Friday 19 August 2011
Great British Lagers
Saturday 30 April 2011
Rome Beer Trip: Veni, Vidi, Vici, I Got Drunk
Tuesday 5 April 2011
Avery Brown Dredge: The Video Blog
Wednesday 23 February 2011
FABPOW! Jambalaya
Monday 6 September 2010
Pilsen: The Movie
While we were in Pilsen it seemed like a camera crew were following our every move. At one point I got a bit freaked out (I was tired and drunk at the time, no doubt) and thought that we were actually trapped in some kind of Chuck Palahnuik story and were the unwitting stars of some horrible live action drama… thankfully it all ended well and they turned out to be very nice chaps who were making a film about beer in Pilsen for Czech Tourism. They were filming with the wonderful Evan Rail showing the sights of Pilsen and PilsnerFest, plus a few bars and some of the underground tunnels (where you can see us in hair nets and hard hats). This film does a pretty good job of showing the two days we had there, which were great fun (UPDATE: I've changed the video below so that it now includes my introduction - we were all asked to do a short intro and they've sent us our own videos. The rest of the video is exactly the same).
Monday 24 May 2010
Style, Sight, Reputation and the Perception of Taste
Sunday 17 January 2010
The Hop Press: Beers to Talk About
Tuesday 12 January 2010
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrel-Aged Beers
Monday 21 September 2009
Innis & Gunn
In my early drinking days I got all excited about every new Innis & Gunn in its lovely box. I think I’ve had eight different I&Gs, including an IPA, Blonde, the Rum Cask, the Triple Matured, Canadian Oak and a couple of ‘vintages’. My favourite was always the Cask Strength version which was 7.7% and came in a red box. I served it with a vanilla crème brulee once and that was simply perfect.
But I hadn’t had an Original for ages and my taste has changed a lot since then. It also seems that my memory has warped and turned the beer from wonderful to weird, something I used to like but not anymore. But I couldn’t remember so I bought a bottle to find out for definite.
It had probably been two years since I had my last bottle of Original I&G and I expected to be taken straight back to my first taste of it but instead it just tasted alien. It wasn’t as sweet as I remembered but it was everything else I expected - oaky yet smooth, slightly buttery and toasty with a definite citrusy finish to it – yet it just didn’t taste right. A few years ago this was such a familiar flavour but I didn’t really enjoy drinking it this time around (maybe I just didn’t like it, maybe it was because it didn’t taste how I wanted it to, maybe I was expecting not to like it...).
It seems that I&G is a polarising beer in a love/hate kind of way (I think it’s the buttery sweetness that gets the thumbs up or down). I love it for getting me started on other beers but the taste just didn’t live up to the memory that I had of it. I’ve got another bottle in the cupboard so maybe I’ll give it one more try before I completely write it off. But the question is: Innis & Gunn, yes or no?
And here’s some bonus material: a video I shot in July of the Canadian Oak I&G (sent to me by R&R). I remember enjoying this one a lot more than the Original.
Tuesday 11 August 2009
GBBF Take 2
I arrived just before midday and sped to see what was left of the BSF. I saw nothing but silver shelfing and an empty fridge. But as I looked further along there was a huddle of people and I saw one, single cask being dispensed. To my delight it was Stone’s Pale Ale, a beer I’ve never had before. Result! It was pretty good, it tasted a little beyond its best but all the essential pieces were in place and it made for a decent starter beer. I also clocked the fridge still-full of US bottles and eyed that up for later…
Fearing the fridge would clear-out I grabbed some bottles: Ballast Point’s Big Eye IPA (which I also bought on Tuesday and brought home – see the video below!) and Deschutes Black Butte Porter (I also wanted some lagers but the queue for this was almost unending!). The Big Eye IPA is 100% Centennial which was exactly why I had to have it. At GBBF it tasted a little sticky, a little tangy with lots of tropical fruit and a great big bitter finish. I’ve opened the bottle at home and it was stunning: a big bowl of oranges, bitter, juicy, fruity and just all-out-awesome. The Black Butte Porter was classic new-skool porter: full-bodied, chocolatey, smooth, sweet, nutty and very good indeed.
