Real Ale Reviews

Flying Dog Raging Bitch

Terrible beer, great name.

Flying Dog Raging Bitch - orange in colour; orange in taste

Of course not, it’s the other way round. Disclaimer starts here: I love this beer.

I first sampled The Bitch at the Flying Dog UK tasting in Leeds. This 20th anniversary beer jumped out of its take-home tetra pak like a bat out of hell. Its nose blasted my clean out of my seat and before the night was out it was on its way to being a beer phenomenon.

Raging Bitch’s Belgian influence is the first thing that strikes me: it’s fruity esters and yeasty sweetness that only Belgian beers can pull off. Until now.

Massive grapefruit pith and outrageous sour fruit intertwine with a sweet malt finish and a bitter attack from an armada of late hops. The nose is huge thanks to a dry hopping assault by Amarillo hops. You pluck out the names of most of Sainsbury’s exotic fruit aisle if you close your eyes; for me the grapefruit ebbs and flows against tangerine and apricot. Read the rest of this entry »

Dunham Massey Cheshire IPA

Let me start by saying I’m not sure I gave this beer a fair run (which is an inadvertent pun!). I’ve just run 8 miles, never a good time for beer tasting. I doubt it was my fastest run ever but it did entail an hour and a half of running up the hills of Morley (of which their are seven, just like Rome, and Sheffield), over the Huddersfield-Leeds train line, across muddy fields, all the way along Churwell Hill, across to Dewsbury and back over the M62. In the rain. You know that rain. The rain that soaks you reet through.

Dunham Massey IPA and parsnip soup

On my return, after 2 x hamstring stretch + 2 x abductor stretch + 2 x hip flexor, but before my super hot sauna style shower, I popped open a beer whilst I liquidised the soup that had been simmering in the slow cooker.

This was part of a haul from the Beer Emporium in Sandbach, one of the first I picked up because I can’t help but be drawn to anything that says IPA on the label/pump clip. It poured very well for a bottle conditioned IPA, very clear, with a copper gradient and deep amber colour. Its nose and taste belied its appearance: I would expect it to be much more yellow and thinner because it tasted pale and gaunt, despite some upfront hop flavours and a little bit of biscuit. Read the rest of this entry »

A Harvey’s Night In

After a hectic day out on Saturday in the bustling streets of York complete with Christmas Market, I needed to relax with good food and beer when I got home. I’d been eyeing up three Harvey’s beers in my cupboard for a week or so and had been planning to drink them all together. Saturday night seemed perfect, with the promise of a hot curry and Christmassy afters.

Harvey’s Blue label

Harvey's Blue Labvel - I love the simple branding and label design

The first of three Harvey’s beers, I was hoping this would nicely wash down a Thai green chicken curry. It’s a coppery pale ale and poured with next to no head. I was expecting something lively from this diminutive bottle, but it was generally flat and a bit watery. Having heard lots about Harvey’s beers my first impressions were a little underwhelming.

It had a really nice, subtle aroma of lemons and limes, and there was a limey tang in the taste. It was super drinkable being soft on the palate with a smooth mouth feel. It wasn’t very bitter (the bottle says a ‘delicate bitterness’ which is an understatement) as you might expect from a beer weighing in at just 3.6% ABV. There was a sweet maltiness in the finish. I believe this beer is dry hopped which may explain some of its character

This did actually live up the bill, kind of accidentally, as it did wash down the green curry well in taste and texture, but I’m not sure this could become a favourite, and I’m not sure I’ve had the best bottle of it. One to give another go… Read the rest of this entry »

Beer Swap beer reviews Pt 1

You might have heard of the guy who I managed to draw for the beer swap: Pencil & Spoon’s own New Media Writer of the Year 2009 Mark Dredge. This was a selection of ales to look forward to; a brief glance at his excellent blog shows his good taste and awareness of beers and I had no doubt he would have developed an encyclopaedic knowledge of the local market over the year or so of working on his blog.

Kent is his part of the country, and is somewhere I have never been, so it was almost guaranteed that most of these beers I would never have come across.

