Adnams East Green

‘Beer from the Coast’ is the slogan of the Adnams brewery, based in the picturesque Suffolk seaside town of Southwold. Last week a case of their newest brew found it’s way up to the Midlothian coast for us to sample on the BeerCast (well, we’re a few miles from an estuary here). East Green is a new bottled beer, which was launched on the 28th of April in Tescos supermarkets and Adnam’s own Cellar&Kitchen stores in East Anglia. It has a certain uniqueness about it – East Green is the UK’s first carbon-neutral beer.

Adnams were founded in 1872 when brothers George and Ernest took over the Sole Bay Brewery in Southwold, and in 2004 the company moved to larger premises enabling them to become more energy efficient. Clearly they take great pride in this – in 2007 they were nominated for an award for sustainability, so the move into a carbon neutral beer was a logical step. They worked with the University of East Anglia’s carbon reduction team to calculate exactly how to make a carbon neutral beer – their recent press release gives full details of how they achieved this.

In a nutshell, this comes down to three things – sourcing sustainable ingredients, using an energy efficient brewing process, and offsetting any carbon costs of distribution. Local East Anglian Maris Otter barley and naturally pest-resistant Boadicea hops are combined in the brewhouse, but it’s the bottling which takes up the most energy – according to Adnam’s figures, about 65% of the CO2 emissions are released making the bottle and then plonking the beer inside. They have addressed this by designing a innovative new lightweight bottle.

But what about the contents? Adnams describe it as a “light, golden beer with subtle citrus and grassy hop aromas, dry and refreshing with well-balanced bitterness”. The abv is 4.3%, and BeerCasters Shovels, Grooben and myself polished off the case in front of last week’s Champions League semi-final between Man Utd and Barcelona. The consensus? Well, it certainly is dry, very dry in fact – you get some of the hoppiness, but none of the citrus notes, which maybe are just too subtle. It’s a decent session beer you would think, but is just a bit too bitter for the rest of the flavours. A commendable effort for their intentions (and Adnams are seeking to become totally carbon neutral as a brewer), but East Green falls short of the high standards of their other beers.

Adnams official website