Goose Island - Christmas Ale 2012

I don't know what it is but I really root for Goose Island. I know deep down in my heart that there are breweries out there who make more interesting stuff and who are maybe a bit more innovative but there are few who are MUCH more interesting and MUCH more innovative and I can't think of any who are both. I grew up supporting Tottenham Hotspur, a team that would consistently delight and disappoint me in equal measures and even though I know Real Madrid and Bayern Munich are almost definitely better teams, I never switched allegiances, I could always appreciate what they were doing, even marvel at them but if it ever came to a straight fight between them and Tottenham (which almost NEVER happens) then I know who's corner I'm in. That's how I feel about Goose Island, they're my team, I'd buy a replica sports jersey with a goose on it if they sold one and I'd have "Drew's Brew 69" on the back because I'm deeply immature.

What does any of that have to do with this review? Not much apart from making it quite clear that you can't trust it as far as you can throw it (it's inadvisable to throw stuff you read on a computer, it often results in needing a new computer.)

This was partially just an exercise in matching a glass with a bottle for a picture, I wasn't even going to review the beer, it's pretty tough to get it in this country, which means that this would just be a deeply biased review of a beer you probably can't drink. Oh well.

It pours an oaky, dark brown with a finger of head that leaves thick, resilient speckling that you probably couldn't remove, even if you used a chisel and some WD40.  It has that beautiful Christmas Beer smell; booze, fruit cake, raisins, mixed with a little rye bread and malt loaf. It smells as appetising as the idea of crashing a car made of lovely beer into an erotic cake shop with figgy pudding walls.

It really tastes like malt loaf too, it's sweet and smooth whilst being thick and boozy. You know you're drinking a strong beer but it doesn't necessarily taste like a strong beer should, it tastes like something you'd pickle plums in, or something old people would drink to ward off evil spirits in the middle ages. It's thick, gloopy, borderline chewy, and a Christmas meal unto itself. I knew it'd be a good'un! I didn't even need to be obviously biased, you can make of that statement what you will.

Food suggestion: As good with Christmas Lunch/Dinner as it would be with that Boxing Day sandwich, though the latter seems rather decadent... But who cares? It's Christmas!

Drink this if you like: ...Santa?

Beavertown - Smog Rocket

It is baffling that after all this time and especially considering the sheer volume of Beavertown I sell that this is only the SECOND Beavertown review I've ever done. I can only imagine that it was a subconscious decision made purely on the basis that nothing would ever beat Black Betty in my eyes. However, in the interests of broadening my horizons, I've decided I need to step out of that odd little comfort zone and try one of their other WILDLY popular beers. In my time at the shop I have sampled Gamma Ray and 8 Ball, both of which are definitely and defiantly Beavertown styled, but what to make of Smog Rocket? A smoked porter is not a style that lends itself well to refreshing drinkability and massive but balanced hop characteristics, qualities that are abundant in Black Betty, Gamma Ray and 8 Ball.

The pour is slightly more fizzy than I expect a porter to be, maybe this is still in keeping with the B-Town style! There's a pencil thin, off white, head that sits unsteadily on top of a light porter. I say it's light, it's still black, but when you hold it up to the light you can see some come through, throwing around colours like hazy red around the bottom of the glass. The nose is quite deliciously smoky, the same way I'd imagine one would smoke a bar of chocolate, and it's got an underlying fruitiness which borders on the smell of Turkish Delight.

It sure is smoky but in an understated, lingering, way that underpins a malty sweetness, all of which is accentuated by a smooth, silky body that has enough carbonation to make you want to chug it like a dying man in the desert who found a bucket of ice cold Mountain Dew. In amongst all of that there's also a fruity core and a subtly bitter finish.

I already love Beavertown and what they do. I love the beers they make and I like how they roll. I've been to the brewery and there was a guy wearing suspenders... Seemingly without irony!

