Canterbury Brewery - Foundry Red Rye

I recently attended the CAMRA Canterbury Beer Festival and my intention was to get a tiny half pint glass (check) and to drink EVERYTHING I possibly could. Good (or horrifically bad) intentions but time after time I found myself gravitating towards Canterbury Brewery, who work out of The Foundry brew pub. I reviewed their Galactic Belgian a while ago and after rediscovering them at the beer festival I realised that I'd been squirreling a bottle of Red Rye away. I remember stumbling about with a grin on my face, a bratwurst in one hand and Canterbury Brewery Helles in the other and I can't think of a time that I've ever been happier to be surrounded by drunk old men and the generic waste smells that you often associate with farms and portable toilets.

Before I even pop the cap on this I'm already rooting for it to be good because the label just feels so deliciously industrial, bordering on steampunk. The pour is syrupy and thick with a light cappuccino foam and a cloudy amber body and moderate carbonation. The smell is hoppy but very penetrating in a way that isn't intrusive or unwelcome, a little like a peach flavoured iced tea balanced with a kick of some unknown booze lurking in the shadows. The rye is very prominent in the flavour, bringing a bitterness that borders on sourness to the core that goes down like single cream, a sensation that is not unlike crunching your way through a pack of melted chocolate liquers.

The hops they've used to create this are two of my favourites simply because they're so uncompromising and, if left unchecked, so supremely powerful. The Ctira is what I imagine has given this beer the borderline sourness and the Chinook is what I imagine has given this beer the inviting aroma. A smart combination from a brewery who are quickly earning my respect.

Well worth trying if you're a fan of extremely bitter things... Like a lemon that someone dropped in an ash tray.

Food Suggestion: I feel the bitter core would compliment tapas or a plate of antipasto, anything that involves lots of meat, olives, bread and other things that seem like they should be good for you but really aren't.

Drink this if you like: Citra by Oakham breweries is similar but more focused on just having the Citra hops. Both are good in their own rights but you're more likely to find a bottle of Citra if you don't live in Kent.

Old Dairy Brewery - Wild Hop

When I first picked this up I thought to myself "ha! Wild Hop, eh? I bet this is going to be some sort of crazy hop combination like... Fuggles and... Uh, fuggles..." and I kept on thinking that this was going to be a drink with big flavour right up until I poured it, picking the most "wild" glass from my collection that I could, though it turns out that that's just a Leffe glass and my glass collection is a bit boring. However, upon actually reading the bottle, the "wild" element comes from the fact that the hops used in this beer are hops that grow WILD near the brewery... Which is a MILLION times more exciting! I imagine that I've probably tasted every hop in one way or another when you consider how much beer I actually drink. I may not have known I was drinking it at the time but it was there. This is new ground, this is a patch of wet concrete, this is a chalkboard in the children's section of a bookshop!

So, has the concrete been tampered with? Has someone drawn a set of comedy breasts on the chalkboard?

Well the pour is a little slow out of the blocks but when the head catches up what you get is a sticky, clinging, web of head that I've not encountered before. It's dark brown in colour and opaque with mild carbonation. The smell is very soft, very subtle but there are intriguing hints of bread and grapes. It's hard not to feel like Marco Polo or Neil Armstrong, I feel like I'm doing something that no-one has ever done before even though I'm sure several hundred (thousands? I don't know ODB's (yes, I call them ODB. It's because I'm so fly!) sales figures,) have.

Wow that's got a really bitter opening gambit that mellows into citrus and, of all things, a marshmallow flavour that I really didn't expect. The body, as I have come to expect, is creamy and has a good mouth feel but the star of the show are those hops because they stretch the limits of what's acceptably bitter in a beer from a company that makes deliciously mellow, even handed and subtle beers. It does mellow out, though this affect is generally attributed to something called Neural Adaption (look it up,) so once you become used to that initial shock it does become a completely different beast, it transforms into a creamy pale ale with a poignant bitter beginning, middle and end.

