Adnams - Spindrift

On a sunny day I can see precisely nothing that even remotely resembles the sea and the quality of beer that I make is substandard to moderate at best, I am nothing like Adnams. However I imagine that if I made good beer and lived so close to the sea that a rogue seagull pecking at my eyeballs can be considered a morning wake up call then I reckon I too would name all of my lovely beers after the sea and all that dwell in it. I think I'm most looking forward to getting my hands on a bottle of Fat Sprat but until that day comes I guess I'll have to deal with Spindrift, a 5% blonde that I bought, not because I recognise Adnams as a purveyor of fine ales but because it had a blue bottle and I thought that was "pretty rad."

It pours a clear amber, maybe slightly darker than most blondes, with a small fizzy head that soon washes away... Like the wash upon a pebble beach... It smells pleasant enough, light honey, light malt, nothing particularly overwhelming, but you know what they always say: "Smells can be deceiving," or something to that effect. The first gulp is smooth and lightly hopped with a creamy grapefruit running through the core, which is a taste I have not found in many other beers. Yes, grapefruit is a common thing to taste in the beer-niverse but creamy grapefruit? Now that's an illusive beast... Like Nessy or the Kraken... The body is smooth with a decent mouth feel, more refreshing than anything else... Like a starboard breeze... but I think that's all it's got up its sleeve. It's pleasant and I'd definitely not say no to another because I am rather enamoured with the creamy grapefruit flavour, the refreshing taste and the blue bottle (I'm like a magpie) but it's not a particularly challenging one.

Why does everything need to be challenging though? So the question is, how does this stack up against other easy going blondes? Pretty well I reckon, but it just doesn't stand out enough. I'd drink it if I saw it on tap and I'd do so happily but only if there wasn't anything else on. I fear this one might just fade into the background... Like a ghost ship in the fog...Or a bag of cockles in, like, a giant fish market or something... The sea.

Food suggestion: Fish, chips and your choice side jazz. I like chip shop curry sauce, my girlfriend likes mushy peas, if I'm feeling piggish and greedy then a side order of a slightly smaller fish is never out of the question. This would go perfectly with that... Double fish and orange goop with, what I think are, peas in it.

Drink this if you like: All my references about the sea.

Evil Twin - Yin and Yang

This, like most tales, is one of 2 halves, a fact that is only interesting because those halves used to be 2 wholes. The unholy marriage between an Imperial IPA and an Imperial Stout that bore the love child that is Yin and Yang by Evil Twin, a brewery steeped in intrigue, produced in Aberdeenshire with the punk Willy Wonka hybrid-mind that is BrewDog. Everything about this beer just screams at you. I poured this beer like a televangelist with parkinsons and it punished me with a 3 and a half finger head, which begrudgingly retreated after I said it didn't look fat and that we could go shopping after. The froth leaves lovely speckling that could be in an art gallery and it all settles down to a thin cappuccino style foam sitting on top of a glass of pure darkness. I do not exaggerate, this is the blackest drink I've had since Ashtray Heart... by Evil Twin. This drink is so black that a recent meeting by the Goth High Council and that guy from the blog "Goths up Trees" announced that all clothing must be this shade of black or blacker or you're not a real goth, and that's a stone cold fact that you can take to the bank...

The bank of facts.

It smells, like all things Evil Twin, like the tar pit would smell in Candy Land: Equal measures sweet and life threatening. I get the impression that the Imperial Stout won the battle of the aroma but I've got my fingers crossed that the Imperial IPA won the battle of the taste. Neither really won because there's only one REAL winner...

ME!

Jesus butt-f***ing Christ this is a tasty beer! It's got sweetness for days mixed in with a sense of gravity and sheer, unadulterated, force that you really don't get with any other brewery out there! It sways from the taste and feel of a black IPA, with the big hops and a slightly refreshing body, to the big, bold, warming tones of an imperial Stout in the blink of an eye. It's got big hops AND a liquorice after taste that I truly don't understand but I honestly do not wish to question, all I want is MORE OF THIS BEER!

