Lovibonds Dark Reserve No.2

The text arrived along the lines of: 'Are you going to be in tonight? If so, I’ve got a beer for you.' Two hours later Pete turned up with an unlabelled bottle and handed it over as if giving you a photo of his new born child. He will later admit that he thinks this is the best beer he’s brewed so far.

Aged in a Jack Daniel's barrel, Lovibonds Dark Reserve No.2 is an 8% (ish) dark ale. The aroma gets you first, a heady mixes of chocolate, oak, vanilla, cola and coconut and this transfers through to the flavour with a surprising roast bitterness adding a big backbone to handle to barrel. There’s a flicker of sweetness with some caramel, then it’s bourbon, roasted nuts, dark chocolate, spice, then it’s burnt-bitter and roasty with some way-away floral hops adding a peppery kick. And it’s all done with poise and delicacy so that it doesn’t taste like licking the inside of a JD cask, instead it adds character and complexity. It’s one of the best barrel-aged beers I’ve had in a long time and a stellar example of when a barrel can make things even better than they already are. My only thoughts are that a touch more body would propel it forward and give it a little extra to wrap around your tongue, making it more luxurious which a beer like this should be.

Unfortunately Pete won’t hand deliver to everyone because he’s too busy brewing or something, but it’ll be on sale soon, either from the tasting room in Henley or online. It’s a good one and Lovibonds are doing some interesting things at the moment, including 69 IPA, a US IPA, and Sour Grapes, a British lambic. Plus it's all keg and bottles.

Westerham Brewery: The 1,000th Gyle

I leave my flat, drive up the High Street and follow it ahead, turn left then I drive in a straight line until I need to turn right down a suspension-testing lane when I arrive at Westerham Brewery. It may take 30 minutes down country lanes, but my journey is straightforward.

Set up on a farm, my drinking soundtrack is yawning cows as dusk darkens, lit by a moon so big and bright it looks like a giant headlight in the sky. I’m here to celebrate the 1,000^th gyle at the brewery, enticed by the carrot-on-a-stick of IPA and sausages. I find the beer I want and help myself. A deep gold and tasting like it’s tank-fresh, the 1,000^th beer is 4.8%, hopped with Target and Progress and properly English in its flavour and bitterness which is fruity, dry, peppery, sinus-prodding and treats your uvula like a punching bag. Outside I drink the beer while watching the sapphire sky with great, billowing clouds and that floodlight moon. I get a sausage made with Westerham’s British Bulldog and cover it in ketchup and mustard before realising that the giant squeezy pot they have isn’t hotdog mustard but Colman’s yellow rocketfuel. Robert Wicks, the main guy at Westerham, says it’s the best sausage you’ll ever taste, but then he seems like he’s got the salesman’s gab and I can’t tell because the inside of my nose has been seared away, possibly irreparably. I finish the beer and head back for more before finding myself on a tour of the charming little brewery, led by Robert, who talks about the ingredients and process. It’s a lovely little brewery in a great location and it’s got a good feeling about it, something hard to put words to. Tour over I pour myself a Grasshopper which, for a 3.8% brown bitter, really walloped of Target and Kent Goldings and had a lasting, lingering bitterness and unbeatable freshness (the freshness thing is why drinking beer in breweries is the best place to try something).

Westerham is one of the closest breweries to me and their beers are almost always on in my local Wetherspoons. They get many of their hops from the area, including Scotney Castle, and they certainly aren’t afraid to pack a few of them into their beers. The 1,000^th gyle is a faceful of Target and Progress which seems like a fitting combination to me.

Working Title: Pale and Hoppy

The term Mid-Atlantic Pale Ale seems to be bandying around after Gazza proposed the name for hoppy British ales. Mid-Atlantic pale ale... Seriously? It’s almost as bad as Cascadian Dark Ale.

Firstly, mid-Atlantic, unless it’s an ironic name, drops literally in the middle of the sea (and all the way to the sea bed, if you ask me), which couldn’t be further away from a pint if it were halfway to the moon. Secondly, this term seems to be a catch-all for the pale British beers made with lots of hops from America or New Zealand (which is nowhere near the Atlantic), but also including British hops too, I assume, so perhaps it lends too much credit to the US. Thirdly, styles naturally evolve and need to have a fluidity to them and it could be the case that in a few years time these pale and hoppy beers are the normal for the style in the UK. And point four is that it just doesn’t sound very cool.

