[A Few More Than] Six Links to 31.08.11

In which I continue to gradually work my way through my post-holiday RSS backlog and shout out anything that catches my eye…

1. Zythophile Martyn Cornell provided a few helpful IPA Myth-Busting tips just in time for IPA Day.

2. …and Reluctant Scooper dug out a few IPA lies of his own from the archive.

3. RedNev put across a well-informed and well-structured counter-argument to the more hysterical claims made by the recent BBC Panorama programme on the subject of alcohol abuse in the UK.

4. Neil, proprietor of Eating Isn’t Cheating, has been singing the praises of Laynes Espresso, a recently-opened coffee house in Leeds, who have brewed an apparently incredible-tasting Imperial coffee stout with the folks from the Leeds Brewery Tap next door. Bloody hell, train to Leeds for two, please!

5. Mark Dredge mused on the popularity of chocolate & fruit beers and asks what the best UK examples of each might be.

6. He’s also posted his best FABPOW piece ever: Punk Ass Chicken. Love it.

7. Mark from BeerBiraBier.com and the legendary Tandleman have been bouncing a few ideas around on the topic of positivity in blogging and naming and shaming, where appropriate. Good points on both sides of the discussion, which prompted Zak Avery to chuck his hat into the ring as well.

8. Boak and Bailey have been sampling a couple of the Fuller’s Past Masters series. Definitely ones to watch out for, by the sound of things.

9. Des de Moor reported that Fuller’s Brewer’s Reserve No.3 is available. Time for a visit to the Fuller’s online store (where it turns out they’re still offering Brewer’s Reserve #2 as well).

10. Zombie Imperial Stout, anyone? The 2011 Surly Darkness label has been revealed to the world and it looks like the best one they’ve put out yet.

11. Reluctant Scooper Simon Johnson posted his thoughts on the state of mainstream media’s beer coverage and wondered why it’s so apologetic. Good question…

12. Courtesy of Tyson, here’s another one for my new ‘local pubs to check out’ list: the Irwell Valley Works Brewery Tap in Ramsbottom (hey, stop sniggering at the back!)

13. Mark Dredge again, and this time he was deeply unimpressed with the new Tesco’s beer aisle shelf-talkers. He’s definitely got a point, they’re pretty bloody awful.

14. Boak and Bailey have been working on expanding their fellow beer bloggers’ vocabularies and linguistic misconceptions alike with eight alternatives to ‘boring’. I’ll have to remember those.

15. And finally, if there was one recent beer event I really wish I’d been able to attend, it was the Thornbridge Meet the Brewer evening at the Port Street Beer House. But instead I had to get up the next morning and catch a train for a day in the London office. Damn. And indeed, Double-Damn. Next time, eh?

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)

Our local Sainsbury’s has rotated it’s standard 2 for £3 offering again.

Highlights of the current selection include:

• Bath Ales Barnstormer [
  • August 27, 2010
  • 6
  • Bath, Black Sheep, Daleside, Fuller's Brewery, Greene King, Hawkshead, Jennings, Marston's, Robinson's, Sainsburys, Tesco, Theakston's, Timothy Taylor's

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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.

Brewery: Shepherd Neame
Location: Faversham, Kent, England
ABV: 4.0% ABV
Version: Bottled
Source: Courtesy of Tesco

Shepherd Neame and Tesco have joined forces to launch the first bottled version of the brewery’s Canterbury Jack draught ale and have done so in order to raise money and awareness for an extremely worthy cause: Tesco charity of the year CLIC Sargent, which helps children with cancer spend more time at home and less time in hospital.

As I don’t live in Shepherd Neame territory I haven’t had the opportunity to sample Canterbury Jack on draught myself – although I’m familiar with their better-known bottled beers, particularly Bishop’s Finger and Spitfire – so this was my first meeting with Jack (although I met its big brother, Gentleman Jack, in a four-pack of <cough> another supermarket’s own-brand ales, thanks to an Xmas present from my sister’s kids, bless ‘em).

