Category: bottled beer

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beer reviews bottled beer

An evening with Elusive: clean, likeable beers

Beers from Elusive.
When it became apparent that another month or two of compulsory evenings in was on the cards, we went mad and ordered mixed cases from a handful of breweries on the advice of our Patreon subscribers.

One of the boxes we ended up with was from Elusive, founded by award-winning home-brewer Andy Parker in Berkshire in 2016.

This gave us six beers to taste, which we worked our way through in approximate order of strength, low to high.

We’ve had Plan-B a few times before and always enjoyed it. It’s a Belgian-inspired pale ale at 4.2% and the characterful, spicy, spiky yeast adds a welcome layer of complexity. It has the body and depth of a much stronger beer, with banana and citrus balanced by snappy bitterness. Why aren’t more breweries doing this? It’s £3.75 for a 440ml can.

Memphis Mephisto is a pale ale with Mosaic hops and probably all the review you need is Ray’s gut reaction on first sip: “Oh, wow, that’s absolutely brilliant.” At 4%, it’s clear, clean and fruity – hefty without being sickly, bitter enough to earn its sugars. Even Jess, who can’t really being doing with Mosaic, agreed that it was a cut above. This was also £3.75 for 440ml.

Overdrive American pale ale at 5.5% and Level-Up American red at 5% are clearly siblings. Both resembled drinkable strawberry jam overlaid with a fairly intense grassy, herbal hop character. We suspect we’d have enjoyed them more if we’d left them to mellow for six months but, as it is, they got drunk without complaint. We think these were both £3 for 330ml, bottled.

The final round included Lord Nelson, a 6.8% saison originally brewed in collaboration with Weird Beard, and Spellbinder coffee porter, at 6%. These were also £3 each.

The former inspired more oohing and aahing – it’s a really exciting beer. Think Dupont (classical) but with a sharp melon-grape-gooseberry note from New Zealand Nelson Sauvin hops. Each sip reminded us of something different: Hopfenweisse? Tokaj? Japanese gummy sweets? We wonder how it might have fared in our saison contest of a few years back.

Finally, Spellbinder was a very decent porter that, frankly, probably would have been more to our taste without the coffee. Adding coffee to beer is a distinctly homebrew habit – it seems as if it’ll be fun, doesn’t it, so why not? – but generally ends up reminding us of the cold dregs from an hour-old cup of instant. This was good, though, and, again, got drunk without grumbling.

If you like well made beers with distinct flavours in styles other than hazy yellow IPA, give Elusive’s mix-and-match offer a go. At worst, the beer will be properly made and decent tasting; and at best, it’ll make you swoon.

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bottled beer

On stash-busting in beer, yarn and books

Yarn

For the past few years I’ve made a serious effort to put a dent in my stash. My stash of yarn.

I’m a keen knitter, an occasional crocheter and a spinning dilettante and like a lot of crafters, I went through an initial stage of buying a lot of yarn. 

While I never quite hit SABLE (Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy) at one point I definitely had enough to see me through five years, and I was still buying more.

We don’t really hoard beer, and we do it even less since moving to Bristol. This is partly because we drank all of our stash prior to the move from Cornwall, and also because in Bristol, until lockdown began, we had access to an enormous range of beer in pubs and just didn’t feel the need to carry high stocks at home. 

However, we have had special bottles that feel too precious to drink, or for which it never felt like the right time.

So there are some parallels with the approach to yarn – specifically that sense of not wanting to knit/drink what you have, because it’s either not exactly what you want, or because it’s too precious to use up.

Yarn, like beer, might be a limited edition – you may never be able to get that exact same colour/recipe again.

Of course, in some ways stash-busting yarn and beer are very different.

Once you’ve drunk a beer, it’s gone, whereas the yarn lives on in what you knit from it.

And some beers might improve with age (we’ve written more about that here) whereas yarn will not. 

I joined a couple of groups on Ravelry, the social website for knitters, that are specifically focused on helping people use up their yarn stash. It works by setting challenges which you opt in to depending on which approaches suit you best.

The hardcore go for ‘cold sheeping’, which is all about measuring the amount of time since your last yarn purchase. More successful in my case have been challenges focused on using up a certain yardage in a certain time, or setting yourself a three-out, one-in limit  – play with the toys you’ve got before you buy a new one.

My favourite is a challenge where you designate some specific items of stash that need to be used by the end of the year or you have to give them away. This also works really well for books – you know, the ones you’re definitely going to get round to reading some day, but which just clutter the house for decades on end.

And this can definitely also apply to beer, given that most of it doesn’t age especially well. 

Some of the mantras apply to both, too. “Shop the stash!”; “You can always buy more when you’ve used what you’ve got!”; “You can’t take it with you!”

Next time: why indie dyers are like small craft beer producers.

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bottled beer The Session

The Session – quarantine edition: where we are at

Suburban Lockdown

Al of Fuggled has revived the Session, the monthly beer blogging jamboree that sputtered to a halt more than a year ago.

He’s asking us to think about our drinking habits in this weird, publess age – are we drinking more? Less? When? And what?

At first, it seemed some version of normality might be possible. The Drapers Arms was open, sort of, selling takeaway beer, and we could still ‘pop in’ to Bottles & Books, our local craft beer shop. (Remember popping into places?)

At the same time, we were also conscious of wanting to do something to show a bit of solidarity with local breweries, so we ordered a couple of cases of cans from Moor. When it arrived, we wondered if we ought to disinfect the boxes, or leave them for a couple of days. We wiped them down, washed our hands, fretted.

