Ivanhoe English Pale Ale
The guy behind the counter looks as decrepit as the shop, and the shop doesn't even look open, it's grape-bordered window dressing might be confused for a long boarded up newsagents. It leans against Ladbrokes on the Dereham Road, just a short walk (and not very scenic walk) from the pot-holed streets of Norwich city centre. Ivanhoe jumps off the shelf, of all the local beers it looks the most promising (though in fairness surprisingly few ...
Spurn Point
Just like Mike Parker, the author of Map Addict, for years I've been mesmerised by the enigmatic Spurn Point, that strangely shaped strip of almost-land that stretches from the tip of the East Riding of Yorkshire and awkwardly attempts to reach back downstream towards the sands of the Humber estuary. Spurn Point (or Spurn Head for many) is a sand bar that has been precariously edging it's way westwards over the last millennium of geological time as the ...
M&S London Porter
Smoky as hell to smell and like a burnt caramel bar to taste, M&S's London Porter is a sweet beer to devour with masses of chocolate or marshmallows over a camp fire. If you don't fancy the great outdoors then no worries, the lingering smoky presence hangs around for a long time in your mouth and may invoke daydreams of sitting under the stars and gazing at the heavens. It's packed with malt variety: you can settle ...
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 ...
Ales of the Unexpected
Since the dawn of my drinking days I've been a big fan of the dark side. Stouts, porters, milds or brown ales, I've always enjoyed savouring their brooding malty richness. And as autumn has arrived with a bang, it's fitting that I happened across a couple of unusual and very worthy offerings from Wentworth on my travels last week. This South Yorkshire brewery is one step ahead of the game in the stout ...
Meantime Pilsner
A strong, frothy head, a pale countenance and a ferociously Noble body makes Meantime Pilsner unmistakeably Bavarian. Put simply it's the colour of straw and the embodiment of light, refreshing, authentic lager. It's so pale you might even miss the barely toasted malt in this one. It's pale, delicate fizz, infused with the scent of stalks and greenery, ensures it's fresh and natural in body and soul with a congenital bitterness screaming of the vernacular style. E.g. it's hoppy, ...
Underbelly
Once upon a time Britain was an industrial nation. The population were manual workers, skilled or miners, all contributing towards the rise of the Empire. Nowadays we work at screens, behind partitions, "in services". Those grey, growing gas stores, the vast warehouses, the corrugated factories; they're alien to much of Britain; a spec on the landscape, an irritation to an otherwise green and pleasant land. These gunmetal structures, whilst reduced in their visibililty, still make up the backbone ...
Goose Island India Pale Ale
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 ...
Co-operative Harvest Ale
Beers these days are hoppy. Well, I reckon they probably are more hoppy than they used to be. Hoppy hoppy hoppy. Such...an easy word to use. And such a generalisation. I never wrote about beer 20 years ago. I was a young Yorkshire lad acclimatising to life in North Oxfordshire, still a decade or so away from being able to legally drink. But I don't reckon the bitters were as hoppy nor the hops as ...
Ringwood Old Thumper
Admittedly Ringwood Old Thumper has taken a while to grow on me. Approximately 10 bottles to be relatively precise. Perhaps it was the nose that created images of toffee apples doused in vinegar or meths. Or the uncertainty of trying to enjoy the gone-off flavours of rotten veg, crab apples, musty drawers and dirty rags? Yet, Old Thumper kinda grows on you. Unfurled slowly is the, not quite delicate, but protracted sweetness and bitterness of an aged and ...
Plot 16: The Fermenting Room
When beer and art collide: Modern Art Oxford's limited edition green hop beer Down a dark and wet side street between the less historical buildings of the city's shopping district, the white washed walls of Modern Art Oxford are accustomed to the strange and gangly structures of modern sculpture. But to the strange and gangly structures of humulus lupulus they are not. Twisting, reaching, helixing, yearning upwards, the leaf-heavy green bines have designs on the famously spired ...
Roosters Pumpkin Beer
Roosters Brewery, whose beers are the staple diet of many a Yorkshire pub, marked this Hallowe'en with a pumpkin beer. No ordinary pumpkin beer though, a pumpkin beer served in nothing less than a giant pumpkin. A really, really giant pumpkin. Pumpkin 5 Spice Ale was tapped at North Bar in Leeds, in front of Calendar news and a small selection of excitable beer lovers. Arguably a more delicate task than tapping a cask, the job ...
