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? 

Exclusive: Announcing Thornbridge’s New Brewer

“2011 is going to be a big year for us at Thornbridge,” says Simon Webster, director of the brewery, “and as we expanded the brew team it was key that we brought in the correct people.” Thornbridge have recently added Rob Lovatt, previously from Meantime, and Coalan Vaughan, previously from Little Creatures in Australia, and now they’ve added another name... Dominic Driscoll from Marble Brewery.

This image is here to allow a pause for thought. The logo also works perfectly upside-down! 

“I've loved being a Marble brewer, and have never been unhappy in all the 5 years I've worked there,” says Dominic. “It seemed a monumental decision at the time but in the past week I've realised it's an unbelievable opportunity to work at a seriously impressive brewery.” He adds: “You'd have to be a fairly stupid brewer not to want to work at Thornbridge, as it's probably the most innovative and creative brewery the UK has seen.”

“Because brewing is hard work and we're a small team [at Marble], we've spent far too much time in the same room and have thus become a bit like Morecambe and Wise in the breakfast scene. We've had an amazing time together, built a new brewery, made it a success, expanded production, started exporting, and of course made some great beer.”

Dominic’s favourite achievements at Marble include “smashing sales targets, 'meet the brewer' at Cask, brewing Vuur & Vlam and showcasing at the De Molen festival,” but the best moments “were always the beer tastings we did every week. This helped us improve every aspect of our beer-making and tweaked ordinary beers into something of which we could be proud.”

There’s lots of things he’ll miss from Marble, including the Marble Arch, Colin Stronge his fellow brewer, Jan Rogers, owner of the brewery, and there’s also some exciting projects in the pipeline which he would like to have brewed. As for the beer, what was the best he brewed at Marble? “Probably the Special 2009,” a 10.5% barley wine. “I didn't sleep properly for a week whilst it was fermenting. If you have a waxed top bottle, you should bloody keep hold of it!”

It’s a big change for two of the highest regarded breweries in the UK. “We have a great relationship with Marble,” explains Simon Webster, “and I was very keen that it shouldn't be affected so we said to Dom to take as long as they needed him before coming over to us.”

Dominic will join Thornbridge in the New Year. “I can't wait to start work at Thornbridge and be part of their plans for the future, and whilst it'll be hard graft, I'm looking forward to getting stuck in. The next few years will be amazing!”

Marble Brewery have built up a great range of quality beers and I’m sure they will continue to brew fantastic pints, grow and get even better. As for Thornbridge, I think Simon says it perfectly: “I can honestly say that if we would have had a free pick of any of the upcoming brewers in the country Dom would have been top of list!”

Best of luck to Dominic. He’s a great guy and will do great things at Thornbridge, just like he did at Marble.

Imagine Wayne Rooney left Manchester United and joined Chelsea... This is big news, right?

Cheers Kelly!

I’ve had a lot of great Thornbridge beers in the last two years. Jaipur is always a big neon sign which pulls me uncontrollably towards it; Bracia is just about the best beer I’ve tasted; Halcyon Vintage 2009 is fantastic; Kipling is an irresistibly great beer; Lumford, Alliance, Handel, St Petersburg... the list doesn’t really end.

This one’s for Kelly Ryan. It’s a simultaneous virtual wave goodbye, a man hug and the chinking cheers of a fresh pint before he heads back to New Zealand. And it’s deserving because he’s taken the time to talk to people, to write blogs and read blogs, to update twitter, to answer questions (and there have been times when I’ve sent strings of emails asking questions I don’t know the answer to just to make me seem less stupid) and to ask them, to engage with people, to say thanks if someone says they’ve enjoyed a Thornbridge beer or to find out why if someone didn’t enjoy one (if such a thing is possible), and, of course, to make great beer; it’s about making the time and putting in the extra effort just because he’s passionate and cares. Britain is an exciting place for beer and Thornbridge are at the forefront of that – long may it continue.

I'm sure many others will join in raising a glass to say cheers to Kelly, all the best for the future and make sure you get your new beer (whatever it is and wherever it’s made) sent over to us!

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).

