Milestone Crusader
Milestone describe this brew as a blonde Belgium style beer, so I guess that puts it in the category of “golden ale”. Crusader is a pale orange/yellow colour as we had expected but isn’t nearly as pale as St Peter’s Golden Ale.
I had real problems getting my Crusader kit to ferment properly. For the first three days the brew bubbled vigorously, producing much foam with meringue like lumps. Activity slowed down by the end of a week but my hydrometer reading was only 1020 instead of 1010! Lee and I decided to rack the brew and add a little more yeast to the fresh container hoping it would work on any remaining sugars. Four or five days later the hydrometer read only 1012.
After a month in the barrel the beer is highly active and frothy when poured. After a short wait the fine froth settles and the beer clears perfectly. Milestone Crusader turns out to be unusually hoppy bitter ale. Lee and I both found it quite difficult to drink quickly on account of the bitterness. I normally prefer maltier tasting ales but I have to say that the ‘hit’ from the hops does eventually get to be quite addictive.
Despite my concerns about how this brew struggled, our barrel of Milestone Crusader turned out to be a perfectly okay drink and also proved to be reasonably strong in alcohol. That said, we still find this bitter to be just ‘a bit too bitter’ for our tastes. Continued drinking has the unwanted ‘side effect’ of influencing one’s taste for other beers. On a visit to a pub where I drank three pints of what I would have considered very good ale I was displeased with the bland taste of each. I am sure it was because my tastebuds had become so used to the heavy hopped flavour of Crusader all other beers tasted pallid by comparison. I am not sure I would want that state to continue.