Then Woodland’s Midnight Stout an oily, smoky, full-flavoured stout and a total surprise of a brew. And it was similar in many ways to Cairngorm’s Black Gold which is super-smoky, meaty, roasty and chocolatey. Excellent UK stouts like this are great to find. Following this was DarkStar’s Espresso Stout which was all coffee-bitter and dark and mouth coating; another cracking dark beer from the UK. Smiles all round.
HSB was on and we had to have that one. Matt and I used to go to a pub near university and drink four pints of this while doing the quiz each Thursday. It was £2.50 a pint and just fantastic. The beer is still great and a taste of a memory (see Matt again in this post as well as Lee), although I’m sure it used to be 5.2% before Fuller’s took over the brewing of it?
I love Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout so went for the Wye Valley Bitter which was fruity with a dry hoppy finish but ultimately a bit boring. To compensate for this I had a Montegioco Mummia, one of the beers I most enjoyed on Tuesday. I could drink buckets of this stuff, it’s that good (although none of my mates liked it?!).
There we go. Another busy drinking day. I had the intention of drinking all UK but got distracted by the US and Italian bottles. I was very impressed with the UK stuff that I did drink but then I pretty much only shot for the names I knew. There were disappointments and there was great surprises and overall I was very impressed by the quality of the UK beers on show throughout the festival.
So that’s GBBF 2009 done. What a festival. It was so much better than I anticipated.
Oh and here’s the video of me drinking Ballast Point Big Eye IPA. It’s one seriously good beer.
Saturday 1 August 2009
BrewDog Tokyo* Yeah
Take a mouthful and it’s big. But then 18.2% is pretty massive. It’s sweet first then into darkest dark chocolate and more fruit but then it flips over and gets floral and hoppy bitter. The cherry sweetness is excellent leading it into the darker flavours and the booze. It’s fascinating and intoxicating. The finish is long and it lingers all around; not just on the tongue but around the whole mouth and in the air and it calls you back in for another go. Then there’s a hotness to it, a freshness that develops as the beer warms, but this isn’t bad and if you put the bottle away for a few years (the best before date is 2019!) then this’ll mellow out.
It’s a remarkable beer. I was drinking it for well over an hour and enjoyed each sip. Now I’m going to buy some more and put it away. And if you go to the website then type TOKYO in as the discount code to get 20% off. This means if you get six bottles you essentially get free postage and each beer costs less than £6. That’s a bargain. Binge away people.
Sunday 24 May 2009
As-Live Tasting: BrewDog How To Disappear Completely
17.14pm. It’s poured and the picture’s been taken. It’s darker than expected; a deep caramel colour. Time to get in there and see whether a superheroically bitter beer can work at 3.5%!
17.16pm. Wow, what a nose!! It’s an immense monster; a billowing tower of olfactory pleasure. The hops are properly condensed and turned up to way beyond 11. The first and most startling aroma is fresh tobacco and tea leaves; it’s a musty sweetness, intoxicating. Beyond that it’s grapefruit and tangerines roasted to just before burning point. There’s also caramel too, in a toasted sweet bread kind of way and possibly overcooked vanilla custard. It’s really something to dig your snout into.
17.19pm. Before I dive in, a word on balance. Balance in beer is good. It’s that delicate see-saw between sweet and bitter. Anything that tips the scales at either extremes loses some of its enjoyment, in my opinion. It’s pretty tough to get body into a 3.5% beer, and not that easy to get a heck of a lot of sweetness but it is easy to make it bitter by adding a lot of hops. What the hell will come of this beer?! I’m going in, watch yourselves tastebuds!
17.22pm. Oh my goodness… The words are in there but not coming out… need another mouthful… woah that’s HUGE! Bitter yes, but it’s got such a great mouthfeel (how much crystal malt did you use?!). It’s toasty grain for the smallest fraction of time before your tongue gets beaten into a hop submission. And it’s unabashedly unrelenting. It doesn’t roll in, it smashes in. It’s that super-condensed kind of bitterness, a tangy, clawing, fill your mouth bitterness. But I think it works…
17.26pm. I’m feeling a bit dizzy with that hop-induce fug of calm. This is another intoxicating brew from the furthest reaches of outer Scotland. It’s intoxicating because it flips your head inside out. It feels like 8.5% not 3.5%. It’s as bitter as a beer can go. And it’s got a roll-around-your-tongue thickness. Have you had Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA? It’s like that in the mouth.
