Einstok - Icelandic Toasted Porter

As if to remind you where they're from, it seems that they like putting the fact that they're Icelandic on the bottle... Which is probably a good thing if I'm completely honest because, before today, I'd never had an Icelandic beer before, and shame on me for never thinking of drinking an Icelandic beer before! It turns out that they're actually pretty good at this kind of thing, especially if the Icelandic Pale Ale is anything to go by... Which it is. It could just be a fluke but I don't think it will be because when I smelt this beer I made a face that was half shock, half awe and half awful maths. The roasty toasty aromas that come out of this beer remind me of camp fires at scouts and though I was awful at cooking things at scouts, I still made a delicious (somewhat burnt) mess that tasted of pain, suffering, bananas and chocolate buttons. The beer itself seems quite unassuming, what with its meagre head that, at best, can be described as "wispy," but I've made the mistake of judging a beer by its head before (not a commonly used phrase, I'm sure it'll catch on,) and I can vouch for that being a mighty error of judgement.

I always think that a good porter or stout should be as thick and/or as dark as crude oil and this definitely fits the bill because though it doesn't seem thick as such, it is certainly dark. I held it up to the light and it was the same colour and shade as it was when it was sitting on my desk, pitch black. I suspect these Icelandic brewers may have discovered a way to manufacture dark matter...

There's a BIG hit of dark chocolate and roasted coffee when you taste this, which is coupled with a medium mouth feel and light carbonation. I do enjoy a coffee porter and this is definitely a good example but they've gone a step further, they've given us a roasted coffee porter that's as smooth as silk, hits 6% and delivers like a postman with severe OCD.

It's hard not to feel classy with this beer, though that may be helped by my (frankly) stunning laziness when picking the glass, which went something along the lines of, "uh, I could just rinse the one I just used... Deal!" What I get, though, is the impression that I'm doing what only a small number of people on this planet have done and that's drink Icelandic roasted coffee flavour booze from a tiny brandy glass and then write about it at length.

I feel like some sort of yuppie Viking... I didn't say I didn't like it.

Food Suggestion: They probably won't thank me for this but all I can think about eating are Danish butter cookies. That smooth, roasted coffee flavour is just screaming for something sweet and buttery to go with it. It was a choice between that and sponge cake... And I'd never pair a porter with a sponge cake, I'm not mad!

Drink this if you like: Nils Oscar - Coffee Porter, another delicious and smooth coffee porter with big flavours. Einstok might have the edge by putting that roasted flavour in there but the 2 beers are comparable.

Einstok - Icelandic Pale Ale

What if Woodstock happened in Iceland? What if Woodstock was actually not a festival and actually a brewery? What then, huh? What then? Nothing... Because that doesn't make any sense. Iceland seem to make their beer the way they make their pop icons. Fluffy. The pour on this IPA (ICELANDIC! NOT INDIAN!) is deeply satisfying with a good 2 fingers of head from even the most careful of pours. The body is a crystal clear dark amber that reminds me of all my favourite marbles from my precarious youth. The aroma is lightly hoppy, edging on the citrus side but it's not massively loud or overtly impressive in the nasal department, which is fine, in fact I'm slightly more suspicious of it now. They say that "it's always the quiet ones," though I often tend to find that it's almost always the loud violent ones that do the loud and violent things that are loud and violent.

It feels smooth with a medium mouth feel that compliments the notes of raisin, toffee, malt and bread. There's a little sting of bitterness if you take a big gulp of the stuff and there's a warm sensation a couple of seconds after you drink it. There's heavy speckling that sticks to the side of the glass like a limpet and follows the the glass as you tip. You could sip at this like a refined gent/lady about town and have a truly pleasant experience or you could chuck this down you and feel the full force of this particularly well crafted Icelandic pale ale. Both choices are good choices because either way you get a lovely, warming, beer that would be perfect in those colder winter months.

Food suggestion: Pork products! All of the pork products! I'd be happy having this beer with a pork chop and apple sauce or with bacon pancakes... Yup, I'd totally drink this with breakfast.

