Buxton, Jawgate

A style of beer that I do know a thing or two about: the good old American Pale Ale. This is Buxton's second branding of this (the old one is in this image). This mid strength beer didn't exist in Buxton's core range for a while (the closest was Wild Boar at 5.7%) and why they introduced it when they already had an existing beer that was quite similar in style and taste seems a strange choice. It's certainly a solid APA, but the fact that it doesn't reach Gamma Ray or Bethnal Pale Ale heights makes it seem as though it's really only included as part of the range to make up the numbers, to tick the APA box.

Cheers Kon once again for this!

Buxton and Omnipollo, Stolen Fruit

My second bottled sour at home I think (I had the Kernel's London Sour a long while back iirc). I'm afraid I turned my nose up at sours a while back - I remember the Beavertown/Wild Beer Co collab Rubus Maximus not really doing it for me and sort of (totally unfairly) dismissing all sour beers out of hand. However, since the Zwanze micro-hype and the Kernel flashing pornographic images of their taking delivery of their new foeders, I figured I'd be damned if I wasn't going to try to ride this next beer trend wave (that Fou'Foune sounds well sophisticated bruv). Anyway, so far, I've had a go at the Brodie's + Brewdog Clapham collab Southside Zester and the Wild Beer Schnoodlepip (not a trad. sour I suppose).

(I read this: apparently IPAs are mainstream now. Obviously I'll come off as some sort of fickle hipster about this 'new' sour beer thing, so without wanting to protest too much, I'll just hold my hands up and admit to being a new fad whore. But it's always good to try new things (except incest and barn dancing, apparently) and push yourself right?)

So with the caveat that I know next to nothing about sour beer....I liked this one (the German version of the Belgian equivalent: Berliner Weisse) from Buxton and Omnipollo. Grapefruit and lime massively evident off the nose and in the taste. Minor 'beer elements' it seemed to me. Obviously puckering, sharp and sour yet moresish and quite mellow and drinkable once I'd acclimatised to that. Massive thanks to my brother Konrad for this as a spot on birthday present!

Partizan, Stout Porter

A very pleasing drink. Not mind blowing, but all the better for it: to my mind, it was just nice to have a beer with nothing wrong/weird/different with/about it. It was exactly what I wanted. Appropriately light body for this porter, nose was consistent, taste was tar, some berries. Nice lick of booze on the finish.

Redchurch Brewery, East End Sasion

Orange pour - mad fizzy. Big piney/orange smell off the bottleneck. Taste follows, then a minor pepper/farmhouse element. Can't taste the booze (6.9%) Some bitterness. Typical London beer hype is Camden, Beavertown and some others, but Rechurch have been around since dot, knocking out amazing and consistent beers. The Pale ought to be ranked close to Gamma Ray and the Hoxton Sout is, for me, possibly the greatest hoppy stout on the market. This saison mightn't quite reach those heights, but it is another example of this understated and apparently overlooked brewery doing things really well.

Green Flash, West Coast IPA

When will I learn not to buy US IPA bottles? How fresh are they realistically likely to be after a massive sea voyage? I had the previous incarnation of this beer a while back at Cask which, iirc, was better. This one had no nose (how does it smell?) and a thin body. Bitter though.

Beer Bottles Revisited

There's a spot at the end of my road, at the beginning of Crystal Palace Park, which is loosely fenced off from the public. In it, there are shipping containers, park benches, Victorian iron railings, old bins, tires, pillars from the old gates and all manner of outlying city space detritus (leather chairs, playing cards, beer cans, footballs, washing machines etc). It's a wonderful space between spaces. I've been there a few times now over the past year to photograph beer bottles for this blog and I'm fascinated to revisit the site over time to see the previous entries untouched by human hands yet ravaged by the elements and overtaken by the undergrowth. Have a look at my other blog (here and http://reverendmedia.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/crystal-palace-14th-march-2014-2.html) to see more images of this great space which probably won't last for too much longer once the Zhongrong Group gets started.

Pilsner Urquell, Torpedo, Fourpure, Gamma Ray - Cans

A slight mish-mash of photographs for this post - for completism's sake I really should have glass shots of the Fourpure IPA and Gamma Ray. Well, there is a previous entry in the blog for the Fourpure bottle here and everyone knows what Gamma Ray looks lke right? (Here's my older post on the Torpedo bottle.)

Anyway, this entry is a sort of addendum to my posts on Modus, Bengali and the Fourpure Session IPA. I'd been trying to track down a can of SN's Torpedo for a while (recalling a fridge full in Euston Tap ages ago when it was first brought over). Remember being relatively confident it'd taste better than the bottles, what with all the benefits that cans bring re: freshness. I was more or less proved right - the chewiness was more present and the body much more satisfying. Still a far cry from Modus in overt flavour terms for me though. That said, 500ml of 7.2% is a bit of fun on a week night.

