Hailing from beautiful Manchester, Chorlton Brew Co. focus predominantly on beers produced using traditional Germanic techniques and as a result have quickly become champions of British brewing, renowned for their incredible sours and progressive mentality; all of their beers are unpasturised, unfiltered and unfined, making them fully suitable for vegans; they also make sure to operate to as environmentally friendly standard as possible, something we could do with to ensure we all get to enjoy fantastic beer for generations to come!

For the third year in a row, Chorlton have rolled out their Winter Tap Takeover, a huge nationwide event involving 50 bars, 15 beers, many of which were winter-themed, and was so massive it had to be rolled out over a two week period, naturally we here at CASC had to get involved! It was to no great surprise that we were greeted to a selection of thoroughly impressive products too.

For starters we have the Mulled Lager, the most popular seller of the weekend, in such high demand that we managed to sell the whole keg in just two days, to the point that we had some lovely German lads drinking Steins of it!

The Mulled Lager started off as a malty Germanic Kellerbier, infused with winter spices and then lagered for a year, it truly tasted like Christmas was with us all over again!

The next quickest seller was the magnificent Spiced Clementine Wild Sour, a Wild Lager awash with juicy clementine notes and seasonally appropriate spices, bolstered up by a soft acidity that puckered the face with equal parts tartness and complexity in flavour.

For something quite different to their usual arsenal of sours we also had the Centennial Mosiac DIPA, reportedly the 100th batch produced, a fitting accompaniment to such a monumental event. A burst of red berries opened up the palate and quickly gave way to fantastic murky maltiness and a big boozy punch, definitely not one to be sessioned by the faint of heart!

Continuing on the train of the weird and wonderful was the Dirty Wild Sour, inspired by the Dirty Martini and aged on olive brine, it was almost reminiscent of a flemish red but with a bigger, tarter bite. The brine brought a level of lingering saltiness that played off incredibly well against the almost balsamic, acidic tang.

Reigning ourselves back down to some realm of normality we’ll look at the BBC Citra Double Sour, face-implodingly sour, but in all the right ways. Packing a massive Citra punch and harbouring a cheeky note of lemons, this murky beast has been a hot seller and definitely one to watch out for for any aficionado of fantastic face-puckering sours.

Which brings us to the final two beers, the favourites of the bar management, the Sour Rye Saison and the Mosaic Wild Sour.

Bar Manager, Craig, has championed the Sour Rye Saison, a wonderfully complex affair of a beer, it’s big gooseberry barnyard flavour entwined with hints of lime, subtle stonefruit tartness and very full body making for a level of complexity that surpassed even the Spiced Clementine Wild Sour!

And last but not least our Assistant Manager, Dan, has chosen to fly the flag of the Mosaic Wild Sour, a sharp, dry, uncompromising monster sour, almost reminiscent of a gueze with hints of barnyard funk that are a perfect jumpstart for any pair of weary tastebuds.

It has been a great pleasure for us to take part in the Chorlton Winter Tap Takeover, as I’m sure it has been for the other 49 bars involved, here’s to many more to come!