FABPOW! Thai Red Curry with Thornbridge Kipling and Jaipur

If there’s one question I’ve been asking myself for the last god-knows-how-long, it’s what works better with a Thai red curry, Thornbridge’s Kipling or Jaipur...?

Thai red curry: Chicken thigh; onion; garlic, ginger and fresh red chilli; pinch of sugar, some paprika, and turmeric; Waitrose’s red curry paste; coconut milk; fish sauce, a big handful or coriander and some lime juice, in that order, allowing each to have five minutes before putting the next bit in. You can put vegetables in if you want - I just added more chicken (by the way, I’ve stopped writing recipes out in the typical way... this allows for masculine intervention and stubbornness, kind of like putting together a cupboard with the instructions – base, sides, top, door, handles).

I got the beers from myBrewerytap who are selling a mixed box of Kipling and Jaipur. I had a box from them last year and since then they’ve continued to grow impressively, increasingly featuring more interesting breweries. It’s great to see Thornbridge available now (with the hope of more beers coming soon) as well as Crown.

As I was cooking I put a message on twitter asking whether people thought the Kipling or Jaipur would work better. The answer was unanimous (out of four or five...) that it would be Jaipur. The curry was hot, creamy and sweet, salty, fragrant and juiced with lime to lift and lighten all the flavours. Kipling, at 5.2%, is lighter in body than Jaipur and hopped with Nelson Sauvins, which make themselves known immediately with a nose of creamy passion fruit, lime and kiwi. It’s smooth and fruity with a great bite of dry bitterness at the end and a beer I’d happily drink every day. With the curry, the hops hit the chilli first, perking them up just enough, then the lime and coriander come in and play with the fruitiness, then it sweeps to the end with a palate-cleansing bitterness. The joy in this is the passion fruit, citrus and kiwi quality from the hops, which really bring it to life and perfectly balance the spectrum of flavour in the curry, particularly the lime and coriander. Jaipur, at 5.9%, is bigger, slightly sweeter and hopped with American varieties giving a great tangerine and floral aroma. There’s more body and sweetness in the Jaipur and the finish is smooth and quenching rather than dry. With the curry it becomes earthier, there’s a herbal quality to it and then at the end there’s a hidden punch of bitterness from the hops which spikes the chilli heat. It doesn’t quite have the lightness to lift the creamy curry and the oranges and coconut don’t balance as well as the tropical fruit in the Kipling.

Kipling won the fight - the dry finish, the light and lively body, and the unique bridging flavours of the fruit made for a joy of a match. The Kipling also seems to fare slightly better in the bottle than Jaipur which was lacking some of its usual punch. I’m already craving this dinner again; it was one of the most successful FABPOWs I’ve had this year, plus, of course, who can resist beer and curry?

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!

Thornbridge’s Riverside Brewery

All I really wanted was a great pint of Jaipur, I thought to myself as I spent hours on a train staring out the window as the countryside blurred into a deeper green. It’d been ages since I last had Jaipur and I was missing it terribly. When I (or we – I ventured up with Brad who is resurrecting Ale Affinity) told people that I’d come up from Kent for the day they looked surprised. When I said I was going back tonight they were even more surprised. To me, the trip to see the new Thornbridge brewery was a no-brainer.
Having been to the old place beside the grand Thornbridge Hall I didn’t know what to expect from the new place other than a lot of silver (these videos hinted at the shiny future). What I found was a vastly impressive modern site, a cool bar space, newly branded bottles and pump clips, a phenomenal brewing space, a groovy Volkswagen and most importantly, more Jaipur than I could possibly drink.
The bar area is glass-fronted, large and bright with huge pump clips on the wall around a quote from Michael Jackson (as I’m moving into a new flat soon this gave me plenty of good ideas, now I just need to convince Lauren that painting cool quotes on the wall is good and I need to convince Thornbridge to send me a giant logo). This is where I got my first Jaipur and it was everything I remember it being: fruity, full-bodied, hoppy, rich yet still delicate and so fresh. Wonderful.
First sight of the actual brew house came when Garrett Oliver opened her up. Now, I haven’t been to all that many breweries but this is nothing like anything I’ve seen before. I expected giant silver bullet-like tanks and I got them and more. I expected technology and I got that and more. I expected to be impressed and I got that and more. I want to be able to write about the brewing stuff but won’t through fear of getting it completely wrong (I’d just finished my third beer by the time the tour with Kelly started). Zak had his notebook out and so I thought I’d better do the same (following the lead of the Beer Writer of the Year, of course) but I only ended up writing seven words and one of those I got wrong and had to correct later. Instead, I’ll put some pictures up and hopefully that’ll show what it’s like.
As a drinker foremost, the important piece of information is this: they will be able to brew over 10-times the volume of beer. There have only been 12 brews at the new place so far (’12 brews in so far’ were five of the seven words I wrote down) and I get the impression that minor tweaks are being made to make it perfect, but we tasted the first batch brewed and Jaipur tastes like Jaipur and that makes me smile.