17.30pm. I just read the BrewDog blog about this beer and it was mash-hopped and first wort hopped, two virtually unheard of practices. The dry hopping was pretty epic too; 15HL of beer was abused by 20kg of hops! And it really does showcase the raw brutality of the hop in its most condensed form.
17.33pm. I said in a previous post that this is brewed with the same hops as Stone’s Ruination IPA (Columbus and Centennial) but that it’s half the ABV and double the bitterness. It doesn’t taste like Ruination IPA. It doesn’t taste like anything I’ve had before.
17.36pm. My Grandad, my Dad’s Dad, used to smoke a pipe. I remember going to his house and pretending to smoke it as a young boy. It had a very distinct smell. It was him, plus the pipe, plus its leathery case, plus the sweet flecks of tobacco. It’s a surprising olfactory madeleine; a re-enactment of 15 years ago and a memory which I didn’t know I had.
17.41pm. I’m listening to Radiohead’s How To Disappear Completely. It seems only right as that’s what the beer is named after. The combination of beer and song works strangely well in a juxtaposition kind of way; it’s a contemplatively haunting song while the beer is a 1,000 mile per hour hop rocket which makes you dozy. The lyrics have a haunting similarity too. Strobe lights and blown speakers, fireworks and hurricanes, I’m not here, this isn’t happening.
17.48pm. I’m fascinated by this beer. I love bitterness and its potentially innate physiological powers, which I wrote about here. It’s a beer which commands your attention; the fear is that it might just be able to kill you. But I like it (of course I do, it’s a BrewDog for goodness sake). I like how it has got just enough sweetness to make it drinkable and I love how it hovers just below the that’s-too-bitter threshold; it’s an unbalanced balancing act.
17.55pm. I can’t decide if I want another now or not? Half of me does (the pleasure-pain loving Id) and half of me doesn’t (the sensible side, the Ego). I can smell the barbeque from where I sit so I probably won’t; it’s possibly the least food-friendly beer I’ve ever tasted (remember the Hardcore IPA As-Live?). Just don’t bother having it with dinner unless it’s a meal you hate.
17.58pm. As the BBQ is getting nearer I think I’ll open a bottle each of 77 lager and Zeitgeist to eat with it. And if you didn’t read it, check out the latest food and BrewDog stuff that I did here (believe it or not it’s 77 and Zeitgeist with a BBQ!! – what a coincidence!). Oh yeah, you can buy How To Disappear Completely from the brewery here. Give it a try and let me know what you think.
Bonus Features... I also shot a video of me opening this beer which I have posted on my youtube channel. I’ll probably start uploading a few videos over there which I don’t put on this blog. There are some pretty cool video beer reviewers out there on youtube and they are worth a look.
Tuesday 19 May 2009
When Video Beer Reviews Go Wrong...
She stood next to the full bottle and empty glass (a very nice glass it was too) and just kicked back with her right leg, shattering the glass!! I couldn’t believe it, as you can probably tell by my angry/worried face (my girlfriend’s going to shout at me!). Anyway, I cleaned up and then went and shot the video inside and was gutted that the beer was not as good as expected – the malt was super sweet and the hops had faded super fast into a dry, floral and pithy finish that was the shadow of what it could and should have been. Don’t you just hate that? Never mind, at least the dog didn’t kick the bottle over and break that, so I still got to try the beer. I hate to think what my reaction would’ve been if the dog had smashed the bottle! This is why I have a fish.
