Categories
beer reviews real ale

Thornbridge Raven: we like it

It seems we’re the last to the party on this so-called ‘Black IPA’, having already seen posts by:

We finally tracked it down at Cask in Pimlico last night. We liked it but, at 6.6%, and with an almost harsh bitterness and rich, mouth-coating hops, it was one to enjoy by the half and at a leisurely pace.

The oxymoron in the name is a bit irritating — black and pale..? — although we can see what they’re getting at. We’d probably call it a flowery porter.

Categories
beer reviews real ale

The rough with the smooth

There are some breweries whose rise to prominence are a source of irritation (Innis and Gunn, anyone?) but we really wouldn’t mind if every pub in the country was selling Thornbridge. That’s just as well, because it seems to be getting that way.

In recent weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to try a whole lot of Thornbridge’s beers. In this post, though, we’re going to highlight one that works briliantly and one that really doesn’t.

First up, the success story. Exposed is a stout brewed with pink peppercorns and strawberry. It sounds gorgeous even just from the description on the bright red and pink pump clip. For starters, it’s a good solid stout. With nothing else done to it, it would be a winner. The subtle addition of exotic flavours, however, makes it something really special. If we hadn’t known, we wouldn’t have been able to name those additives, but they were certainly there providing beguiling, tantalising hints of their presence in a tingle on the tongue here and a raspberry/cider sourness there. This reminded us of a Belgian beer, only Thornbridge have got the recipe bang on, first try, rather than needing 200 years of experimentation to get the spicing sorted.

Then, sadly, on to a beer which didn’t work as well. Halcyon is a 7.7% strong IPA made with green hops. Sounds exciting, right? It certainly smelled incredible — exactly like sticking your nose into a foil packet of hops when home brewing. Sadly, it tasted like sugar syrup laced with hop tea, astringent and overbearing.

We guess the latter is the price you pay for successful experiments like the former.

Categories
london pubs

Pump creep

The owners of Cask, our current favourite London pub, have obviously decided to pull out all the stops on the beer front. They’ve just expanded from five cask ale pumps to eight, including two from Dark Star and three from Thornbridge.  Moravka Lager has also appeared.

The keg beer has got better too — out go Guinness and Fosters to be replaced by Keesman Herren Pils, Brugse Zot (blonde and brown), Rothaus Pils and Weizen, Mort Subite Kriek, and Kuepper’s Koelsch. The range of bottles from small german breweries continues to impress with some real obscurities sitting in the fridges.

A great pub just got even better.

We’re also delighted to see that our local has added an extra pump for cask ale.

Categories
pubs real ale

I should be on that train

The Sheffield Tap, the newish Thornbridge-affiliated pub on platform 1 at Sheffield’s central station, is a very, very dangerous development.

It’s very easy to find yourself standing at the bar with a half-empty glass of delicious, crisp Thornbridge White Wild Swan watching your train leave without you. And the worst thing is, you don’t even care. Trains are ten a penny, but beer this good is hard to come by.

Seriously, this pub is excellent. It has a beautiful interior, incredible cask beer and (although we didn’t count) what might be the best range of bottled beer in the country, all available to take away.

Now let’s have one of these at every station in London, please.

With thanks to Pete Brown for the tip off. Pretty much all the other bloggers went together a few weeks back and seem to have enjoyed it too.

Categories
beer and food london

Tasty treats at the Charles Lamb

charleslamb

The Charles Lamb in Islington is one of our favourites because you can get beautifully-kept pints of Dark Star Hophead and Butcombe Bitter.  (As regular readers will know, Bailey is partial to a pint of foaming Butcombe. Hur hur.)

We were delighted to find that they also have the legendary Jaipur on at the moment.  Do I need to rave about how lovely this beer is?  It stood up very well the American ‘extreme’ beers I was drinking on Friday, not just in terms of hoppiness, but its wonderful viscous body.

The Charles Lamb has also recently replaced Amstel with Meantime Helles (great idea) and are now featuring “limited edition” specials from said London brewery.  This month’s offering was the Elderflower Maibock, which was rather odd.  We wanted to like it, but it was a little too sweet, and tasted a bit like a rubbish dunkles from a north German brewpub.

For more about the Charles Lamb, see their website.  As well as full meals, they do a great range of bar snacks, like potted prawns and toast.

Boak

Photo from Andyrob at Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons. Thanks, Andy!