Great British Lagers

A good pint of lager gets me excited. A proper pint of Czech- or German-style lager, brewed in Britain, is something I want to see more of.

I think there’s a massive potential market for great lager – just look at how much of it is sold in pubs. Imagine if a craft brand could tap into those sales. Things are happening in the UK with craft lager and I really hope it continues; breweries like Meantime, Freedom, Moravka, Camden, Black Isle, Thornbridge, and more, are making lagers now. I also think more will try them. I’d love to see DarkStar have a go at a proper Czech pils, Adnams and Fuller’s, too, Magic Rock, Fyne, Moor.

There’s also Windsor and Eton’s Republika. A 4.8% lager made with pilsner malt from Moravia, Saaz hops from Zatec, Czech lager yeast and water treated to soften it. It’s been conditioned for six weeks. And it’s very good. Soft and clean, biscuits and popcorn, dry and bitter and sprightly with Saaz. It’s what a good lager should taste like and I could drink a lot of it. I'd love to see it in keg to see how it gets on.

I want to see more great British lagers. Not ones hopped with Amarillo or Simcoe or Citra and not those almost-lagers which are made with ale yeast or which just get a two-week condition in tank. Good, classic lager with lots of flavour while still being subtle. But it is a big commitment for a brewery to make a lager as it needs extra tank time. When you get a really good one that time is totally worth it. That’s pretty much what I’m trying to say in the video above.  

Rome Beer Trip: Veni, Vidi, Vici, I Got Drunk

Here’s a video of my trip to Rome, including some of the sights and some of the beer bars. The music was a choir singing in the Pantheon – an amazing sound.

Rome is an incredible, awesome place. It’s impossible not to be struck with a sense of wonder as you walk the worn streets, to be filled with the stories, shadows and shapes of history, to wonder how many great men have walked here or seen this or made that happen, to get philosophical about life and work and play and feel tiny at the base of giant and beautiful monuments.

The Trevi Fountain is stunning, a story in stone; the Pantheon makes you marvel, the huge columns holding it steady are impossible to forget; St Peter’s Basilica is the sort of place where you forget to look down only to miss something amazing under your feet, but then you look to the side and see a statue or a painting that you’ve read about or seen in books and there it is in the real world; the Colosseum makes you think harder than any other, think about the eight years it took to build, the lives of the 30,000 slaves, how they made it to be over 50 meters high, and then the fights themselves, the raw brutality of it all, the savage entertainment of it; Palatine Hill seems overgrown now, a different place to the history books, but the stories that are set there are the beginnings of the city. (There’s also the Spanish Steps which are a bit shit and can easily be skipped).

It all combines to be a powerful, almost overwhelming, experience in looking at the past and seeing it in the now. It makes you philosophical, which is where the beer comes in; there’s nothing better than a few glasses of beer to make you more loquacious about life and history and philosophise about the past and the present.

And Rome has lots of good beer. Bir&Fud, Ma Che Siete Venuti a Fa (or the Football Pub which is far easier to spell and remember), Open Baladin and Brasserie 4:20 are the four places that anyone interested in beer should visit in Rome. It’s in these bars that you’ll find the best of Italian beers and the best of world beers, with each bar standing out in their own unique ways: the pizza and Italian beer in Bir&Fud, the drinking atmosphere in the Football Pub, the cool interior and the long list of Italian beers in Open and the smart dive bar brasserie with casks and kegs of world beer in 4:20.

And then there’s the food. The great thing is that food and drink is central to everything and they always go together. Buckets of home-fried crisps, aperitivo, impossibly thin pizza bases, rice balls, gelato everywhere (I am now obsessed with hazelnut ice cream), bowls of silky pasta. Our favourite place to eat was Pizzarium and the pasta in Brasserie 4:20 was incredibly good. We ate very well in Rome.

There are two warnings. The beer costs 5 euros a glass and most places serve it in 330ml glasses (6 euros for a pint). The glasses change size and shape depending on what’s in it, and the beer is well cared for and well chosen, but that’s a lot of money even by big city standards. Yet if you know it’s coming and are happy to pay, which I was, then it’s not so bad. The other is that none of the beer bars sell Diet Coke. For most people this is a good thing (I think it’s a good thing), but when you are dragging your girlfriend who doesn’t drink anything but Diet Coke around these bars until as late as she can possible bare them, she turns grumpy and you (I) have to drink very fast...

