Tag Archives: Badger
Bargainwatch: New 2 for £3 selection at Sainsbury's
My local Sainsbury’s has rotated its 2 for £3 offers again (I must have bee a little late to spot the previous rotation).
My personal highlights this time around:
Bargainwatch: Flying Dog, BrewDog, Grimbergen and more at Tesco
Looks like Tesco might be a good place to head for to find some decent bottled beer bargains at the moment. I’ve just come back from a weekly shop with a bag full of bottles, and while I was there I scribbled down a few of the more interesting offers, which included:
- 3 for £4 on various beers including Grimbergen Blonde, Grimbergen Dubbel and Innis & Gunn Original Oak Aged Ale [Baron, you want to get yourself on the motorway down to Tesco in Prestwich, mate… :)
Edit from Ed – The two Flying Dog offerings have been further reduced to half price, so I just emptied the shelf of my local of the Classic Pale Ale. At 88p each it would have been just wrong to leave them there.
Quick catch-up #5: The Rest of 2009 so far…
Back in January I declared my intention to steer clear of average, bog-standard bitters and pale ales as far as I possibly could. When it comes to the buying of bottled beers I’ve done pretty well. Purchases of a pretty superb stout selection from BeerVentures.co.uk, a case of rare and rather exquisite Belgians from BeerMerchants.com and a couple of excellent BrewDog orders have helped to keep the quality averages consistently high and I’ve been exercising my willpower when it comes to supermarket purchases: only the most interesting-looking new stuff for me.
Inevitably though, there have been a few that in spite of their apparent promise haven’t turned out to be quite as remarkable as I’d hoped. And seeing as there are only so many times that your humble beer blogger can stretch “bitter ale, malty, some hoppiness” (or vica-versa as applicable) to a full Tasting Notes write-up, here’s another quick catch-up piece to clear the backlog from the notebook:
Shepherd Neame Late Red (bottled, 4.5% abv)
A very deep-ruby red bitter brewed with late-season hops. Not sure if the seasonality of the hops adds anything in particular to the flavour profile, but the brew was distinctly hoppy and bitter, although at the same time a bit on the flat side and without much else to distinguish it. Not bad, but not great either.
Jennings Golden Host (bottled, 4.3% abv)
A golden amber pale ale with a very hoppy nose that somehow doesn’t carry through into the flavour, which was quite mild and if anything, had a honey-sweetness rather than a hop-bitterness. With a touch of citrus as well, this would make for a pleasant summer quaffer, but isn’t one I’ll be looking out for in future myself.
Thwaites Liberation (bottled, 4.8% abv)
A smooth-drinking, but with barely a distinguishing characteristic to report back on – a touch of sweetness but hardly any bitterness to balance it out. I would have expected more from Thwaites, who usually know how to put out a decent brew and at 4.8% it should really have had a bit more bite, surely?
Black Sheep Yorkshire Square (bottled, 5.0% ABV)
A dark amber bitter with a hoppy, fresh-tasting flavour, good bitterness and hints of citrus to make things interesting. Nice. But not remarkably nice… (Ed wasn’t blown away either).
Orval Trappist Ale (bottled, 6.2% ABV)
I picked up a bottle of Orval in Tesco during my recent Belgian-familiarisation drive. It poured with a big head and a big aroma and turned out to be slightly cloudy, slightly effervescent and slightly sour. Not a hint of sweetness anywhere and a rather odd after-taste, too. I know this one’s meant be a taste that’s worth acquiring, but I don’t know… I’m unlikely to be going back any time soon, I think.
Wood’s Shropshire Lad (bottled, 5.0% ABV)
I’m pretty sure this one must have gone off in the bottle. Or at least, I hope that explains the cloyingly sweet, marsh-mallow, unpleasantly yoghurty flavour that saw the bulk of it dumped down the sink. I’ll give it another go sometime – if only on the grounds that my brother-in-law swears it’s actually a decent drop – but honestly, this particular bottle was just undrinkable.