The new site couldn’t be more different than the old place but the personal touch isn’t lost in its size or in how the computer software remotely runs the place. The personal touch isn’t lost because of the people who are making the beer. And that’s what it always comes down to and that’s why I write about beer: it’s all about the people. It’s them who make a place what it is, whether it’s a small outbuilding or a super-modern plant. I met them at The Rake, I drank their beer at The Bull, I went to brew with them for the day, now the new Riverside brewery and every time they impress me more. To paraphrase and add my own spin, Garrett Oliver deconstructed the brewery in his opening speech, and this works just right: Thornbridge successfully combines British tradition, Italian style, the audaciousness of the US craft brewing scene and a Kiwi spirit of fun and adventure. It’s Innovation, Passion and Knowledge and now a lot more beer.

Some notes on the pictures: Notice the bald/grey heads in the shot of Jim and Garrett Oliver. The giant Jaipur is the new pumpclip. That busty lady is part of the new branding for the bottles. The VW is cool. The silver things make beer.

A Beer Night: Number Two

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

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

This is how the night went, in this order.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Beers I Want

I write posts whenever they come to me. I’ve got about 10 ready to go at the mo, maybe more. This one I wrote way back in February and a few things have changed since then so I thought I'd better post it now before it becomes completely redundant…

I read a lot about beers, often books or cruising blogs and websites, checking out tasting notes and other peoples’ words. I guess you could say I’m a beer voyeur, jealous of what others are drinking. I drink a lot of great beer but you always want what you can’t/don’t have. Here is a list of the beers which I really really really want to try.

Dogfish Head’s Pangaea. A beer made with ingredients from all seven continents. That’s cool. It’s water from Antarctica, moscavado sugar from Africa, rice from Asia, hops and malt from Europe and North America (in what order I don’t know), Belgian yeast (from Belgium?!) crystallised ginger from Australasia and quinoa from South America (I think this is right, the DFH website only lists the water, rice and ginger, finishing it with ‘etc…’ which is kinda stupid because I want to know what’s in it and exactly where it came from!). I love the idea behind this beer.

DogFish Head’s 120-Minute IPA. 21% IPA that is boiled with hops for two hours, fermented with hops (fresh batches added daily) and aged on hops. Flipping insane! I wouldn’t turn away the 60- or 90-Minute brews either. [Edit: see this post – I now have a DFH90 coming my way!]

Another DogFish Head. World Wide Stout. An 18% monster. Enough said.

Alesmith’s Speedway Stout. Another 18% imperial monster, yes please. And they do one in a bourbon barrel so let me at that too!

Some of the stuff from Short’s Brewing Company’s, including crazy-awesome beers such as Imperial Black Cherry Porter, Bloody Beer (Bloody Mary-style beer), Peaches and Crème, Uber Goober Oatmeal Stout (it has peanut puree in it!) and Bananas n Blow (banana and cocoa). Nuts.

Russian River Brewing’s Pliny the Younger: Number 2 on BeerAdvocate’s Best Of and a hop bomb. And I’d obviously need the Elder Pliny too, to compare. [Edit: I got the Elder coming too, see this post again]

Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel made from Civet coffee which has been crapped out of a weasel. [Edit: I nearly crapped myself when I saw this at Planet Thanet beer festival in Margate last weekend! I did a double-take, squealed in excitement and then bought two]

Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh. Old Engine Oil aged in malt whisky barrels. Woo!