Needing little treats to get us through each day, we started drinking on more days of the week. But because beer was a bit of a pain to acquire, we drank less of it overall. One or two six times a week rather than two or three sessions over the course of the weekend.

Eventually, the Drapers closed for good, and Bottles & Books went delivery only, and our Twitter timeline began to fill with tempting offers and pleas: “Support us! Support them! Do your bit!”

We ordered cans from Thornbridge (excellent), more from Moor, more from Thornbridge, more from Moor.

As the situation got more serious, our brains adjusted – great things, brains – and the fight or flight panic passed, and with it the need for daily treats.

The regular dry days returned but the big weekend sessions didn’t.

So, overall, we’re drinking less, but savouring what we drink all the more.

Probably just as well, really, as hangovers and the depressive effects of alcohol aren’t all that helpful when everything else is so bleak.

One little ritual that has emerged, though, is a Sunday night homage to the Drapers: cheddar cheese, pickles, biscuits and ale, face to face over the table with the TV off. It’s mostly fun, mostly a pleasure, but with a bitter aftertaste.

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beer reviews Belgium bottled beer

Blackberries in beer: Mûre Tilquin

Blackberries.

Blackberries are my absolute favourite fruit. I’m borderline obsessed with them from about May onwards, watching out for how they’re developing, whether my usual favourite spots are looking good.

I have Strong Opinions about them, too. For example, I strongly believe that urban blackberries are better than rural ones and that the best of all come from Walthamstow Marshes; should have Protected Designation of Origin status; and ought to be the subject of lengthy essays about terroir.

So when I came across Mûre Tilquin, which is a lambic with 260g blackberries per litre, at our local beer shop, Bottles & Books, I had to give it a go, even at a whopping £25 for a 75cl bottle.

It was marked 2018-19 with a science-fiction best before date of 2029.

It’s comforting to have this kind of ‘special beer’ in the stash – something that you know will be interesting, at least: IN CASE OF UNEXPECTED GLOOM, POP CORK. And, well, that moment came at the weekend.

There’s a fun bit of additional ceremony when we open this kind of beer because as well as drinking it, we need to take photos. What if it’s amazing and we didn’t? Can you imagine?

Cage off, It opened with a threatening gunshot pop and pushed back hard against the seal. Would it gush? No, the fizz was assertive but not out of control.

Bottle and glass. Foam close up.

It poured a pretty, deep rose colour, and a pungent smell of brambles on the farm was noticeable from half a metre away.

It was, as you’d expect, rather sour. There was also an absence of sweetness and the finish was extremely dry, although not quite as mouth-puckering as most beers from Cantillon.

There was a strong oakiness but I didn’t pick up any blackberry. If someone had given me this blind, I don’t think I’d have even thought of my favourite fruit in passing. In fact, I might not have thought there was any fruit in it at all.

I enjoyed it anyway, though, over the course of hours, mostly because it reminded me of drinking Tilquin gueuze in Chez Moeder Lambic in Brussels.

In one of our very earliest blog posts, we wondered why you don’t see more blackberry beers, and reviewed a few that we had found.

I’ve often returned to that thought, particularly when it comes to lambic – if raspberries, then why not blackberries?

Having now added this data point, I’m more convinced of an answer we’ve received in the past: they ferment out too fully to retain any flavour.

But if you’re a brewer, pro or at home, who has managed to make a blackberry beer that proves otherwise, I’d love to know more.

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beer reviews bottled beer

Beers salvaged from the junk shop shelf

A selection of ancient beers.

On our last trip out, in February, we visited Stroud for the day. That’s where, in a jumbled-up junk shop, we found a collection of grubby old beer bottles, still full, and for sale at £2 each.

We bought a selection based on (a) ignoring royal wedding and jubilee beers and (b) aiming for breweries that seemed more interesting to us.

  • Greene King Audit Barley Wine
  • Charles Wells Old Bedford Ale
  • Banks Old Ale

Then we got home and drank them.

Ever since our experience with Adnams Tally Ho, and having discussed the issue with Patrick Dawson, we’ve been committed to drinking these ancient beers when we come across them.

They rarely improve with age, or ever gain any particular cash value, but every now and then, one is a wonder.

In this set, all of which we reckon date from around 1980, give or take, there were two good ‘uns and, sadly, one total dud – not a bad strike rate.

Greene King Audit Barley Wine was the winner. It reminded us of Harvey’s Prince of Denmark – a mellower, milder take on imperial stout. On opening, there was a very slight hiss. It produced loose bubbles and barely held a head. There was berry, sherry, leather and… cheese? That makes it sound more complex than it was. Overall, it was pleasant, boosted by the sheer timebending thrill of consuming something bottled when we were babies.

Charles Wells Old Bedford Ale was, unfortunately, flat. From its tiny bottle, it produced what looked like two glasses of cheap brown cooking sherry. The first taste confirmed it: this beer didn’t survive the battle. The overwhelming flavour was, well, water, with a background whisper of burnt sugar and cloves.

Finally, the one we were most excited about: Banks Old Ale, with an OG of c.1092. It hissed, gave us brief bubbles, and then left us with two egg-cup’s-worth of flat black oil. It was salty, rich, full of prune syrup and plum. We wanted just a little more.

In conclusion, £6 for the pleasure of drinking two decent old beers that haven’t been produced in decades seems worthwhile. It’s certainly cheaper than a session at Kulminator, with a similar hit rate.

And you know what? The nip bottle needs to make a comeback.