CABPOM August: Flying Dog Cheese and Beer Pairing

NB: Sorry about the lack of photos, this fool forgot to take his camera and phone battery died. I’ve used some POS from the Flying Dog site.

Last Thursday saw me leaving the BSF bar partway through the day to amble on down to the White Horse at Parson's Green. I'd heard a lot about this pub, the fact that it is often referred to as the "Sloaney Pony" due to the drinking crowd it attracts, but not one to let other people's opinions cloud my judgement I thought I'd better check it out for myself. Why this particular night? Well besides being the first day of the annual American Beer Festival there was another event that had caught my eye: a cheese and beer pairing evening with Flying Dog. I was already toying with the idea when I heard about the beer; the cheese made it a no brainer!

Arriving at the pub around 6:30 I found it to be fairly full of a diverse clientele, with a number of people sat outside waiting for a BBQ. An astonishing array of beers awaited inside, both on keg and cask and after perusing my choices settled for a half of Sierra Nevada Kolsch, a beer I had no idea they brewed! I sat at a table where I was talked at by a fairly drunk office worker with socialist sympathies; so was glad to escape upstairs for the real event.

The tongue-tingling selection of beers

A stunning selection lay before me on the bar, four keg Flying Dog beers and three on cask. I also espied Great Divide Espresso Oak Aged Yeti which got my pulse racing too! The room had been decked out in brewery regalia and an American flag hung from the ceiling. Care had been taken to give every place a copy of the matching menu (see pic) and separate tasting notes were handed out to those needing them.

Once the 30 or so people had settled at their places Dom, the organiser of the event took the floor to welcome everyone and set the scene for the night. He then surrendered the floor to Matt Brophy. Not only were we lucky enough to try the Flying Dog beers but the Brewmaster had come along to guide us through it (he brought the CEO Jim Caruso along too). Through a mixture of talent and luck Matt has reached the position of Brewmaster at the tender age of 35. He gave us a brief biography, saying that he was inspired to begin home brewing at the age of 17 after listening to a radio interview with Charlie Papazian. His parents didn’t seem to mind that he was brewing beer four years before legally allowed to drink it! After that he managed to get a voluntary job at his local brewery then headed off to brewing school at the Siebel institute in Chicago. He worked at Great Divide before becoming head brewer at Flying Dog in 2003.

We were then given a delightful overview of the Flying Dog philosophy by Jim, who has been with the brewery for yonks and knows pretty much all there is to know about its inception and ethos, including the connection to Hunter S. Thompson and beer label artist Ralph Steadman. Jim could sense that we were eager to try the beers; so as the efficient and lovely bar staff filled our glasses Jim described the first beer: In Heat Wheat (4.7%) matched with Swiss Emmental. This beer had all the right characteristics for a weisse, banana and rich wheat on the nose, a big fluffy white head and cloves in the body. The beer definitely enhanced the flavour of the cheese but left a disagreeable metallic tang and vegetal finish.

Next up was the Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale (5.5%) pepper and cinnamon on the nose with Keen’s Farmhouse Cheddar cheese. Wow this was some amazing cheese! Luckily for me (unfortunately for him) the guy sat next to me had over indulged at dinner time and did not feel like eating so I got double helpings of this earthy, dry masterpiece. The slightly resinous and well carbonated beer really brought out the flavour in the cheese, ending on a not unpleasant slatey note. This beer was produced from a 90 minute boil and enhanced by dry hopping in the fermenter.

Midway through the evening and we face a monster: 10% Single Hop Centennial IIPA. Except it wasn’t single hop as Matt let on it had been dry hopped with two further varieties in the cask. That’s right, you read correctly, this beast of a beer was on cask and didn’t suffer for it! A rich nose of mangos and lemons, deep amber in colour with lots more mango in the body and a resinous finish. Coupled with the crushed peppercorns on the Monterey Jack melted on rye it really assaulted the taste buds in a delicious way. Matt told us that their cask beer is primed with Belgian Candy Sugar to ensure the all important secondary fermentation and that their beers are suitable for vegans as they use no fining.

