Old Craddock

Now I've done something I don't normally do with this one and waited untill the day after to write up the blog.  Also hello again, I've had a break from blogging about beers and although my current audience is fairly limited I hope that one day it won't be and people will go back through these past beer blogs.  Old Craddock is a beer from the Lakes District, particularly Hesket Newmarket in Cumbria.  I have blogged about beers from this part of the world before as it is something of a hotbed for micro breweries and this is something that excites me as a growth industry.  Anyone who has never visited The Lakes is urged by myself to do so, it is gorgeous and has many fine pubs serving the local brews.  This is my first beer from Hesket Newmarket Breweries and I was pleased to learn that there are several more to try.  Perfect excuse to get up to The Lakes this summer!

 So the beer itself, the colour was a cloudy caramel one.  The cloudiness came from the bottle conditioned sediment which is something I love.  You could pour the beer very carefully and avoid the cloud but I did not, in fact I often use the German method of rolling the bottle with the last bit left in to stir up the bits for maximum flavour.  The nose was very interesting and by that I mean hard to read.  It took a good few sniffs but the scents came through and it was lovely.  There was some sweet malt at first which I did not expect and have not come across much.  Dried fruits and spices are not unexpected and where rich and full.  The overall rich juiciness was very pleasant and developed.  After a while a surprising peachy scent came through which delighted me!  
The first sip had summer fruits in it which I would expect in certain red wines but not in a beer it was fantastic though.  There was some resinous caramel flavours which I expected from the colour and really helped give this beer an all round quaffing quality.  The spices from the nose developed in to very smooth flavours and were really tasty.  To finish up some mild hoppyness.  Anyone familiar with my blog will know about my love of frothy fizzy beers but this one had a very low fizz with little frothiness.  It didn't really detract form the overall beer which I would have again anytime but not before I've tried the rest!

Ilkley Best

Ilkley is a small town in West Yorkshire not far from me and like many small towns in the north a small brewery has found great success. This current trend of small breweries brewing traditional ales and gaining the kind of success that not only sustains them but lets them grow really does put us in the midst of a golden era. Ilkely best is their flagship bitter and as a traditional Yorkshire bitter is certainly lives up to the beers its rich history has delivered in the past. This is a beer I received as a gift and thought it was enough of a departure from my usual fare of darker and/or Belgian beers I usually gravitate to to get a different blog then usual. I have recently started working for Buon Vino wine shop, the beer section though not large is stocked with a good few beers which you won't see many places so you can expect to see some interesting beers in this blog.
This beer though, it has a rich amber colour almost copper really. It isn't to different from bitters of its type but has an edge that does set it apart and had me intrigued. The nose was very different, very clean and fresh you could say it almost had a soapy edge but I wouldn't want to put you off as it defiantly smelt like a beer with some background hops and a little spice. The taste was again very soft and round with some toffee there somewhere. It was very dry and resiny bitter with some toasted malty flavours, decent length and a really good quench. The fizz was good and it had a decent froth. This beer is defiantly recommended and I look forward to trying more in the range, especially the stout.

Poperings Hommel Bier

After concentrating on darker more local beers I am again going abroad and once again am drinking Belgian beer. I don't know why Belgium produces so many fine beers but I'm very glad and thankful for their efforts. This is a beer I came across several years back and when I went looking for it again I found out it was not very well known. Thankfully I small but fantastically stocked shop in Settle called Buon Vino managed to order some in for me and have been stocking it regularly. The colour then, a rich golden straw with just a hint of cloudiness to it. The nose is something highly intriguing, strong biscuit and yeast dominate with a sweet almost golden syrup edge to it. It turns out Hommel not only means hop but also honey in Flemish so the sweetness is no surprise. The taste was at first overwhelmingly biscuit and hoppy whilst being very smooth, it was also really quite buttery which led to it being quite shortbread like. Shortbread is something I am very familiar with and so when the biscuit flavours and the butteryness came together to form a shortbread flavour I was thrilled. The finish was slightly dry and incredibly moreish, this beer comes in a rather small 25cl bottle due it being 7.5 % so being so moreish could be quite dangerous. This bottle size is not strange in Belgium due the locals drinking these for pleasure and not for downing one after another and I have to say they are on the right track. This is a beer to be savoured it is complex and has great depth, it is well worth rolling it round and round your mouth. These lovingly crafted beers need to be enjoyed lovingly to get the most out of them and seeing as how there is so much to get out of it it won't be a waste of anyone's time. As you can tell I would highly recommend this beer if your lucky enough to come across a bottle.

