Monthly Archives: February 2009

British Versions of Continental Beers

In the last few months, we’ve come across a couple of welcome attempts by British breweries to mimic continental beer styles. More of this, please. It’s surely the best way to compete with imported lagers?

Wylam Czech-style Pilsener beer is malty, fruity and very satisfying.  It’s nowhere near as good as a fresh Czech beer on tap, or even Derbyshire brewed Moravka, but compares very well with a bottle of Budvar.  An impressive offering from this Northumberland microbrewery.

cainsdoppelbock

Cain’s Double bock is very ‘true to style’, despite its origins in the north west of England, rather than the brewhouses of Bavaria. It’s really heavy and malty, but without being too sickly. It’s got some very pleasant milk chocolate and vanilla flavours and a soupy body.  At 7.1%, it goes straight to your head. Is this is available in cask form? If so, we’d love to try it.

The joy of parti-gyling

birthdaybeer

We’d been playing with the idea of a parti-gyle brew for a while.  This is where you take the first lot of sugary liquid from the mashed grain to make a strong beer. You then run more water over it to flush out any remaining sugar and that  second, less-sugary liquid is used to make a weaker beer.  Here’s  an old article by Randy Mosher on how to do it.

When I hit upon the idea of brewing Bailey a surprise birthday beer, I knew I couldn’t brew an entire batch in secret, but I could hide a small carboy of beer. So, part-gyling seemed the natural way forward.

I was definitely impressed by the results, and I think Bailey was too (well, he can’t say he doesn’t like his birthday present, can he?).   More excitingly though, it showed us that parti-gyling is pretty straightforward and allows you to experiment a lot more on brew day and make two very different beers with only a little extra effort.

Full details on how I made the beers can be found after the jump.

Continue reading →

Beer and Cheese #3

ssimperialstout

This is a fun way to spend an evening, although it can interfere with your sleep.  Using the same cheese line up as first time, we tried each against a couple of contrasting beers, namely Brooklyn’s East India Pale Ale, and Sam Smith’s Imperial Stout.

The goat’s cheese didn’t really work with either — it accentuated the bitterness (at the expense of the malt) in the pale ale and killed the roastiness of the imperial stout.  The cheap camembert didn’t make a dent in the imperial stout’s flavour but brought out a little sweetness in the Brooklyn.  However, the beer made the cheese taste like rubber.  We had hopes that the imperial stout would be a good match for the Roquefort and it did stand up to it, but again, lost some roasty flavour.  The Roquefort made the pale ale harsher and more bitter.  So – we’re still looking for a good match for this one.

The best match for both beers was actually the boring cheddar.  It made the East India Pale Ale more balanced (we’re fans of the beer but think the hops are a little too grassy and dominant) and it intensified the flavours of the imperial stout.

Pretend Mongolian beer better than expected

This is what Mongolia looks like (picture by XXX at Flickr, under Creative Commons).

This is what Mongolia looks like.

Baadog describes itself as a “Mongolian craft beer”, brewed under licence (in Ireland, apparently) for the for the Mongolian Barbeque chain of restaurants.  We weren’t expecting much — another slightly dull, fizzy “world lager”, perhaps, like British-brewed Asahi?

In fact, it’s pretty good and way exceeded our expectations. It’s almost brassy in colour, slightly cloudy and accented towards the malt.  Ratebeer has it classified as a Vienna-style lager.

Whatever the origins, it’s nice to see restauranteurs coming up with an interesting beer to go with their food rather than just sticking with wine, or filling their fridges with Becks, Stella and the appalling San Bloody Miguel.

We picked this up from Paul’s Wines on Orford Road in Walthamstow.

Picture by Tiarescott at Flickr, under Creative Commons.

More BrewDog reviews

morebrewdogs

We’ve had a few Brewdogs in the cellar for a while now, and only just got round to drinking them, having pitted the IPAs against each other a while ago.

“The Physics“, a “laid back amber beer” didn’t really work for us – it’s got a gorgeous smell, and it’s pleasant enough, but it doesn’t have a lot of complexity of flavour — crystal malt and that’s it.  Tasted like one of our homebrews.

Riptide, a “twisted merciless stout” is pretty good though — one of those beers that’s so well balanced it’s hard to pick out particular flavours.  There’s cocoa (rather than chocolate) and a slightly sour cherry note.  If you gulp it, there’s a hint of smoke.  It’s 8% and has a lot of body. Drinking this feels like a real treat.

Paradox Smokehead (batch 015 in Islay casks) is an impressive drink. You’d give it to people to make them go “wow, doesn’t that taste like whisky”. But, if you don’t like peaty whisky smells and flavours then forget it.  There may be other exciting ingredients in there, but if there are, they’re hard to spot.  We like it but it’s almost an ordeal to get through half a bottle.

Isn’t BrewDog’s marketing strategy just ace?  Cool-looking bottles that you’d happily give to non-beer-geek mates.  Limited edition batches, like 90s indie singles. Lots of publicity in “taking on” the Portman group. Getting on Oz and James helps, too. Of course the beer should speak for itself, but with their strategy BrewDog are aiming for the mainstream market, and you have to be impressed with that ambition.

Brooklyn Local 1 (beer and cheese #2)

local1

What could be more fitting for our continuing beer and cheese adventures than to try a special beer from the man who inspired us in the first place?