Westvleteren 12. Obviously. [Edit: Done it here]

Moor's JJJ IPA. A massive English IPA. Hit me!

The Thornbridge St. Petersburgs aged in three different whisky barrels. Can St. Pete’s get any better?! I have to know. [Edit: I now have one of each which I got when I went up to visit for the day]

Fresh Stone Ruination IPA. I adore the bottle and want to see how much better the cask could be in San Diego!

BrewDog made a beer called Zephyr, a 12% IPA aged in grain whisky barrels for 18 months with a load of strawberries. I want that. A lot. [Edit: This is coming soon!!]

If anyone has any Samuel Adams’ Utopia going then I’d like to a have taste of that too, or some of the other 25%+ beers. Are they really beer?!

And I was born in 1984 so I really want a beer from that year. Any beer, as long as it’s drinkable. To be honest, if it isn’t drinkable I’ll take it anyway. I’m thinking a Thomas Hardy’s 1984 would be the most realistic or maybe some Belgian classics.

And here’s some which have made the list since February… the BrewDog/Stone/Cambridge collaboration which is a 10% Black pilsner. Dark Lord because I’m a sucker for the hype and the fact that they release it on ‘Dark Lord Day’.

As you can see the last few months has seen some good beer come my way, but there's still more that I'm searching for and the list will always be evolving. What’s on your ‘I really want to try’ list? And any ideas on how I could get a bottle of beer from 1984?!

FAB POW! Beers with Chocolates

As it’s Easter this weekend it only seemed right to do a beer and chocolate pairing for this edition of the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week (FAB POW!). I thought about the individual pairings and the different chocolates but then I decided something: I will go nuts and throw out a whole load of beautiful pairings for a variety of different chocolates. That’s how I roll people.

Dark Chocolate calls out for something fairly sweet to pick up its natural bitter-sweetness. Dark chocolate brings out the roasted notes in the beer and the beer will bring out the sweetness in the chocolate – it’s a matter of balance and re-balance. You want something quite strong though to hold its own. The BrewDog Paradox’s are all great here as the dark malts in the beer just grip onto the chocolate. Thick and unctuous Barley Wines can do well here too with the dried fruit sweetness and the bitter chocolate getting it on. The other awesome option (and one of the best ways to introduce anyone to beer and food) is a cherry beer, something sweet and sharp to cut the richness of the chocolate. Any cherry beer you like, it just does the job, although my favourites are the cherry lambics.

Milk Chocolate is best with the big, black roasty beers. Strong coffee stout is excellent, enhancing the coffee notes and adding richness to the chocolate, plus the inherent ‘burnt’ and earthy flavours are just wickedly good with the milk chocolate. Mikkeller is a winner or BrewDog’s Coffee Imperial is excellent (while we’re here, coffee stouts are blinding with bananas and I’ve paired them with stellar success to gooey chocolate puddings! That’s the picture, by the way). Alternatively, ‘lighter’ imperial stouts do a fine job, try Sam Smith’s or Thornbridge St Petersburg. Or, Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout or Stone’s Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout make great matches, pairing up the creaminess in the beer and the chocolate. And one of my favourite recent matches is Harviestoun’s Old Engine Oil with milk chocolate covered raisins.

White Chocolate is harder as it’s so creamy and sweet but something like Thornbridge Bracia is stunning, in fact Bracia, because it has an amazing richness which turns near-savoury, works with any chocolate you can throw at it. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout is another anything-goes, chocolate-loving beer and the thick body works with white chocolate really well (it shares that similar savoury note to the Bracia which makes it sing with the sweetness – that’s why you add salt to most chocolate recipes, it loves the sweet-savoury balance!). Goose Island Bourbon County Stout is another monster pairing, picking out all the glorious nutty-berry-sweetness in the beer.

