Old Worthy Pale Ale – reviewed

Last month, we wrote about one of the new players about to enter the Scottish market – Old Worthy Beer, who are planning to launch in mid-August. Initially contracting to the Isle of Skye Brewery at Uig, they will be putting out a single beer – a Scottish Pale Ale brewed with heather honey and peat-smoked barley malt from the Ardmore distillery.

The man behind the Old Worthy operation – Nick Ravenhall – kindly sent us a bottle of the beer in question, so we gave it a try to see how it fared. Still in the pre-release phase, Nick let us know that the final version could still be tweaked if needed – and was obviously keen to get the feedback. This is very much the modern way of running focus groups – targeted tweets to beer bloggers, a few samples here and there, then read the various posts.

It’s a good idea (clearly, we all love free beer) – but does come at a certain risk to the brewer. If an early version of their product isn’t that great, the bloggers have a duty to write about it, which can knock the confidence of the fledgling operation (unless you think that we bloggers puff out our chests a little too much, of course – we all like to pretend we have some kind of influence).

Thankfully for all concerned, I really enjoyed Old Worthy Pale Ale – and I’m sure Nick won’t mind me saying that I was surprised I did. I’m not really a fan of the smokey, peaty whisky flavours – but actually found them to be quite mellow in the beer. Ditto honey, but again, the sweetness was soft and well-balanced. That’s not to say there was no flavour – after a while you were left with that noticeable peat-smoke aftertaste.

The problem, as we said before, with these types of beers is that you need to be careful to not overblow one of the components. If you are aiming for something fine and traditional, there’s no point ratcheting up the sweet, sticky honey, or putting too much of the phenolic whisky in. Old Worthy Pale Ale seems to be very well judged in that regard, and is all the more drinkable for it.

The only constructive criticism I can make is that the promised ‘crisp and refreshing’ element isn’t really there. But then, trying to get that into a honey and peaty beer is even tougher. Nick told me he is looking at the hop balance – which would certainly help, I think. A little more of the citrus would make a difference, providing it doesn’t upset the balance too much. Launching with only a single beer is a risk – but on this evidence, one that could work.

You can read other reviews of Old Worthy Pale Ale here, here, and here