Wood's Shropshire Lad

An interesting little beer today, another that was purchased for me on my families travels so thank you very much! Wood's isn't a brewery I had heard of but upon researching them a little they are a big deal in Shropshire, they have a range of beers and I hope to be able to taste more soon. I imagine it'll be the case that I will see them everywhere from now on but that's often how it goes. This ale was brewed to commemorate a series of poems which the beer is named after and then the beer quickly became their most popular and therefore flagship ale.
Looking at the back of bottles isn't something I usually do, especially if I intend to blog about it but I did read the label on Shropshire Lad and was intrigued to see it claimed a smell and taste of pear drops! Being a fan of traditional sweets that had me quite excited so lets get on with the review. The colour in the photo looks fairly average but the photo often doesn't do the beer justice and that is certainly the case here. When held up to light this beer has a truly gorgeous reddish purple colour that I haven't come across before and had me quite excited. The nose didn't have pear drops in it I have to say but was strangely sweet in the way you might possibly describe pear drops as. Perhaps I'm being unfair but pear drops for me have an unmistakable aroma that wasn't present here. There was the scent of boiled sweets but generically so. Lastly a background hoppyness which comes as no surprise. The taste had a huge wave of burnt toffee which isn't highly unusual but the depth and clarity was, if a burnt toffee bitter is what your after then check this out because they nail it. There was also hints of cinder toffee which particularly pleased me and a general dry hoppyness which again is to be expected really. The fizz was really excellent, I mean truly so with a frothiness that went on and on. Really good bitter this, a beer that leaves you thirsty and at 5% its not really a session ale either so be careful. If you see this beer at least have one, I can't give it a general overall recommendation as I don't think it would be for everyone but as a beer enthusiast I wouldn't want to miss it.

Traditional Porter Tesco Finest

Last blog I talked about how supermarkets are releasing beers from established breweries with their own labels on them. This beer is another great example of that, Tesco finest traditional porter does not tell the tale of this beer fully. Harviestoun brewery from Scotland is home to many fine ales but I suppose I only know this as a beer enthusiast. This is a another excellent example of a brewery gaining exposure without having to spend big, the benefits of releasing under the Tesco name and not having to market and supply this beer under their own steam must be well worth it. I really hope this kind of relationship becomes more common because the amount of microbreweries opening and producing really fine ales is getting higher all the time. Having this kind of outlet as an opportunity for getting beer out there must be an enticing prospect for any brewery. So the beer in question, a traditional porter, again it's right up my street! I will in future branch out with some different styles but I haven't this time so here goes. The colour as you can see is very dark, almost black really with the slightest tint of ruby red around the edges. The nose had a lovely sweet tinny fragrance with the minerally mellow coffee flavours you would expect. There also seemed to be a slight whiff of bonfire to it which was a nice surprise. Chocolate in porters is no surprise but the very definite dark chocolate taste was very welcome, with so many soft sweet choc flavours prevalent these days the bittersweet flavours were a real pleasure. It was quite dry with a touch of oiliness which I wasn't expecting but was undoubtedly a plus. A mild coffeness on the aftertaste finished this beer superbly. The fizz was quite mild but a nice froth complemented this beer well. Due to this beer being a Tesco beer I imagine it is available nationwide so get out there, get a bottle and enjoy. Heck get a few it's only a 330ml and I reckon you'll want a second at least!