I’ve been trying out chocolate and IPA pairings but haven’t had any excellent ones yet, I figure there must be some out there, probably a stronger beer with juicy, orangy hops? And ideas?

Do you like beer and chocolate together? Or do you love it? What good matches have you had?

Beer Ice Cream: Thornbridge Hark

A while back I made ice cream from BrewDog’s glorious RipTide stout. Ever since then I’ve been in the mood to try out different beers to see what kinds of flavours they bring to ice cream.

There’s so much potential for using different beers to affect different outcomes in dishes. Carbonade, stews, pies, breads, pannacottas and ice cream would all use the same base recipes each time you make them but the beer which is added will change what the final product is like, and that’s pretty cool – it’s something I’ll be experimenting with quite a lot.

Last weekend I opened a 9-pint mini-keg of Thornbridge Hark which I had brought back from my visit to the Brewery. Most of this was for me to drink but I also decided to do a bit of work in the kitchen. This ‘work’ was a carbonade, beer bread and an ice cream (plus this crazy experiment at Butterbeer). The beer is a 4.8% ‘winter warmer’ brewed with a little rye malt, crystallised ginger, coriander and caraway seeds and Seville orange zest. It’s fruity, spicy, zesty, clean and crisp and it’s all underpinned with a fantastic rye bread flavour which is just delicious.

The RipTide ice cream is fantastic. It’s chocolatey and packed with fantastic roast malt flavours, keeping the essence of the beer but fading out before the hops kick in. And in ice cream you don’t really want hops as they leave a dry, strange and unwelcome tang. Saying that, I will soon try a big IPA and see how that comes out, maybe Goose Island as it’s got that huge orange and caramel mix which could be very tasty (it’ll probably need some fruit going in though to emphasize the juicy hops, and it’ll want less of the beer).

When I first tried the Hark I wasn’t sure how it’d translate as an ice cream as it has a decent dose of hops in it, giving a little floral bouquet and some dryness, but what the hell, this was an experiment and I would still have 8 ½ pints left! So I made up the batch and you know what? It’s really good! What you get is like a brown bread/rye bread ice cream with hints of banana and citrusy spice. I gauged it just right on the beer front and there was no hop bitterness coming through to kick the back of the throat. A really good result. And it has left me wanting to try and ice cream sandwich with it in, maybe with a little strawberry jam too! Yum!

I am lazy when it comes to my ice cream base but I am also scared of getting scrambled eggs when making custard, so I simply combine condensed milk with double cream and then add whatever else I want. It’s so easy but it just works perfectly. This hardly needs a recipe but here it is, and it makes around a litre. But here’s a warning: the amount of beer that you add varies between each different one that you choose; 300ml is not a blanket amount that works for every beer and most will want slightly less than this so start at 150ml-200ml and work your way up, trying it along the way.

• 1 can of condensed milk
• 300ml double cream
• 250ml-300ml Thornbridge Hark

Mix them all together and churn it in an ice cream machine then eat. I told you it didn’t need a recipe!

So Beer Ice Cream Take Two (well, technically Take Three as I made a tiny batch of BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran which rocked) was a great success. I’ve got my eye on a strong Belgian ale next, probably Chimay. Then I’ll be testing out the IPA.

Any suggestions of other beers which could or do make amazing ice creams?

If you had to...

It’s Thirsty Thursday so let’s throw out another If you had to… conundrum.

It’s inspired by my evening at the London Drinker last night. The two beers at the top of my hit list were Thornbridge’s Jaipur and Fuller’s London Porter (cask!). Two fantastic beers with similar ABVs (5.9 and 5.4 respectively) but two completely different beers. So…

If you had to... would you rather drink Pale beers or Dark beers for the rest of your drinking days?

No arguments about the spectrum of brown, I’m ignoring that, this is: Pale Beer (lagers, IPAs, golden ales, etc. – anything lighter than amber) vs. Dark Beer (mild, dark ales, stout, porter, etc. – we all know Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, so anything darker than that). Go!

