Another Beer Night

This is the (neatly lined-up) aftermath of a beer night from a few months ago (plus a bottle opener, it seems - I guess this was to add artistic effect, or something). I won’t go through every beer we had as the picture should do the hard work for me. Instead I’ll just tell you about the best ones.

Kernel Brewery Export Stout 1890 was the most handsome beer of the evening, a charcoal black and a creamy head. It’s smooth in the mouth, smoky, roasty and delicious – another Kernel cracker.

De Hemel’s Nieuw Ligt Grand Cru 2005 was a real playground of flavours: fruity, boozy, vanilla, pepper, plums, raisins, banana bread and rum. It was fantastically interesting.

AleSmith Speedway Stout was thick, dark and sexy, filled with loads of coffee and chocolate, a real tongue coating dark-beer-lover’s dreams. A wow beer (only bettered by the bourbon-barrel-aged version which is double wow).

Russian River Damnation 23 was another wow beer (cool label blurb too). An oak-aged tripel with so much going on it had three of us talking about it for the duration of the bottle: lots of apricots, pineapple, honey, huge vanilla oak presence which I really liked, stewed apple, roasted oranges, toasted nuts; very smooth bodied, a drying bitterness. It’s the oak that makes this and gives it something cheeky and playful, although there's nothing subtle about it being there. Where can I get more?

We threw a few wild cards in there and some duds too. Surprisingly Utenos did pretty well, unlike the Brodies Mint Choc Chip Stout which we had high hopes for – it neither tasted like chocolate nor mint and was disappointing (if you call a beer by that name then it has to taste ridiculous for it to work, if you ask me. See Saltaire’s Triple Chocoholic).

This lot was demolished between three of us. We did the usual scoring which you can sort of see below. There was a slight theme to this night of 'good beer and shit beer', although that was only very loosely followed... 

A Special Beer Night

Another beer night. This one reserved for those special bottles we’d been meaning to drink for so long but just never got around to it, shared with Mark from Real Ale Reviews and Pete Brissenden.

A Pliny the Elder to start. This was pretty much the reason Mark decided to come down from Leeds as I’d promised that I’d bring a bottle back from San Francisco for him. It’s a great beer, pithy, piney, dry and bitter.

Alaskan Smoked Porter 2009, another bottle I brought back from California, poured an opaque darker-than-burnt-out-wood back. Smoke comes straight out, followed by fire and chocolate. First the mouthfeel grabs you, silky and smooth, then the smoke whisps in at the end, bonfire, earthy, fiery but still with chocolate underneath. A great beer, exploding with flavour for 6.5%, and not overpoweringly smoky.

Petite Orval next, the beer kept for the monks at the brewery and only available there - a weaker version of the normal Orval. It smells like rhubarb and lemon, delicious. It’s smooth and dry, lemony and peppery, incredibly drinkable and just like a smaller version of Orval without so much of that familiar dry bitterness. I wish this was commercially available – it’s fantastic.

Russian River Supplication followed with its awesome aroma of glace cherries, lemons and wood. It’s smooth, clean, sour, peppery, full-flavoured. Great beer.

Then for a Fuller’s Vintage 1999. It’s packed with serious dried fruit, syrupy, Madeira, port-like in its age. The body is so full and smooth, there’s a huge marmalade and spicy malt flavour that’s so familiar to the Fuller’s beers, then more Madeira comes through, treacle and caramel and a peppery, intense finish. Wow – the last 10 years have been good to this beer.

Cantillon Saint Lamvinus, bottled about 6 months ago, aged with merlot grapes in a Bordeaux barrel. It’s cherry red with no head, funky and peppery but not massively sour, it’s easy drinking, woody, tannic and dry at the end and seriously tasty. A Cantillon Iris followed which is cold-hopped and has a shockingly good aroma of fruity, peachy and citrusy hops, but those hops clash wildly with the beer, going off like a nuclear reactor on the tongue, smacking bitter and sour simultaneously and it was all too much for me.

An Old Chimneys Good King Henry Special Reserve 2007 brought us back on track and what a beer this is. Rate Beer has this as the highest rated British beer (the Fuller's '99 is the second highest rated on there) and I can understand why. The aroma is coconut, oak, vanilla and chocolate; it’s thick and intense but still remains light and drinkable, there’s roasted berries in there, lots of chocolate, oak and hints of umami which adds a lot of complexity.

Then an Orval side-by-side, one from July 2008 and the other from December 2009. The old one was cheesy, funky and just generally bigger; the new was fresher, more floral. The old tasted leathery, dusty and dry with an underlying candy sugar sweetness; the new had funk and lemons, a fruity sweetness and more pepper. Very interesting to have them together to see the difference of age and both still tasted great. I had a year-old bottle recently which stopped perfectly in the middle of these two and that seems just about right for me.

Next a De Molen’s Lood & Oud Ijzer, a black and tan blend of Amarillo and Rasputin (both oak-barrel aged) made especially for the Pig’s Ear beer festival last year. We had bottle 103/120 – that’s small run stuff. It has the most amazing aroma and like a Proustian time machine I’m back in Hackney, at the bar, drinking with mates, the day after the BGBW Awards Dinner. It’s grassy, peachy, fruity and then comes chocolate, cocoa and some mint. There’s so much Amarillo in there, then dark fruit, then chocolate. It’s so smooth and still tastes wonderfully fresh.

A Drie Fonteinen Geuze was deliciously dry, crisp and sour. It's an awesome beer, probably my go-to geuze.

Then finally a BrewDog/Mikkeller Devine Rebel 2010, bumped up to 13.8%, possibly with a change of hops as I couldn’t taste or smell the usually pungent Nelson Sauvins. The beer is big and boozy, honeyed, very bitter, nose clearing, orangey and just a bit disjointed – it was just too strong for me. Time for bed after this one.

Not a bad beer night, although I had a vicious hangover the next day, one that left me running for the bathroom in fear of being sick while I was frying some bacon! Thankfully it was all made right with a pint of Marble Pint and a fish finger sandwich in the sun at The Bull, which Mark has written about here. It’s good to clear some of the better bottles from the stash every now and then.

