Blakemere - Navajo

A trip to a kids' birthday party at Blakemere Craft Centre led to the chance discovery of a little microbrewery and beer shop, just round the corner from the play centre. Obviously, I snuck out while Gangnam Style was on, and had a nosey round.

The brewery was closed, which I would expect on a Saturday, but the attached shop was open. It was called "Beers 'o' the World". I went in, looking forward to perusing the American craft ales, drooling over the Belgian beers and perhaps buying a nice Pilsner or two.

No. It turns out that "Beers 'o' the World" only stocks beer made next door, with a range of what looked to be about ten different ales. The range was really traditional, with a mild, a stout, a fruit beer and of course the obligatory Christmas novelty beer. Who buys those anyway?

One thing that immediately struck me when choosing a bottle was that a lot of the crown caps seemed to be barely on, with the bottoms still splayed out a bit. If they were on, it was only just. The bottles also mostly had sticky beer stains around the necks from the bottling process. Not a good first impression.

I didn't find the range very inspiring but I got a Navajo (pale golden ale with hoppy citrus notes) and a Jewel (light-golden, well-hopped IPA). They sounded like the pick of the bunch.

Once home, the 3.9% Navajo was first up. The cap kind of limply fell off when I wielded a bottle opener at it, with a very small release of pressure. I started pouring quite slowly, with a tilted glass like always, but quickly realised it was going to be pretty flat and moved the glass upright in an attempt to get a head to form. No chance. It was completely flat and also rather cloudy.

A quick sniff revealed a significant tangy fruit smell, with no hop aroma at all. I had a swig and it was drinkable. It was quite bitter but pretty nondescript apart from that and I found it hard to concentrate on any other flavours because of the off-putting fruit tang that never went away.

I may well be wrong, but it tasted like it wasn't ready yet - like it had not had chance to condition properly. Whatever the reason though, I spent my hard-earned cash on this beer and was left very disappointed.