The name applies to beers brewed with 100% pale malt, highly hopped, well attenuated with a yeast that doesn’t give off many esters or other flavours “to let the hops shine without competition,” coming out somewhere between 3.5% and 8% (5% is best, he says). It’s very pale in the glass and very bitter in the mouth. It’s a mix of British and American influence and it’s a style which I love – there’s something which just works so well in a simple pale ale with lots of fruity hops, especially from the cask – and it’s the style that I most want to drink right now. I also agree with what Gazza is saying and the whole point of the article (it’s firmly a British beer just with American hop influence), but mid-Atlantic? I understand the desire to classify – we all like to stick a label on something so we can understand it (or complain about it if it isn’t right) – but surely we can come up with a more compelling name than that?

Thornbridge Brewery call Kipling a South Pacific Pale Ale and Ashford a New World Brown Ale, which works well for those, but perhaps shouldn't be extended broadly to others. In 500 Beers Zak Avery uses the term International Pale Ale, which would work with this style – it’s International, brewed in one place, taking influence and ingredients from another, but it could then become a dumping ground of a term. What’s wrong with Pale and Hoppy, New World Pale Ale or just Pale Ale, after all, it’s not exactly a new style, it’s just British Pale Ale 2.0 with different hops used in it, a natural progression, the latest fashion. How about Trans-Atlantic or Cross-Atlantic or Anglo-American if there’s a desire to say that this style is somewhere between the UK and the US (which therefore rules out the rest of the world, presumably)...

Mid-Atlantic pale ales... what do you think? Do they need their own classification and if so, what can they be called?

Image from here. I did try and photoshop in a bottle of beer bobbing around in the sea but failed remarkably.

GBBF Week: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

The Good: The beer (obviously); the pork scratchings (obviously); seeing friends, old and new; third measures; the volunteers who deserve a standing ovation each evening; the location (big, brilliant); the speed to enter is incredibly good if you have a ticket; despite the hoards of people, the gallons of beer and mountains of food, it somehow never seems dirty or messy in there; the waves of Cheers which growl around the venue as the days progress.

The Bad: I think water should be freely available and encouraged, perhaps on a free water bar; on Saturday there was no cask US beer left and much of the other beer was sold out by 5pm (good for the festival, not so good for the drinker who can only attend on Saturday); and does anyone really listen to the music? (these are all minor - there's little to complain about, in my opinion)

The Ugly: The gents’ toilets towards the end of the day (a long time queuing followed by standing swaying-shoulder to swaying-shoulder with two other guys, aiming with considerable difficulty into the white hole surrounded by a frog chorus of farts and barely-stifled giggles).

The Best Beers: Portsmouth Brewery Bottle Rocket IPA was my favourite overall beer, a fruity, tangerine-juiced IPA, so deliciously good that it’s got my tongue doing excited somersaults just remembering it; the Portsmouth Oatmeal Stout was also exceptional and the smoothest mouthful of beer of the week; Fyne Ale’s Jarl was the best UK beer I had, its bright flavour blinds its bland 4% peers, firing out fruity hops and pithy bitterness; a passing gulp of Birrificio Italiano Tipopils was excellent and I’m glad I picked up a bottle to bring home; Fuller’s Chiswick and ESB were both in remarkably good condition and reaffirmed to me just how good their beers can be, while the Brewer’s Reserve No.2 showed the other side of Fuller’s, a side worthy of considerable attention (Kelly Ryan writes this great piece about it); Durham’s Hopping Mad, Arbor Beech Blonde, Marble Manchester Bitter, Thornbridge Kipling and Moor’s Revival all really hit the hop spot, vibrant and full-flavoured UK ales; Opa Opa King Oak Milk Stout was a great example of a style I don't drink often enough; a few good lagers were served to me by Tandleman, all excellent and cool with crisp flavours and just what I wanted as a little refresh from the US hops, even if I can’t remember what they were (there was a Zoigl and an unfiltered Kolsch among them...); De Molen’s Tsarina Esra Reserva was ridiculously delicious and dangerously good.

