Fuller’s Organic Honey  Dew Golden Beer – 5.0% Vol

Me and Jack looked at each other with a mutual look surprise as we took our first sips of this beer. Not at all what we were expecting. It was not the sweet sensation I was expecting and someone else here has informed me that the draft version is far sweeter.

I must admit that I went to the trouble of pouring this into a glass to see if it appeared more golden that it tasted and I have to say that it did. In fairness this Ale may be golden for regular drinkers of strong ales and porter but for my young pale loving taste buds this juxtaposition of a stronger ale with the dark, syrupy, (not sure if that’s a word) raw sweetness doesn’t really float my boat.

I must say the bottle, particularly the bottle tops, are awesome…

Hogs Back Brewery T.E.A (Traditional English Ale), 4.2%

Currently sat round Jack’s house playing 1 Vs 100 on the Xbox while having a few real ales. Tomorrow we’re hoping to head over to Greenwich to check out the Meantime brewery but in the meantime (pun definitely intended) we plan on doing a few reviews tonight.

This TEA was recommended to me by Fletch a few weeks ago so when we were down at Waitrose picking ales I suggested to Jack that we give it a whirl. Aside from Fletch it comes well recommended having won the 2000 Best Beer in Britain award.

I have to say that this beer is really smooth, tasting initially a bit like a strong continental lager and not as strong as many award winning ales. The soft initial flavour gives way to a fantastic hoppy aftertaste which I would imagine was responsible for putting it in line for the award. It is bottle conditioned and has the quality you expect for a bottle conditioned ale.

Jack says this is one of the top five ales he’s ever tried and that he would not be embarrassed to give a bottle to his old man at Xmas. Top referral Fletch.

http://www.hogsback.co.uk/

T.E.A. not tea!!!

Fruli Belgian White Beer – Strawberry Flavour – 4.1% abv (bottled)

We’ve been up and running for a couple of months now and I’m ashamed to note  that the level of female input into our reviews is frankly disgraceful. In an attempt to partially redress this error I rocked up to work this week with two bottles of Fruli, one for each of two lovely ladies from my office who were good enough to offer their time to provide me with a review in exchange for beer.

Fruli can be quite a dividing beer, something of the Marmite of the beer world, with most people either loving it or hating it. I was interested to see whether the reviews were similar or whether we would be lucky enough to see opposite ends of the spectrum. For background I should state that Amanda is an experienced beer drinker who often recommends beers and watering holes to me on a Monday after she’s been out and about over the weekend. Rachel is just an experienced drinker!!!

Here goes…

‘As soon as I opened the bottle I was hit with a strong smell of strawberries. I found the taste was not disappointing but I wonder if an avid beer drinker may well do as there’s only a tiny hint of beer flavour in there. It’s mostly Strawberries!

It reminded me more of a sparkling wine than a beer. I really enjoyed the taste and would definitely drink this again although I don’t think I could drink more than two in a row as it is quite sweet.’

Rachel

‘I was quite disappointed in this strawberry beer, it was quite wet with no real beer taste and only a slight taste of strawberries. I too thought it was more like a pink sparkling wine than a beer.

I did however love the Timmermans Strawberry beer on draught from Muse in Wetherby on Friday night. It was really tangy with a slight beery taste. I would definitely drink that again.’

Amanda

Many thanks to the guys for their comments on Fruli. I have posted a link below to an unofficial Fruli website. The website is really cool, although unofficial, and I will try and get a Fruli trail over to them for Leeds in the coming weeks.

In the meantime please feel free to add comments below if you wish to ‘weigh-in’ on the Fruli vs Timmermans debate  which Amanda may well have just inadvertantly started…….

http://fruli.com

Scottish micro-brewery BrewDog has hit the headlines this week with its claims about the impact of its new beer Tokyo*, which founder James Watt claims is “providing a cure to binge beer-drinking”.

His claims are based around the idea that anyone that wants to get inebriated will turn to stronger beers (such as his brewery’s 6-unit, 18% ale) and appreciate the flavour so much that they will not need to turn to “mass market, industry brewed lagers that are so bland and tasteless that you are seduced into drinking a lot of them”.

Of course, this is patently untrue – and it is more than likely that Mr. Watt knows this.

BrewDog, in its brief two-year existence is quickly becoming the rock n roll star of the micro-brewery world. As reports this week have reminded us, the company has previously flirted with controversy over a name given to one of its products that refers directly to drug-use (apparently; I wouldn’t have known said term if the BBC hadn’t informed me!)

But all publicity is good publicity and this is clearly the case here. BrewDog are now probably the most discussed brewery in the country and that can’t be a bad thing for them. I personally, love their manifesto. The aim is to target the younger market and turn them on to quality Real Ale and away from the cheap, common lagers popular amongst this demographic. In terms of Real Ale popularity, it is great achievement that such a young company, run by two clearly enterprising individuals, is taking the corporate alcohol producers head-on.

What they have also done with these statements is to highlight an issue that has plagued Britain for years; we don’t know how to appreciate alcohol consumption, certainly beyond the high-culture of fine wines.

We have never had the ‘café culture’ found abroad, where alcohol is consumed in a more respectable manner, and it is this side of the BrewDog argument that is strong. Growing up in the UK, drinking beer, wine, spirits and so on, is often more focused on quantity as opposed to quality. Although specialist bars and ale houses are growing in popularity, much of the city centre remains dominated by low-standard, low-priced alcohol which has ultimately become the norm.

Therefore, if companies like BrewDog are brewing special ales, such as Tokyo* – a run of three thousand units, of which only one thousand will be sold in the UK exclusively on the firm’s website – is this really such an issue?

