Engaging an Oxymoron

“What’s that beer?” He asks, while he sips his lager.

“How long have you got?” I ask.

“It’s a special beer, a blend of two brews with a few extra things added,” I begin; his brow faintly wrinkles wondering how many ‘things’ can possibly be added. “One beer is called Military Intelligence. It’s an oxymoron because it’s a Black India Pale Ale. It’s a fashionable style at the moment, essentially a dark beer brewed with loads of American hops, which are really fruity and bitter – you can’t mistake them, here have a smell.” I push the beer under his nose. He sniffs, not realising that a beer could ever smell like this – an intense, punchy citrus. “It’s full bodied, rich but not overly chocolatey or coffee-tasting, which many beers like this can be. It’s sweet first, it coats your tongue and then it’s really citrusy and bitter at the end.” He’s nodding. I continue: “This beer,” I raise the jug we’re drinking from to acknowledge, “also has a beer called Black Spot blended into it. It’s a best bitter brewed by a guy who won a homebrewing competition. He brewed it out there,” I point to the brewery opposite us. “Once blended, the brewer added oak chips and more hops. He used a variety of hops called Citra, that’s what gives off the amazing lemon, grapefruit and dried lime aroma and by adding them at the end you get the full aromatic effect. The oak chips add a faint vanilla hint but it’s kind of hidden beneath the hops, which are pretty confrontational.” He’s still nodding. “There aren’t many beers like this in the UK. Not many at all.”

“Right.” He says as I pass him a glass and fill it half way.

“Plus it’s special because only we are drinking it and no one else – it’s a one-off.”

“Right. It’s interesting, isn’t it.” He says, lifting the glass and sipping cautiously. His eyes widen as an explosion rocks his tastebuds in a way they’ve never been rocked before. I leave him, staring into the dark depth of the glass in his hand. He finishes it through slightly-gritted teeth (the bitterness feeling like it’s eating his tongue, no doubt) and then goes back to his lager.

A couple of hours later I see him return from the bar with a jug of the dark beer.

The beer was Ruby, Makin’ Bacon, a special put together by Saints and Sinners at Brew Wharf for Lee and Ruby, two good friends of mine, who were celebrating their engagement. I only asked for a pump clip so I did pretty well – we were happy to be the experimental white mice for the night! It's also got me thinking... as I got engaged last month, perhaps I should get a special beer brewed for myself!!

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.

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.

The Spoon to my Pencil?

Lauren often asks me when I’m going to write about her on here. “What do you want me to say?” I ask her. “Just tell them how I’m the best girlfriend in the world.” “You’re the best girlfriend I’ve got...” I tell her, “but it’s a beer blog and you don’t like beer.” “Oh.” She says.

To begin, she doesn’t actually drink beer. This is both good and bad. It’s good because she can be my driver. It’s bad because I’d love to share these bottles with her and have her get excited about them with me. I’ve tried hard to get her to like it but it’s not going to happen. Lauren does, however, have a great nose for smelling beer. And a great ear for listening about it. You see, whenever I am anywhere with a beer or whenever I’m doing things which I write about on here, Lauren is usually always there. She’s the one next to me in the pub reading her magazine (the bribe to keep her there so I can have a couple), the one opposite me at dinner while I talk to her about something beer-related, or how I wish they had something else on, or how next week I plan to open this bottle or that, or she’s sitting on the sofa while I sit behind at the table tapping into the laptop, “spending more time talking to people on twitter than talking to me”, posting blogs, or she’s in the driver’s seat while I give (always bad or wrong) directions to some distant “old man’s pub”, or she’s listening to me describing why this beer is good and that beer isn’t or how this one could be better or how I wish I could go here or there, or she’s putting beer glasses back into the cupboard or moving bottles around in the fridge because they take up more room than the food, or she sees me putting away my latest beer order and wonders when I’ll spend some money on her for once, or she’s answering questions as I playfully quiz her on my latest blog post (“You’re my favourite beer blogger,” she told me once, “but then I don’t read anyone else’s blog”), or she’s patiently waiting for me to post a blog, or read a blog, or send a tweet, or buy the bottles I’ve been staring at for ages which took us an hour out of our way to get, or she’s following to a pub (“honestly, it’s just around this corner” I say, hearing the feet drag) only to walk straight out because there’s nothing on, or she’s waiting to start eating her dinner while I take pictures of mine, or she’s planning her next few weekends around my drinking schedule, or she’s kicking me out of bed when my 5am alarm clock goes off so I can get up early to write or she’s woken up late when I steam back in at midnight (I’m sure she’ll tell me what I’ve forgotten, too).