A thoroughly enjoyable beer that really makes you think about Old Dairy Brewery. They lull you into a false sense of security with beers like Sun Top, Copper Top and Silver top which are subtle, sweet, enjoyable and everything you could want from a beer...








(This is a dramatic pause.)








...THEN BAM! HOW ABOUT SOME WILD HOP?! WAKEY WAKEY TASTE BUDS!!! IT'S TIME TO DRINK SOME FIRKIN (replacement for a swear) BEER!!!

Food suggestion: Words. I ate the words of doubt I spoke when I first saw this beer.

Drink this if you like: Nothing really has the creaminess of an Old Dairy Brewery pint but when I drink this I get a similar sensation to when I drink Kipling by Thornbridge, which is odd because they're not really that much alike but oh well, you get what you pay for with this blog.

Old Dairy Brewery - Czech Mate

With a delicious waft of redcurrants bouncing off the top of its generous, creamy, goose down pillow of a head, I suspect that my original suspicions about Czech Mate, a lager brewed to a traditional pilsner recipe (a Czech one I assume but it doesn't actually say that,) are going to be right on the money. What were my original suspicions you ask? Well, let me set the scene.

Czech Mate was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar when I met her...

Wait, nope, that's the start to another story altogether! I saw Czech Mate on their website and said, out loud (though I was the only one in the room so I didn't end up looking like I had mental issues,) that it looked like the Old Dairy Brewery beer that would impress me most. I deduced that it'd probably have a massive head, a hazy amber body and it would probably use Saaz hops... Which it does, but a chimp could've predicted that. Even so, I'm glad they haven't messed around with a classic.

It smells like a delicious summery pudding with a core of citrus and red berries getting backed up by a little kick of cake. The pour is frisky and the foam is so fine that anorexics stare at the bubbles and wish they were that slim, the body itself is slightly darker than your average pilsner but not enough for it to be unrecognisable as one of the breed. The taste is the thing that really shocks you about this, though, because as well as being horrifically easy to drink it is also deeply interesting. This is a pilsner with character! The Saaz gives it an element of spice that you don't expect and there is an unexpected yet thoroughly welcome bitter kick that is a sight for sore eyes and a taste for tired buds. There's still an element of garden fruits in the mix when you drink it, there are hints of redcurrant and blackberry that precede that bitterness and without them the beer would be one dimensional but as it is Czech Mate is one of the most fun pilsners I've ever had.

I'm so happy that this was brewed in my home county but I assure you that that's not why this is getting such a good review. Old Dairy Brewery have impressed me simply by consistently getting the simple things right and growing with a subtle hand that is very rare in an age where the guys who are getting all the limelight are the ones who are going big with ABV, experimentation and hop combinations.

Food suggestion: You know what this would go great with? Dim Sum! Tiny little parcels of pork or fish delicately steamed and served in bamboo box things. Oh hell yeah! I could down a big sloppy bucket of Czech Mate and gorge myself on Dim Sum in china town every day of the week if the cumulative calories and alcohol wouldn't eventually kill me through cholesterol poisoning and/or liver failure.

Drink this if you like: Sitting in the sun, drinking a cold pint, being challenged by that cold pint. Looking at that cold pint and audibly saying "well played Czech Mate... Well played," only for you later to be sectioned because you were caught talking to beer again.

Old Dairy Brewery - AK 1911

AK 1911, AKA Historic Kentish Bitter, AAKA a throwback to a time long long ago where the local pub was not going out of business, when hops were the ONLY crop grown in Kent, when your local policeman would join you for a pint before giving you a clip around the ear for apple scrumping. AK 1911 looks exactly how bitter SHOULD look, I'm not sure I even care what it tastes like anymore because the pour is just picture perfect, the head is frothy enough to write your name in and it's that kind of translucent dark brown that happens to be that exact shade of brown that beer bottle sweets used to be before the idiots in charge decided that beer bottle sweets were sending the wrong message. Oh yeah, people in charge?! I bet chocolate cigarettes were a bad idea too?! Now who looks ridiculous?!