Cheshire Chocolate Porter

Some of you might recognise this beer from M&S, it's part of the range they have brewed for them by proper breweries and then stick an M&S logo on the labels. I have no problem with this as they use some excellent breweries and I it gets exposure for the breweries who don't have huge marketing budgets, Tesco do the same and I will be blogging about one of those in future. This particular brew is produced by Frederic Robinson Ltd at the Unicorn brewery in Stockport and for anyone who might be familiar with my blog it's right up my street. It is a beer I've had many times and I was once told by M&S staff had been stopped, fortunately for me it popped up again and I've taken that chance to blog so here goes. The colour as you can see is rather pale for a porter and has a gorgeous pale bronzey brown quality with the usual reddish hints around the edges. The nose is largely malty, a very smooth malt with the unsurprising chocolate notes rising through it. There was the merest edge of coffee and a nice sweetness that doesn't always come through the nose with chocolatey porters. The first thing that hit me when I drank it was how incredibly smooth this beer is, not just a little but but massively so! It slips down far to easily and then the soft chocolate flavours start and they are surprisingly long lasting. This is not the most chocolatey porter I've had but it might be the most drinkable to date. Again the sweetness came through at first but the finish is a little bitter and a touch dry. This is defiantly a beer where I would be reaching to open a second of after the first had been finished and so is highly recommended. The only thing that I would say that might possibly be construed as negative is that it isn't very complex but not every beer needs to be, you don't always want complex and when a beer does a few things this well who needs it to be.

Kelpie Seaweed Ale

Upon seeing this in the shop I was immediately excited! Being a fan of all things marine a seaweed ale seemed right up my street. The beer is a old recipe from Scotland, back when it was first made the hops and barley they grew were fertilized with kelp seaweed now though they add fresh seaweed to the mix and it shows. I didn't know what to expect from this ale and when I poured it out I was pleasantly surprised to see it come out so dark, my love of dark beers has been mentioned in this blog several times but I really thought this beer would be lighter. As you can see from the picture it is a lovely deep brown and when held up to the light there were some lovely red ruby hues coming through. The first smell didn't give the seaweed away except for maybe a touch of sea air, I was shocked to get chocolate and malt on the nose and the minerally edge that I would expect from porter or stout. This beer was a real learning experience for me, I don't claim to be an expert on beer I have lots of learning and tasting to do, which is brilliant but I'm not an expert maybe one day if I keep on drinking and blogging! The first taste put one word in my head, seaweed. Uninspired perhaps but they set out to make a seaweed ale and they damn well did it. Seaweed isn't something I've had lots of experience with but enough to know what I was tasting. The chocolate I anticipated came as an after taste as well as some maltiness. The thing that surprised me most was the sweetness of the it, not a chocolatey sweetness but a lighter less creamy sweetness. The fizz was excellent nice and strong and frothy, complementing what was a very smooth and well rounded beer. For only 4.4% it was quite warming as well which I enjoyed. After finishing the beer though I couldn't decide how to recommend it, it was certainly enjoyable and interesting and I have no complaints. I did feel decidedly like I wouldn't want another, at least not straight away and that for me is the mark of a good beer not a great beer. Yes they have succeeded in making a very drinkable beer with an ingredient I wouldn't expect and it surprised me which was great but I can't shake the feeling that I probably won't seek it out again anytime soon. Like I said, a good beer but not a great beer and with so many great beers out there waiting to be drunk I can't give it my personal high recommendation. Should seaweed beer sound particularly exciting to you though this is a fine example and worth adding to any beer enthusiasts list of beers they have tried.

Saltaire Triple Chocoholic

Stout and Porter are decidedly winter ales, I personally enjoy them all year round though. If you are going to try a seasonal beer then this one is a great choice. The hearty warming nature of darker beers such as these do complement the colder darker months, something very comforting about them. Of course chocolate is a great comforter also so if you need something to lift them winter blues here it is! Yorkshire have made great traditional bitters for a long time and in recent years have started making some more unusual beers such as this. Saltaire breweries have been making this beer for a little while now and the first time I tried it I was I was hooked, not literally I'm not an alcoholic! The idea of a chocolatey porter enhanced with more chocolate works a treat, I'm someone who isn't a fan of adding ingredients to the traditional brewing ones used for centuries but in this case I have made a definite exception. They also do a great range of other beers but those are beers for another blog.
The colour was dark, I mean really dark! Lovely reddish brown edges to the main black body but otherwise exactly what I expected and was hoping for. The nose lept out with unsurprisingly chocolate, a real strong milk chocolate. The smell wasn't pungent though it was light and creamy and had a sniff of malt about it. The first sip was different, to begin with there was a swift edge of minerally flavours likely due to the calciums they add. This quickly gave way to the milk chocolate flavours which were fluffy and bright, the finish was dry and bitter but still chocolatey sweet much like a dark chocolate. The end left a mild pleasingly malty flavour and of course a strong chocolatey taste. The fizz was good but short lived, the only thing I could ask for with this beer would be a stronger longer fizz but its not a real complaint. This beer is excellent, if you enjoy a good stout and want something to alleviate the cold January blues give this a go.