My Visit to Thornbridge Brewery

What makes a few breweries rise up above all the others? What makes them special and unique? What makes them who they are? If you ever get a chance to visit Thornbridge Brewery you’ll find the answers to these questions. I first met the guys from Thornbridge at The Rake a few months ago. I had a lot of great things to say about them. This week I went ‘up north’ to the brewery with Matt, the same Matt from this Beer Night, to have a look around. It started early. Very early. I decided the best bet would be to train it there and back, but this meant eight trains overall. Eight. We arrived at Dronfield - home of the mighty Coach and Horses pub - at 10am and Kelly Ryan, the brewery manager, was there to greet us and drive us to work/the brewery (his car is so retro-cool, by the way, that he had Metallica on tape playing as we started driving!). Kelly is an amazing guy (he even sent me a text to remind me to bring a sandwich for lunch). He’s literally overflowing with beer knowledge, passion, love and enthusiasm. And he doesn’t stop. I think he only walked when we were there to slow him down, the rest of the time he was running (actually running). Reluctant Scooper has been to visit for a brew day (his article is so brilliant, you must read it) and he uses the term ‘ceaselessly bounding’. That works for me. The brewery is in the grounds of Thornbridge Hall and it’s a stunning place to go to work. The brewery is tucked away inconspicuously out the back. There’s a small brewhouse, an office, a lab and a few storage units. Inside the brewhouse is all the stuff you need to make beer (I won’t go into all that, read it in a book or here). Dave Pickering was in there brewing and Matt Clarke was running around, sorting out casks. At Thornbridge they brew one beer a day and have up to six fermentation tanks doing their stuff. The best thing: this place smells amazing! It’s full of that gorgeous ovaltine malt from the mash and there was a constant orange and tropical fruit hop sweetness. Lovely stuff. I couldn’t do math or science in school, it just didn’t stick. English was more my thing. After spending a day at Thornbridge I wish I’d been able to get the sciences because they make it sound so cool (they are number one in the periodic table of cool). I was completely fascinated by the whole scientific side to beer and it’s given me a greater depth of understanding about this stuff that I love to drink. And Kelly doesn’t make it geeky either. All the talk of science-stuff was glamorous; it wasn’t white coats, it was leather jackets. They were brewing Jaipur while we were there and we got to spend some time with Dave as he was brewing. He’s a really great guy, full of that same Thornbridge passion and knowledge which fills the air. And he was patient too as we kept asking questions about what he was doing and getting in his way as he tried to do his job. (He fancies brewing a smoky beer to go with the summer barbeques and he also said about making a small beer alongside Bracia, here’s my idea: take the small beer and age it on smoked oak chips. I have no idea if that’ll work or if it’s even possible but it sounds mighty good to me!). Dave managed to keep us quiet for a while as we cleaned out the mash tun. I went in with instructions of ‘push it towards the hole’. ‘I can do that’ I thought. I climbed a ladder and looked down. It was a pit of spent, hot, wet grain that looked like dark porridge. And it was pretty far down. It was at this point (the top of the ladder, no turning back) that a few things dawned on me: 1. I am terrible with heights. 2. I can go up ladders but not back down them. 3. I have a fear of sinking sand. Shit. ‘Just jump in’ Dave said, which was easy for him to say standing on the hard floor. With vertigo making everything swirl, the heat from below increasing the tension and a certain amount of pride at stake, I clambered up onto the narrow rim of the mash tun. Completely unstable and fearing a rather nasty fall (which only exacerbated the vertigo) I jumped in and slowly sunk about a foot, encased in a round tank, hot grain closing in, still sinking, not stopping. I gripped onto the side for dear life, the heat engulfing me, pulling me down. I almost yelled for help. But thankfully I stopped sinking. I was stable. I couldn’t move my legs but I wasn’t going further down. And I actually started to like the comfort of the heat through the wellies and the sweet smell of the grain as I began pushing and shoveling. Matt stood at the other end as I shoveled the hot stuff at him, frequently overzealously, burning his hands and making a real mess. Oops. With the tank clean I had to get back out again and I remembered my fear/inability of getting down ladders. Oh boy. I still had to climb out of the mash first, precariously balancing on the edge, trying not to look down as I made an awkward crab shape and tried to shuffle on to the ladder. I pretty much burnt my hand on the copper but I wasn’t letting go. I got a foot on the top wrung, then the other foot made it. It was a pretty sorry sight seeing me sweaty, shaking, covered in grist and coming down a ladder backwards, but I made it! We looked around the brewery some more and saw a few special things, including the sherry and Madeira casks that were used to make the Alliance trilogy. And you want to know something super-cool? These giant oak casks are now filled with Bracia! Yup, I know, how flipping awesome does that sound! We saw the special ingredients for one of their next brews: cocoa nibs, star anise and mandarin peel. We smelt plenty of hops (it may be geeky but I just love smelling the different hops). We tried some St. Petersburg stout aged on cocoa nibs which Stefano (the head brewer and all-round cool guy who had been busy in the office until then) declared to be very good (this declaration is a great sign for a beer; his tasting of it seemed to last forever, I was hoping that by saying I thought it was great I hadn’t made a complete palate faux pas, but a smile soon appeared and his eyes lit up. Phew.) We also got to check out some yeast which is analysed after every brew (fun science stuff which involved looking into a microscope!). They were checking some Jaipur yeast. Here comes a brutal yet beautiful truth of brewing Jaipur: the yeast dies to