We didn’t score the bottles this time, like we usually do for Beer nights. If I had to list my Top 3 it’d be Good King Henry, Petite Orval and De Molen’s Lood & Oud Ijzer. What isn’t mentioned is that the fridge still had a bottle of Pannepot Reserva 2007 and a BrewDog Tokyo*, while a Marble Raspberry Decadence was loitering just in case. 

IPA Night

Last time we had Stout Night, before that were two general Beer Nights, this time it was an evening dedicated to IPAs. Pete, Brad, Chunk and Matt (who is pretty much my only mate who doesn't have a blog or can't be reached by putting @ in front of his name - but he does feature 47 seconds into this video) came to my place last Friday with the promise of a fridge filled with hops and orders for them to bring pizza, snacks, and cheese, plus any IPAs they find.

The evening revolved around the IPAs I brought back from America, which I wanted to share with friends. These bottles had been in the fridge since then, teasing me every time I went in there. I also picked up a few bottles from the supermarket or beer shops to add to the collection. We did the usual thing of rating the beer out of 10 for a little interesting competition. Almost all the beers were IPAs, although a couple slipped in which weren’t, but we can excuse that. Here’s what we had, in the order we had it, and all scores are out of 50.

1. Green King IPA (3.5%)

Why the hell not. We usually like to start with something middle of the road to set the benchmark score but Pete was driving over and we figured he wouldn’t mind missing this one. It’s an IPA because it says so in the name. It’s just not IPA as we know it to be now. Frankly, it was horrible. My scribbled notes say ‘it smells like a baby’s bib that’s got sick on’. Still, it was a fun start and made us all laugh. We saved some for Pete so he didn’t miss out. Score: 10.5.

2. BrewDog Punk IPA (6%)

This was an obvious one to use as we all know it so well. I have had indifferent bottles recently but this one was absolutely spot-on and perhaps the best I’ve had it in the bottle. It seemed slightly more honeyed than usual, less dry-bitter in the finish and better balanced. Score: 37.5.

3. Thornbridge Jaipur (5.9%)

We wanted a Punk/Jaipur-off but as soon as we poured them we noticed that something wasn’t right... when we checked we saw that the Jaipur had a best before date of November 2009 (despite the fact that I only bought it the weekend before – I also got an out of date Orval then, but that was a good thing... if you visit the Bitter End in Bromley, check the dates). It had suggestions of Jaipur but the hops had fallen in and the malt was pushing out. We stopped the side-by-side and didn’t give this a score as it wasn’t a fair representation (that same day a box of Jaipur and Kipling arrived from myBrewerytap, it just went to my parents' house, not mine).

4. Bear Republic Racer 5 (7%)

Pete arrived, put beers in the fridge, caught up with the previous three and then we started straight on the big ones. Racer was my favourite beer in California so I was eager to see how well it bottled and lasted. Straight away, with that aroma of tropical fruit, mango and tangerine, I had a Proustian flashback of the Toad in the Hole on my last night in Santa Rosa. There’s so much fruit, a great long, dry finish and wonderful balance and drinkability. I need more Racer 5, I love it. Score: 43.5.

5. Russian River Pliny the Elder (8%)

No messing around, straight from Racer to Pliny. This is a new Californian classic brewed a few towns away from Bear Republic. It was the first and the penultimate beer of my US trip and there were many in between. Bottled on the 2nd February, it was five weeks old. Pliny is full of pine and grapefruit, resinous and fruity with a long, dry, almost-herby finish. There’s less sweetness than the Racer and less ‘balance’ but that doesn’t matter, it’s a wonderful beer and that aroma-finish book-end is so inticing. Score: 42.5.

6. Marston’s Old Empire IPA (5.7%)

We jumped around between US and UK beers all evening. Old Empire may have suffered from coming after Pliny... although I was surprised as I didn’t expect much - it had a crisp, bitter finish which would work well with spicy food. This is more of an Old School IPA, compared to the US New Skool. It was perfectly drinkable, I just can’t imagine buying more and keeping them in the fridge. Score: 26.

7. Pitfield 1837 IPA (7%)

This one left us divided with some hating it and others not minding it. It poured a murky gold and had a sweet, doughy nose of fresh bread which carried through into the taste. It’s big and warming, a little tannic and dry with a bitter finish and hints of slightly sour fruit. This was probably the most authentic IPA we had and I thought it was really interesting in a not-quite-right, sort of way. The initial taste reminded me of Pete Brown’s Calcutta IPA and if you left this long enough I think it would develop similarly. Score: 21.

8. Troegs Nugget Nectar (7.5%)

This is a once-yearly release which I was given by Ken Weaver in California. This is also not an IPA, instead it’s an Imperial Amber. We can overlook that as it’s got shit loads of hops in it and was the same colour as all the others anyway. This was very good. Lots of caramel and c-hops to begin, fruity, piny and perfumed with a big hit of floral and orange in the quenching finish. The floral quality and extra sweetness marks this apart from the West Coast IPAs. Score: 41.

9. Ballast Point Sculpin IPA (7%)

Another famous US IPA, this one from Ballast Point, a great Californian brewery. This one had a nose-full of oranges, peaches, apricots and sweet floral. Taste-wise it’s spot-on, clean and smooth and bitter-sweet and delicious. Score: 41.5.

10. Bells HopSlam (10%)

Like Nugget Nectar, this is a once-a-year release, which came a few weeks before I flew out. The bottle is another courtesy of Ken. This is a biggie. The image on the front says it all: a man squashed by a giant hop. It starts with citrus and pine and then opens into mango and tropical fruit. I didn’t write much down because I was too busy falling in love. It’s just a wonderful beer and my personal favourite of the evening. Score: 43.5.

11. BrewDog/Stone Bashah (8.6%)

Last week I wrote about Black IPAs so it seemed fitting to have one in for the evening. This one is a Double Black Belgian IPA, a typically renegade style, given its brewers. Whenever I’ve had this it has tasted different and others agreed that they’ve experienced the same thing. This was nice, smooth, a good level of roastiness and estery, tropical fruit. Score: 33.5.