What a difference a can makes to a Fourpure IPA though. My bottle was bad, the can was spot on. Very close to the Sixpoint indeed (a better drink all in I'd say). I understand Fourpure have quit the bottles and are focussing solely on cans (they're able to can far more per minute than they can bottle). I popped to the Brewery to get myself a six pack - the IPA, some sessions and a couple of the Pales (which for me were the weakest I think). Want to try the Amber and their Pils (not bothered by the Stout, sorry). Was told there will be a nitro stout available at some point.

Pilsner Urquell has just gone in to the lead on my Untappd stats, thanks in the first instance to ubiquitous Urquell upholder Mark Dredge and then to a hot summer. 'Chewy' is an adjective that I've been using alot re: canned beers, but seems to make a lot of sense. A friend was telling me how he eschews Urquell in favour of lighter lagers (a night on the 'heavy' Urquells once leading to a substantial hangover) which reinforces for me their quality, particularly at only 4.4%. £6/four pack from Majestic (a bloomin' steal). Fiending for the unfiltered version.

Beavertown cans. One thing Beavertown seem to do better than anyone else is hype. I'm ashamed I wasted so much time tracking down my BA Impy stouts when they turned out to be so expensive - I was totally swept away with the online fervour to get them that I really didn't realise (until afterwards) that spending £12 on 330ml of beer is certainly a false economy. I sincerely hope that they can lower the prices on their cans. I paid £2.50 for the can of Gamma Ray. It's certainly a good beer and obviously some of the (rightly) infulential beer blogging illuminaries revere it like some sort of craft beacon. However, for my part, I'd rather spend my £2.50 more frugally. Don't get me wrong: Black Betty is an all time great and that Blood Orange thing was incredible (regular Heavy Water was cool too). But from now on, with my very light pockets, I'm going to have to try and resist the siren call of their brilliant graphics and intense (yet inspired) branding. (What an arse that their first DIPA has just come out....!)

Summer Wine, Maelstrom

Non-hazy bottled IPAs aren't appealing to me anymore (über cheap versions from Tesco nonwithstanding), particularly when I pay close to a fiver for them. (Give me a Kernel, Weird Beard, Moor, Siren, Redchurch etc etc. Excessive yeast sediment used to upset me, but I've come to love it and that pepperines it brings.)

In fairness, I've had a Sabretooth and a Diablo on keg (Fox E8, also a pint of Diablo on cask at the Westow I think) and they were sublime, misty and cloudy tropical beasts. I suspect that draught Maelstrom is much in that vein. This bottle was ok, but i think my prejudices stopped me from enjoying it as fully as I might have. Pine and a thick bitterness, but a little thin for 9% and, without the haze, it felt as though there was something missing... For some reason, the word 'maelstrom' will forever remind me of Peter O'Toole falling into the Vortex in Supergirl.

Tesco Finest, American Double IPA (Brewdog Hardcore IPA)

9.2% of (Brewdog) IPA from Tesco for £1.99?? Yes please.

Partizan, Falconer's Flight

I kind of see this as a mid-weight version of the Beavertown Quelle Saison - a hoppy saison that could almost be a super fizzy pale ale. Pepper and rainwater nose, dominant taste was lemon and grapefruit, bit of fresh, fat blade grass, a high carbonation that faded quickly down the drink. Not a great deal of the saison farmhouse essence as such. Nice dry finish. Again - drank from the fridge, possibly more funky when warmer. Top beer.

Celt Experience, 613 Années

Not 100% to my tastes this one from Celt. The sweet, sort of winey/grape/raisin nose is something I've come to associate with out of date hops (although I'm not sure if that's correct). The taste was piney (mild hoppage), a bit orangey + a bitter finish. I was expecting higher carbonation. My first bière de garde - I expected a malty saison, this felt like a sort of malty, spicy, slightly past it's best ipa, I suppose. This type not really for me.

Beavertown, Quelle Saison

A very light yellow pour, tangy satsuma nose, plus pineapple and grapefruit. Taste follows - mouthfeel is a very fizzy and very light fruity pale ale. There were some saison elements in there (just about) - some straw and pepper etc - possibly more pronounced at cellar temperature than straight out of the fridge. Good bitter after. I'd session this. (Imagine if they put this in a can.....!)

Beavertown, Ger'onimo

Drunk April 12th, photographed June 18th. Best of the Beavertown BA's for me. Nice whiskey upfront on the nose, damp leaves/mineral water and some meat. Good booze on the taste, slight dryness (possibly the whiskey influence?) in the finish. A woody spice going on in this, possibly a little nutty? Decent untunctuous mouthfeel. Nice heavy body. My impy stout nemesis, the dreaded vanilla sweetness, crept in towards the end, but not too much thank goodness.

