Archive for the ‘bottled beer’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Why so few bottled dark beers?

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

It’s always interesting to see the old adverts that pubs sometimes use to decorate their walls. A poster for Bateman’s Salem Porter from the early 90s caught our eye this week.

We assumed this beer had been discontinued because we’ve never seen it for sale anywhere, unlike their ubiquitous XXXB and Rosey Nosey Christmas beer. But, no, they still make this multiple award winning cask only beer.

Keen as we are to find it on cask one day, it would also be nice if their bottled range (which we can get very easily in corner shops in our bit of London) included this apparently brilliant beer. Perhaps they could drop one of the three very similar golden ales to make room?

Maybe they feel there’s no market? If so, that’s a shame, because we really believe dark beers (milds, porters, stouts, lagers, whatever) are going to be the next big thing. After all, what’s a cooler looking pint than one that’s pitch black?

Tags:,
Posted in bottled beer, breweries, buying beer, Generalisations about beer culture | 14 Comments »

Cornwall in conclusion

Saturday, March 21st, 2009

castleinn

These are our final words on Cornwal, which we’re sure is becoming a boring topic.

Ten great Cornish beers

  1. St Austell Tribute (cask conditioned).
  2. Marks and Spencer’s Cornish IPA (bottle conditioned).
  3. St Austell Proper Job (bottle conditioned).
  4. St Austell Admiral’s Ale (bottle conditioned).
  5. Sharp’s Chalky’s Bite (bottle conditioned).
  6. Skinner’s Ginger Tosser (cask conditioned; excellent despite the terrible name).
  7. Carn Brea One and All (bottled; not brewed in Cornwall).
  8. St Austell Clouded Yellow (bottle conditioned; a fake Bavarian wheat beer).
  9. Lizard Ales’ An Gof (bottle conditioned; strong dark ale with salt and smoked malt).

Five disappointing Cornish beers

  1. St Austell HSD (cask conditioned and bottled).
  2. St Austell IPA (a Greene King IPA beater — bland and weak).
  3. Sharp’s Doom Bar (didn’t find a good bottle or pint of this anywhere; maybe we should have gone closer to the source and made it to Rock?)
  4. Skinner’s Betty Stoggs (cask conditioned; too much crystal malt and some cardboard).
  5. St Austell Tribute (bottled; dead and flavourless compared to the cask version).

Two decent Cornish pubs

1. The Castle Inn, St Ives — looks a bit rough around the edges (those “drugs will not be tolerated” signs send all the wrong signals) but was full of old men and guest ales when we went on a weekday lunchtime.

2. The Ship Inn, Mousehole — probably cheerier in season, but has a very friendly and efficient — he earwigged when we were deciding what to have and the drinks were lined up on the bar before we got there. Our mates’ kids tell us the Ribena Fruit Shoots were well kept, too.

Next time, we’ll check out the Blue Anchor and the Tinner’s Arms at Zennor.

Tags:
Posted in bottled beer, breweries | 1 Comment »

We have a winner: best British Koelsch Klone

Tuesday, March 10th, 2009

A few months ago, we spotted that Young’s bottled Kew Brew (now “Kew Gold”) is a dead ringer for a decent draught Koelsch. We tested that theory again this week and are now prepared to say, outright, that it’s the best substitute for draught Koelsch you can get in the UK.

Filtered, pasteurised bottles of Frueh just don’t compare. It’s even better than Meantime’s slightly bland effort.

Tags:
Posted in Beer styles, bottled beer, Germany | 12 Comments »

Young's Chocolate Stout: now with added smoke

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

Has anyone else had a bottle of Young’s Chocolate Stout recently? We just tried one at a Young’s pub in London and were astounded to discover that (a) it’s got better and (b) it no longer tastes of chocolate, but rather intensely of smoke and roasted barley. The ingredient list includes oats and “natural chocolate flavouring”.

Any insight much from those in the know would be much appreciated.

Tags:
Posted in bottled beer | 11 Comments »

Cornwall and beer on the train

Saturday, March 7th, 2009

mandscornishipa

We’ve just returned from a week in Cornwall, in the far south west of England, so expect a few posts in the coming days on our beery adventures around St Ives.

We got the week off to a good start on the train from London last Saturday with a few bottles of Marks and Spencer’s relatively new Cornish IPA.

We were pleased to see that the supermarket chain are now crediting the brewers of their own-brand bottle-conditioned beers on the labels (we  beer geeks like to know where our booze is coming from) and that this is a product of St Austell.

We guessed it would be a rebadge of their brilliant bottle conditioned Proper Job, but it’s not. It’s weaker (5% as opposed to 5.6%) and also has a lighter body and drier finish. It’s much closer, in fact, to cask conditioned Proper Job. We thought it was delicious. One of the best bottled beers we’ve had in a long while.

Thanks, St Austell and M&S, for a great start to our break.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in beer reviews, bottled beer | 9 Comments »

Duvel: no dumb blonde

Sunday, January 18th, 2009

satanbeer

There’s no more illuminating way to taste beers than to try three or four supposedly similar specimens together. When we found ourselves in possession of two notoriously blasphemous Belgian beers (Satan Gold and Judas) we thought it would be fun to drink them along with their evident inspiration, Duvel. The experience gave us a new appreciation for this old favourite.

Satan and Judas look, too all intents and purposes, identical in the glass. They have the same rich golden colour; the same loose, bubbly head.

Satan first. What a let down after the fun and tacky packaging. It smells of pear-drops, nail polish and alcohol. There are some tart apple flavours which might work if they were balanced with bitterness. Sadly, this beer is hardly bitter at all. The stingy hand with the hops is countered by an overgenerous helping of sugar. All in all, a bit like drinking syrup.

