Brewery: Adnams
Location: Sole Bay, England
Style: Sparkling, Belgian-style strong ale
ABV: 10%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of Adnams

I’d been looking forward to this one since it arrived a week and a half ago: Sole Bay Celebratory Beer, a special edition, 10% ABV, sparkling, Belgian-style ale brewed by Adnams to celebrate the 350th anniversary of their Sole Bay brewery.

Following a spot of helpful advice from Baron Orm I put the bottle in the fridge last weekend and then, chilled right down and glistening with perspiration, popped the cork on it last night. (The occasion I’d decided to celebrate? As suggested by @pintsandpubs: Friday. Also, as it turned out, a 4-0 England win over Bulgaria, which was a handy bonus.)

Here’s how the Sole Bay Celebratory looked after I’d poured the first measure into a tulip glass (the closest thing you’ll find to a champagne flute in our house):

Isn’t that a beautiful colour? Like sunset over the sea…

The aroma was gently sweet and faintly floral, nothing too intense. Carbonation was good: a steady flood of tiny, tonsil-tickling bubbles. And the flavour? A huge hit of instantly recognisable Belgian-styling, with honeyed malt, crisp shortbread biscuit, luxurious caramel, just a faint touch of hazelnuts or almonds, a splash of soft sherry and a nip of Irish whiskey. All those sweet, sweet flavours were then chased down by a lingering dryness on the after-taste which, coupled with the chilled-down carbonation, kept the overall profile in excellent balance and made for a sense of intense refreshment.

As the beer warmed a little – over the course of measure two and the half-glass that was left for measure three – that crisp, refreshing edge diminished slightly, but a those sugary flavours intensified and became more pronounced; by now I was getting sticky toffee-pudding and more fruit: ripe honeydew melon in particular. At one point I had a swig after nibbling a square of Green & Black’s fruit & nut milk chocolate and the result was an explosion of marzipan (and I’m a big fan of marzipan, so I repeated that little experiment a couple more times, just to be sure I had it right.)

In conclusion, then: a rather lovely, rather wonderful beer that would be a worthy accompaniment to any celebration. I reckon I’ll be ordering another couple of bottles of this one from Adnams in the very near future. One to keep until Yueltide / New Year, and one to store for a fair bit longer. I rather suspect that Sole Bay Celebratory will turn out to be a beer with great potential for alchemical magic, given a few years to let those sugars calm down a bit.

Huge thanks to the good folks at Adnams for their generosity in sending this one along for me to sample. And please don’t sell the rest before I can find my credit card…

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: BrewDog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
Style: “Vanilla Bean Infused Belgian Quad”
ABV: 10.2%
Version: 375ml bottle
Source: see below

Ed and I both scored ourselves a couple of bottles of BrewDog’s Abstrakt:01, the first[*] in their new range of Concept Beers. I ordered mine from the Abstrakt website on its day of release, Ed picked his up from the (rather excellent) Gap Wines in Belfast.

This is what Abstrakt:01 looked like when I poured it:

And here are our joint tasting notes:

Ed Said:

The bottle I sampled was number 1747 of 3200. I don’t know if that really means anything, or is any indicator of quality.

Not the easiest bottle to open, that cork was well pushed in. But once I got there I took a whiff from the open bottle and wondered where the aroma had gone, it was almost undetectable. A bit more comes through on pouring but it’s still very subtle, hints of vanilla and mango, with a touch of spice.

And the tasting was… actually quite disappointing. Very underwhelming, considering the price. Some subtle fruit flavours of mango and peach at the start, and a dollop of spiciness coming through shortly after, but I didn’t notice much sign of the vanilla. Despite the strength I thought the alcohol was well controlled, not impinging on the flavour too much, and the overall texture was very smooth. And it was far too easy to drink – I was hoping it would last me a while, but it was all gone in under 40 minutes. Maybe I’ve just come to expect more from BrewDog, but this is too tame, not exciting or challenging enough.

Or maybe it’s just too young and needs more time to mature and develop complexity. Which is what I plan to find out with the second bottle, number 1743; I’m following Darren’s suggestion and have stuffed it at the back of the cupboard for the next year.

As for me, I’m in pretty broad agreement. I picked up a hint of toasted coconut along with the vanilla on the aroma. I thought the mouth-feel was a particular highlight: honey-rich and smooth. And I noted down a stream-of-consciousness list of flavours that occurred to me as I sipped and ended up with: caramel, jam, honey, coconut, almond and overripe banana. It reminded me very strongly indeed of another beer, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember exactly which one… something Belgian, probably.

No surprise then that my overall impression was of a beer that’s rather too sweet at this (very young) stage of its development. To be fair to BrewDog, they do say (although only on the Abstrakt website, not on the bottle itself) that: “This beer is ideally suited to ageing and we recommend cellaring for 12-24 months.”

So that’s what I’ll be doing with bottles #2 and #3. I’ll have a word with Ed and see if we can coordinate another sampling and post up a fresh impression in twelve months’ time or so. I hope the sugars will have calmed down by then and more complex flavours developed. If its improvement-with-age is anything like BrewDog / Stone Bashah‘s then I reckon we’ll be in for a treat.

And I’ll be in for a bottle or three of Abstrakt:02 as well, with any luck. Triple Dry Hopped Imperial Red Ale, y’say? Sounds intriguing…

Around the Beerblogosphere

• Reluctant Scooper waxes lyrical

Look what ParcelForce dropped off this morning:

That’s one to drink young (in a couple of weeks’ time, most likely), one to mature for 12 months or so and a third to keep for as long as I can stop myself from opening it…

Brewery: BrewDog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
ABV: 6.0%
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of BrewDog

Punk Monk is BrewDog‘s latest prototype beer, one that they handed out to participants in their Sainsbury’s Beer Competition competition. As far as I can gather it’s a variant of their core Punk IPA beer, brewed with Belgian yeast, hence the ‘monk’ element in the name… although I had harboured vague notions that they might have been mad enough to brew an IPA-style mead for a while there, mead being the other traditional monastic brew, but it turns out I was off the mark.