I'm pretty sure, however, that if I drank as much of this as I really want to then I would almost definitely go blind because at a hefty 11.1% this puppy is not to be toyed with because this is no toy poodle this is one of those mythical puppies with 2 heads that spits acid and humps your leg... Whilst looking you dead in the eye. It doesn't taste like 11.1%... Which is extremely dangerous... For me... But mostly it's just the sign of an extremely skilled brewer.

Evil Twin. I don't know how you do the things you do. I just want you to keep doing them.

Food suggestion: Salad... Ha! Shut the hell up! Salad is for the weak willed! Go big or go home ya damp little tea cloth! STEAK! Fancy steak. Fillet steak with a fancy sauce that involves either chocolate or the food equivalent of gun powder. The core of this is: DRINK YIN AND YANG WHILST EATING A STEAK AS BIG AS YOUR FACE!

Drink this if you like: The look of yourself in your favourite jeans... Or sunshine.

Orkney Brewery - Latitude

I'm not entirely sure what to expect from a Scottish Pilsner. I imagine I should keep an open mind. I also imagine that it won't taste particularly Scottish, especially considering that almost all Scottish beers I've had to date have been well above the 6% mark, yet this eeks in at just under 4.

It looks nice enough, fluffy with half a finger of head and a slight cloudiness to it. On the bottle they claim to have created a fresh green hop flavour, which is hard to do without the use of fresh green hops... Which is what I suspect they mean by "flavour" otherwise they would've just said something like "brewed with fresh green hops." I'm just nit picking though because it smells as fresh as a newly pitched idea for a fabric softener commercial, with an overtone of a sweet caramel slice.

I reckon I'm going to like this beer.

I wasn't wrong! It does taste like fresh green hops to an extent but that's paired up with a soft honey sweetness and a bitter aftershock that makes a pilsner for people who ACTUALLY like beer. I don't even think the stuffed shirts at CAMRA, who have lobbied against anything that even slightly looks like lager, would say no to this. This is as crisp and thirst quenching as anything I had in Germany but also somewhat more complex than some of the ales I've reviewed for this blog, ales more than double the percentage of this (and more than double the price.)

Yet again I have purchased this from a place that doesn't really sell beer, it only barely sells stuff you can eat. Dobbies is quickly becoming my favourite place to buy beer in Ashford.

Food Suggestion: Crips. Fancy ones. Or chips. Fancy ones! From a fancy chip shop within, at least, 5 miles of an actual beach.

Drink this if you like: Tzara by Thornbridge or any craft Pilsner. This one might be a bit more of a test but I'm sure you can handle it if you're reading this.

Ommegang - Abbey Ale

Ommegang, a name that I could say over and over again if not for the fear of becoming mentally subnormal, are a brewery that deal in Belgian style ales but work out of Cooperstown, New York. I have nothing but respect for the American micro brewer so I expect great things from a beer that smacks of intrigue. It doesn't quite pour like I expected it to but the smell and flavour definitely makes this beer something that you would either proverbially or literally write home about...

"Dear mum,

I bought a beer that comes from New York but is actually a Belgian styled Abbey Double that weighs in at a whopping 8.2%. I know you don't like it when I'm on the harder stuff but if you could smell this beer then I'm sure you'd see my side of things. It's rich and fruity with biscuity overtones and a lovely sting of raw booze, like that summer pudding Aunt Mabel made when she fell off the wagon again. It kinda looks like that Christmas pudding she made too... Except with this we won't need to call the fire department... And I won't need therapy.

You really should try this, mum, it's definitely a pudding beer, what with its smooth body and light blackcurrant, honey, syrup and apple flavours that fizzle through like that time cousin Jimmy bought all those fireworks and set them off in the kitchen. It's odd but a couple of years ago I rated American beer well below my Top 5 but now the yanks are definitely in the top 3. I know how much you like the Germans and the Belgians and I like them too, mum, but they can be one trick ponies sometimes. The Americans, especially some of the East Coast breweries, can do Belgian and German beers that can stand up to the Belgians and Germans. On top of that, they make the entire spectrum of beer and plenty of it surpasses anything I've ever had before, so don't be giving me that whole 'Americans only drink pissy Bud and pissy Coors' because they don't! They've got some freakin' taste... If we ignore corn dogs and American cheese.