Rome is the sort of city that is hard to take in, hard to understand, hard to appreciate. It’s epic in all senses, it’s busy, it’s as exciting looking up as it is looking side to side or down. It’s also a sad place to visit; nowhere has ever struck me as so rooted in history, so important historically, with so many lives and stories played out on its maze of streets. There is also sadness that I could never tell what was real, or original, and what was new or preserved. Was I looking at something made 2,000 years ago or is that just a recreation? You also get used to seeing such enormous and beautiful buildings that they no longer surprise you and you even expect them (oh look, there’s another piazza, another church, wow that’s a big one).

As for the beer? I loved it all. It was all great, all interesting, all delicious. Bitters, pale ales, saisons, sours, beers with fruit, wheat beers, stouts. A mix of it all, all with a classy Italian stamp. I went expecting to be impressed with the beer and it beat my expectations.

For a mix of amazing sites and sights and great beer bars, Rome has to be high on the list of places to visit.

Avery Brown Dredge: The Video Blog

I might not have mentioned this, but earlier this year I made a beer at BrewDog along with Zak Avery and Pete Brown...

We could’ve brewed anything we wanted; the only limitation was nothing spontaneously fermented (though Stewart Bowman, the Head Brewer, would tell us that he’d like to play around with wild yeast in the future). I was interest in brewing an imperial lager (“dry-hopped to oblivion,” my email says), a butch oatmeal stout (perhaps with coffee and maple syrup because that’s a beer I’ve been obsessed with and wanted to brew for years) or a saison with lots of US hops, all of which I thought would work well in the BrewDog range as well as being beers I really like. The others made their suggestions, including another strong lager-style and we politely emailed our way to the happy ending we settled upon.

An Imperious Pilsner it what we brewed – it was designed to be like that lager your mate drinks, just bigger. We decided on 100% Saaz hops while we were at the brewery – before that we were swaying between a variety of different hops and different additions. It was to be 7-8%, as pale as possible, as unfiltered as possible (if we could), and an amplified showcase of noble hops.

Tradition. Homage. Revolution. That’s how the bottle label begins and that’s the inspiration. It’s about the long lager traditions, about using the same ingredients, having a period of lagering, and tipping our glasses to the lagers that we love. It’s also an homage to beers like Monsieur Rock, My Antonia and Tilted Smile; lagers but different. And revolution because this isn’t just a normal lager and we made it at BrewDog who aren’t just a normal brewery. The label, which is Carlsberg green, encapsulates the whole idea.

And we did actually get stuck in with the brewery instead of just standing around scribbling in our notebooks. Lugging 53 sacks of malt and mashing it in was hard work, shovelling it out of the copper mash tun was even harder work (or so it looked – Zak had that job), and I was the lucky one who got to stand above the boiling kettle and continuously throw handfuls of hops into it.

After two months, including the lagering and dry-hopping, it’s ready and tasting great; it’s exactly what I wanted it to be. It’s subtle in its punch, it’s an exploration of the Saaz hop, it’s a simple beer expanded. The body is golden and the head is full and fluffy, so it looks great. The aroma is slightly sweet, a little breeze of yeast, then into floral and orange pith, peaches and apricot, a distant herb garden, all subtle. The body is smooth, the bitterness is dry and crisp, botanical like gin but with bursts of distant fruit, like little surprises to keep you interested. It’s like a lager but different; all the qualities are there, it’s just amplified and bigger, meaning it stretches in different directions.

The beer is currently on sale on the BrewDog website for anyone who wants to try it – I suggest you drink it young to get the burst of Saaz freshness, though I’ll be keeping one or two back to see what happens in a few months. The beer isn’t cheap but then we used a ridiculous amount of malt and hops, plus took up two months worth of ultra-valuable tank space at the brewery.

Avery Brown Dredge is finally here. If you’ve had the beer then what did you think?  

FABPOW! Jambalaya

I video blogged! Below is the written version which doesn’t show me doing the eating and drinking and is hopefully more coherent.

Jambalaya: a jumble of French, Spanish and Creole in the southern states of America; a jumble of meat, vegetables and fish; a jumble of rich and spicy, smoky, meaty and savoury with bursts of sweet prawns or tomatoes. It’s a paella or pilau which has been uprooted and fallen down near the Gulf of Mexico.

I used Jamie Oliver’s recipe and it was great. If recipe reading is too strenuous then do this, with some stirring in between: chicken, smoked sausage; onion, pepper, celery; garlic, chilli (I used scotch bonnet), bay leaves, thyme; stock; rice; prawns. 