12. Hopdaemon Skrimshander (4.5%)

Pete is the brewer at Hopdaemon so of course he brought a few of his beers around. This is the bottle-conditioned version of their IPA and it’s straight from the brewery. It’s the first time I’ve had it bottle-conditioned and it makes a big difference. The flavour was fresher, smoother and had a delicious underlying bready-fruity quality. It wasn’t big-hitting like the others but it’s still a very nice beer and one that I will always serve with a curry. Score: 37.

13. Gadds’ India (8.3%)

As we are all from Kent (except Brad but he lives close enough now) we needed some Gadds in there. This is a fairly old bottle but it’s holding up well; the hops are integrating and adding lots of flavour without bitterness, a sweet yeasty quality comes through, it’s mellow with hints of sour fruit. This got mixed reactions. It’s another old school-style IPA and it’s interesting to see how they all develop in similar ways with the hops retreating, the body filling out, a doughy sweetness and stone fruits – if that’s how all the traditional IPAs developed then I imagine I would’ve liked them too. Score: 33.5.

14. Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (6%)

I was looking forward to this one but left a bit flat and disappointed. There’s nothing wrong with it, I just wanted more. It has a simple aroma of earthy-citrusy hops, it has a base of caramel flavours and a little bite at the end, it just didn’t wow. Score: 35.

15. Odell IPA (7%)

Lovely, cheeky nose of peaches and apricots, fruity and inviting, floral. It’s very drinkable, very tasty and very nice. We liked it a lot and it’s one of those beers to keep in the fridge, if you can find it. Score: 40.5.

16. Flying Dog Raging Bitch (8.3%)

There’s a lot of hype around this beer but I’m not sure I get it. It’s an IPA with Belgian yeast and it’s fruity, estery, interesting, but something in it doesn’t work. I want to like it more than I do and there’s something about the hops and the yeast which seems to clash. We split two bottles between us and talked about the beer the whole time, which added something to the enjoyment, even if we were trying to work out what didn’t quite work. Score: 36.

17. BrewDog Punk Monk (6%)

I had this in the fridge so we decided to try it directly after the Bitch to see a comparison between IPAs made with Belgian yeasts. This one was much better and I really like what BrewDog have done (I’ve written about it here). It works perfectly well and the spicy, fruity character from the yeast adds a lot to the final beer. Score: 39.

18. Avery The Maharaja Imperial IPA (10.5%)

A big bomber of year-old IPA. This is a big beer all around: big malt, big hops, big bitterness, big flavour. You can taste that it’s old and we felt that it either needed to be drunk fresh or a couple of years old, as it was it was in a bit of a transition, but it was still very good. Score: 38.5.

19. Hopdaemon Green Daemon (5%)

Not an IPA but it’s an ale and it’s pale so it’s okay. I didn’t write anything down for this one so it must’ve either been very good or very bad. Judging by the scores we all liked it. Score: 38.

20. Mikkeller/De Molen Mikkel & Menno (7.2%)

Bottle 191 of 1080. Matt brought this around because he’d never seen it before and we both love Mikkeller and De Molen. This is definitely not an IPA and it’s not even very pale and possibly not even an ale - it’s a wheatbock with US hops. It’s smooth and malty, spicy, and then big c-hops come through, fresh and juicy and then leave a long, dry bitterness. We couldn’t quite work it out (style-wise) but enjoyed it (we did have to rush this a bit as it was time for everyone to dash down the High Street to catch the last train home). A good end to the evening. Score: 36.

Not bad going – 20 beers between five of us in under four hours, and great fun it was too. Pete stayed over on the sofa and we enjoyed a Leviathon after the others had left. I haven’t liked this much in the past but (I think) he’s made some tweaks and this has a great dry finish to balance the sweet, malty body. It’s also worth mentioning the other stars of the evening: the pizzas. Brad was in charge of these and he spared no expense by going to Iceland. The classic flavours he chose were Bolognese, Fajita, Hot Dog and Cheese & Onion (just in case we had a veggie). It may have been the beer talking but the pizzas were disgustingly good. I can still remember cracking into laughter as I bit into the Bolognese pizza and it tasting exactly like Bolognese! The other revelation was squeezing French’s mustard onto the Hot Dog pizza before cooking. Incredible. We decided to rate the pizza too: Bolognese scored 39, Fajita scored 30.5, Hot Dog scored 40.5 and Cheese & Onion 31. If you have a spare pound go to Iceland, buy the Hot Dog pizza, put mustard on it, cook and eat with a smile on your face.

IPA is such an interesting and varied style. All these beers were different and shone in their own way. Some were big-hitting on the bitterness, some were full of tropical fruit, some were floral, some were earthy, some were fragrant, some were malt-dominant, some were imperial and some were not. The best beers were seriously good, the worst were totally forgettable. The overall winners according to our ratings were Racer 5 and HopSlam, which is a good result, I think. Now I just need to work out a plan of how to get some more of them...

Stout Night

I’d been saving up bottles of stout for ages in the lead up to one big, black blow-out beer night. Two weekends ago I finally held Stout Night to coincide with my 25th birthday. I’ve had a couple of beer nights before, where we open lots of bottles, drink, talk about them and then, for the fun of the competition, we give them a score out of 10. It’s no science, it’s no geek-fest, it’s just good beer and friends. This time around our beer night was themed so that all the beers (except one, but it was as black as the rest so it’s okay) were stouts. The range went from 3% milk stout, through coffee stout, stouts with chilli, barrel-aged stout, stout with wild yeast and up to a very imperial 17.5% stout. Pete, Brad, Lee, Sean and Matt (he doesn't write or tweet, he just drinks the stuff) came to my house to drink it (Pete missed the first half as he was at Twickenham and then had to battle high winds and fallen trees on the train journey). This is what we had and how we scored them (the bracket score of the first eight is the average of the others added on to suggest Pete’s):

1. Wye Valley’s Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout (4.6%)

Almost a year old, great beer to start on, bitter chocolate finish was superb for ABV, suffered from over-carbonation, unfortunately. Classic British bottled stout. I got it from beermerchants.

Mark: 7

Matt: 7

Sean: 6

Lee: 6.5

Brad: 8

Total: 34.5 (41.5)

2. Meantime’s London Stout (4.5%)

Smoky flavour to it but lacking something in the body and in the middle to make it more drinkable for us, less bitter than Dorothy.