Anyway! It smells mellow yet hoppy and yeasty... You know, Those things you need to make beer! It may sound obvious but it's sometimes hard to get a beer smelling like hops and yeast in a pleasurable way, there are so many variations within the brewing process now that I would claim that it's harder to make a pint like this than it is to make something that tastes like honey. I recently made a pilsner that tastes like biscuits. Did I mean to do that? Heck no! But it happened! Point proven!

Now that is a smooth and heart warming bitter, a true reminder of how bitter can be. I like mine slightly chilled and I think that's definitely helped this along though I imagine this would be gorgeous at room temperature in winter too. Right now it's soft and refreshing with hints of beer bottle sweets I mentioned earlier, which is helped along by that trademark milky body but in the winter I can imagine sitting down with this and being comforted by its warming hop fizz.

This county was built on 3 things: Chaucer, Fuggles and Goldings and no-one really gives a fig about that first one because hops are the only things that matter. I sit here and drink AK 1911 and I feel proud to be Kentish. I don't think any beer has made me feel like that before.

Warning: Contains sediment like real beer.

Food suggestion: Pork scratchings would be my first port of call but any other example of pub grub would be acceptable. Best consumed whilst surrounded by exposed wooden beams, hanging hops and old bearded men telling tales about shaggy dogs.

Drink this if you like: Nostalgia.

Old Dairy Brewery - Sun Top

It was one of those beers that defined the "swift half" for me. A cheeky little drink whilst on a swift jaunt around Rye with my girlfriend. She wanted a bloody Mary, I wanted to stay below the legal limit and so it seemed that when I stepped into The George in Rye that the 3.6% Sun Top was the perfect choice. Though the cask and bottle versions are slightly different, both retain that playful fluffy head and golden body that make this look more like a cloudy pilsner than it does a pale ale. What I like about it, though, is how it just screams refreshment, the name and the sunflowers on the label are telling you when you should be drinking this and how you should be drinking this: When it's bloody sunny and bloody cold.

This bottled version smells like soft hops and fresh bread which may mislead as the flavour is a little stronger than you might expect. There is an outspoken hoppy core, wrapped in a lightly carbonated, drinkable outer casing that makes this both interesting and drinkable... I mean it's definitely more drinkable than it is interesting but it's more of an enigma than many others of its ilk.

This is a pale ale that you can happily chug like a steam train on a sweltering hot day. Embrace the hop core and you'll be friends for life, this is perfect if you wanted an entry level Old Dairy Brewery beer or something to take to a party that you had to drive people to/from. It's low in alcohol but don't think for a second that that makes this weak. Sun Top knows what its talents are.

Food Suggestion: Something that involves a salad. This really shouldn't be paired with anything heavy, it's truly a summer beer. Drink this with steak and kidney pudding at your own risk.

Drink this if you like: Sunflowers, salad, summer... Lists...

Haimhauser - Kellerbier Hell

After a long day of being ruthlessly efficient and conforming to stereotypes I like to sit in my well ordered garden and relax. It is days like this that I truly understand the Germans. I've spent all day lugging heavy vegetables around while all around me people were purchasing sausages and BBQ equipment. I did not fuss, I simply got on with it and promised myself that when I got home I could sit in the sun and drink something light that looked happy to see me. I'd made sure that it was chilled perfectly as anything less than perfection just wouldn't do and popped the cap. The pour was a joy, bubbly and excitable with the perfect proportions of head, the kind you only ever see in the movies. The smell is lightly spicy, which suits its hazy blond body perfectly.

I have not had a helles in a long time.

Equal parts soft and citrussy, this is a joyful beer that must be enjoyed only when the conditions are right. A true German chugging beer that you should really be drinking out of a litre stein in front of a plate of meat, potato dumplings and sauerkraut. It's not complex but who needs complex on a glorious day like today? I've got other things to do with my time, just let me laze in the sun, basking like an iguana. Keller, I imagine, stands for "...that is as refreshing as being doused with cold champagne after 3 hours in a sauna," in German and bier stands for "beer."