Friday 1 May 2009
The Session 27: Beyond the Black & Tan
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOrTrFQ0FNBb_asbKhx17h4oQXd35-VXYZNGPUys2CPjKVmB60eV-niNtc6oL-U690jXZlRmIj1hlGhZCGw8OdiCxz7wUFJME7m9OUY3EwDKfTEGN6sGq7bmkGYoEVgmQACf8hGXua3DwK/s200/session.jpg)
For this month’s Session (hosted by Beer at Joe's), which asks us to look beyond the Black & Tan, I wanted to try something I’ve been thinking about for a while - mixing a strong stout with a cherry beer. I had a bottle of Sam Smith’s Cherry beer that’s been lying around for ages (too long - it was a year past the drink by date!) and was going to be used in the kitchen. I also had a Guinness Foreign Extra in the cupboard so I thought, ‘hey, why not?!’ I wanted to pour it so that there was a divide between the two liquids, or at least a blending of colour from black down to red. I’ve seen and done this before in a bar where I used to work. This mixed (in a truly hideous cocktail) a clear, citrusy alcopop with Guinness. If it’s poured correct (over the back of a spoon) it stays as two very separate colours in the glass and looks amazing (like this), even if it tastes like hell. Here’s the video of me pouring it and tasting it.
So another interesting mix. It didn’t work as well as I’d hoped in terms of the way it looked or the way it tasted, but it was worth trying. And that was the purpose of this Session - to try something new. As for my thoughts on this mixing beers game? I’m still sceptical but I won’t give up just yet.
Sunday 19 April 2009
To Garrett Oliver, Cheers!
I am a big fan of Fuller’s, and think their ESB and Golden Pride are both superb beers. The ESB is 5.9%, full of toasted malt, toffee, bread and a bowlful of fruits – oranges, marmalade and apples. And it has a nice hoppy finish to it which clings inside your mouth calling you to take another giant gulp of beer. The Golden Pride is altogether bigger, but at 8.5% it’s still gluggable, full of condensed roast fruit sweetness, toast, strawberries, honey, marmalade, blackcurrant, toffee and booze. I’ve had it off cask before and that’s incredible too.
Put them together and what do you get? A Peacemaker. Go to page 135 of Oliver’s book and he recounts inventing the beer. Reading this I decided that I had to give it a go and raise my glass to the man. And you know what? It’s really damn good. Thick and rich, loads of toasty grain flavour, lots of fruit, roasted apples and oranges, strawberry and some honeycomb. The Golden Pride sweetness lifts it up and the ESB’s hops balance it all out - the combo just works. And it’s great with cheeses too, especially stronger ones.
But did I just mix a beer?! I think I did. Well, here are my thoughts on mixing beers, as I become more and more curious about it. As I say in the video, I always thought that a beer was a complete thing as it was. The brewer doesn’t slave away to make a beer for us to then mix it up with something else. It’d be like reading a page of one book and then reading a page of another book and trying to make the story work as one. But I am coming around to the idea now, my cheeky and curious side wanting to experiment. I tried Thornbridge’s Jaipur IPA with their St. Petersburg imperial stout and kind of enjoyed it (it was a little like Great Divide’s Yeti) and I have a desire to try a cherry beer with a nice, strong stout. One of the craziest black and tan’s I’ve heard is called Heaven and Hell and comes Dogfish Head. It mixes their 120-Minute IPA with their Worldwide Stout. That’s a 21% IPA with an 18+% stout! Blimey! The whole mixing thing opens up a new sphere of beer drinking, a realm of creativity for the drinker to play brewmaster: a bonus level for the extreme beer fan.
Mixing is something that I’ll probably experiment with a little bit, but not too much. It’s the sort of thing that can be done at beer festivals or when you’ve got a glut of bottles open, but other than that you risk ruining two good beers. But if you do want to try a cool blend then a Peacemaker kicks ass. Although finish two pints of it and it’ll kick your ass!
So here’s to Garrett Oliver. Your book is a great source of inspiration. And your beers are pretty good too. Cheers.
A footnote on more slapdash and uncouth mixing. I've had turbo shandies before which mixes lager with alcopops like Smirnof Ice and at university we drank gin and tonic shandies by mixing half a pint of lager with a G&T. I remember that being really quite good then…
Monday 23 March 2009
Biere des Moulins or Beer in a Plastic Bottle
When I saw the curious green bottle in the booze section I just had to buy it and try it. I’d never seen beer in a plastic bottle with screw top before. Beer lives in casks, kegs, barrels, bottles, glasses and cans. Plastic bottles are the realm of fizzy pop and cheap cider.
