SOME beer devotees may know that the now firmly established four base ingredients in beer used to be three – water, barley and hops.
That's because the fourth – yeast – was thought to be some form of celestial intervention which fermented the beer.
Once they nailed down that it was actually micro-organisms floating in the air, brewers began to contain it and develop various strains.
But this isn't a column about yeast. Hops have long been a staple of beer but in the first millennium, this wasn't always the case.
Beer predates the footsteps of Christ on the earth, and for a good eight centuries after that, all manner of available vegetation was used to try and add flavour.
Basically, a trawl through the local hedgerow would determine what the beers smelt and tasted like.
Farmageddon have nodded to that tradition in the creation of their Gorse IPA. As the name suggest, this is a beer using gorse – the mountain shrub which frequently attracts amateur arsonists in the height of summer.
In this case, the gorse is there to supplement the hops rather than replace them. Gorse IPA has been knocking about for a few years now, in a few different versions, but all involve the late addition of the plant to the boil.
The harvesting of them can be a hazardous enough pursuit, but Farmageddon have been churning out this beer for a few years now, so clearly no serious injuries have resulted.
The beer itself pours a dark amber colour in the glass with a generous fluffy white head – an indication of the rather lively carbonation.
The gorse aroma comes through strongly on the nose, but there are some tropical whiffs poking through too.
That owes a lot to the fact the gorse gives off scents of coconut and pineapple.
That gives the beer a whole Pina Colada type feel, helped by the use of Mosaic and Sorachi Ace hops which lends a sweet and juicy element to it.
There's still a bit of an earthy and woody vibe to it all, though, with a slight toffee sweetness to the malt.
With so much going on, it's very easy to get distracted from the fact that this is a 6 per cent beer...
