Thomas Hardy Ale

[Wowbagger]

It would appear that this wonderful substance has ceased to be.

http://www.thomashardysale.org.uk/page2.htm

STOP PRESS!
July 2009: O'Hanlon's announce that production is to cease due to the time and expense of production and to free up brewing capacity for other products.

I think the bottle I have left in the cupboard is probably the last I will be able to buy. This is a very sad discovery.

[Baggy]

  we've just purchased a solitary bottle that was lurking behind the bar of a remote pub.

[Ian H]

http://www.beer-pages.com/stories/eldridge_pope.htm

I remember being impressed with the vast array of well-kept buildings and evidence of thriving industry when riding past the Brewery from the station in 1995. Little did I suspect what would happen a year later.

[Tewdric]

What a shame - I have very fond (but fuzzy) memories of Royal Oak bitter from my university days in the late eighties. 

[SteveC]

I have a bottle which was given to me for my 18th birthday.  Although a famously long lived beer, I suspect it is past its best by now.

S

[Wowbagger]

I have a bottle which was given to me for my 18th birthday.  Although a famously long lived beer, I suspect it is past its best by now.

S

Obviously I don't know how old you are, but I read an interview with one of the old Eldridge Pope directors years ago, probably in "What's Brewing?", and he reckoned that the beer wouldn't reach its best until it was at least 10 years old. I had a bottle once which was certainly over 5 years old and it was a damn sight better than the stuff Woolly and I drunk the night before last, which was only 3 to 4 years old. Having said that, O'Hanlons were only brewing it for 6 years and there's no way of telling, short of experience, what the differences between their stuff and the original was. I think it was a pretty good likeness, but how that would have developed over time of course I don't know.

[SteveC]

I have a bottle which was given to me for my 18th birthday.  Although a famously long lived beer, I suspect it is past its best by now.

S

Obviously I don't know how old you are, but I read an interview with one of the old Eldridge Pope directors years ago, probably in "What's Brewing?", and he reckoned that the beer wouldn't reach its best until it was at least 10 years old.

Let's just say it's now over thirty years old!  They used to say that it would keep for twenty five years, and shouldn't really be opened before ten.  Which is part of the problem.  I got married when I was twenty-eight and finding a small old bottle of beer was a fairly low priority that year and it sort of got forgotten after that.  I happened to see it lurking in the back of the cupboard earlier today.

S

[Ian H]

Hmm. Not especially good.

[SteveC]

Hmm. Not especially good.

That is a shame.  They produce some rather fine beers.

S

[Wowbagger]

I wonder who has the recipe? I'd happily make some and store it for a few years. It's a bit like making your own marmalade.

[Wowbagger]

I think you should drink yours Steve. Either that, or employ a taster to drink it for you. 

[andrewc]

Several bottles on Ebay, starting at £9:00....