Blog Retirement

I'm retiring this blog. It's really a matter of a bit of a lack of creative inspiration. I feel like I've been plodding along for a while; the only posts I find the time to put up are a few beer reviews and they're not really what I wanted to write - if only because they are rarely as interesting as broader musings about beer and pubs and all that stuff that I read about on other blogs!

Having said that I do fully intend to carry on writing blog posts, they are just going to be slightly less beer-centred, although I do hope they will be at least as successful (if that's the right word) as this beer blog has been.

Thanks to those of you that take the time to read my meanderings, and I hope you'll do the same over at my combined blog at its new home under Drinks Advice. A warning though - there might be a fair bit of whisky involved, for the simple reason that I'm spending more and more of my time embroiled in the world of whisky, and enjoying myself immensely.

Cheers. I'll leave the last words to my daughter; she learns fast...

PS. If anyone fancies adding my new blog to their blog-roll that would be appreciated. Hopefully I've updated everyone on to the new roll, if I've missed you give me a shout and I'll sort it.

Brewfist 'Spaceman' IPA

I love Italy, I've been there a few times and even got married on a wine estate out there, and it's great to hear that the beer scene is branching out beyond Miller's ubiquitous Peroni and Heineken's Birra Moretti. Will Glass' excellent blog Italy Brews is a great source of information on the Italian beer and it's a shame his time in Italy came to an end - I for one am hoping someone picks up the baton and carries the site on.

This is the first beer I've had from Brewfist, and the first I remember having from Italy that's a bit more interesting than your standard Euro-lager, and while it would be nice to be out there sampling it there's never a bad time to be drinking IPA so here goes.

It pours a gorgeous orange colour and that reflects the marmalade aromas and the blood orange on the palate. It's not overly carbonated, making it very smooth and easy-drinking, and not too heavy on the sweet tropical fruit which I thought gave it better balance than some American-style IPA I've had. It's got a pleasant, grapefruit pithy finish.

Brewfist definitely get a big yes vote. Next time I order some beer I'll be adding more to the basket!

Worthy of my nephew's favourite joke: What do you get if you see a spaceman? You park man! (Sorry, he's only eight.)

7% abv. £3.24 (33cl) from Beer Ritz.

Horses and Hops

I had a couple of decent beers the other evening. One I picked up recently from the newly opened Flipping Good Beer Shop, and another I'd had stashed in the cellar for a few months and came across it while I was having a bit of a sort out (if you horde beer/wine/whisky like I do you know exactly what I mean.)

First up was the Sadler's Hop Bomb. I probably served it a bit cold, because there wasn't much on the nose at first, maybe a touch of elderflower but if I'm really honest, it didn't hang around long enough to warm up and allow me to savour the aromas - it's far too quaffable for that! It's 5% abv; strong I suppose, if you like your beer at a more 'sessionable' strength, but quite low for a modern IPA and I thought it was all the better for that; it's less about the sweet tropical fruit than vibrant fresh apricot and white grape flavours, all leading to a gentle sherbet finish rather than harsh bitterness.

5% abv. £2.65 (33cl) from The Flipping Good Beer Shop.

The other was the Welbeck Abbey Brewery Dark Horse, not one that is part of their core range - I think I'm right in saying it's a seasonal/experimental brew from earlier in the year.

There's lots of well-done toast on the nose along with a touch of red and dark fruit. On the palate it is plummy and rich, but keeps its balance rather than descending into a heaviness that its 4.8% abv couldn't support. There's marmite flavours and a lovely sweet hint that comes through on the finish. It would be a hard one to put into a style category - is it a dark ale, a hoppy mild or a lighter Black IPA? When it tastes this good, I for one don't really care!

4.8% abv. £2.60 (50cl) from Hops in a Bottle.

Oakham Citra

I put this one off for ages, and now I'm struggling to work out quite why, because I'm pretty sure it's something I'd pick up again. I think it was partly because Oakham JHB used to be around a lot in the pubs I frequented (not least because I lived in one) and, while it was brilliant at the time, I became tired of it, even if that was more of a fault of its pale (sorry) imitators than JHB itself.

