Category: American beers

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American beers beer reviews

Burnt Offerings

barbecuebeers

In recent months, we’ve really been enjoying American brewery Flying Dog’s Amber Ale, which has those characteristic US hops, but is mellow and balanced enough to drink with any kind of meal, or even to chug from the bottle at a party. At an umbrella-assisted barbecue this weekend, we decided to try out a couple of other sessionable beers from their range.

First up, Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale, which shows that it’s not only English brewers who have a knack for coming up with puerile names for their products. The beer itself (5.5%) is excellent, and not unlike Fuller’s ESB, with marmalade being the common flavour. It went well with grilled meat and, yes, was good to drink from the bottle.

Tire Bite Golden Ale is brewed with German hops. On the whole, we found it less exciting, although the bottles that came from the ice bucket later in the evening were much better. Is it an attempt at a Koelsch? Other people at the party who aren’t as fussy as us loved it.

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American beers beer reviews pubs

How much!?

The Rake at Borough Market can be hard work. We’ve found it’s more-or-less bearable between 2 and 4 in the afternoon, though, which is when we happened to go for a pint on a recent afternoon off.

We’ve written about the Rake lots of times before, but one thing we’ve always shrugged off is the price of the bottled beer. Our view has always been that imports should cost more and that it was worth paying the inflated prices to be able to drink hard-to-come-by beers somewhere other than our front room.

This time, though, even we were astounded to find ourselves paying £9.50 for just over one UK pint of Stone Cali-Belgique IPA.

Yes, this is something to do with the exchange rate; and, yes, the very nice bar manager did warn us before opening the bottle; and, yes, it was a very interesting beer. In short, we’re not really criticising the Rake for charging what they need to — they’re running (an apparently very successful) business, after all.

What it did make us question is our own priorities. Should we take such a prohibitive price as a sign that we ought to focus our energies on drinking local beers, at least until the dreaded Crispy CrunchTM is over? After all, it’s not as if we can’t get insane IPAs or stouts full of citrus hops in the UK these days.

The Stone Cali-Belgique IPA is their standard IPA made with Belgian yeast. It’s almost an educational tool, demonstrating what difference a brewer’s choice of yeast can make. It tastes spicy, floral and sugary, with reminders of Duvel and Hoegaarden. Probably not worth £9.50, though… Thom of the Black Cat brewery reviewed it here and didn’t like it much.

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American beers buying beer london

American beer in East London

americanbeersinwalthamstow

The mystery of the two Brooklyn India Ale bottles in an alley near our house has been solved.

It seems that Paul’s Wines — an ancient and tatty off-license on Orford Road in Walthamstow, East London — has upped its game on the beer front. It’s been decent for a while (lots of bottled ale, the occasional sighting of Brooklyn Lager) but now it’s probably one of the best specialist beer shops in London. The manager says it’s a permanent arrangement as long as they can keep hold of the supplier.

Don’t get over-excited: there isn’t that much competition when it comes to beer shops in London, and it’s no Utobeer. But it’s better than the Army and Navy beer section these days, and really, really convenient for us!

In stock now, on top of the usual suspects from Young’s, Shepherd Neame, Badger and Fuller’s (partial list):

  • Anchor Steam
  • Goose Island Honkers Ale
  • Flying Dog Hefe Weizen
  • Brooklyn Brown Ale; East India Ale; and Lager
  • Bernard Dark
  • RCH Pitchfork
  • Morrissey Fox
  • some ales from breweries I didn’t recognise
  • some weird looking beers from Russia, Mongolia, Corsica…
  • And the full range of Sam Smith’s.

I got a 10 per cent discount for buying (ahem) a few bottles.

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American beers

Beer geek droppings

Spotted in an alleyway in East London, not far from our house: two empty Brooklyn East India Ale bottles.

I haven’t seen this on sale anywhere other than Utobeer in London. Are there other beer geeks in the vicinity? (If so and you’re reading this — what’s wrong with the recycling bin, ya litterbugs?)

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American beers beer reviews Germany

Oktoberfest beers — USA vs Europe

Hofbrau Oktoberfest beer
Hofbrau Oktoberfest beer

The relentlessly thirsty Eric Delia posted some interesting thoughts on American brewers preserving European traditions the other day. This was prompted by an article in the New York Times, where the authors sampled 24 “Oktoberfest-style” beers before declaring that the top three were all American. The article makes the point that while the original Munich brewers are producing lighter and lighter beers, the American brewers have kept to a more traditional style and are doing it better.

It’s an interesting tasting, and has some good observations on the nature of festbiers:

“A good Oktoberfest beer is a masterpiece of balance and integration, delicious without being extravagant”

Although I did find it amusing that they considered beer that was 5.5-6% to be “rather mild”!

Certainly the three (German) festbiers we tried last night exemplified this idea of perfect balance. We drank Augustiner, Hofbrau and Spaten. It’s very difficult for us to describe what these beers tasted like, mostly because they’re absurdly drinkable and we gulped them down. The Augustiner probably won, with a more pronounced malt flavour and a crisp, dry finish that made us desperate for the next sip.

The balanced nature of these beers make it hard to identify specific flavours, but that’s not to say they’re flavourless. They’re certainly all much better than the standard lagers by these breweries, despite their relative conservatism.

In contrast, Brookyn’s Oktoberfest beer did not meet the high standards set by their “usual” lager. It ticks all the boxes in the BJCP style guidelines — it’s a gorgeous amber colour, with a tempting caramel aroma. But it doesn’t taste as wonderful as it looks, sadly. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, it just doesn’t have the same gulpability as the other three we tried. That could be something to do with relative freshness, of course.

Boak