Posts Tagged ‘tasting’

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Active drinking

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009

sparklypints

In the latest edition of James and Oz Pretend to Argue about Booze, a man told them how to drink Guinness properly. He insisted that you “pull the beer through the head”.

Confronted with a sparkled pint in a pub in Cheshire recently, I thought I’d try the same trick. So, I actively supped, rather than just pouring the beer in through my horrible great cakehole.

It worked.

I got the benefit of the pillowy head, but the beer came through loud and clear — not muted, or subdued. I left the head behind in the glass, where it belongs, making my pint look nice.

It’s odd to find yourself rethinking something as natural and instinctive as the act of taking on liquid through the mouth, but I guess an obsession with beer will do that to you.

Incidentally, we thought Oz and James were pretty dreadful last night, although it was worth putting up with 25 minutes of self-indulgent drivel to see the Beer Nut and Bionic Laura on our screens.


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Posted in opinion | 8 Comments »

Gulp

Thursday, January 22nd, 2009
Painting of hops on the side of a pub in the Franconian countryside

Painting of hops on the side of a pub in the Franconian countryside

Our beer tasting ritual has evolved.

It used to be a fairly simple affair, as laid out by Michael Jackson in his 500 beers:

  • put on lucky underpants
  • turn twice around an oak tree in the midday sun
  • cross ourselves
  • swirl beer
  • sniff beer
  • sip beer
  • swallow
  • rub chin in contemplation.

Now we’ve added “take a proper big gulp” to the itinerary.

Sipping is fine, but some beers just don’t seem to come through when tasted that way. It’s like there’s a hole in the flavour. But take a really big gulp and suddenly, you’ve got nectar.

Unfortunately, it’s not always weak session bitters which benefit from this approach. Strong so-called sipping beers are often no such thing. Seven per cent Westmalle Dubbel tastes better when swigged, for example.

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Posted in beer reviews | 11 Comments »

Pumpkin ales

Sunday, October 5th, 2008
Post Road Pumpkin Ale

Post Road Pumpkin Ale

From reading US beer blogs, I get the impression that pumpkin beers are quite big over there. Apparently, the early Colonists turned to pumpkins to bulk out the barley, or something like that. At any rate, they’re a novelty over here.

We picked up Post Road Pumpkin Ale at Beer Exposed. It’s in the Brooklyn Brewery’s line of historic ales, so it’s branded a little differently. The overwhelming smell was spices (cinnamon and nutmeg at a guess). Unfortunately, what was a lovely smell translated into a rather unbalanced beer — really quite acrid from all the spice, with a thin body.

So we weren’t expecting a lot from Hall & Woodhouse’s seasonal Pumpkin Ale. We’re not massive fans of the Badger brewery products, particularly their “flavoured” beers, and particularly when they’re not fresh. This one had been sitting in our stash for around nine months, so the omens weren’t good. Well, that just goes to show how wrong you can be, as this is a lovely beer. Interestingly, it smelled of bananas, and the flavour was a bit like a less sickly, slightly spicier weissbier but with an ale-like mouthfeel and condition. And it was in excellent condition too, despite filtering, pasteurisation and our idiosyncratic cellaring methods. At 4.6%, it’s a bit weaker than the Brooklyn effort, but had a great rocky, long-lasting head. Excellent stuff, highly recommended.

Boak

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Posted in Beer styles, beer reviews | 7 Comments »

Strong cornershop stouts

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Four stouts from our local cornershop

Four stouts from our local cornershop

Last week, we tasted four strong stouts from our local cornershop.

We know Guinness Foreign Extra is good and wanted to see how the others on the market compared.

So, we got a bottles of:

  • Dublin-made Guinness FES (7.5%)
  • Nigerian-made Guinness FES (7.5%)
  • Dragon Stout (7.5% )
  • Lion Heart Stout. (7.6% )

To save you reading too much more, Dragon and Lion Heart were pretty horrid, both lying somewhere between cola and tramp’s brew. Neither had much body, both were fizzy, and both tasted overwhelmingly of caramel. Lion Heart boasts that it’s made with “the finest pilsner malt”, but that certainly didn’t come through. And here’s a choice quote from the Big City Brewing Company’s Lion Heart Stout web-page:

Lion Heart Stout makes the men Roar and ladies Purrr. 100 percent Jamaican stout which, being true to its brewing heritage, is smoother in taste, stronger in body and flavour and not too bitter providing the drinker with the increased ability for excitement, power, tenacity and vigor in the pursuit of life’s pleasures.

