Halloween Hobgoblin

It’s Halloween!

And if your local supermarket or beer shop doesn’t have pumpkin beer, then the next best thing to celebrate the might be the Halloween branded bottles of Wychwood Hobgoblin, found retailing for £1 at ASDA.

The £1 price tag didn’t scare us but the beer did a little. We must have grabbed a dogby bottle because the usual stewed fruit aroma had matured into rotting crab apples (old hops perhaps?) and the familiar fruit cake richness had become an earthy sweet ‘n sour tang, like rosé wine left unattended overnight.

A bad apple perhaps but if you get a better luck of the draw Hobgoblin is a robust strong beer for warming a cold and prickly Halloween evening (or simply accompanying an X Factor eviction should that be your Sunday night TV tipple). Read the rest of this entry »

Right it was day two of the Super 8′s yesterday in the Twenty20 World cup and England took a good old tonking off the Saffers. Let’s see if we could get our own back by pitting one of own nation’s fine ales against the Cape shandy that Smithy and his boys will have been sitting down to last night.

South African – Castle Lager, 5.0% abv

In to bat first is the South African opener. I had mine ice cold, just how I like my lagers on a warm day, but have to admit that it hasn’t really kept it’s cool under the pressure out in the middle. I like the fact that it was flavoursome and malty for a lager, justifying it’s premium tag. It was, however, a little disappointing in terms of texture. Oddly, because I usually find lager too fizzy, this feels strangely flat in the mouth.

Score (out of 20) – Good opening partnership but a disappointing middle order – 8

Blighty – Extra Special ASDA Golden Ale, 4.5% abv

I purchased this beer in advance, hoping the weather would respect the cricket and allow me a clear crisp evening outside on the patio. It did not. Having said that, the beer is actually maltier that it’s golden appearance suggests and, while it is by no means heavy or dark, it has a sturdier backbone than I was expecting. I would therefore say that it is probably more suited to a crisp springtime evening than the strong midday sun.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with this ale and I expect that it is widely, and relatively cheaply, available through ASDA supermarkets. Certainly it is worth a taste to see if you agree with my opinion that, while it does not have the sweetness and finesse required to find itself on any shortlists for great golden ales, it grinds out a solid win for the English code of the game.

Score (out of 20) – consistently above average throughout without shining, ground out the win – 14

Hook Norton Brewery’s Old Hooky – 4,6%abv

Following on from last night’s review of Hook Norton Brewery I thought it important to get a review of one of their beers up as soon as possible. Old Hooky is the flagship of Hook Norton Brewery around the country being widely available in many supermarkets as well as most good wine/beer merchants. The very bottle I am drinking was sourced in Morley from ASDA and was on their 3 bottles for £4.00 mix and match deal.

As an aside me and the monkey boy, when we first moved to Morley, experimented with buying every bottle of Old Hooky on the shelf in ASDA whenever we went. Within a month we had a range of five different Hook Norton beers available (More than most shops in Oxfordshire) right here in Yorkshire. Unfortunately the levels of consumption required to continue this selection proved unsustainable.

Right – back to the beer. Old Hooky is not the light, paler type of ale that I typically favour but is one of the beers that I drink most often. This is largely because it’s the most widely available offering from my favourite brewery, but also because it’s a bit of an anomaly in that it’s full bodied, darker flavoured and yet not at all heavy.

Hook Norton advertises this as a ‘fruity’ beer and it is, but not in the light citrus way I think of when I hear that phrase. It comes across dark and fruity like my Nan’s Christmas cake, reminding me of treacle rather than golden syrup, yet slips down just as easy as summer or pale ales. I would recommend trying this beer with a nice steak or a beef stew as it has the body to compete with the meat but will not fill you up and leave you embarrassed with half a plateful of leftovers.

I give this beer to a great many friends as a taster from home and it is always well received with many friends asking me to bring other Hooky varieties up for them to try. For this reason, and because of it’s wide availability and low price in ASDA, I have to rate this as one of the best beers available in Britain today.

We'll tidy up the artwork but for now you get the idea of what it looks like for when you're in ASDA