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!

TTT: Flying Dog vs. Meantime

It's been a while since I did my first Transatlantic Taste Test so I though I'd have another go. I fancied something a bit lighter after all the heavy beer I had last week - I think Sam Smith's Imperial Stout was the lightest one I had! Flying Dog Old Scratch (Amber lager) and Meantime Union (Vienna style amber lager) seemed a reasonable enough pair to compare so away I went.

Said it before but Steadman rules!

Appearance-wise the big difference was in the head, which was noticeably darker in the Old Scratch, the copper hint contrasting with the white of the Union. The Old Scratch had more of a reddish hue and there was a slight haze to the Union. On the nose the Old Scratch had a dusty aroma that I normally associate with Belgian tripels, backed up with toffee. There was more spice on the Union, hints of ginger and more green, aromatic hops.

On the palate they're both pretty restrained, as you'd expect from lager - these aren't big pithy hop-bombs! Having said that there is a more definite hop bite in the Old Scratch, balanced out with a gentle caramel malt and biscuit flavours. The Union is softer and more nutty with brioche and fresh bread flavours.

Picking between the two? Well they're both good, and particularly in the garden on a hot summer's day (you remember the summer, we had it last week?) either would go down a treat. So I'd say a commendable score draw, although I think if I absolutely had to choose it'd be the Meantime because I think the high alcohol of the Old Scratch means it's not quite got the Union's balance - it's potentially a bit subtle for 5.5%.

Flying Dog Old Scratch, 5.5% abv, £1.99 (355ml)
Meantime Union, 4.9% abv, £1.39 (33cl)
Both prices are from the Beers of Europe website.

Victory 'Hop Wallop'

It could be I'm missing the point somewhere, but it strikes me that in some cases the whole 'hop flavour is good' thing gets pushed so far as to leave a beer that actually has very little character or complexity. Yes, it's undeniably packed with flavour, but it can be one-dimensional, even (dare I say it?) boring. Hops and nothing else.

There is precedent. Twenty years ago varietal Chardonnay was almost synonymous with white wine. Liberal use of new oak was fashionable, and when this had been followed through to its logical conclusion we ended up with white wines that had no fruit character. Wines were flavoured more with oak chips or even oak extract than the grapes they were fermented from in the first place. It was more like biting the twigs than enjoying the fruit.

That said, experimentation is a great thing, and without creativity we'd be without an awful lot of very good beer. Would Sabbath be around if Hendrix hadn't been? Slayer without Sabbath? Napalm Death without Slayer? Anaal Nathrakh without Napalm? OK, it's stretching the analogy, but my point is that, while you might well not get on with music, or beer, that pushes the margins that bit further, it's still a good thing that it exists. As the ever-motivational Olympic motto goes: 'Bigger, faster, more expensive...' (or possibly not.)

Me? I'm undecided on the whole Imperial IPA thing. I love the hop flavours but it's the lack of interest that bothers me. Yes, there's loads of pine on the nose and grapefruit pithyness on the palate of this Hop Wallop, but it almost tastes a bit extracted, sort of wrung out rather than loved! I don't find myself dwelling on it, savouring the beer while enjoying discovering new flavours as it warms. It'd stand out in a crowd and I'm sure at a beer festival or if you were judging it as part of a big line up it's attract your attention, but does that necessarily make it a great beer?

8.5% abv. £3.39 (355ml) from Beers of Europe.

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.

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.

Sierra Nevada 'Summerfest'

Once again the craft/keg/real/cask thing reared its head with Jeff Rosenmeier from Lovibonds sparking a debate by declaring he made 'craft beer' as opposed to real ale or the like. All of this is thrashed out on both sides over at Des de Moor's blog. The root of the issue seems to me to be beers that are good but aren't easily labelled (not literally) or placed into a category. What must the Campaign for Real Stout* be thinking about this?

Personally I think it's a problem that stems from labelling/categorising outliving its usefulness. If you are looking for a record in a shop (remember record shops?) it's useful to be able to look in a specific section; Indy (almost by its very nature), Drum & Bass, Metal etc. but when it gets down to rather pointless debates about whether something is tech-step or neurofunk, groove or thrash, grindcore or death-metal,  it all outlives its usefulness. If you don't know what I'm talking about then pick your genre on Youtube and read some comments, or better yet, don't - it gets very annoying.

All of which brings me back to a beer, the Sierra Nevada Summerfest. I've no idea if they are still 'small' enough to be officially defined as a craft brewery (I suspect they are, even if only to remain 'craft') but if their beer's good, then their beer's good and I'm happy to drink it.

Pours with a slight haze. Gentle hop aroma without pithiness; citrus. Light-bodied with grapefruit on the palate. Fine carbonation - here my beer vocabulary lets me down a bit - if it were a sparkling wine I'd describe it as a delicate mousse, which it isn't but hopefully you get the idea; small, delicate bubbles rather than big fizz. This, for me, sums up how a lager should be. Yes, it's easy-drinking, and not the most challenging beer in the world but it does have flavour, and no matter what category you might want to put it in, in the end I'd just go for it being good beer.