Drink this if you like: Kill Your Darlings by Thornbridge is a close one though KYD is ever so slightly more extreme than Einstok IPA. You get all those toffee, raisin, malty, bready flavours but you just get a whole lot more of them. Which you prefer depends on whether you like to be offered flavour on a silver platter or whether you prefer to be pistol whipped with it.

Robinsons Brewery - Trooper

As Less Than Jake once observed: All my friends are metalheads, which is good because I loves me some metals but it does mostly mean that if I give this beer a bad or even an indifferent review then I might find myself Caught in a Mosh or on the end of between One and Six Hundred and Sixty Six lashes. It's enough to drive a guy Psychosocial or make them just Run to the Hills...

Ok, enough of me trying to ram as many metal track names in as I can. This is a beer review, dammit! So, the question you've all been asking ever since Bruce Dickenson announced that he'd been working with Robinson's brewery to make his own beer is about to get answered. Is The Trooper a beer that really gets its Hooks in You or will this beer become just another example of The Evil that Men Do? All I wanted to know when it came out was whether it was worth buying but, since I'm not Calirvoyant, I got off my lazy back side, travelled from Here to Eternity, only to find out that they were on offer and bought 3.

There has been a trend with celebrities stretching their proverbial wings and venturing into alcohol production but, like The Flight of Icarus, many of the attempts have been doomed from the get go. AC/DC have their Hell's Bells Sauvignon Blanc, Slayer have their Reign in Blood Cabarnet and a wine by KISS that wasn't so much Strutter as it was a stutter. Not to mention that this is not the first time that Iron Maiden have made some delicious alco-booze! Eddie's Evil Brew tasted of boysenberry and passionfruit, 2 things I never thought I'd see associated with the men who have the power to instil everyone on the planet with a Fear of the Dark. There are also wines from Motorhead, Ratt, Warrant and (although very much not metal) a collaborative beer made by Thornbridge and Reverend and the Makers.

What of this beer though? Will it go the way of Wickerman or will Robinsons Brewery, Bruce Dickenson and I become Blood Brothers?

First impressions? Well it strikes me as a traditional English bitter... Which is a good start. The label says that this beer combines bobec, golding and cascade hops to dominate the flavour with a subtle hint of lemon... Wait... What? Dominating with subtlety? Are you sure? Ok, it's your beer. There's also a light history lesson about the charge of the light brigade but we don't really need to concern ourselves with that. The beer itself pours well and has a thin head, it's slightly cloudy with medium carbonation. It's biscuity and bready on the nose, which suits its light, leather brown, body. It has a light to medium mouth feel with a very welcoming wave of soft lemon that is rather pleasing in so much as it means you could chug this for days but if you did decide to do that then I imagine you might eventually become rather bored as that lemon flavour is the only thing that makes The Trooper stand out. There's nothing before the lemon, there's nothing after the lemon, there's no depth, don't get me wrong, what you do get is nice, it's just nothing to write home about. Especially if who you're writing home to is an Iron Maiden fan.

I guess I have a problem with bands I love making beer... Which I love more; because there's only going to be one winner and it's not going to have an audience of thousands of black clad mentalists, it's going to have an audience of one. Me. I'm the one experiencing this beer regardless of who made it, I couldn't care less if the influences for the beer are the guys who brought me The Number of the Beast and 2 Minutes to Midnight, if the beer isn't great then it isn't great... And this isn't great. It's not bad, it's just not great. It needs a little something else, a little tweak of bitterness, a little kick of hops in the aroma, something to push this pleasing session beer into a future English classic. I imagine a lot of this has something to do with expectations; I don't associate Iron Maiden with light, sweet, lemon flavours. No, I associate them with bubbling pots of goo, the occult, battles from wars I've only vaguely heard of, torture and the glorification of the symptoms of mental illness. How that translates to beer I'm not too sure but I would have like something much more complex, interesting and substantial. I expected something mad.

Trooper stands up on its own so don't panic, it's not as if Maiden have become the proverbial Fallen Angel just for making this beer, you can still love them and you can love the beer too if you like, nothing is stopping you but nothing is stopping you from spreading your own wings and searching for something better.

Hint: Drinking this whilst listening to the Rock in Rio version of The Trooper definitely makes the whole experience a lot more fun.