Badger Golden Champion (bottled, 5.0% ABV)
I was highly impressed by Badger’s Golden Glory a while back, but this one didn’t quite hit the same high-notes. It was pleasant and drinkable enough: a rich, golden ale with a light, hoppy flavour and some definite citrus notes. But again, I’d expect more from a 5% ABV beer. And from a marketing perspective, I’m just not sure why Badger would want to have two such similarly-named ales in its range when they have such distinct characteristics? Anyhow, my advice: stick to Golden Glory for a much more interesting flavour experience.
Belhaven Twisted Thistle IPA (bottled, 5.3% ABV)
Along with a few others in this round-up, I rather think this is a beer that would perform much better on draught than it did in the bottle. A golden-amber ale that actually had a much more malty profile than it’s claim to IPA-status would suggest, with the hops not really kicking in until the after-taste rather than being up-front and central as you’d expect. With hints of honey-biscuit and a pink-grapefruit citrus tang it’s not unpleasant by any means, but it’s not remarkable either.
Maxim Double Maxim Premium Brown Ale (bottled, 4.7% ABV)
This resurrected recipe has been lovingly restored by the Double Maxim beer company; it was first brewed in Sunderland in 1901 to celebrate the return of the Maxim Gun detachment from the Boer War. The beer is a deep chestnut colour with a slightly vegetative aroma in-bottle. Hoppy and sharp with an underlying marzipan sweetness that develops into a definite almond flavour as the beer goes on. Pleasant enough, not so impressive that I leapt to try the draught version when I saw it a few weeks later; although who knows, maybe that was an opportunity missed..?
Cairngorm Trade Winds (bottled, 4.3% abv)
This one was left over from the selection I picked up in last year’s Sainsbury’s summer Real Ale promotion. A pale golden ale with a rich, fruity flavour and a lingering bitterness that became more noticeable as the pint went on, backed up by a smooth, satisfying mouth-feel. Would probably try this one again, especially if I found it on draught (Ed was a bit more impressed than I was).
Marston Oyster Stout (bottled, 4.5% abv)
For a stout, this one was remarkably thin, fizzy and generally a bit limp: a hint of coffee and chocolate, but barely anything to distinguish it from bottled Guinness. I’ve had porters with a lot more body and bitters with a lot more flavour and a great many stouts that were superior on both fronts. Not one I’ll be rushing back to in a hurry.
Wychwood Dirty Tackle (draught, 4.0% abv)
Tried a pint of this one at the Bull’s Head in Manchester at the end of a session. A pleasant, rich-chestnut coloured bitter with a well-balanced blend of malt and hops and dry, bitter finish. Pleasantly drinkable, but not all that remarkable. No sign of it on the Wychwood website, either; I’m guessing it was a seasonal brew for the Five Nations or something like that.
That’ll do for this time around. Got a few more in the notebook, so I’ll post another round-up later on in the year.
Tasting Notes: Badger Harvester's Ale
Brewery: Badger Ales (Hall and Woodhouse)
Location: Blandford St Mary, Dorset, England
ABV: 2.5%
Version: Bottled
Source: Tesco
With Harvester’s Ale, Hall & Woodhouse are having a go at re-creating the sort of lower-abv ale that used to be provided for the workers in the fields at harvest time, to help the long days in the fields go by without everyone either falling into an alcoholic stupor or kicking off the sort of scythes vs pitchforks contest that nobody was likely to emerge from as a winner. Thus, it weighs in at a mere 2.5% ABV, although Badger promises that it will still prove to be “a full-flavoured, fruity, refreshing ale” and it was deemed good enough to win a Tesco Drinks award last year, in the lower and no alcohol category.
I have to admit that I’d spotted – and passed over – this one on the shelves of the World Beer section (not the real ale section, oddly) in Tesco a couple of times, but finally decided to give it a go. In fact, I’m giving it a go as I type…
Harvester’s Ale pours a very pale, golden amber with a thick, frothy head, although the latter soon dissipates. Flavour-wise, it’s got a definite maltiness that gives way to a hoppy bitterness, particularly in the after-taste. Quite lager-like, really; especially with its initial burst of effervescence that settles down to a familiarly lager-like background fizziness. Having said that though, I should point out that it’s definitely got more flavour to it that a fair few of the factory-produced lagers I’ve had to resort to in restaurants when nothing else was on offer.