5.0% £1.86 (35cl) from Waitrose

A final thought: Is this a responsible beer to make? If all lager was this good we'd have nothing to moan about, and given it is one of the two great national pastimes we'd only be left with queueing. Damn these Americans, bringing their good beer over here... Back to Jeff I think.

*Yes, I made that up.

Brooklyn Brown Ale

Blogs are subjective. It's part of their appeal, and why it's fun to write them and fun to comment on them. I do drink more beers than I necessarily feel the need to blog about, sometimes due to time constraints but often due to the fact that a stand-alone tasting note is only interesting up to a point, and a blog that is just an extension of ratebeer or the like probably isn't that interesting to the people who are good enough to read what I do write!

This is different though. When I was doing the wine 'practical' part of my WSET diploma it was interesting to try so many wines that I could get to the point of recognising them as being very good, without them necessarily being something I'd buy - and not just because some of them were extremely expensive. Obviously this is more towards the beer or wine judging end of things, which goes away from my original point about blogs, but it was this beer that made me think of this and I thought I'd share. Do people encounter many beers that they objectively think are good, but just not really their cup of tea?



A dark brown beer, the head fades quickly. There's molasses on the nose and cinder toffee with slight floral notes on the palate. I got Marmite and other yeasty aromas as it warmed in the glass. Overall it's an interesting beer, with plenty of character, but I'm not convinced I'd buy it again.

5.6% abv, £1.69 (355ml) from Beers of Europe

Mediocrity... and Gueuze

So there I was musing about the commercialisation of beers we might well think of as craft/real/artisan, worrying that marketing people might be running off with our favourite brews, then everyone was all over twitter being offended by Jeremy Clarkson, which is nothing unusual. This is a guy who has a talent for finding publicity, he'd been given a prime time TV interview and he'a got a DVD out (this is a guess, it's Christmas soon.) And so, Clarkson ignored as usual, thoughts turned back to beer... but are there beers you might find offensive? Stella Artois is the biggest selling UK brand, and as such is fairly heavily mocked among those of us who consider themselves to have a tiny bit of taste, but is it offensive, or just... dull, at best 'reassuringly' mediocre?

Of course there are some amongst us who find mediocrity pretty offensive. Perhaps this is best left in the hands of Aussie comedian Steve Hughes*, a man who walks on stage to Slayer. There was plenty of people who got all hot and bothered about Angel of Death in 1987, but his rant? Boy bands or, as he puts it:

'Corporate Shells posing as musicians to further a modelling career.'

Still, at least they're not making beer... Bugger.

* Full clip is well worth watching here.

Jacobins Gueuze

So this is a beer that many might well consider offensive, but it's anything but middle of the road. I'm guessing Gueuze as a style is never going to hit the mainstream, look pretty, have a number one single. And I'm glad of that.

The Jacobins is actually a fairly low-key example (not that I've tried a huge amount), and I think is decent enough as an introduction to Gueuze. It pours a dark-gold, 'real' (ie. slightly oxidised) apple juice colour. On the nose there's earthiness and faint cider-apple. There's refreshing citrus; clementine flavours that border on the taste of Matlow's Refresher Chews but a short finish which means the sweetness is not too cloying, leaving you wanting more.



5.5% abv (25cl) £1.49 from Beers of Europe

'Premiumisation...' and Anchor Porter

Apologies for using a crass marketing term but it's something that's been going on in the industry for a while and it's also something that I think gets to the point often discussed in beer blogs and on the Twitter hop-vine. There has been a move, particularly in the spirits category, towards more interesting drinks, ones with provenance, history, and (at least according to the sellers) flavour. I would suggest that 'Fancier Pints' and the burgeoning UK 'artisan' beer sector are far more a part of this than they are a product of campaigning from consumer groups such as Camra.

Take an example like Grey Goose vodka, as made by a Cognac Master Distiller, with water filtered through volcanic rock (and however much marketing blurb you'd like to insert here). All well and good and it's good as far as vodka goes - I tried it a few years ago courtesy of a rep from the parent company, Bacardi (hardly a small artisan company). The fact is that it sells far more as a statement than a flavour choice. It's a bit like the vodka version of a Ferrari, everyone knows it, everyone knows it's expensive, but it's arguably a cosmetic thing. Another example from closer to home (for me) is in the wine industry where (anecdotally*) some winemakers have seen a big upsurge in sales by considerably bumping up the prices.

The Campaign for Really Good Beer has been attacked by some for not knowing what it stands for. Firstly I would have thought the clue was in the name. I think part of the charm, and maybe even its raison d'etre is the very fact that it defines good beer by something as simple as whether the the person drinking it is enjoying it. Although I'd suggest part of the fun is to be able to describe the beer and argue its merits - and maybe even cut through some of the bullshit?

