Golden Pints 2016

Well its been a while since I blogged, but I figure missing out on my golden pints nominations would be a step too far! Not going to separate out UK & Ireland this year, partly because now Ireland's reaching maturity I think the beers should stand on their own against the best of the rest but also because there's a danger it'll be a rerun of last year. It'll be trickier this year not least because I've not been as active on Ratebeer as usual but also because I've been drinking far and wide including a return to GBBF for the first time since it moved back to Olympia.

Best Cask was supped right at the start of the year - at the time I knew it would be in contention and still stands head and shoulders above the competition. That beer was Wiper & True Pink Peppercorn Porter

Best Keg plenty of stuff sampled this year but the Cloudwater Claussenii Stout Cherry Bourbon Barrel Aged was drunk in copious amounts at ABV; so that takes the crown.

Best bottle My top rated beers of 2016 are both from Buxton, but marginally ahead is their AngloBelgique, a magical combination of juicy IPA hopping and fruity Belgian yeast without the stickiness or cheesy esters sometimes associated with the style. The pinnacle of their Belgian series

Best Can Vocation smash and grab really impressed as an easy drinking DIPA, but the beer I enjoyed enough to buy the remaining stock in the York Tap Was the Beavertown 2016 release of Spresso. Looks like the barrel aged version took best keg last year - I'm nothing if not consistent!

Best Collab There's been a few noteworthy efforts this year,  including brew by numbers/ de la senne but the Magic Rock/ Cloudwater/ Lees Three's Company is still playing on my mind all these months after drinking it; so that takes the crown

Best Overall has to be the Three's Company, which I'd happily drink multiples of. Luckily its been rebrewed and released in cans by Magic Rock as Big Dipper; so hopefully it'll become semi-regular.

Best Brewery For their excellent work with the Belgian series plus tasty new imperial stouts and IPAs the award this year goes to Buxton. The recent batch of axe edge (pretty much my favourite continuously available UK beer) was particularly delicious! Well done to Colin, Denis and team! Please continue to crank out these excellent beers! Honourable mention to Cloudwater who really made some excellent beers this year, with DIPA v8 being another favourite of mine along with the collaboration and barrel ages stuff mentioned above.

Best New brewery is a bit harder as I can't think of breweries that specifically opened in 2016. Lost and Grounded have gotten a lot of love, but having only sampled one beer I can't fairly nominate them. So I'm going to pick a couple from 2015 that escaped my notice until this year. The first is Vocation, whose aforementioned smash and grab was a a favourite this year, but their hop utilization across the range is excellent leading to stuff that's far too drinkable for my own good.. Closer to home (though not  as the crow flies!) is Simon Lambert and Sons in Wexford, better known as Yellowbelly. With brewer extraordinaire Declan at the helm no style goes unbrewed with solid results across the range and some excellent beers in the sour family of styles, which is where Declan's heart lies (also checkout his side-project Otterbank for more wild and mixed fermentation beers).

Best overseas Draught Insufficient supped to make a fair judgement, 2016 has been the year of local on draught for me.

Best overseas bottle/can Hoppin' Frog Hop Heathen stands out from the scores as an excellent Black IPA

Best Overseas brewery Was kindly sent a selection of Amager in a Rate Beer local swap and was very impressed by pretty much every beer, recommend people seek them out!

Best Overseas bar only got to Spain this year; so my experiences more limited than usual but the obvious winner here is Fogg Bar Madrid for my dream concept of a proper cheese and bar bar, all Spanish beers, an excellent bottle selection and cheese/ charceuterie options including a small tapas with every beer. Recommend a visit!

Best new bar Southampton has really come along leaps and bounds in beer since I left for the balmier climes of Norn Iron. For my 30th I managed to visit a good number of them and I think the Bookshop Alehouse was my favourite. Previously an antiquarian bookshop, there's a selection available for sale/ browsing, great range of cask, keg and bottles and a chalkboard pointing the direction to nearest food establishments with patrons encouraged to bring their own food in. This would have been my local whilst in Southampton and provides a much needed watering hole between St Denys and Bevois Valley. (I'll hopefully get a blog up on Southampton scene if I ever pull my finger out!)