There's bags of grapefruit-led citrus fruit on the nose, tempered with enough tropical fruit to keep the attacking edge off but not so much as to stop it being refreshing. The palate's all about the juicy fruit from the hops; the grapefruit is back with a touch of soapiness, although far from being so much as to be off-putting, and again there's support from tropical fruit, all without it careering off into over-sweet passion fruit territory. It's all really clean and fresh, no wallowing about in cloying sweetness for this beer, it just merrily leads you into grabbing the next one.

4.2% abv. £2.07 (50cl) from Waitrose.

Adnams 'Southwold Winter IPA'

I love winter; long evenings staying cosy in the house with a good film, a good beer and a good whisky. Ideally I'd go for an imperial stout with a whisky to match, but Adnams' idea of a Winter IPA sounds like a rather excellent concept too. When I worked in a London Oddbins next to a video shop we used to try and come up with wine and film combinations, asking people what film they'd rented and trying to recommend an ideal wine. I might branch out and try for a triple combination, the ultimate whisky and film accompaniment to a beer - I'm sure I can put the research in for this one.

Back to the beer. It poured cloudy, I'm not sure if that was my fault but I'm rarely particularly picky about clarity. I loved the brilliant orange colour though. There's a slight soapiness on the nose, but it was potentially a bit cold when I first poured it - a good film beer has to last the length of a film after all. There was plenty of rindy-orange flavours, like mixed peel, and a spicy, perfumed finish. All good, but for me a little understated. I'd love to try a more powerfully-hopped version!

There was a bit of a danger of expecting too much from this one, as my little self-indulgent opening paragraph suggests. It is, after all, a beer brewed for a supermarket chain so is it fair to expect something so different as I had in mind? Perhaps, but thinking more objectively this is a great beer for the money, and it might well lead to more adventurous offerings in the future. A beer like this with a more powerful spice kick like the Otley O-Garden would be fantastic. The whisky was a SMWS Glen Moray and the film was Se7en. Good for a starter but as the nights really draw in I'll be looking for my whisky to have more sherry, smoke or even chocolate orange flavours - like the Ben Nevis from the Glenkeir range - Christmas in a glass.*

6.7% abv. Expect to pay around £2 (50cl), sorry, lost the receipt. Marks & Spencer exclusive.

* A bit of a work plug but it's a delicious whisky!

Fuller's 'Bengal Lancer' IPA

Big breweries are much maligned in beer blogs and the like, but just because a brewery is big doesn't mean it can't make interesting beer, even if far too often they don't. White Shield; 'from the makers of Carling' as the advertising slogan doesn't run,  is perhaps the most extreme example of this, but Fuller's seem to me to be one of the bigger British breweries that offer something special. Having lived most of my life north of Watford Gap it's not a brewery I'm actually that familiar with, but what beers of theirs I have tried have put many operations that espouse the virtues of their small size and flexibility as as asset to shame.

It seems to be a recurring theme of mine that when I try new IPAs I'm actually looking more for how the malt supports the hops flavours and gives the beer structure and backbone. For me far too many beers use hops rather too indiscriminately, almost forgetting that beer is a complex drink, not just a sort of one-dimensional strong hop cordial. There's plenty of leafy hop aroma, all backed up with smoky spices and that all-important biscuity malt spine. If I were to be critical, I found that there was a little too much sweetness, but I realise that's just my taste rather than a fault with the beer, some people will like it more because of that.

Celebrity endorsed, and (rather curiously) made for the Swedish market, but don't let that put you off. 5.3% abv. £1.99 from Ocado.

PS: Apparently it's vegan too, no nasty fish bits required!

Meantime IPA

75cl bottles of beer, a truly fantastic idea. They're great for sharing, and in the case of both the Punk IPA I had the other week (which I am pleased to say was back in tip-top form) and this one, they're even better to share with someone who wasn't that keen and so let me drink it.

For me Meantime brewery are ticking all the boxes. They're making good, well-packaged beer, which is widely available. I love reading about the weird, the wonderful, the eye-wateringly expensive, and the hard-to-find, but unfortunately that's often as close as I get. However it's reassuring to know that even in those monuments to mediocrity, the British supermarkets; decent, flavourful beer is getting a look in.

