Sep 4 2013
Bottled Ales – September 2013 Pt1
“So when you see me coming, you better whistle or start humming, ’cause otherwise, I’ll tell you now that I’ll just walk right by.
‘Cause lover, when I drink, I’m dozy but I fancy getting cosy and I heard a rumour that I may have caught your eye. “
(Meanwhile, At The Bar, A Drunkard Muses – Arab Strap)
Aidan Moffat – Poet, Genius!
In the miserable knowledge that I am confined, by budgetary restraints, to BM Mansions, I resort to the tried and tasted method of cheering up. Listening to Arab Strap and raiding the (ahem) cellars! By this route, we come to a few more bottled beers worthy of a shufty.
If you have ever read one of these before, you will know what is comes next!……The format remains….
1. The Beer, 2. The Brewer, 3. The Strength, 4. The beer style, 5. The Price & Size (including discount, eg: for CAMRA membership, where applicable). 6. Where from, and, If a website for the vendor exists, the hyperlink to the shop / brewer website, just in case you are inspired enough by my ramblings to make a purchase! Here goes…
1. Pale – Five Points Brewing Co (Hackney, East London) – 4.4% abv – Pale Ale – £3.50 (330ml) – The Ale Man (Castlefield Market, Manchester)
I had this beer a month or so ago at Font bar and enjoyed it hugely. When I saw it in bottle at Damian O’Shea’s stall at Castlefield Market, I really needed to give it a whirl. So….
Gold in the glass with a lively white head, releasing aromas laden with mango and sweet pink grapefruit. Medium bodied, that grapefruit comes to the fore in the mouth with a sting of lemon zest. Smooth drinking with some resins and a lovely bitterness with some grapefruit lingering to mutate into a lovely, slightly herby, bitter dry finish. At this strength, I could drink this all night on draught!
2. Fade To Black – Weird Beard Brew Co (Hanwell, West London) – 6.3% abv – Black IPA – £3.50 (330ml) – The Ale Man (Castlefield Market, Manchester)
Another product from Damian’s super Sunday stall at Castlefield. Go to this excellent market if you get the chance. Superb food stalls, vintage clothing, even second-hand vinyl when I went last weekend! Beer AND Music – heavenly!
Unsurprisingly, a black beer! Cafe creme head with a candied citrus nose with prominent lemon and sugared grapefruit. Into the mouth and there is espresso with simultaneous citrus! I love this beer, confoundingly satisfying! The body and texture of a creamy stout or porter with fruity hoppiness. A cracker for what is now a firm favourite brewer with no backward steps.
3. Davy Jones’ Locker – Five Towns Brewery (Wakefield, West Yorkshire) – 3.8% abv – Bitter – £2.48 (500ml) – Yorkshire Ales
Picked up on my most recent visit to Adrian & Vicky Pettit’s excellent shop, Yorkshire Ales. I like this brewers beers. A lot. However, on pouring this, I started to worry. Was this one of those “boring brown beers”? Well, I should have learned to NOT judge a book by the cover!!! One sniff of that glass put me at ease and got me salivating…..mango, pineapple with maybe a sprinkling of caster sugar on a grapefruit segment. Mmmmm….
Unsurprisingly fairly light bodied given the alcohol levels, but oodles of upfront hoppage in here. More mango and a more than a touch of grapefruit. Superbly bitter, fruity with a grassy dry finish. A cracking refreshing beer. Another cracker from Mr Malcolm Bastow.
4. IPA – Rodhams Brewery (Otley, West Yorkshire) – 6.2% – IPA – £2.61 (500ml) – Yorkshire Ales
On that same visit to Yorkshire Ales, this caught my eye. No idea why, because that is hardly the most eye-catching label! But catch it it did. So in the box it went.
An incredibly pale gold beer, almost lagerishly pale. A reassuringly nose twitching citrus aroma, with tingling lemon and grapefruit. A bloody lively devil this, the top flew off when flipped. In the mouth, more tart lemon and grapefruit citrus in a smooth medium body. Bitter. Desert dryingly bitter. Some warmth filtered through following a bitter grassy herbal finish. Did I say it was dry? OK. Excellent first for me from this Otley brewer.
5. Punch The Clock – Revolutions Brewing Co / North Riding Brewpub (Collaboration) – 7.8% abv – Double IPA – £3.87 (500ml) – Yorkshire Ales
I love beer. I love music (any kind of music…….). It stands to reason therefore, that I love Revolutions! Another brewery that just gets better with every sip. I also like the beers I have had by Stuart Neilson from North Riding Brewpub in Scarborough. This simply couldn’t go wrong!
A deep golden beer with HUGE citrus aromas. Drooling by now, I put my lips to the glass for a sip. A big biscuity malty backbone with a fabulous full-on dirty hop citrus bang! Citra in there? Like all Revolutions beers, really well-balanced. Loads of Malt? Loads of hops! Simples!! Lovely bitter grapefruit flavours with a big bitter finish and really dry grassy aftertaste. The best beer of this style I’ve had in ages. A real big DIPA……and named after a Costello album. Boys, you spoil me!
6. (Bourbon Barrel Aged) Bearded Lady – Magic Rock Brewing (Huddersfield, West Yorkshire) – 10.5% abv – Imperial Brown Stout – £11 (660ml) – The Ale Man (Castlefield Market)
With all of that pale stuff, some balance was required. This beer provides that balance….and a bit more! But first, that bottle. Just the look of it stunned me. Sealed with black wax over the crown cap, the bottle looks and feels as if it’s etched. It is simply stunning. The beer had a lot to live up to!
