A Brooklyn Brace

Whilst up in Yorkshire for most of the last couple of weeks I picked up a couple of Brooklyn beers from Roberts and Speight in Beverley. I originally bought the EIPA for my brother to take back to Holland with him but he forgot it, and because the best before date was next month I did the decent thing and drank it for him. The other was a chocolate stout; since my other half seems to be developing a taste for them, she wanted to give this one a try. More self-sacrifice was required; I had to help since she felt she couldn't finish a whole bottle of 10% beer on her own.

Brooklyn Brewery East India Pale Ale is fairly restrained on the nose, with caramel and maybe a little stone-fruit. The hops are more noticeable once you get to the palate. There you get more of the dankness which I generally associate with the more hop-heavy American offerings - and their British cousins.* A faint wood-smoke and pine bitter finish rounds it all off rather nicely.

As a side note, I'm not sure I'd classify it as an 'English' IPA (apart from for the obvious reason, maybe a New England IPA?) but it's certainly different to the lighter-bodied, tropical/citrus fruit offerings that you get from most American craft brewers, and so I suppose the classification serves a purpose. Having said that it strikes me that IPA is such an abused and misused term that it is in danger of becoming almost meaningless it's so broad. None of this detracts from this as a beer though, I thought it was excellent. Although it owes most of its flavour to the hops the malt is not ignored, and I think this gives it a complexity that often gets overlooked in modern IPA.

6.9% abv. (355ml) £2.19 if you order it from Beers of Europe.

Brooklyn Brewery Chocolate Stout is a different beast altogether. I'm not sure that full-bodied even begins to describe this one. It's almost chewy! I actually found myself swirling it round my snifter glass to see if it had the viscosity of a Pedro Ximénez sherry - it's not quite that thick but you get the idea. It's sweet, stopping just short of being cloying, which is helped by a bitter finish. As well as the rich chocolate flavours I got a touch of liquorice too.

10% abv. (355ml) £3.39 if you order it from Beers of Europe.

* Many thanks to David (see the link) for giving me a word I can use to describe something that reminds me of weed!

Magic Rock 'Human Cannonball' IIPA

Since I left the pub trade a huge number of breweries have started up, completely changing the face of the UK pub and beer scene. Many of these escaped my notice since I was immersed in sitting wine exams and trying to get my head round grape clones and rootstock types. Since I started beer blogging and re-discovering British beer in particular, Magic Rock have been one brewery that has been constantly recommended and raved about, but I've just never got round to trying. The day after IPA day was therefore IPA day squared, a chance to relive #downDIPA perhaps?

Given I'm not a massive fan of Imperial IPA as a style, I was impressed by this one. It was getting close to its best before date, which might have affected the freshness, but if so I suspect it mellowed rather than deteriorated. It poured a deep reddish-amber colour, and there's bags and bags of hops on the nose, delivering rich citrus and tropical fruit. On the palate the hops are, relatively for a double IPA, held back; which I think gives the beer a better balance, allowing some of the caramel sweetness of the malt to come through. On the basis of this my appetite for Magic Rock beer is well and truly whetted, I'll continue to be on the look out for more of their beers.

You can have a bit of a read of the story behind Human Cannonball here.

It's a very well disguised 9.2% abv. I got this one from Beer Ritz, although I'm not sure what I paid for it. Slurp are charging £3.90 (33cl.)

BrewDog 'Never Mind The Anabolics'

I popped into BrewDog in Nottingham the other day because I fancied trying this one, and it seemed appropriate enough for a second IPA day beer. If you have a high enough tolerance for BrewDog's publicity antics and you haven't seen the things they did for their 'Olympic' beer it's over here. Me? I like IPA, and given an opportunity to try a new one I'm always up for it, and that's unlikely to be changed by how little or much noise the brewery make.

