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!

Adnams 'Spindrift'

Having cracked open an old favourite bottle of wine last week it was good to see Adnams stock its more up-to-date vintage. At the other end of the 'favourite activities' scale I found myself in Sainsbury's the other day, and sought succour in the beer aisle - or, as it turned out, the 'ale' section which was lurking in the wine aisle. It was an Adnams beer that caught my eye. It's a brewery I'm not that familiar with - one of the sister pubs to the one I used to manage used to have Broadside on hand-pull but it's not something I particularly remember having seen a lot of in Nottingham.

I was musing recently that some beers don't seem to make the transition to bottle that well, but if this is one that was originally brewed with cask in mind then, for me, it translates very well. On opening the grassy and lemony-hop aromas leap up at you, although they're a little more restrained on pouring, when the malt comes through a little more. On the palate it's impeccably balanced between the malt and the hop flavour, the caramel and biscuity malt providing backbone to the light body and the hay and citrus hop flavours. All in all a most enjoyable summer beer.

I feel I have to mention the blue bottle. I thought it was pretty cool, my wife thought it made it look like an alcopop; although she really liked the beer. On the other hand, crisp and refreshing are not flavour descriptors - as marketing terms they're best left firmly in the court of those who make drinks that don't taste of much and need chilling down so far as to make sure you can't taste anything. Adnams perhaps need to have a little more confidence in how good their beer is? It's never easy is it?

A lot of flavour packed into a 5% beer. Worth a go; a cure for 'supermarket blues' perhaps? £1.79 (33cl).