So educate your palate so you can trust it. Try new things but don't be fooled, because people in marketing never miss a trick, they're coming for your microbrew.

* Remarked upon by the guests at an Australian wine day this week.

...and the beer.

I also tried Anchor Porter recently, and I really enjoyed it. Not too intense a flavour despite its 5.6% abv.

Good creamy-brown head that stayed around, not too fizzy.

Bitter chocolate, mocha, touch of sweetness on the finish. What I like about it is while it has plenty of character, nothing is too dominant, and so it has a lovely balance. Moreish to the point of being dangerously drinkable.



£1.85 (355ml) from Beers of Europe

Goose Island 'Honker's Ale'

Been off radar for a while since I've been busy doing the uninteresting things that I am hoping will earn me the money to continue my exploration of all things beer-related. It's also been a rather indifferent week on the beer front after the excitement of Stout Day and The Session.

So this post is due to, but not really inspired by, Goose Island 'Honker's Ale' which is apparently inspired by visiting English country pubs. All well and good making beer in an English style, but there are plenty of English beers out there that, although they are faultlessly made, are in the end just not that interesting!

Lovely brown colour with a hint of orange. It has a vague roasted malty nose, and there's a sweetness to start, which doesn't linger into the finish since it's taken away by a kiss of hops.



Not the sort of beer that inspires, although it was more interesting than the Lone Star by Pabst, and Samuel Adams Boston Lager, both which almost made my hop-thirsty palate feel like I hadn't drank a beer. Again, not unpleasant, but indistinguishable from many of its contemporaries. In its defence the Sam Adams had some richness that reminded me of some German Oktoberfest beers, but lacked the punch that the real thing has.

 

Apologies if this all comes across as a bit negative, since I don't like posting negative reviews, but it strikes me that with the Craft beer scene in the USA thriving, and feeding a similar resurrection of interest in different beers over here, it would be a shame if these sort of beers are held up as examples of a new beer scene in the US. And perhaps more worryingly it did make me wonder what sort of beers are ending up state-side and our friends in the US are thinking 'this is OK, not exciting, but OK... I hope my Sierra Nevada's cooled down so I can have that next.'

Goose Island Honker's Ale, 4.3%, £1.59 (355ml) Beers of Europe
Lone Star (Pabst), 4.7%, £1.59 (355ml) Beers of Europe
Samuel Adams Boston Lager, 4.8%, £1.59 (255ml), Waitrose. Also £30 a 24 bottle case at Majestic.

Victory 'Prima' Pils

Looks like a wheat beer - cloudy, straw-yellow and a short head retention, but got some big hoppy nose going on there, and when you taste it, there's a whole lot more. There's a herbal whiff of the more specialist Amsterdam café, and it snatches a bit of balance back from the big hop bite with a touch of sweetness in the finish. On further investigation, once you get past the hoppiness there is some spice (ginger) and lemon. Light bodied without overdoing the carbonation. All this contributes to a really rewarding beer, and it's refreshing enough to be deceptively quaffable.

I'm not sure how this is a 'German Style Pilsner,' I don't remember having had a German beer that was this intensely hoppy. The hops and malt may be German but the style? Although in the light of recent controversy surrounding the Oxford Companion to Beer (mainly surrounding Martyn Cornell's comments and how they were received) I think sometimes it's not that bad a thing to remain blissful in ignorance. I think I'll stick to drinking and thinking about it.



5.3% abv, £2.49 (355ml/12 fl oz - whatever they are) from Beers of Europe

I had to check up on the abv since it's not actually on the label. I'm surprised they get away with bringing it into the EU without it, but apparently there are reasons for this lack of information that go back to 1935 and post-prohibition laws, and some state legislatures still ban alcohol content labelling. Of course, the Surgeon General's warning about alcohol is still there despite them not telling you how much is in it. Crazy world indeed. More in this feature by Joe Strange.

Pabst 'Blue Ribbon' Beer

I've had a couple of days of dealing with internet things I don't really understand so it was nice to get back to beer yesterday evening. I'm not really claiming to understand beer either, but since it makes me feel better then I don't really mind. Having said that I am grateful to all the beery people I follow and chat to on Twitter for dispelling some of my ignorance, and I'm also very much looking forward to the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Beer. This gratitude also makes articles like the hopelessly uninformed one from Peter Preston in this morning's Observer all the more irritating.

Pabst Blue Ribbon is a pale yellow lager with a gentle lead-in sweetness, and a soft floral/blossomy finish. A decent enough apéritif beer, I suppose it ticks the boxes but it is not exactly an inspirational beer.

On the subject of uninspiring beers, according to the Pabst website they used to brew, or at least one of their subsidiaries (G. Heileman Brewing Co.) used to brew 'Carling's Black Label'. I was under the impression that Carling was a Canadian brand rather than American, so somewhat confused by that. The ignorance turns a full circle, but I suppose without ignorance we'd not have the fun of learning. Worth drinking to.



4.7% abv, £1.69 from Beers of Europe