But why isn’t beer stored and sold in plastic bottles? History, I guess, is the first answer – beer bottles have always been made of glass. And it’s the brown glass bottles which do better than green or clear bottles because it restricts certain light photochemistry from occurring and funking up the beer. Plastic suggests cheap and throw-away and it just doesn’t feel right in your drinking hand - the weight and solid grip of the glass bottle is so much more comfortable. And the plastic screw top, don’t even get me started on that one, it was like opening a bottle of Sprite. Literally. Maybe it’s environmentally better? No… I’m pretty certain that glass wins that one too. So why bother with plastic? Maybe it’s a question of price…
On to the beer then, the important stuff. I didn’t expect much from it, which was good because I didn’t get much. The bottle had a slight amount of ‘give’ to it before it was opened which suggested a lack of carbonation. It cost 99p for 500ml which tells me it isn’t out to challenge the premium beer crowd. It has a poncy French name and describes itself as a Continental Lager, and then it suggests that it’s good with light meats (light meat? WTF’s that?). It’s made by InBev, by the way. And the taste? Well, it’s like a 3.8% lager, bland and uninspiring, a bit insipid, slightly eggy and metallic with a faint biscuity base and hops which you can almost miss. It’s fine, I guess, if you drink that kind of thing. I didn’t finish the bottle and I won’t buy another one except for novelty value or to enter as a dud on a beer night. Still, it was an interesting little taster.
Anyone know of any other plastic bottles of beer and are they any good?
And why the bath I hear you say? Well, I thought I’d open it in there because I wanted new places to shoot videos. Plus there was some hope that it might inspire me (I get a lot of good ideas in the shower…). I wasn’t inspired this time but maybe I’ll try again some day. Maybe not. At least the lighting is good thanks to the gorgeous sunny day, the perfect kind of day for a lovely, chilled bottle of Biere des… Don’t even go there.
Sunday 8 March 2009
Westvleteren 12: The Psychology Behind Drinking the Best Beer in the World
I think there’s a whole load of complex psychology surrounding these world class beers: We know their story, know their reputation, we expect something life changing from them. But do we actually get it, like actually actually get it?
Westvleteren has a story which raises it up into beer mythology (this post explains it well). It’s hard to get hold of. The brewery tells you what beer is for sale and when. They only make enough to sustain themselves at the monastery. You have to call the brewery/monastery between certain short windows and you can only pick it up between another short window of a few days. It’s limited to three crates per car per month. And you can’t buy all the beers at the same time (they also have a 6 and an 8). And you aren’t supposed to sell it on. It’s a tough one to get hold of. It is coveted. It is prized.
I’ve wanted to try this beer for, like, ever. Everyone wants to drink the best beer in the world, don’t they? But is its status self-perpetuating? And is there a deeper psychological process which makes the drinker expect something amazing and therefore they convince themselves that what they are drinking is amazing? Or on the opposite end - do we raise it up only to face disappointment?
As hard as I tried while drinking it, it is impossible to clear my head of thoughts of greatness. I’ve had the beer for a while now, just waiting, calling me, teasing me with promises. I’d built it up in my mind. I didn’t want to be disappointed. I wanted to be moved. But what if I wasn’t? What if I didn’t particularly care for it? Or didn’t think it’s as good a whole load of other beers? Does that make my tastes wildly different from everyone else? Does that make me – somehow - less of a beer drinker?
Maybe the only real way to try the beer objectively is to have it totally blind. But that’s no fun, is it? This is something that you want to know that you are enjoying. There’s an anticipation to it, an excitement. I want to know that I’m drinking it, I want to pop the golden cap off myself, I want to pour it carefully; I want to be involved with it. But then I am raising its status just by going through this process and loving the careful steps.
