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beer reviews Poland

Definitely not beer of the week

lechpils

Our local Turkish-run corner shop sells some surprisingly good beer but, on the flipside, they make most of their money flogging nasty ciders and strong lagers to tramps. Which is Lech Pils?

Lech Pils caught our eye because we’ve got a soft spot for Poland and because, unlike Lech Premium, it isn’t that commonly seen in the UK. There was also the thought in the back of our minds that, if Premium is a boring lager (and it is) then maybe Pils would actually be something more interesting — perhaps drier, hoppier and more bitter? It certainly looked the part, being as pale as a beer can be, and quite gently carbonated.

Sadly, it’s rubbish.  It smells a bit like WD40 and tastes like mouthwash. It reminded us of Fosters, and that’s not a good thing. Straight afterwards, we had a Pilsner Urquell for the sake of comparison, and it was streets ahead. Could this be the least surprising conclusion to a beer review ever?

When Boak lived in Poland, Lech Premium was her beer of choice, being the least likely of all the Polish beer brands to give her a migraine. “Best of a bad bunch” would be the phrase…

Categories
beer reviews

Hitting the stash

Autumn seems to have struck all of a sudden – it’s windy and wet and there are an alarming number of leaves on the ground for August.  It meant that for the first time for ages, we fancied a night in with the stash.

We’ve collected quite a few odd beers. You know the type — you think they’ll be interesting but not necessarily nice, so you don’t get round to drinking them.  First up was the notorious Speedball, by Brewdog, which sounded foul from the description (kola nut, guarana, poppy, c-hops and honey) but was actually very pleasant.  For all the look-at-me-I’m-contraversial marketing, it tasted like a nice, non-extreme American Amber ale.  Maybe some of the extreme flavours had mellowed over time?  Speedball is now called “Dogma”, by the way.

Next up was Ginger Tom by Robinson’s, a mix of their Old Tom and Fentiman’s ginger ale.  This 6.5% strong ale didn’t quite work – too much ginger and not enough Old Tom, making it fizzy and overpowering.  You could see what they were trying to do though, because the aftertaste was really nice, like gingerbread.

Expecting those two to be weird and undrinkable, we’d also laid out Temptation, a “Russian stout” from the Durham Brewery.  Can you go wrong with a 10% imperial stout that says “best between September 2007 and September 2012”?  No.  It’s great, with loads of comforting flavours – vanilla, chocolate, coffee, liquorice, sherry.  One to savour and our beer of the week.

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beer reviews bottled beer Germany

Un-skunked bottled lager

The cap from a bottle of Augustiner lager beer

In a crap pub, a bottle of Budvar is often the last refuge for the beer geek. Sadly, those little green bottles are almost always past their best — stale and flavourless.

It was nice this week to be reminded that it doesn’t always have to be that way with bottled lager, though, when Augustiner Lagerbier Hell (our beer of the week) transported us to Bavaria with one sip.

There were veritable hops, sweet malt and — hooray! — no off flavours.

It also helped that it was served in a nicely shaped and properly branded glass. That shouldn’t matter, but it does.

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beer reviews

Champagne moments

vignerone

So England regain the Ashes, convincingly in the end although I’m sure I wasn’t the only one getting nervous.

When Ponting and then Clarke were run out in short succession, I started hunting around for something bubbly to chill.  We eventually settled on Vigneronne, which is a lambic with added grapes, brewed by Cantillon.

It certainly had the right champers-like consistency and lots of bubbles.  It’s not as overwhelmingly sour as some of the other Cantillon offerings, with a slight sweetness towards the end.  If we didn’t know it had grapes in, we probably wouldn’t have guessed, but all in all it made a nice refreshing drink for the garden.  Iris is still our favourite though.

Boak

Categories
beer reviews pubs

A surprisingly deep beer

Banks's Bitter

On Tuesday last week, when I should have been at the Great British Beer Festival, I found myself obliged to take a business trip to the north east of England. The Chequers at Dalton-on-Tees,  a proper village pub where I stayed, was some compensation.

The extrovert landlord keeps a small, relatively conservative selection of real ales in the absolute peak of condition. Among them was Banks’s Bitter.

It’s one of those beers you see all over the place and which we’ve always overlooked in favour of stronger, sexier or harder-to-find alternatives. On this occasion, the ticker in me led me to choose it purely because it was the only thing on the pumps I’d never tried before.

And, what do you know? It turns out it’s an excellent, characterful everyday pint. It’s got just the right balance of sulphurous aroma, acidity and malty sweetness to occupy the tastebuds and, at a moderate 3.8%, several pints didn’t leave me crying into my fried breakfast on Wednesday morning.

Bailey