Brewery: Ascot Ales
Location: Camberley, Surrey, England
Style: Stout
ABV: 5.0%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of Ascot Ales

This bottle of Anastasia’s Exile was the second survivor from the ill-starred sample package that Ascot Ales sent me last week. I rather suspected that this one would have the edge over the Posh Pooch and my prediction turned out to be bang on the money.

Anastasia’s Exile poured with an opaque black body and a frothy tan head, giving off enticing aromas of rich chocolate and strong coffee in the process. The first sip delivered a good mouth-feel, carrying intense flavours of dark chocolate, roast coffee-beans, hickory smoke, liquorice and pepper. Slightly sweet, but with a long, dry, roast-malt finish, this is just the sort of complex, deeply flavourful stout I love to slowly sup and savour and I thoroughly enjoyed the two-thirds of the bottle that Jo let me keep for myself (after having a sample sip she insisted on nicking a measure and who can blame her?)

This one was very, very good indeed and I have a feeling the draught version would be excellent. I’ll be keeping my eyes open for this one on a hand-pump, definitely.

Many thanks again to the folks at Ascot Ales for sending this one along!

Brewery: Ascot Ales
Location: Camberley, Surrey, England
Style: Session Bitter
ABV: 4.2%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of Ascot Ales

The folks at Ascot Ales sent me along a three-pack of their beers last week. The aim was for me to sample their Royal Wedding tie-in beer, Royal IPA (4.1% ABV, available in a limited run of 1,000 bottles and on draught in a selection of Nicholson’s London pubs this weekend as part of their Thameside Festival) but alas, Royal Mail didn’t do the folks at Ascot proud and, despite a decent amount of packaging, the following happened en-route:

Nevertheless, the Royal IPA’s two companions – a Posh Pooch bitter and an Anastasia’s Exile stout – survived the ordeal intact, and I decided to crack open the Posh Pooch last night whilst watching the final of Masterchef. (On that note: massive congrats to Tim Anderson – @vikingtweats – currently the manager of The Euston Tap – although not, I suspect, for all that much longer – on his utterly deserved win for absolutely astounding displays of pure culinary craft and creativity throughout the series!)

The Posh Pooch poured a copper-amber colour with not much head and a very light carbonation. There was plenty of toffee-malt on the aroma and that was the dominant flavour profile as well: malt-led, although with a lingering dryness on the after-taste for a sharper finish. Brown sugar, caramel and a slight grapefruit-ish sour note cutting through the sweeter flavours. The mouth-feel was a bit on the thin side, but I’m sure that’s down to the bottling; I think this is yet another example of a session bitter that would be much better sampled in draught form. And I rather suspect that I’ll be more noticeably impressed with the Anastasia’s Exile when I get around to that one this weekend. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Many thanks to Ascot – and to Maria at their PR company, Haslimann Taylor – for sending this one along for me to try. And I hope that the Royal IPA is a huge success at the Nicholson’s festival this weekend!