Green Shoots

Three contract brewing arrangements today, though in each case the new breweries do get involved to a lesser or greater extent. The first two are new Irish breweries (beers purchased from Drinkstore) and the final beer comes across from England.

All striking but completely different brands, all use green, the colour of new growth.

 

Mountain Man's beers are currently brewed at Eight Degrees. Green Bullet (4%) is an eponymous brew of that work-horse Antipodean hop as enjoyed in Bowman beers for a number of years and to my knowledge the first Kiwi hop I tried. Unfortunately this beer doesn't showcase it all that well, with a mere dusting of hops poking through the malt laden base. Hazy pale burnished gold with fluffy white head. Bready with dusty peaches. Medium carbonation, dough, dry bitterness becoming astringent. 

The branding is good but more work required on the beer.

Baile Brew Pale Ale is a bit heftier at 5% but still doesn't give the best of showing to its hops. Darker hazy burnished gold with dense white foam head. Dusty yeast esters and sweet malt on nose. Medium carbonation, slight kiss of tropical fruit balanced by biscuit malt and a touch of toffee. Fairly short finish.

And finally Northern Monk New World IPA, 6.2%: a beer I was keen to try as I've enjoyed home-brew from David before and he's one of my longest and most interesting followers/ followees. He's currently contract brewing at Hambleton in lieu of being able to afford his own kit but still has full creative control whilst Hambleton's kit gets used more fully, a win-win situation.David kindly sent me a bottle of his beer to try.

 It pours a pale amber with off-white head and caramalt sweetness, natural yoghurt and sharp lemon. Low carbonation, cheesecake, sweet malt, finishes a little quickly. 

I really wanted to like this but it didn't quite live up to expectations. This one is two months old now; so may not be a true reflection of how it tasted fresh. I've a bottle of David's collaboration (Bad Habit) with Weird Beard to try which sounds more promising and their new Imperial stout is one I'm definitely keen to try.

So not a terrible start for any of these three, but I look forward to trying more of their wares once they've had a chance to bed in a bit

Cidre World

One of my most anticipated drinks books of the year has just arrived on my doormat; so I thought I'd write a few words on my thoughts on Pete Brown and Bill Bradshaw's new book: World's Best Cider.[post title a nod to Pete's favourite cider ;)]

From Amazon

So aside from the grandeur on the dust jacket ("most successful beer writer" and "greatest cider expert" both sounding perhaps a little far fetched, but I'll let it pass as marketing exuberance) does this book pass muster? Its great to see cider put into layman's terms (it is after all the layman's drink) with some of the myths debunked and a handy guide to what to drink and apple based alcohol drink variants around the world. Yes, this beer also covers those drinks distilled from cider such as apple brandy and eau de vie. It may be pedantic, but if you're going to include Northern Ireland within the island of Ireland (makes sense in the context of the book) then the rest of the UK should be labelled "Great Britain". Politics aside (and real vs "fake" cider is also covered) its great to see the new Northern Ireland producers featured, albeit in very brief form with similar thoughts as my own.**

For me its the coverage of North American cider culture where this book excels, an area I previously knew very little about, but thanks to almost 60 pages in this book I feel like I'm well on the way to also becoming a cider expert...ahem. A short but well curated bibliography of websites and books should help those eager to find out more.

I've long admired Bill Bradshaw's photography and they look great in glossy format in this coffee table tome, including some previously unseen pics, and I'd go so far as to say these are worth the cover price (£25 but as usual cheaper on Amazon) alone. Its certainly the most attractive cider book  I've seen to date and one I'll continue to flick through long after I've absorbed the information. It certainly leaves you thirsty!

There's also a cider with food section, alternative dining options to wine being all the rage these days and there are some great suggestions I'm looking forward to trying out. Chocolate and cider brandy truffles anyone?

So pedantry aside, this is a fantastic book for the cider lover in your life, it looks great, packed full of information and out right in time for the Christmas rush. It officially launches next thursday (I paid for my copy on Amazon, no freebies this time!) so keep an eye on Pete's blog for launch events near you.