It’s a great dish for a beer, with tastes and textures calling out for the cooling cut of carbonation, and so with it I wanted to try a few different ones, to try and see what worked best and why. I like dark beers with spicy food as the chocolatey, roasty depth acts like a Scoville sponge, rounding out flavours, while there’s a smoky/savoury bridge in them which can bring flavours together. Many people like pale ales with spices, something I’m more wary of because hops and chilli tend to fight rather than play and like two naughty kids when you put them together they get naughtier and noisier rather than quieter and calmer. I also couldn’t resist trying it with a lager. If someone in a Southern US state was going to have a beer with their dinner then chances are they’d have something like Bud. Jaipur was there because I was drinking it while cooking dinner.

Smuttynose Robust Porter. Chocolate, smoke, a savoury depth and a long-lasting roasty finish which develops as it warms. With the dinner it worked really well to begin, being a cooling sensation against the fiery scotch bonnets, but when the long finish came out from its six degree slumber it rubbed against the spice and intensified it - imagine a cup of coffee when all you really want is a glass of lemonade.

Caldera Pale Ale. What a nice beer. A noseful of Cascades, smooth and crisp without the bitter hit I was expecting but enough to make you go straight back for more, making it very drinkable. The underlying sweetness in it made it work really well with the richly savoury dish, slicing through the chorizo smokiness, but the hops at the end, rather than rounding it off, add a little jagged edge. Still a nice match up though and something I’d have again.

Thornbridge Jaipur. A glass of Centennials, fruity, floral, a spectrum of oranges and a long-lasting bitterness. It’s the first bottle of Jaipur I’ve had in ages and I enjoyed it. However, it didn’t like the jambalaya. The bitterness in there became harsh with the spices, earthy and tangy.

Budweiser. I’ve got no problems drinking Budweiser and as a beer it fascinates me, particularly its history. It’s very pale, doesn’t bellow out a huge aroma (most people drink it straight from the bottle so forget late hops), but has that classic bite of apple. It’s clean and crisp, cold from the fridge it’s uncomplicated and easy to drink: it is what it is. With jambalaya... it was perfect. I wanted it to just be ok, but it was spot on. With the spice a little lemon character came through which cut through everything, an unexpected burst of sweetness was enough to fight off the saltiness and it cooled everything down and balanced it out, making it the beer I wanted to drink more of.

The jambalaya was delicious. It’s also a dish which throws out different challenges to finding a good beer to go with it – chilli heat, smoke, delicate prawns, rich rice, a heavy and sticky texture, tomato. I tried all the beers over and over (until at the end of dinner I couldn’t move for an hour) and Bud was the one I kept going back to: it just worked. It was uncomplicated and improved the flavours in both the food and the beer. Next time I should try it with Dixie, a New Orleans lager for that local flavour. Until then, Budweiser gets FABPOW’d.

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).

Pilsen is a cool place. I recommend it to anyone who goes to the Czech Republic, even if they only go there for one day (it's a one hour, £3 trip from Prague). Pilsner Urquell is a great place to look around while there are a few really good bars nearby for good beers, particularly Pivovar Groll and Small Breweries Klub.

Here’s the video (it's widescreen so cuts off in the blog; to see the whole lot follow the link to YouTube). See if you can spot me, Tim, Adrian and Pete throughout...

Style, Sight, Reputation and the Perception of Taste

If you give me a US IPA, and you tell me exactly what style it is, then my brain triggers an expectation of taste. If you give me a beer, but don’t tell me what it is, and I see that it’s chestnut brown with a thin head, then I can almost taste it before I actually raise the glass to my lips – it’ll be bready, a little toffee, maybe some earthy, English hops, right? If you give me a bottle and don’t tell me the style but the tasting note says ‘rich chocolate flavour, roasted fruit and a bitter finish’ then I know what to expect when I drink it. And if you gave me a bottle of Dark Lord/Westvleteren 12/Pliny the Younger then I can guess roughly what it’ll taste like flavour-wise and I also expect it to be incredible, thanks to its stellar reputation. But how much do these – knowing the style, colour, tasting notes and reputation – affect the actual perception of taste?

To try and get a better understanding I asked Lauren to choose any two beers from the cupboard. No restrictions, apart from a couple which were 750ml or some strong specials - there were about 50 bottles to choose from ranging from lagers, through pale ales up to big stouts, from all over the world. She then put them in the fridge for an hour and banned me from looking until after I’d tasted them both.

