DUCHY ORIGINALS ORGANIC BOTTLE-CONDITIONED SUMMER ALE

Duchy Originals, the natural and organic food brand established by HRH The Prince of Wales and which donates its profits to The Prince of Wales’s Charitable Foundation, has introduced the third beer to its highly acclaimed drinks range.

It follows in the footsteps of the widely distributed 5% abv Duchy Originals Organic Ale (Britain’s fastest growing organic ale) and the seasonal Duchy Originals Winter Ale 6.2% abv. The new beer will be the first in the range to be bottle conditioned.

Duchy Originals Organic Summer Ale, 4.7% abv, will be available exclusively in Waitrose stores from the end of April and throughout the summer at £1.69 per 500ml bottle.

Victoria Joyce, Waitrose Beer Buyer comments: “We're delighted to be involved exclusively with the Duchy Originals Organic seasonal beer range. Summer Ale will make an excellent addition to our range and will build upon the great success we enjoyed with Duchy Originals Winter Ale.”

After seeing HRH The Prince of Wales supporting British cask ales at a Slow Food movement in Turin in October 2004, The Campaign for Real Ale challenged the Prince to brew a bottle-conditioned beer, the bottled equivalent of cask ale.

Duchy Originals Summer Ale has hopefully answered their wish with this bottle-conditioned, un-pasteurised beer, packaged with a small amount of live yeast left in the bottle. This yeast continues the fermentation to smooth out some of the flavours and provide a gentle dusting of carbonation to tingle the tongue. The bottle also carries the ‘Camra says this is real ale’ label.

Wychwood Brewery’s head brewer, Jeremy Moss adds: “For Duchy Originals’ Summer Ale, we wanted to create a delicate straw-coloured beer bursting with summer-time flavours. So it has been brewed with more than a nod to the hop, which has given it accentuated citrus aromas, followed swiftly by hints of dried fruit and marmalade. On the palate, there are delicate flavours of grapefruit and melon offset by an almost pine like hop flavour and a long lingering finish. Bring on the barbeque!”

Summer ale is brewed with Plumage Archer barley, harvested from organic farms, including the Prince of Wales’s Home Farm at Highgrove in Gloucestershire. It has then been blended with a small amount of malted wheat, and the resulting brew has been boiled with organic Fuggles hops, grown in Belgium.

Late in the boil, organic Goldings – again from Belgium - are added to enhance aroma and flavour, before a final charge of Belgian Goldings and English Target hops are added after the boil so as to produce an aroma which is both light and citrussy, but with rich undertones of marmalade.

This beer can either be drunk clear, poured carefully so as to leave its yeast at the foot of the bottle; or it can be enjoyed cloudy, with all the goodness of the natural yeast still in the glass.