The IPA pours a coppery-orange colour. On the nose the Meantime IPA's fruit was restrained at first; grassy nuances of tropical and citrus fruit were there, but I served it pretty cold which I think subdued things a little. The punch came on the palate in the form of an explosion of pithy bitterness. For me some IPA can end up with so much forward tropical fruit that they end up being a bit cloying, more like pop than beer - or maybe Um Bongo? This has far more complexity, the biscuity malt doesn't just feel like an afterthought, although taking away some of the sweetness does seem to make it moreish and disguise the alcohol. Ah well, that's what Friday evenings in front of the rugby are for.

7.4% abv (75cl). I got this from Sainsbury's, I think I paid about £5.50 for it.

Hawkshead 'New Zealand Pale Ale'

NZPA started life as a British export in the late 19th century. Although popular myths suggest that it was shipped to Lions rugby players in 1888, in fact it was more the coaching staff and press core that used to drink it at the time, the players themselves having developed a preference for a chilled glass of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc - a local beverage very popular at the time and now, sadly, confined to the three for a tenner bin at Asda. A few ships were unfortunately wrecked on the Australian coast at the time, allowing the locals to sample the now famous beverage. This actually led to the Australians developing a deep mistrust of hop-flavours, something that is only being overcome in very recent brewing history.

OK, so I made some made stuff up. Although by all accounts it's no worse than the rubbish peddled by Tui* with regard to their 'East India Pale Ale.' Back to the beer in hand though, this is from Hawkshead's well-hopped collection, made exclusively with New Zealand hops, and, rather like the wines do at their best, it does seem to encapsulate that vibrant Aotearoa freshness, something I'd imagine it would be more difficult to do if the beer, rather than just the hops, had come half way round the world. As you might expect it's fruity on the nose, but it also shows a certain tartness which gives it a nice contrast rather than it turning into a tropical fruit punch. On the palate it does a great job of staying the right side of crisp and clean, at no point do the fruit flavours overpower the beer; passion fruit balancing nicely with crisp green apple. Despite not being shy of exhibiting a powerful punch, it's a beer without harsh edges; drinkable and extremely tasty.

6% abv. £3.10 (33cl) from Beer Ritz.

* Pronounced 'twee' as in sickeningly corny, which makes sense when you see how their advertising works.

Edit: I thought I'd add a soundtrack. A British remix of a kiwi band that the friends I met in New Zealand introduced me to. A soundtrack to summers since, despite it being winter when I was there - well it was a mild enough winter to turn the snowboarding part of the trip into a skydiving one! Motueka rocked.

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!

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.

Meantime London Pale Ale

I've really been enjoying some understated hop-driven offerings recently; beers like the Great Newsome Pricky Back Otchan and the newest of Gwaun Valley's beers, the Bitter Ale. I don't mean spectacularly, in-your-face hoppy like the Jackhammer I had in BrewDog Nottingham the other night, which was great, but hardly the most sophisticated of beers. These are beers where the flavours are that bit more difficult to pin down, potentially all the better for that if you're enjoying a quiet contemplative bottle at home rather than a pint down the pub, where sometimes you want the flavours to leap up at you so you can get on with your conversation.


The Meantime London Pale Ale definitely fits into this category. I'm not sure if it's a traditonal or a modern beer. It's bitter, but it's not a brown bitter. It's pale ale, in the original sense of 'not dark' but it didn't really have the feel of either an American pale ale, or a more traditional Burton ale. I'm even conflicted as to whether it's a good thing that these beers are popping up in some supermarkets. Maybe I should just concentrate on enjoying it? There's plenty to enjoy after all. Lot of juicy, zesty, citrus fruit to back up that mown-hay bitterness and malty texture. (4.3%. £1.65 for a 33cl bottle in Sainsbury's)


Briefly returning to BrewDog. I also had a schooner of Libertine; the new black IPA that's going in as part of their core range. Despite problems I've heard from various sources about erratic Punk IPA quality and continued problems with their supply chain, BrewDog are still doing something right at least - this really is a superb beer. One cheeky query though. A brewer I know would like to know if it's BrewDog who've bought up all the Simcoe hops? If it's Simcoe that's responsible for the Libertine then can you please share? I for one would like to see more of this sort of thing!

