Beer of the Week

Great Heck , Amish Mash (£2.25, 4.7 per cent)

Great Heck Brewery are coming along in leaps and bounds at the minute – a push into bottled beers, along with a snazzy new look, and a few new recipes have seen Denzil Vallance’s outfit really making some waves in the local and national beer scenes.

The Yakima IPA, especially, has been a favourite on cask here at the Trembling Madness, but, in bottles, their lighter sessionable Citra and Amish Mash have really caught my eye.

Amish Mash, pun clearly intended, is not brewed to a traditionally Amish recipe, rather it’s a bit of a mish-mash between styles. It could broadly be called a hopfenweiße or similar, only a lot lighter in body; it’s a wheat beer, liberally hopped with American and new-world cultivars.

The result is that this pale gold beer pours with a rich fluffy head, bursting with a bone-dry grapefruit and pine-needle aroma.

The body isn’t as heavy as some wheat beers can be, nor is it as heavily carbonated, rather the mouth feel is pitched just right, making this easily drinkable.

Toasted sunflower seeds and tangerine peel play off against a dry, earthy bitterness, with a touch of fennel seed and coriander in the finish. The malt really is the backing dancer here; more a vehicle for the hops, but like their Citra, Great Heck’s wheaty pale ale is extremely light and refreshing.

Everything told, it’s a fantastic, crisp ale at the stronger end of session ABV, and it’s fantastic.

Recommended by Michael Bates, Trembling Madness, 48 Stonegate, York

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