*I'm from Somerset and drink a fair amount of cider as per stereotype.

**Sadly no acknowledgement for your humble reporter but I'm sure plenty of people helped out who weren't named either!

World's Best Cider By Pete Brown & Bill Bradshaw RRP £25 Jacqui Small LLP (London) ISBN: 978-1-906417-99-4

Kinnegar

Another new brewery in Ireland is Kinnegar, based in County Donegal, Ireland, was built commencing March this year. First beers began appearing in August, a great turnaround of less than 6 months. You can see the progress updates on their blog below.

They have a striking brand of a leaping hare on single coloured background which certainly helps them to stand out on ever increasingly full shelves. They currently have a core range of four beers with a few specials, all available in bottle and I managed to pick up three of them from Drinkstore in Dublin.

Strong branding in primary colours

Limeburner is a "Northern Pale Ale" @4.9% pouring slightly hazy pale gold  with dusty grainstore and slight nectarines on the nose. Gentle carbonation, sweet malt, minimal hops. Not unpleasant nor exciting and would appeal to lager drinkers.

Devil's Backbone is a "Northern Amber Ale"- 4.9%. Ruby amber with caramel sweetness and red berries. Gentle carbonation. Well balanced fruity bitter. Not quite as expected but well flavoured with a selection of malts making it a bit different to your typical Irish red.

Scraggy Bay IPA is 5.3% & hazy burnished gold with steady stream of fine bubbles with tight white head. Sweet mango and dusty grainstore on the nose. Medium carbonation, full bodied dry shortcake malt, touch of lemon. Dry herbal finish. Well made but unexciting.

A promising start, bolstered by their great branding, but perhaps made a little too conservatively for them to be regular beers for me, though Scraggy Bay would go down well chilled on a summer's day. I'm hoping to get hold of a bottle of their fourth core beer, Rustbucket Rye, a Rye PA. I'd like to see some darker beers too; though not necessarily a stout because we're awash with them already! But feel free to disagree with me by trying them for  yourself!

Kinnegar Brewing

@kinnegarbrewing

Autumn Beer Extravaganza (Wetherspoon Autumn Beer Festival 2013)

Its that time of year again, autumn is upon us which can only mean one thing...Wetherspoon are back with another selection of cask ales for their real ale festival. This time around we have an extra special treat, all ten of the collaboration (collabeeration!) beers (that's 20% fact fans!) were brewed by American brewers with UK breweries. Brewers from 7 states took part producing beers in 8 different styles. Plenty for the tickers amongst you! Remember they're all one offs too; so make sure you get along to try them out. Here's a preview of those beers and others that I'm most looking forward to.

Shaun O'Sullivan from 21st amendment in San Francisco California travelled to Wychwood to brew American Bitter Red a sessionable Amber Ale with "agressive" hopping. 

The brewery is of course named for the repeal of prohibition, without which this brewery and all of the others below would have been unable to exist. @21stAmendmentBrewery

Next up is Restoration Pale Ale brewed by Mark Wilson of Abita Brewing Co with Wetherspoon collaboration stalwarts Wadworth. Normally based in Louisiana Mark rocked up in Devizes and used a large amount of cascade to get plenty of citrus character into this beer. @TheAbitaBeer

Ballast Point are a well known US craft brewer from San Diego California; so  "session IPA" Even Keel brewed at Marstons should be something special (and is a recreation of a 3.8% regular beer in cask form). Again using new world hops; so expect plenty of citrus character but there's also some noble hops in there to provide plenty of bitterness too. @BPBrewing

There's an unusual sounding brew from Will Meyers of Massachusetts' Cambridge Brewing Co - Beatles inspired Sgt Pepper is a saison with rye malt and four types of peppercorn. I think its great that Wetherspoon make this kind of creative ale available to the UK drinking public at large and well done to Everards for collaborating on this!
@CambridgeBrewer