Photo by Jonas Smith

The Other Memorable Beers: Saltaire Triple Chocoholic really is a cocoa lover’s dream; four bottles for 50p each, two unlabelled, one from 1980 and one from 1981, all perfectly drinkable, all showing the results of careful aging, all interesting to try; Revelation Cat’s Single Hop Lambic was unforgettable in a bad way, clashing sour with big, citrus hops; Rogue’s Chipotle Ale had three of us all exclaim ‘smoked paprika’, which, while it may be my favourite spice in the kitchen, is not something I want in my beer (this was one of three bottles which Mark writes about, which had us talking for an hour about beer and food pairings for three out-there beers).

GBBF week is done. It’s a crazy, intense and brilliant week. It’s a time for meeting up with friends and drinking good beers, just because we can. If you went, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly?! The best beer you had was...?

I got the images from the CAMRA website.

WOW! MOOR REVIVAL IS THE BEST BOTTLED BRITISH 4% PALE ALE IN THE GALAXY!

Ok, ok, so I’ve done the exaggerated screamy hyperbole before, but this time I really mean it: Moor Revival is the best bottled British 4% pale ale in the galaxy.

A calm gleaming gold with a thin, creamy veil of head comes straight from the handsome bottle. Berries jump out first, shortly followed by citrus fruit, peel, pith and juice. One mouthful and you know you’ve got something good – a touch of sweetness to begin which is passed over by those hops bringing juicy fruit and fresh bitterness followed by pithy, grapefruity bitterness and a long, lingering finish to assert authority: I may only be 4%, it says, but I’ve got more flavour than all of your rubbish beers put together (it’s shouting back at all the boring brown bitters waddling aimlessly beneath it).

The joy of this beer is that it tastes just like a pint of perfect cask ale. In a blind taste test you’d struggle to pick it as a bottle; it doesn’t have ferocious bubbles and its flavours haven’t been dulled by the time spent in glass, instead it has the body, mouthfeel and freshness of something just-tapped and hand-pulled and that’s a great achievement.

Not many breweries succeed in bottling hoppy 4% pale ales and manage to retain this level of flavour and freshness. Moor Revival kicks arse (and it’s only £4 for a big bottle!).

I had this while watching the football yesterday so it could’ve been swept up under sadness but it shone as a beacon of light out of the mire of despair. It also went incredibly well with a packet of delicious Q pork scratchings, but then what doesn’t go well with pork scratchings? To qualify this further, during the game I also had a Crouch Vale Amarillo, a Marble Manchester Bitter and a Crouch Vale Apollo (the Apollo is deserving of a capital letter blog post, something along the lines of HOLY CRAP, CROUCH VALE APOLLO IS ABSOLUTELY THE MOST DELICIOUS SINGLE-HOP PALE ALE IN ENGLAND  – the fruitiest Um Bongo aroma and another one which tasted like a freshly hand-pulled pint) and the Moor was the standout beer from its immediate peers.

OMG MARBLE MANCHESTER BITTER IS TOTALLY AWESOME

Perhaps I was too hasty in my wild praise of Thornbridge Halcyon. It’s not that it doesn’t deserve it – of course it does, it’s bloody fantastic – it’s just that maybe I’ve found something even better.

It was Friday. It had been a very long bitch of a week. I was hot and thirsty and tired. I slumped in from work, dragged myself to the fridge and pulled out a restorative beer: Marble Brewery’s Manchester Bitter. I’ve had it on cask in The Bull and loved it but was a little worried about how it would transfer over into a bottle... I needn’t have. It’s 4.2% of brilliant. It’s a stunning gold colour. It smells like you’ve been locked in a room full of sacks of deliciously fresh hops - passion fruit, tropical fruit and citrus – the kind of aroma you want to be able to inhale so deeply that it fills every last space of your lungs. It’s easy drinking, it’s completely delicious, it’s got these incredible hops that just keep on teasing and playing and nibbling away, so fruity, astoundingly fresh, vibrant, AWESOME. It puts almost every other bottled British beer I’ve had this year to absolute shame. Breweries: if you want to taste what a 4.2% hoppy bottle-conditioned British bitter can taste like then try Manchester Bitter. Please.