Mark: 5.5

Matt: 6

Sean: 7

Lee: 6

Brad: 7

Total: 31.5 (37.5)

3. Mackeson’s Stout (3%)

Lactic, smooth, sweet. It is what it is. When would we ever grab a can of this to just drink it?

Mark: 4.5

Matt: 3.5

Sean: 5

Lee: 4

Brad: 4

Total: 19 (23)

4. Dark Star Espresso Stout (4.2%)

Big, burnt roasty nose, unexpected monster coffee flavour for ABV, earthy richness but a little thin in the body. If this was 6% with the same flavour then it could be brilliant. I think it’d make a great breakfast beer, if that’s your kind of thing.

Mark: 6.5

Matt: 6

Sean: 6.5

Lee: 6.5

Brad: 7.5

Total: 33 (39.5)

5. Guinness Original (4.2%)

Probably the most recognisable beer in the world and the most famous stout. It had to be in the fridge. The flavour is classic and recognisable too. From the bottle it was thinner and fizzer than the keg. We had a long discussion about Guinness and how people feel about it. These scores are based on the bottle.

Mark: 5.5

Matt: 5.5

Sean: 6

Lee: 5

Brad: 4.5

Total: 26.5 (31.5)

6. Old Chimney’s Good King Henry Special Reserve 2006 (11%)

Fun over. Things step up dramatically here. The highest rated UK beer on ratebeer. Interestingly, the beer was three years old to the very day when we had it (14/11/06). That’s pretty cool. It’s got an amazing nose of chocolate, nutty/oaky/coconut, then a rich, silky and oily body, roasty, raisins and berry sweetness, oak. Wow. I have another bottle of this and I’m so pleased about that, it’s incredible.

Mark: 9

Matt: 8.5

Sean: 8

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 9

Total: 42 (50)

7. Southern Tier Mokah (11%)

Beer brewed with coffee and Belgian chocolate from beermerchants. This was a very memorable beer as a chorus, like a Mexican wave, passed around the room of ‘WOW’ when each of us smelt and then tasted this one. I expected it big, black and bitter. It wasn’t. Lee said it best: ‘Kind of like if Willy Wonka made beer.’ It’s got a candy sugar and cocoa nose, very sweet. And it tastes like this too - sweet, chocolatey, cocoa, not much coffee roastiness. It’s actually laugh-inducing in a good way and really fun to drink. I wouldn’t want much of it, but a glass was great.

Mark: 8

Matt: 8

Sean: 8.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 8.5

Total: 41 (49)

8. BrewDog Tokyo (12%)

From the first ever batch. Not the 18.2% starred version. Thick, dark pour, full roasty nose, smoky with a sweetness in the flavour and roast bitter finish. Very good but not as awesome as the Big One.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 7.5

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 9

Brad: 8.5

Total: 41 (49)

At this point Pete called to say he was nearby. To refresh ourselves we shared a bottle of BrewDog in a moment affectionately termed a 'Movember Mouthwash'. We didn’t rate it because it wasn’t black. It was also a bit disappointing but it’s for a good cause.

9. Stone Imperial Russian Stout 2008 (10.8%)

Big and rich, roasty, thick, great balance, great beer, enough said.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 7.5

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 8.5

Pete: 8

Total: 49

10. BrewDog Paradox Anniversary Edition 004 (10%)

Only 200 bottles of this were made (bottle 124/200). Complete with a great label designed by Johanna Basford. It was aged in an Ex Dunmore Taylor Bowmore 1968 cask. I loved the nose to begin, plumy, smoky, islay, chocolatey but after a while the oxidisation seeped through like cloying tomatoes and vinegar (not undrinkable, just unusual). There’s a lot going on to taste - sourness, roasty, whisky barrel – but the oxidisation was fairly overpowering, unfortunately, and it wasn’t to everyone’s taste.

Mark: 7

Matt: 4.5

Sean: 3

Lee: 4.5

Brad: 6.5

Pete: 6

Total: 31.5

11. Harvey’s Imperial Stout 2003 (9%)

Following the sharpness in the BrewDog we opened a stout deliberately ‘infected’ with Brettanomyces. It’s full-bodied, roasty and rich like charred steak, then comes the sour, fruity yeast and it’s unique and wonderful with a strange yet very drinkable balance. I got this from Beers of Europe.

Mark: 8

Matt: 7

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 8

Pete: 7.5

Total: 45.5

12. Struise Black Albert (13%)

Smooth, chocolatey, delicious. Just a masterpiece of a beer and personally I think it deserved higher scores but it suffered for being too well made and not esoteric enough to sit between all the other extreme flavours.

Mark: 9

Matt: 8

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 8.5

Pete: 8.5

Total: 49.5

13. BrewDog/Stone/Cambridge Juxtaposition Black Pilsner (10%)

No it’s not a stout, but it is black. I wanted to open this and share it as it’s one of the only bottles in the UK, as far as I know. I’m glad I did. Lots of fruity bitterness, big old c-hops, a lemon disinfectant wipe quality which isn’t a bad thing. The roasty-bitterness is not overpowering which is great as it allows the hops to really come through. This is a very cool beer, I just wish I could get more of it.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 9

Sean: 9

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 9

Pete: 7.5

Total: 50.5

14. Birrificio del Ducato Verdi (8.2%)

Italian imperial stout brewed with dried chilli peppers. It’s sweet and chocolatey, smooth and drinkable with (very) distant earthy pepper warmth at the back of the throat. Good beer, although I would’ve liked a tiny bit more heat. This is another that suffers from being too ‘nice’ and doesn’t punch you in the face with over-the-top flavour.

Mark: 8

Matt: 7

Sean: 6.5

Lee: 7

Brad: 7

Pete: 7

Total: 42.5

15. Port Brewing Old Viscosity (10%)

Bottle from beermerchants, imperial stout partly barrel-aged. This one does punch you in the face with over-the-top flavour. Nice bourbon oakiness, chocolate and a roast finish, smooth and very drinkable. A totally great stout. Brilliant. Beermerchants have Older Viscosity available now, that's very tempting...