You know what I really like about this beer? It may sound odd but it's that it's not Belgian enough. Whoa! I know that look! Stop it and listen. With some strong Belgian beers I get the feeling that there's too much going on and the yeast flavours with the much stronger 12-15% ones can be so overwhelming that you can feel a bit sick. This steps back a little and lets you relax. It could be a 6%... It could taste like a 4% after you've had 5 at 8.2%... Which this is. The point is that this, as well as being a happy go lucky pudding, could just as easily be an arm chair beer that you enjoy in front of a roaring fire or in the comfort of your favourite deck chair on a roasty toasty summers eve.

Hope the dogs aren't dead and I hope Uncle Marvin has passed that gall stone. I'll be back when Thornbridge, Sierra Nevada, Brewdog, Augustiner, De Molen, Mikkeller, Evil Twin, Nogne, La Chouffe, Fuller's, Goose Island and Nils Oscar have stopped paying me millions of (whatever currency each of those use (pounds, dollars, pounds, euros, euros, euros, euros, krone, euro, pound, dollar, krona,)) to drink their delicious beer all day and swim about in their giant vats of beer like an alcoholic hippo.

Love,

Drew."


Food Suggestion: This beer is truly brilliant and I can see it going as well with moules and frites as it would with creme brulee or, dare I say it, one of those dreaded corn dogs. This beer could make ANYTHING better.

Drink this if you like: I consider this a much subtler version of something like Augustijn Brune or Gulden Draak but this is truly in a league of its own.

The Kernel - Biere de Table

Beers from The Kernel always look so pleasant and unassuming, almost safe in a way because of how they've made their bottles, all dressed in a friendly uniform that looks as home made as bike made out of disused coat hangers. This one is even more unassuming and friendly because it describes itself as Biere de Table, or table beer. For the uncultured, that means that this is a beer that is meant to be cheap and is to be enjoyed with food. From that you can extrapolate that the beer is not meant to steal the show, merely enhance it with a riveting supporting performance, like Natalie Portman in Leon... Or Donkey in Shrek.

Even when you pour this unassuming and friendly beer, it still can't help looking unassuming and friendly, what with it's light body that looks like cloudy lemonade in the right light and nearly 2 fingers of Mr. Whippy style head that sticks around for hours, never tiring of just being a barrier between you and lovely beer. It smells rather like a floral wheat beer, similar to the smells of many French ales. It starts off like a Belgian blonde before transforming into a heavily carbonated pilsner before ending up where it began, as a French ale. It's smooth but also tarte and tangy whilst retaining a refreshing quality that is most welcome. There are hints of the sweet shop about this beer but through the sweet fudgey notes there's a whole basket of citrus fruits in there just waiting to burst out. It seems like a mix between a lager and a wheat beer, something I can really get on board with.

I'm not a huge fan of French ale, which is why I'm relieved that The Kernel have stepped in to do it properly. Vive London!

Food suggestion: Some lovely French cuisine... I don't often eat French food but I will refrain from saying you should eat frog legs, snails and horse... Maybe just a baguette and some cheese... And eat it whilst watching a film that stars Gerard Depardieu.

Drink this if you like: La Goudale is an obvious choice but, most importantly, drink this if you don't speak any French and believe that this beer was actually made by a table.

Goose Island - Bourbon County

Once upon a time, in a land far far away, there was a place called Chicago that sat in the middle of a vast and prosperous country called 'Murica-land. It was said that Chicago ran rampant with bulls and bears who would often be carrying their cubs on their back in a little saddle. There were often fires, but the people were still happy despite the bulls and the fires and the bears that carried around smaller bears on their back because they had a great many things to be happy about. An Italian plumber, who would moonlight as a baker, had a mishap with his pipes whilst making bread and a pot of meat-a-ball-a sauce and stumbled into the invention of the pizza. People of Italy would later claim that they'd invented it hundreds of years before but the people of Chicago knew the truth. They also had Bill Murray, who would sit around camp fires day and night telling who ever happened to be passing about the time he played basketball with cartoon-like super mutants or the time he got stuck re-living the same day again and again and again, which entertained the locals, who would often pay Mr. Murray in delicious, home cooked, food or in the form of novelties from sporting events that had no use after said sporting event.