Partizan, Stout

Like Kernel, Partizan don't eff about with their beer nomenclature. I'm tickled by their simply calling this drink a 'stout'. (I'm sure other breweries would be tempted to add unnecessary prefixes in a bid to make it sound 'more exciting'.) Truth be told, I was excited to see the single word on a blue Partizan bottle rather than the 3 word 'FES' (I'll drink an FES but prefer my stouts less sweet and fizzy) - I'm not sure there's been one before?

A shade lighter in colour than your typical imperial stout. Taste was a satisfying blemd of the meat/choc/coffee/licorice (liquorice sp?) thing with a decent bitter finish. Just a fraction light (for me) of being a full blown imperial stout (this bottle was an 8.5%, I think the current stout is milder at 7% or so). I am absolutely fiending for their stout porter, doubt I'll get one though. We watched 12 Years A Slave when I had this. This film is not a date movie.

Dark Star, Imperial Stout

Sussex's Dark Star offer a mixed bag. I love Hophead and the wonderfully off balance nonsense of their Six Hop (bottle and cask), but Revelation (bottle, cask and keg) was so-so and this one didn't tick my impy boxes I'm afraid.

Whilst it committed the cardinal sin of being over-carbonated, I was reasonably into the English hop aroma (tinged with bananas possibly?) and the heavy bitterness. It was sweet but not syrupy and there was a little nail varnish remover in the finish too. A shame, as i really wanted to be into this.

Crate, IPA

Disappointing drink from Crate. I think this may have been passed it's best. Hop degradation? Sugary nose, flavour was mostly toffee. There was some sort of cleanliness overriding those malts, but it was largely tasteless. A shame, as I sampled this on keg at Westow House and it was a cloudy and pungent delight. The last photo above is of the Crate Brewery beer garden from a series commissioned in Hackney Wick last year.

Weird Beard Co, Single Hop Series No. 4: Citra Pilsner

I wouldn't have picked this as a pilsner in a blind test, but a good beer from Weird Beard nonetheless. Cat wee nose, big citrus taste. Gentle lasting bitterness that turns into a pleasing dryness. Quite like these hoppy lagers/pilsners. (This bottle was drunk back in March.)

De Molen, Rasputin

Impy stout from big boys De Molen. Rainwater and dried mushroom nose. Bitter aftertaste from the saaz hops (maybe), saves it from being too sweet.

Fuller's, Vintage Ale 2013

Fuller's were one of those breweries that I didn't really pay attention to when I started taking beer seriously. To make an analogy to how I discovered new music (that's what you do in beer writing right? make an analogy between beer and music?) when I was a teenager: if it was band that everyone had heard of, you wouldn't bother checking them out, rather focusing on more obscure, newer bands. (This was why I never listened to Pink Floyd, Zeppelin, Sabbath etc until into my 20s.) So when I began drinking flavoursome ales, I thought - why bother with Fuller's? There's a new Kernel/Partizan/Magic Rock/etc just out.

That was until I read somewhere {{citation needed}} that Fuller's ESB was an inspiration to a bunch of US brewers who thought it was the bees knees. Well, if the kings of hops and modern beer styles in the States thought that, then I bloody well ought to try it then eh? Obviously it's amazing, along with their London Porter and the bottle of their Imperial Stout I had last year.

I bought their Vintage Ale for a very reasonable £4 (I think) from Waitrose. Dates and raisins on the nose. Thick mouth texture, big hit of honey/treacle. Then it's orange shred marmalade and this massive wave of English hops, must be hopped like an IPA, but with English damp grass, leafy, straw-like Admiral and Sovereign. A heavy pint, a good heavy. Also boozy, but likewise, a good boozy.

Fuller's is good London beer and in lieu of an overtly beer focussed pub, I'll always choose a Fuller's one.

Ska, Modus Hoperandi

Cans, cans, cans. You know this one: this Colorado veteran is hard to beat. US IPA as it was meant to be drunk (i.e. canned and as fresh as possible from a trans-atlantic voyage). Used to be on the menu at Byron, had it once there I think. Currently a load around at the moment (Whole Foods for £3/can and in my local too). Deep red copper colour, nose is weetabix and caramel + freshly cut grass and sticky pine sap, citrus floating at the edges. Taste follows plus a savage bitterness. Brilliantly pungent drink this. It's very satisfying - absolutely love it.

Fourpure, Session IPA

Faint aroma on this (but potentially I drank this a bit too cold) - that sort of 'stale hop' thing (I went to the Kernel once and the brewery stank of this exact smell). Flavour is light, white bread and pine, high carbonation, respectable mouthfeel and body. Bitterness is long with very little dryness. Obviously sessionable, but possibly not the head of it's class. In absence of DPC cans (where the hell are they??), you'd go to this one I imagine. 4 photos this time 'cos I got some brilliant light.