In the words of the mighty Tandleman, this is a proper stout, there’s no seeing through this bugger! Black. Pitch black. Not bad for a Brown Stout! A fabulous creamy cappucino head boasting bitter chocolate, Tia Maria and smoky, boozy aromas. A beergasm! (I felt like Meg Ryan playing footsie under the table with Billy Crystal!)
Once I’d cleaned up and calmed down, I got to taste it! More bitter chocolate with deep coffee tones and an enveloping boozy warmth. Then the whiskey soaked wood rises up and through your nostrils like a dragons’ breath!
Sweet, bitter, smoky and warming. My vocabulary feels inadequate. It is. A work of Dark Art(s) both inside and out. Like the Revolutions/North Riding, worth every penny!
Well, (takes a deep breath!) that’s it for now.
Favourite pale? Revolutions / North Riding. An absolute crackerjack of a DIPA.
Favourite Dark? Go figure!
On that note….’til next time!
(If you’re going to Leeds International Beer Fest on Friday, I’ll be the Manc in the corner, drooling and talking gibberish. Please, save me from myself!)
Slainte!
Mar 21 2016
MTB with Weird Beard @ Heaton Hops – 14/03/2016
I kind of gave up on Meet The Brewer (MTB) events a few years back. They got to feel a bit like doing a “Brewery Tour”. I’ve been around a few Micro Breweries and to be honest, they start to blur into one. Once you’ve seen four or five, it gets to be ‘variations on a theme’. A bit samey.
It’s the personalities that make both worth doing. And Gregg Irwin – chief Spreadsheet Ninja, brewer, co-owner of Weird Beard Brew Co – is definitely one of those.
And (let’s get this out of the way NOW shall we?) I rather like the beers that these fellas brew down in West London. I always have. For all of my Northern Beer Fascism, I’ve had a soft spot for these beers since I was introduced to them by The Ale Man, YAY years ago.
Yes. Damian O’Shea. The same. Now thriving in his “Award Winning” bar. Heaton Hops. A bar that has wormed its way into my cold cold heart. By being astonishingly good. It’s simple really!
And I had an agenda….(maybe) more later….
We had six beers to get through. 4 of them – given my curmudgeonly Northern tendencies – that I had never tried before.
Like I said, Gregg is certainly no wallflower. And there were a few choice epithets sprinkled throughout the evening, to be sure – given his visceral feelings about Mild, we’re unlikely to meet halfway on some. These made the evening all the more entertaining. I certainly shed a laughter tear or five!
Rather amazingly (or not – to some – given the “craft beer” boom) Weird Beard export their tasty wares to 21 countries, 10 of them on a regular basis. They’re even making inroad in that most vin sozzled of countries. France. Apparently, a real growing market for good beer.
So. Where were we? Ah….
So Damian had persuaded Mr Beard himself to come and chinwag with us. And this was very much a two-way street. There was at least one vegan in the cosy audience, so we had a bit of to and fro on the usage of isinglass as an aid to clarity. We had Gregg’s story as to how Saison 14 (one of the beers tonight) acquired its name – a reference to a score it obtained in a Home Brewing contest – cue withering glare at YT (recent Home Brewing judge….)
The beers started to flow….and Gregg chatted briefly about the birth of each and how the hop bill and other parts of the recipes have changed – sometimes by design, sometimes due to availability of ingredients – over time. Things like how the body that they get into beers like “Little Things That Kill”. How the beers get named – mostly from songs “LTTK” (A track by Bush), “Fade To Black” (Metallica).
Personally, I can’t wait to taste “Relight My Fire”…..
It is – to me – sad that WB only cask approximately 15% of their output. The joy I used to find in my occasional pint of Decadence Stout – one of the best I’ve ever had – was a rare thing. A truly lovely beer. I think that it is safe to say, that cask wouldn’t be Gregg’s preferred method of dispense. Putting it mildly…..(I just had to get “Mild” in one more time….)
To my utter delight, Jimmy from Nasi Lemak had set up a mini “street kitchen” outside the bar, so we had some truly excellent grub appearing – at intervals – on the tables (Sweet Potato fries with spicy sauce went superbly with the Choc Mint Stout – “A World Without Dave”)
It would be easy to waffle on about the beer. Safe to say that it was uniformly superb. But, briefly, from “Little Things That Kill” (Light refreshing and hoppy), “A World Without Dave” (Choc, Mint, Lush and creamy), “Fade To Black” (Smooth, Citrussy, a little Coconut – the sole cask), Saison 14 (my personal favourite – surpisingly – Cream Soda smooth, Apricot & Tangerine)
The final two beers were hastily consumed – as myself and my mentor “Pal” had to scarper sharpish for a train. They were “Sorachi Faceplant” a BIG (8.1%) IPA that was so juicy and dangerously drinkable and “Sadako” Imperial Stout, luscious, creamy, smooth and done absolutely no justice to by being wolfed down. Unlike the spicy chicken that Jimmy wheeled out….
(Pic : Courtesy of @Deeekos)
This was an excellent evening. There are very few things that would encourage me to travel from Bolton over 20 miles on a school night. But Damian O’Shea, Heaton Hops & Gregg Irwin managed it.
Even if I WAS the butt of a few Irwin jokes…….
And no. With nights like this, Meet The Brewer events DON’T need “Reinventing”.
They just need good beer, good people (brewers, bloggers, beer & food lovers) and intelligent conversation. Oh. And a liberal sprinkling of beery expletives…
A joy of an evening.
By • Uncategorized • 2 • Tags: A World Without Dave, Black IPA, Fade To Black, Heaton Hops, Imperial Stout, IPA, Little Things That Kill, Mint Choc Stout, Nasi Lemak, Pale Ale, Sadako, Saison 14, Sorachi Faceplant, Weird Beard Brew Co