...But something was missing. Even though Chicago had pizza and Bill Murray and bears that carried smaller bears around on their backs in saddles, there was still a hole, a gap, a chasm, a gaping void that only something forged of sheer magnificence could fill. The gods of Fun and Being Totally Kickass scratched their heads respectively and formulated a notion.

"If," the God of Fun pondered, "if we could group together the greatest brewing minds in this fair city and encourage them to build a brewery on that island over there..."
"...The one with all the geese on it?" Questioned the God of Being Totally Kickass
"Yeah, that one. They could make a beer so rich and so delicious, yet so ridiculously uncompromising that the entire world would have to sit up and pay attention!"
"Yeah, and we can both get wasted, get butt naked and run around on soldier field!"
The resulting high five was so fierce that the shock waves reverberated through time itself and are now considered to have caused the Great Chicago fire. Considered by who, you say? Oh, only MEGA-SCIENTISTS! THAT'S WHO!

...And what was that beer called? BOURBON COUNTY! By the brewery on the goose filled island!

Now I'm no psychic so I'm not sure how the conversation between all the brewery folk went when they thought about making Bourbon County but I imagine it went something like this:

Captain Awesome: Ok, I've had an idea for a beer.
Mrs. Pumpernickel: Whatever you do, it should be at least 15%
Captain Awesome: Agreed! It should be 15%! But it should taste like an intense vanilla milkshake mixed with some sort of extreme old school alco-booze.
Interrupting Goose: HONK!
Captain Awesome: I agree, gentle goose! If we aged this beer in bourbon barrels then it would give us everything we wanted!
Interrupting Goose: HONK!
Captain Awesome: HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY MOTHER! I CHALLENGE YOU TO A DUEL!

*several hours later*

Captain Awesome: You win this round, goose! Now, let us return to brew-thinkery, horrid beast!
Interrupting Goose: HONK!
Captain Awesome: Right back at you! Anyway! This beer should be a stout that is as black as those old racist cartoons with a hardcore kick that'll scare the living piss out of anyone not expecting to be drinking the TRUE NECTAR OF THE GODS!

*Lightning crash*

Talking Llama: What about a subtle chocolate taste, old bean?
Captain Awesome: Wow, that pipe and monocle really suit you Reginald! I think a subtle chocolate taste would be a capital idea!
Gail who answers the phones: I think it should be a stout and you should age it for 5 years...

*Silence. Captain Awesome and Reginald the talking llama do not know anyone called Gail and are super-telepathic with all their best chum-pals so, therefore, have no need of phones.*

Captain Awesome: ... Sure. We... Can do that, I guess.

And so it was that Bourbon County was forged. The world rejoiced. Women and children cried in the streets. Geese ran rampant and made several failed attempts to gain suffrage. And in a land far far away, I simple beer critic got to his 100th beer review, got really excited and drank the 15% beer before he'd even started writing the review, he became horribly drunk and happy and wrote a story that didn't make any sense to praise one of the best and definitely one of the most memorable beers in the world today.

The End

Sharp's – Connoisseurs Choice: Quadrupel Ale

Proving that Sharp's are certainly no one trick pony, is the connoisseurs choice range, a selection of beers that look, for all intents and purposes like the head brewer Stuart Howe has decided to strut and show the rest of England how it's done. I've had one of these before but I can't remember which one or what it tasted like, all I can remember is that it was mind blowing and to say it packed a punch would be to say that Mike Tyson has a pretty nifty right jab. This one weighs in at double figures, which is always daunting, but there's something about the smell, an enticing fruity, caramel, aroma that has a little hint of rye, that suggests that this isn't going to taste like it's packing heat.