All this debate has done is to highlight the country’s insecurities about its own drinking culture. BrewDog won’t change that, but at least it is putting the control back in the hands of consumers to try new and innovative ales, no matter how strong they may be.

I woke this morning and for no apparent reason one of the first things that popped into my little head was “I miss Colin Murray”.

Now Mr Murray was what you might call a grower for me (no innuendo please!). That is, I didn’t really ‘get’ or like him at first. But one listen to his Radio 1 show and I was hooked. For me, Colin Murray was The Return of Radio.

There may have been others pioneering the radio show (I’m told 6Music is good and I love Bob Dylan’s Theme Time show), but on a regular basis radio to me was just annoying opop or annoying ads.

Anyway, one of Colin’s features was the Mid Week Mobile Disco, a selection of songs chosen by Colin, his team and the listeners based on a theme. The theme allowed for interpretation and wasn’t just a bunch of songs with the same word in the title, but well thought out links between songs around a distinct theme. The Mid Week Mobile Disco had music history, interesting debate, uncovered trhings you didnt know, got audiences interactin, and was above all, just fun!

So, in a hopefully not too vain attempt to ressurrect my happy Wednesday nights listening to interesting music and Mr Murray’s very friendly and conspicuous voice, I’ve started a little Mid Week Mobile Disco (#MWMD – which looks like an acronym for a dangerous weapon, sorry!) and, with it being IPA Monday (#ipamonday) and Music Monday (#musicmonday).

It’s dead easy to contribute,:

- simply tweet your suggestions for themed-beer songs to @realalereviews or just with the hash tag #beer playlist

- if you have Spotify then you can find the playlist for all suggestions via HTML link Beer Playlist or via this spotify link: spotify:user:realalereviews:playlist:4kl8Puv1GTHX0cQDzy4P9H

- email your suggestions to realale(at)real-ale-reviews.com and we’ll post them on the blog!

Hoppy IPA Monday and happy  Music Monday!

Anglo Dutch Brewery – Summertime Ale, 4.1%

Having been critical of The Porterhouse earlier this Summer for not being fully stocked with light, golden, summertime brews I could hardly go into the Cross Keys, Holbeck, on a warm sunny day and not try this topical summer number.

I do not know much about the Anglo Dutch Brewery but, according to their website, they were officially launched in 2000 and they haaven’t had a history update since 2003. Nor could I find this beer on their website (www.anglo-dutch-brewery.co.uk) so I was going into it slightly blind but very willing.

I was more than happy with  the result which was enjoyed in the evening sun behind the Cross Keys. It is hard to believe, sat drinking a beer in this peaceful spot, the other areas of Holbeck only a short walk away.

The beer itself was slightly yellow, rather than the anticipated golden. It has cirus flavours and was quite sharp to the taste, coupling this with the rather flat texture it was reminiscent of a more full bodied version of the traditional bottle with a slice of lime such as Corona or Sol. Perhaps a great British alternative to the these hispanic imports.

The beer certainly deserves to be treated more seriously than the comical light it paints itself in. The picture may be too small to show it but the caption says ‘Others are cleaning up the all decade merchant bankers party’. My advice is forget the merchant bankers, forget the imported lagers and bash on with a cheeky few pints of this West Yorkshire gem on a sunny night in Leeds.

Corona for West Yorkshire

1849 Champion Ale by Joseph Holts

Despite hailing from the ‘wrong side’ of the Pennines (a distinction I realise is entirely subjective and I say with the greatest of affection and genial banter!), the eponymous Joseph Holt of Manchester and his descendents have created a number of really good quality ales over the years, and 1849 Champion Ale is one of the brewery’s most readily available ales.

Hints of fruit jostle amongst the hops that dominate this ale. It has a darkish complexion in taste and colour, which make for a complex but thoroughly enjoyable drink, worthy of it’s ‘Champion’ title.

Traditional ales that really hit the spot can be hard amongst the myriad real ales in some supermarkets (not a bad thing but a good sign of how real ale now commands decent shelf space in the big four chains). If you live outside the North West & The Lakes you may have to go a little further out of your way to find Joseph Holt’s bottles though, as if I remember rightly this was a frugal purchase from Booth’s in Ilkley.

A very rewarding bottle, from a brewery that deserves greater recognition than it probably gets, at least outside of the Greater Manchester area. We’d be very proud of such a brewery in Yorkshire!

Goose Island IPA - a fine example of a North America IPA

Hoppy, vibrant, refreshing and tangy to finish, Goose Island is a mighty fine American IPA. The Chicago brewers bottled ales are a staple of many of the best bars in the UK, with both the IPA and Honker’s Ale permanent fixtures at our work’s regular, The Cross Keys in Leeds.

American IPAs differ from their UK counterparts. I don’t think it’s all down to the fact I enjoy them quite a bit colder than I’d usually sample a traditional ale, but they seem to share a vivacious style that UK IPAs often don’t muster.

Does this mean they aren’t traditional India Pale Ales in that case?

In fact they may be more so, as an abundance of hops is one of the core features of a traditional India Pale Ales (the hops and strength acting as a preservative to keep the beer in good shape throughout  the long voyage to India in the 19th Century) and many North America versions are far hoppier than British counterparts which have lost their hop-filled roots somewhat (with notable exceptions of course!)

Goose Island shares that hoppy optimism, leaving a satisfying malt feeling in your mouth that inevitably urges you to take another gulp. There’s fruit in there amongst the hops and malt, adding complexity. It is a balanced IPA, very enjoyable to drink and moreish to boot.