Starting close to home

So, first beer of the blog. And what better place to start than home! Lacons, based in Great Yarmouth, opened their doors again after a 45 year absence in 2013 and wasn't it worth the wait!

Encore is one of the brewery's three signature brews (which I was lucky enough to get given for Christmas, and strong-willed enough to not drink until now!) Winner of multiple awards last year, this amber ale has impressed across the board. It's genuinely so nice to see something like this spring out of Great Yarmouth, after so many years of seeing various parts of where I spent my childhood and teenage years gradually fade out.

The fruity nature of the beer is refreshing and zesty, a great way statement of intent for the brewery in the beer market of today. Crisp and dry, the taste lasts and keeps you keen right through to the last swig. Enough bitterness and sweet fruit in equal measure, it's easy to see how it won such praise as it did globally last year at the World Beer Awards.

For all the beer nerds, according to the brewery's website, the yeast strains used in the beers are made from the original yeast cultures, deep frozen at the National Collection of Yeast Cultures - the most fun place ever to work- by the brewery before it closed its doors in 1957. Crafting their ales from these original strains give physical substance to the air of history and heritage that surround Lacons, and the blend of the classic with the modern is at the heart of what they are doing since the reopening.

Overall, Encore is a pleasure to drink and hopefully the brew will start finding its way out of Norfolk in the not so distant future. Not enough craft beer is finding its way out of the county at the moment in my opinion, and their are a wealth of microbreweries old and new all around. 

A quite apt metaphor for what Great Yarmouth should be itself, Lacons are reinventing themselves, and I can only hope that the town itself isn't far behind!

If you want to find out more about the brewery or want to sample some of their wares, check them out here: www.lacons.co.uk. 

Now, I've still got two more to 'sample' before the night is through, so if you're lucky, you might see them up here in some vaguely readable ramblings soon.

Bottoms up!

This post was written to the tune of: Jungle – Julia