They don't need me blowing smoke up their respective anal passages because they know they're good, their sales figures should show them as much, and they sure as shi...Shootin' don't need some review to tell them how good their beer is.

End of review!

Food suggestion: All I want, all I can think about, is a bag of dry roasted. That's it. Dry roasted peanuts and about a gallon of Smog Rocket = Happy Drew.

Drink this if you like: The idea of smoked beer. If you're building yourself up to drinking beer like the Aecht Schlenkerla Doppel Bock then this is a great way to get yourself ready!

Meantime - Imperial Pilsner

Maybe the least understood amongst the alcoholically educated, the pilsner is often lumped in with other cheap lagers, given a bad name by those who remember the bad old days where Harp lager was the best thing you could get. Even now there's little to shout about in the English pilsner world. No lager is appealing, no decent English pilsner... exists as far as I can see, and you completely forget anything that even remotely resembles a high percentage pilsner. That's Special Brew territory and nobody drinks that apart from the homeless, vagrants and travelling folk... Or so says the Daily Mail.

They're all still right too because this Imperial Pilsner by Meantime is for export only, which is sad, but I have a bottle, which is AWESOME!

The pour is beautiful and controlled with a 2 finger head that soon whittles away down to a thin foam, leaving light speckling. The aroma is exactly what you'd expect from a good pilsner except there's just more of it. There's a sweet caramel core to the aroma that's surrounded by a light breadiness that is most appealing.

It tastes as light as a beer half its percentage and the light caramel/biscuit sweetness hides the little twinge you get from the alcohol. This is a beautifully well balanced Imperial Pilsner with a nice, thick, mouth feel and a medium carbonation that gives you just a little fizz as you pull away. It is as refined as Lady Penelope but has the same ability to utterly destroy your liver as drinking a bag of rusty hammers. Maybe it is more a case of it being the beauty that brings out the beast because this is certainly not to be sniffed at, especially when you can get it for £8.50 in a 750ml bottle... Which may sound like a lot but consider that you would pay more for 500ml bottles of Evil Twin or Stone... Unless you happen to live in Denmark or America, in which case you probably pay normal prices.

The moral of this story, however, is that some of the great stuff being made in this country is export only and I can only assume that's because the brewery don't think there's a market for it here. I would argue that there's always a market for good beer and this definitely falls under that category.

Food suggestion: Sweet caramel flavours in a pilsner? I think that lends itself well to pork belly! Aw yeah!

Drink this if you like: Sleeping in a gutter, mugging innocents and not paying taxes... According to the Daily Mail.

Stone - Ruination IPA

I get the impression from every Stone bottle I've ever read that I am, in the eyes, of the brewery, a massive waste of blood and guts, a pansy with limp wrists and facial hair that grows pink and eventually turns into cotton candy; that I am a tiny little, pigtailed, girl in a world built for big, masculine, men and that I shouldn't try whatever beer it is because I'll hurt my tongue and I'll go crying to my mum... Whom they later insinuate they had intercourse with. That's EVERY bottle of Stone beer... Except this one, which is polite by comparison. Hushed warnings and mild insults with mere insinuations that the customer bats for the wrong team, but this is my introduction to Stone so I better start with the lighter stuff, eh? Don't get me wrong, I've had Stone before but it's always been from someone else's glass. This bottle's MINE dammit!

The pour is well controlled, cloudy, pale, bordering on an orange hue with an uneven half finger head that sticks around long after. There's mild carbonation but in certain lights it seems to glow, making me think that the secret ingredient at the Stone brewery may well be Uranium. I'm expecting BIG hops from this, but the bottle says 100+ IBU's... Which could easily mean it's 200... Or 1000!!! Where does it end?!