I didn’t think the night could get any better but I was wrong...Two further beers in quick succession and Matt’s assertion from the start of the night that the initially quiet audience would liven up as the night wore on was becoming true. I found all manner of questions that I wanted answering, but luckily the guys were working the tables and knew their stuff; so I found out what I wanted and more. After the IIPA we were treated to Raging Bitch (8.3%), again on cask. This is their Belgian yeast IPA and my was it drinkable. No cheese match supplied with this one, but I reckon a good stinky washed rind could have worked well. An apple ester nose with a fairly dry, astringent and bitter body with hay character from the Brett. Matt tells us that a night on these beers can lead to a thumping hangover in the morning, which they refer to as being “Bitch-slapped”. It’s easy to see how this can happen as the alcohol is so well hidden.

Dog Schwartz (7.8%) is a beer with an identity crisis but doesn’t suffer for it. It’s a hybrid of a double Schwartz and a rauchbier and has the best of both styles. Smokey bacon and chocolate on the nose it has a creamy texture, gentle smoke and finishes on a golden syrup note. It uses cascade for the aroma hops and perle for bittering. They get their malt from Germany where it is beechwood smoked and around 50% of the total malt bill is the smoked stuff.

Dubious as to how the night could be bettered I was again proven wrong with the grand finale: Barrel aged Gonzo Imperial Porter with Toasted American Oak (9.2%) dry hopped in the cask with cascade and matched with room temperature Colston Basset Stilton. Wow. This beer was breathtaking and with the cheese simply sublime. Fruity, vanilla ice-cream, chocolate and boozy nose with coffee, resinous hops and even more chocolate in the luxuriantly thick body. The oak adding extra vanilla and the dry hops rounding out the beer. This is exponentially better than the bottled version, and that is already a great beer. This matched exceedingly well with the piquant fruity flavours of the stilton; so much so that I had to avail the tray on the bar of an additional two glasses worth. For a beer described as having “a shit-tonne of hops” they’re remarkably well hidden and the beer is very balanced. The thought of this pairing is still making me salivate; it’s a no brainer that this is the cheese and beer pairing of the month.

I finished on a half of the aforementioned great divide and was not disappointed, Matt’s former employers don’t seem to have suffered without him and half the pub agreed as I shared the beer around. After a very topical conversation on dispense and cask conditioned beers with Oz Clarke (whose best pint was a Batemans XXXB some years ago) and telling Roger Protz to try the Revelation Cat 3-yo Lambic Laphroaig Cask on BSF (he didn’t!) I called an end to the highlight of my week and returned to my hotel room and fell in a contented slumber, accompanied by the inevitable cheese-aided dreams.

I would like to say thank you to all of those involved in making this night memorable, to Dom for organising the whole thing, James Clay for getting the beers, the bar girls who were very smiley, friendly, efficient (not to mention pleasing to the eye) and quick to offer refills. Also to Matt and Jim who were an excellent double-act for the evening. I feel much more educated about so many things and they left me wanting to visit the brewery. Cheese and beer pairing is no new thing to Flying Dog, they host frequent beer dinners, something I’d love to see more of in the UK. Their beer leaflet also has a whole ream of pairing suggestions for each beer. I bumped into the guys again the following day at GBBF looking remarkably bright eyed and bushy tailed. The Hunter S. Thompson quote which Jim gave at the start of the night “good people drink good beer” can certainly be expanded to “great brewers brew great beer”.

PS sorry for all the apparent name dropping but I think they add to my account of the evening, and yes I am aware that all of my CABPOM’s so far have been with dark beer and usually blue cheese, I’ll try to mix things up a bit for next month but no promises!

Beervana

I've just got back from a very beer filled week in London which more than made up for my normally beereft experience in Northern Ireland.

