Description
NEW! ARTHUR – DIPA – 8.4% abv
This is a bold brew by any standards, bursting with fruity frolics, sweet with only a tiny hint of bitterness almost but not quite hiding the 8.4% abv 🙂
Moving to Sheffield was an equally bold move for this soft little southern lad (me) back in the mid 1980s. I found myself in a little terraced house in an area called Pitsmoor – and my next door neighbour was Arthur.
Arthur was in his late 80s when I moved in, and we would spend hours chatting in the adjoining back yards, putting the world to rights and on a Wednesday would wander down for a few ales in The Carlisle public house on Carlisle Street, at the time still pretty much an old ale house. Arthur confided that he’d been drinking there since the age of 15 when he started as a ‘goffa’ in a steelworks.
(Goffa this, goffa that).
Arthur even at such a generous age was still a huge man, it was easy to see him in past days as a colossal towering muscular worker throwing frighteningly huge bits of metal around. He told me of the day he got married, having gone out to have a shave and haircut (two bob) and putting on the only suit he’d ever owned on before walking to the church with the best man and a few chums. He noted that there was a horse drawn wagon coming along the street and he plus chums had to cross over the road as the wagon had a lump of near molten metal on the back and it would have singed their suits if they got too close.
Arthur’s wife had died ‘some while since’ of Mesothelioma – a particularly nasty form of cancer as a result of working with Asbestos for many years.
On his 90th Birthday we walked down to the Carlisle again, but on a Tuesday. The Landlord quipped “Areet Arthur, is it tha birthday lad?” Upon learning that it was, and that Arthur had therefore been drinking there for 75 years, he graciously gave Arthur the first pint ‘on the house’!
Shortly after his 90th we were generally chatting and putting the world to rights yet again, when he asked me what I thought about “Section 28” (Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 was a law that prohibited local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality in schools). This very deeply meaningful and at times emotional ‘chat’ concluded with Arthur confiding that he’d always known from being a very young lad, that he was gay. But it would have been completely impossible to admit it. So he’d married, and yes he deeply loved his wife and missed her dearly, but knew – given a choice, he’d have formed a relationship with another man.
Arthur died shortly before his 91st Birthday. A proud, huge, strong and sweet man of many thoughts – some quite fruity – so naming this Hazy Pale was easy.
I’ve known many Arthurs since then, and I name this beer in their memory too and commend it to you as a very beautiful, not too bitter, strong and fruity offering that I’m proud to have brewed.
If you’ve made it this far and want to know what it is, well it’s based on a Maris Otter malt, with BRU-1, El Dorado and Idaho 7 hops in the whirlpool, then a respectable dose of Vic Secret and Nectaron dry hop.
Cheers!