The smoothness and drinkability of this is high level and there are biscuity undertones with only a very light hoppy zing. This maybe isn't the beer for everyone because some people prefer something that challenges them, which is fine because I'm often one of those people but sometimes I just want to lounge and I want to lounge with really well made beer that just makes me feel good about my life. Today Kellerbier Hell is that beer.

Food Suggestion: Currywurst or Wienershcnitzel with a mound of mash or a potato dumpling and enough gravy to drown in. Failing that, a sausage butty with caramelised red onions and your choice of pickle/chutney would go down a treat too.

Drink this if you like: Germany.

Partizan - Cascade, Chinook, Columbus

"Hey Drew."

"What's up Grapevine?"

"I got that list you wanted."

"The one for all the awesome beers I should try? Awesome! Well, what've you got?"

"Partizan."

"Awesome, I've always wanted to try their stuff! What else you got?"

"..."

"Well?"

"... Uh..."

"You didn't do any research at all did you, Grapevine?"

"... Just drink the Partizan, ok?"

These London breweries seem to be popping up like padded moles in outdated arcade games and I, for one, couldn't be happier. You've got The Kernel, Beavertown and Brodie's as well as Camden Town and Crate and many more emerging, seemingly, by the day. However, to shine in such an environment you must be special, you must be the best, you must be quirky and fun, which Partizan seem to be
. Everything from the artwork to the fact that they've named this beer after the hops they've used gives me the impression that these guys think so far outside the box that the box is a dot to them.

The pour is frisky but satisfying with between 1 and 2 fingers of head depending on how much of a jerk you want to be to your beer. It's a pleasant oak brown, which hides the carbonation but if you look closely then it is quite evident that it's there. The smell is something rather special, that sweetly savage citrus that reminds me of red grapefruit and brown sugar is a throwback to a darker time when such things were a luxury. The smell itself is in the style of these strong craft breweries from London, uncompromising, and that's just the way I like it.

It tastes bitter with a sweet smoothness and a hoppy after burn that flares and mellows in a second. Once your taste buds calibrate to the initial shock and the 7.4% it's packing, you can settle down to a deliciously hoppy and bitter beer that even has a lightly spicy kick and a consistent tingly effect on all your senses. I am not surprised that this is as good as it is because it was recommended at The Bottle Shop in Canterbury and they definitely know what they're doing.

Food suggestion: They say that IPAs go really well with Indian food but I'd love to try this with Mexican... Though I guess it's the same principal: Hunks of meat, spicy sauce, side of rice, everyone's happy.

Drink this if you like: Similar, in ways, to Meantime IPA but this is a step up in almost every area.

Blue Moon

It's brewed by Coors but still describes itself as North American Craft Beer. I'm pretty sure that's a contradiction in terms but I've never been known to say no to good beer regardless of the ACTUAL company behind it. Spaten and Lowenbrau are owned by inbev and I still love them, so this has still got a decent chance. Blue Moon was sold to me as an unfiltered wheat beer that's brewed and spiced in the Belgian tradition, so it's definitely talking the talk, but what does it do in the way of walking the walk? Well, the aroma is malt heavy with a pleasing punch of orange peel and the finger of head you get from the pour recedes quickly, leaving a small amount of speckling.

It tastes like someone's laced a silk handkerchief with potassium and has dared you to see if you can swallow it whole, not to say that it's an unpleasant sensation because it is, at least, not boring. The taste settles down and you start appreciating how smooth it is and how the orange peel really comes through whilst also realising that it isn't a heavy wheat beer, which I often find off putting.

Blue moon looks like pond water and goes down like barbed wire coated in Vaseline, which makes it charming to my booze-addled brain.

Would not kick it out of bed for eating crackers, nor would I say no if someone plonked one down in front of me and told me to "drink up"... High praise indeed.

Food suggestion: Seafood I reckon. This makes me crave a bucket of crab legs with a slightly smaller bucket of butter and a hammock of bread. This American beer seems to be giving me a good old American appetite.

Drink this if you like: Similar to and slightly more exciting than Hoegaarden. Drink this if you've never had a wheat beer before and fancy something a little exciting.