Brooklyn Local 1 is bottle-conditioned (and a very nice bottle it is, too).  The Brooklyn Brewery website describes it as “a dynamic complex of flavors, Belgian flair, Brooklyn fortitude and a dusting of our special yeast” and it lives up to this.  It is Duvel-like in its mouthfeel and drinkability, with a sweet orange flavour giving way to a spicy aftertaste.  It’s jolly good.

We tried pairing it with a range of cheses.  A posh, rather gooey camembert from our local deli made it sweeter and reminded us of Hoegaarden Grand Cru, accentuating the spice.  A very nice Wensleydale complemented the spice, but was overpowered by the beer very easily.  Our difficult-to-match Oxford Blue was OK, but made the beer taste much less complex.

The overall winner (in fact, the best beer and cheese match we’ve had yet) was the aptly named Stinking Bishop.  This rind-washed cult classic made the beer much more intense and full-bodied, while the beer brought out the creaminess in the cheese and helped to downplay its challenging odour.  Marvellous. There’s something in this cheese and beer business after all.

Why cask ale matters — sticking up for CAMRA

realalechalkboard

A recent post of ours about the Good Beer Guide set off a wider debate about CAMRA‘s focus on cask ale, at the expense of other good beer, a point which Tim picks up here.

Just after we started blogging, we posted about the use of the word “craft” beer, and why we preferred it to “real ale” as a concept.  Re-reading it, I would still agree with most of the sentiments but I feel the need to stick up for real ale a little more now than I did then.

As a beer lover, I adore the fact that my favourite pints in the pub will rarely taste exactly the same.  I like that the fact that you can get amazing-tasting beer at relatively low strength — I can’t think of many sub 4% “unreal” beers that taste great, whereas I can think of many wonderful cask ales at that strength.

Sometimes we think that the UK could do with a “craft beer revolution”, one that focusses on the quality of the beer, not the way it’s produced.  Certainly beers like Sierra Nevada and Brooklyn Lager which are unreal by the time the hit the UK are fantastic gateway beers for people who aren’t that bothered about beer.

However, if there is less emphasis on cask ale, is there a danger that it will decline again?  As Jeff and Dave and various others point out, looking after and serving real ale is a chore.  Why would you do it unless you loved the stuff?  It would seem to be an obvious thing to get rid of if you run a pub company — as Jeff has pointed out, the margins are often worse, particularly for beer from small breweries.

So why do pub companies bother stocking cask ale (albeit often a limited selection) and how come so many landlords sell it even though they “don’t personally touch the stuff“? Could it be something to do with a national pressure group that rewards you in publicity for stocking the stuff?

I do get frustrated with narrow-minded attitudes towards lager, and what I call the “four legs good, two legs bad” dogma that many CAMRA members seem to subscribe to.  But we’re still members of CAMRA (albeit not active ones) because we would still like to see more cask ale around and a greater choice in the places that do stock it.  And while we hate the “take it to the top” campaign, there is a lot of other grass-roots stuff going on (“LocAle” springs to mind) that is helping to promote good beer in a wider variety of places.

Boak

The Famous White Horse at last

whitehorsewebsitegrab

The White Horse on Parson’s Green, West London, has a nickname which is amusing the first time you hear it but tiresome after the 100th, so I’ll say this only once: it’s known as the Sloany Pony because, unlike most serious beer pubs, its clientele is made up largely of tall, skinny posh girls.

Several things become obvious on entering. First, the range of beer is huge and covers all the bases. Secondly, the bar staff are obviously being paid and trained properly, because they’re extremely cheerful despite item three: the place is absolutely crammed.

Standing about looking forlorn because we had nowhere to sit paid off after a few minutes, though, as a young Scottish couple moved up so we could share their table. How very civilised — that doesn’t happen often in London. And, what do you know: they’re only friends of the chaps that run Brewdog! They should be on commission, too, for their sincere salesmanship of Brewdog’s wonderful Paradox which features on the White Horses’s extensive bottled beer menu.

Notable among the many beers we tried were Schlenkerla Rauchbier on tap (almost as good as in Bamberg, but not quite); a startlingly good lambic kriek from Oud Beersel; and a 2006  Fuller’s Vintage Ale (with cheese).

We left feeling skint and rather unglamorous but will certainly be returning, even though it’s an hour and half trek from our place.  Perhaps on a weekday afternoon, though, so we’ve got room to breathe?

Chalky's Bite Improves with Age

chalkysbite

In a recent tasting, Zak Avery compared Sharp’s Chalky’s Bite to Koelsch, which spurred us on to open the last bottle of a case we were given as a gift a year ago. In Zak’s honour, we drank it from Koelsch glasses.

We pretty quickly decided that we didn’t really see any similarity although we take Zak’s point about the cold conditioning of top-fermented beer.

What we also noted was that it had aged beautifully. It was nice enough fresh, but after a year mellowing in the ‘cellar’ (garage), it knocked us for six. Without a fresh one for comparison, it’s hard to say what had changed, but our feeling was that it had lost some bitterness, become rounder and less brash — like a classy Belgian blonde.

We’d be interested to hear any suggestions for other British beers, apart from the usual suspects, that age well.