Ilkley: Mary Jane (England: English Pale Ale: 3.4% ABV)
Visual: Pale, clear, light gold body. Some small bubbled carbonation. Thin white dash of a head.
Nose: Flour. Dry bitterness. Kumquat. Sharp lime. Sour dough. Dry lemon.
Body: Nettles. Prickly. Lightly oily. Palma violets. Dry orange. Slightly peppery. Lemon juice.
Finish: Flour. Dry bitterness. Peppery. Lightly oily. Light raspberry. Carrot and coriander. Lemon juice.
Conclusion: This beer took a while to grow on me. Initially it seemed to suffer from the curse that affect many more hopped, moderate abv beers, where they can come across too dry and so the bitterness becomes too harsh and the flavours less evident.
Over time a dry, pleasant lemon note comes out, along with other, still dry, citrus notes. It grows to a very pleasant lemon juice style that is very drinkable and works brilliantly against the harsher bitterness elements.
It still has some flour like dry character which can get a bit sticky, so not perfect, but it has improved massively from my first impression. It also gets some soft raspberry and other lightly tart flavours helping to round it out.
Overall, not bad, not stand out but doesn’t fall to the worst of the flaws this style that it could have – it flirted with them early on but managed to move away from that to something pretty decent.
Background: Another beer from the X-Mas visit up to see the family. Crap, I have been rubbish at putting these notes up. By memory Ilkley have been pretty good at doing more traditional British beer styles, but it has been a while since I tried anything from them, so they may have pivoted focus since then. Erm, not much else to say. Chilled up north, checked out what new bars had opened since I last visited. Had a good time.