Mark: 9

Matt: 9

Sean: 8.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 9

Pete: 9

Total: 52.5

16. Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (9.2%)

Bitter – check. Chocolatey – check. Oatmeal – check. Lovely stuff. Their 12th anniversary beer.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 8

Sean: 8

Lee: 8.5

Brad: 8.5

Pete: 8

Total: 49.5

17. Mikkeller Black (17.5%)

The big finish. A 17.5% beer. Heady, boozy, thick, vinous, port-like, sweet, warming, bitter like dark chocolate, maybe slightly oaky/woody. Quite similar to BrewDog’s Tokyo* and totally fantastic. Another bottle which I got it from beermerchants and I want more. A lot more.

Mark: 9.5

Matt: 9.5

Sean: 9

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 9.5

Pete: 9

Total: 54

18. BrewDog Rake Raspberry Paradox Smokehead (10%)

BrewDog played the encore. A crazy spectrum of flavours which I wrote about here. Roasty, berry-sharp, smoky, all a bit much but still quite enjoyable.

Mark: 7

Matt: 7

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 6

Brad: 7

Pete: 7

Total: 41.5

Stout Night finished. After this I walked Matt, Lee and Brad to the station and managed to lose Pete and Sean. Then I found them loitering and we had a dodgy kebab with some really hot chilli sauce. Then we came home and opened a Punk Monk and watched TV.

Beer nights like this are always interesting. Some of the beers deserved higher marks and probably would’ve got them if we hadn’t had so many different, varied, esoteric bottles to open. The scores that they get shouldn’t mean too much and looking back over them I just think, ‘wow, did I/they really give it that mark?!’, but that’s just how it works. I am almost certain that if we did the exact same line-up of beer and people in a few weeks time the scores would be different. But it’s not about that. It’s about sharing a lot of great beer with mates and talking about them and enjoying them.

The top three on the night were:

Mikkeller Black

Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity

BrewDog/Stone/Cambridge Juxtaposition

There were a cluster of beers scoring 48-50, which is also interesting, and any one of these could easily have scored higher on a different night. As for the top three, I’m not surprised Mikkeller won as it’s a great beer, but also, after all that 10% stout, to have something so much bigger really awakened us. The Old Viscosity is just great and the Juxtaposition was a blast of hoppiness which I think we were all craving, so this stood out. I think retrospectively my top three were: Mikkeller Black, Old Viscosity and Good King Henry, so not far off the overall. Now I need to start collecting stout again as my stock has been completely depleted.

Beer and Food Night at Pete's

Last weekend I went down to Pete’s for dinner and to open a few bottles of beer. He knocked up wicked array of food and he’s written about the dinner on his blog, so I won’t go into the food stuff other than to say this: Pete is a bloody good cook and his dessert was flipping fantastic (the dessert recipe is on his blog post). As he covered the food side, I’ll get the beers stuff down. We started in the best possible way: a bottle of Punk IPA to ease us in. Then came an Boon Oude Kriek, all light and blush and sweet and sour with cherries and an air of a cool summer breeze brushing against a clean t-shirt standing out in the countryside. It was a great pre-dinner drink. We had a Rother Valley Boadicea Pale Ale which was pretty average, kind of citrusy. Then we stepped up a bit and opened a De Dolle Extra Stout. It looks like coca-cola with a frothy head, it smells of coffee, chocolate, smoke and spice. It’s got a great balance to it, an elegant lightness, an earthy hop finish. We enjoyed this one a lot. With the main of sausage stew we had Hopdaemon’s Leviathan, a 6% ruby-coloured strong ale which is very sweet and malty with dark, roasted fruit. It worked well with the dinner (it was a ‘let’s just open this one!’) but for me it was just a little too cloying on it’s own – an earthy porter would’ve been a great match. Hopdaemon’s Skrimshander IPA, on the other hand, is a superb beer. It was here that we opened the star beer of the night: Gadds’ Ancestors. A 9% whisky-barrel aged porter. I really enjoy BrewDog’s Paradox Smokehead for it’s earthy-salty-phenolic quality, but I thought the Gadds’ was even better than that. Smoke, a phenolic, medicinal note and dark chocolate all lavishing around the glass. In the mouth it’s so smooth and clean, so chocolatey and smoky and rich but at the same time elegantly subtle with just the faintest hints of some berry sourness that worked oh-so well. Bloody good. I only wish I’d bought a few more (although, as of this weekend beermerchants are now stocking a few Ramsgate beers - there's a blog post here too). Then dessert and the star pairing: cherry beer with a dark chocolate and sour cherry pot. So simple, so delicious and just perfect pairing. The cherry beer was just the usual red-paper-wrapped one from the supermarket but it was ideal, mixing with the heavy roast bitterness in the pudding and catching onto the pockets of sour cherry. A ballet of fruity and bitter-sweet with roasty and dark. Also with dessert we opened a BrewDog Longrow which is all smoke, cherry and chocolate and fantastic. The beer is totally excellent but it didn’t work as a pairing this time, which just meant that we finished the bottle after dessert with blue cheese - yay! We opened a Cooper’s Pale Ale at one point but I barely had any before throwing it down the sink – I didn’t think much of that one! There was a BrewDog Hardcore IPA to go with the strong cheddar and this was a good match, although maybe slightly overpowered by the brash hops. An Anchor Steam beer also popped up, a classic. And then I had to leave for the train (with bottles left unopened!) home and I was absolutely stuffed. I do love nights of eating good food and drinking good beer just for the sheer hell of it.

A Beer Night: Number Two

A few months ago we had a beer night and it was a proper riot. This weekend we had another. The main purpose, other than just drinking lots of good beer, was to open the mini-keg of Thornbridge Halcyon that I picked up from my brewery visit in March. The night was as before: we open a beer, drink it and give it a score out of ten. Yes, it’s a really simplistic and reductive way of marking beer but that’s how we do it. It’s only a bit of fun. Although it’s hard rating beer like that and far from scientific; it’s simply a reflection of what we enjoyed (or didn’t) on the night, scored by four guys with different tastes in beer.