Odell Myrcenary and IPA

Three on keg.

I travelled across on Saturday to help with GBBF setup, with my first beer coming Saturday evening in the shape of the Odell meet the brewer evening at the Cask Pub and Kitchen. I of course have met Doug Odell before as he works on US Cask beer at GBBF, but that didn't make his (brief) talk about the beers on offer any less interesting.

The beers on offer and tasting notes

A selection of three Odell beers were available on draught (IPA, Double Pilsner, Myrcenary) but the real highlight were the limited edition bottle releases shared out around the pub to anyone interested. A nice touch by the Cask there. After the Odell-a-thon I also tried a Witter Saison-de-Fleur and Mikkeller Black, the former was tasty, the latter sublime. Could have easily had another half, but at 17.5% decided against it! A good evening indeed.

Sunday night saw a mini pub crawl around Euston station. Starting in the Doric Arch I had a perfectly tasty pint of Brains SA Gold. Déjà Vous prompted me to remember that I had indeed been there before! Next up was the Bree Louise, a lovely little backstreet boozer with a massive selection of cask ales and 50p off per pint for CAMRA members (also students, NHS and armed forces: not to be sniffed at!). They also offer customizable cheese plates, the stinking bishop on mine was particularly tasty with whatever it was I was drinking (in my excitement to get a plate of cheese I didn't make notes!) The evening ended up in the Euston Tap where all Bier Sans Frontiers staff had congregated and polished off two 24" pizzas. Beers were £1 a pint for all draught beers which was a steal! Tried Thornbridge versa weisse and Bristol Beer Factory Acer/ Saison. I like that the Euston Tap blog about their beers, it helps as an aide memoir of what I was drinking! (Too many exclamation marks...)

Four cask beers

7 on keg!

A return to the Cask was called for on Sunday for the Kernel meet the brewer evening. An impressive range of four cask and 7 keg beers was an almost bewildering choice for one who had not yet sampled the delights of the Kernel. I tried three of the cask and one keg beer; Nelson/Citra, Kernel/Redemption collaboration and export stout on cask, Imperial Export Brown Stout on keg. I really enjoyed all of the beers, especially the recreation of extinct recipes and look forward to trying more from these guys in the future.

Just a few of the many beers on offer!

Reflective drinking

After that the evening called for a visit to the Craft Beer Co. in Clerkenwell. Plenty of other bloggers have extolled its virtues; so I will lay off on the superlatives and merely state that there was sufficient choice to keep me amused for months (time and funds permitting!). The house lager by Mikkeller was particularly good, closer to a pale ale than I had been expecting an amber-yellow hue with plenty of fruit. The evening quickly descended into mayhem when I met a couple of Canadians who insisted on sharing their beer with me and I likewise reciprocated. Its pubs like the craft beer co where you feel comfortable sharing beers with complete strangers and for this and the spectacular surroundings alone the beers were worth the high asking price.

Julian finishes his pint of Magic Rock Dark Arts

 Most of the remainder of my week was filled with all things GBBF, but you will be able to read my round up of that later this week. I also attended the Flying Dog cheese and beer pairing at the White Horse at Parson's Green which I am still salivating about now. I intend to post about it as my CABPOM for August; so look out for that soon too!

In summary, London has plenty of decent pubs and I think having events organised around GBBF really makes it into a week celebrating beer in London. Would love to see more next year as Mark suggests here, though this will inevitably mean having to choose which event I least want to miss out on! As it was I didn't get to visit the Jolly Butchers, Rake or Southampton Arms as I had been hoping to. Ah well there's always next year!

I hope everyone else enjoyed their time in London during GBBF week. Who did I miss out on meeting at the various events? This week taught me I need a backup battery for my HTC!

