Antipodean Gems

One of the New Zealand breweries I was most impressed by on my recent trip (and beforehand) is 8 wired. So much so that I managed to track down some of their beers at the excellent bottle shop when I got home. Here are my thoughts:

Ø for awesome is a collaboration brew between 8-wired, Renaissance and Nøgne Ø (check out the pics on this blog). It gets its name from a now cult TV appearance of a former heavyweight boxer. Dark garnet-mahogany with fluffy ochre head. Very dull musty pine needles and caramel on the nose. Some initial resin up front, then cardboard, toffee and warming alcohol. Touch solventy in finish. Can see the nogneø and renaissance influences, sadly hops have long since faded.  A shame as its only been out for a year. (Release date was that wonderful palindrome 21/02/2012).

Saison Sauvin was the beer I was most keen to try and had actively searched for it in New Zealand but to no avail. To me it sounded the perfect combination of Belgian yeast and New Zealand hops. The actual beer was slightly disappointing though. cloudy amber with pithy tangerine and dusty saison yeast. Sweet passion fruit and gooseberry flavours followed by a mix of yeast esters and warming dry malt. The alcohol is a bit heavy in the finish. Fairly biting carbonation and medium body. 

In complete contrast Fresh Hopwired is my highest rated beer in the 8 Wired lineup, besting even their excellent iStout. Looking at the hop line-up its unsurprising as the big hitters and my favourites are there...Pacific Jade, Nelson Sauvin and Motueka. As the name suggests, this is Hopwired with the added lupulin hit that only using wet hops can provide. very hazy amber with strong passion fruit and gooseberry. Plenty of damp hops woody notes too. High carbonation, juicy medium bodied, gooseberries up front, lupulin punch on tip of tongue. Long pithy tropical bitter finish. 

Finally we have C4 double coffee brown ale. Hopped with Pacific Jade, Pacifica and new Zealand Cascade its a clash of coffee and hops. Chestnut brown fruity coffee with grey brown head. Milk chocolate and some ashen notes. Pithy orange hops come first. Plum pudding and rich fruit coffee with increasing alcohol warmth down glass. Medium body with high residual sugar, low carbonation and slight burnt toast bitterness in finish.

So a mixed bunch then, probably my fault for not drinking them fresh enough but disappointing nonetheless.

On another note I really like the 8 wired website, lots of useful information and (more importantly) each beer has its own page for linking purposes! Follow them on twitter.

Total eclipse of the palate

Its sometimes interesting to compare two or more beers in a series, to find out what different treatment can bring to the flavour of the beer. Sunturn brew is an 11% barley wine from our Norwegian friends  Nøgne Ø. This one is brewed with 30% peat smoked malt and 20% rye malt. 

It pours impenetrable black with the merest suggestion of ruby brown corona when held up to the light. As you'd expect it reeks like an Islay whisky and peat is the only flavour in your mouth for the first few sips. Once the palate shock has subsided however, other flavours are allowed to come through. There's the juicy red berry rye flavours and a whole jumble of dried fruits and chocolate from the malt. Its a complex beer which evolves as you drink it and you certainly have plenty of time for contemplation as that alcohol is not shy about showing its head.

What happens when it is aged in a bourbon barrel then? in this case an unfortunate mess. It starts off promising with al the requisite vanilla and butterscotch on the nose, but the tasty peat phenols have disappeared altogether to be replaced with harsh alcohol flavours and unbearable caramel sweetness. If I'd kept some of the unaged version I dare-say they'd have made a beer greater than the some of its parts, but on its own the barrel aged version has just been left for far too long and is a struggle to get through.

What have we learnt then? It takes a deft hand to barrel age a beer well. We've also learnt that brewers will still try to sell their beer when its been ruined, especially if gullible beer buyers (this one included) will part with their cash for it.

Some heftier Norse Offerings

@beersiveknown

Last week I reviewed some of the special beers from the NogneO range but they also have a number of the more common styles. Today I will review no less than 5 IPAs (all above 7.5% ABV!) plus a brown ale, porter and Imperial stout. (Two IIPAs formed my FABPOW post). Better get my drinking head on then! 

The first couple I tried were both disappointing. Not that there was anything wrong with them. Both the Porter and Brown Ale are competently brewed beers and drink well enough, but there's nothing stand-out about them. I can get better examples of each for half the price I paid in any number of off-licences in the UK. 

For the Norwegian market they showcase the respective styles, but its not a beer that would find much favour in the home of these styles.

The Pale Ale was bottled exactly 6-months ago and the hops have already faded leaving us with a pithier version of Fuller's ESB. It's marmalade hops backed up by robust malt with a good whack of bitterness/ 6% ABV but very drinkable it didn't stay in my glass for long. After the initial shock of bitterness passion fruit and tangerine make themselves known leaving you with a long fruity finish.

I'd love to try this one fresh.

The same applies to the IPA. You know that its cascade in there, that grapefruit bitterness and hint of lemons is recognisable but the taste is somewhat diminished. Its a bit stickier that the pale ale and a slight alcohol burn at the end. It doesn't need to be this strong. Heftier still at 8.5% is the Two Captains another home-brew competition winner. Its nice enough with sprightly carbonation and pineapple esters on the nose. Its almost Belgique, but apparently just a UK yeast.

Turning to the dark-side we have the Imperial Stout top rated of the range with the Rate Beer crowd. So how does it stack up? Its very viscous black, tan head. The complex nose of vanilla, bourbon, tobacco, toffee invites investigation of the flavours. Thick and rich in body, sweet malt, sticky, slight sourness. The finish is as you would expect full of rich roasted coffee and dark chocolate, but also a fair bit of dried fruit too. It didn't disappoint!