Part of me expected to be almost stupefied by not knowing the beer/style in my hand, as if the senses of smell and taste would be rendered useless. At the same time I wondered if not seeing them would intensify my ability to smell and taste. Also, I was worried that I’d get them entirely wrong, proving that I can’t actually taste anything...

As you can see from the video I didn’t do too bad. I got the strength and colour of the first beer – Mikkeller’s GIPA, which I fail miserably at trying to pronounce – picking out earthy, peppery citrus but confusing it with something a little bretty and sour (it wasn’t sour, just bitter, lemony and fruity from the hefty use of German hops). Taking the blindfold off and drinking it again seemed to make it taste different, as if the flavour was suddenly amplified. The second beer - Viven Porter - I managed to get the colour straight away from the roasted aroma but the easy-drinking quality of it made me think it was a low abv beer when it fact it was 7%. Again when I drank this without the blindfold it suddenly tasted different; stronger and generally bigger. I’m pretty sure my perception of these beers changed as soon as I knew what I was drinking, which I guess confirms the idea that knowing what beer is in your glass does affect the way it tastes.

The mind tricks in clever ways so I wanted to see how well I can smell and taste without anything influencing it. The selection group was small, which may have affected me (I knew I had a bottle of mild in the cupboard and as soon as I tasted the dark beer I thought it was that), so maybe next time I need to do it at a beer festival where there are hundreds of beers to choose from. I also think that next time I will be more objective and know what to expect of a test like this, perhaps taking more time to think about the actual qualities of each, rather than speedily sniffing and sipping just to get to the big reveal of what I’m drinking. The use of all the senses of important and I sped past them eagerly.

The test was far from scientific, but an interesting look at perception and the senses. I want to try it again soon and it’ll be interesting to see how I do with a couple of British ales. The other idea, inspired by Chunk, is to get Lauren to choose any bottle of beer from the supermarket without me knowing and then pour it out and see how I get on. As experiments go, this one has got my brain ticking in many ways, raising questions about packaging being able to influence the taste of something, as well as reputation and style. 

Have you attempted a similar blind tasting exercise? If so, how did you get on? 

I think there’s so much more to this idea than just this post and I find the whole concept of taste and perception fascinating. The only trouble is that I look like a right twat with that mask on. I've also just realised that the way I have the page set up cuts off half the video, thankfully it's the half in which nothing happens, but if you want to watch it in glorious (hazy) widescreen then you can see it here.

The Hop Press: Beers to Talk About

This week’s Hop Press blog is about the beers which make you talk. I specifically refer to Westvleteren 12, Tactical Nuclear Penguin and Calcutta IPA, the beer Pete Brown had brewed for Hops and Glory. To quote myself, because it’s easier than re-writing, ‘Having [these beers] in your glass is a tangible experience; there’s excitement to them, delicate underlying tension, a sense of wonder. These feelings come from the rareness, history, age or the story (of the actual beer or a personal story of your own) of the beer.’

The full post is here. Tell me what you think. And what beers have made you talk?

Last week, when I was working on this BrewDog Dinner, I also shot a video of Tactical Nuclear Penguin. Here it is.

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrel-Aged Beers

Barrel-aging beers has been the brewing in-thing for the last few years. I’ve had plain oak, god-knows-how-many whisky-barrels, rum-barrel, cider brandy barrel and wine barrel and each adds its own unique quality, some of it from the wood and some from what aged inside it.

Whisky barrels are the most common and the affinity of the grain makes them natural partners. BrewDog’s Paradox series is a great way of showcasing how one beer can be changed dramatically by aging it in different whisky barrels, and the finished beers are understated but still full of character. American versions tend to be more punch-you-in-the-face with bourbon - Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout is probably the quintessential casing point. Whether subtle or not, I have a bit of a thing for the barrel: I love what the aging can add if it’s successful; I love the extra texture, the wood flavour (oak, vanilla, coconut, a dryness), the spices and sweetness, smoke and earth. But what exact characteristics are transferred from the whisky into the barrel and then in turn from the barrel into the beer?

To try and find out I opened some beer and whisky side-by-side. First, BrewDog’s Paradox Springbank with the Springbank 10 whisky and then Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh 12 with Highland Park 12. Here’s a video (my first in ages) of me opening the Ola Dubh and Highland Park.

