and stone fruit and the citrus, blueberry, tropical and green fruit notes of Mosaic.
Triple Knot Tripel 10%
We’ve tried a lot of Belgian tripels, and this was a great example of the style. It rounded off a wonderful selection of beers. Very impressed.
Brewer’s note: Triple Knot is made with Pilsner malt, acidulated malt and invert sugar fermented using Adnams house yeast as well as white wine yeast. It’s hopped with Eldorado and Pacific jade and we add a sprinkling of botanicals – lavender, orange blossom and jasmine.
Inspired by the strong Tripel ales brewed in Belgium. Our take on this traditional recipe adds a few botanicals and enjoys six months of beautiful maturation, allowing the beer to pick up a slight bready character often associated with sparkling wine.
We’ve still got a few more Adnams beers to try, including a barrel-aged version of Broadside and a barley wine, so I’ll be adding those to this post once we’ve tried them.
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