make it. It’s the ultimate sacrifice. It makes that beer and clearly realises that it has reached a certain pinnacle in its life and it can do no more. There’s something wonderfully romantic about that, I think. And we were even part of a little beer tasting in the office which allowed us to try three beers by Odell’s in Colorado. There aren’t many of their beers in the UK so this was pretty cool. The star was undoubtedly the IPA. Great stuff. When Kelly and Stef taste other breweries beers’ it’s clear to see why the Thornbridge beer is so good; their palates are sharper than Gordon Ramsay’s knife (and his tongue) and they pick up scents like hunting dogs. They swirl and sniff and pull out what they get, one flavour or aroma after the other, chasing them around the glass, searching for them. In the office we got to speak to Stef more. There were discussions of funk (Brettanomyces, that is) and barrel aging and I had a load of questions about the move to the new, bigger brewery. He is sorting it all out and the next few months are going to be crazy-busy for the guys up there. But the move will mean more beer so we’ll be able to get their stuff in more places and slake our thirsts much easier. They’ll also be able to knock out more bottles (they are playing around with bottle conditioning too, trying different yeasts, etc – more science stuff) which is a great thing. I am already excited about going up to visit the new place once it is up and running (eight trains you say?! I don’t care, I’d travel on double that to be there!) After work we hit their pub, the Coach and Horses. This is a dreamy place which is run by Kelly’s lovely girlfriend Catherine. We were in awe of the beer selection - bottled and cask. There were five Thornbridgers (not a typo) on cask and we started, in the only way possible, with Jaipur. It was just simply perfect. Biscuit and toffee malt base and then tropical fruits and hops-a-plenty giving a crisp and elegant finish. I could drink this all night. It was served through a sparkler though, a thing curious to my southern eyes. I asked for my second beer without the sparkler and to be honest I couldn’t taste a difference. It did however look better with the sparkler fitted. Kelly changed out of his work shirt and then it was just three mates at the pub talking about beer and music and TV and films and laser eye surgery and Korean food. Kelly then brought out his homemade lambic. Yeah, he ‘brews’ at home too. He’d taken some of their Blackthorn Ale (I was drinking that when he brought the lambic out, very nice indeed) and popped it into a bottle and left it to do its stuff for 18 months (there was some other detail to it, something about taking it from the pipes, I don’t know – Kelly, help me out here!). And it was really good. Creamy yet sharp yet sweet. Nice one. Dinner came next. Kelly, Matt and myself ordered three dishes and shared it around (it was a sharing kind of day). The oxtail was rich and oh-so-juicy, the brisket was like butter and the belly pork with Toulouse sausage and beans (a deconstructed cassoulet, if you like) was just brilliant (wicked crackling!). The menu is great, the food is proper pub grub and delicious and the portions are huge - this is a must-visit place. With dinner I had a pint of McConnels, their vanilla stout, which was magical (and made with real vanilla pods). It’s smooth, rich and roasty with a sweet hint of the vanilla. I’d wanted to try this for ages and wasn’t disappointed. Sadly there wasn’t time for dessert because we had to go. We didn’t want to, that’s for sure, but we had to. We did have time to split a bottle of Bracia before we left - a great way to end the day. And what an amazing day it was. A tiny insight into what’s going on up at Thornbridge and what’s to come. It was truly exciting and fascinating. It has made me taste better, think better and understand beer better. I now know the back-breaking effort that goes into making their beers, I’ve seen where it all comes from, I see everything that they do in the minute detail that they do it. I left invigorated and it has made me realise just why I love beer. Why it means so much. Why I spend the hours that I do searching for it, drinking it, reading about it, talking about it and writing about it. It makes all of that worthwhile when you see that there is so much passion on the other side and you see what the beer means to its brewers in places like Thornbridge. Innovation, passion and knowledge are their tag lines and you cannot fail to go anywhere without these being entirely evident. They know so much, they clearly love what they do and they want to try new things. There is so much energy around the place, it just feels right being around them, it feels comfortable and we felt welcome even though we were interrupting their hectic day with silly questions. But they all had so much time. And they are so generous too. Beer is for sharing and when you’ve got such great knowledge it just spills out and you cannot fail to learn an awesome amount from them. And the beer stands up to all of this. It is second to none. You just have to see the piles and piles of awards they have stacked up in the office to know this. You just have to try the beer to know this. On the train home I was sad to have left. I wanted to keep a piece of what I felt at the brewery with me. I wanted that feeling every day. But then I realised something. And it’s here as I sit down now with a Jaipur. We do get to feel a part of the brewery, we do get to experience it and we get it every time we drink their beer. That beer that we have in our hand is prepared with so much passion and enthusiasm that we taste the essence of the brewery, something special deep within it, something intangible, something missing from so many other beers. Their beers are ‘never ordinary’ - they are spectacular. They are special. The brewery is special. The people are special. Thornbridge is a remarkable place. And I thank them for allowing us that little insight into their world. If you want to buy their beers then go to beermerchants as they have the widest selection available that I've seen, including the Alliances, Bracia and the ever-so rare barrel-aged St Petersburgs. You can also get mini-casks from the brewery. And Kelly Ryan has a blog which you should be reading here.