Moor JJJ IPA
This not, I repeat NOT, an IPA. Punchy, citrus hops? Nil. Alcohol? Deep, stewed and sweet beyond believe. Apple skins & fruit pudding? Yes, yes, YES! None of which gives Moor JJJ IPA much credence as an IPA. But then again this isn't an IPA nor a double IPA. It's only a bleedin' triple IPA(!!!). This couldn't be further from Green King's bland and monotonous flagship brand of ale and is similar in nothing but colour. By their own admission Moor didn't ...
Moorhouse's Pendle Witches Brew
From Pendle Hill you've more chance of seeing Ian Holloway celebrating at Bloomfield Road than coming across any broomsticks or clandestine hurlyburly. And that's on a cloudy day. The sandstone plateau does have a slightly spooky aura about it though. Standing proud from the undulating hillside you can imagine a cackling coven of witches peering over the landscape and plotting the demise of their rivals. Especially if you visit during thunder and lightning... Moorhouse's Pendle Witches Brew is inherently ...-
December 8th, 2009CommentIt feels like I’ve been writing about these Sainsbury’s beers for a long time. To be fair it is, but once I’d started I wasn’t giving up!
The actual competition finished quite a while ago, and it’s probably a good idea to round up what happened.
Barnstorming beer from Bath Ales
In 2008, Sainsbury’s first launched their beer competition. Breweries provided the supermarket giant with their finest new ales, a selection of which would make it through to the final, where the beers would find themselves in stock and on sale in stores nationwide.
The top selling beers would win a nice big order from the Sainsbury’s to be stocked on a permanent basis, a veritable cash cow and holy grail for many brewers.
The first year saw Bath Ales Barnstormer and Doctor Okells IPA (both very good!) take the title.
This year Scottish brewers dominated the challenge, with no less than 7 of the 15 finalists in stores across the country coming from the industrious BrewDog and their contemporaries the brothers William.
Tags: bath ales, birds and bees, BrewDog, chaos theory, golden hare, sainsburys, williams brothers
Finalists in the 2009 Sainsbury's Beer Competition
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December 8th, 2009Beer Reviews, IPA
BrewDog Chaos Theory
Complexity in the universe is often based on simple, fundamental rules. We don’t know all of the rules but we understand some of them; however despite this, life is still, at our level, an unpredictable and seemingly random existence.
Deep Simplicity by John (and Mary) Gribbin is one of the best science books and makes my head hurt as much as a few bottles of BrewDog's Chaos Theory does
Chaos theory helps us get our heads around this (and then in the next breath turns our perceptions of ‘thought on its head). It also suggests that systems such as our universe are completely deterministic…in theory. But unfortunately we have to pinpoint the exact starting conditions of the system, which is a little more than tricky when every single tiny particle in our universe system was compacted into an unimaginably small space, a little over 13,700,000,000 years ago (plus or minus about 14 million years!).
This chaotic nature has parallels with the brewing process, where we calculate the mix of initial ingredients, follow strict processes and end up with tasty beer at the end. But we can’t always predict the exact end result and consistency and quality in a brew can be more difficult than just throwing the ingredients together and sticking the heat on.
As you might have guessed there’s a parallel between all this and BrewDog’s last beer in our Sainsbury’s beer competition series. Chaos Theory is an ode to chaos theory (although at 7.1% it doesn’t really help me get my head around the physics much!). Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: beer, BrewDog, chaos theory, competition, india pale ale, IPA, sainsburys -
September 7th, 2009Breweries
BrewDog goodie box
I got a very excited text from my girlfriend earlier on today, informing me that a rather large box had arrived from a certain Scottish brewery.
I have to admit I was really looking forward to getting home and opening it, so it’s typical that I didn’t get back home until about 8.30pm thanks to work, my own incompetence and a quick trip around Ikea (the downside of living so near one is its so easy to ‘go for a quick wander whilst it’s quiet’!!)
So, I was delighted to get home and realise that Sarah hadn’t been exaggerating, it really was a large goodie box that had arrived!
Unfortunately, the lovely folk at BrewDog might have selected a box that was a little too big, and as I eagerly opened my grandly wrapped package I was greeted with the smell of very strongly scented soggy cardboard and a distinctly beery smell. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: BrewDog, chaos theory, dogma, punk ipa, punk monk -
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