So here is what I received:

- Westerham Brewery’s Little Scotney IPA (4%)
- Harvey’s Star of Eastbourne East India Pale (6.5%)
- Hopdaemon Brewery’s Skrimshander IPA (4.5%)
- Whitstable Brewery’s Raspberry Wheat (5.2%) Read the rest of this entry »

Chaos Theory and the Complexity of Life (and Brewing)

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 »

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! Read the rest of this entry »

Hardcore IPA by BrewDog

The first BrewDog in our Sainsbury’s Beer Competition series is one that we’re relatively familiar with. So far we’ve only got around to reviewing Punk IPA and Dogma, but we have quite a few ‘Dogs ‘in stock’ and it’s about time we wrote something about them.

Hardcore IPA is one of those beers that has a little bit of the ‘wow’ factor (or the ‘woah’ factor depending on your taste buds).

It has a crazy, tropical Um Bongo aroma that’s sweet and exciting. It smells like sweet, e-number fuelled heaven trapped in a bottle.

Hardcore IPA by BrewDog

Fruit salad penny sweet smells give way to a bitter overload, hops completely dominating and filling your mouth. Aromatic beers usually mean bitterness, but the pineapple aroma makes you expect something with an exotic fruit taste.

Beers with an imperial tag usually come at a certain strength and richness. Hardcore has the strength but it’s hidden treasures are perhaps just a little too inaccessible.

If you can work through the IBU frenzy you will get some of that, but boy does that take some acclimatisation.

This is a big beer. Drink it too fast and it becomes medicinal, but sip it slowly and it’s a world of hops, passionfruit and titilating tongue tingles. Oh, and it’s strong as hell to boot, so don’t down one before bedtime.

How To Disappear Completely by BrewDog

Tremendously excited about a beer named after a band I’ve held on a pedestal for over 50% of my life, I jumped on the chance to grab a couple of these when I picked up a few beers for a Soccer Saturday marathon and catch up with mates from my uni days. Trying to conduct a beer review in front of Jeff Stelling and co is never easy, especially when it isn’t the easiest review to write.

How To Disappear Completely - it's very complicated

How To Disappear Completely is something else.  To say its heavy on the hops is an understatement! The aroma and the first sip are larger than life, a complete juxtaposition with the Radiohead song it’s named after. This is, as the bottle suggests, is imperially hopped.  That’s something I can be pretty keen on, but of course with beers super charged with hops, balance is inevitably lost. My first reaction is that for the piney-hoppy-dark-malt fest that this beer is right from the start, this isn’t alcoholically strong, begging the question where does this taste come from (or where does the alcohol go?!).

BrewDog’s beers are generally very drinkable, especially considering that they are usually above average strength, and How To Disappear Completely is deceptively light. And considering the immense bitterness this beer exudes, it is sort of drinkable…relatively speaking. But if I’m honest I just didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as Punk IPA or Chaos Theory.

It’s not a bad beer by any means, there’s a depth of flavour that I found quite overpowering and perhaps a bit OTT, something I find with Stone Ruination IPA – a beer of such character that it can barely get into it before it’s tripped me up and spat my back out. How To Disappear is similarly hopped, I’ve no doubt the ascerbic power of this beer will take you by surprise and the off-the-scale theoretical IBU count of 358 (or something) will have your taste buds screaming for mercy and jumping ship like lemmings.

It feels like a seasonal beer, something suitable for the autumn and winter, not one of the last hot and sunny days of summer, watching the football results with accumulator in hand. The flavours are astonishing – I’m sure that cocoa, cigars, grass, fruit and leaves all hit me at different points when I wasn’t stunned by the bitterness. The malt manages to make brief, fleeting appearances and adds a smoky, roasted flavour …but blink and it’ll disappear. The flavours of the beer do disappear and intertwine like the do in the same way, just in a much cruder way.

How To Disappear Completely by BrewDog

My friends Jimmy and Jay were not at all impressed, this being too far flung from the safe arms of Birri Moretti and Erdinger, about the fanciest they get. Their first reactions were knee jerk – this was just way, way too much to handle.

And I’d agree to a certain extent. For me I like the idea and I like it that a milder beer (ABV wise) can be amazingly complex. But How To Disappear Completely didn’t strike me as interestingly intricate, I found it difficult. For me its balance is lost and the hop/malt struggle within this beer isn’t a tug of war of the taste buds but more of an uncoordinated rabble that peters out leaving an uncomfortable aftertaste. The stormy brew doesn’t ebb and flow, the flavours crash and erode, leaving your senses a little worse for wear. That’s if you’re able to get through the bitterness and find those flavours!