Worthington's 'White Shield' IPA

When I popped the top on this one I wasn't sure whether it was worth taking a few notes or not. It's not like I was going to be able to tell anyone anything different about it. Once I'd got going though I thought another voice in its favour was no bad thing. So much is written criticising huge industrial brewers that it's quite therapeutic to have a beer like this that's not only faultlessly made, as big brewery products generally are, but interesting to boot.

Football on, seventies M&B dimple mug full of Burton IPA - not a bad place to find myself of an early evening. It pours brown, with reddish hints, and retains its head well. I'm still not sure how much yeast has to be put in to get the bottle fermentation going in order for it to qualify for being 'bottle-conditioned' and get the little sticker, but when poured quite vigorously it was clear, and I couldn't see any yeast hanging about in the bottle. What initially got me was how much malt aroma there was; lots of shortbread biscuit backing up the grapefruit of the hops - there's no way you'd mistake this for an 'American' IPA. On the palate there's layer after layer of complexity; dried and citrus fruit, toffee, spices and orange peel. There's a faint reductive 'spent-match' quality to it too, which, like petrol aromas in Riesling, I can imagine is not everyone's cup of tea, but I thought it added a little to the beer. Similarly the finish has some of the soapiness that I know puts some people off cask beer, but in this case it actually works - it not being too dominant. This beer's all about the balance of flavours, not too much, not too little.

Much as I may disagree with many things they do, and stand for, I know the people at Molson Coors aren't daft, so here's hoping they carry on letting the brewers keep this one as it is. I'd be happy to re-visit it every now and again, and I hope others are too; you'd miss it if it were gone.

5.6% abv. £2.15 (50cl) from Ocado (I think, seems to be a pretty standard price though.)

Thornbridge Brewery Tour

A few of us went for a tour of the Thornbridge brewery yesterday, along with  a stop at the Monsal Head Hotel, or at least the Stable Bar bit, somewhere I first visited for a bit of refuelling on my way to my stag/beer and walking weekend in the Hope Valley. If you've never been up there then you're missing out. You might be be prepared to accept indifferent beer because of the view, but you don't have to, the Buxton Moor Top was amazing; session beer for hop-heads, with a great supporting cast courtesy of the Wincle brewery. Frankly, even if the pub was horrible it'd probably still get a good review from me by virtue of a couple of Michael Jackson books being scattered around as reading matter.

I won't go into details of how the beer is brewed - there are people far better qualified than me talking about brewing on many a blog, so I'll just put a few photos below so those of you who want to have a bit of a look at the shiny stuff can do so. It's certainly an impressive site, wearing its modernity and its craft beer credentials with all the pride, if not all of the volume, of one of its ex-employees.

As for the beer, well we got to try the Lord Marple there and then, and all of their regular lines are available bottled form the brewery shop. I also bagged myself a few Thornbridge Hall beers, which is the brand they are labelling their experimental brews under - reviews of those to follow anon. They're brewed at the older, original brewery site. After finishing the tour we headed over to the Sheffield Tap to make sure we got the whole Thornbridge experience - we're nothing if not dedicated - Jaipur and the superlative Kipling on hand-pull rounding off the afternoon's tasting experience nicely.

Thanks very much to Thornbridge for a fun and informative tour and some excellent beer - I'm looking forward to the Thornbridge Hall beers and a return trip to the Tap. Cheers!

More Michael. Style!

Tasty bits.

Shiny stuff! (Mash tun)

Mmmmm, hops...

Brew lab.

Sam. Getting thirsty.

More shiny things.

Bottling line, for about 30% of the beer.

More tasty bits!

More shiny stuff. They've got something like 300 awards!

Some fizzy keg rubbish...

...we found hiding in the cold store.

