Ridgeway Pickled Santa
Ridgeway • England
From brewmaster Peter Scholey:
“Pickled Santa is a copper coloured ale. The base beer is simple but very traditionally English, being brewed with 100% Maris Otter variety malted barley and 100% whole Golding hops. A hint of the unusual side of Pickled Santa lies in the name because it is brewed with a selection of whole spices.
Note ….the flavour comes from fresh WHOLE SPICES. Not flavour extracts, not essential oils, and not ready ground supermarket blends. Whole spices weighed and blended, bagged up, then carefully but repeatedly run over with a two ton fork lift truck driven just for good measure by 260 pound Brian to crush them ready for addition to the brew.
The result is intriguing. It’s beer but somehow slightly different. Pickled Santa is fuller, softer and rounder than you would expect a 6% ale to be. That’s not altogether surprising because in Victorian England before the days of analytical chemistry we unscrupulous brewers used to regularly add Coriander to beer for it’s power to make the beer seem stronger and “bigger” than it would otherwise be. But you don’t really taste or smell the Coriander.
You do smell lovely hints of fresh creamy Nutmeg, (that’s whole spices for you), and peppery pungent Allspice but they are not dominant because we think that at the end of the day Pickled Santa should still taste mostly of beer…and it does.”
**DOWNLOAD RIDGEWAY PICKLED SANTA SELL SHEET HERE**
Style: English Ale
ABV: 6.0%
Packaging: 500ml bottle, cask, 30L keg
Brewer Website: http://www.ridgewaybrewery.co.uk/
Other Beers by Ridgeway
- A Curious Collection of Holiday Ales
- Ridgeway Bad Elf
- Ridgeway Bad King John
- Ridgeway Bitter
- Ridgeway Criminally Bad Elf
- Ridgeway Dry Hopped ESB
- Ridgeway Foreign Export Stout
- Ridgeway Imperial Barleywine
- Ridgeway Imperial Red Ale
- Ridgeway Imperial Russian Stout
- Ridgeway Insanely Bad Elf
- Ridgeway IPA
- Ridgeway Ivanhoe
- Ridgeway Lump of Coal
- Ridgeway Oxfordshire Blue
- Ridgeway Pickled Santa
- Ridgeway Querkus
- Ridgeway Reindeer Droppings
- Ridgeway Reindeer’s Revolt
- Ridgeway Santa’s Butt
- Ridgeway Seriously Bad Elf
- Ridgeway Very Bad Elf
- Ridgeway Warm Welcome Nut Browned Ale