In fact, it’s so good, I put my money where my mouth is and just bought a whole case of it from myBrewerytap – it’s the perfect summer beer and I can’t imagine anything better when sitting in the sun than a chilled bottle of this.

myBrewerytap are also selling four other Marble bottles – Lagonda IPA, Tawny No.3, Ginger and Chocolate Marble. Beermerchants sell the special, limited edition Marbles, which are also fantastic (Special, the American-style barley wine is my favourite).

THORNBRIDGE HALCYON IS FUCKING AWESOME!

Excuse the tabloid hyperbole and screamy capital letters, but I don’t think enough people have said just how good Thornbridge Halcyon 2009 is yet (only Zak Avery, Hopzine, Reet Good Leeds, Real Ale Reviews 'an Innocent smoothie on acid', and The Ormskirk Baron [baron rating of 5/5]). It’s a beer blogger’s dream: limited release, once a year, hotly anticipated; green-hopped with new season UK Targets (forget the US C-hop, it’s all about the UK Ts on this display); a dangerously beautiful 7.7%; a sexy new label (featuring a sneaky peak of bust); a stream of updates - promises - from the brewery on its progress: we’re brewing it soon, it’s been brewed, it’s in the conditioning tank, it’ll be a few months yet, it’s almost ready, it’s tasting great, we’re almost there, bottling Halcyon soon, bottling Halcyon now, so close, just a little longer, it tastes amazing, it’s ready to go, YOU CAN BUY THEM NOW... it’s beergasm territory, get ‘em while they’re HOT.

Remember Fruit Salad sweets? That’s what it smells like first, then pineapple, then mango, then a little grassy and floral, then a tangy, pithy, resinous bitterness stomps on through. One line of the notes has both “Mmm” and “Yum” on. The hops are super fruity and unexpected; juicy and delicious. It could threaten to get a bit sweet but the bitterness rips through and it’s all backed up with a stiff malty backbone to keep it in shape. A knife-edge balance, perfectly executed.  

It’s hyped-up and laden with heavy sacks of expectation, but the beer smashes through that (I imagine it does so with a look to the skies, an impassioned roar, a paw at the chest). Big green hops, super fruity, full-on bitterness, but always just lip-smackingly good. It’s up there with the best IPAs this year (and I’ve had some shit hot IPAs this year).

I’ve got a mixed 12-pack of this and St Petersburg (another great beer, deserving of its own upper case exclamation, no doubt – imagine you BBQ’d a bar of dark chocolate and then blitzed it up with some coffee, and loads of earthy hops, it’s real goood, in a dirrrty kind of way, like eating in bed) but I’m seriously tempted to go back to myBrewerytap and order some more (especially as they’re now selling Marble, too).

The Queens Arms, Corton Denham

Grand for its rural village location, a large garden, sweeping countryside views. The bar of The Queens Arms, in Corton Denham, Somerset, is the heart, there’s a dining area on one side and a more relaxed area for drinking and eating on the other. The floors are worn, the furniture is modern in its antiquity, tastefully miss-matched. On the bar are four handpumps (two from Moor, Adnams Extra, Millstone True Grit, plus a couple in the cellar if you know the right people); behind it are two casks of cider; in keg they have Meantime London Stout (they stopped selling Guinness a couple of years ago); Pilsner Urquell for the beer lover who fancies a lager; Amstel for the guy who doesn’t recognise anything else; a rolling tap, this weekend featuring Duvel Green; and two kegs of cider, one of them local. Lined all around is a widescreen vision of bottles - gins and whiskys, spirits, exciting world beers - pale, dark, sour. On the bar are bottles of Moor beer, packs of eggs laid in the village, a mountain of freshly baked pork pies and jars of mustard. Upstairs they have five fine rooms, cosy, smart, relaxing, ideal for a weekend away.