Let’s put aside the hyperbole and verbose descriptions for a second. When it all boils down, How To Disappear is a beer I’ll try again. Maybe my taste buds will become attuned to it, maybe I’ll find something else in it,  but it’s not one I could drink regularly, and certainly not something I could convert friends to easily.  Like the song, which wasn’t my favourite on Kid A to start with, it really took a lot of effort to get under the skin of it, and I still don’t fully get it. But I love the song now, so maybe the beer is a grower?

If I had to choose, if I could have only this beer or the song of the same name, then I’d have to take the song every time.

But being an optimist, I’d definitely take the song and the beer if that was an option, even if I’m never able to quite enjoy it or get it.

Williams Bros IPA

This years Sainsbury’s Beer Competition has an unmistakable Scottish feel to it. The Tartan army has no less than 7 entrants in the list of 15 finalists, and the verve and enthusiasm from the two breweries in question is unquestionable.

First up we have BrewDog with three entrants, Hardcore IPA, Dogma and Chaos Theory. Never ones to err on the side of blandness their ales are heavily hopped and infused with such delicacies as poppy seeds and honey.

Williams Brothers Brewing Company are also keen on supplemented good ol’ hops, barley and malt with locally sourced ingredients, with their beers featuring heather infusions, gooseberries and tayberries amongst other plant and fruitlife.

Williams Brothers dominate the Sainsbury's beer competition with 4 entries making the final 15 beers

The second of Williams beers to be reviewed (the first was Birds & Bees) in this series is their IPA. India Pale Ale is usually regarded as a traditional ale, one from a empirical time long gone and remembered only in statues and grand dockside buildings.

But for Williams Brothers IPA’s are most definitely a modern concept, that is compared to the heather beer for instance, which has been brewed in Scotland for 2,000 years (according to the Sainsbury’s fact sheet).

So with experience making beers that have paryicularly strong heritage how does this IPA fair?

Well, it’s a fine example of British India Pale Ale style.

The golden liquid has a hoppy aroma which precedes a similarly hoppy taste. You can tell this comes from this side of the Atlantic because of the malty finish which balances the whole beer of. This doesn’t dry your mouth out, it’s crisp and bittersweet, which a character that is lost in many of the US hop monster IPAs.

Williams Bros have made an IPA that is rooted in tradition but is a competitor to the likes of White Shield and Meantime. It might not have your taste buds partying like Hop Devil or hit your senses like Halcyon, but this is an IPA you could drink a couple of in an evening and thoroughly enjoy.

Halcyon IPA by Thornbridge

Halcyon IPA

This is an IPA that I’d been eyeing up in my cupboard for a few weeks before I sat down with, and boy, did it not disappoint!

Halcyon IPA by Thornbridge has a hugely hoppy aroma – a grassy rather than floral scent that tingles your tongue on the first sip. It’s initial taste is full of spices and contrasting flavours, and that’s only the beginning! Texture and colour wise it looks uniformly opaque (although I poured it pretty quickly),  but even this doesn’t reflect it’s deep and multifarious taste.

Halcyon - the best IPA in the UK?

This is a glorious IPA, remaining refreshing whilst being charismatically strong. It’s strength lingers throughout, becoming more complex with each gulp.

Let’s use Goose Island IPA as a benchmark of floral, tasty, downright excellent IPAs. Put simply, Halcyon is stronger, deeper and brings more to the table. Let’s not downgrade Goose Island, it’s in my Top Ten Beers Of All Time, but I can have a few Goose Island on a night out (my last night out in Leeds passing through Reform Bar proves that) but I might struggle to drink more than one Halcyon in a bar.

For a hoppy night in however, I don’t think you could do any better than this, another hop affair from Thornbridge. I actually took a break from drinking Halcyon to sample a Sam Smith’s Strawberry beer that Sarah was drinking (fruity beers so far are all she can stomach!) and coming back to Halcyon after it was an absolute joy. The explosion of taste in my mouth seemed twice as powerful and twice as enjoyable as before.

To sum it up, Halcyon is bloomin’ brilliant, and, like Radiohead this weekend at Leeds, I’m glad it’s something I had to wait a few years for despite the glowing and unrelenting reviews that tempted me so often.

I can honestly say this is a beer that isn’t caught up in hyperbole nor ballyhoo (yes I used a thesaurus for that one!)…it really is a very, very, very good beer.