The Springbank whisky has distant smoke, a slight saltiness, a floral lightness, dried fruit, spices and ginger. The beer carries over the earthiness and the salty-smoky flavour as well as fruit beneath and some of that spice and coconutty wood to round it all off. I think this is one of the best in the Paradox range with a great balance of sweet and smoky.

The Highland Park 12 is so smooth, it has a great sweetness to it and then hints of earthiness and smoke. It’s incredibly well-balanced, I think. The Ola Dubh 12 is packed with raisins and smoke swirls around inside it adding great complexity. The woody barrel dryness also comes through, lending a near savoury touch at the end. It’s a great beer and a great whisky.

Tasting beer and whisky side by side is an interesting challenge. The barrel imparts certain characteristics into the beer, some of this is from the wood itself (a texture-thing as well as a flavour) and some is from the whisky; some of the whisky flavours are probably dulled by the wood, but others will be amplified. Oak, vanilla and coconut are prominent in barrel-aged stouts and these are from the wood. Smoky flavours seem to elbow their way through to the front of the beer, even when it’s subtle in the whisky, and extra sweetness folds itself in, balancing the roasty-bitter stout (for it is most often stout in the whisky barrels). As for other flavours... I guess I need to drink more beer and whisky!

I’m trying to learn more about whisky. My interest in it has come from drinking beers aged in whisky barrels. For me, it’s the wood character that interests me the most in the finished beers. I love the vanilla and coconut flavour and the toasted oak quality. Lovely. My enjoyment of gueuze is based on the savoury-woody quality that adds such fantastic depth to the beer. Gadds Reserved Barely Wine is a great example of a barley wine aged in an old red wine barrel, another twist on aging, this one with wild yeast character.

Innis & Gunn

Innis & Gunn was one of the first beers I found myself drinking regularly when I made the switch from lager to ale. Since then I’ve found that it’s been the beer which has continually been able to convert others. I don’t know what it is. Perhaps it’s because it looks a bit fancy? Maybe it’s just because it tastes so different to cans of lager. Maybe it’s the creamy sweetness that does it. Who knows.

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.

GBBF Take 2

Yeah I’m still riding this wave but this’ll just be a post focusing on the beer I drank on Saturday at the GBBF with my mates Lee, Matt, Sean and Dave. The intention was to spend Tuesday on the US stuff and Saturday on the UK stuff. Here’s what I managed.

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…
On a quick warm-up lap I saw Moor’s Revival (a finalist in the Champion Beer of Britain 2009) and knowing how I loved and waxed lyrical about JJJ I had to try it. It was lovely; really easy drinking and quenching with dry, fruity-floral hops. This is just the sort of hoppy, full-flavoured, sub-4% beer that I’m loving right now (these are the future, I tell you!). Next, because I read a tweet from Steve saying it was on, came Fuller’s 2009 Vintage. I real scoop. It’s caramel coloured, bready, malty and clean and then it goes into fresh, grassy and green hops. It was great to try it from the cask but for me I love these with a couple of years under them when the hops fade down and the dried fruit and brandy flavours ease through. The 2004 I tried here is still one of the best beers I’ve ever had.

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.
Dinner followed and I had to have another chicken balti pie because it was amazing on Tuesday. It was amazing again on Saturday. I went to the Cains stand for this beer and went for the Dark Mild (not as an intended FAB POW! just to have a beer to wash it down) which was a solid mild. It didn’t match the pie but it was super with some pork scratchings (oh the beautiful pork scratchings!). I also had some Cains Fine Raisin Beer which I loved last year and really enjoyed again this year, in a guilty-pleasure kind of way.

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?!).
More bottles followed… Birrificio Lambrate Ligero which was floral and fruity, quenching and biscuity then into a slightly sour fruit note and a dry, bitter finish. It took us a few sips to get out heads around this one but it was great. Then came a Big Sky Scape Goat Pale Ale which we all decided we would buy a lot of if it was available in the UK: citrus, pineapple, pine and then a cakey sweetness; loads of flavour and all very easy drinking - a lawnmower beer with bite. There was also a bottle of De Molen Vuur and Vlam which my notes tell me is like Orval without the brett. It’s spicy, dry and tangy with peppery hops. Excellent but it took a while to wrap my mouth around it. And there was some Hogs Back A over T too which was smooth, boozy and tasted like brandy and strawberries.

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.