BrewDog Punk Monk was similar yet subtly different to its genetic relative; it has the same hoppy-sharpness but it’s cut through with a sweeter citrus tang, rather like honeyed grapefruit. I cracked open a bottle of Punk IPA immediately afterwards (purely in the interests of providing a proper scientific stufy, you understand) and the original had a distinctly drier, more bitter character in comparison. I thought Punk Monk had a more luxurious, viscous mouth-feel than the Punk IPA, as well.

All in all I’d say that if Punk Monk isn’t quite half way between BrewDog Punk IPA and BrewDog Dogma, then it’s definitely hovering somewhere between the two. It’s frankly rather delicious and I do hope that the BrewDog folks decide to put it into full production before too long.

A big thank you to the ever-marvellous and generous folks up at BrewDog for sending this one along for me to sample.

BrewDog Punk Monk around the beerblogpsphere:

• Mark Dredge posted an as-live tasting over at his Pencil and Spoon blog
• PartyBear posted a write-up on Beeradvocate.com

Brewery: BrewDog
Location: Fraserburgh, Scotland
ABV: 12.5%
Version: Bottled
Source: BrewDog.com

A few weeks ago I placed an order via the BrewDog website for a bottle of their ultra-limited edition (only 100 bottles made available for sale at £25 each) Zephyr ale, along with a few bottles of BrewDog / Mikkeller Devine Rebel and BrewDog How to Disappear Completely (tasting notes for that one will be posted before too long).

Initially brewed as a 9% ABV IPA (by a brewery that knows a thing or two about brewing an IPA), BrewDog Zephyr was subsequently decanted into 1965 Invergordon whisky casks packed full of strawberries and then left to mature for exactly 600 days. The end result: a 12.5% ABV “strawberry infused Belgian inspired wood aged ale” that tastes like nothing else I’ve tried to-date…

But how to describe BrewDog Zephyr? Mark Dredge and Ms Impy Malting have both resorted to rapturous prose-poetry and the reviews at ratebeer have been similarly full of (slightly more prosaic) praise. And I for one am happy to add my own small paean to the growing cacophony: this is a truly fantastic beer.

The bottle opened with an appropriate champagne-pop, releasing a thick, strawberry infused aroma. The pour was lively, the beer’s effervescence contributing to a frothy, if short-lived, head and an ongoing pleasant fizziness. First taste: an intense explosion of mixed flavours that was clearly going to take some time to sort out, and a fructose sweetness that was distinct but not overly sugary. A bit hit of alcohol, but nothing too harsh or over-powering. Interesting. Very interesting.

After a couple more sips (I certainly wasn’t going to gulp this one) I began to pick out a few of those flavours: I kept looking for strawberries – knowing full well that those casks had been packed with them – but that particular note was elusive. Instead, I was getting unripe peaches and apricots, maybe even a slice of mango? A hint of the advertised coconut, wrapped up in shortbread. And of course, the whisky was there too. Speaking of which, I’d be very interested indeed to try a drop of the 1965 Invergordon, if only to help me with a theory I’ve got…

Because after a while I began to realise – and this was confirmed for me by the lovely Jo – that BrewDog Zephyr is actually really rather salty. Not something you often encounter in a beer – particularly in a Belgian-style of this strength, I’d imagine (having only experienced a few of those) but the saltiness was definitely there. And eventually, I think I worked out why: the Invergordon distillery was (in 1965 at least and still is if it’s still a going concern) situated on the coast, as this multimap reference, provided by the distillery profile page at scotchwhisky.net illustrates.

I went through a bit of a malt whisky phase before I came back to real ale, and one thing I learnt is that during maturation, a whisky will take on not only the characteristics of the ingredients and methods used in its distillation and the cask it’s matured in (hence the port wood / madeira wood etc. finishes you see on the shelves), but its character can also take in elements from the surrounding environment. Which is why a whisky like Old Pulteney tastes – quite distinctly – of the North Sea. And as Old Pulteney was the whisky that was most strongly brought to mind when I tasted BrewDog Zephyr, I would guess that a 1965 Invergordon whisky, distilled and matured on the coast, would have a similar sea-salt character and that the saltiness would have lingered in the casks long after the whisky was decanted, transferring in turn to the Zephyr.

Not – I hasten to add – that this in any way spoiled the flavour; quite the opposite in fact: salt is an obvious flavour enhancer and I’m sure Zephyr’s many fruit notes were only enhanced by its inclusion in the mix. And as I progressed through the 750ml (slowly, savouring every mouthful as I went) those fruit flavours merged and mingled with the alcohol and caramel-sweetness and saltiness and hop-bitterness – which was there, although it took a long time to come through and was never quite as prevalent as it is in BrewDog’s other IPA brews – to result in a drink experience that was, frankly, quite amazing.

All in all, I’m absolutely delighted that I splashed out £25 for a single bottle of a beer this rare and remarkable and I’d definitely do so again if the opportunity arose. In fact, if I remember rightly, BrewDog have an Atlantic IPA in the works – matured on-board a working trawler vessel in order to approximate the original sea-going life-cycle of the first India Pale Ales – and I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for a purchase of that one, even at a similar price-point. I’ve said before that I’m a sucker for a beer with a good story behind it and at the moment, BrewDog seem to be producing a series of literary masterpieces. Long may they continue to create!