I’ve started sampling my way through that selection of Great British Beer Festival 2011 beers that I picked up from Sainsbury’s last week. Here’s what I’ve checked out so far…

Williams Bros Profanity Stout 7%
A big blast of smoky coffee and liquorice flavours and plenty of dry bitterness on the after-taste, but delivered by a slightly thin mouth-feel, which was a tad disappointing. I like stronger stouts a lot, and I was expecting a lot from this one, so maybe it was a victim of over-inflated expectation, but I just thought that at 7% ABV it ought to have a bit more going for it in terms of body. It’s no BrewDog RipTide, put it that way…

Williams Bros Caesar Augustus 4.1%
I thought this second beer from Williams Bros was (perhaps oddly) much more impressive. A lager / IPA hybrid (judging by the the back-label, in this case an ale brewed with lager yeast, then cold-stored before being dry-hopped with ‘IPA hops’, if I read it right) it’s actually one of those rare beasts: a bottled session beer that tastes really rather good indeed. Pale gold in colour, malty in flavour with a hop-burst after-taste that builds and builds, it benefits from not being over-gassy or watery on the mouth-feel. Very nice indeed. A definite candidate for my favourite bottled session beers list.

Harviestoun Wild Hop IPA 5.1%
Pale almost to the point of crystal clarity with a big, big citrusy hop profile: there’s a mix of Fuggles, Goldings and assorted American hops in this one, apparently, and they really shine through. There’s just enough malt sweetness to keep everything check and the beer has a very pleasant mouth-feel as well. All in all a rather excellent drop of ale all round. One I’d definitely be happy to try again, in bottle or draught form alike.

Robinson’s Frederic’s Great British Alcoholic Ginger Beer 3.8%
Definite ginger aroma from this dark copper-coloured beer. Strong malty character with a hint of lemon and a good wallop of Ginger. Jo (who drank this one and has provided the tasting notes) reckons it could be Robinson’s Young Tom with added Fentiman’s ginger beer (in the same way that Ginger Tom is Old Tom + Fentiman’s). Not too sweet; definitely a proper ale-with-ginger rather than an alcopop-masquerading-as-ginger-ale. Very pleasant.

Sadler’s Worcester Sorceror 4.2%
A copper-coloured bitter with a slightly spicy, peppery edge to a mainly malt-led, cough-drop sweet base. Good mouth-feel (not too thin). Easy-drinking and very flavourful indeed. Another good session beer, from what’s turning out to be a very good selection all round.

Hunter’s Full Bore 8.0%
Slightly cloudy (but maybe because I didn’t realise quite how much sediment there was in the bottle) golden amber coloured strong ale, packed with marzipan and toffee flavours, it doesn’t taste quite as alcoholic as its 8% ABV might suggest. Smooth, sweet and distinctly drinkable, a highly enjoyable strong ale, I might have to get a couple more of these in while the stock is still available.

So far, so good. I know these beers were selected by means of a public / expert tasting / voting session (I got an invite myself, but I couldn’t schlepp on down to the Midlands mid-week to take part) and it seems as though the pre-selection process has resulted in some very good choices indeed. More to follow on the other six (and I might have to go back for three of the four I missed – the wheat beer among them excluded for intolerance reasons) when I’ve had a chance to drink them.

Tesco seem to be selling off their current Finest range of bottled ales at a very reasonable 2 for £2:

• Traditional Porter (Harviestoun Old Engine Oil)
• Ginger Ale (Williams Ginger)
• American IPA (BrewDog Hardcore)

Here’s another quick sweep of items-of-interest from around the Beerblogosphere that have caught my eye in the past week or so:

Congratulations to Stewart Ross and Chris Ives of the Ilkley Brewery Company who, SIBA tells us, have won their first beer award after only six months in business: gold medal in the bitters and pale ales (under 4.0 per cent ABV) category at the Society of Independent Brewers Northern beer competition.

And congrats also to Sam Moss and Michael Brothwell of Leeds Brewery on their Yorkshire Young Achievers Award for Achievement in Management and Enterprise [via @realalereviews].

Over at the Thornbridge Brewers’ Blog they’re showcasing their Christmas 2009 beer and explaining the brewing process as well. No mention of a bottled variant though… here’s hoping the Trackside or Marble Arch will have some in on draught this Yuletide, it sounds like one I’d definitely like to try.

BrewDog have doubled their production capacity with the arrival of their New 40HL Brew-House, presumably an interim step on the road to their brand new, state-of-the-art eco-brewery, once they’ve raised the required £23million from their Equity For Punks scheme?

Incidentally, in amongst all the hoo-hah over Brewdog’s recent Portman Group complaint stunt, did anyone else notice that they’ve also launched their new novelty-labelling service over at www.punkdog.com? Or did no-one really care enough to mention it..? Meanwhile: BrewDog shown in positive light during mainstream media coverage? What’s the world coming to?

Jeff Evans talks up Harviestoun’s expanded range of Ola Dubh expressions over at his Inside Beer blog. All five are available from Harviestoun direct and I’m sorely tempted…

Sounds like Liz and Pete Brown’s Christmas Pud is going to be a bit special this year. And Pete has unearthed some rather interesting hop history as well (sounds like a trip to a National Trust gift shop might be in order at some point).

Over at Barm, Tandleman and Mark Dredge all have interesting things to say about the kerfuffle caused by Oliver Thring‘s CAMRA vs Lager article on the Guardian website.

And finally: things are hotting up on the Beerswap front as Collect+ depots up and down the land frantically shift the millions okay, dozens of lovingly bubble-wrapped four-packs of craft ale in time for folks to drink the stuff and then meet their December 4th write-up deadline. Follow the action on Twitter via #beerswap. The package I sent has been received in good order by Mark Dredge, who posted the evidence to Twitpic.

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.

Brewery: Harviestoun
Location: Alva, Scotland
ABV: 4.8%
Version: 500ml bottle

Staying in Scotland it’s off to the award winning Harviestoun Brewery, and our first lager review. I’m by no means a lager fan, but in the interests of fairness I feel I should sample what the world has to offer in this beer style as any other. Most of them can usually be summed up with words like fizzy, bland and chemically. But not this one.

First up, Harviestoun use only natural ingredients so no artificial chemicals included. Secondly, carbonation is well controlled so it’s not overly fizzy. Third, there is bags more flavour than any other lager I’ve had. Schiehallion has a crisp, refreshing, citrusy taste with a hint of grapefruit, ending with a slightly dry and bitter finish. Perfect after a long hike in the mountains.

The best lager in the world? Could be; it’s certainly the best lager I’ve tasted.