Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout

At the instigation of Phil of Beersay fame, and because I don't have any Temptation for Friday's Durham Brewery promoted '#impoff' (Imperial Stout Twitter tasting) I ended up drinking a Nøgne Ø Imperial Stout yesterday evening.

It pours with a gorgeous deep tan head which retained well as I drank the beer. There's dark chocolate, a faint soapiness and a slight lactic/milky coffee note to the nose. On the palate it's both dry and rich, with lots more coffee, bitter cherry and pine hop flavour. It holds the alcohol well, not spirity. (Possibly dangerous that!) Good balance with the chocolate & touch of vanilla. Coffee keeps coming as you drink it, along with more spicy notes. On the whole a fine beer. It's not overly exciting, but certainly impeccably made. Sometimes it's easy to get carried away with the power of some modern beers when you're tasting them but for me they have to have a corresponding amount of character to back up high abv. I'm just not sure this needed to be 9%.

A Duvel glass came out due to discussion
centred on a previous blog post!

On poking round the website it was interesting to see that Nøgne Ø don't appear to brew a 'non-imperial' stout and I wonder if they could get a similar amount of character into one without the abv. It was a flippant comment at the time but I mentioned to a couple of people on Twitter that it could maybe have done with some time in an old PX sherry/whisky butt to add character, and given the guys at Nøgne Ø have aged a similar beer in Cognac barrels, it suggests I might not be alone in that thought - this I'd love to have tried.

£4.75 (50cl) from York Beer & Wine Shop.

Thornbridge 'Raven' Black IPA

Every now and again a beer leaves you reaching for Roget and looking for more superlatives to throw at it. At times like these I generally feel like a review can never quite do it justice. I'm sure I'm not the first person to be blown away by how great Thornbridge's Raven is. Simon over at CAMRGB seemed pretty keen and if you didn't check his review out, you should.

I got lots of berry fruit and dark cherry on the nose, along with hints of chocolate and orange. Bags of rich fruit on the palate; cherry again and some dried fruit balancing well with the coffee and roasted malt flavours. The slightly grainy texture sets it up well too. A genuinely intriguing beer, big enough without being excessive. The bitterness of the finish seemed to move around to the mid-palate and almost dance with the lemon and orange hoppy fruit. Highly recommended.

6.6% abv £3.05 (50cl) from Hops in a Bottle.

Glass Envy

It was my fault for not ordering it in something else, but I was sat in the pub the other afternoon with a certain amount of jealousy directed towards my two mates' tall, elegant Pilsner Urquell glasses. Nothing wrong with the beer, although it was nothing spectacular, but served as it was it just looked... dull.

Suitability aside -it just looks thirst-inducingly great!

I'm hoping that the message gets through to pubs that good beer deserves good presentation, and a glass-washer-scratched nonic simply doesn't do any beer justice. I'm not saying that every brewery should go so far as Sam Adams did with their 'scientifically developed' glassware, especially since the bit about tasting sweetness at the front of your tongue is not so much a disproved theory as a never was theory. It'd be impractical for every beer in a pub to be served in its own glass, and I'd rather a pub rotated beers for interest than kept the same lines for presentation's sake, but decent glassware is important. I'd be interested to hear people's preferences.

Personal favourites for draught beer by the pint? Just on aesthetics rather than bringing flavours out I liked to use tall, straight sided glasses like the Senator when I was a bar manager, but I also have a fondness for handled mugs like this Haworth, and I'd be happy to be offered the choice of one of those two in a pub.


Ben McFarland wrote an interesting piece on the Guardian: Calling Time on the Pint Glass, and even calling time on the measure, back in January if you missed it.

Thwaites Co-Operative 'Strong Brown Ale'

I thought I'd check this one out since the beer selection in my local Co-Op is rather lame but I'm a fan of Thwaites beers.

It's all treacly malt, almost molasses like in weight and texture. Great body and mouth feel and a rich, dense, satisfying umami, almost broth-like palate. Lots of flavours of Marmite and Chinese black-bean sauce mixed in with that sweetness. It's not a style of beer I often enjoy (time and a place!) but this wasn't half bad, certainly a meal-in-a-glass sort of beer, and I'd recommend it if you're a fan of heavier brown ales - Newcastle Brown it ain't.

5.0% abv £1.90 (ish) from the Co-Op

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!