Canterbury Jack’s label proclaims it to be a “light, refreshing, contemporary ale bursting with citrus nose and flavour” and it delivers pretty much exactly that. It’s a pleasant, light session bitter although I found it quite malty, fruity and slightly sweet – perhaps not so much citrus as cream toffee – with a light hop-touch. It is very refreshing, too, and went well with the pork burger I had for tea last Friday, so I reckon it would be an ideal barbecue beer. Maybe Tesco could repeat the campaign a little later in the year? It ought to fly off the shelves in the summer (assuming we have as summer this year, of course)*.

All in all: a good, tasty, bottled session bitter. If you’re looking to stock up the ‘share and enjoy’ section of your beer cupboard then you could do a lot worse, and you would be supporting a good cause at the same time. The bottle I tried was sent along courtesy of Tesco (cheers, Mary!), but I’ll definitely be purchasing up a few more next time I’m shopping at their place.

*Edit: Quick update from Mary @ Tesco: “It will be on shelf all year so will certainly be around for you to max it in the summer with the barbeques, especially if we have the scorching summer that’s been promised!”

Our local (Prestwich, Manchester) branch of Tesco has scored poor to middling for its bottled real ale section for some time, but I usually stroll down the appropriate aisle on the optimistic, but usually-disappointed, off-chance that they’ve managed to stock something interesting for a change.

So I was pleasantly surprised yesterday when I wandered on by and discovered a scattering of ‘NEW!’ shelf-tags in the section. Pick of the bunch had to be two from Flying Dog, not only their pack-leading Classic Pale Ale but also one of their speciality brews: Gonzo Imperial Porter. At 8.7% I’m betting that one packs something of a wallop and I’m looking forward to trying it (£2.49 a bottle, by the way, and I think it was £1.69 for the Classic Pale).

I also picked up a bottle of Budweiser Budvar Dark Lager, on the grounds that there’s always room for another Czech dark lager in the beer cupboard. And then, crossing the aisle to the UK real ale in a bottle section, I spotted a few that were new to Tesco but that I’d either already sampled or seen in Sainsburys. Although the, up in the top-right corner, I spotted a few bottles of Morrissey Fox Brunette, so I grabbed one of those for sampling as well. The beer cupboard is once again full to over-flowing and there’s another consignment on the way from BrewDog as well. I know, I know, I really need to drink more…

But yeah, anyway, head on down to your local Tesco – you might be able to pick up something new and interesting. And speaking of supermarkets, have Sainsbury’s cancelled this year’s real ale competition / promotion or something? Not a sniff of it in our local branch, and I haven’t heard anything about it on my regular-read blogs, either. Anyone know what happened there?

I’ve been stocking up on a few tasty ales to sample over the course of this year’s season of goodwill (and, hopefully, good ale) to all and sundry.

Firstly, the BrewDog Paradox Longrow and Paradox Springbank that I ordered the other day arrived this afternoon, along with a couple of very handsome BrewDog pint glasses. So that means I’ll have no fewer than four bottles of head-fucking rocket fuel potentially delicious strong stout to try over the Xmas break, for a start. Which is nice.

Added to that, I’ve got a bottle of Innis & Gunn Triple Matured (which Ed sampled recently), plus one of Wychwood‘s Plum Duff, which apparently isn’t their seasonal beer for December 2008: they have one called Winter’s Troll (see what they did there?) instead, but I haven’t seen any on the shelves of my regular supermarket haunts.

Speaking of beers not being on the shelves, I went looking for Morrissey Fox‘s seasonal ale – or their Best Bitter, which is meant to be a bit tasty – in my local Tesco the other day, but all they had was the blonde ale as usual. (Quick aside: you’d think that, what with all the attention they’d been drumming up for themselves recently, the MoFo boys would have bothered to update their website with something other than the same crappy holding page by now, eh?) Neither have I been able to find any of the Shepherd Neame Christmas Ale 2008 (which Ed also sampled recently).

