Brewery: Polly’s | Location: North Wales| Find them: Home Page - Polly's
Polly’s is a Welsh brewery and we’ve never tried their brews before. We picked up their imperial fruited gose in a local craft beer bar and the pale ales from various supermarkets.
We sampled the pale ales on the same night but saved the gose for a couple of days later. The pale ales were all very good with Whut! just edging it as our favourite. The gose was lovely - very sour with a nice balance of sweet and salty.
Floret: Extra Pale Ale 4.2%
Lovely aroma of ripe mango, pineapple, and orange. High carbonation, juicy in the mouth with a dry finish.
Brewer’s note: Sometimes you just want a beer that is mega sessionable. Our Core pale ale is delicious, hazy juicebomb of a beer, balanced with enough bitterness to keep drinkers coming back for more. A baby version of our incredibly popular Spur IPA – Floret is positively bursting at the seams with peach, mango, and pineapple notes, backed up with pithy orange peel from its Citra, Simcoe and Azacca hop bill.
Whut!: Pale Ale 5.1%
The aroma wasn’t as strong as the Floret, but it had lots of orange and grapefruit flavour with the texture of fruit juice.
Brewer’s note: We like to think we take plenty of influence from not only the old school visionaries of yesteryear, but our new school, hop forward contemporaries to boot here at Polly’s HQ. Bridging the gap between classic bitterness along with modern softness and juiciness is something we’re always looking to straddle the fine line between, and Whut! is an expression of this passion to walk the fine line. A hearty addition of Mosaic in the whirlpool adds a gentle, but pronounced earthy bitterness to this beer, whilst our dry-hop charge of equal 5kg additions Bru-1 and Mosaic, along with a hefty 20kg of Citra brings those sweet, tangerine, and bold pineapple notes with an undercurrant of citrus bitterness to compliment the whirlpool addition.
Haunted By These Dreams: Pale Ale 5.3%
Smells like ripe fruit. Not as sweet as the first two and more peach-like flavour.
Brewer’s note: If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times - in a world of soupy, pulpy juicebombs, sometimes there really ain't nothing more relaxing than just a simple, clean, crisp pale ale. Coming off a year wherein we saturated ourselves with release after release of ultra-high abv beers, we decided to go back to square one and create something a little more on the sessionable side of things; something that we can go back to again and again without having to worry about our heads the next morning. Featuring a trio of bonafide Polly's favourite hop varietals in Simcoe, Galaxy and Columbus, this beer bursts with the usual Polly's checklist - tropical, juicy vibes from Simcoe and Galaxy, but balanced out with a grassy bitterness from Columbus.
Satin Pattern: DDH Pale Ale 5.5%
Not a strong aroma, but grapefruit-like flavours.
Brewer’s note: Double Dry Hopped Pale Ale- Columbus El Dorado Mosaic Simcoe.
Golden State: California IPA 5.9%
Less of the East Coast flavours and more California style - drier and more bitterness.
Brewer’s note: WSDMP. Citra, Chinook, Simcoe. Just delicious
Little Fictions: Imperial Fruited Gose 6%
So sour and tart that it makes your face pucker which we love in a sour beer. Good balance of sweet and salty.
Brewer’s note: After making frequent flirtations with the imperial gose style throughout 2023 and gaining absolutely rave reviews for each iteration, we set about looking into what we could do to one up ourselves, as is our frequent MO here at the brewery.
Deciding to stick with the higher ABV sour beers to maintain that thick, pulpy mouthfeel to accentuate the fruits we use, we decided to bring the tart sour party very much to this beer with a hefty addition of Lime and Blackcurrant to create a full on smoothie for grown ups; amplified to the max for a banging gose that’s equal parts sweet and sour.
With a healthy addition of local sea salt to take the edge off that smacking of tartness, this beer is perfect for those times where you want to just drink something straight up silly.
