In my London and York posts I mentioned that I picked up a few choice bottles of ale on my travels. Here’s what I brought back from those far-off, exotic, blessed-with-a-specialist-beer-shop places:

Picked these three up at Utobeer in Borough Market. I’m a big fan of Flying Dog, having enjoyed pretty much everything of theirs I’ve managed to get my hands on to-date, so a chance to grab these three was just too good to miss.

• Flying Dog Double Dog – A Double Pale Ale, “dry hopped with an insane amount of Cascade and Columbus hops”.
• Flying Dog Wild Dog – A 355ml version of the barrel-aged Gonzo Imperial Porter release.
• Flying Dog Raging Bitch – their 20th Anniversary brew, an 8.3% Belgian IPA.

Three more from Utobeer and then a bottle of the good stuff as a souvenir of our evening at The Porterhouse:

• Sierra Nevada Bigfoot – the 2010 / 35th anniversary release of Sierra Nevada’s famous barleywine style ale.
• Hardknott Infra Red – the third release from Dave’s brew house, a big, red, 6.5% IPA.
• Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale – one of a few legendary US brews I’ve been keeping an eye out for.
• Porterhouse Brain Blasta – a bottle of 7% thrice-hopped ale for the road.

These four all came from The Bottle in York. More big, bad American brews…

• Victory Golden Monkey – I was tempted by the Hop Devil next to it, but couldn’t resist the Monkey’s Belgian allure.
• Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA – 60 hop-additions over a 60-minute brew for a 6% ABV IPA with 60 IBUs.
• Dogfish Head Raison D’Etre – “A deep, mahogany Belgian-style brown ale brewed with beet sugar, raisins, and Belgian-style yeast.” Had to be done.
• Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA – 90 hop-additions over a 90-minute brew for a 9%ABV IPA with 90 IBUs.

Some pretty special bottled ales there, I reckon. With what’s in there already, my beer cupboard is nothing less than a treasure trove these days. Mind you, I think I really do have to start drinking some of it though, this hoarding habit of mine is getting a bit ridiculous…

Brewery: Anchor Brewing
Location: San Francisco, USA
ABV: 8.2%
Version: Bottled
Source: Beer Ritz, Leeds

Inspired by The Beer Nut‘s recent exhortation to get stuck in to your stash from time to time – rather than watching all those lovely bottles of strong ale slowly mature towards some nebulous and tricky-to-accurately-judge nirvana of agèd perfection – I decided last weekend to bring my sole bottle of Anchor Old Foghorn ale out of the beer cupboard, a mere four months after putting it away on the top shelf, with the rest of the Good Stuff. And I’m extremely glad I did, because now I know to pick up a good half dozen or so bottles of this rather magnificent ale the very next time I see it on offer.

Anchor Old Foghorn pours a lovely dark chestnut colour and from the first sip releases a cacophony of rich, sensuous flavours: toffee and coconut predominate in a sweet and heady swirl, with developing red wine and sour cherry notes on the after-taste, which help to take the edge off the sugariness and stop it becoming too cloying or sickly. The alcohol hit is noticeable yet quietly under-stated and the mouth-feel is smooth and chewy, all of which makes for a glorious, slow-sipper that’s quite, quite delicious… particularly once that initial sweetness settles down a bit and the flavours begin to merge and mellow into something that’s a real joy to sample.

Definitely the sort of ale I’d like to become much better acquainted with. I have a feeling my next trip to Beer Ritz is going to be an expensive one…

Brewery: Adnams [spotted an old advertisement for a beer called ‘Tally-Ho Old Strong Ale’, brewed by Adnams. I’d never heard of it before, despite being reasonably familiar with the range of Adnams bottled ales, so I assumed it was a long-dead vintage from a bygone era, presumably the 1950s.

Then, a couple of weeks later I nipped along to the sorting office to pick up a missed parcel and opened it to discover a bottle of 2009 vintage Tally-Ho, courtesy of Sean Clark at Adnams. As far as I can work out, it seems that Adnams have been brewing small-cask runs of Tally-Ho every year since 1880, but this year is the first time that they’ve produced a bottled (limited edition and bottle-conditioned) version of this strong, barley-wine style, winter ale. Well, it’s the first bottled run for a good while, at least; ‘in cask and bottle’ is printed on the aforementioned ad poster, so it has been bottled at some point before now.

