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.)

Transatlantic Taste Test

Possibly a bit excessive on the grandiose title, but I like alliteration, and putting 'Burton Bridge and Sierra Nevada Porter' in the title line would have been far too long.

One of the fun things about tastings of whatever tipple is trying to challenge preconceptions. Blind tastings are particularly good for this, and the greater the preconception, the better it works, be it 'I don't like Chardonnay' or 'lager is all tasteless fizzy rubbish.' Although I didn't try these two beers blind (my wife did, as a spurious, unscientific control group of her own), I have to admit to a couple of ideas as to what differences there might be between them.

The Burton Bridge is black, but shows deep reddish brown/garnet colours when you get some light through it. There's a fruity aroma but without heavy alcohol sweetness. I though there were aromas like the skins of plums (fruity, but bitter), the wife chipped in with cherry.  On the palate the bitter chocolate and roasted coffee notes cam through a bit more, along with a touch of mixed peel. The finish is clean and decidedly bitter - and this becomes more ferocious as you get down to the bottom of the bottle (it's bottle conditioned).

The Sierra Nevada unsurprisingly is more aggressively fizzy, and with a lot more chocolate on the palate, and less fruit character. It's certainly a less challenging beer, that sweetness and a bit more headiness from the higher abv making it more approachable, but I thought it lacked a bit of complexity compared to the Burton Bridge. Having said that I thought they were both good beers, and a lot more similar than I expected them to be. If you want a porter to be mellowing and not shouty and aggressive then they do the job. The missus preferred the Sierra Nevada, so I think an honourable score draw is a fair result.

Burton Bridge Porter. 4.5%. Not sure what I paid for it (I got it from Weavers in Nottingham) but The Real Ale store charge £2.60 (50cl).
Sierra Nevada Porter. 5.6%. £2.29 (35cl) 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.