Anyhow, back to the cupboard. There are a couple more strong ales in there that I’ve been saving for a dreary December day: Greene King’s Abbot Reserve and Morland Old Crafty Hen (also brewed by Greene King, although when I tried to find some official info online, I ended up stuck on their bloody infuriating Old Speckled Hen website) both of which look like they ought to be able to warm my cockles in fairly short order, all being well.

And I’m planning on revisiting Meantime‘s Winter Time in the near future and hope to take a more detailed set of notes than on my first attempt. I will, of course, be letting you know how I get on…

I didn’t intend to visit the beer aisles when I was in Tesco today, I’ve still got plenty of bottles to sample. However, I was running low on more regular beer; you know, ones I’ve had loads of times and can settle down and enjoy without the need to jot down notes for this place. So round I went and a little smile came to my face when I saw that all the ales and world beers are now 20% off. I did exercise some self-control so only came away with some bottles of the very fine Weihenstephaner wheat beer and Whitewater Brewery’s Clotworthy Dobbin. And they had just taken delivery of some William Bros Midnight Sun, so I’m home with a bottle of that as well.

The BBC website reported yesterday that UK beer sales are on the way down again – in pubs and off-licenses alike – to the tune of 7.2% year-on-year for July-September, according to figures from the British Beer and Pub Association.

The BBPA (or the BBC interpretation of the BBPA press release) was quick to blame the combined effects of the worsening economy and a 9% hike in duty on beer. I was surprised, though, that they didn’t make the rather obvious connection to the generally lousy weather we’ve had this “summer”. Surely that, coupled with the inability of any of the home nations’ football teams to qualify for the European Championship, would have had a fairly significant impact as well, no?

Anyhow, economic collapse and footballing ignominy aside, I’m happy to report that I’m still doing my bit, with a trip at the weekend to the (usually lamentably under-stocked) real ale section of the local Tesco which, to my surprise, resulted in the acquisition of no fewer than seven new (to me) interesting-looking bottled beers:

• Brewdog Punk IPA – recently reviewed and highly-rated over at The Beer Diary, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for this one.
• Morrissey Fox Blonde Ale – I actually had no idea when I picked this one up that it’s the subject of the new Channel 4 TV series Neil Morrissey’s Risky Business, which starts tonight. I’ll be watching that one via Sky+ later in the week.
• Williams Bros Midnight Sun – a rather interesting-looking porter from one of Ed & Joe’s favourite breweries (judging by the growing volume of their combined tasting notes to-date…)
• Farmer’s Harvest – a benefit ale for the NFU, but I’m not sure which brewery this is from as I couldn’t spot it anywhere on the bottle (or the NFU website).
• Jennings Golden Host – A premium ale from Cumbria.
• Orval – Belgian trappist ale; should be a good Autumn warmer.
• Pivovar Herold – Czech dark lager. One for the fridge.

There you go. Can’t say I’m not doing the best I can to help reverse that trend, eh?

Brewery: O’Hanlon’s
Location: Whimple, Devon, England
ABV: 5.0%
Version: 500ml bottle
Source: Tesco

I actually hope, for the sake of both brewer O’Hanlons (whose Port Stout I thoroughly enjoyed on the recommendation of both Ed and a best winter ales article in the Independent a while back) and the guy at Tesco who signed the contract, that this one had gone off in the bottle before I got to it. Because otherwise, what they have on their hands is a strange, sour-tasting, thoroughly nasty brew.

A light, hoppy aroma was promising enough, but the first taste had me grimacing and wondering whether I actually wanted to go any further. It possessed none of the sweetness and richness you often get from a stronger ales and definitely none of the “toffee and malt flavours derived from live conditioning” promised on the label. And yes, I did pour carefully to avoid sediment.

I struggled on for another few sips, but was eventually defeated as the taste just got more and more rank. About a fifth of the bottle went down under protest, but then the rest went down the sink and I turned to a trusty Hobgoblin to cleanse the palate and restore equilibrium.

Something very wrong here, surely? Alas, the only way to be sure would be to sample another bottle, and that’s not a risk I really feel like taking…