The Session #54: Sour Beer

 

I’d been meaning to work out how the session works for a while, so when I got an idea for a session topic I Googled it and found the necessary details (see here). It’s a monthly beer blogging event held on the first Friday of the month blogging about a topic “hosted” by one of the participants. I decided it’s high time I got involved and this month’s entry is as good as any, “sour beer”. This month it's hosted by John at the Brew Site.

Lee from Hoptopia recently tweeted “What was your first sour beer” and I replied Boon Oude Gueuze at the Boon Brewery November 2009. Though, on reflection, this wasn’t strictly true now I come to think about it. No, for my first experience of sour beer would have been a few years earlier than that in the form of a kriek or framboise from the excellent Southampton bottle shop Bitter Virtue. I tried a few different fruit lambic beers but nothing that made me want to go back for a second one and I ended up largely sticking to British bottled beers.

The beer festival is in the spectacular Belfort Van Bruge

I decided I needed more of an education in the Belgian beer styles and my chance arose in November 2009 when a group of us visited Bruges for the beer festival. It was an eye-opening event to say the least. So many different beers that I didn’t know where to start. In my excitement I forgot to keep notes, so other than a few ticks in the program I’m not sure what I tried and what I thought of them.

What have we here?

One of the highlights of the trip; however was a visit the Boon brewery. We boarded a coach to the small town of Lembeek and scurried out through the rain into a courtyard where we were met by our tour guide. We could see what was definitely an industrial site, but it could have been making anything. There was however a clue to its contents in the shape of the letterbox outside. We were met by the jovial guide who led us through the gates and onwards into the brewery.

A clue to what lay within

 Once inside we were given an interesting and intriguing tour of the brewery including of the mash tun, the fermenting tanks and the barnlike maturing room filled with massive Brandy barrels filled with beers of varying ages. Much better accounts are available elsewhere and this post isn’t about the brewery but the beer.

 The gigantic aging barrels at Boon Brewery

After the tour we all sauntered up the road to a beer cafe where we could choose between Boon Oude Gueuze and Boon Kriek. I picked the former and this was certainly the biggest eye opener of the whole trip. I’d been told what to expect beforehand, that the beer would be sour, that it “isn’t for everyone”, but this still gave me no idea of what was in store for me!  A tongue tingling lemon with sour and still more sour and a whole mix of other new and exciting flavours besides. I loved it. I also tried the kriek which I much preferred to the sweetened versions I'd tried so far.

Shortly afterwards I moved to Northern Ireland and had no chance to further my sour beer experience. Through talking on rate beer I found someone locally who is a sourhead and he recommended The Vineyard in Belfast as the place to try and I picked up some Mort Subite beers from there. He has a sour beer project of his own which I may get a chance to blog about later in the year. My realisation is that I’ve merely scratched the surface with lambic beers and other sour styles and need to rectify that urgently!

I am making this post go live whilst working at the Great British Beer Festival and yes, I’ve had a chance to try some other sour beers here too. We have some crazy beers by revelation cat on draught. Three year old Boon lambic taken from Belgium and aged in laphroaig whisky/ marsala wine casks. There's also a superb Fruity kriek

I’m hopefully going to visit the Cantillon brewery when in Belgium next year too so plenty more sour beer ahead of me.

Northern Ireland's biggest brewery.

Northern Ireland has four brewers. I've already reviewed one of them; so decided its time for another. County Tyrone is very beereft* but thankfully Whitewater beers are stocked by both Asda and Tesco. I bought the entire selection of their beers in order to review them. The beers are available fairly widely and most real ale pubs in Northern Ireland have on of their beers on draught.

As you can see from the picture above they have a distinctive and simple brand which helps the beers to stand out on the shelf. They brew a range of different styles, though the beers tend to fall at the lower end of the ABV spectrum. Copperhead is the new session beer. The nose has apricot fruitiness and grassy meadows. Fruity body with a dry bitter finish and some malt sweetness.It is a golden session ale and very quaffable at 3.7%. Its the only whitewater beer available on draught at GBBF this year.

