I suspect that I was drinking this seasonal beer out of season, but recently I had a bottle of Thwaites Liberation Premium Ale. This beer is normally available around Remembrance Day, and Thwaites donate a portion of the price of the beer to the Royal British Legion. A worthy cause, and so far the donations total more than £65,000.
Interestingly, the Thwaites web site doesn’t mention the bottled version of this beer, but here is a link to the description of the cask version. The bottled version is significantly stronger than the cask version, being 5.2%. It’s quite dark (I think “dark amber” is the official term). It’s what I would call “flavoursome” – quite sweet and fruity, but slightly bitter. Very drinkable – I enjoyed it.
I used to drink Thwaites Bitter (lots of it) when I was at Lancaster University (that was in the early 1970′s!) and I haven’t seen much of it since then – only when on trips “up north”. Thwaites was one of my favourite beers at the time – quite an achievement, as we were blessed with lots of great beers from Manchester and the rest of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cumbria, etc. – which I must get round to writing about sometime.