But still, I’m not sure I’d personally describe it as “full-flavoured” so much as “surprisingly tasty, considering…” and it’s not particularly fruity either, unless you count those hop notes. But it is quite refreshing, could probably stand a bit of a light chill before drinking, and with its lower alcohol content, it might make a decent Friday lunchtime starter to ease you into an evening session.
All in all: not too bad. Not too bad at all.
Tasting Notes: Badger Fursty Ferret
Brewery: Hall and Woodhouse (Badger)
Location: Blandford St Mary, Dorset, England
ABV: 4.4%
Version: 500ml bottle
Fursty Ferret gets its name from the ferrets that used to poke around the back door of the Gribble Inn, where the beer was originally brewed. It’s a light brown colour, perhaps intended to mimic the colouring of said ferrets. The aroma is a nice light hop one, with hint of malt and a touch of citrus. The malt may be part of the background smell, but it’s very much to the fore in the taste. Flavour is enhanced by some bitterness, mixed with not too sweet fruit notes, before ending in a dry finish. Texture is a bit thin, and overall it’s a pleasant enough, if inoffensive and uneventful, drop, made quite moreish by that dry finish. The only thing is I wouldn’t actually want more of it, one was quite enough.
Quick catch-up #3: The Rest of 2008, Part II
Back to the notebook for another lightning gallop through some of the beers that I sampled last year but didn’t quite get around to writing up in full…
Wells Bombardier Satanic Mills (5.0% abv, bottled)
Pitch black with a light tan head, almost stout-like, you can certainly tell this sister beer to Wells’ Bombardier and Bombardier Burning Gold is brewed with chocolate malt. With coffee notes and a lingering sweetness as well, it’s got a bit of variety to it as well. Very nice.
Greene King Strong Suffolk Ale (6.0% abv, bottled)
A very dark, almost black, ale with a strong, sharp flavour. Not too sweet, not too heavy, I’d happily have another go at this one.
Innis & Gunn Cask Strength Oak Aged Ale (7.7% abv, bottled)
There’s an incredibly rich, complex flavour to this 77-day ages strong ale, with a gobful of toffee at the fore. Quite sweet but with a dry edge: rather like liquified treacle tart. Very nice indeed.
Hall & Woodhouse Badger Hopping Hare (4.5% abv, bottled)
This “thrice-hopped” golden ale is exactly as described: hopped up and dry to the taste, with a refreshing finish. Not the hoppiest I had all year (BrewDog’s Chaos Theory and Saltaire Stateside IPA spring to mind) but hoppier than most, certainly.
Shepherd Neame Whitstable Bay Organic Ale
Brewed using English organic barley and New Zealand organic Gem and Hallertau hops, this pale, golden ale has a very mild character with definite citrus notes and a pleasantly hoppy after-taste. Refreshing and easy-drinking, I think this one might be a staple summer ale of choice if I can find a stockist round about May or June time.
Whitewater Clotworthy Dobbin (5.0% abv, draught)
Had a pint of this one in the Crown Liquor Saloon (Belfast’s finest beer-related tourist trap) on a visit to Ed’s neck of the woods last August. The website says it’s a ruby porter, but I remember it as more of a strong ale, to be honest. Either way, it was a rich, malty brew with a grapefruit-sourness that mellowed as the pint went on… definitely interesting, if perhaps a bit of an acquired taste.
Whitewater Belfast Ale (4.5% abv, draught)
A second pint in the Crown, this time Whitewater’s signature bitter. A rich amber colour, poured a bit on the thin side (although Ed’s pint looked heartier than mine), tasted like a slightly less strident version of the Clotworthy, making it a more drinkable session choice, perhaps.