Best bar overall is tough, revisited a number of old favourites this year, York Tap and Small Bar are both strong contenders, but this year it goes to Marble Arch with an excellent range of well kept beers in many styles on cask and keg and of course the DIY cheeseboards always win bonus points!

Best Festival again didn't get to as many as I would have liked this year, very much enjoyed the winter cask fest at Franciscan Well, but just pipping it in breadth of beers, choice of food and general party atmosphere was Killarney.

Best branding another fierce battleground this year, with Beavertown knocking out enough awesome can labels to completely plaster my chromebook and Cloudwater's guest program churning out all manner of eyecatching and unexpected designs but for me the Boundary branding has really come into its own this year now more specials and series have been released - not many breweries can boast an in house artist's studio!

Just realised I gave them runner up last year too!

Best book/ magazine We're pretty lucky now with plenty of decent beverage magazines available now, almost too many as I'm in perpetual backlog! This year's award goes to Beer 52's Ferment for the quality of writing, look and feel, breadth of topics and managing to stick to a monthly publication schedule. Well worth subscribing to but please guys do some proper editing, far too many typos!

Online retailer goes to Eebria again this year, almost by default as I've not really ordered from many others - largely because they've not had enough of interest in stock to justify the shipping costs.

Independent retailer that most impressed was Beer Moth. If it wasn't for limited drinking time/ luggage space my wallet would have been considerably lighter on exit! Fantastic selection from far and wide at very fair prices.

Best Blogger is another tough one this year, a lot of my favourites have fallen silent and I'm yet to find any that really click with me. Matt Curtis has written some great pieces across multiple platforms this year, but as ever its Boak and Bailey I always read off the bat rather than pocketing for later with their regular blogoshire roundup posts always turning up some gems which would otherwise have been missed. Cheers guys!

Just noticed they also won last year, must be doing something right or else I'm just boring* 

*not mutually exclusive

Simon Johnson Award for best beer Tweeter this year is going to Yvan Seth for his honest and sometimes brutal insider view of beer wholesale - though admittedly this is mostly on facebook. Keep at it sir, you're leading a sea change.

Thanks everyone for reading here's to a beery 2017 (with hopefully a return to semi-regular posting from me...we shall see...)

Golden Pints: Ireland 2016

As per last year, I'd like to put together some nominations from the island of Ireland as this bog is all about highlighting the growing beer scene over here. I'm not going to look back at last years until after this post goes live; so it'll be just on my memory and ratebeer scores rather than being influenced by what went before. The usual provisio applies: I wasn't able to try everything that was released and if any more impress before the end of the year I reserve the right to amend my choices!

1. Best Cask Beer I've not had very much Irish cask this year as I missed the ICBCF, but I was able to attend the Franciscan Well winterfest. However I'm going to "cheat" slightly and nominate the Northbound 08 Kolsch which was on key-cask at the CAMRA beer festival.  Clean, fresh, flavourful - I had three pints which is a rarity in these days of halves and thirds.

Honourable mention: Lacada Stranded Bunny for tasting just as a porter should and filling a real gap amongst the Irish reds and dry stouts. If I'd had a chance to try it with more condition it could have taken the crown 

2. Best Keg Beer I've had a lot more of these, though largely what's been imported to the North as I've only been to Dublin a couple of times. The crown has to go to Eight Degrees for Gasman Rye for its sheer drinkability, which it has no right to have at 7.8%, a tropical melange of hops combatting with a robust and spicy body.

Honourable mention: There are far too many to list really, 2015 has been an excellent beer year but I was really impressed by Killarney Devils Helles a really crisp and nettley doughy pils like beer and the juxtaposition of clean malt and fruity hops that was Trouble Brewing Remix India Pale Lager.

