Artisan beers – beer reviews and X Factor

It all started with an off the cuff comment on Twitter (as so much does these days!). I mentioned on my personal twitter account that I had ‘some cracking beers in’ but wasn’t really in the mood for sitting with pencil and notebook. Not that I don’t enjoy sitting with an artisan beer disecting all of the tastes and fancy words I can conjure up, but I simply wanted to forget all that and just get lost in the beer.

Because I was contemplating some fantastic beers that I’d been waiting to open for some time. These were beers I’d heard about, read about and almost dreamed about opening.

Paradox Isle of Arran pours very, very dark

A few other beer bloggers wearily heading back from beer festivals and Scoop singing the praises of BrewDog’s RipTide I headed for the beer cupboard but all I really wanted were my staple favourites to drink, beers I can always fall back on as discussed in my post on emergency beers – a Goose Island Honkers, a Brooklyn Lager and a Peroni Gran Reserva were exactly what I needed. But with encouragement from other beer tweeps and Reluctant I crumbled!

But I’d let the beer cupboard become infested with only ‘special beers’, those beers that you save because they deserve a special occasion, perhaps a little concentration and a clear head.

I shouldn’t complain, and to be honest a little more Twitter encouragement soon led to me biting the bullet and starting off with a bang, a Rip Tide versus Paradox Isle of Arran double review.

Rip Tide - a perfect distraction from X Factor

With mussels pasta in white wine sauce in my plate, and a night with Sarah watching X Factor on the telly, I cracked open the stouts and got stuck in. What did I think? You’ll have to wait for the review post I’m afraid, but in a nutshell Paradox Isle Of Arran is dark and it smells of alcohol. Funnily enough Sarah quite liked her first taste of the whiskey-aged number  saying it tasted better than it smelt!

Rip Tide was slightly more ruby (but still dark!) and intense, with subtle complexities that I explored over the course of the best part of an hour.

Suffice to say the side by side BrewDog pairing soon got me in the mood for beer, and I hit the cupboard again, sticking a Little Creatures Pale Ale in the fridge and mulled over where to go next.

Bashah was lighter than the stouts but still dark and strong

I opted, completed unplanned, for the Bashah challenge. I actually wanted something paler but with the alternatives being Tokyo, Great Divide Titan Stout or a Rudolph Christmas Ale, and having enjoyed Stone’s Self Righteous ale a few days previous, I dived straight in.

Bashah is the result of a collaboration between two breweries who could quite easily be twinned, Stone from the US and brewDog from Scotland.  It’s a Belgian style double IPA of some type, coming in a little lighter than the stout but still pretty dark, tasting like barbecued hops (well what I imagine hops might taste like bbq’d!)

You’ve guessed it, it’l get its own post, but it was good. I reckon the Stone influence makes this beer work, the balance echoes Self Righteous. It’s dark but hoppy and that’s a style I could get used to.

The first drop of Atlantic IPA

Inspired by my efforts so far I again returned to the beer cupboard, and impressed with the quality of the BrewDog efforts so far (which pleased me after the recent stunts and publicity) I decided to go all out and gently picked up my coveted Atlantic IPA. Again, there’ll be a full post for this beer, a bottle I’ve been avoiding for some months. Boy it was interesting though!

And so Saturday evening was drawing in, Saturday night TV was winding up, my netbook battery was dying and my head was a little heavier than when I tucked into my dinner. But I managed a Little Creatures nightcap (a superb beer with lots of lemon meringue ‘x factor’) as Sarah had intentions of catching up on series 2 of Gavin & Stacey and I reluctantly accepted my fate hoping the beer would get me through (it did and the beer had softened me enough to enjoy the show; at least more than I expected!)

So my impromptu artisan beer tasting was a success, and drank over the course of about 7 hours I woke up fresh as the Yorkshire air the next morning  fighting fit. I might not have made the best notes (or taken the best pictures) of my special beers, but that will only benefit a certain beer emporium in Leeds when I go back to replace them all as soon as my pay cheque hits my wallet this week!

My special beers the morning after