The beers were fantastically kept and all excellent. Adnams Extra was an ode to the Fuggle with its earthy, bitter fruit flavour while Millstone’s True Grit was brioche and citrus hops. Then four Moor beers, which was good as Justin Hawke, the Moor head brewer, was the guy who greeted me at the bar. Queens Revival (3.8%) was a great, refreshing hoppy session beer. Northern Star was a special dry-hopped batch with lots of Citra, giving a bold punch of citrus bitterness and a quenching drinkability for its modest 4.1%. Raw (4.3%), a Celeia (I think...) dry-hopped version of Merlin's Magic, was like a very good best bitter but better. And Hoppiness (6.5%), a 50/50 blend of Revival and JJJ IPA (this one also dry-hopped with Citra), which with one sniff transported me to the West Coast USA with its big, pithy, punchy citrus – bold, bitter and bloody good to see a beer of this style and quality in a British pub. We also opened a bottle of Moor Fusion, an old ale aged in ex-cider brandy barrels. There are only 700 bottles around; it’s dark and fruity and beneath that comes a dry, apple-skin flavour, a woodiness in the texture, some chocolate and spice. It’s subtle and very special. Then, picking from their spirits, two from the Anchor Distillery - an Old Potrero 19^th century whiskey which was smooth, vanilla-licked, charred, vegetal and warming, and a Genevieve gin which had crazy botanicals, a dry finish and an unexpected bready, malty middle.

We ate there too. The asparagus and local poached egg was my idea of spring food heaven, especially with the Raw. My belly pork with bubble and squeak is my idea of any day food heaven, especially with the Hoppiness. Lauren’s bream with tapenade, tomatoes and pepper was swimmingly-fresh and delicious. A rhubarb clafoutis was the lightest I’ve ever tasted and perfect with a glass of sweet Italian dessert wine (the wine list is also excellent and long). The breakfast the morning after was spot on – bacon, sausage, perfectly oozing poached eggs, mushroom, haggis, roasted vine tomatoes and toast.

The best thing about The Queens Arms is the way everything is finished with smart little touches. A fresh flower on the windowsill makes a big difference. We had a sofa in our room and a view out onto fields which tells you to slow down, you’re in the country now. The room has a pack of jelly babies and a couple of magazines. If you want to go for a walk they have wellies, they’ll even make you a picnic if you want one. The pork pies and olives on the bar are great with beer and impossible to resist. There are games in the garden for the (big and little) kids. The way the menus look and feel, the way the staff say hello, the care and attention of everything – it just makes you feel at home, the way the best pubs should.

Some pubs are perfect: a garden for the sun; a respite from the rain where muddy boots aren’t frowned upon; a fire warming the stone walls with its smoky heat; a destination on a spring afternoon: somewhere you can always find good beer, good food and good people. The Queens Arms is one of those rare places. 

I'm in the pub drinking a pint of real ale because it's Cask Ale Week

I'm in the pub right now. I ordered a pint of British Bulldog from Westerham Brewery, a micro just up the road from here. It's a gleaming bronze with a thick head of foam. Not much on the nose, a little bread and some dried fruit. It's a real thirst quencher, full-bodied and smooth, a backbone of distant caramel and a finish of dry, peppery hops. It's not complicated, it doesn't need me to write detailed tasting notes, it doesn't challenge me in any way, it's just a great drink, a classic to-the-style best bitter, wonderfully kept and spot-on enjoyable.

There's a certain amount of pride which comes with drinking a pint like this. I look around and I see glasses of wine and pints of lager. I'm sitting here with my British cask ale, raising the glass and taking deep, satisfying mouthfuls. I am proud to be drinking it.

It's Cask Ale Week and that means we have an opportunity to champion this wonderful product. Sure, we can drink cask ale every week of the year, but that's not the point, this is about drinking British beer in the pub and celebrating the glory that is a pint of real ale.

I think I'll have another.

Dark Star Saison

In The Evening Star, Brighton. I‘d gone there wanting Dark Star's Saison, the brewery special for March, and it was on the bar. It’s a golden pint, foggy at the edges, a thin white lace winds down the glass. It’s a noseful of biscuity malt, of distant orange pith, pepper, a summer-day-in-the-country freshness. It’s 4.5%, clean and crisp, a wonderful mouthful of pale malt, smooth, a gentle earthy dryness, a rounded spice, a zesty spike, an uplifting finish of hops. It was so good I had to have another pint. If we didn’t have to leave for the train I probably would’ve had another.