3. Best Bottled/ Canned beer This one is much easier, has to be Galway Bay's Superlative 200 Fathoms. Last year's release was special this year was spot on and one of my highest rated Irish beers altogether. Honourable mentions Farmageddon Hopburst IPA - these guys had a run of infected bottles but this one showed off how the beer is intended, bright juicy tropical hops on a clean lightly bready malt profile. 

Boundary Filthy Animal a Christmas special which unfortunately sold out before I could get hold of any more bottles a lightly spicy and smoky rich porter, great with cheese or desserts alike.

4. Best Homebrew has to go to Shane's Raspberry Turbo, outright winner at Sourfest. Its the kind of beer I'd want to keep a few of in the fridge for its sheer enjoyability. Luckily a version of it is currently slumbering in a wine barrel at Boundary and is certainly a contender for best bottled beer next year!

5. Best Overall Beer is a tricky one but I think it has to be the Northbound 08 because it just surprised me on draught after having found it ho-hum in bottle. Its a year-round beer rather than a seasonal like the majority of my other picks this year, try it if you find it!

6.Best Brewery is becoming harder every year as the ranks of excellent breweries swell almost weekly. I could easily give this to Eight Degrees again, who haven't released a bad beer this year but that would be far too easy. Instead I think there's a brewery this year that's really dialled in its core range and released a raft of interesting specials with a head brewer who's really gotten into his stride. That brewery is of course Galway Bay. I can't claim to have loved everything but Foam and Fury continues to be a world class DIPA, the Voyager US IPA filled a real gap in the market and the sessionable kettle sours are real winners. Congrats Chris and team!

7. Best New Brewery -Killarney very much impressed on first outing earlier this summer; but I've not drunk enough to give them the crown. Instead this award goes to a brewery I've drunk monthly from their launch, with a solid core range (though admittedly not all to my taste) and a raft of specials and collaborations it has to be Boundary.(full disclosure: I am both a co-owner and good friends with Matthew the brewer, but I like to think the beer speaks for itself). The ethos behind the brewery and the buy in from the local community are the real things that make it stand out.

 8. Best Pub/ Bar has definitely been earned by The Sunflower. Woodfired pizza oven in the garden, host to Belfast beer Club, well kept beer on cask and a great range of local and international beer in the fridges. Saddened and angry to hear that redevelopment may lead to its demolition - I hope not but in the meantime please support it whilst you can.

 9. Best New Opening - I've not been to any new bars down south but there's one that immediately springs to mind in the north. I was a bit of a latecomer but I've now visited on a number of occasions and been impressed each time. 10 guest taps with regular takeovers and the biggest bottle list of perhaps any UK bar, interesting small snack plates and a buzzing atmosphere. The award this year goes to Brewbot.

 10. Best Food and Beer Pairing I've not eaten out as much this year, but one thing that really does stick in my mind is the fresh, lemony and mouth-filling creaminess of St Tola against the crisp, pithy and brightness of Eight Degrees Full Irish (Cheers to Mike at Fancy Cheese Co. for facilitating this!).

 11. Best Festival is really getting some real competition now, with some weekends having multiple events, especially during the summer months. I now have to pick and choose which to attend but in my mind there is one true stand out. Fantastic venue, excellent food and world class beer selection. Great feedback from all who attended - amazing considering its in its first year! This award belongs to ABV. (Disclosure time again: I worked the full weekend at the festival and know the organisers)

 12. Best Independent Retailer with a new growler fill station and probably still the best variety of Irish and international beers The Vineyard takes this again.

Honourable mentions: McHughs have made ammends for an inauspicious first few orders and continue to impress with the number of Irish beers they manage to find room for. I'm also very fortunate to have the Winerack in Stewartstown acting as my local good beer hotspot - though of course its helped that I've been able to advise on what should be stocked!