Samuel Smith's 'India Pale'

I've had a couple of superb summery beer and food meals over the last few days. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was a great match for the asparagus risotto I had the other night, the hops fulfilling the same role as the acidity in a good cool-climate white wine might; cleansing and invigorating the palate without having so much fruit that it overpowers.

Apparently after a couple of years the blue
 veins will appear naturally.
So this isn't a 'blue cheese' as such.

Slightly more appropriate to a few days up in sunny East Yorkshire was Sam Smith's IPA with some cheese that we picked up from Roberts & Speight in Beverley. True to form we went in to buy some tickets for their Spring Wine Tasting (you can have a read about some of the wines here) and came out with cheese, bread, beer, wine and a couple of tickets. Armed with some fresh crusty bread, a small jar of Cheese Maker's Pickle from Cottage Delight, a chunk of very very mature Mull cheddar (see the picture)* and I was ready to go.

The beer pours a deep golden colour and has a fairly restrained orange-pithy hop aroma with a back up of hazelnuts. The gentle toffee malt came forward more on the palate, and there was a lovely sort of old-school bitterness to it - none of your new-world tropical fruit flavours here thank you very much! There's plenty of body, which also shows it can be done without  jaw-dropping levels of alcohol - or any other part of the anatomy for that matter. I realise that this isn't the most revolutionary or exciting beer in the world but I thought it was a good traditional IPA, and it went superbly well with the sweet fruit of the chutney and the tang of the cheddar. An apple for my pudding and I was well set-up for a tough afternoon of relaxing in the sun.

5% abv. £2.29 (55cl) from Roberts & Speight, Beverley - local wine merchants with a decent range of local and imported beers and glassware; well worth a visit if you're in the area. It's always good to see a beer that's seaweed fined and so entirely vegan.

* I know nothing about cheese, maybe Steve will be able to enlighten me as to what's gone on with the cheddar. I can only tell you how good it tastes!

Hops In A Bottle

I took a mate up to Mansfield the other day for a visit to a beer shop I'd not been to before. I first heard about it on Twitter just before Christmas, which I think was not long after it opened.


Hops in a Bottle's focus is very much on local beers. There's a small selection of Wychwood and the like from outside of the surrounding area, but they seem to be more to provide something familiar for the less adventurous than a core of what the shop is about. Similarly don't go in expecting a selection of trendy American craft beers, or indeed anything foreign, or you'll be disappointed. That is in no way a criticism, the shop seems proudly local, and the beer range simply reflects that. The policy seems to be to stock as much of the range as possible from the breweries too. Welbeck Abbey Brewery (who also have a blog) is the closest to the shop, with breweries such as Blue Monkey, Nottingham Brewery, Flipside and Castle Rock from down here in Nottingham. Derbyshire's represented by Brampton, Buxton, Spire, Peak Ales and Thornbridge. Lincolnshire and Yorkshire in the form of Sleaford, Springhead, Wold Top and Kelham Island. I also caught sight of Newark's Milestone brewery. I apologise for any I missed, no notebooks were harmed in the writing of this blog post. I think that's a pretty extensive range when you factor in how many lines each brewery provides, and all of this traditional beer is set out in a very modern way. It was refreshing to see the temptation for decking the shop out in all sorts of mock 'Olde Worlde' rubbish was resisted. As you might be able to see from the photos, when we have our scorching summer (surely we're due one?) they might need to protect some of those precious bottles from the sun, but it's nothing a blind won't sort out.



Here's a brief tasting note for a couple of the beers I picked up:

Welbeck Abbey Brewery Ayrshire Amber Ale 4.6%. £2.70 (50cl)
Seasonal amber ale. Really fruity - hint of crushed raspberries and red/white currants. A great spring beer.

Flipside Clippings IPA 6.5%. £2.70 (50cl)
Lively IPA with good bitterness. Less overt tropical fruit than most modern IPAs, more vinous white fruit. Lovely smokiness on the finish.

Hops in a Bottle's website is still under construction, but you can say hello on Twitter, or even better, go and have a chat in person - allow some of that enthusiasm for a locally produced product to inspire you!

