PRINCETOWN'S Dartmoor Brewery is celebrating success with its latest ale — an unusual beer with a rare ingredient which tickled the tastebuds of judges at the SIBA South West Beer Festival last week.

Three Hares ale won the gold award in the speciality beer class at the event, held at Tuckers Maltings in Newton Abbot.

Mark Shackleton, sales director at Dartmoor Brewery, said: 'Three Hares is an ABV 4.4 beer flavoured up with Dartmoor Heather Honey which is supplied to us by Peter Hunt who has hives on the heather tracts of the eastern moor.  

'Unfortunately this honey is in short supply due to the continued disappearance of heather and purple heath, mainly caused by the advance of the bracken with which barely any plant can survive.

'Three Hares is going to remain rare and very special but will be available for festivals and special occasions in and around the moor.'

Mark said Dartmoor heather honey, unlike other honey, gave this golden brown ale a 'delicious superb rich spicy taste' with a hint of apricots.  

He added: 'In fact, many ladies who would never dream of drinking beer love the taste of Three Hares.

'Honey used as a flavouring for beer has Viking origins but they would go one step further and use the fresh green tips of heather, we felt it would be best if we left the heather for the Dartmoor bees!'

Mark said Viking honey beer was apparently revered as a drink to enhance fertility.

'I have yet to see if Three Hares has had the same effect on the people of Dartmoor,' said Mark.

The Three Hares beer pump clip logo is an optical illusion with the three hares only having three ears between them.  

Mark said the image had connections to pagan times there are even records of it being used in an ancient Chinese Dynasty — long before it was ever adopted by the Dartmoor Tinners.  

He said that initially the hares embodied in the logo  were associated with resurrection and were the forerunners of the Easter bunny —unfortunately this led to the original motif developing more sinister connections and it became thought of as the animal form of a witch, related in the story of Bowerman's Nose and other Dartmoor witchcraft stories.