BrewDog Tokyo* Yeah

All the commentary has been done on this beer and so now we just need to know what the damn thing tastes like, so here it is, a straight-up tasting note post and nothing else (except this fine piece of cinema). I decided to shoot a video of it for the whole world to see, but I’ll write about it too if you can’t face seeing me sniff, swirl and sip a beer and then struggling to describe it more eloquently than it’s good.

It’s 18.2% but everyone knows that by now, it’s brewed with jasmine and cranberries, aged over French oak chips for a month, dry-hopped to hell and fermented with a champagne yeast. It’s a thick black pour with a surprisingly bubbly head which soon laces sexily. Holding it up to the light shows the faintest glimmer of red which is really quite handsome. The aroma is big, but not as big as I expected. It’s fruity pretty much all the way with cherries and those cranberries, beneath that there’s a nuttiness and beneath that it’s a box of fancy chocolates and some vanilla-laced wood.

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.

Here’s the old and new* Tokyos. I considered a side-by-side but then thought again… The 12% Tokyo is one of the best beers I’ve had this year and I’ve got a couple left in the cupboard so maybe I’ll get round to a comparison one day, perhaps opening a Mikkeller Black too or a World wide Stout if I can snag a bottle from somewhere! Oh, and one more thing... this beer probably contains about 400 calories per 330ml bottle. Does that bother anyone?!

As-Live Tasting: BrewDog How To Disappear Completely

17.10pm. Evening all. It’s been a bloody lovely day here in Kent, I’ve just got back from Whitstable and now I want/need a beer. And it’s a new beer tonight – BrewDog’s How To Disappear Completely. A 3.5% imperial mild-slash-imperial IPA with a theoretical 198 IBUs. Yeah, 198!! This surely renders all hope of balance out of the question!?

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.

When Video Beer Reviews Go Wrong...

I wanted to shoot a video of me opening the Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. I wanted to do it at my girlfriend’s house - she has a great garden, it was sunny and I was going to be there for dinner anyway. While she was cooking I set up outside, trying to keep the dogs (she has three) inside. The dogs hadn’t been around for ages so I hit record. As you can see I stop talking soon after I start as one of the dogs, Jess, approaches. See what happens next (I only wish I had her in shot the whole time so you can see what I saw.)

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.

The Session 27: Beyond the Black & Tan

"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". I wrote this a few weeks ago in a vblog about mixing beers. In this I blended Fuller’s ESB with their Golden Pride to create a Peacemaker. And it was pretty good. But I am unconvinced by mixing beers, yet still I’m curious about the possibilities.

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.

As you can see, my pour didn’t work out perfectly but there was some difference in colour between top and bottom (I think the carbonation in both may have encouraged the two to come together more willingly, I’m not sure - I think the nitro Guinness was better for sitting on top of the alcopop than the bottled stuff). But how did the beer taste? Well, it was ok. The first few mouthfuls were interesting but fairly good, lots of cherry, a little sourness, roasted notes, vanilla and chocolate bitterness. As I drank on it got more and more cloying and to be honest it had this weird tangy astringency (maybe the year too-old beer was to fault?!). It could’ve worked and I think a 70-30 blend, top heavy with Guinness (or another strong, thick stout) could be great.

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.

To Garrett Oliver, Cheers!

A small thank you note to Garrett Oliver, the man whose book has made me love the possibilities of beer even more than I thought possible. The Brewmaster’s Table is wonderful and lucid, it has the power to take you all over the world to different breweries and dinner tables, it makes you hungry and thirsty in equal measures and it’ll make you more intelligent. It’s a great book, you can pick it up any time and flick to a page and still learn something or still be able to just fall into a different place because of his informal, lulling style of writing. Plus the man who brought Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout into the world deserves a high five!

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…

Biere des Moulins or Beer in a Plastic Bottle

vBlog number 4 done. Just a quickie this time as I check out Biere des Moulins, or as the title will tell you, it’s a ‘Beer in a Plastic Bottle’. Ridiculous, I know. Anyway, you can check out my youtube channel here. There’s a load of other good youtube beer guys out there so give them a look too.

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.

Westvleteren 12: The Psychology Behind Drinking the Best Beer in the World

What is the best beer in the world? Ever since I have known about beer, consumed it and read about it, the same beer has been championed as ‘the best’: Westvleteren 12 (see ratebeer or Beer Advocate). But is it really the best?

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 up the list. This happens. Just look at Pliny the Younger. Where was that a few years ago? Where is it now? (Hint: high up)

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)

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.

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.