I opened a Westveteren 8 last week. It was a good beer but I expected more of it. Beer Advocate has it as the 8th best beer in the world and Rate Beer has it as 18. I thought it was just good. Good isn’t enough! Mind blowing just about suffices. The whole thing with the ratings websites is that they measure hundreds and thousands of votes. Any beer could score maximum points and any could score a big fat zero. What puts a beer in the top few is consistency: if a beer consistently scores high marks then it’ll rise
So what about the Westvleteren 12? It’s 10.2%, brewed with pale malt and dark candy sugar, hopped with Northern Brewer and yeast from Westmalle. It’s unfiltered and bottle conditioned (this book told me that). Making the video was difficult. It’s hard enough saying the right things anyway but when your head is filled with ideas of ‘world beating brilliance’ while trying to be objective and trying to remember what you want to say, it’s tough. And in honesty I am affected by the beer. By the hype. By the lore. And I know this.
When its golden crown comes off it pops gloriously. A funnel of fog wisps out. It pours a russet brown and the aroma booms out the bowl glass. The carbonation is too much to begin, jumping around in my mouth; I want it less lively, I want it to slide around my mouth not bounce around. The nose is dried fruit (you might be able to tell that from the video!), cherry, rum, toasted brown bread and an earthy, woodiness. There’s a lot going on. In the mouth it’s equally complex and rich; rammed with dried fruits, dark cherries, hints of chocolate, booze, toasted grain, brown sugar and nuts. It’s a glorious beast of a beer.
Yet the whole time I was fighting between the thoughts of ‘the best beer’ and the enjoyment of the beer. If anything the pressure of drinking it affected my enjoyment. I wanted more from it but I was also always expecting more to come. Yes it’s a superb beer and just the opening of it feels special, but I genuinely think this affects how the beer is rated overall. And would this beer still score so highly if it was easily available, like the Rochefort or St Bernardus beers?
So is Westvleteren 12 the best beer in the world? It wasn’t the best beer that I’ve ever tasted. But it was excellent (I think it was excellent anyway, maybe my mind was playing tricks?!). In my honest opinion it was too young (much like the 8 I had – the use by date is 19.11.11 if that means anything to anyone?). It needed longer to develop. There was a tinny harshness at the end which would mellow with a few years in the cupboard, I’m sure. I’ll try it again in a year or so and share it with a few beer-loving buddies (I will accept shotguns on the remaining bottles that I have, that’s the fairest way!). Right now it wouldn’t make my ‘Top 10’ list or my own ‘Best Of’ but I’m very glad to have opened it; this was the most excited I was about opening a beer yet and the whole process fascinated me. Although I was left wanting more. I guess it’d be like finally getting a date Cheryl Cole/Sienna Miller and then they leave before dessert (and on the dessert menu is something you really want!). Something like that.
Have you had it and what did you think? Do you reckon the psychology behind opening it plays some part in the way the beer is experienced? And this doesn’t just go for Westvleteren, what about all the other ‘great’ beers? Or great books/movies/albums…
(FYI - and don’t think less of me - I got my beer from ebay! And the suit is because I was drinking the beer after graduating from my Master’s, read about that here. Oh yeah, and visit my youtube channel, it's a veritable hub of beery activity)
Sunday 15 February 2009
Beer and Cheese 1: Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout
Today comes the first of a series of beer and cheese pairings to try different beers with a range of different cheeses to see what works with what. The possibilities are endless.
Today’s, the first, takes CAMRA’s choice for the 2008 Bottled Beer of the Year: Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout from Wye Valley Brewery. It’s a 4.6% stout and very good indeed. It’s smooth, gluggable, full of fantastic roasted grain flavours, chocolate and coffee with a lingering dry hoppy finish.
It’s got a really cool logo with the voluptuous pin-up of Dorothy draped across it. The beer itself is pretty sexy too; dark, enticing, complex and full of flavour. The bottle says it’s good with cheeses, but doesn’t mention specifics, so this little impromptu tasting was to see how it worked with a few cheeses that I had in the fridge. I hadn’t tried the beer out of the bottle and I hadn’t tried it with any of the cheeses before I recorded it, so it was all off the cuff.
The Brie was creamy and mild but the beer did nothing to enhance the flavours, and what you most want is for the match of cheese and beer to lift off into a new direction, not lie flaccid and flat and skirt around each other awkwardly.