Dark Star have done it again. I thought Six Hop was superb and this one ranks alongside it. The April special is their 6.2% IPA and I’m already thirsty to try it. I’m also looking forward to more Six Hop at Planet Thanet Beer Festival, as well as the APA (that's one of my favourite beer festivals and this year the beer list is looking very tasty - that's my Good Friday sorted).

Dark Star Six Hop

Dark Star's Six Hop is one of the best beers I’ve drunk so far this year, whether in the UK or California, from anywhere in the world, dispensed from the bottle, can, keg or cask. It truly was a stunning glassful, a perfectly hand-pulled cask ale. It’s 6.5%, six-times hopped, a February special from the Sussex brewery. It shines in the glass, one of those pints that’s alive with colour and condition, a crown of frothing bubbles settling above. It’s a full bowl of tropical fruit, grapefruits, oranges and peaches, it’s fresh like spring, floral and grassy, it has hints of sweetness but never too much, the bitterness is bold but not brash, it’s smooth, it’s crisp, it’s dry and quenching yet and mouth-filling and lip-smacking. A complete triumph – if you see it, drink it.

I had this in The Bull where an Oakham Inferno was a great start and a Pictish Porter with a wonderful dry, roasty bitterness was on top form. I also got myself a bottle each of the Marble Decadence Kriek and Frambozen. That was my reward for following Lauren around the shops all day.

Williams Bros Historic Ales

What did beer taste like hundreds of years ago, I often ask myself. What hops did they use in their double IPAs in the 1700s, what kind of whisky barrels did they age their imperial stouts in during the 16th Century? In fact, my enjoyment of lambic is in its olde rustic charm, a taste of beer from many years ago, a mythical-magical concoction of wildly and freely fermenting beers, sweetened with fruit. Luckily for me, Williams Bros have a range of Historic Ales, so I get to try a modern interpretation of what these beers may have been like.

Kelpie is made with seaweed, which isn’t half as horrid as it sounds. Years ago the barley was grown in fields fertilized by seaweed but to recreate that the brewery adds the green stuff into the mash. It’s a deep brown ale with a fruity, chocolatey aroma initially, but sneakily hiding behind this is a waft - a hint - of something saline… a distinct earthy, peppery aroma (and maybe I was just mind-tricked into thinking it, but I could’ve sworn I smelt deep fried seaweed, the stuff from the Chinese – which isn’t even seaweed at all!). It’s a really tasty beer, easy drinking, roasty with a nice background sweetness and some dark stone fruits.

Grozet contains bog myrtle and ripe gooseberries. It’s a pale gold with a fluffy white head. The aroma is light and fruity and inconspicuous which belies the first taste of pale ale with a kick of sour berries, not wild-beer-sour, but fresh fruit sour. It’s bready and clean with a kick of earthy, heathery, flowery hops and then that fruitiness, which mellows as you drink. I could probably drink a few buckets of this.

Alba is a tripel-style beer brewed with spruce and pine. Some of these lovely new American hops taste like pine. This is actually made with it. Pouring it I feared a strange mix of retsina and strong beer, thankfully this fear soon died as it poured an amber-red and wafted a great aroma of berries, fruit and yeast. It’s a big beer with plenty of cakey (Victoria sponge) sweetness, spicy malt, strawberry fruits and a dry, slightly-herby finish. The pine wasn’t sharp and in your face, but chilled out, adding a great depth.

Williams also brew the famous heather ale, Fraoch (I also have one of the 11% versions aged in ex-Sherry and Speyside whisky casks), and Ebulum, an elderberry black ale with a recipe from the 16th century, as part of the Historical Ale range. I don’t imagine that this is exactly (or even close to) what the beer tasted like hundreds of years ago but I like that they are using these traditional ingredients and making them available for the modern drinker – it adds an extra level of engagement to the experience. And they taste pretty good too.

I don’t think I’ve had any Williams Bros Contemporary beers on cask (maybe Midnight Sun?) so that’s something to look out for this year. And this is just another example to raise when I try and qualify the statement: Scotland, they make some of the best beers in the world right now.

