As-Live Tasting: Kernel Suke Quto Coffee IPA

9.00pm: And relax! Long day: up early, writing, work, gym, dinner, shower. Now to drink beer. 

9.01pm: My mind’s doing summersaults and my fingertips are eager to tap at a keyboard and do the stream of consciousness thing so it's As-Live blogging time. Think and sip and tap and drink.

9.02pm: The Kernel’s Suke Quto Coffee IPA. 6.9% ABV. This is batch 2 and another collaboration with Square Mile Coffee Roasters. It smells ridiculously good. The beer’s beneath my nose. I’m stooping over and around it to try and type but I don’t want it to move away.

9.04pm: And then as if by magic the aroma moves. It goes from super citrus, all hops up in your face, through chocolate and then into a mix of those dark coffee grounds and tropical fruit. Coffee: check. Hops: check. It's a Coffee IPA.

9.05pm: Still smelling the beer.

9.06pm: Gulping beer.

9.07pm: Wow. This is different! Coffee and hops and booze. It’s exactly what I need right now. The body is classic Kernel, smooth and full (how do they do that?!), there’s toffee sweetness, then coffee roast, then hop fruitiness, then hop bitterness, then coffee bitterness, which is the lingering aftertaste. It’s a beer which drinks more sequentially than any other I’ve ever tasted.

9.09pm: Answering emails... 

9.14pm: I’m loving the chocolatey depth in this beer. I often get chocolate flavours in IPA but this something else. Where does that chocolate flavour come from in IPAs?

9.15pm: I need to iron a shirt. Tomorrow I’ve got to do a presentation in London at 8am. Who organises presentations at 8am? One day I’ll have someone who will do my ironing for me. Either that or the sort of job where I don’t need to wear a shirt.

9.22pm: This is the sort of beer you drink in minutes to try and work it out, to try and find out why you like it so much, why it works when something says it shouldn’t (coffee and grapefruit isn’t a classic combo). I love that quality in a beer – the unintentional speed drinking to try and understand it. More coffee comes through the further down the glass you get and the warmer the beer becomes. The bitterness gets more apparent, both from hops and coffee.

9.24pm: I had the first batch of this beer a few months ago but it was only a couple of mouthfuls so don’t remember it much. I know it was in the Dean Swift and Tandleman was there. Then I went to the Tower Bridge Draft House and had a burger. You don’t forget details like that.

9.27pm: I’m sure I’m meant to be doing something important right now but I have no idea what that is.

9.30pm: Oh! Some news for anyone who read the sausage, chips and beans post last week... a mega sausage, chips and beans beer taste-off is happening on Friday. I’ve got lots of beers and I’m calling in assistance from some sausage-loving beer drinkers. Results will be posted next week.

9.33pm: You know what’s most interesting with this beer? Every mouthful tastes a bit different to the one before. It started with the hop explosion, then came the unlikely marriage of coffee and hops, then the coffee became the star, then it started to taste drier and more bitter and now at the end of the glass it’s like a hardcore chocolate orange. And every gulp is great. It could’ve been a crazy clash but it isn’t and it works.

9.37pm: Beer’s done. I loved it. But then it’s Kernel and Kernel only hit home runs. My only worry is that this beer is packed with as much caffeine as lupulin, so one will keep me up all night and the other will make me sleepy, like necking sleeping pills with a Red Bull. Fingers crossed that won’t happen.  

9.41pm: Time to look away from a computer and into a book. Kernel’s Coffee IPA is gone. Anyone else had this? If so, what do you think?

UPDATE: This is a post-live note to add that the colour of the beer isn't as dark as it looks in the picture. It's a dark beer for an IPA but it isn't brown.

Open It! Four Great Bottles

This weekend’s Open It saw a burst of beer-opening excitement (check out the twitter hashtag #openit for all the action). Here’s what I opened.

The first beer wasn’t strictly there for Open It but it was so good that it’s getting a promotion. Buxton Brewery’s Moor Top is 3.6% and 3.6% of bottled British beer usually makes me sigh in expected disappointment (too thin, too weak, not enough flavour), but this one is very different. A looking-loving pale gold pint, this one takes off when you get your nose nearby and take a faceful of Chinooks for the effort – lime, grapefruit, tangy tropical fruit, ginger. It’s clean, refreshing, light and so, so drinkable, plus a poky bitterness to keep you going back for more. I’ve heard good things about Buxton and now I want to try more!

Coalition Ale, the Thornbridge and DarkStar collaboration, has been waiting for a special occasion and it didn’t disappoint: it’s one of the best beers I’ve drunk this year. Brewed in February 2009, hopped with Atlas, Aurora and Liberty, and bottled in October 2010, it pours a handsome hazy orange with a head which drops to a fine lace. The aroma is a subtle, pastel-coloured spectrum of oranges, and the taste is the sort of thing that has your tongue dancing. It’s so simple yet there’s so much interesting complexity to it, so much depth. It’s bitter at the end but never overpowering, mellowing marvellously into the beer, there’s a dryness to it, lime oil, citrus zest, liquorice, and no negative signs of aging, no greys around the temples. It’s stunning and I want more bottles.

