Best new beers of 2011…Thornbridge Evenlode

Yesterday we announced the first of our pick of the best British beers launched in 2011 – Sharp’s Monsieur Rock (5.2%). Today we bring you our second (these are roughly in order of release). A beer we tasted at FyneFest in early June – but not from Argyll’s champion brewer – it was merely a guest at Fyne Ales’ festival…

Evenlode (6.2%)
Thornbridge, Bakewell, Derbyshire
(cask, released April 2011)

It’s a BeerCast double for Derbyshire’s Thornbridge brewery, as they also featured in our best new beer awards in 2010. The peerless imperial stout St Petersburg (which had been launched in the bottle that summer) was an obvious highlight of last year. Thornbridge Evenlode is a 6.2% brown porter, and it stole the show at this summer’s FyneFest. Even more impressively, it was a debut brew from a new member of the Thornbridge team.

Back in March, Thornbridge Hall had just been successfully renovated. Amongst other improvements, their small-scale brew kit was again ready for action. Used alongside the main Riverside facility as a development brewery for beers such as the Alchemy series, it was inside the hall that ex-intern Giada Simioni formulated her first solo beer. Having joined British brewer of the year Stefano Cossi in late 2010, Giada’s first beer became Evenlode.

Looking every inch the classic porter (the photo above is my ‘half’ at FyneFest), it had a big roasty malt aroma, with a touch of almost spicy hop in evidence. Quite toasty on the palate, this beer was one of the smoothest I had all year. A milk chocolate mocha, slightly nutty and smoky at the end – and as with the Monsieur Rock, incredibly drinkable for 6.2%. So easy to go overboard with this one – if St Petersburg hadn’t been there on cask I’d have stayed on Evenlode all night – it was that good.

Join us tomorrow for the third in our series of best new British beers of 2011, as we head back to our Scottish homeland. Since producing Evenlode, both Giada and Stefano have left Thornbridge – but the Derbyshire juggernaut shows no sign of slowing down…