A Good Friday

Planet Thanet beer festival at the Winter Gardens in Margate. It's one of my favourite festivals of the year, no doubt. Good friends, good beer, good location; it's got all you want and need. This year Gadds' Uberhop (a traditional hopped-up lagerale) rocked it; Tryst Corronade IPA was bitter, apricoty, light, dry; Millstone Tiger Rut was a glass of fruity tangerine, floral and oh-so-drinkable - awesome. Some dark beer - Gadds' Black Pearl and Elland 1872 - rounded us up and some more Uberhop and Tiger Rut finished us off.

It was a Good Friday. I love Planet Thanet beer festival.

Ramsgate Brewery and Gadds' Barely Barley Wine

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying until everyone knows it, but Ramsgate Brewery are going to be big. For a moment forget BrewDog, forget Thornbridge, forget Harviestoun, Fuller's, Sam Smith, Dark Star, forget Oakham; remember Ramsgate.

Their core beers are superb. There’s No.3, No.5, No.7, named after the number of pints the brewer can have before his wife knows he’s pissed, and they are classic ales: No.3 and No.7 are pale and No.5 is a best bitter. Dogbolter porter, which I had cask for the first time last week, is really very good - Fuller’s London Porter good. Then they’ve got a few which are most often found in bottles (although they come out for beer festivals sometimes). I’ve written about these before - India, Ancestors and Black Pearl - and they are all excellent.I went to the brewery and shop a few weeks ago to get a few bottles. They also sell a really good range of European beer alongside the Gadds’ stuff. I got a Mikkeller Warrior Single Hop; a couple of Trappist brews ready for a tasting – Rochefort 8, Westemalle Dubbel; a La Chouffe Houblon; a Taras Boulba, a bitter Belgian blonde; a De Molen Amarillo and a couple of bottles of geueze. Big shop. But it was all about the Gadds’ beers.

And it was two new ones in particular that I wanted; their barley wines: Oooks!, dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvins and Reserve Barrel Aged Barely Wine which is aged in red wine barrels from Chapel Down winery (who also make beer).
Oooks! is a deep red-brown going fiery orange at the edges, the head is thick and creamy and then it’s unmistakably dominated by those Nelson Sauvin hops – brash and bold, resinous, massively condensed tropical fruits, peppery and strong. There’s something about the Nelson Sauvin that I really can’t put my finger on, but it makes it incredibly drinkable. There is something about this that feels like a rich double IPA with plenty of toasty, caramelized flavours. It’s excellent.

The Reserve is a different beast. A near-mythical beast. It’s phenomenal. What makes a phenomenal beer? For me, in this case, it’s a complexity that is almost unrivalled. It’s the same base beer as the Oooks! (minus the dry-hopping) but it’s aged in Rondo 2005 French oak casks and the result is a complete spectrum of awesome. It starts with a brett funk, an air of countryside and chlorine on the skin, there’s understated berry sharpness and red fruits, then comes the base beer all toasty and caramelised, then it goes all red-wine-barrel with spicy wine notes and a near-tannic woody finish and a drum-crescendo of hops. It has an incredible evolution of flavour and you never quite know where it’s come from or where it’s going; there’s a little bit of magic in this beer, something intangibly evocative and different. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve had before. In a very good way.

The great news is that you can buy this beer online or from the shop and try it too. Beermerchants have just got in a selection of the Ramsgate beers and they are totally worth buying. Seriously. Re-read my opening gambit and then go buy some and see for yourself. And there’s a beer festival coming up in a few weeks. Get down there.

There’s a gallery of images here. I managed to sneak into a couple of the pictures taken by Phil, including some where Eddie Gadd the brewer is wafting the aroma of fresh beer my way (just before he gives me a Nelson Sauvin hop pellet which I was tasting for days after!).

Beer and Food Night at Pete's

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

A Few New Beers

I’ve opened a few new beers recently as well as trying to get through some of the bottles which have been filling the cupboards and fridge. Here's a few notes.

Ramsgate Brewery Gadds’ India 8.3%
A cloudy pale ale. Boozy nose of candy sugar alongside citrus and earthy hops. Really surprising mouthfeel, all thick and biscuity and bready without tipping over into too-sweet. It’s got big hops, earthy and peppery and strong and there’s more booze too. There’s a great middle moment when you aren’t sure whether it’ll go sweet or bitter, it balances on a tiny point, see-sawing, then drops over into bitterness. Really drinkable for the strength and even though it wasn’t super-fresh it still tasted good. I went down to the brewery last weekend so expect more from Ramsgate to come.