Another fantastic sounding beer is Seattle's Elysian's Avatar, a jasmine IPA brewed by brewer Dick Cantwell with Thwaites on their "Crafty Dan" kit on 17th September.

via Thwaites

Featuring the fairly recent Glacier hop alongside superstar Amarillo and bittering stalwart Northern Brewer. At 6.3% its fairly hefty too and should work well as a warmer for the journey home.
@ElysianBrewing



 Sunshine Daydream is a 5% brew named for a Grateful Dead documentary released in 1972. It was brewed by Matt Cole owner of Ohio's Fat Head's brewery at Batemans on 9th September (welcomed by an Ohio state flag!) with centennial, citra and simcoe triple-teaming on the hop-front to produce a citrus bomb IPA.
@FatHeadsBeer






Harpoon IPA was brewed by brewer Jamie Schier at Bank's. Its been brewed in their Boston brewery for 20 years; so great to get a UK cask version brewed over here.
 @harpoon_brewery






Another uncommon beer style for the UK and the first outing at a Wetherspoon fest is Cream Ale. This one has been brewed by Oregon's Ninkasi at Caledonian in Edinburgh. Cream ale is a light fruity ale using simcoe and liberty for fruity apricot and mango notes, then lagered (cold conditioned) a hybrid style akin to kolsch.
@NinkasiBrewing





 
Mitch from Stone has documented his trip to the UK here. He brewed Supremely Self Conscious alongside Fergus at Adnams. I'm a big fan of Stone beers and Adnams is a well respected brewer plus I love Black IPAs; so this is surely my most anticipated beer at the fest this year.
@StoneBrewingCo







And last but not least is Spike Buckowski of Georgia brewery Terrapin's collaboration with Shepherd Neame - Treehugger. Its another rarely seen beer for the UK a German style Altbier with authentic Hallertau region hops.
@TerrapinBeerCo

I'm also looking forward to Roosters All Star Brewster's Aromatic Porter and even the GK Abbot's Confession. but there should be something for everyone with 50 beers to choose from! I think you'll agree with me that Wetherspoon have outdone themselves with the selection this year, I'm not sure how they'll raise the bar again in 2014!

All the tasting notes for these beers may be read in the festival program, along with interesting background stories for each of the brewers. All of the beers have already been added to ratebeer, so I've linked them in to the above. Remember that you can get three thirds for the price of the pint during the festival, making it easier to try the full range (don't try 50 in one day!)

Northern Ireland CAMRA and Beoir are coming together to celebrate the festival in the Bridge House Belfast on Saturday 19th October, all are welcome. Its a chance for you to meet fellow beer enthusiasts, a brewer or two and hopefully try all ten US cask beers at the same time.

Thanks are due to Gary Holmes and the marketing team at JDWcreative for sending me through a PDF with all of the pumpclip artwork, cheers guys.

Red Brick Beer Fest

Factoberfest, Bristol Beer Factory's answer to that infamous Munich event. I enjoyed the event back in September 2011, so was high time I paid the Tobacco Factory a visit again. 

After a fantastic feed in the Souk Kitchen opposite, we popped across to the venue for some beers.

Lots of lovely cask beer!

It's grown in size somewhat in the last two years with 45 cask beers, 13 kegs and 5 ciders appearing over the weekend. The place was packed due to the pissing rain outside, but it wasn't long before Daisy, my dad, his friend George and myself were safely ensconced in a sofa.

Keg this year too! As modelled by brewer Jonny.

 The range of beers was fantastic and it was great to see all of the Bristol breweries represented for the opening night.Wiper and True's Amber in the Pines (back beer below) was highlight of mine Full bodied pine, citrus zest, mango berries a melange of flavours, really impressed. Fairly high residual sweetness balances hefty hopping with a long hop finish. I also really enjoyed St Austel Big Job and Bristol Beer Factory's own Cafe Latte. Saying that all beers on the evening were in superb condition, except the Fyne Ales Rune which I suspect wasn't as it should be.

Beer in all the major colours!