BrewDog Nottingham Launch

Well, it had been open nearly a week at the time, but I suppose you don't get a chance to have an opening week more than once, so I don't blame them for making the most of it. The 'press lauch' event was Tuesday night, and it was great to meet some of the people I've been chatting to on Twitter; Simon, Matt & Rick from Notts Brew, Ian and Marverine.

BrewDog types... (Max & Johnny)

So on to the bar. Well, I'd go for the beer, ignoring all the hype and everything else surrounding it. The fact of the matter is that whatever criticisms that are levelled at BrewDog, very few of them centre on the beer they make. Yes, their PR can grate a bit, but then if you are a beer geek, it's not you the PR is aimed at, it's aimed at the yet-to-be-converted, the ones that don't spend a lot of their free time immersed in Untappd, Ratebeer and ahem... Beer blogs. I only had BrewDog draft* (sic) since that's what my wrist band got me.

Blitz, 2.8%: I kicked off with this one. Good malty/liquorice flavour but the lack of body means it came across as a bit watery as I got through it. Good for such a low strength but at £3.60/pint I can't see them shifting huge amounts!

Big Dog (Broad Street's giant)

Punk IPA, 5.4%, £2.95 for 2/3 of a pint: I've not had this since they started dry-hopping it, but it is really very good, as you'd expect from what, I suppose, is their flagship beer. Bursting with passion fruit and mango flavours and a grassy note from the Nelson Sauvin. Nicely counterpointed by a bitter finish.

5am Saint, 5%, £2.95 for 2/3 of a pint: Fruity, particularly red fruit. Raspberry notes. More bitterness than the Punk. This was the first one where I thought, 'it needs to be on cask.' Being a bit more subtle than the Punk, I thought the aromas just didn't come out at you until it had warmed up a bit.

Prototype 17.6, 4.1%, £3.95/pint: Speaking of raspberries, this ones flavoured with them. Pleasant enough, although I'd suggest it's more of a summer beer than one for February. Fresh, perfumed and clean and with a good, tart finish. Reminded me a little of Williams brothers Roisin rather than a more overt fruit beer. The 17.6 is because it's the 6th batch of prototype 17.

Hops Kill Robin Hood, 7.8&%, £2.95/half pint: The one that's definitely not a Robin Hood beer, you know, it's ironic? Moving on... It's really very good. Still got massive hop flavour, but not quite as candied as the Punk, and I think all the better for it.

Hardcore IPA 9.2%, £3.20/half pint: Pithy citrus; grapefruit and orange on the nose. Sweetness and slightly syrupy on the palate.

Alice Porter, 6.2%, £1.85/half: My friend Nik was waxing lyrical about the kerosene aromas of this one, and he was right, there's an air of jet-fuel about it. If that sounds foul, it isn't, it really works.

What event is not improved by the addition of a knitted beard?

Paradox Jura, 15%, £3.50/third of a pint: Imperial stout aged in Jura whisky barrels. Cutting to the chase, this is one of the most amazing beers I've ever tried. Lots of coffee and chocolate on the nose, the vanilla/bourbon flavours coming through on the palate giving way to a PX sherry finish. Velvet-smooth and luxuriously sweet. It's a big beer, one to dwell on. I'm sure it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea (another friend described it as being like post-mix syrup, but it didn't stop him drinking it!) but I loved it!

Are there any criticisms? Well, if it were me I'd go for a more informative bar lay out, they're trying to sell beers that many people have never heard of before, and since many people don't know what they want before they get to the bar, having labels on the fonts might help. I suppose the argument runs that the staff will keep you informed about the beer, and help you make a choice, but that can't always happen when they're busy. Other things like terrible queue management can be put down to opening week inexperience amongst the staff. If this seems a bit picky then I apologise, don't let it make you think I didn't like the bar!

It will be interesting to see how things work out once the novelty factor has worn off. Will people in Nottingham be prepared to carry on spending the kind of prices they're being asked to pay? It's not London, and you don't have to be an economic analyst to know that there's less money knocking about up here. They also need to get wi-fi in there.

Good luck to BrewDog Nottingham, and thanks for a cracking evening.


