Brewing By Numbers

Certainly one of my favourite "Best of London" discoveries from ales by mail is Brew By Numbers. I first tried their Berliner weisse about a year ago and knew they were on to something. They now rank alongside their Bermondsey brethren of Kernel and Partizan among the elite of London brewers and I'm on a mission to try more. In early February I spent an enjoyable afternoon following the now obligatory beer pilgrimage around the rail tracks and spent a few hours in the good company of Andy @tabamatu in the packed BBNo brewery. I later got hold of some bottles to try; so here are my thoughts.

A couple of porters up first, one with liberty and one dubbed traditional. Liberty first then at 5.7% is hazy dark brown, fluffy beige head, piney hop notes and cocoa. Full bodied, low carbonation, v easy drinking, rich dark malt with cocoa, toasty malt and well balanced by leafy herbal hops

The traditional porter is even better at 6.5% dark loamy brown with frothy tan head. Cocoa and toast. Robust and rich, earthy roast barley, coffee and toast. Superb, reaffirms my love of porters. This is sparring against Anspach and Hobday as my favourite porter of the year.

Coming in a smidge higher is the export stout at 7.4%. Pours opaque ebony brown with pillowy tan head and earthy rich roast barley nose. Full body with spritzy carbonation, coffee and chocolate. Rich, hides its strength well. Umami dry toast., touch of lemon peel. V drinkable. Rich cherry notes.

Saison seems to be an area of expertise for the brewery and in addition to a fantastic motueka & lime and wai-iti and lemon sampled at the brewery I picked up a Nelson Sauvin saison. Now antipodean hops pair brilliantly with the fruity Belgian yeasts and again there's no exception here.Pouring hazy pale blonde with pillowy cream head. Rich gooseberry and passion fruit on the nose, redolent of a sauvingnon blanc. Fairly soft medium mouthfeel with a gentle carbonic tingle, fruit peel bitterness at first, then creamy wheat and plenty of fruity gooseberry with a pause for Flinty yeast before progressing to a fruity dry finish. Excellent stuff.

Another style that's (perhaps controversially) all the rage is session IPA. I'll save my thoughts on the genesis of this style for another post and just talk about the beer here. This one combines citric Amarillo and more Nelson Sauvin. opaque golden beer with fluffy off white head. Mango rind aroma. Full bodied pithy bitterness with juicy satsuma and slight sweaty feet. Amarillo running the party here and doesn't quite hit the spot for me. A prime example of "London Murky".

Finally we have a full blown IPA, this time with simcoe and chinook. BBNo redeem themselves here, yes still hazy but  with a much more inviting lime peel and passion fruit nose. Medium body, gentle carbonation, "ruinously drinkable". So sessionable for its strength. Juicy fruit, gentle bitterness, peach, tangerine, verbena. Delicious, best ipa I’ve had in a while. Perfectly balanced.

So with an average score of 4/5 (and only the session IPA letting the side down slightly) Brew by Numbers have comfortably entered my Top 5  UK breweries alongside the likes of Redchurch, Siren, Buxton and Wiper & True. I urge you to seek them out and try for yourselves. I certainly feel vindicated including them in my ones to watch, with more fun on the way in the shape of barrel ageing.

Brew By Numbers

@BrewByNumbers

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Tis the Saison

This post has sat in draft for too many months; so clearing it out to make way for more posts next year. One of my favourite beer "styles" are saisons, nothing better when you want a sessionable ale to spend some time over. I've curated an interesting range in this post; to show you the breadth of the style.

Up first is an offering from Partizan, very much in the traditional vein - Saison Grisette @ 4.8% Hazy pale blonde with lacing of white head. Typical dry Belgian yeast esters, well attenuated, medium body, slightly peppery coriander, long ester filled finish. I've since had all of Partizan's saisons* but this was still one of the best.

Another Partizan saison next (Big Red), similar but darker, not black however. Cloudy mid amber with coriander and yeast esters on the nose - probably the same yeast as used above but igven more malt to chomp on as this one hits 7.4%. Sweet and spicy, caramel and apple, warm and spiky, dry Belgian finish. Its got the best bits of a Belgian dubbel without the candy sugar off-taste I hate.

Stepping ever stronger is Nomada Untitldead at 9% which I discovered in the fridge at the Barley Mow one day. Dark chestnut amber, minimal head soon dissipated. Rich toffee sweetness plus slight tartness. Sweet, toffee, caramel, fruitcake, rich marmalade. Low carbonation. Long fruity finish but too rich for my tastes.

To finish off is my final bottle of the "Overseas Dictator" brewed for my birthday last year by my friend Paul. The carbonation has died down somewhat which means I can pour the glass without it frothing everywhere (redecorated Bitter Virtue with a fresh bottle...) This has really aged well with a good dry finish, just a touch of chocolate and some nice herbal hop notes complementing the saison and wheat spices. Apologies to Paul for leaving this so long to post!