Fuller's - Honeydew

What do you mean I've never reviewed Honeydew? I must have! I compare EVERYTHING to it, I can't have completely skimmed over it... Oh... It turns out I have. Sorry Fuller's! I don't think I can even count how many bottles of this I've consumed and not once did I think to write up a little something to express my gratitude. What an ungrateful sod I am! Well there's no better time to do it than several months after they changed all their labelling, so here it is.

It smells of, duh, honey but with a little burnt quality to it that stops the smell becoming sickly and helping to remind you that you have beer in front of you and not a glass full of something Whinny the Pooh would drink if Disney suddenly decided to go all Noir and edgy. The colour is that of honey and the head recedes quickly which, if you stood back and stopped paying attention, could leave you under the impression that someone has just emptied a jar of the stuff into your glass.

The taste, unsurprisingly is of honey but with a hint of cereal in the background which gives the drinker the impression that they're drinking the liquid form of Honey Loops, a sensation that is extremely pleasant and, for some, evocative and nostalgic, I know it definitely is for me.

I often don't pay attention to the little details about this beer like the fact that it's organic or that it's 5% because the novelty of it still hasn't worn off. It was the first honey beer I ever had and it has set a bench mark that has not been beaten by anything else claiming to be honey beer. Skinner's tried but it was just beer, Floris succeeded... In making alcoholic honey. Honeydew is a pleasant mixture that leads you to think you're drinking a honey concoction whilst still reminding you that beer is best.

Food suggestion: A big, glistening, gammon joint with cloves and honey that has maybe been cooked the fancy way in a vat of ginger ale so that it becomes, if anything, sweeter than sweetness itself.

Drink this if you like: The idea of mead more than the reality of it. I tried mead recently and I wasn't a fan; this is what I imagined mead would be like. I wish to drink Honeydew from a hollowed goat horn and laugh raucously at tales of plunder and conquest.

BrewDog - Jack Hammer

In my head Jack Hammer is not so much a metaphor for being beaten up with hops as, I'm sure, it was intended to be, more the name of the guy who made it, who in turn is just happy for the recognition. I've got a lot of respect for the people at BrewDog and it's hard not to love them when you know that this beer was a prototype, competing against other prototypes in the 2012 prototype challenge. It didn't win but BrewDog decided to run with it anyway, this little scrapper is the beer that could... The beer that could smash your face in!

Everything about this beer screams POWER! There's a big punch of grapefruit on the nose, really fresh grapefruit, something that's difficult enough to handle on it's own, but if you add to that a 7.2% alco-haymaker and a warning from BrewDog themselves about how bitter this is going to be, then what you've got are the makings of something beautiful.

WOOF! That's a proper IPA and that's no word of a lie! A big citrus punch with a bucket of bitterness to follow all encased within an extremely drinkable, pale orange/brown, body. In the blurb they talk about putting a bullet in the brain of mediocrity, well if that's what they wanted then we need to pin a medal on them. What have they won? Oh, just HATE CRIME OF THE CENTURY! THAT'S ALL! This beer, single handedly, takes mediocrity behind the shed and puts an end to its pitiful existence. Mediocrity sure didn't see Jack Hammer coming... This sounds like the synopsis of an awful B movie.

"Crime doesn't pay and vengeance is a dish best served cold. Mediocrity wants to travel into the future and stab the internet. Not if JACK HAMMER has anything to do with it! Jack, a no-nonsense cop who's lost his meds and lost the plot has one last chance to save his daughter from an exploding train and all the dinosaurs from the second Jurassic Park, a film that doesn't exist yet. Will the world be destroyed? Mediocrity thinks so. Jack thinks mediocrity should have lunch with him. What's being served? KNUCKLE SANDWICH!"

Food Suggestion: Knuckle Sand... Uh, curry, I love IPAs with curry. I can't help it, they just work too well for me to ignore the connection.

Drink this if you like: Similar in citrus zing to Citra by Oakham Ales but this is packing way more Umph in the trouser department.