It was great to chat with brewer Jonny Mills and manager Simon plus bumping into Luke from the Bag O'Nails is always a pleasure, even if we only had 5 minutes to chat before I had to run to the bus.

The only downside for me was that I had to leave parts of beers un-drunk as thirds weren't an available measure. This could have been worse though as beers were a very reasonable £1.50 a half or 7 for a tenner and they did get passed around four people!

Yours truley enjoying a half of something tasty.

I'll be back to Bristol next weekend for Bristol beer week (see my t-shirt!), where I hope to try more tasty Wiper and True beers alongside others from Bristol and environs. Give me a shout if you're coming and we can meet up for a beer or three!

Some Sheelin Brews

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, new Norn Iron brewer Sheelin has started supplying to the market. Brewer George Cathcart called in on his way home from a delivery run for a chat and to leave me some samples. More on those later but first a bit more about the brewery.

George had been home brewing for seven years before taking the plunge and going commercial. As with all sensible start-ups he began with a 1 barrel brew kit to perfect his recipes and he'll continue to use this for one-offs and festival specials (something special lined up for Christmas already). He does also have an 8 barrel brew kit which is enabling him to meet the demand on the back of the article in Easyjet magazine.

That high demand has seen his wife Vicky handing over the keys to the cafe they were also running to focus on the brewing side of the business for the time being, with demand growing even in the few short weeks since we last spoke. With an energetic 16month old to look after George and Vicky certainly have their hands full!

George and I have a fair amount in common, a love of good beer and good food (and the pairing thereof) but we're also both chemists, albeit heading in slightly different directions. George's fascination with microbiology and biochemistry has led to him creating a yeast bank of some 30 viable strains of yeast; allowing him to pick the most suitable strain for the job in each of his four core range beers and having plenty at hand to pep up those specials!

So what of the core range? On the face of it its the usual Irish "holy trinity" of red, blonde and black with a pale ale, so what's different? All the beers are brewed at a sessionable 4.5%, allowing for them to be drunk by the pint, but George is also aiming at the beer and food pairing market; so the beers have been brewed with a lower bitterness level to increase potential matches and appeal to the widest audience. Those specials will be where us beer geeks get our kicks, with higher strength brews, speciality yeasts/grains and perhaps even a spot of barrel ageing?

George left me samples of his blonde and his stout. The blonde ale is very much what you might expect, though without the almost metallic hops or biting carbonation you too often find in the the style. Instead there are some pineapple yeast esters and some doughy malt flavours that I normally associate with a Kolsch. I'd finished the beer within a few gulps, which is always a good sign and nothing about it would put off those used to the cold and fizzy, though the carbonation is noticeably lower than those mass market products (which can only be a good thing in my mind!).

The stout is a different beer entirely. Again, with the low hopping rate, the beer is very "mild" and I've even suggested to Gorge that the style designation be kept vague to prevent preconceptions of something dry and roasty which this beer isn't really. I see it as a proper mild (albeit at the higher end of the ABV range) with licorice toffee and burnt toast at first seguing into roast coffee beans and milk chocolate in the finish. Its fairly sweet and I reckon a dose of late hops for flavour  (Bramling cross perhaps?)* would really make the beer zing and I'd love to see this on cask.

So how about food pairings? Well the blonde would work well with light meats and fish and mild cheshire cheese whereas the stout would give an extra dimension to any red meat or game stew, dark berry fruits and sweet and creamy blue cheeses. Look out for the beer in the province to try for yourself.

George hopes to have his third beer, an IPA available in cask for the Belfast beer festival in November. Hope to see you all there. My preview post will be up sometime towards the end of October but to whet your whistles there will be plenty of seasonals from around the UK, a few unusual beers and of course a growing contingent of Northern Ireland breweries and cider makers in attendance.

*I suggested as much to George and he let slip that he's been growing a few bines on the sly, one of which is Bramling cross - the first hops in Northern Ireland in a long time perhaps?

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
@WildBeerAndrew
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*Goose Island Fleur, Cigar City Papsoe's Passion Fruit Porter and Elixir's Jump the Shark