Hmmm. It’s like Viagra, then? Don’t think you’d get away with that in the UK.

We poured most of these two away.

Dublin FES was as good as we remembered, so it was only the Nigerian-made version that offered any hope of a taste revelation. We drank them side-by-side and noted a creamier, lighter head on the Irish version. The Nigerian version is much sweeter, but not overwhelmingly so, and certainly miles ahead of Dragon. It’s grainy and burnt tasting, with a lot of bitterness at the end to balance things out. Boak liked it; Bailey wasn’t so impressed.

Those in the know say that Belgian version of Guinness (“Special Export Stout”) is best.  We think we’ve had it before, but are not sure.  It would have been good to try it alongside the others.

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Posted in beer reviews | 6 Comments »

How good are your tastebuds?

Monday, September 8th, 2008
Hops

A hop flower (from Wikimedia Commons, photographed by LuckyStar).

Can you drink a beer and guess which hops are in it?

We are the first to admit that we are still learning our way around beer. One thing we’ve been working on is our ability to spot varieties of hops in beer — useful when you want to brew your own version of a particular beer, or borrow some element of its flavour or aroma. Or when you want to show off to other beer geeks.

So far, we’ve got the basic stuff sorted.

  • Citrusy American hops are easy to spot.
  • Goldings often make a beer smell of oranges.

But that’s about it as far as our own senses go.  We usually have to resort tog to scouring the internet for expert analysis and comments from loose-lipped brewers.

If you’ve got super tastebuds and or a super nose, were you born that way? Or did you train yourself? Any tips would be much appreciated…

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Posted in homebrewing | 8 Comments »

The Session #19 – German beer

Saturday, September 6th, 2008
The cap from a bottle of Rothaus Tanen Zapfle

The cap from a bottle of Rothaus Tannen-Zaepfle beer

This month’s Session has been set by Lootcorp 3.0 and is on the subject of German beer.

…the goal is to dig a little deeper and write about how German beers and beer culture have worked their way into your life (and hearts)…

We’ve already blogged about this — our conversion to good beer took place in Germany, so it’s a pretty key part of our beer-drinking lives. We try to go there at least once a year, and I’ve even started learning German so I can have all those fascinating conversations with Franconian brewers about their mashing schedules.

It’s a bit easier to get a regular dose of German beer culture in London, now that Zeitgeist has opened up. So to celebrate this month’s session, so we popped along there.

Zeitgeist is aimed at homesick Germans, so the beer list reflects what Germans actually drink. Therefore most of what’s on offer is the usual mass-produced, nationally available lagers — Bitburger, Warsteiner, Koenig Pils etc. In a shrewd move, reflecting the tendency of Germans to boast about their local beer, they also offer a number of big “regionals” – eg Gaffel Koelsch (on tap), Schloesser Alt and Tannen-Zaepfle, by the Baden-Wuerttenberg state-owned brewery.

Last night, we had a little virtual tour round Germany. We started in the former DDR, with Wernesgruener, before moving to the far north-east west for some Jever (seriously cheesy website, BTW). I don’t think we’ve actually blogged about this before, which is surprising, given how much we drink it. There’s just something about its bitter kick that makes us come back for more. Tastes a bit like hay, in a good way.

Gaffel Koelsch went down well. While it’s not our favourite koelsch, we prefer drinking this one fresh out of the barrel than drinking a tired bottle of a better one. It’s always refreshing, and drinking it next to Wernesgruener and Jever brings out the malty, fruity flavours.

Then down to Baden-Wuerttenburg, where we sampled Eichbaum and Rothaus Tannen-Zaepfle. The Eichbaum was pretty dull (too much hopfenekstrakt and no hops?) and the TZ was OK. When we were on holiday in Heidelberg, we drank it there and noted that it’s a lot fruitier than other pils. It’s drinkable enough, but really not terribly exciting, unless you’re from the area and feeling homesick.