This beer night was enjoyed by Me, Matt (who was with me on the brewery visit and co-owned the cask, and whose flat was ground control for the evening), Sean (who was also at the last beer night) and Lee (who wrote this fine piece about San Francisco and City Beer Store).

This is how the night went, in this order.

1. Sakara Gold. 4.0%
Egyptian lager brewed by a subsidiary of Heineken. Matt recently returned from a holiday to Egypt and brought a few beers back with him. This one was pretty nasty. Fizzy, soapy, bland. No distinct flavours. The sort of stuff which probably tastes great under the Egyptian sun but which tastes bloody shit in a basement flat in Camden.

Mark: 1.5
Matt: 3
Lee: 4
Sean: 4
Total: 12.5

2. Stella. 4.5%
No, not that Stella. This was another Egyptian bottle, presumably trying to cash in on the name of the other one. This is also brewed by a Heineken subsidiary and has apparently (according to the bottle) been brewed since 1897. You would’ve thought in that time they would’ve been able to make it taste of something. Nope. My notes read: ‘tastes the same as Sakara - maybe a nastier tang, maybe more sweetness’.

Mark: 1.5
Matt: 3
Lee: 4
Sean: 4.5
Total: 13

3. BrewDog Zephyr. 12.5%
I wanted to get this one in early before our palates started getting knackered. There’s not much more to say about this beer that I didn’t say in this post. It’s just incredible. Everyone was blown away by it. There is just so much going on in this beer that sharing a 330ml bottle between four was just not enough. It’s got biscuit grain, so much tart (a Cantillon-esque quality) and sweet strawberry flavour, loads of character from the whisky barrel (smoke, oak, vanilla) and the boozy ABV only comes through in the warm glow that it leaves behind. Just wow. Better than a fine Champagne. I can’t wait to see what a year or two does to this beer (which I accounted for in the marking by knocking of a ½ mark).

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Lee: 7.5
Sean: 8.5
Total: 34

4. Adelscott. 5.8%
It’s one of those beers you see in France in cans or little stubby bottles. This one was from the can. If you remember Desperados from the last Beer Night then this is a fair equivalent (minus the Proustian feelings on my part). It’s a ‘whisky beer’ in the loosest sense. And it’s another Heineken brew. Ridiculous. A beer night and three of the first four beers are made by Heineken?! Anyway… this is super-sweet but some hints of bourbon (really?! bourbon?) are in there, mainly a nutty-cherry flavour. The beer has no finish. Pretty crap, although knocking back one is no problem.

Mark: 4
Matt: 4
Lee: 5
Sean: 5
Total: 18

5. Stone IPA. 6.9%.
This had been in my fridge for too long and I feared that it was going to be past its best. And it was, which was a real shame and the marks are no reflection on how good this beer really is. But that’s how beer nights work – you mark it on how good it tastes there and then. Tonight it was fairly sweet, plenty of the C-hop character was there, it was just dulled down and instead of its usual juicy, fresh bitterness at the end it was dry and piny and missing an oomph. Even though it wasn’t as good as it could be it still did pretty well.

Mark: 7
Matt: 7
Lee: 6
Sean: 6.5
Total: 26.5

7. Gadds’ Oyster Stout. 6.2%.
Sean and Matt’s local brewery and it’s the brewery which made them who they are. This is a great looking stout with milk chocolate, roasted grain and candy sugar in the nose. In the mouth it’s chocolaty, toasty and coffee-bitter at the end with a great earthy and oaty sweetness. I love this brewery and they are doing some excellent things. Eddie the brewer has a blog here and if I were to stick my neck out I’d say that Gadds’ brewery could be one of the next big things in British brewing (ssh, say it quietly…).

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 6.5
Lee: 8
Sean: 7.5
Total: 29.5

8. Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel. 10.9%.
I picked this up at the Planet Thanet Beer Festival last month. I was there with Matt and Sean and thought I should share it. Crudely put, it’s brewed with coffee beans that have been eaten by, and then crapped out of, a weasel (here's the Mikkeller blog about the poo beans). You might think that Zephyr couldn’t be beaten? Well I’m going to go right out there and say something big: this is one of the best beers I’ve ever had. I absolutely loved it. It looks so sexy in black with a creamy, tan head. It’s all chocolate and coffee and earth in the nose. The body is smooth and rich and thick. It’s oaty and going savoury and there’s earthy-lemony hops at the end. There’s bitterness from the coffee and loads of dark chocolate. It’s so addictively drinkable. I am so glad that I bought two beers when I got the chance. Just mind-blowing.

Mark: 9.5
Matt: 8
Lee: 8.5
Sean: 9
Total: 35

9. Thornbridge Halcyon. Mini-keg. 7.7%.
What a superb beer this is and we had 9 pints of it to share. Lots of caramel beneath a huge floral, earthy, dry bitterness. For its strength it’s very easy drinking, balancing on that knife-edge between sweet and bitter, calling you back in for more sweetness to ease the bitterness. This beer is something special, but then everything Thornbridge do is mighty fine. Halcyon is Jaipur on steroids, as Kelly Ryan describes it here.

Mark: 8.5
Matt: 7.5
Lee: 7
Sean: 6.5
Total: 29.5

10. Thornbridge Halcyon. Bottle. 7.7%.
I wanted to try the mini-keg and bottle side by side to look for any differences. This bottle is the 2008 vintage green-hopped with Targets. It’s similar to the mini-keg just with more fruitiness and pine bitterness in the hop bite at the end. I got oranges, pineapple and tropical fruit in there on top of a big bitter kick and that sweet toffee base. The other difference that we felt between the two was that the bottle was slightly less bitter than the keg (the keg is dry-hopped and the IBUs are bumped up a few points) and fruitier. This is one great bottled beer. I really can’t wait until Thornbridge can get more bottles out when they move to their new brewery.

Mark: 8.5
Matt: 7.5
Lee: 7.5
Sean: 7
Total: 30.5

11. BrewDog Paradox Springbank. 10%.
Another fairly rare beer (to go with the Zephyr, Beer Geek Brunch Weasel and mini-keg of Halcyon), this was brewed for the Japanese market and only a small number were sold in the UK. It’s a great barrel-aged stout, chocolate, smoke, cherry and coconut. It’s earthy and packed with dried fruit. A proper good barrel aged imperial stout.