I wasn't entirely sure what to expect given the claims about 'controversial' additives. It pours a lovely coppery red colour. |On the nose there's pine and an earthy, herbal note, presumably from the ginseng. On the palate here's plenty of juicy tropical and citrus fruit hops as you'd expect from a BrewDog IPA, but overall I just wasn't that impressed. It's decent enough, but not that exciting or different.

The acid test of these things is usually the question of would I buy it again? Well, I don't think I would. I don't think it's really that much better than BrewDog's staple Punk IPA, assuming it's on form - I have heard there are some issues, to justify the extra money.

6.5% abv. £4.66 from the brewery if you buy six.

Durham Brewery 'Bombay 106' IPA

I don't think I had any involvement in IPA Day last year, it was a bit early in my blogging days so I probably wasn't aware of it in all the hubub. Anyway, here I am celebrating my first IPA Day. A day to celebrate what is probably my favourite style of beer. What's not to like?

First up was a beer I've been looking forward to trying for ages. Much as I like the American styles of IPA it's British IPAs that are my first love from way back, and in the wake of British performances in the Olympics which have actually stopped my usual cynicism in its tracks it seemed doubly appropriate. As far as I'm aware Durham Brewery (admirably in my opinion) won't sell their beers through supermarkets, so this isn't something you're going to find outside of specialists or on-line. Look out for their #sourpower day to celebrate the release of the really exciting sounding Diabolus that's happening on the 6th of September.

Enough pre-amble, on with the beer. It's bottle conditioned and leapt out of the bottle after opening so it didn't pour very clear, although I just about managed to miss my phone and hit the glass with only minor spillage! Crisis averted I dived right in. It was well worth the wait, a really excellent, unashamedly bitter beer. None of your new world tropical fruit in this one; there's some lemon and grapefruit on the nose but it's just luring you into a false sense of security before the steely metallic flavour on the palate hits you with everything it has. Short, sharp and definitely to the point. The finish is crisp, the mineral hop hit doesn't hang around long enough to get unpleasant, rapidly moving on to spices; pepper that urges you to try more.

Obviously IPA Day deserved more than one IPA, but the Bombay deserved its own post. A superb beer; BrewDog's 'Olympic Beer' will have to wait.

7% abv. £3.36 (50cl) from Beer Ritz.

Credit: IPA Day logo, with the date 'corrected', taken from Martyn Cornell's Zythophile blog. His posts debunking IPA myths are well worth a read.

Saltaire 'Triple Chocoholic'

Yesterday was Yorkshire Day, so a bit of a rummage round the cellar unearthed a couple of appropriate beers, and the Saltaire 'Triple Chocoholic' was voted in by my other half as the one to celebrate with. It was perhaps inevitable that we'd compare it to the Meantime Chocolate Porter that we had last week.

For starters this seems to be far less of a 'beer for people who don't like beer.' (See Pintsized Ticker's experiment here.) The nose was dominated by the chocolate malt, despite being only 12% of the malts involved, but it was the aromas that reminded me very much of nosing the chocolate malt at the Gwaun Valley Brewery the other week that stood out - it was in one of the jars pictured. On the palate the chocolate definitely comes through but it doesn't have the viscous texture of the Meantime that leaves it being a lot more 'beery' rather than a more indulgent 'dessert in a bottle' style. If this sounds negative then I don't mean it to be, I think that the two beers, despite obvious similarities, are very different. The Saltaire uses chocolate to complement the beer rather than being the be all and end all of it; the bitterness of the hops is still there and the power of the malt means there's cocoa and biscuity qualities that add another layer of complexity. The name Triple Chocoholic, to me, does suggest something more of a chocolate overload than the beer delivered, and while I don't think that is necessarily a bad thing in terms of making a beer I wonder whether some people might be disappointed.

4.8%, £2.69 (50cl) from Beer Ritz.

PS. A reminder it's IPA day today. Hope you've got your hop-bombs in for the occasion! Potential menu includes Durham Bombay 106, BrewDog Never Mind the Anabolics or Moor Illusion. Nice decisions to make.