Belfast Ale on the other hand is a much darker, reddish colour. Lively carbonation in this one as you can see from the picture. It has a spicy, peppery hops aroma with fruit shortbread.  Fruity at first taste then the goldings hops become apparent. Fairly long finish with some dryness 

 

 Belfast lager is as good a British lager as any. The clean hop aroma comingles with esters that come from the use of an ale yeast. The beer is a lovely pale yellow with gentle carbonation and a small head. The body is light with pineapple notes and a bitter finish. Could easily have polished off another few bottles of this if I'd had them.

Clotworthy dobbin is a classic porter. At 5% its the strongest beer that Whitewater brews. The aroma is of a washed rind cheese with vinous fruits and underlying alcohol. The taste is chewy caramel malt, fermented apples and a dry sweetness. Seems more like a best bitter than a porter, which isn’t how I remember it from draught; so I may need to try it again. I was lucky enough to try a whisky barrel aged version of this at Belfast Beer Festival last year which rounded off this complex beer nicely. Look out for it!

No Irish brewery worth their salt would be without a stout in their portfolio and this one is no exception. The dark brown beer poured very lively with a thick tan head. Lovely aroma of roast barley, chocolate, coffee and raisins. Thick bodied, dry stout with burnt after-taste and a bitter chicory finis. This is my favourite of the five beers sampled here, though if I were to pick a beer to drink multiple of in one session it would be the lager.

*My new word, invented 28/07/11!

August is beer month!

August is shaping up to be an awesome month beer wise. Here’s why:

1.       GBBF

Everyone knows this is coming up. I travel across on Saturday morning to help with the setup and work all week until the following Saturday. I’ll be working on USA cask with BSF (I hope!).  Expect tweets along the way as beers arrive and I get to taste my hit list!

2.       Three meet the brewer events

Turns out the Cask pub and Kitchen have a meet the brewer event with Doug Odell on the Saturday night (okay 30^th July isn’t quite August, ssshhh) and  if that isn’t enough, one with the Kernel Brewery on Monday 1^st August. We have evenings free until Tuesday; so time to go sample beers that I’ve never tried before. I really enjoyed the Odell beers I tried recently so looking forward to that. I’ve heard loads about Kernel too and until now not got hold of any. Expect blogs on both of these.

Then on the Thursday (yes international #IPAday) there’s a meet the brewer at the White Horse, Parsons Green. The brewery in question - Only Flying Dog! Not only beer tastings, there will also be cheese. It’s a given then that I plan to attend!

3.       Week in Manchester

Outside of London, Edinburgh and perhaps Leeds, Manchester seems to have the highest density of pubs in the UK serving new and interesting beers, and plenty of good cask pubs too. I plan to visit Port Street Beer House, the Marble Arch and the Microbar among others. Also when I’m staying in Manchester I’m making a train trip to a certain Headingley beer shop, which I’m very much looking forward to.

4.       Beer Tasting

One of Craig’s legendary beer tastings is hopefully happening in Edinburgh on the Friday of my Manchester trip. I must have known as my return journey leaves for Edinburgh at 2pm Friday afternoon ;). May also get to visit what is fast becoming my regular Edinburgh haunt too.

5.       Hilden Beer Festival

To round off the month nicely Hilden Brewery has their annual beer festival. Running from the Friday evening through to Sunday early evening the event is set to have over 30 beers, including beers from both Northern Ireland and the Republic, along with select favourites from on “the mainland”. There’s a BBQ all day and bands playing on two different stages. Once the beer list has been released I shall make a separate post, but in the meantime see the website and the flyer below.

Who said you have to go abroad to some exotic location to have an exciting beer summer! If anyone has any suggestions of other places to go/ things to see whilst in any of the fine cities mentioned above then let me know.  Hope to see some of you at any or all of these events!

NB Don’t write a blog post whilst cooking dinner or you’ll end up destroying a saucepan when it runs out of water!