FAB POW! Thornbridge Halcyon with Extra Mature Cheddar

Here we go. A hip new serial feature for Pencil&Spoon which was dreamt up yesterday while I was having a run. FAB POW! The Food and Beer Pairing of the Week!

Simple really, I just say a great pairing that I’ve had and you can tell me any cool ones that you’ve had. We can share the wealth of eating and drinking under a nicely onomatopoeic title that makes it sound camply cool like a comic book superhero fighting the bad guy (in fact it sort of is like a superhero and his sidekick, beer and food I mean, fighing together to save the world).

I’m starting with a themed choice as today I am going up to Thornbridge Brewery for the day (I'll be on the train when this auto-posts itself at 9a.m). FAB POW! Thornbridge Halcyon with Extra Mature Cheddar. The beer's a 7.7% IPA and it’s got that essential feature of the heavily-hopped beer: it drives you crazy wanting more. It’s a rollercoaster of sweetness and bitterness, one follows the other in a vicious circle, and it’s addictive. The caramel base lies beneath the citrusy fruit smack. Put this up against the kind of cheese which makes you wince with its strength (you know the one, it makes you mouth pucker) and you get a heavenly match. The cheese fills your mouth and the beer flows over it, mixing on your palate, lifting it up and away in different directions; tangy, sweet, salty, sharp, bitter, more sweet. And it’s BIG. It’s uncompromising. But it’s brilliant. The beer is fruitier and the cheese creamier. And don’t just take my word for it, here is what Kelly Ryan from Thornbridge says. And if you want the beer then Beermerchants are selling it. It’s one of the very best IPAs you can buy in the UK (Beermerchants have also got Bracia and Jaipur which are stunners). There it is. FAB POW! done. Anyone had anything good recently? I wanna know!