Gtuttgarter Hofbrau Christmas Ale

Another beer that was given to me! This is brilliant, this beer though I would have purchased myself only excepting for I've never heard of it before! This was given to my Brother in law who got it off a rep who came to his work, he works for the Mercedes F1 team so lets hope he gets more German beers. Brewed in Stuttgart their hofbrau range is quite wide but being the festive season a Christmas Beer bottle found its way to me. Lager is something I've always had more trouble discerning flavours from than ales due to the fact I think the way it's made allows for less diversity in flavour to develop. The lower temperature means there is less happening to the ingredients and you therefore get less happening in the result. Please don't take it that I don't like larger, I love lager. There is a great range and variety but compared to the multitude of tastes you can get from ales it doesn't quite compare. This may rile some lager lovers and that's great I'd love to discuss the merits of lager versus ale. That would only end in us admitting that one without the other would be a terrible shame and lets just get on with drinking the stuff. So the beer in question, a lovely golden straw colour. The first taste was dry with a mild biscuit flavour which surprised me a little but was very welcome. It led to a slight sweetness developing and the lovely clean crispness you would expect from a well crafted German lager. The fizz was strong and frothy just how I like it from lager and quite biting when several mouthfuls were taken. All in all quite standard for German lager which I suppose suffers from the high expectations that go with the words German lager. I really enjoyed this beer, it was never really in doubt. If you see a something from the Gtuttgarter Hofbrau range give it a go you can't really go wrong.

Hoggleys Northamptonshire Bitter

Okay so we're back to Hoggleys. After the last review I emailed them with a link to my blog because their website says they always want feedback. They seemed really chuffed to read my kind words, times are tough for them at the moment apparently so hopefully they'll enjoy this review as well, as I certainly enjoyed the bitter! As someone who enjoys darker or unusual beers this bitter isn't something I would normally pick up of my own accord. Not because I don't enjoy classic English bitters but because I don't usually find them to have as greater deal of diversity as my favored tipples. This beer was bought for me so it was an interesting chance to review something I wouldn't have chosen to myself and I was very glad for the opportunity. Lets get stuck in. The colour was paler than I personally would expect from a classic bitter but the image doesn't do justice to the lovely deep amber tones this beer had when held up to the light. The nose was biscuity, this isn't strange for a bitter but it is a strong biscuit aroma and sets up the first taste really well. I'm not done with the nose yet though, this might sound unusual but there was an earthy smell. It was in no way unpleasant and suited the biscuit smells, surprisingly pleasing earthy tones to be honest. The first mouthful was at first hoppy, that's a good start. The biscuity smells translated to a butter biscuit taste with a touch of caramel, the finish was dry and a little sour. Only a touch sour but enough to give the dryness some depth, the butter biscuit flavours really shone through on the finish. The fizz on this beer was strong and biting and when a big enough swig was taken it frothed up fantastically. I can imagine that you get the idea I enjoyed this bitter, I thought I would enjoy it but the complexity was a real surprise and my appreciation for Hoggleys brewing skills has increased once again, I look forward to making a point of trying the entire range and bringing bottles round for my beer loving friends to experience. Well done Hoggleys.

Hoggleys Solstice Stout Review

Hoggleys brewery is pretty much next door to where my sister lives down south. I say pretty much next door, in the same neck of the woods. You don't get this beer round Lancashire which is a shame because everything I've tried from there has been excellent. This is the first time I've had the Solstice Stout and I had to blog about it because even though I drink a lot of stouts and enjoy them hugely this particular stout needs to become more widespread so this is me doing my bit to spread the word.
First things first, the colour, pretty standard for a stout in that it's very dark. Almost black but the deep browns can be spotted round the edges so no surprises there. The smell had the distinctive metallic notes you often get from traditional stout, this one had rich coppery tones. The first sip was outstanding, chocolaty flavours are very common in stouts but not like this. It was as near to thick rich chocolate mousse as you can get without eating chocolate mousse, with the added bonus of being beer and bringing with it all the lovely beery tastes we all know and love! It really is quite amazing how much this tastes like a choc pudding. There is a slight bitterness which first made me think it could be described as having dark chocolate flavours but this bitterness turned into the slight coffee like aftertaste which is again typical of beers of its type. This is a very smooth and thick beer which like any traditional stout has a good fizz on it, being bottle conditioned it had plenty of bits in the bottle which of course made there way into my glass. These chewy bits are full of fantastic flavours and although yes quite fattening are full of nutrition. Hopefully Hoggleys will spread across Britain and become available in most beer shops but until then you'll have to take my word for it that this one is fantastic.