Next was Kernel and DarkStar’s Imperial Marzen, a 9.1% nightmare for style pedants. A hazy red-amber pour, malty and full bodied as you’d expect from a Marzen, especially one supersized in strength. There’s lots of orange blossom, orange pith, peaches and a bunch of fresh flowers in the aroma, probably from something other than noble hops, and it’s got that gorgeous slick body I love from Kernel beers. There’s not much bitterness but lots of hop flavour, and it’s very easy drinking – the sort of beer you chase to the bottom of the glass to try and understand it, never quite managing it and needing another straight after. It’s so interesting, so tasty, so nice to drink, even if it does defy every style book written now or in the future.

Another Kernel topped off my Open It weekend – Imperial Brown Stout 1856. A 10.1% beer monster packed thick with chocolate, a little coffee bitterness, some booze around the tonsils, a chocolate ice cream sweetness, a puff of smoke and char and a plum skin fruity bitterness. It’s mouthfilling, intense, rich, darkly delicious and very good. Absolutely brilliant.

Four of the best beers I’ve had in a long time, especially the Coalition, which is a masterpiece. What made these beers stand out is how balanced they all are and how drinkable, despite some lofty ABVs, they are, with each of them having a depth of flavour that makes each gulp more interesting than the last. And that’s a great quality to have in a beer.

Who else has had these beers? What did you think? 

The Breweries for 2011

Last year I posted that Marble would be the brewery to watch for 2010. Locally people knew about them but they didn’t get much further away than that. Now Marble are on the lips of many beer drinkers thanks to their excellent cask and bottle selection. This year I’ve got three breweries to look out for...

The Kernel Brewery has gone from 0-100 in 2010. Making beer from a small lock-up in the arches under a railway bridge, Evin is like a wizard filling his bottles with beery magic potions. A series of pale ales, IPAs and a number of dark beers, plus a few cool collaboration (Glyn from The Rake, Mark from DarkStar, Coffee IPA with Square Mile Coffee, a behemoth imperial stout) sees a great range of great beers, all with unrivalled drinkability and oomph. I know I’ll be looking out for each new beer with thirsty anticipation in 2011.

My second choice is another London brewery... Fuller’s. I haven’t had a Fuller’s beer all year that’s been less than excellent and a couple of Chiswicks have been mindblowingly good. The reason I think Fuller’s are important in 2011 is that they have a huge breadth of coverage and they can appeal to the full spectrum of beer drinkers; their core range is very good and deliciously reliable, they have Vintages and Brewers Reserves, plus they are experimenting with the Past Masters series. They also have an important place in being approachable to those who don’t drink real ale and can definitely be a Road to Damascus brewery for new drinkers, whether through their excellent bottled beers or their cask range. They are for Beer Geeks too, who can happily fall back on a pint of Pride, they can look out with anticipation for the rarer casks of Porter, smack chops at Bengal Lancer, chill out with a Chiswick or get excited about the latest Vintage or Brewers Reserve. It’s a very strong brand for all drinkers, backed up with excellent beers.

I think Adnams are also deserving of significant mention along with Fuller's in the way they can appeal to a very broad spectrum of drinkers, from the pint of best bitter in the pub to the home drinker in search of something special and rare, plus their interesting range of international beers and seasonals for those after a little variety. Add to this their new range of spirits and they are a brewery to look out for over the next year. Fuller's and Adnams could be the most important breweries in the UK right now. 

Who are you most looking forward to drinking this year? Who should people be looking out for?

FABPOW! Kernel Export Stout and a Hummingbird Cupcake

Earlier in the day Lauren sent me a picture of herself eating just about the biggest piece of cake I’d ever seen, along with an excited message saying that she’d found the Hummingbird bakery. Of course, I quickly tapped my reply and told her to buy me something. When she got home, just as I was about to open a bottle of Kernel Export Stout, she pulled a cupcake from her bag and set it down excitedly on the table. “Oh-my-god-Mark-the-cakes-were-amaaaaaaazing!!!”

I opened the beer first. Based on a recipe from 1890, it’s 7.8%, dark and topped with the sort of foam you need a spoon to enjoy; it’s dark chocolate, coffee and cocoa with a little wisp of smoke; a full body, more dark chocolate, some distant fruity berries and dried fruit, an earthy-leathery depth and just a hint of smoke and salt. Delicious, interesting and different with each sip, it’s another great beer from Kernel (there's currently some available from Beermerchants who also have a jaw-dropping number of Mikkeller bottles).

The cake was top heavy with the kind of vanilla butter icing to make your knees go weak while the sponge was impossibly light and airy. Together the intense, dark flavours in the beer matched the icing with neither overpowering the other, while the fullness of the body made it work, lifting the sweet sponge and icing and giving it a chocolatey kick on the way down.

An impromptu FABPOW and this one taking two London craft products sold at the opposite edges of the city and putting them together in harmony. And it gives me an idea... what about a London Market Brewery which takes inspirations from what’s on the stalls, independent shops or uses leftover market ingredients. Maybe a collaboration with different stalls: so a cupcake beer or beer cupcakes with Hummingbird; a chocolate beer with a chocolate stall; fruit and veg beers; a beer to go with particular foods and jointly branded...

Beer and cake can be hard to get right but when you nail it it's brilliant. Carrot cake and US IPA is a winner, so is kriek and a gooey brownie and then a cupcake and a rich, deeply delicious stout. Any other beer and cake recommendations?