Monday 31 January 2011

This weekends brewery of choice! - Dark Star

My first taste of Dark Star produce was in the sadly now closed Beer Circus in South Croydon. As I 've mentioned before light beers are not my personal favourite, but that said, I often enjoyed a Hophead or two.

Well, the wetherspoons I visited saturday evening was doing two Dark Star beers Hophead and a new one on me Partridge, I tried each beer and would recommend you search them out.

An interesting website too http://www.darkstarbrewing.co.uk/opdarkstar.htm

Hophead
Strength: 3.8%
Colour: Light golden colour
Taste: A bit of citrus flavour (which is what I normally dislike about light beers, but its not so heavy as to take away the 'beer' flavour in this one so worth a try)

Partridge
Strength: 4.0%
Colour: Dark reddish brown, a typical bitter colour
Taste: I liked this one a lot, difficult to describe but I had another!

Saturday 29 January 2011

Last nights bottled beer - Brains SA

Very nice, very nice indeed. Very smooth taste.
Many bottled beers in the past have struggled to get rid of the fizziness of a bottled ale. Most now have gone some way to reduce this, but I have to say SA is one of the better ones in my opinion.

A very popular Welsh beer and rightly so.

SA
Strength: 4.2%
Colour: Rich golden brown
Taste: A full bitter flavour, nuttyish, just right in fact!!

Thursday 27 January 2011

Retro

I've just been flicking through my 1990 copy of the Great British Beer Festival brochure (held in Brighton that year).

How times have changed, for example, all the beers show original gravity as opposed to alcohol %. (I believe you just take the last two digits and put a decimal place in the middle so Pedigree would be a 4.3% beer, although I'm happy to be put right on this).

As I'm  little bit of a stato I marked which beers I'd sampled, here is the full run-down, its no wonder looking at the gravity of these beers that I feel asleep on the beach that afternoon (don't forget that in those days the festival closed at 3 and re-opened at 5 as was the pub laws at that time).

Marstons: Pedrog (as in a half of Pedigree (1043) and a haf of Owd Rodger (1080)
Ballards: Wassail (1060)
Biddenden Perry
Nethergate: Old Growler (1055)
Hop Back: Summer Lightning (1050)
Lloyds: VIP (1048)
Belhaven: Strong Ale (1070)
and lastly
Clarks: Hammerhead (1056)

I'll have to have a look to see how many of these breweries still exist.
In answer to my own question.
Marstons: Yep http://www.marstons.co.uk/
Ballards: Wassail (1060). Yep and still doing Wassail. http://www.ballardsbrewery.org.uk/page13.html
Biddenden Perry: Yep  http://www.biddendenvineyards.com/
Nethergate: Old Growler (1055) Yep still around http://www.nethergate.co.uk/
Hop Back: Summer Lightning (1050) Yep http://www.hopback.co.uk/
Lloyds: VIP (1048), don't think so
Belhaven: Strong Ale (1070) Yep http://www.belhaven.co.uk/ though acquired by Greene King in 2005
and lastly
Clarks: Hammerhead (1056) not sure but they could be http://www.hbclark.co.uk/ though don't see Hammerhead anywhere.

Pleased and a little surprised to see that

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Shepherd Neame Brewery - Faversham, Kent

My personal favourite from this brewery is Spitfire
The beer is a regular with me as I often found in the Two Brewers (Selhurst) before a Crystal Palace game. Very distinctive in its taste, so not always popular with everyone. But personally, when served well this is a very more-ish pint, and enjoyable pint, so much so I named one of the tables at my wedding after it!

Spitfire
Strength: 4.2%
Colour: Dark Reddish Orange
Taste: Slightly spiced. Very distinctive at the first gulp!
Other brewery alternatives: Kents Best, Master Brew
Other Seasonal alternatives: Late Red, Whitsable Bay

Of the alternatives, whilst I'm sure they are perfectly fine, the only one that makes me move from Spitfire is Late Red. Although I have been known to have a Master Brew from time to time, if the barrel of the Spitfire is being changed.

Late Red
Strength: 4.5%
Colour: Copper
Taste: Very easily drunk, with a slight nuttiness

Master Brew
Strength: 3.7%
Colour: Lighter than Spitfire but not much
Taste: A lighter version of the Spitfire in taste too, in my opinion.

As an aside, I did try the Canterbury Jack when it first came out, and didn't take to it at all, I see it is still on sale, which surprises me, I wonder what the target audience is as its not a traditional taste at all.

Finally, the Faversham brewery does an excellent brewery tour which I did a couple of years ago, it ended with a very well informed tasting session. If you do stay over whilst in Faversham, I can thoroughly recommend the Sun Inn, also a Neame pub, as most in town are. Britains oldest brewery goes from strength to strength in my book and long may it continue.

Monday 24 January 2011

An Introduction

Hello all,

Okay, my name is Simon, and I've enjoyed real ale now for about 25 years, and this blog initially is to pass on my personal opinion of some of the many beers that I've drunk (King & Barnes Festive, Pompey Royale etc) am drinking or even would like to drink!

I've regularly been to The GBBF (Great British Beer Festival) and always enjoy trying a new beer. I'll be honest I'm not professionally trained to pass on an opinion, but I like to have one anyway.

Recently I've found bottled beers have improved immensely and will be reviewing plenty of those too, as I write I've just finished off two very nice bottles of Jennings beers - Golden Host (an Organic beer not one I normally go for but a pleasant one none-the-less) and Cumberland which I've had on many occasions and would thoroughly recommend, I'm not going to go into details on this first post, but plan to do more in depth reports on future beers including these ones.

Personally, I enjoy beers from all around Britain but particularly South West brewers with beers such as the Otter Head Ale, Palmer IPA, St Austell's Tribute and a lovely one I had at GBBF in Aug 2010 Tintagel's Gull Rock. That said go all the way to the Orkneys and who could resist a pint of Dragon Head, okay I'll admit I've never been to the Orkneys but the bottled variety is a very nice dark ale. Lets not also forget all the breweries in between either.

I think that'll do for my first post, as I've said I will expand how I review, once I got to grips with blogging thing.