And then there’s the times when she talks to me about beer, when she mentions hops or buys me some of my favourite bottles, when she says she likes something I’ve just written or she suggests going to London to go to some pubs or she says, “I bet that beer would be great with chocolate cake”, or when I catch her looking at my blog and reading the comments people leave, or when she smells a beer and picks out aromas I hadn’t, or when she clears away all my empties and tells me that she likes this label or doesn’t remember me drinking that bottle, “what was it like?”, or when she genuinely takes an interest in what’s in my glass.

I’m quite lucky, I think.

I write this blog but there’s always someone else there, someone who probably should hate beer but tolerates it and listens and actually knows a lot about it because she cares about what I care about. I guess she’s the real Spoon to my Pencil.

Sorry if this is gushy and sentimental but that should keep her sweet while we go for a huge steak dinner at the Hawksmoor on Friday (she doesn’t eat meat) and then drink around Borough, followed by a massive and potentially messy beer night at ours on Saturday, followed by more beer on Sunday and Monday (she will also hopefully be cooking me dinner on Monday). Plus next weekend at The Bull’s huge beer festival, the weekend after at The White Horse’s Old Ale Festival, then the British Guild of Beer Writers Dinner (which she isn’t coming to) followed by the Pig’s Ear beer festival the next day and then the next weekend on a London pub crawl.

Bitten Bullet Beers

It all started on twitter (again). This time it happened while I was drinking a Ballast Point Big Eye IPA (see the video here) and waxing lyrical about the Centennial hop. Then a tweet popped up from Barry, of The Bitten Bullet fame, along the lines of ‘If you like Centennials then you’d like my homebrew hopped with Chinook and Centennial’. Fast-forward three weeks and there I was drinking it with Pete (that’s where we had awesome Spag Bol with Rochefort 8, by the way).

Now, I don’t have any experience with homebrew so didn’t really know what to expect. To be honest, without wishing to do any injustice to Barry, I was preparing myself for something drinkable but perhaps not comparable to the normal, commercial beers which I drink all the time. I was very wrong.
We started with Spiral Galaxy H1N1, a 5.2%, 35IBU single hop pale ale. I know Barry brewed this while house-bound due to swine flu, so there was a little inherent danger in this beer (a week later and I’m showing no symptoms…). It’s golden with a tropical fruit aroma, kind of like fruit salad sweets and passion fruit. The malt was really clean and crisp, biscuity. The bitterness was good and I could’ve drunk a lot of this one. I hadn’t heard about Galaxy hops before so it was good to see it in action. Anyone know any beers which use Galaxy?
Next came the Alternative Munster Altbier, a 4.6%, 38IBU Alt hopped with Northern Brewer and Hallertauer Perle. Barry tells me that it isn’t lagered, hence the ‘alternative’ in the name. I’m not a massive Alt fan, not really getting their point, but there was plenty going on in this: caramel, berries, brown bread, chocolate and an earthiness. Very nicely brewed, very clean and tasty.
Then we opened the one which kicked the whole thing off: Klosteiner Pale Ale, 5.9%, 40IBU and hopped with Chinooks and Centennials (that just reads like beer erotica to me). Now this really was something special. Deep orange-gold in colour with a great orangey, perfumed, fruity nose which went straight through into the taste, along with a caramel sweetness, giving loads of Centennial bite and a whole spectrum of oranges and citrus. Pfwoar! I wanted a lot more of this one but apparently I had the last bottle. Please brew it again!
Finally came the Bitten Bullet Barley Wine, a 10.5% beast, hopped with Cascades, Chinooks and Centennials with an IBU of 106. Wowza! We had this with an incredible oozing piece of gorgonzola and it was a real winner. The beer is big and brooding, as you’d expect. It has a huge hoppy aroma, like Sierra Nevada’s Bigfoot, then beneath that it’s chocolate and dried and stone fruit. It’s earthy and unforgiving, there’s loads of burnt citrus, over-done brown bread toast and then more banging hops. Only 22 were made and I think Barry has the intention of aging them for quite a while, allowing the hops to mellow right down. He also sent a very rare version of this aged over oak chips with the specific instruction of not touching it until Christmas, when it’ll be a year old. I look forward to it.