I agree with the people at Stone, if you cannot handle this beer then you should go back to drinking milk, eating cookies and breast feeding because this is indeed a heavily hopped IPA but, like most of the kids in the Breakfast Club,  it's also got other stuff going for it too. There's a smoothness and thickness that I've come to expect from American IPAs, it's that same sensation I had when I first had the Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA, it's a sensation that asks you ONCE whether you wish to continue and then starts pummelling you in the gut like a deranged drill instructor who's just gone through a messy divorce and has lost his meds.

It may sound stupid to say it but when you drink this you can almost smell the brewery, the malt aromas come out when you get close enough to give this beer an enema and they add a whole different dimension to this beer that you don't get with a great many IPAs. A lot concentrate on hops alone when the backbone of any good beer is your malt. Stone seem to understand this, they seem to understand a lot of things, mostly about becoming a kung-fu lumberjack and other such manly endeavours.

Food suggestions: For some reason Americans hate Indian food, a fact that baffles me daily, which means I can't pair this IPA with Indian food as I normally would, but this would go AMAZINGLY with MEXICAN FOOD! AWWWWW YEAH! Spicy meat, side of rice?! It's basically the same thing!!! :D

Drink this if you like: Big hoppy IPAs with a strong malt backbone. Similar to the Dogfish Head 60 and 90 minute IPAs, but for making you feel like a complete dick for giving them money, they're in a league of their own.

Birthday Special! Brooklyn Brewery - Brooklyn Sorachi Ace

How special does a beer have to be for someone who works in beer to have it as a special birthday treat? £15 a bottle special? That's probably a good first step but I have much more personal reasons for drinking this on my birthday. This precise bottle was a gift from my current employer upon signing a contract with him and casting off the shackles of supermarket life. This bottle represents my new found sense of freedom and the beginning of, what is essentially, a new chapter in my life. I may well have picked something fancier, rarer or more expensive as my beer cupboard is stocked to breaking point, the reinforced shelving creaking and bending under the weight of both quantity and quality. However, the sentimental value is what pushed this one into the lead and that's almost exactly why it won't get a bad review, even if it's bad beer... Which it won't be. A lot of people say you have to be completely objective to be a critic. I call shenanigans on that! You know who are completely objective? No-one! Rocks are completely objective, as are trees, water, carbon and the gap in the middle of donuts where more donut could be. We are creatures formed of bias and preconceptions, emotion and favouritism. If this beer stinks, I'll tell you it smells like roses and you'll have to believe me, that's just the way it goes... For today at least.

Anyway, down to the actual beer itself. Brooklyn Sorachi Ace, named for the hop, is a classic, unfiltered Saison that is as lively and excitable as a newly acquired labradoodle pup, with a generously grand head that you'd need a tiny ice cream shovel and a flake to polish off properly. The body is as clear as a crystal lake and as honey hued as a slushie made with liquid gold. The smell is subtle but inviting, hints of spring time country air, flowery and dainty, like marriage prospects in the very early 20th century. The light speckling is encouraging, suggesting that it has been made well by real people but that it won't be a thick, hearty, soup of a beer... Not that that's a bad thing, but you expect Saisons to be crisp and lacking in stodge.

The body is as smooth and as crisp and as drinkable as pure spring water, it is as desirable on a cold evening as it would be if you'd just run a marathon. The flavour grows on the palate, letting you enjoy how smooth and deeply drinkable it is before flowering into a bitter-sweet, zesty-lemon treat. There are little hints of spice every now and then that make you think about what else could be going on in this beer but you need not look beyond the very obvious. This beer is gorgeous, it is addictive and dangerously drinkable. This is a beer you could lose yourself in and the terrifying thing is, unlike wonderland or Narnia, I don't think I'd ever want to be found.

Excellent choice for a birthday beer... And I didn't even have to try and be biased at all!

Food suggestion: The lightness and lemon hints would lead me to think that this would go with any chicken based dish or even served as a dessert beer after or during a BBQ. This is definitely best enjoyed in the sun... Or with a picture of the sun crudely drawn on your wall with crayon.