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen (5.1% abv, bottled)
One of a batch of bottled beers I picked up at the Vineyard off-licence on the Ormeau Road in Belfast while we were in town. This German smokebeer is brewed with smoked-barley malt and it really shows: it smells like a wet barbecue and tastes like smoky bacon crisps (although, I hasten to point out, still in a good way). Definitely an acquired taste and I for one couldn’t drink it in quantity, but I reckon a bottle or two would go very nicely indeed with a good cumberland sausage or some crumbly white cheese.
Harviestoun Old Engine Oil (6.0% abv, bottled)
Another one from The Vineyard, sampled whilst staying with friends in their cottage on the east coast of Northern Ireland. An incredibly rich, smooth porter / stout cross-over with hints of chocolate and caramel. Very potent and very drinkable, this one compared extremely favourably to the Meantime beers I was drinking on the same evening, being just as characterful but not quite as sharp on the palate and I’d definitely grab a couple more bottles if I spotted it again.
St Peter’s Cream Stout (6.5% abv, bottled)
I’ve been on a personal mission to find my perfect stout for a while now and I think this may be a definite contender. And as I’ve just found out from the St Peter’s website that there might be an outlet near me that stocks their beers, I’m hoping to re-visit this one before too long for a full write-up. Short version for now: a rich, huge-flavoured, intensely satisfying stout that delivers a massive hit of liquorice via an incredibly silky-smooth mouth-feel.
Leeds Brewery Leeds Pale Ale (3.8% abv, draught)
Tried this one at the Ackhorne Inn on our most recent visit to York. It’s a very pale ale that turned out to have enough hops for a decent IPA. Hops upon hoped upon hops in fact, resulting in a drop that’s very dry, very sharp and very, very bitter.
Everards Tiger Best Bitter (4.2% abv, draught)
On the same night out in York, we wandered down to the Yorkshire Hussar, where this turned out to be the only ale they had on draught. It also turned out to be a bit of an odd one: very smooth, quite sweet and with an after-taste that I eventually identified as fresh strawberries (I kid ye not). The website claims a ’rounded toffee character’, so perhaps my tastebuds were just mis-firing.
Right then, that’s another twelve to be going on with, I’ll stop there for now. I think I’ve got another dozen or so in the notebook that are worth a quick mention, so I’ll make up a third batch with those sometime this week, time allowing.
Quick catch-up #1: 2008 Holiday Beers
Xmas / New Year 2008. A week and a half off work and a chance to hit the beer cupboard and see what falls out. I kicked off at lunchtime on Xmas Day with a bottle of Wychwood Plum Duff (5.0% abv), a seasonal number from the brewers of one of my all-time favourites, Hobgoblin. Quite spicy, with a sweet & sour character, I thought Plum Duff had perhaps just a little too much fruitiness for my palate, but the mellow, warming after-taste made it drinkable. Not a bad start…
Xmas dinner was accompanied by a drop of Innis & Gunn Triple Matured which Ed sampled back in November and I pretty much concur with his conclusions on this one: toffee, vanilla, a little oak, generally smooth with a pleasantly bitter-sweet finish. I also cracked open a bottle of Meantime Winter Time, which I wrote up during my Meantime series last year. Unfortunately, I was too busy tucking into my grub to pay much more attention than last time, so I’ll have to come back to that one for a third attempt at some point.
Next up was a bottle of Greene King Abbott Reserve (6.5% abv) which turned out to be incredibly tasty; much more so that I’d expected, I have to admit. Another smooth, strong beer with a pleasant citrusy tang (I detected orange zest and nutmeg without any help from accompanying a mince pie). Quite sweet but with a bitter under-current that stopped it tasting too sugary. Definitely one I’d go back to again.
Boxing Day was spent driving to and from family in Leeds, so I only had time for a couple of beers when I got back home: first up was William Worthington’s White Shield (5.6% abv, bottle conditioned). At 5.6% it’s not as strong as you might expect an IPA to be and it poured with more fizz and a lot more sweetness than I thought you should expect from the style. Not horrible, per se, but far from the best I tasted last year.
