Verdant Putty launch: results & prospects for craft beer in 2021
The can launch of Verdant Putty, an annual release from the Cornish brewery, featuring the freshest hops, took place this week. No doubt a keg release will occur in due course.
It very quickly sold out direct from the brewery and I note demand is high at those bottle shops that have supplies.
I didn’t buy it this year. Its an excellent beer but there are lots of others, even in days like these, and I like to try new breweries and brews along with old favourites staples.
Even so as I wrote about the 2020 Putty launch (below, slightly edited) it’s clear that even in the rather tough days of early 2021 craft beer has a real reach. Therein lies one of the hopes for beer futures
I was at the 2020 launch of the latest can release of Verdant Putty (8% double ipa) at their joint taproom, the Experiment, in Hackney early in January. I wasn’t particularly there for that purpose then but it was rammed mostly with men of a certain age and facial hair style (and that was just me).
Putty is current beer Zeitgeist, in the way that Cloudwater DIPAs once were (as Toby Wood noted on twitter) but rightly so. It is an excellent beer.
The keg launch saw me at the independent central Cardiff bar (Bubs) in mid-January (16th Jan 2020). It is a sizeable venue so it wasn’t entirely rammed but I note they got through a keg in a few hours and another together with their can stock the following day. That’s impressive given that its not cheap and while to my taste not to everyones. Moreover most of those imbibing did not appear to be the ‘usual’ craft beer adherents and only a few had beards.
The point is that a beer like Putty finds keen drinkers across the country not just in locations where the usual suspects gather. That underlines something about the reach of craft beer in 2020.
I thought the beer was highly drinkable. Murky of course and juicy. You could go further in respect of taste description but those are the keys.
The zeitgeist will move on but I’m sure Verdant will continue to make great beer (which I expect I’ll sample mainly at the Experiment).
Whether such a beer can get beyond niche, albeit a popular one, and whether it should are perhaps a couple of the craft beer questions for 2020, but the launch of the latest iteration of Putty in the middle of Dry January suggests its possible…
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