Beavertown, 'Spresso

Yet another canned imperial from Beavertown. Quality brewing, but if I were being uncharitable, I might say it was a bit one dimensional. That said - the real stand out on this is the mouth feel. Wow: absolutely zero harshness, velvety and carbonation just right. Have you had one of those canned coffees? Basically that's what this is.

Beavertown, Imperial Lord Smog Almighty

Much like the Heavy Water, I've been lucky enough to sample Beavertown's imperial porter in a couple of it's guises: the alpha series version (March 2013!) and the barrel aged version (2014). This might have been the only one that I didn't drink out of the fridge, but whereas the others had this coal/tar flavour going on, this one was, for me, a dunkel rauchbier and it wasn't really my bag.

Beavertown, Heavy Water Cherry and Sea Salt

I've had the pleasure of drinking Beavertown's Heavy Water in a few of its incarnations, the 'regular', un-suffixed version, the barrel aged version thereof and now this one - brewed with sea salt and cour cherries apparently. It's excellent: thick, unctuous and creamy, aroma and taste ticking all impy boxes, cherry comes in mid-palate but only gently, some (very) small salt at the end. Finish mildly bitter (hops?) and not too dry. I paid £4.40 for this I think, which is about right.

Beavertown, Dark Saison

My biggest gusher ever. Never seen the beer leap so high! Bottled 18.2.13, drank May 2015. Quite sweet nose, some minor bubblegum. My first thought was Quelle Saison but black (minus any tropical hop flavours). Rain water and a bit schwarzbier. Medium to low sweet saison character. Very high carbonation. Minor burnt bitterness in the finish. A little dry. Glad I got this, think it may well have been the last one that Mr Lawrence had.

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....!)

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.

Beavertown, Heavy Water BA Longmorn '92

Smells like wine when sniffed off the bottleneck, but those vinous fruit aromas weren't repeated elsewhere in the drink. In the glass: soily mushrooms and marmite. There was a sweet element in the taste - milk chocolate rather than a bitter 70%+ cocoa. Only the barest carbonation, but adequate. Strangely, the body wasn't as heavy as expected, but the oiliness of it compensated somehow. There hardly seems to be any whisky, at least not how I might understand it. Possibly there was an overarching sweet and woody presence throughout the whole thing, but because it was so mellow, sometimes it got lost behind other flavours, i.e. the vanilla that crept in as it warmed (nose too). There was only a tiny bit of booze noticeable really.

As I swilled the glass after the starting the last quarter of the drink, there was this weird, slightly cheesy smell and a slight cheese (cheddar?) taste going on. It kind of faded as soon as it came, but it definitely stood out. The bitterness was great, a medium strength, but really long lasting. Nicely burned malt/cereal/biscuit. Quite a dry finish at times (possibly the whisky influence?). I watched the first episode of the Beeb's Sherlock Holmes whilst drinking this. I'd avoided up to this point, but quite fancied seeing how they did Moriarty, so thought I'd better start the series. It was alright actually. Thanks again to Manish for this bottle.

Beavertown, Lord Smog Almighty

Quite a bit of hype that surrounded this release! First there were the Draft House tasting sessions, then the online campaign, the bottle numbering (heavy water only), the delayed release, the distribution hold-ups....then there was the small matter of the price (varying from £12 through to £20). Compared to £6 for a BA Kernel (Glen Spey or Glen Garioch at 10.3%ish), Bristol Beer Factory BA at £5ish or the Magic Rock Bearded Lady at £11.50 for a 660ml bottle. It'd better be amazing I thought.

Served at cold room temperature (10ºC ish?). Soy and baked beans (with berries creeping in on the edge) on the snout, minimal carbonation - about right. Whisky (sweet, slightly solvent) crept in on the nose after the first few sips, then the whisky started to dominate the aftertaste (Braes of Glenlivet are not to be confused with Glenlivet apparently. Some good background on the distillery and tasting notes on some of their vintages can be found here).

