"You're regretting buying that" says my friend Connor as I take a sip from the half of cider I bought for some reason to drink between pints of pale ale.
Yes and no.
We're sitting amongst the happy chaos of a Saturday in the beer garden of The Plough in Cramlington, the best pub in the town for cask ale. The sun is out, and had better remain out for the next few months if it knows what's good for it, and the vibes are great.
The cider in the little glass in my hand is the colour of pale gold, no head but a few bubbles on the surface. Poured from the bag, a proper cider.
Bourbon is there in spades, a huge amount of the flavour from the cask in which the cider was aged has transferred itself to the liquid of this 6.8% slow-burning sunset drink. I'm glad, I muse as I take another sip, that I didn't get a full pint. I have things to do tomorrow.
Sweet and smooth but strong and a little astringent, it's a cider for sipping at, I find, and I drink it about five times slower than I would most beers. It's a great drink, one for slow intake and deep contemplation rather than "another, and another, and another" sessioning.
The regret that must have played over my face doesn't come from a dislike of the drink, it stems from your correspondent knowing full well that cider gives him some of the worst nightmares on the planet.
Later in the dark hours of the next morning he will awaken from a nightmare where the skeleton of a gigantic snake entered his room, chased him down the stairs to the living room where for some reason there was the same mass-produced piano that seemingly every school had in the 1990s, and pinned him against it with hundreds of ribs that it extruded from its spine, all the while screaming at him.
This reporter will jolt awake in horror and realise that even though he made mental notes on the beer he was drinking and hoping to write about, all has been replaced by snake terror.
Realising that he should have just put more effort into writing bad horror fiction than this beer writing lark, he will make a plan to return to the Plough, after some more sleep, to reassemble the notes in his head on North Riding Brewery's CF302.
The sun remains out. It went to bed for a time to allow the ghosts of giant snakes to pin people to pianos in their dreams but has returned to keep Northumbria warm and thirsty.
There's something a little bit odd about asking for a "pint of CF302 please", like it could be a pint of anything with a name like that. Engine oil, coolant, robots.
CF302 is the unit code for a new hop being sold by Charles Faram, an exciting new development hop that has gone into this very refreshing English Pale Ale, and so the glass comes back filled with delicious beer and not some other unknowable thing.
The head is smooth and foamy, a perfect pint of cask placed into my hand. The soft head gives way to a body of copper-touched gold, and a flavour that is subtle but strong, smooth but insistent. I attempt to take my time with the first pint, but anyone reading this who has drank with this reporter knows that the first one barely touches the sides.
Even so, the flavours of pineapple and peach come through and make themselves known quickly and with subtle force. This beer isn't a double dry hopped IPA monster that pushes your head into a fruit basket then throws the fruit basket off a cliff, and this is in itself a welcome reminder that flavour doesn't have to be ludicrous to be noticeable.
The aroma is soft and strong as well, staying with the drink's theme of quiet competency and hidden depths. Again, fruits that are gentle on the senses but then linger just like in the taste. And the refreshment is staggering, few beers I've had recently have convinced me that I'm actually rehydrating when I drink them more than this one has.
It's a beer this reporter could happily drink daily, in a world where habit-forming didn't exist. Soft on the mouthfeel, gently carbonated from the cask with just enough bubbles to remind you that it's there, it's not perfection because I don't think perfection in beer has been perfected just yet, but it is delicious and the aftertaste just clings on for dear life, making you need another pint more than just want one. A repeatable session beer at a repeatable and sessionable 4% abv, I finish my last pint of it as the sun begins to dip. It's just after six in the afternoon, and this reporter begins his walk home, via another pub, and will sleep soundly.
If you enjoyed this article, if it made you laugh or smile or made you want to try either of these beers, I would love it if you tipped your writer by following this link. A donation of £3 would almost cover one pint of CF302 (and by the way, a pub doing pints of cask for less than four quid? God bless small town pubs) https://ko-fi.com/ruariotoole
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