* How cool can you get? American spelling and everything, that's why they're next to a movie theater! Look at that, nearly managed to finish without taking the...

Odell IPA

Caution: Contains Wine Tangent.

Decent New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc can be a great wine to use as a starting point to get people into tasting wine properly. It usually has loads of accessible tropical fruit flavours, making it very drinkable, and more often than not it has a characteristic gooseberry flavour that can easily be identified when you come back to it. When I run wine classes it therefore becomes a useful tool to get over that barrier of 'all white wine tasting the same' or 'I can never pick out any of these flavours/aromas that people go on about.' This has also lead to it being hugely successful.

Why the wine spiel? Well, it occurred to me that something like this Odell IPA has certain characteristics in common with Kiwi Sauvignon. It's not so extreme as to be unpalatable to your average lager drinker, but still has a kick of hops that once you said to someone 'this is what hops can do' they'd experience that moment of revelation and rush down the street shouting 'eureka!' Well, perhaps not, but hopefully you see my point. Lots of zesty orange on the nose and palate, with tropical fruit and a mouth-watering bitterness (similar to the acidity that's so important in a good white wine) and a lovely smooth, not over-carbonated texture which makes it both mellow and moreish. Good enough to fall in love with? Well it has been suggested (with thanks to Boak & Bailey).

7.0%. £2.99 (355ml) from Beers of Europe.

Bold Statements

A comparative tasting. Two IPAs with something of a challenge on the label. The first was Sainsbury's 'Taste the difference' (as brewed by Marston's) and the other was St Austell 'Proper Job.'

I thought I'd give the Taste the Difference a go as a sort of decider, having had both good and bad from the range in the form of their TTD Albariño (excellent) and Barolo (terrible). Anyway, since I had to go into a Sainsbury's Local to get bread I felt I deserved a reward for braving such a place.

I enlisted the help of my other half to ensure impartiality, the idea being to see if the beers lived up to their billing. And so armed with snifter glasses, we dived in. Both poured with an amber hue, the St Austell retaining its head a little longer than the TTD.

The Marston's, some choice quotes from the missus:
Initially: 'Bitter, not too keen.' 'Bland, generic. No character.'
In summary: 'It's like John Smith's, tastes cheap.'

There was very little on the nose, faint citrus (lemon) on the palate but bland summed it up nicely, the bitterness of the hops had no fruitiness to back it up, and so was hardly pleasant. This sort of thing annoys me. If you're trying to encourage people to drink better beer then this will do more harm than good, why pay the best part of two quid for this when a can of generic premium lager will cost you half that?


The St Austell:
'I much prefer number two.'
'Punchy'

Pithy grapefruit on the nose and on the palate plenty of hop-power, and a real zingy, uplifting tang rather than being creamy. Pine on the finish. This was really good, just as you'd expect an IPA to be - you get flavour for your money. Powerfully Hopped? Yes. Proper Job? Indeed. And could you taste the difference between it and its pale imitator? Most definitely.



Sainsbury's Taste the Difference IPA, 5.9% abv £1.89 (50cl) and St Austell IPA 5.5% abv £2.19 (50cl) from Ocado.

Bristol Beer Factory 'Southville Hop'

As far as I can remember this is the first beer I've had from the Bristol Beer Factory, it's certainly the first I've had from a bottle. I'd heard good things about them so when I saw this I thought it was worth a go, and I'm very glad I did!

This is BBF's take on an American style IPA. Amber coloured and hazy - it's bottle conditioned and I wasn't particularly gentle when pouring. Not especially aromatic but it's lovely and pithy on the palate, stopping just short of bitterness which makes it really accessible, and very moreish. Medium bodied with a great creamy texture and bags of grapefruit and white nectarine flavours. There's a pleasant grassiness on the finish but again it stops short of biting bitterness.

All in all an absolutely superb beer, and if there is any doubt that 'craft' beer and 'real ale' fans have a common ground, then this is one beer that should dispel it. Perfect match for the darts final on the tele, and a great start to the week.

Weighs in at a surprisingly sneaky 6.5%, drinks more like 4.5. £2.39 (50cl) from Beers of Europe.