Mark: 8
Matt: 7
Lee: 7.5
Sean: 8
Total: 30.5

12. Meister Max. 8%.
Another Egyptian beer. For this I will simply type in exactly what my drunken notes say. ‘Boozy, ethanol, over-sweet, odd. Egyptian stuff of earlier plus more booze. Very undrinkable – not good. Too strong and not enough flavour. Stupid. (Heineken again).’ My favourite part is ‘stupid’ because it describes the beer so aptly. This was horrible. And considering the beers which came before it it was lucky to get the high scores that it achieved.

Mark: 1
Matt: 1
Lee: Missed this one as he had to get the tube home, no great loss for him.
Sean: 0.5
Total: 2.5/30

There we go, another little beer night enjoyed. We were trying to decide whether this one or the previous one was better for the beers but we couldn’t come to a decent conclusion. I think that the better few beers on each night were just so good that it didn’t matter about all the other ones in between. As a recap on this one, the top three were:

1. Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel (the best shit beer in the world)
2. BrewDog Zephyr (the most complex beer I’ve ever had)
3. Thornbridge Halcyon Bottle (surprisingly the bottle just edges it, but neither Lee nor Sean are hop heads so preferred the less-bitter bottle) and BrewDog’s Paradox Springbank

These nights are great fun and we have plans for a couple more - one for a stout and dark beer night (probably when it gets colder) and one for a Belgian special featuring a battle royale between year-old versions of some classics. The best thing about these nights is that we always have a great time and get to share great (and some terrible) beers. Opening the beers, talking about them and enjoying them together has the ability to make a great beer that much greater. Beer is made for sharing, it's the most social drink in the world and there's nothing else like it.

Notes: we served everything in over-sized wine-glasses like total nonces and we opened the keg at the very beginning and drank it throughout the night. We didn’t rate dinner this time (for those interested, it was pizza from Somerfield and was average at best). And for the record, Sean wanted it known that he was massively hung over from the Reading beer festival the day before. Pussy.

A Beer Night

Beer nights rock. A few of us get together, everyone brings a few different bottles, we share them, discuss them and then for a little bit of competition we score each out of 10 to see which beer ends up the highest. It’s a great excuse to drink a load of quality beers with your mates.

There will always be a few expected stars in there and a few duds (that’s how we do it), but you never can predict just how well any particular beers will do and often completely different styles of beer receive similar scores. You do find yourself basing marks on the other scores you’ve already given (‘how many did I give the last beer? Because it wasn’t as good as that…blah blah blah…’). There’s nothing too scientific about it, it’s just guys drinking beer and awarding each individual one they drink a score.

Here’s what we had in the order we had it. We didn’t plan an exact route through the beers, although certain ones were placed at certain points for comparative reasons. And we saved the really big boys until the end. There were three of us - Me, Matt and Sean – and we were in Matt’s flat.

1. BrewDog. Chaos Theory. 7.1%. Matt’s choice.

We all loved this IPA but it was marked fairly conservatively as it was the first one up (you don’t want to set too high a benchmarch). It’s hopped with just the Nelson Sauvin and all that mega concentrated fruit flavour booms out the glass. It’s got that addictive IPA quality about it. This was the prototype version.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7.5
Sean: 7
Total: 22

2&3. BrewDog Zeitgeist Prototype vs. BrewDog Zeitgeist ‘Real’. 4.9%. Everyone’s choice.

Us three Men of Kent spent the previous evening knocking back Zeitgeist at the beer’s launch so we wanted to do an immediate comparison between the old and new. The new was smoother, with a greater depth of flavour and topped off with those citrusy hops.

Mark: Prototype: 6, Real: 7
Matt: Prototype: 5.5, Real: 7
Sean: Prototype: 5.5, Real: 7
Total: Prototype: 17, Real: 21

4. Westvleteren 8. 8%. My choice.

I’ve had it in the cupboard for a while now and thought I’d crack it open to share (beers like this are so much better to share with fellow beer lovers). I wanted this early in the night while we were still fresh. We all knew the mythical status of the brewery and the respect it garners from the beer world so it was surrounded by discussions of psychology (which I’ll write about soon) and how we expect greatness from such beers which then affects our perceptions of them.

None of us had tried this beer before. It pours a deep ruby colour and the nose is all dried fruit sweetness and tea bread. It’s very complex with each mouthful picking out different flavours. It tasted very fresh and clean, a slight bitterness to end, lots of sweet tea, something oaky, candy sugar… there’s a lot going on. It’s really drinkable and moreish but despite the complexity it has a simple, fresh quality to it.

Beer Advocate has this as the 8th best beer in the world. Is it? We didn’t think so. Maybe it gets better with age, maybe we just didn’t fall under the Westy spell. It’s a very very good Belgian beer, just not the best.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7
Sean: 6.5
Total: 21

So it scored 21, that same as BrewDog’s Zeitgeist. Are they the same in reality? No. But Zeitgeist gets marks because it’s a beer that you can drink lots of, one that can be enjoyed all the time. Westvleteren is completely different, almost incomparable. Maybe we even marked the Westvletern down because it didn’t live up to the heights of greatness that we anticipated.

5. Becks. Alcohol Free. 0.05%. My choice.

A dud thrown in for fun and deliberately placed after the Westy 8. The marks speak for themselves but here were a few quotes: ‘it smells like arse’, ‘pointless’, ‘like licking copper pipes, but at least the pipes might have mould on that would taste of something, and probably the most succinct, ‘fucking shit’.

Mark: 0.5
Matt: 1
Sean: 0.5
Total: 2

6. Okell's. Aile. 4.7%. Sean’s choice.

A ‘Smoked Celtic Porter’. It’s got a great looking cappuccino head, there’s a hint of charcoal and bonfire in the nose but the smoke is really lulling and gentle. It’s very smooth and drinkable. We all loved this beer and we all were sad when the bottle was finished. Superb.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7.5
Sean: 8
Total: 23

7. Whim Ales. Dr. Johnson’s Definitive. 5.0%. Sean’s choice.

None of us had seen or heard of this beer before and we will probably quickly forget it; it was just okay. A fruity dark ale, some spice, cereal and dried fruits. Probably affect by following up the excellent Okell’s Aile.