Lovibonds Henley Dark 4.8%
Coca-cola colour with a thick and creamy tan head. Aromas of milky chocolate and sweet smoke. Drinking it brings out much more roasted bitterness with dark chocolate and coffee alongside smoke and a pleasing earthiness. It’s packed with flavour and complexity which is great for its fairly modest strength. As it warms it gets earthier and the smoke comes through more (edging towards a great phenolic complexity). I served this with lasagne and it worked really well – the smoke buffers the rich tomato sauce.

Mikkeller Stateside IPA 7%
Hopped to buggery with Chinook, Cascade and Centennial (that's what the bottle says, the website says it's got Amarillo?). It’s a deep amber with little carbonation. The nose gives off caramel, bread, pine, booze and burnt tropical fruit. There’s plenty of sweetness which is balanced by a great bitterness with pine, grass, grapefruit, tangerine and tropical fruits. I don’t think it was especially fresh and so it could be even better, but I really enjoyed this (but then how could a beer with those hops not be good?!).

Kasteel Cru Rose 5.0%
I might write-up a larger blog about this beer but in the meantime let me tell you this: the beer is pointless and completely shit. One word: drainpour.

Nils Oscar God Lager 5.3%
I didn’t expect too much with this one but was pleasantly surprised. It’s a great golden colour with a nose of brown bread, toast and distant lemony hops. The flavours are really clean and crisp with plenty of biscuity malt and some toffee bread finished off with some simple, earthy-lemony hops. Nice one. Follow the link to go to beermerchants, that's where I got mine from.

Kasteel Triple 11%
I don’t really get triples. Maybe I just haven’t had one that I love yet. This was gold with tiny streams of bubbles. It’s boozy at the back of the throat with a gin-like dryness. There’s some spice, something vaguely sweet and more booze. To be honest it just didn’t taste quite right.

Brasserie Dupont Saison Dupont 6.5%
I was sitting in the garden reading in the sun and needed a cold, refreshing beer to open. This was my choice and I’m glad I went for it. Wheaty, earthy, spicy with a faint orange peel aroma and distant twangs of sourness. It’s fresh and quenching, some fruitiness, some earthiness, some peppery spice and a great lingering dry bitterness.

Mikkeller Warrior Single Hop 6.9%
A flame colour with a juicy aroma of peach, orange and mango closely flanked by a leathery-pineness. It’s completely hop-heavy and condensed in its bitterness but it’s great for that reason. It’s very bitter, fruity, floral, pithy and roasted tropical fruits with that requisite clawing finish. Nice and I think this one is up there alongside the Cascade single hopper. I picked this up from Gadds' Beer Shop, where you can also get the India.

The Bull’s Best of The Best Beer Festival

Here’s a round-up of last week’s beer festival at The Bull. Garrett and Lynne, the landlord and lady, put on a fantastic event and I really hope they’re pleased with how it all went. The beer was spot-on, the food was excellent, the garden was a great place to hang out (the weather stayed dry too) and the atmosphere was perfect. To Garrett and Lynne: It’s you two who make The Bull my favourite pub. You are willing to go that much further than everyone else. Thank you.

To set the scene: I was there on Thursday with Pete from Pete’s Food Blog and Brad and James and friends from Ale Affinity. On Friday Pete and Brad were back again (we couldn’t stay away!), both with their younger brothers. I was with my mate Matt. And Steve from Beer Justice and Phil from Beermerchants were there too. The barbeque filled the cool air of the pub garden with grilling meat and Garrett’s irrepressible laugh rang around his kingdom as everyone chinked glasses and talked and laughed and got pretty damn merry.

I started down low, way down low at a measly 2.7% with BrewDog’s Edge. But measly it ain’t: this 2.7% minx is a flavour bomb. So full bodied, a perfect creamy head, chocolate roasted notes and much more hop bitterness than I expected. One surprising beer that you could drink all night. Next Pete and I went tag-team-style on Saltaire’s Amarillo Gold and BrewDog's 77 Lager (the Amarillo in each being a cozy and chance partnership). Amarillo Gold was very pale, loads of neat Maris Otter grain and a delicately refreshing lemony-citrus finish. The 77 lager was surprising fruity with a great body and good hop bitterness - good cask lager action indeed.

More double-teaming next with Thornbridge Kipling and BrewDog's Dogma. Now it kills me to say this but none of the Thornbridge beers we tried were up to their usual standard. I don’t know why this was, but the fact that it was across the board is worrying. Now Dogma. Here’s something you might not have read around these parts before, but here goes: I don’t care all that much for bottled Dogma or its previous incarnation, Speedball. It does nothing for me except make me mildly giddy. However, on cask it’s much better. There was honey and vanilla and blackcurrant and toast and another creamy head (they give good head at BrewDog) all wrapped up in a slick body. Nice. We also opened a bottle of unlabelled BrewDog’s Atlantic IPA to share around the bench. Lightning doesn’t strike twice, you say? Well guess what… It was a thumbs down from a table of BrewDog fans. I like the oxidized notes in Zephyr but in the Atlantic IPA they are too much (sour and cement-like) and it doesn’t mix well with the whisky warmth and the punchy-earthy-fruity-bitter beer.

