My favorite beer of
is the Spotted Pig Bitter that Brooklyn Brewery (?right?) does for the Spotted Pig in Manhattan. That place also happens to be my favorite restaurant at that end of the city. They got it in casks in the cellar and when I ordered my first, it was the very first time I had ever seen a beer engine.
Drinking a well executed cask bitter isn't a 'joy' per se, at least not in the sense of rainbows and fireworks. But it's satisfying in the same way that sitting on the deck after rotovating 50 sq m of garden is. Also, for me, it's different from when I drink hop bombs or high-gravity gunboats. It's just perfect, like drinking water, but awesome water.
I've got some Northdown and Cobb hops in the garden that I'm planning on putting into my "Garden Variety Bitter," which is going to be made of entirely home-grown ingredients - hops, rainwater, and malt. Not sure about the malting though, we'll see.