Anyhow, a very handsome, 330ml bottle it is, too, elegantly lettered and with a subtle, red-jacketed huntsman motif. The ale itself poured a lovely dark chestnut colour with ruby highlights and a thinnish head. No trouble with sediment, despite the bottle conditioning. Dried fruit aromas wafted from bottle and glass alike and the flavours were all about warming yourself in front of an open fire on a crisp winter’s day: rich, smoky chocolate, spiked with spicy, peppery notes, all carried on a marvellously creamy mouth-feel; it put me in mind of a rich, dark-chocolate mousse (you know, one of those Gü ones that cost twice as much as anything else but are definitely worth the extra…)

So, in conclusion: I’d say that Tally-Ho is an extremely palatable, eminently sippable and quite delicious strong winter ale that’s just my sort of thing. I’ll be keeping an eye out for this one and although a 24-pack at £35.75 might be a little rich for my current beer-budget, if I can find an outlet selling singles then I’ll definitely be in there for a half-dozen.

Thank you very much indeed to the folks at Adnams for sending this one along for me to try.

I’ve been rather lazy on the beer blogging front since getting back from Tenerife at the end of October, I know. That goes double for beerblogosphere link-harvesting, but I’ve finally pulled my finger out and pulled the latest batch of links-of-interest together. But this first post-holiday round-up of beer-related blog-posts is going to be a bit of a monster so why not crack open a bottle of your favourite ale while you settle in for a skim-read?

Oh, incidentally, the big buzz while I was away was obviously all around the launch of Brewdog’s Equity For Punks share scheme, but I’m hoping to round that one up in a separate post as there’s a tonne of material to digest and I think it rather deserves a stand-alone.

Right then, without further ado…

(more…)

Brewery: BrewDog / Mikkeller
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland / København, Denmark
ABV: 12.1%
Version: Bottled
Source: Brewdog.com

I’ve been very keen indeed to try this new collaboration from two of modern brewing’s most talked-about operators, ever since I first read about its creation last December. So I ordered a mixed six-pack of Devine Rebel and How to Disappear Completely (via the Deals for Punks page on the BrewDog site to make up the numbers on my recent Zephyr order (and I have a few more Mikkeller brews to try as well, courtesy of a case of rare Belgians from Beermerchants.com).

Devine Rebel is a barley wine, a style of beer that I’ve not had a huge amount of experience with, so that was another cause for much sampling-anticipation. The opening of the bottle releases a quite wonderful aroma of rich caramel with just a hint of herbs. The pour is almost entirely effervescence-free – I’m guessing this is normal for the style, hence the ‘wine’ appellation? – and the first sip is rich, sweet, almost medicinal in character; the beer has definitely imported some distinctly whisky-like qualities from the quarter that has been aged in Scottish whisky barrels. The beer has a wonderfully rich mouth-feel, that conveys the flavours superbly, as well. Damn, this one’s good…

One thing that’s definitely noticeable (and I’m using the present tense because I’m drinking this one at the moment – live-action tasting notes, folks!) is that despite the 12.1% ABV the alcohol content doesn’t overpower the more subtle flavours. In fact, as you get towards the bottom of the glass, the flavours become even smoother, the medicinal rough-edges rounded-off a bit, the warm toffee-caramel notes more pronounced. All in all, it’s an absolutely delicious brew. Very highly recommended indeed!

CAMRA have announced this year’s supreme Champion Winter Beer of Britian. It’s Oakham Ales Attila, a 7.5%abv barley wine described by the brewery thus: “Fruit notes and elderflower on aroma. Taste of ripe red berries and citrus fruit with a long bitter fruity finish.”

Sounds bloody delicious, and I’ll bet there’s none left by the time I get to the NWAF tomorrow evening (my drinking buddy Howard is available, so that means a double-session for yours truly. Nice.)

The silver and bronze awards went to Elland Brewery‘s 1872 Porter and Sarah Hughes’s Dark Ruby mild, respectively, so that’s another two for the target list for tomorrow and / or Saturday. I’m looking forward to the next couple of evenings immensely…