Judas is somewhat better, though similar. Sugary: check. Fruitily acidic: check. It tastes, in fact, like stewed rhubarb, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. All in all, not a beer we’ll be hunting down, but definitely drinkable. Unlike Satan, this one didn’t end up down the sink.

And then onto Duvel, which suddenly looks and tastes like what it is — a very sophisticated, well-engineered beer. It’s lighter coloured and lighter bodied than either of its two imitators. The bitterness is refreshing and pronounced. Veritable hops indeed. Whereas Satan and Judas lost their heads almost immediately, Duvel has iceberg-like clots of foam all the way down to the last mouthful.

We have our winner. Just because it’s ubiquitous doesn’t mean Duvel isn’t brilliant.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in beer reviews, Belgium, bottled beer | 9 Comments »

The Beer Rep Cometh

Thursday, September 18th, 2008
Some cornershop beers

Some cornershop beers

A band of aggressive beer salesmen seems to have passed through our neck of the woods, or maybe a new cash-and-carry has opened?

At any rate, the range of beers available at fairly ordinary corner shops and grocers near our house has expanded massively in recent weeks.

Here’s a partial list of bottled beers we can buy on the way home from work without going near a supermarket:

  • Grolsch Weizen (big thumbs up from Bailey, Boak not so excited)
  • Jennings Cocker Hoop, Cumberland and Sneck Lifter
  • Bateman’s Combined Harvest and Victory
  • All the Badgers, including unseasonal Pumpkin
  • Young’s Bitter (bottle conditioned), Special London and Chocolate Stout
  • Wychwood Hobgoblin, Wychcraft, Black Wych, Circle Master and Goliath
  • Hen’s Tooth
  • Cooper’s Sparkling Pale Ale
  • Theakston’s Old Peculier
  • Shepherd Neame Whitstable Bay, Spitfire, Bishop’s Finger, Master Brew and 1698
  • Fuller’s London Pride, ESB, Golden Pride, Honey Dew and 1845
  • Svyturys Ekstra, Gintarinis and Baltas
  • Baltika porter, wheat beer, dark lager and helles
  • Pilsner Urquell
  • Budvar and Budvar Dark
  • Pitfield Red Ale, Stock Ale and EKG
  • Gulpener Rose (eugh!)
  • Paulaner Helles
  • Brakspear Organic and Triple
  • St Austell Proper Job and Tribute
  • Baltika porter, dark lager and wheat beer
  • Usher’s Founders Ale.

That covers a great many of our day-to-day needs, but it would be nice to see more porters and stouts; more Belgian beer; and the return of Brooklyn Lager, which has disappeared from our local off licence.

And, of course, there is a bit of an illusion of choice here, because many of these beers are very similar in taste and appearance and, in some cases, are made and owned by a handful of umbrella companies.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in bottled beer, buying beer, london | 4 Comments »

A virtual tasting for beer-beginners

Thursday, August 21st, 2008

Versión en español

Delirium, over at “De Cervezas y otras cosas”, has set a very interesting topic for this month’s “round” (the Session for Spanish-speaking beer-bloggers). It was so thought-provoking that we thought we’d post it in English as well.

The challenge was to come up with a “virtual” tasting session aimed at people who are not beer lovers. We had to pick between five and eight beers that we would put forward, avoiding obscure microbreweries, and explain why we’d selected them.

We like to beervangelise from time to time, so it’s a question we’ve thought about a lot in the past. After much pondering, we finally came up with some definite proposals, which we put forward here. (more…)

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in bottled beer, La Ronda | 10 Comments »

Rogue Smoke Ale

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

A bottle of Rogue Smoke Ale

Wow. What a great beer.

When we asked people to bring us bottles of beer for our 10th anniversary in February, our chum Nick presented us with a bottle of Rogue’s Smoke Ale.

We had a feeling it might be special and, as often happens, that’s stopped us drinking it.

Tonight, after a particularly successful day’s brewing, it felt like the right time to crack it open.

It smells, as expected, like bacon, but once that’s died away with the big fluffy head, there’s a lot of zesty hops and a crisp malt flavour which beats the pants off a lot of dunkels we had on our recent German jaunt. It’s top fermented and that might be why it reminded us a little of a brown ale.

So, like we said at the top, a great beer, and inspirational. We have to make something like this now!

Bailey

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in American beers, bottled beer | 2 Comments »

Petty rant about beer bottle labels

Saturday, July 12th, 2008

Homebrewers know the pain of bottling. The boring bit of the whole process. Tedious, painful and messy. We try to minimize the pain by using polypins, but this means you have to drink the beer a lot quicker.

Cleaning the beer bottles is bad enough. But what really gets my goat is getting the labels off British ale bottles. I don’t know what they use to glue the damn things on, but chemicals, steam and good old fashioned elbow grease are not enough to get rid of them, and you end up with bottles with unsightly bits of paper and glue marks all over them. Not what you want to serve up your pride and joy in.

American labels are pretty bad, but then their bottles come in all sorts of weird shapes, and what with the preponderance of screw top caps, we tend to put them straight in recycling. Nothing more frustrating than spending all that time cleaning and sterilising a bottle, only to find the bugger won’t cap.

German and Belgian beer bottle labels come off with ease, on the other hand. Is this related to the fact that there is much more of a practice of reusing bottles there? Germany has a bottle deposit scheme, and in Belgium bottles often seem to be collected by the bar staff for return to the brewery.

Come on, British brewers! Do your bit for homebrewers and the environment, and use something with a half- life of less than a millenium. Flour and water paste works for us. Or Pritt Stick.

Boak

Tags:,
Posted in bottled beer, Environmental stuff, homebrewing | 8 Comments »

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »