Redchurch Brewery - Hackney Gold

One of the core breweries in London's craft revolution, if maybe not as well known as breweries like The Kernel, Redchurch Brewery come storming out of the blocks with a bunch of beers that look to be their main stays for the foreseeable future. Their site certainly talks the talk for them as far as saying they value depth of flavour and quality as well as mentioning that they do not filter or pasteurise, something that (hopefully) will become so common that it won't even need to be said anymore. I liked the bottles the first time I saw them, they're simple and no-nonsense, they say what type of beer it is and then there's a borough of London before it. It's not exactly Monet, it's not even Manet, but it doesn't have to be.  I want the contents of the bottle to be the masterpiece.

So here I sit with Hackney Gold, a beer I recommended to a customer without even trying it. The customer, who would only drink lager, is now converted and will often come back for a bottle of Gold. I'd accidentally stumbled upon something brilliant, something that's very easy to do at the Bottle Shop (Goods Shed, next to Canterbury West station.)

The nose is nicely hoppy, just a little, defined, waft as opposed to a direct kick up the nasal passage, there's a hint of red fruit lurking in the background as well, which is rather pleasant. The colour is a dark amber with a pencil thin head that retains well, the pour is satisfying and it has medium carbonation.

It is roundly bitter on the palate, engulfing your taste buds like a forest fire before putting itself out, there is a fruity background again but you have to draw deep from the well to bring that around. Even though it is quite punchy with its bitterness, it remains smooth with a medium mouth feel, which is what makes this the stand up beer I expected it to be.

I look forward to seeing what Redchurch Brewery can bring in the future.

Food suggestion: This has the bitterness of a traditional IPA and, therefore, would got great with a dry or rice based curry.

Drink this if you like: Meantime IPA is identical, I guess what you want will depend on what is closer to hand at the time.

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.

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.

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.

Fuller's - Golden Pride

To me Fuller's will always be the crazy old man at the end of the bar telling shaggy dog stories about how he saved Churchill during a war he wasn't even old enough to be a part of, how he killed off the last of the dragons with only a cocktail napkin and a set of playing cards and how he invented toothpaste but originally intended it to taste like garlic and crushed narwhal horn. They will always be that guy to me, but with a twist. Fuller's have been there and done that... Wherever 'there' is, they've been there and 'that' is a horrible nickname for YO MOMMA! Let's not beat around the bush for MUCH longer, Fuller's are the big boys in the brewery playground and they don't need to take your lunch money because you are required, by many unspoken laws, to present it to them as tribute.

So it is that I finally come to the biggest boy in the gang, Golden Pride, an 8.5% behemoth that, unapologetically, comes in a pint bottle. Nope. No pussying out of this one. You're in for the long slog if you pop the cap on this bottle of brutality. It smells like the bastard child of a loaf of bread and a promiscuous grapefruit with an underlying threat of horrific alco-booze! It looks as dark and threatening as... Oh... Apparently what I was going to say was rather racially insensitive, so let's say it looks as dark and threatening as a hedgehog holding a detonator and a picture of your favourite sofa.

The first thing I like about this beer is that the pour is like an idiots guide to pouring. I'm sick as a dog at the moment and I'm too tired to do things properly so I just opened the bottle and poured in the general direction of the glass. "PERFECT POUR!" Announced Golden Pride triumphantly. I stared at the glass, amazed, as Golden Pride bellowed "Top Score! You must be some sort of KING!"

I am, I thought to myself...

It tastes like the London philharmonic would sound if they were only allowed to play instruments they had crafted from fruit and bread. It is balanced, drinkable and warming all at once, giving you hits of fruit, bread, malt and even a little hint of liquorice and there is precisely no hint of the 8.5% content. This is going pro at being a super-badass ninja because it even lulls you into a false sense of security by letting you win at the pouring game, patting you on the hand and telling you that you've got massive man parts... Even if you're female. Then BAM! Welcome to being drunk under a table! Stop being such a cliché you freakin' mess!

You want a rating? Go to a site where many idiots make tiny reviews about beer and then claim to be experts. You didn't come here for the rating, you came here to know what a good beer actually does to the working brain of a normal human being... I wouldn't know.

Drink Fuller's Golden Pride, because not drinking it would make you a lame. Now that's a review you can take to the bank!

Food suggestion: I'd love this with some sort of Morrocan tagine. A lovely hot, sweet, sticky, bowl of meat and sauce. GET IN MY FACE!

Drink this if you like: Staring into the eyes of a dead god and seeing who blinks first. He did. You win. FATALITY!

Brakspear - Triple

Pouring like how I imagine a mix of honey and jam would if they had been carbonated, Brakspear come bounding in like an excited Labrador who's just had a lovely swim, with their Triple, so called because of their 'Double-Drop' system added to an extra fermentation in the bottle. Count along with me kids...

1 fermentation... AhAhAh.
2 fermentation... AhAhAh.
3 fermentation... AhAhAh!

However, even with all those fermentations, this is still only 6.7% which, for its breed, seems a bit like weak sauce. Maybe I'm wrong (something I highly doubt.) What it gives away in boozey brass tacks it more than makes up for in charm, it has a fruity and yeasty aroma and sticky uneven head that is playful in the same way that whipped cream and a blind fold made of duct tape is playful. The colour is a sticky, dark, brown and there is a decent punch of carbonation.

The taste is very smooth and bready with little hints of the fruitiness that the aroma alluded to, as well as a rich, round, toffee feel with only a small kick from the alcohol at the end... Seemingly just to remind you that it's there. With a taste like that as well as a smooth, refreshing, body I am surprised that this only comes by the half bottle. I could drink a litre of this out of a boot or a yard of it out of... A yard glass. This beer is much more fun than the label would have you believe. I look at the bottle and think that this is going to be a drink for old men who like beer the way it was in the 70's, there's nothing exciting about it to entice me to drink it and that's exactly why it's been sat in my beer cupboard for nearly half a year. I'm only drinking it now because I'm between themes and I didn't want to write a rushed review about the bundle of Belgian rarities I was recently given.

So, for a stepping stone, this wasn't bad at all. Lovely body, decent taste, warming kick and, like hooker with insomnia, head for days.

I still don't have a ratings system but I shall rate this as 7 turnips out 25 because the rest are rotten and you can't make beer out of turnips.

Food suggestion: I really want a steak when I drink this. Not a REALLY good one, just the kind you get from Beefeater, better than average and slathered with a sauce that's so greasy that, if secretly added to someone's breakfast, could be considered worse than grinding fibre glass into their mid-afternoon coffee.

Drink this if you like: Doom bar is quite similar, though a lower percentage, and Wadworth 6X is a good shout if you prefer something lighter and a bit more on the fruity side.

Newcastle Nocturnal & Winter IPA

Whatever you happen to think about the Newkie brand, they are a figurehead for what English beer should be like and is revered around the world as a readily available beer with both flavour and style. I don't think that Newcastle Brown is the best beer in the world but it is definitely not the worst and I am intrigued to see what else they can come up with.


Newcastle Nocturnal - 4.5%:

The moment I pour it is the moment I have deja vu. It's almost exactly like pouring Brown but with slightly more froth, the aroma is that old school bitter smell, that stereotype of beer that no longer exists but still sticks at the back of your brain like chewing gum beneath a stackable, plastic, school chair. The taste is not unpleasant and inoffensive, pushing as far as having a little hint of toffee to go with the smooth texture that makes this a thirst quencher more than a beer to be enjoyed and savoured.

There's something very odd about this beer and I'm pretty sure that it's because it looks, from bottle to pour, like it should be a craft beer made by some farmer out in Cumbria but it's made by the biggest brewery in England and brewed by Heineken UK. It was never going to taste anything other than artificial, which is a shame because I looked at these bottles and thought some of the real, passionate, brewers had cobbled together a few efforts that were so good that the company had to put them on sale. This is not the case. This just feels like a big company spotting a trend in craft beer and trying to jump on the band wagon to eke out a few more pounds to throw on the pile.

This is a nothing beer that is neither good nor bad, it simply IS. I can imagine having a few at the pub but I can't imagine enjoying it.

Food suggestion: Rice cakes. Something bland that tastes like nothing to compliment the utter taste of nothing that seems so abundant in this beer.

Drink this if you like: Tap water.


Newcastle Winter IPA - 5.2%

Are you actually s***ing me? Did someone switch the label on this bottle with one for Nocturnal? Because this looks, pours and smells almost exactly like its 4.5% counterpart. I've got a sinking feeling about this...

On the nose it's a near perfect match with Nocturnal and, oh guess what, it tastes like an absolute carbon copy of nocturnal but with a little extra bitterness to denote that it's a winter IPA. F*** you, Newcastle Brown, for making 2 identical beers and trying to fence them off as 2 "limited edition" premium beers, you bunch of bastard con artists! Having a massively popular brand does not allow you to make utter bollocks and sell it to the public. Go back to making that one beer that people who know nothing about beer like.




Food suggestion: A big bowl of bitterness and regret with a side of sheer hatred.

Drink this if you like: Being a massive f***ing idiot.


Verdict: Don't buy these. If you like Newkie Brown then drink Newkie Brown... Out of an old tin can as you slowly drink yourself to an incontinent death whilst wearing a pot noodle stained string vest, slowly infecting your hovel with the stench of desperation and stale piss.

Thornbridge - St. Petersburg

What better way is there to round off my borderline worship of Thornbridge than with their 7.4% Imperial Russian stout?  I could have shelled out for the Imperial Oatmeal or the Heather Honey stout but I'm not freakin' made of money, get off my case! Fine! I had the opportunity to buy them but I opted for this because I got greedy and wanted to buy at least 4 other beers too and shelling out £12 on one may have scuppered my plans somewhat. Yet again I got this under the sound advice from the folks at The Bottle Shop in Canterbury.

St. Petersburg smells a lot more playful than it looks, like the child with growth problems trying to play nicely in the park before accidentally breaking someone's leg. It looks like a black widow and I fear it may want to do some bad bad things to me and then gobble me up whole. I best get the jump on it and throw the first punch, only the weak don't embrace things that could knock them on their arse!

The aroma smells of freshly made honeycomb and thick cut marmalade, the kind of honeycomb you get at a carnival and the kind of thick cut marmalade you get at the county fair. It pours like gasoline and has a head like the wash on a pebbly beach after BP have been in town. The depth in flavour is just mesmerising! It goes from hoppy bitterness to creamy milk chocolate back to bitterness which leaves me lapping at the foam remnants in my (super manly) stache in a hopeless attempt to get the taste back. This is a beer you can get philosophical about, this is beer you could sit in a pub and write poetry about, words like "delicious" don't quite sum up what this beer embodies. St. Petersburg is rich without being sticky or cloying, it is bitter sweet without having an unpleasant contrast, it is both a drink you could down and a drink you could savour. It is one of the best stouts I have ever had.

Thornbridge seriously know what they are doing and they could easily take on any Belgian, Czech or German brewery and beat them at their own game if they were so inclined. I'm not saying that out of patriotism either because I bloody love the Belgians and the Czechs and the Germans but Thornbridge really are just that good. Don't believe me? Buy ALL/ANY of their beer and tell me I'm wrong.

Food Suggestion: A lovely, creamy, Stilton with water crackers and a sweet pickle of sorts would go with this like Pumba and that other thing from the Lion King... Killing off beloved characters to scar children for life... That's it!

Drink this if you like: The De Molen stouts and porters are a good place to start if you like this