Delirium Tremens Review

Welcome to my second beer blog, now it's a series. This beer is one I had some years ago and never forgot, seeing it at Byrne's I had to get it agian for this blog. This beer is Delirium Tremens which is Latin for 'trembling madness', a violent sickness brought on from alcohol withdrawal! Great name for a beer. It is 8.5% and very pale with a slight cloudiness. It is very much bottle conditioned with three different yeasts going into it's production leaving some tasty chewy bits in your beer. Held up to a light it has a pale golden straw colour with the slight cloudiness giving it an air of mystery, well I thought so anyway. The nose has the familiar citric notes you can expect from many Flemish beers and an unexpected sweet honeyish background. The taste is unexpected and excellent, initally smooth and slightly sour the honey tones come through first with a set honey sweetness this is followed by a lemony tang which then gives way to a warm satisfying finish. The fizz of the beer is not a heavy one but what does make it through is pleasing gentle. The bottle is very distinctive, meant to emulate cologne ceramics, if you see one grab it. A really excellent unusual beer which fully deserved its award as the Worlds Best Beer in 1998 at the World Beer Championships.

Rodenbach Grand Cru.

So I went to Bryne's wine shop in my home town of Clitheroe to peruse the usually interesting beer selection. It did not disappoint, although £2.29 is quite expensive for a 330ml bottle of beer at 6% abv I had not seen it before and I love to try new beers. As you can see from the picture it is quite dark which you might expect from a Belgian ale but this was not reflected in the taste. Anyone familiar with Lambic beer will be aware of the citrus sour flavours these beers are characterized by and although this partciular beer had the citrus zing it was followed by a much sweeter taste than I was expecting. The nose gave off strong peach aromas with the unmistakeable citrus zing. The first sip was amazing and was only outdone by the pleasant sweetness that followed. I was expecting sour and to be fair to call it outright sweet would be wrong but I must say in the grand scale of Flemish brewing this is definitely sweeter. It did not taste as dark as it looked, it had the consistency of a more golden/amber beer which led to me drinking it a little faster than I would the darker ales due to the heavier warmth darker beers usually carry.
After drinking and thoroughly enjoying this beer I did a little light reading on it and found it commonly described as winey, I can't agree with that maybe it's just me but the notion of this beer being sour and winey was not my experience and I drink a lot of beer and consider myself to be pretty good at identifying various flavours and styles. Still if we all agreed it'd be rubbish wouldn't it. I'll end with this, should you have the chance to try this beer do so. You won't regret it.

Back after a while.

Thought I'd start with a picture in hope of catching peoples eyes and drawing them into the less spectacular aesthetic of plain old text. So yeah I've not blogged in ages so I thought I'd kick off with some of my feelings about my fave hobby Reef Keeping!

Reef tanks are always a work in progress and require what I like to call RUD. This stands for Research, Understanding and Diligence. This alone will not keep your reef ticking over there is also the elusive sixth sense which needs developing. As you keep tanks like this you gain an understanding of what needs doing and how and it is not always explainable. You can take as many readings and fulfill as many standardized parameters as you like but the feel you get for your particular set up and the creatures in your care is what will ultimately determine your successes. This isn't to say that any one aquarists sixth reef keeping sense is infallible, far from it. The dreaded tank crash can strike anyone no matter how well attuned you are to your setup. What I am trying to say is that although it may at first appear that a hobby which included large amounts of biology, a sizable amount of chemistry and a very decent dosing of physics it isn't an exact science. Life is a tricky and chaotic thing (as Jeff Goldblum taught us in JP) and reef keeping is as much about having an unknowable feel for it as much as anything.

This view will of course be condemned by many other reef keepers, its a highly divisive hobby. Much arguing goes on online as what works for one person doesn't work for another, no two tanks are the same. Which I believe just adds weight to my argument but the internet is infested with trolls. Sod em though.