Also in the box he shipped were a few German beers and a beer mustard. Herren Pils was pretty much my perfect pilsner, light and fruity and so drinkable (I had just spent five hours walking around Ikea though, so even this would've tasted like heaven). Boltens Ur-Alt was malty, nutty, bready and slightly roasty, although again, Alt’s not really my thing. And a Fassla Zwergla, a Bamberg Dunkel (Bamberg Dunkel sounds like a character from a Vonnegut novel…) which had a really nice simplicity to it with apples, toffee and toasted brown bread.

I like this homebrew thing. There's definitely something in it... All my expectations were blown away and I was massively impressed. These weren’t just good beers, these were excellently brewed beers that I’d want to drink again and again. If you would have placed these in front of me and asked my honest opinion, without any prior knowledge of them, I would’ve guessed a well established and quality commercial brewery. Barry, you should be very proud of those beers, now hurry up, get back to brewing and ship me some more over!

Fantasy Pub Week! 2: People

It’s the people that make a pub, right? Sure the beer helps but the soul of the place is set up by the people who drink there and the people who work there. This is not to be underestimated. You need a landlord, you need a barman/maid and you need regulars. And remember, as it’s a fantasy list they can be real or fictional, famous or not, dead or alive, or just choose your mates. The way I see it, the landlord is someone to chat to at the bar about anything and everything, the barmaid is a piece of ass and the regulars each have their own special qualities.

Landlord
Barman/barmaid
A few regulars, up to you how many

My Choices…
Landlord: Stephen King (I bet he’s great to chat to about sport and movies and books and life, although I’m not sure if he drinks now, but that’s okay)
Barmaid(s): I’m going for two because it’s unfair to make them work all the time – Sienna Miller and Cheryl Cole
Regulars: Lauren and my best mates and drinking buddies (all of them), some beer writers/bloggers following the GBBF fun, then Marilyn Monroe, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, Barack Obama, Will Smith and maybe some historical figures like Plato and Julius Caesar. That should do it and that should be a lot of fun.

Sharing Beer

Beer is for sharing. It’s the friendliest thing I know. Beer makes friendships. A love for beer itself is a long-term love affair. You like good beer, I like good beer. An instant bond. An understanding. A desire to share. We meet up for beers; that’s when we see each other. How’s your beer? Try some. Yeah, that’s good. Nothing else is like it. Let’s go to the pub. What you having? If you’re having that one then I’ll go for this. We talk, we laugh, we relax. The best beers I’ve ever had have been shared - they’ve been talked about, they turn into better beers because of it. Wow this is good. I’m not that fussed. I love it. I love it too. The one who wasn’t fussed gets into it. Actually you know what… We bounce words around, hyperbole, lyrical similes, random tastes and smells and memories. We laugh at him, then we get it ourselves, it does smell like that. We can open another bottle, we can order another half; we can drink more beer. Quantity and quality. It’s about being with friends, sharing something important to all of us, having a great time with a few beers. That’s why we drink it.