Finally, into Bavaria for Schlenkerla Maerzen. Mmmmm. Frazzles and fruit. Does it for me every time.

Boak

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Posted in Germany, The Session | 6 Comments »

Boozy birthday

Monday, September 1st, 2008
The Brugse Zot jester clown gremlin thing grimaces from a beer glass

The Brugse Zot jester clown gremlin thing grimaces from a beer glass

It was my birthday recently and naturally I celebrated by consuming a lot of very nice beer at various venues, with various people. We didn’t take detailed tasting notes but here are some summarised thoughts:

  • Westmalle Triple is my current favourite trappist beer. I like the way it combines the interesting “horseblankety-ness” of something like Orval with a beautiful rounded malt sweetness and fruitness.
  • Or maybe Rochefort 10 is my favourite? Gloopy chocolate in a goblet.
  • Brugs Zot Bruin (currently on tap in the Dove) impressed with its heavy body and fruity flavour. And at 7.4% it’s a lot lighter than its impact might suggest.
  • Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barley Wine doesn’t age that well, or perhaps we didn’t age it well. We’ve enjoyed it in the past, but we drank a bottle that’s been in the “cellar” for nine months, and the hops were just way too overpowering. Where did the malt go?
  • Similarly, an aged bottle of Cantillon Gueuze didn’t live up to expectations. We bought it this time last year when we visited the brewery, where we sampled the Gueuze and found it fabulous. It was nice enough, but just not as special as you want from something that’s come out of a dusty old corked bottle.
  • Crouch Vale Brewers Gold really is a wonderful drop. If we hadn’t excluded cask-conditioned beer from the selection, it would have been right in there in our beer tasting for beginners.
  • Estrella Damm is still our favourite mainstream Spanish lager, because you can actually taste the malt and hops. Estrella de Galicia is still too sweet for me (sorry, Chela).

Boak

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Posted in beer reviews | 1 Comment »

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…)

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Posted in La Ronda, bottled beer | 10 Comments »

Hogs Back brewery — some of it our cup of T.E.A

Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Various Hogsback Brewery beers

Various Hogsback Brewery beers

Lots of people seem to rate T.E.A. (Traditional English Ale) by the Hogs Back* brewery. We’ve had it on a number of occasions (on cask and in bottle) and never really liked it. There’s just something a bit acrid about it. So we’ve never made much of a point about seeking their stuff out.

However, the other night we were in Stonch‘s pub, and he got out some of their OTT, a 6% old ale. As he says in his post, it had a “surprisingly sour, funky character”, tasting almost like an Oud Bruin. It worked extremely well and was very tasty, but we did wonder whether it was supposed to taste like that.

We’ve just drunk a bottle we’ve had stashed away for a while, and it’s a very different beer. There are elements of a dark Belgian beer like Ciney Brune in the nose and mouth. I suppose there’s a hint of sourness right at the end, but you would not call this a sour beer. It’s much more fruity. It’s very pleasant. I don’t know which I prefer — this version, or the potentially “off” bottle we had the other night!

Anyway, this made us keen to try the rest of the Hogs Back stash we’d accumulated over the years. Burma Star Ale is 4.2%, and a percentage of the revenue goes to the Burma Star Association. It’s a well-rounded, red ale, with spicy, fruity aroma. An almost creamy maltiness gives way to a nutty, dry finish. Nice.

Then came Wobble in a Bottle, which packs a powerful punch at 7.5%. It didn’t look all that great — the head vanished almost instantly — but this tasted like a good Belgian abbey brew. Similar sugary-fruity-chewiness. I really enjoyed this one.

Finally, we had to try T.E.A. again. I would love to say that the conversion process was complete, but it still didn’t work for us. But it made wonderful beer-rye bread.

Boak

*And there’s another lack of apostrophe to wind the Beer Nut up.

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Posted in beer reviews | 12 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

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Posted in American beers, bottled beer | 2 Comments »

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