After that one I went for a bottle of Williams Bros Midnight Sun (5.6% abv). This porter seemed to be a fairly classic example of the style: a slightly sour whiff in the bottle, a very dark ebony with a tan head, a spicy, faintly smoky, sweet coffee flavour that was smooth and very drinkable. Another good contender for a regular slot in the beer cupboard.
The weekend brought another driving stint up and down the country to the in-laws’ and by the time Jo and I had spent at least half of the (unusually long at four hours) journey to Bridgnorth stuck in a standing-wave tailback on the M6, I definitely needed a couple of beers and I was hoping that another strong ale from Greene King – this time Old Crafty Hen (6.5% abv) – would hit the spot quite nicely. It turned out to have a hoppy nose, citrusy flavours and a surprisingly deft touch for such a strong beer. Alas, that deft touch meant that whilst it was decidedly drinkable, it lacked much in the way of character and was rather un-memorable as a result. A symptom of larger brewery mass-production, perhaps? Or maybe it’s just one of those beers that’s much better on draught. I preferred the Abbot Reserve, definitely.
I opened a bottle of Hall and Woodhouse Badger Pickled Partridge (4.5% abv) next and alas it was another fairly indistinct one, albeit quite pleasant and quite drinkable again. Very malty, with light spice notes and a lingering bitterness to the after-taste. Not much else to write home about. I’ve had a much better Badger beer recently, which I’ll be writing up before too long (all being well).
The next day produced much better results. Jo’s folks live not too far at all from The Bull’s Head at Chelmarsh, which – following a change of management a couple of years back – is a great food and ale pub, well worth checking out if you’re down that way. I nipped down after Sunday lunch for a pint with brother-in-law Richard and opted for a drop of Dorothy Goodebody’s Christmas Stocking (4.2% abv? -ish?), a seasonal ale from Wye Valley. Extremely nice it was, too, with distinct cinnamon and nutmeg spices; very easy-drinking indeed and neither too heavy nor too sweet. More enjoyable than the Plum Duff, certainly.
I was back down the pub in the evening, with Jo and her folks, for an Irish folk session laid on by landlord John and some of his mates. This time I decided to try another draught Wye Valley brew, their Hereford Pale Ale. At 4% abv it was a light, highly quaffable, golden pale ale that made for a great session beer – I stayed with that one for the next couple of pints as well – with a fresh, faintly citrus flavour and a very dry, hoppy finish. Good stuff!
But the scooper in me was sorely tempted by a third draught ale from Wye Valley: Dorothy Goodbody’s Golden Ale and so I switched to that one for my final pint of the evening. I’m glad to say that I wasn’t at all disappointed. Very similar to the HPA, but with less strident hop notes and a maltier finish. Altogether a very pleasant end to a very good evening (the music was more than half-decent, too). If only they’d had Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout on as well… but that’s one to keep an eye out for another time.
I finished the seasonal Bridgnorth run with a visit to the town’s specialist wine merchant, Tanner’s, and picked up a selection of local brews that are now awaiting their turn in the beer cupboard. More on those in due course.
And there you have it. Not the entire Holiday beer session, I have to admit. There are a few others that I will be writing up separately, but that’s the bulk of my last ten days’ beer sampling. Mostly good, one or two indifferent, none bad enough to pour down the sink. Not a bad result at all.
Tasting Notes: Badger First Gold
Brewery: Badger (Hall & Woodhouse)
Location: Blandford-St-Mary, England
ABV: 4.0%
Version: Bottled
Source: Sainsbury’s
Badger First Gold has a very dry, hoppy nose and pours a deep, rich chestnut brown. Flavour was nutty and warm, with a good balance between malt and hops; mouth-feel was smooth with a lingering dryness. All in all, it reminded me of a more cultured version of Newcastle Brown.
A very pleasant drop indeed, much more fully-flavoured than the majority of the similar-strength beers I’ve tried this year. It would make a very good session beer on draught, I’m sure. Plenty of character without being too over-powering, you really could keep going on this one all night, with perhaps the occasional Poacher’s Choice to spice things up a little.