Food suggestion: I'd love a big slab of haddock, plaice, sole or monkfish with this, though the way I'm thinking just involves the fanciest fish and chip shop you can think off and then eating out of the bag near a pond.

Drink this if you like: Iron Maiden. No, I'm not being facetious. If you like Iron Maiden then you will almost force yourself to like this beer regardless of whether you actually like it or not. The closest beer equivalent, however, is Harviestoun's Bitter and Twisted.

Special: Drew's Boston Holiday!

What did I expect before I went to the states? Part of me imagined that everyone would be drinking Bud or Coors and there wouldn't be a decent drink in sight, the other half of me somewhat suspected the truth but wouldn't let me get my hopes up too far for fear of them being dashed quite spectacularly. What was the reality? Well, as much as people do love their Bud in the states, it was clear to me that there was an onus on quality as well as the obvious onus on quantity (hey, stereotypes exist for a reason,) the first liquor store I visited (they have stores just for booze, you can't just get it from a supermarket like you can here... This fact baffled me for several days,) had a range so deep and jam packed with quality beer that I ran around like an excited child/tourist, taking pictures and screeching.

This is just the tip of the ice berg, people!

There was a plethora of high end beers from Germany, Belgium and England which included the likes of Piraat, Gulden Draak, Ayinger, Schneider Weiss, Aecht Schlenkerla, Samuel Smith, Meantime, Duvel, La Chouffe, Innis & Gunn, Hofbrau, Affligem and Chimay. On top of this they had a whole aisle dedicated to American craft beer! They had a wall of Sam Adams surrounded by Dogfish Head and Magic Hat, Sierra Nevada and Ommegang, all of it was relatively local (we're talking about America here, nothing is ever THAT local) unless it was too good or too big a craft brewer to ignore. "These American microbrews can't all be that good..." I pondered to myself, making an almost completely random selection that run me up into the vicinity of $80 (yeah, that's where most of my money went, though I did attempt to purchase my weight in silver and bronze age Marvel comics.)

BOOM! That's when Dogfish head 90 Minute IPA happened! A 9% hammerhead of a beer that doesn't so much sneak up on you than it does directly assault your taste buds and nasal areas with its SHEER DOMINANT WILL! A heavy mouth feel and punchy hops that make Mike Tyson look like he throws like a baby seal seal the victory for this horrifically uncompromising brew. Did I mention it comes in packs of 4 and that they average at $2.50 each? Now that's some strange economical voodoo that I want to master and then, in the future, bend to my will in a potentially flawed attempt at world domination.




"What else was there Drew?" I hear you crying, jabbing at your computer screen like a demented puppy at a set of glass, sliding, doors. Whoa! Hold your horses will you? I was getting to that!




Boom! Sam Adams, Little White Rye... Hahahahahahahahaha, what a play on words, hahahahaha. STOP IT! A deliciously fruity number with light hoppy tones that reminded me of a much more complex version of shandy. Sam Adams love using coriander and various peels in their sweet, sweet, alco-booze and this is no exception! The peel is prominent but not intrusive and all the other spice in there only adds to the refreshing, zesty, qualities of the beer. This may well have been the best of the lot but I didn't get to try all of them, I would've needed another 10 days in Boston if I'd wanted to do that. On top of that they have a selection of SUPER FANCY beers that come in bottles that look like lamps as well as a couple that they barrel age in Buffalo Trace casks and one that is Barrel aged for 18 months, hits the high 20's for abv and costs around 250 buckaroos! What I learnt about Sam Adams, however, is that they are a very impressive brewery with a dedicated team and a history for innovation and quality, 2 things that I had no idea they possessed before visiting Boston and, indeed, their brewery.

Fancy places like this.

There were a great deal of beers on display and I found that when I travelled, the restaurants and bars would all be supporting their local microbrewery with many completely obscure brews on tap in restaurants fancy enough to have un-laminated wine lists. This, however, all seemed normal to the people of Boston and Cape Cod who often gave me a look that would suggest that they questioned my general sanity when I enthused about local or interesting beer. It makes me think that beer, contrary to popular belief (in this country at least,) is one of the things America has been doing right all along.