Marble Brewery: The One for 2010

My beer of the year was Marble Pint. It was totally deserving – it’s clean, hoppy, pale, so fruity and drinkable and rammed with flavour; a marvel at 3.9%. In a year where I’ve been chasing big, brutal and hoppy, this just side-stepped in and took all the glory from beers of much bigger fame, and it was also able to change my mind about ‘boring pale ales’. In truth, I would’ve happily drunk pints of Pint every single day. It’s a quality British beer, made to be drunk in the pub, brewed by a great brewery.

And it’s not just Pint that deserves praise. Earlier today I had a couple of pints of Manchester Bitter, a 4.2% pale bitter, fruity hops, delicious body, bitter but not too-bitter, juicy, gluggable. The word ‘Bitter’ has come to stand as a negative thing. It’s one of those old-style English beers, murky brown in colour, autumn fruit flavour, dry hoppy finish... It’s a classic style but one which, in its frequent incarnation, drags English beer back a peg or two from where it deserves to be. Manchester Bitter raises the bar on what a Bitter is. I just hope others follow it.

Beyond these there’s Dobber; Marble Pint plus a bit more - big bitterness, loads of fruity hops, so clean and fantastic. There’s Ginger, a fruity-spicy ale rich with the fresh ginger and tongue-tinglingly good. Chocolate Marble is a quality, full-flavoured stout. Then there’s Decadence and Special, two 750ml champagne-corked and wax-sealed bottles; one imperial stout, one barley wine.

BrewDog were my Brewery of the Year for 2009. More than anyone else they’ve kicked the arse of British beer and pushed it forward. For the quality of the beer, BrewDog also stand up to their media hype, and that’s very important. Part of why they are my brewery of the year is their social media presence, which cannot be denied or overlooked – they use and exploit it to their benefit better than anyone else (but the beer still stands up to it). If I were to stick my neck out then I’d say that Marble are the British brewery to look out for in 2010. They won’t be as loud and obnoxious as BrewDog but they will make a lot of incredible beer. I know for sure that I’ll be watching them and trying to drink their beers as often as possible. I hope that a new brewery will mean more beer and more availability. I also hope they bottle some more of their specials. Remember Marble. Drink them as often as you can. Taste just how good British beer can be in 2010.

Beer Blogger Awards 2009: My Winners

Personally, I’ve had a good 2009. I graduated from a Masters degree, I started a career, I moved in with my girlfriend, I wrote the first draft of a novel (and another 35,000 words of a second), I became an uncle and the BGBW award topped it all off. Beer-wise it's been a great year too. Lots of new beers tasted, new favourites found, new friends to drink them with and lots of great memories. But... it's time to announce my winners for 2009. It’s been really hard to select most of these, hence why I’ve gone for some honourable mention choices too. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while then most of the winners will be familiar names – I like to talk about the beers I enjoy the most. I did a semi-similar thing last year and my choices are quite different and I’m sure that this time next year they will be very different again.

Feel free to take these categories and the logo (designed, like Beer Swap, by Robsterowski from I Might Have a Glass of Beer – cheers!!) and paste them into your own blog, alternatively you can email me your winners and I’ll post them on here or you can comment yours below.

Here are my winners for 2009:

Best UK Draught Beer: Marble Pint (Thornbridge Jaipur is a very close second)

Best UK Bottled Beer: BrewDog Tokyo* (Thornbridge Bracia and Zephyr are close behind)

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Too many choices... Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Captain Lawrence Reserve, Bear Republic’s Racer 5, De Molen Amarillo... Ultimately, Racer 5 reminds me of a good couple of days in London and I won’t forget it in a hurry

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Pliny the Elder (a few Mikkellers are up there)

Best Overall Beer: Marble Pint

Best UK Brewery: BrewDog for being constantly interesting, pushing and progressing British beer and making people talk about beer (Thornbridge, Marble and Gadds need mentioning and with all moving to bigger breweries it’ll be interesting to see how 2010 fares for them)

Best Overseas Brewery: Mikkeller

Best Bottle Label/Pump Clip: BrewDog’s Atlantic IPA (shame the beer isn’t as nice as the label!)

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Bull, Horton Kirby (The Rake is runner-up)

Beer Festival of the Year: GBBF (Planet Thanet is second – love that festival)

Supermarket of the Year: Sainsburys (Tesco almost got it for introducing Gonzo Imperial Porter, 77 and zeitgeist but they took away Orval in the process...)