Mark: 6.5
Matt: 6
Sean: 6
Total: 18.5

8. Stone Brewing. Ruination IPA. 7.7%. My choice.

I didn’t know when to bring this big gun out. It has a ruining effect (100+ IBUs!) on your palate and I didn’t want us to all just be tasting pine, orange and grapefruit for the rest of the night. So we had it before dinner, figuring that the food would clear our palates.

This is one addictively good beer. It’s brutally elegant in the cyclical nature that it makes you drink: sweet first then bitter which blows up in your mouth, then you want the sweetness again to ease the rampant hops and so on and so on… Incredible. Sean is a dark beer guy and Ruination IPA may well have changed his life forever (it changed my life when I first had it!).

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Sean: 8.5
Total: 26.5

Next up: Dinner.

Matt’s lives right by a fish and chip shop so we just went there for something cheap and sustaining. I had burger and chips, Matt had sausage and chips and Sean devoured two huge battered sausages and chips (although did later complain of blurred vision). In keeping with the scoring, here’s what we gave the food:

Mark: 6
Matt: 6
Sean: 5
Total: 17

9. Desperados. 5.9%. Everyone’s choice!

A beer with huge sentimental value for all of us. We have demolished a fair few kegs and bottles of this trashy-delicious beer. It’s a tequila beer that you serve with lime. It’s quite unique, kinda sweet and limey. The flavour is just so familiar to all of us that we were gushing with Desperados-induced memories throughout. This scores highly because we love it for its sentimental value (plus it just tastes pretty good! Our trashy beer of choice!).

Mark: 7
Matt: 8
Sean: 8
Total: 23

Yes, it scored higher than Westvleteren 8!

10. Rogue. Dead Guy Ale. 6.5%. Sean’s choice.

A copper coloured maibock. Loads of apple and spice. Fairly drinkable but unfortunately it just wasn’t anything special, and by this time we were all getting pretty discernible, wanting nothing less than awesome (that’s what a Desperados will do to you/us!).

Mark: 6
Matt: 4
Sean: 4
Total: 14

11. Fuller’s. Vintage Ale 2004. 8.5%. Matt’s choice.

We stepped it up from here. This beer is older than the friendship between Matt and I which he bought it in our first year at uni together. We had two and opened one almost two years ago before we left uni. This is a sentimental beer that has been loving looked after.

It was bottle number 05325. Russet coloured with a big sherry and dried fruit nose with caramel and vanilla. It’s gorgeously complex with honeycomb, dates, marmalade, liquorice, oak, sherry and cherry… every mouthful gave us more and more flavours and complexity. We all agreed that it was probably the best beer that we’ve each tried. The sad thing is that we’ve had it for almost 5 years and now it’s gone forever!

Mark: 9.5
Matt: 9.5
Sean: 9
Total: 28

12. Goose Island. Bourbon County Stout. 13%. My choice.

I’ve had this knocking around for a while now and thought the beer night would be a great time to open it. If we thought the Fuller’s was unbeatable then this gave it a fair old fight. It’s an amazing beer. Black, oily, huge boozy bourbon nose, vanilla and coconut. It’s thick and rich, woody, vinous, chocolatey with a berry sweetness. It’s complex and warming and flipping good. I’ve got another hiding away for a few years time.

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Sean: 9.5
Total: 27.5

13. BrewDog. Paradox Isle of Arran. 10%. Sean’s choice.

We probably should’ve had this before the Bourbon County as it’s fairly similar just a lot more mellow and toned down. It still stood up to the plate but it was stuck in the shadow of the beer before. But this is one of the best beers I’ve had this year and I love it. It’s chocolate and vanilla and coconut and cherry and ginger and berries and it’s superb. It’s like the Bourbon County’s little brother who may not be as strong and up in your face but is probably more intelligent and complex.

Mark: 9
Matt: 8
Sean: 8
Total: 25

14. Port Brewing. Wipeout IPA. 7%. My choice.

Another big IPA, this one to end off the night. This is hopped with Amarillo, Centennial, Cascade, Simcoe and Summit. It’s golden with a huge orange pith and juice aroma. It’s rich and boozy with hard-hitting, dry tangy hops which just keep getting more and more bitter. There isn’t too much sweetness either, which can be a problem with beers hopped to the eyeballs. A good IPA but after the glories of the Ruination anything big and bitter was going to fall short.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7
Sean: 7.5
Total: 22

And that was the end of the beer night. Although, there was still one bottle hanging around, but it only seemed fitting to have it in the morning with…

Breakfast... Sausage and black pudding sandwiches. Proper food and just the job to deal with the after effects of the night before. The breakfast scores:

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 8
Sean: 8.5
Total: 24

And with breakfast we had…

15. Mikkeller. Beer Geek Breakfast. 7.5%. My choice.

A rich coffee stout, bitter and roasted and full of proper coffee flavours. It has a great grassy/earthy hop finish which perfectly matches the coffee and dark chocolate notes. I thought this was a great (breakfast) beer, but it was probably marked down overall because of our slightly delicate states.

Mark: 7
Matt: 5.5
Sean: 6
Total: 18.5

So there it was. Great fun and a load of great beer. A strong and varied line-up and really interesting to compare so many different styles and flavours. The Fuller’s Vintage was champion of the night but the Goose Island was very close behind and the Ruination was right up there. I guess the big shock was Westvleteren not making the top five and Desperados being in there. The best beers are the best beers, and we agreed universally, but there is also something very important about sentimental value. The Top 5:

1. Fuller’s Vintage 2004
2. Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout
3. Stone’s Ruination IPA
4. BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran
5. Okells Aile and Desperados (joint fifth)

In last place:

Becks Alcohol Free (that was kind of a gimme)

And breakfast beat dinner.

After breakfast we went to the White Horse in Parson’s Green and had a few great beers (Meantime IPA off tap was brilliant) and then out to a Belgian restaurant for dinner (I had Delirium Tremens off tap to start and a Rochefort 8 for main). Then we went to another pub and none of us ordered a beer. I’m guessing we were all feeling pretty beered-out!