Drink this if you like: Sunshine, lollipops... Rainbows... *Insert rest of the song here.*

The Rebel Brewing Company - Triple Review!

A set of 7 beers from The Rebel Brewing Company of Penryn, Cornwall came into the shop recently and I snagged 3 to test. I picked the golden ale, the scotch ale and the black lager, because I too am a rebel, and rebels drink beer that doesn't look like how people imagine it should. I feel like a badass today.


Cornish Sunset 4%

A lively beast that better resembles the foam of the seas crashing against Cornish sand than it does a Cornish sunset. The colour is a darker gold, bordering on murky brown and the pour produces a whole load of head, this is one you've got to be a bit patient with, there is a light banana aroma, which (mixed with the VERY lively head) makes me suspect that this may be infected. Not to say I don't like the smell of bananas, but these sure are tell tale signs.

The light banana aroma translates into an equally light banana taste that hits right from the off and slowly peters away. It does have a nice round body and I do get the impression that I've stumbled upon the beerquivalent (beer equivalent) of banana milk. The wheat is very prominent and gives the whole thing a lovely softness. It doesn't taste infected but the tasting notes say this should taste of mandarin and other types of citrus... It very much doesn't.

Not entirely unpleasant but I don't know what they were tasting when they made that label. Whatever it is, I want to try some of that! As it is I have a KINDA decent golden ale, nothing I'd go out of my way to have again but it sure is KINDA decent.

Food Suggestion: Lovely cake or lovely bread, maybe even both... Greedy guts!

Drink this if you like: Well banana bread beer is somewhat close. This could also work as an entry level for wheat beers.


Bullhorn Black Lager 4.9%

Well this seems more like it, maybe we can just chalk the last one up as a spot of bad luck so that we can all get on with our lives. The pour is restrained and gives a pencil thin cola head from its relatively low carbonation. It seems to do what it says on the bottle, completely ignoring the picture of a snail, because it's black and it looks light and refreshing at the same time. A check for presentation, not a check plus, but a check nonetheless.

The smell is interesting, giving off hints of smoked malt and evidence of roasty toastiness. The body is as refreshing and as drinkable as you would expect a black lager to be and it tastes sweet and smooth, with light berry notes at the end and a little bit of roasted malt coming through in the middle and a lingering sweet aftertaste that makes you want to go in for more.

This has definitely made up for the shortcomings of Cornish Sunset. Now I'm a little excited about my last one!

Food suggestion: I love black lagers with Chinese food and this is no exception!

Drink this if you like: Asahi Black.


Eighty Shilling 5%

A dark scotch ale, maybe that'll be the beer that brings it back for Rebel Brewing Co. maybe this 5% dark scotch ale will be a real winner and it'll mean that all of their beers average out to a C or C+. The pour is encouraging, a dark, shadowy character with a strong 2 finger head that isn't afraid to stick around, regardless of how awkward the word HEAD may make you feel.

The smell, however, is a bit lack lustre. I normally expect scotch ales to smash me in the face with a strong whisky aroma, whereas the aroma here is just the lingering thoughts of whisky, the ghost of whiskies past. Maybe it'll taste awesome though, right?

Well, it sure is dark... And that's where their labels stop telling the truth. This is, at best, a watery porter with a slight whisky aroma. At worst, it is the disappointing end to a disappointing run of simply sub-par beers which ranged from mediocre to INFECTED.

A colleague of mine had a different 3 to try and he told me that one of his was quite violently infected. Why would a brewery send infected beer to prospective buyers? Their name seems to be rather appropriate now that I come to think of it, they're rebels against a great deal of things, flavour and proper sterilisation being at the top of the list.

Food suggestion: Don't eat anything with this. Don't drink this. Drink something else.

Drink this if you like: Sadness and when cute puppies die.


(As a side note, of the 3 bottles I had, just over half went down the drain. These guys need to step up and spend a bit more time on their brewing and a little less time making cool labels.)