Lagerboy Speaks – Thornbridge Kill Your Darlings

Lagerboy hasn’t had a run-out for a while, but as the days are starting to lengthen and the rain that plunges from the grey Scottish clouds becomes a tad warmer – it’s time to stop chewing those noble hop pellets and get with the liquid. The first tempter to pass his cage hails from the Derbyshire peak district – Thornbridge’s Kill Your Darlings Vienna Lager. Not many UK brewers bother with this style – which is a pity, as they can be lovely. They also provide Lagerboy with something slightly darker, and therefore, variation.

A quick check on RateBeer reveals Thornbridge’s KYD sits at number 9 on the Vienna chart (there’s a New Romantic joke in there somewhere). Underlying their “We might make one, we might not” status, those ten beers hail from six different countries (I’ll let you guess how many are from Austria). Unusually, the UK has two, both produced by Thornbridge. Equinox sits in tenth place.

Anyway, that’s enough tick-bollocks. Kill Your Darlings puffs out of the bottle like a watery stew, with a sweet, slightly spicy nose. Honey as well – bready too, like inhaling a Turkish dessert trolley. If Lagerboy knew what an American Brown Ale was (too many words for him), he might think it had a similar taste – brown sugar, bready malt and some sweet caramel. However, the cutting finish brings it back into his ballpark. It shuts the door in your face – a fantastic crisp end to a really rather lovely beer.