Pure Delicious Beer

Twitter is a wonderful thing and a great marketing tool. I did not get it until I joined up and found myself brewing and updating twitter alongside two other fellow Irish Craft Brewers. As a marketing tool it is being employed in advertising that is not in your face and annoying as you can simply ignore what you do not want or even block it. When Purityale followed me on twitter I did not have to follow back, by not following I would not see what they have to say and so essentially ignore them. Instead I logged on to their profile (as I do for everyone who follows me) to see what sort of messages they send and what their website is about. In this case it was simple, Purity is a brewing company in Warwickshire, England and the twitter updates are mentioning their beer, awards, news on new products and so on.
So I followed them and after looking at their website and not seeing any Irish places to get their beer I contacted them directly (by twitter) to see if they knew where I could find it. I was then kindly sent three bottles of their beer. One of each of their own regular beers.

The reasoning behind this is simple, it is cheap advertising for them. I will do exactly what I have done and what they expected me to do. Get their beer and write about it. Not only am I writing about it now but I also sent twitter updates on each of the beers on Saturday as I was drinking them. Now I will write what I think about the beer and if I thought the beer tasted like Ass juice then that is what I would write, though I would feel bad about it. Thankfully Purity Ale is as far from Ass juice as you can get. It is wonderful beer actually.

Another bonus for this form of advertising is that after drinking my first beer and loving it, I contacted an off-license (liquor store) on twitter called Drinkstore and asked that they look in to getting Purity beer in stock and they said they will add it to their list.
And now to the beer.




For those of us that grew up in the 80's and 90's we will have watched TV shows that ended with the credits "Sit Ubu sit, good dog". Well it seems the Purity brewers named their dog Ubu and named a beer after their Canine companion and called it Pure UBU.
This is an English bitter I believe though it's not like any English bitter I have had before. It is like a cross between a bitter and an American pale ale.
It is a lovely amber/red colour with a nice fluffy white head.
The aroma is one that is sweet from the malt but you can smell the hops too. I thought I got orange but it might have been my imagination.
The taste was an eye opener and "wow" was what I said out loud to my wife. It starts out with the malty sweetness and then instantly the hops hit you only to return to a sweet finish but with the hops lingering long after you have swallowed. The two hops that stand out are "C" hops normally found in American pale ales. Challenger and of course Cascade.
The finish was fantastic and slightly metallic in a good way. I loved it and wanted more.




Next up was Mad Goose which is their pale ale offering. Again this is a fantastic beer with many of the expected pale ale qualities of bitter hops and citrus. It was also sweet and this was more evident than with UBU. I found this less bitter than the UBU and my wife actually liked this one. She is not a fan of bitter beers but this had just the right balance.
The mouthfeel on this one was either oily or syrupy. It was not heavy but a little chewy and very interesting.
Oh you can just make out in the background on my bar I have a plate of twiglets and Cheddar cheese. This went very well with mad goose and even better with UBU.




And finally we come to Pure Gold. All of the Purity beers have won various awards, either supermarket awards or slightly more respected awards from the likes of CAMRA. Pure Gold seems to have the most awards. This is a sweet Golden ale. My bottle foamed out of the top when I opened it but since the carbonation was not too high I will say it must have got a shake before I opened it.
This was a fairly complex beer and I got notes of honey, caramel and orange in the aroma and a taste of orange and caramel as well as a lovely hop aftertaste. My wife again liked this one. An excellent balance of sweetness and bitterness.


So that is it, their three beers and I loved them all. My favourite was Pure UBU, I just loved the bitterness. My wife liked Pure gold as she loved the sweetness and balance. I would certainly buy them should they become available in Ireland. There are other beers to their name. One is their own Farmers Harvest which might be a seasonal ale as it is not in their main line up. They also import a few beers.
One of my favourite things about Purity is their image, the way they market themselves. I think UBU is very clever and my wife laughed out loud when she saw the name. I also like how they are trying to be environmentaly friendly by treating their water naturally using a man made wetland system for filtration etc.

I suppose I should mention to any other brewers reading this (if any) that if you would like some cheap advertising done and would like to send me samples of beer to write about then please do so. I will be honest though, so if you believe in your product then it should be fine.
I would also suggest to brewers that if they are not marketing on twitter then they should start doing so. If anyone wants to follow me on twitter, they can do so here.