The first sip is like drinking the love child of velvet and cream, it may well be the smoothest thing I've ever gulped out of a glass (specific!) If I had a blind fold on then I would swear that what I'd just had was, in fact, a dessert at a fancy restaurant because that texture and that taste should not be possible in a beer. However, reading through the method on the label, I am not surprised that this beer is so good; this has been cold stored and matured, it has 4 different strains of yeast in it as well as 4 different types of hop. This ale is amongst the elite when considering beer decadence and sheer brewing mastery. You can only make this kind of beer if you're at the very top of the game, I cannot stress that enough. To make something as smooth as this, with all the subtle undertones of coffee, toffee, liquorice, rye bread, whilst still making a 10% ale feel like a 5% porter, it's just something beyond obsession. Stuart Howe (head brewer at Sharp's) is obviously an extremely talented man and Sharp's are lucky to have him.

No jokes in this review. The beer is just too good.

Food Suggestion: A cheese board with veiny, stinky, Stilton and the kind of cheddar that has the texture of acrylic paint and tastes like it's been chained up in a cellar for a decade for fear that it might break out and terrorise local dairy farms.

Drink this if you like: Being some sort of king...

Aecht Schlenkerla Eiche - Doppelbock

Suggested as a definite purchase for the man who likes an interesting pint, a pint so interesting that the name of it is almost completely indecipherable to anyone who is not completely fluent in German. I had to cheat and actually do some research (yes, I consider research to be cheating. Where's the fun in it?) This pours like flat coke and smells like pig grease... And it's already intrigued me to the point that I'm salivating at the thought of chugging the living hell out of it.

This was described to me as the smokiest beer the sales person had had in a while and that was enough to get me hooked. I'm relatively new to smoked beer but I get the impression that the idea of them is to push you to the very edge of what you can perceive as pleasurable, which in turn creates a whole new level of pleasure through the sense that you've actually achieved something by drinking a beer. A nice thought, though I imagine the truth is a lot closer to 'farmers accidentally set fire to barn but still wanted to make beer with the fire damaged grains.'

As previously mentioned, this dark beauty smells like delicious, salty, pig grease and tastes like someone poured molasses into an ash tray and mixed it with a candy cane made out of ROCK SALT! You can eventually learn to ignore the pig grease smell but WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT TO?! What on earth could be better than the aroma of hog death and thick, gooey, brown 8% alco-booze? It's an entire pub experience in a bottle, beer and pork scratchings. It tastes like a bag of good ideas that's been left out in the sun to fester. Beautiful!

Food suggestion: A bacon sarnie or a lovely chunk of pork knuckle. Something greasy and fatty to accompany the intoxicating smell and cut through the subtly sweet flavour.

Drink this if you like: Working in a tannery or if you like the idea of hunting for wild boar whilst wearing a pointed hat that has feathers in it from birds long extinct.

...I keep expecting to find greasy white lumps floating in my beer but as yet I remain disappointed.

Red Horse

It's quite a rarity to find a beer from my (half) homeland, The Philippines, but when I saw Red Horse I leapt upon it like Tarsier leaps to it's horrible death... Enthusiastically! Made by San Miguel and almost exclusively sold in The Philippines, Red Horse is a 7% extra strong lager that pours like a regular lager with no more and no less head than anything else I've ever seen and it quickly dissolves to nothing.

I said a while ago on my Facebook page that this was never going to get a fair review, in fact because it's Filipino, it's going to get an intensely unfair review that glows brighter than the sun itself... Even if it does turn out to be utter bollocks.

It smells subtly malty (a bit weak) and the brave and honourable brewers of Red Horse have instilled an interesting aroma (at smells a little stale and odd.) The taste is reminiscent of a honeyed orange and tastes much more interesting than it smells (it smells of nothing.) I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this beer, maybe I just thought this would taste like San Miguel but it really doesn't. It is comparable to some of the more interesting lagers and pilsners I have tried in that this, at least, has gone big with flavour, even if it is a little unsubtle and has a slight cloying element at the finish. Ahem, I mean, the masterful brewers of San Miguel have created a beer that you can easily get really drunk on as you can't actually taste that it's 7% but after half a glass I can assure you that it definitely is.

If you find it (I found it on an excursion to Wing Yip in Croydon,) then it's worth buying it and at well under £2, it's totally worth it (just about.))

Food suggestion: Balut... Look it up.

Drink this if you like: Getting horrifically drunk on a budget.