The sharp, creamy goats’ cheese was much better: the cheese is full of goaty punch and the beer sweeps in and lifts the palate with plenty of sweetness while the cheese still lingers throughout. This was a surprisingly good match.
The mature cheddar was Black Bomber from Snowdonia Cheese Company, and it’s fantastically strong, tangy and rich. The match was okay but not great; the cheese is probably too much for the beer to handle and the beer doesn’t get its chance to shine.
The Colston Basset stilton is one of my favourite cheeses there is. It’s creamy, smooth, strong and delicious. It worked really well with the stout, softening the coffee roast flavour and bringing out the sweetness within. And eating this after, with some crackers, it was an even better combo.
The final cheese was thrown in as a Valentine’s special - a white stilton with strawberries and white chocolate. It’s almost unpalatably sweet, kind of crazy, mainly full of strawberry flavour with the mildly sharp stilton underneath. It’s interesting. But it did work fairly well with the stout. The strawberry and chocolate paired up and the cheese and the roast flavours danced around a bit.
I say in the video that the goats’ cheese works best, but when I tried them all again after it was the stilton which I enjoyed the most. The best thing about this was the actual beer itself. It’s a really great bottled stout. And while none of the matches were amazing, there were some good ones.
Sunday 8 February 2009
A Storming Lemon Cheesecake
I've decided to try out some video blogging. I have a youtube channel which you can view at www.youtube.com/user/markdredge. While you are there, check out Zak Avery's brilliant channel or click here.
If you’ve seen the video above then you won’t need much of an intro to this dish (this is my first attempt at a video, so be kind! EDIT: I've uploaded a new and improved version with better sound). Whether you want it with the beer or not, that’s up to you, but it’s an amazing match – actually amazing! - and I can’t think of a single other beer which would work with a lemon cheesecake. Even sitting here now this combo still baffles and excites me.
Like I say in the video, it’s difficult to do the beer justice with words. If you are a beer person then it’s one of those beers you need to try. It’s in-your-face awesome, it’s challenging and it’ll make you think about what beer is capable of being. I love it for its complexity. There’s more on the BrewDog website, including their own video and some more food pairing (written by me!), and you can find that here.
This cheesecake is so easy to make and tastes great. It’s perfect for a light finish to a meal, a great summer dessert or even a fancy dinner party – it can do it all with ease. The whisky-spiked sauce is intended for the beer and acts as a stepping stone between the food and drink, linking the flavours in each, but it works perfectly if you don’t serve this beer.
This makes a big cheesecake, easily enough for 8
The base:
- 125g melted butter
- 225g digestive biscuits (I used the Hovis ones shaped like bread)
The topping:
- 300ml double cream
- 300ml soft cream cheese
- 250g mascarpone
- 4 tablespoons icing sugar
- 2 lemons – juice and zest
The raspberry sauce:
- 200g raspberries
- 50ml whisky
- 1 tablespoon icing sugar or honey (you may want more than this)
Butter a loose-bottomed cake/flan tin. Crush the biscuits into a fine dust - I do this by putting them in a sandwich bad and smashing them with a rolling pin (make sure the bag is on top of a kitchen towel or something soft and ensure there is no air in the bag). Then add this to the melted butter and stir through. Push the biscuit mix tightly into the base of the tin and chill.
Mix together the double cream until it is as thick as you can make it before it turns to butter. In a separate bowl mix the cheeses and icing sugar, then add the zest and juice of 1 lemon. Stir it through and add the double cream, folding it in. Give it a taste and add as much of the leftover lemon juice and zest as you like. If you are making this for the Storm then go easy on the lemon or it’ll overpower the beer – it may be a beer full of massive flavours, but it is still only an 8%-er so you need some delicacy.
Once everything is mixed together, layer it on top of the base and chill until you want it.
To make the raspberry sauce just blitz up 200g of fresh raspberries, a tablespoon of icing sugar or honey and 50ml of whisky. Give it a taste, if you want more sweetness then just add some more sugar or honey. Pour it through a sieve to remove the pips and set aside.
Serve this with the Storm which should be just cool. I’d like to suggest another beer to serve with the cheesecake but I really can’t think of another which would work.