Of those I've tried I'd suggest the Holy Smoke as my favourite and if you're a fan of rauchbeer  or [eaty islay drams give it a go. The imperial stout is also particularly good; so look out for that. Aside from that try the pale ones fresh  and only try the others if your wallet can stretch that far.

Of course, NogneO produce a lot more beers, which I may try in the future, but I doubt I'll be specifically seeking them out as there are so many other brewers, UK or otherwise, I've not yet tried at all. It seems its best to try them in the UK though as (although pricey) they're apparently cheaper here than in Norway!

A NogneO FABPOW

@beersiveknown FABPOW stands for "Food and Beer Pairing of the Week", a term coined by Mark Dredge of the excellent Pencil and Spoon blog.

I'm a big fan of soup. Its pretty easy to make, filling and gives me an excuse to fire up the breadmaker (not that I need one). For Christmas I got Madhur Jaffrey's excellent Curry Easy book, which to my delight has a number of Indian soup recipes within its 70s wallpaper inspired covers. I decided to make the tomato and lentil  soup (I'm not sure I can reproduce it here, due to copyright issues, but its similar to this one). Its pretty spicy; so decided to try it out with some IPAs. Double IPAs in fact.

Two boozy bottles 10% ABV each.

 What could be better than a 10% double IPA? That's right two of them! Brewed by Nogne O for the 100th and 500th brews respectively they proved popular enough to remain staples of the range. As you can see from the picture above, both #100 and #500 are very dark for IIPAs.

Mmmmm Tasty soup

#100 had a strange nose of soapy coconut and the body was just too much sticky caramel and little malt, with a bitter finish. Paired with the soup however the sweet tomatoes and fragrant corriander combined to coax out some previously unseen hidden flavours of chocolate and citrus. I'd class this beer as an American style barley wine rather than double IPA.

#500 on the other hand worked quite well on its own. It was very mameladey on the nose (think good quality spicy seville orange) with dark burnt sugar and candied orange peel in the taste and a treacley finish. When tried with the soup it picked up an unpleasant earthy hop/metallic flavour which jarred with the tomatoes.

Of the two I marginally preferred the #500, being closer to an IPA, though conversely #100 paired better with the soup. They're very boozy though so I'd like to see them in a 330ml bottle, though probably wouldn't buy either again.

Does anyone else have beer and (veggie) soup pairing suggestions? 

You can see my other NogneO reviews here and here.

Naked Islands and other romantic notions

Beer is seeing a resurgence all over the globe, with decent breweries cropping up in the most unexpected of places. One such place is in Norway, where NogneO have carved out a niche for themselves producing "over twenty styles of beer". After spending the best part of a year reading about the brewers I finally came across their beers in stock in Ales by Mail and shortly later Drinkstore.

I ordered everything they had, so ended up with 15 to review,
which I'll split over a couple of posts.

First up with the lowest ABV (4.5%) is the Bitter. Modelled on that classic English style and hopped with Goldings, its nice enough and probably works well as a session bitter in its home market, but having to pay import prices its just a bit disappointing. Typical goldings nose, perhaps a bit paler than a typical bitter with plenty of bitterness in the finish.

A Christmas duo next then Underlig Jul and God Jul - respectively Peculiar Christmas and Good Christmas. The former was consumed on a train between York and Edinburgh and is your fairly typical spiced Yuletide beer. Pepper noticeable on the nose and into the body where it is joined by cardamom at first with roast malt and ginger following on in behind.

The God Jul is a different kettle of fish. Much darker and weighing in at a hefty 8.5% (the previous being a lowly 6.5%...) the change in strength isn't really noticable. Darkest brown with a fluffy tan head, treacle nose. Quite a lot of marmitey yeast umamai too. Fairly sweet with a rich maltiness but not cloying or alcoholic for its ABV, with just the hint of tropical fruit from those centennial hops. A true winter warmer.

A Belgian spiced beer style, Wit, is next up. Its remarkably haze free for one with so much wheat and a nose of Floridian orange groves. The citrus carries on into the body with just the barest suggestions of coriander and a pervasive but subtle TCP which is perhaps contributed by the yeast. Certainly an interesting take on the style.




Following on from the spiced beers, we have a few that are spicy and a Belgian style that has become more popular in recent years - saison:  one regular and one "India" Saison. The first is fairly typical in colour for a saison. It has all the things I enjoy on the nose, complex, some horse blanket, a hint of lactic acid. In the taste there's the unmistakable EKG but they soon fade into the background and the yeast strain is allowed to work its magic of pineapple esters and dry spiciness. The second is a collaboration with the Aussie Brewers Bridge Road. From the moment the bottle is opened the enticing peachy aroma of galaxy wafts up to your nasal passages. It pours a darker amber than the regular saison and retains its head for a good while. There's also the mango associated with citra, which must come from Stella, a hop I have very little experience of. Immediately lighter in body and at once heavy due to increased malt bill. The tropical fruits are there too but at the same time plenty of bitterness. The fruity hops repeat in the finish with the sweetness of fruit salad jacks...remember them? Underneath that is the same earthy spicy yeast in the regular saison. It perhaps loses some of its saison drinkability but an interesting beer all the same.

From spice to smoke and travelling South-East through Europe we get to Bamberg, home of the Rauchbier style. The beer in question? Holy Smoke, winner of a home-brew competition. Looking at the ingredient list its not a true rauchbeer as it uses peated malt rather than beech-smoked. It has the complex nose of an imperial stout with roasted and lactic notes. In the mouth its thick and slightly peppery before the  rich smokiness comes through. None of the harsh phenol of your Laphroaig here, this is much more akin to Bunnahabhain, playfully smoky but plenty of other stuff to tantalise the palate, tobacco, cola, liquorice. Its very drinkable for its ABV (6%) and my favourite of the range so far.

Next week I'll cover the remainder of the beers that I picked up!