This is another in an occasional series of posts about beers suggested to us by our Patreon supporters. Tim Thomas (@timofnewbury/@UllageBeer) wanted us to try some bottled beers from one of his local breweries, Siren, so we did.
First, though, we want to set out where Siren sits in our mental rankings of UK breweries. We’ve encountered its beers fairly frequently over the last few years in cask, keg and bottle, and have sometimes enjoyed them. Most recently we were delighted by Kisetsu, a ‘Japanese Saison’, and had a very pleasant night on QIPA, a barely boozy cask-conditioned ale at 2.8%. Some of the bigger, stranger beers aren’t quite to our taste — we found Caribbean Chocolate Cake too sweet, and Limoncello too intense to drink in any great volume — but we can tell they are basically decent, properly made beers constructed around interesting ideas.
And the middle-ground, core range pale ales and IPAs have always seemed fine, if perhaps a bit rough and oniony, with not much to commend them over many other examples of the same style.
When we walk into a pub or bar and see a Siren beer on offer, we often order it, but, at the same time, they’re not a brewery that springs to mind when we’re asked to name favourites, which we reckon puts them somewhere in the second division.
The four beers we looked at this time were all ordered from Beer Ritz back in October:
- Oat Couture, 33oml, £2.72
- Cerealist Manifesto, 33oml, £3.38
- I Love You Honey Bunny, 33oml, £3.89
- American Oak Brown, 33oml, £3.47
Oat Couture is billed as a hazy American pale ale at 4% ABV and was brewed in collaboration with beer retailer Clapton Craft. It poured with only a slight mist and a pleasing gold glow. The aroma was good, all green leaves and orange fruit, suggesting some sweaty greenhouse at Kew. The taste was initially soapy and husky, more tonic than pleasure, but seemed to improve as it went down. It is essentially a light, rather dry pale ale, defined by bread-crust malt flavour and lingering bitterness, with a twist of lemon zest to liven it up. The bit of suspended yeast, we think, softened the edges and added a savoury hum we’d rather wasn’t there. Overall, we liked it without quite being impressed. A good-natured shrug of a beer.
American Oak Brown, being a big, dark beer at 5.8%, made a stronger impression. In the process of constructing its stack of off-white foam it threw out grassy aromas and vanilla scent, like a cinema bucket of Coke. We expected it to be thin after all that fizz and fuss but it was actually mouth-coating and sticky, like chocolate buttons. The flavours you might expect from a dark beer are there, especially coffee, but also more of that raw, green hoppiness which on this occasion really worked with the carbonation to lift the beer. We really enjoyed this one and would happily drink it again.
We’ll only give a brief note on I Love you Honey Bunny, a 6.3% honey and oat IPA brewed in collaboration with The Other Half, because we let the bottle slip past its best before date. We wouldn’t say anything at all except that, BBE or not, it tasted like perfectly good, fresh and zesty bottled pale ale. (Perhaps if we’d got to it sooner there’d have been more of the advertised fruit smoothie quality.)
Cerealist manifesto was the biggest beer of the set — a 9% imperial stout brewed on collaboration with Slim Pickens using Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal — and a hit for us, just about. It’s a fat, beefy beer that smells of girders, cherry and rum. There’s something of root beer or botanical cola in the flavour, followed up by a distinct but subtle spicy burn, and some background earthy dirtiness acting as a mild spoiler. It’s somehow buttery without tasting like butter — Werther’s Originals? It’s certainly a strange, exotic dessert of a beer that’s a bit loud and could easily be obnoxious, but in the right mood, is just great fun. Perfect for the Midway at the State Fair, if you can find a way to fry it on a stick.
Overall, this leaves Siren about where they started in our eyes: a brewery that throws a lot of mud, some of which sticks, and some of which even glitters.
The third of four beers recommended to us by 