*Post to come in the new year!

Wild at Heart

A much anticipated brewery came flying onto the scene in 2012 and now have over 20 different beers under their belts as diverse as bretted stock ales to luxuriant imperial stouts and aggressively hopped IPAs. I wrote about their hybrid apple beer Ninkasi earlier in the year. Here are my thoughts on a few more of their range.

Instantly recognisable stags head logo

Up first is one of my favourite styles- a saison but with a twist. This is blended in a similar way to gueuze with a young (jonge) and old (oude) saison blended out of a solera system*. Each batch will still have some of that original first barrel in it; so its one to try over time.
Dark hazy amber with light off white head. At first musty then spicy yeast esters on the nose. Very Belgian, wit like at first with building biscuit sweetness and yeast complexity, bready notes, dry herbal hops, medium carbonation, quaffable yet layered and v easy drinking.  

Less wild perhaps but still fantastically put together is Madness IPA. Brett missed the West Coast IPAs he could pick up on almost any corner in his native California and decided to recreate one for us lucky Britishers. Slightly hazy pale amber with fluffy white head. Rich aroma of citrus pith and resinous pine alongside grassy hop freshness and mango rind. Spiky carbonation, pithy hops, chalky bitterness, rich hop flavours up there with the best UK IPAs. Full pithiness, lemon freshness and mango rind right through to a long finish. 

A beer that went down a storm at the recent B-cubed festival was schnoodlepip, a crazy collaboration concoction with Kelly Ryan of Good George, Mark Tranter (normally of Dark Star, soon to be Burning Sky) and of course Brett at Wild. On paper it sounds as if it may not work, passion fruit? hibiscus? pink peppercorns?!? I've had the good fortune to try all of these ingredients in beers before*, but never at the same time. Add to that the obligatory spell of barrel ageing and wild yeast magic and you have a really special beer on your hands.
Scarlet tinged amber with white lacing. Rich tropical fruit nose, Belgian yeast esters and a slight pepper tingle. Moderate carbonation, tart at first, lots of hibiscus like Goose Island's Fleur, pepper tingle on tip of tongue, sharp passion fruit and dry malt finish.

They've just recovered from a fairly serious fire; so why don't you support them to recover by buying some of their bottled beers, or better yet head to Bristol for Bristol Beer Week to try them in situ at the various bars taking part.

Wild Beer Co
@BrettJEllis
@WildBeerCo
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*Goose Island Fleur, Cigar City Papsoe's Passion Fruit Porter and Elixir's Jump the Shark

More facial hair

As promised, here are my thoughts on some more Weird Beard Brews following a post earlier this month. Four saisons and an IPA.

Saison 14 gives everything I look for in a saison, Belgian nose of honeyed yeast esters, big wheaty spicy body and a little funkiness in the finish. It made an excellent dry pre-dinner aperitif and one i will be visiting again. On a par with their Black Perle and fighting for top place with Fade to Black.

The same can't be said of Saison 42 (a hitchiker's guide to the galaxy reference and a collaboration with new Swedish micro Sad Robot) which is rather flat and tasteless. It finishes fairly sweet and heavy too, maybe it has a lower proportion of wheat in it?

Its quirkier brother 42e is more like it, primed with elderflower cordial in the bottle it has a wild feel to it. There's some heavy candy sugar towards the end but it sings with a floral elderflower refrain that demands another glug.

Collaboration is the name of the game as the next saison is also a colabeeration with Andy (@tabamatu) or more rightly a scale up of one of his many successful home brews. Cheers Andy for lugging this up to Edinburgh for me! A great showcase for the gooseberry side of the Nelson sauvin hop, though perhaps a little too high in alcohol for my liking. Well made and pretty well balanced, seek it out if Nelson Saison your thing!

Finally Hit the Lights is the IPA Miss the Lights was planned to be. I certainly preferred it to the earlier iteration. Well balanced with red berries and sage/ lemon balm in the aroma. It drinks well, with more of those red berries, though is a little to hefty to make it sessionable.

Weird Beard has two other brews that I've not yet had the chance to try and narrowly missed out on trying at EBBC13 this weekend! Ah well, you can't try it all. More on EC13 later this week (when I have my notes and thoughts in order!) 

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.

CABPOM February: Marble Special 2011 & Stinking Bishop

Mixed marinated olives

February's CABPOM is similar to lat month's in that its the same style of beer paired. A beer I kicked myself for not buying whilst in York in December just so happened to be available at the Marble Arch on a visit recently. The beer in question is of course their 2011 Special, a saison brewed in collaboration with Mark Tranter of Dark Star (whose saison was one of the first brewed in the UK and I'm still yet to try!) Saison is one of my favourite styles and a number of UK breweries have produced them recently. A stalwart feature of the Marble Arch is their legendary cheese boards. We opted for a 9 cheese selection as a starter to our planned meal at Zinc Bar and Grill.