I believe we had a burger here. It was very good and very necessary.

Next came two beers from Marble: Pint and Dobber. Garrett told us that Dobber was the bigger brother of Pint and he was spot on. Pint was pale, clean, crisp, quenching, gluggable and finished with juicy citrus hop bitterness. I absolutely loved this beer. Then I tried Dobber and fell in love again. It’s a fantastic beer, loads of C-hop sexiness (I believe I bet this blog at one point that it contains Centennials!), orange and a juicy-pithy clawing finish with a great toffee body. Super, super stuff. And honestly, I would’ve been happy to drink just those two all night, but I was on a mission.

Let’s zip through in a montage: In the following hour, or so, I had: a mouthful of Jaipur, my favourite cask beer, and it was a shadow of itself and this brought a tear and a sorrowful swoon. This swoon was not cured by the half of Pitfield IPA which was boozy like nail polish, had a too-sweet candy sugar body and didn’t deliver on the hops. I had a taste of the Saltaire Blackberry Cascade which I liked until just after I swallowed when it became sickly like a chewy sweet. I appear to have tried Ginger Marble and remember not enjoying that too much. I’m not a big raw ginger fan and this tasted like raw ginger. It was hot stuff (literally as I’m posting this Reluctant Scooper has just put up something about Marble Ginger – he likes it more than I do!). A lot of the others loved it though and I think it could be a grower. Thornbridge Red Brick was just not right. And there was a glug of BrewDog’s Trashy Blonde at some point. This was Pete’s beer and I’m pretty sure he enjoyed it. Phew.

This was where we stepped it up. Another tag-team effort went down here to wrestle BrewDog’s Devine Rebel and the Pitfield Imperial Stout into submission. I can proudly say that we won the battle. The Pitfield was bloody marvelous, all rich and roasty with chocolate and coffee and dark fruits and a super earthiness. This stuff rocks. As does Devine Rebel. It’s honey and marmalade, some whisky smokiness way back in there, sweet but not too sweet, a complex sipper rolling around. Thursday done.

The morning after prompted my post about hangover breakfasts and I didn’t truly recover until I had the first pint on Friday, when I was back on it in a flash. I obviously went for a pint of Pint and it was even better than the day before. After this we went and got on the beer train to Ramsgate, Matt’s local brewery (I didn’t have them on Thursday knowing he was down on Friday). Gadds’ No.3 was a great pint as always; caramel, fruit, earthy hops; a Kent classic that I wanted to drink a lot of. Then came the Thoroughly Modern Mild which had a big sweetness with honey and marmalade (kind of like Devine Rebel) and was an easy-drinking 6% - a mild for winter, when Mild Month really should be. Dr. Sunshine’s Special Friendly followed, a wheat beer with a classic wheaty taste (quality beer writing there), vanilla, citrus and a good butterscotch quality (not a bad butterscotch quality). I’m not a wheat beer lover but I could’ve had a lot more of this. Thumbs up to Ramsgate!

Next I tried Saltaire's Sublime Blonde, which I think was Phil’s. The resounding verdict was that it tasted like Foster’s Twist: lager and lime. Not great. There was a Rye Smile in there but bugger me if I remember what that tasted like. All I know is that we ordered a Gadds’ No.7 and a Rye Smile and it took Matt and me a few sips to work out which was which. After this I went back and had more of my favourite’s from Thursday. Another Dobber, an Edge and another Pitfield Imperial Stout. And that’s where the night ended, I think. There may have been more. I lost track and was just having a good time by then.

There were a few beers which didn’t come on while I was there, the notable one being Thornbridge’s Epic Halcyon (here is the full festival list). The good thing is that now I get to look forward to it another time!

And there we are. I don’t think this is particularly illuminating but I wanted to share my thoughts about the beer and the fun that we had. This was a great festival because it was small and friendly and the beer was fantastic. Marble Dobber won beer of the festival and I can’t argue with that. Marble Pint would have been a close contender for my vote and that’ll be a beer I look out for from now on. Gadds’ No.3 was flawless and Pitfield’s Imperial Stout was epic. You can’t expect to love every beer which is on. Enjoyment is so subjective and the beers which I liked others didn’t and vice versa. That’s why we drink with friends; to compare, to discuss, to try other beers. I had a great time as you can probably tell. Cheers Garrett and Lynne!