Independent Retailer of the Year: Utobeer

Online Retailer of the Year: Beermerchants

Best Beer Book: Pete Brown’s Hops & Glory

Best Beer Blog: Reluctant Scooper

Best Beer Twitterer: @reluctantscoop

Best Online Interactive Brewery: BrewDog (for their ability to go viral – no one else in UK brewing has that power)

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Anything with the pork scratching at GBBF!

Open Category: Best Beer-Related Thing about 2009 is...: All the new friends I’ve made and all the great new people I’ve met through beer (The Best Non-Beer-Related Thing...: Becoming an Uncle!)

Next Year I’d Most Like To... : Drink in the US and make some beer-money from writing...

Dubbel, Rabidbarfly and John Clarke have commented their winners here. Chunk, Knut and Andy have blogged theirs. And I think Kelly from Thornbridge needs a special mention for putting the year of blogging into a poem!

2009 has been a good year... Here’s hoping 2010 is even better!

Drinking Beer Swap

After all the organising, the blogging, the tweeting, the hoping things would work out, the collect+ problems, the broken bottles, re-sending those broken bottles, the chasing people up and pushing them along, and then more chasing... after all of that I finally got around to the best part of Beer Swap: getting my bottles and drinking them.

Darren from Blog O’Beer (and @blogobeer) sent beers to me from Manchester. When I returned from the collect+ store I was ridiculously excited about opening the package to see what I had been sent. And it was real excitement, a great sense of fun, just like Christmas. I was delighted with what I unwrapped: Marble Ginger, Chocolate Marble, Outstanding Stout and an Outstanding Pushing Out – four brand new beers to me from two very exciting breweries from the North West.

I started with the Ginger (the 6% version this is – there’s also a 4.5%). The label says this is ‘fiery and intense’ and it certainly pours a colour that deserves that description. The nose is dominated by ginger and that goes straight through to the taste – candy sugar then in to fresh, sweet ginger and peppery spice, fragrantly earthy with a dry, bitter finish. I had the 4.5% Ginger Marble at The 2 Kents Beer Festival and I’ve grown to love it after initially not enjoying it. I had this with belly pork and spicy butternut squash (just like this one I had with Ruination) and it was perfect – a FABPOW! waiting to happen. This is an impressively different bottled beer.

Next was Chocolate Marble (5.5%), a near-opaque red-black pour with a tan head. A full roasty nose, chocolate, caramel, a lactic sweetness. It’s a great drinking stout, dark chocolate, a roasty richness, more of that caramel sweetness and a long, earthy finish. A lovely bottled stout, easy drinking and uncomplicated. And this was followed by the Outstanding Stout (also 5.5%). I was interested in the comparison between these two and it was immediately clear as I poured the Outstanding – it’s darker and fuller-bodied, the aroma was chocolate again but with smoke and liquorice this time, less sweetness and no lactic quality. The taste marked them apart too with this being fruity and ever-so-slightly sharp (in a fresh berries kind of way), full bodied, lots of liquorice and sweet smoke, smooth and with a long, dry, earthy-bitter finish. This had big flavour throughout and was very good. I think bottled stouts are very hit and miss. There’s often a whole middle section of the beer missing and it tastes thin or watery. These both got it just right.

I finished the evening with Outstanding’s Pushing Out, a strong golden ale (7.4%). It pours a great looking amber red with a fluffy head but then things get interesting... A big nose which is immediately like pick n mix, fruity and sweet, but then beneath this it’s earthy and peppery, minty with the slightest hint of Orval to it (this added a great depth and a little tang which mirrored the fizzy sweets in a pack n mix, although I’m not sure if it’s meant to be there). The taste was more of the same – a bag of chewy sweets and then in to a great bitter finish, not too strong but still assertive, and there was a lingering nudge of sour (again, I thought this was better for it!)... I liked this beer a lot. It made me smile and that’s good.

Thanks again to Darren for sending the beers down. It was great to be able to drink new beers from breweries that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to get. I didn’t know about Outstanding before this but now I want to know more. As for Marble, well I’ve got a real soft spot for them, thanks to enjoying them at The Bull, and I think they are just great. Now I just need to venture up to Manchester to drink them where they come from.

Beer swap rocks!

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.