9 cheeses and a bottle of saison

1. Hereford Hop
2. Desserts de Trappistes
3. Cropwell Bishop's Stilton
4. Barber's Cheddar
5. Northumbrian Baltic unpasteurised ale washed cheese
6. Stinking Bishop. perry washed rind
7. Epoisses de bourgogne. unpasteurised washed rind in marc de bourgogne
8. Cotswold Blue
9.L'alpini

Cheese menu front

cheese menu reverse

Cotswold Blue Brie

blue brie: Slightly metallic, very ripe ammonia. Not a particularly good match and I think probably overripe.

l'alpini: no notes made. I think the cheese was quite delicate and overpowered by the saison.

Stinking Bishop

Epausses: sweet pineapple esters, rich strong aromatic...lovely

cheddar. bread and chutney.

hereford hop, very drying, bitter jarring with the beer

stinking bishop perfect match, meaty flavours, accentuated hoppiness.

barber's cheddar

northumbrian very gentle gruyere style reminds of Caerphilly, beer too powerful.

Trappistes almost as good with the beer as stinking bishop.

colston basset. not one for saison but a great finale cheese

  

That seems to suggest that it will go well with washed rind cheeses, its a difficult choice but I think CABPOM this month has to be Marble Special 2011 and Stinking Bishop. I Dare-say any washed rind with a saison may be a good match. If you've not yet had a cheese platter from the Marble Arch, do get along there and remember, the most fun you can have with beer and cheese is just to try something out and see what works for you!

Thus concludes my Manchester series and blog posts until March (except for any major news of course!)

CABPOM January: Brooklyn Sorachi Ace and Barncliffe

A trip to York recently saw me visiting the York Beer and Wine Shop. Reasonably priced, with a good selection of beers from the UK and further afield. Look out for the 25th jubilee porter, which is especially tasty (and actually over a year old at this point!) This fine establishment has something that all beer shops should; a cheese counter! A great selection of cheeses are in attendance, which made for much deliberation with ample help from Jim, the shop's owner. I finally settled on three:

Ribblesdale Blue goat - this is an unmistakably goaty number but it also has the lovely ripe fruit notes of a soft blue cheese like cambazola.

Ogleshield is a washed rind cheese that had travelled all the way to the shop from Somerset (in fact a few miles from my front door!). Made by Jersey cows owned by the Montgomery Cheddar Farm. It was brine washed, fairly mild with an open texture and nutty rind.

Barncliffe is a "Yorkshire Brie" from Sherley, nr Huddersfield. It is made from a Meuse-Rhine-Issel cows and has a buttery lemon flavour in the paste, with a chalkiness in the rind, reflecting the flavours in the immature centre.

Now, those of you who have been following this blog for the last half year or so will know that I love to pair beer and cheese; so using some beers I had to hand (picked up in the York Tap the day before) I decided to see what would work. The two beers in question were both American takes on Belgian beers, Great Divide Belgica and Brooklyn Sorachi Ace.

I tried the Belgica first.Its a golden ale with light carbonation and thin white head. A great nose of pineapple and some brett funk along with a hint of spearmint (hope it doesn’t carryover to taste!). Fairly typical sweet Belgian body with plenty of fruitiness and a bit of bitter in the finish. Medium bodied fairly sweet  and longlasting. Nice enough then, but how did it fair with the cheeses? The blue brought out an unpleasant metallic bitterness, I've found this before with hoppy beers and blue cheeses. The beer overpowers the barncliffe, obliterating any flavour. However with the Ogleshield the cheese is intensified, the fruity flavours from the brining come to the fore and are complemented by the fruity hops. The rind (which some people choose not to eat) tasted even more fantastic.

The Sorachi Ace is a beer I'd heard good things about, though I've had mixed opinions on the hop itself.. Complex hay, bubblegum, tangerine, sherbert nose. Slightly hazy blonde. Open fluffy head. Mellow, bit of brett, pineapple, sweet. Long moreish finish - this is the best exhibit I've seen of this hop, the grassy flavours I pick up from the hop are reflected by the mild Brett of a saison yeast.  

With the blue cheese each becomes more fruity. The goatiness is lost and it becomes like a ripe cashel blue. The beer's yeast esters become more noticable in the taste and the finish  lasts longer. Too much though and it becomes almost unbearably sweet.

The Ogleshield is the defeated cheese this time, the flavours are obscured by the complex beer, though the rind brings out more of the brett flavours in the beer.

Barncliffe takes on an interesting cherry flavour and both beer and cheese become fantastic, bouncing back and forth off of each other. Incidentally the cheese goes particularly well with Chinese spring-onion bread.

So a few decent pairings in the bunch this month, but for me the Barncliffe and Sorachi Ace just edges it; so that's the CABPOM.