Brewery: Hopdaemon
Location: Newnham, Kent, England
ABV: 5% / 4.5% / 6%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of Hopdaemon

A few weeks ago, the up-shot of a short Twitter conversation with Hopdaemon’s @PeteBrissenden was that Pete very kindly offered to send me a few samples of his beers, seeing as I was unlikely to be able to find them on sale anywhere in Manchester. A box containing three bottles of Hopdaemon’s finest duly arrived and I got stuck in last Friday evening.

I started with Hopdaemon Green Daemon, a bottle conditioned helles bier (which, Wikipedia tells us, simply means ‘pale lager’) and frankly it turned out to be one of the very best lagers (pale or otherwise) that I’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter. Things started off rather well with a lovely, fruity-caramel aroma as soon as the bottle was opened. The beer poured a dark amber-gold colour with almost no head and the first taste released a cascade of rich, sweet fruit flavours: most noticeably cantaloupe melon, with a touch of peach and papaya. There was a bit of toasted-almond in there as well and coupled with a lingering dryness to the after-taste that helped to keep the fruit in check, providing a good balance to the whole. Great flavours, carried along on a silky-syrupy mouth-feel. Quite a distance from my mental picture of a typical pale lager – if I didn’t know better I’d have said this one was more of a Belgian-style beer – but I’ll take Pete’s word for it. Definitely worth seeking out.

Bottle number two was Skrimshander IPA. I first tried Skrimshander a few years ago, when some friends of ours hosted a barbecue party and some of their Kent-based relatives made the trip with a case or two in the boot. I remember enjoying it immensely – that’s why I’d gotten in touch with Pete in the first place, to see if he could recommend a sales outlet Up North (alas. no, Hopdaemon generally only supplies retailers Down South) – and I was very glad of the opportunity to re-acquaint myself. Weighing in at 4.5% ABV, Skrimshander might not be as strong as a we’ve come to expect an IPA to be, but it certainly doesn’t disappoint in the big hop flavours department. Again, a very pleasant mouth-feel conveys a dry, crisp, hop-heaviness with a lingering bitter finish that sneaks up on you a couple of seconds after you’ve swallowed. There’s a faint nuttiness, hardly any fruit and an almost whisky-like character to the malt notes. Very, very nice indeed.

Going for the hat-trick, I cracked open the Leviathan, anticipating the biggest and boldest beer of the evening from this 6% ABV ale. It was a pleasure to behold as it poured; a rich ruby-chestnut body with a thick, frothy head. Flavour-wise it was all rich malt, with hints of treacly smoke and another long, dry finish. Not as sweet as I thought it was going to be; everything kept nicely in balance. Another damn fine beer, which I enjoyed immensely.

So: three damn fine beers from Hopdaemon there. If I had written down the one I though I would enjoy most before I started, I would have predicted Leviathan, but on reflection I think I’d actually pick the Green Daemon as the best beer on the night, if only because it was so much better than I was expecting it to be. Skrimshander is a very good example of a relatively low-alcohol IPA and Leviathan is an extremely tasty strong dark ale. But for a helles lager, Green Daemon really stands out from the others I’ve tried recently, kicking even BrewDog’s very fine 77 Lager into touch.

And now of course, I have a problem: I’ve run out of Hopdaemon and it’s not generally on sale up north. Time to start scouring the online retailers, I reckon. Please do let me know if you do spot it on sale anywhere in Manchester though, and if so be sure to grab a few bottles for your own beer cupboard. You won’t be disappointed.