The main body of this beer taste was sweet: a little liquorice and a tiny amount of vanilla. Not much coffee, which surprised. Warming booze. Burnt bitterness lasted a medium length after each sip, mingling to a greater or lesser extent with the whisky each time. The best element for me was the tar parenthesis™ that seemed to provide the background for all the other elements - the signature Smog Rocket t-gel flavour, but ramped up for the Imperial. Gentle gum sting and the coal smoke smell, which had been missing thus far, finally made an appearance at the end. A multi-dimensional beer I suppose, each sip was more or less different, which kept things interesting. Fortunately the sweet segments didn't dominate and the smoggy bits I was particularly looking for were there.

Definitely a beer worthy of anyone's time, but not really a £12.50 beer to my mind. (Thanks Manish for keeping the price down on this one - you were one of the more competitively priced sellers of this beer out there.)

Beavertown, Heavy Water

Noteless for this imperial stout from Beavertown. I drank it ages ago too, so can't really remember how good it was (I suspect it was very good). I do remember buying it from Sourced in King's Cross so I probably paid over the odds for it.... Overpriced barrel aged version of this out now!

Beavertown, Bloody 'Ell IPA

This IPA from Beavertown came out to a bit of a fanfare earlier this year. I first tried it at the London's Brewing festival back in May. There, it was simply incredible - thick, very fresh tasting and unbelievably citrusy. The bottle wasn't quite as good - all the elements where there, the massive über-citrus kick, the solid body, but they were accompanied by some harsh, yeasty burning type effect which kind of ruined it for me. I did take care to pour, but to my mind the kegged version was just so much better, so I cam away a little deflated and disappointed. (Disclaimer: at the time of trying the kegged version, I was rather drunk...things may have seemed to me a little different to me in that state of mind than they might have otherwise....!)

Beavertown, Smog Rocket

This porter from Beavertown was a revelation when my brother bought me a bottle for last Christmas (2012). I remember being sat at the in-law's table, slightly miserable due to Greene King IPA and fiending for an APA. I hadn't had any dark beers up to this point so I didn't really know what to expect. I was blown away - the smoke, the tar, the viscosity (for me, at the time), the pungency. Delicious! Subsequent bottles faded in impact as I discovered imperial stouts and the like, and the most recent bottle I had was flat as a pancake (sadface). Nonetheless, Smog Rocket holds a place in my heart, being as it was, my first taste of dark and smoggy traditional(ish) London recipe brews. I had their imperial smog a while back too. I didn't really get it then, but I have their new barrel aged version set aside, looking forward to giving it another go.

Beavertown, Black Yeti

The first in a small series of some of the Beavertown Brewery beers. This Yeti stout (think it's called Black Yeti?) is good because it's cheap - £2.50 from Mr Lawrence (curiously, I've seen on the shelf at Utobeer for over £4...). Good coffee aromas, acceptable body for a low(ish) abv stout and a gentle hop essence towards the end, precipitating a decent and pleasing bitterness. Slightly metallic aftertaste perhaps?

London's Brewing 2013

Lots has been said about the organisational problems of London's Brewing 2013. Luckily for me, my brothers queued on my behalf, my wife and I arrived later on, collected our tickets at the door and walked straight in. My main bugbears were beers running out, beers not being available from the start, and, as Matt Curtis pointed out (as did a punter next to me in the keg tent queue) that Weird Beard's Mariana Trench, was not in fact Mariana Trench. Queuing times were, at worst, no longer than you might expect at a busy music festival or even a packed bar in town.

I must confess to grumbling on my arrival - angry punters storming off upon discovering the queues inside may have coloured me slightly - but, after things settled into a vague routine, I ended up sampling some excellent beers (I wasn't particularly adventurous though) had a great time, and ended up quite drunk.

2/3 Redchurch IPA
1/3 Kernel LBA Stout (love this)
2/3 By The Horns Hopslinger (loads better than the last time I had it in a bottle)
2/3 Beavertown Blood Orange IPA (New favourite IPA, my wife loved this. Went back to get some more but it was all gone by then.)
2/3 Windsor and Eton Conqueror
2/3 London Fields Black Frost
2/3 Beavertown Dark Saison thingy

Went on the The Fox after that, but then things went a bit hazy. (Disclaimer: up since 6.30am, minimal lunch, sleep deprived!)

Addended thanks (and sheepish apologies!) to Mr. Plant for putting up with some drunken ramblings about the blood orange drink.