New Arrival: BrewDog Abstrakt:09

My three-bottle Abstrakt Addikts Club subscription of the latest in BrewDog’s generally rather excellent Abstrakt series arrived safe and sound on Monday.

One bottle has been squirrelled away in the ‘maturing nicely’ cupboard, another has been put out of sight at the back of the high shelf in the main beer cupboard to develop for a year or so and I’ll crack open the third at the earliest opportunity, so I can try it young. Which might happen this Friday evening, or maybe the weekend after.

BrewDog have been a bit tardy in updating the Abstrakt website, but I did find some info on the brew in a blog post back in March:

“The Cranachan Imperial Stout [AB:09] was inspired by the famous Scottish desert [I think they mean "dessert", but you never know with BrewDog], brewed with a mountain of dark malts, loads of oats, Scottish Heather Honey, local raspberries and has been aged in grain whisky casks. Whilst brewing, ingredients certainly tasted pretty spectacular.”

I’ll just bet they did. And I shall report back on the finished product in due course.

Manchester Cross-Town Session, 12.05.12

Saturday night just gone, Jo and I hatched a plan: start at one end of the City Centre and wander our way across to the other, with the following scheduled stops: a first-time visit to Cask on Liverpool Street, then down to Peter Street to check out the brand, spanking new BrewDog Manchester. After that, round the corner to Tampopo to fuel up on asian fusion cuisine. Then to The Bank for another swift one. Finally, wind up at The Port Street Beer House for a session-closer or two. Two new pubs, two old favourites, food in the middle: sorted! Or so we thought…

Cask

Our first visit to Cask – we’d heard good things about Cask for years, but just never seemed to get around to visiting. Not much to look at from the outside, but the deceptively-small frontage opens up inside into a long, comfortably-appointed bar/pub with a beer garden / smokers’ area out back. Five handpulls, one of which was being changed, but no problem for either of us when it came to finding a session-starter.

Jo: Facer’s North Star Porter (4.0% ABV)
Chocolate flavours up front, followed by a big hit of coffee all the way to the finish. Very pleasant indeed.

Me: Ilkley Mary Jane (3.8% ABV)
A classic golden ale with a crisp citrus-sharp hop profile on a light biscuity malt base. Very, very close in flavour to Marble Pint, which is a perennial favourite. I thoroughly enjoyed it (but Jo wasn’t so sure, she’s really not a hop-head…)

Good pub, good beer. Our first visit won’t be our last.

BrewDog Manchester

Jo: Nothing…
Me: Nothing…

Here’s the thing. The place was jumping when we got there, all seats taken, decent crowd standing in the marked-off area out front, but still room for a couple more at the bar, so we sidled on up. That’s when we ran into difficulties. The beer selection was, as usual, impressive: lots of BrewDog favourites to choose from – Zeitgeist, Punk IPA, an Abstrakt or two, Riptide (which I adore) but for Jo? Someone who’s not much of a hop-head and didn’t really want even a half of a 5%+ ABV beer before food? Nada. Not a drop. The lass behind the bar was as helpful as she could be, searching through the bottle fridges for something that might be palatable, but the best she could come up with was a 5.8% imported stout (I forget which one) at £7 a bottle, or the aforementioned Zeitgeist… but Jo’s really not keen on lager yeast and it’s still 5.8% or so ABV.

So we left again, our thirst un-slaked. Just bad luck, I’m sure – on another night, we might have found the 3.8% ABV version of RipTide that BrewDog have brewed in the past, or one of their occasional session-strength beers. And I’m not complaining or saying that BrewDog should cater to all tastes – their thing is the high-end, occasionally silly-strength craft beers, after all – but still, there was definitely a gap in their offering there, in the session stout / dark mild / malty session beer segment of the beer spectrum. Ah well, so it goes. I’ll be back with a couple of my hop-head friends at some point, but it seems unlikely that Jo and I will become regulars.

(Also: £4.25 for a pint of Punk IPA. I know the government keeps putting the beer duty up, but still. It’s not like they have to pay a middle-man’s cut on that one, is it? Just sayin’…)

Next: food. Tampopo. Recommended.

At which point, fuelled up and still in search of our second ale of the night, we deviated slightly from the original plan and swung by:

The Waterhouse

A semi-regular haunt, this Wetherspoons pub is usually a safe bet for a good selection and a decent quality pint. So it proved on the night, with seven or eight cask ales to choose from and at a very reasonable £2.35 a pint, too.

Jo: Summer Wine Resistance Dark Mild (3.7% ABV)
A hint of chocolate and a coffee tang on the aftertaste – but not too sour – this dark mild was quite pleasantly drinkable.

Me: Hawkshead Rhodes to Kilimanjaro (4.4% ABV)
I’ll always try a new Hawkshead ale if I spot one. This one was a mid-amber malt-led red ale / bitter with a good dollop of hops following through. At least, it was to begin with, but that sharp, dry after-taste continued to steadily build, so by the end of the pint the malt was a lot less dominant. I enjoyed it. Not as all-out fantastic as Lakeland gold, mind, but worth a try.

After that we wandered on up to The Bank, but their four or five ales were all pretty un-inspiring. We tried Kro in Piccadilly as well, but likewise their four cask hand-pulls were all a bit samey, so we kept going up to:

The Port Street Beer House

One of our all-time favourite three Manchester pubs (along with The Angel and The Marble Arch – the exact order depends on which one we visited last), the place wasn’t as busy as usual for a Saturday night (folks checking our BrewDog, perhaps? Or saving themselves for the big, season-deciding matches the day after, maybe?). The options looked good on arrival, vis-a-vis a session stout for Jo: Dark Star Sussex Stout on cask had to be a winner, but alas that one ran out just as the bloke before me at the bar was ordering one. So for our first round we went with:

Jo: Mikkeller Dry Stout (4.1% ABV)
On keg rather than cask and Jo’s not a huge fan of keg stouts, but it was pretty much the only sensible option, so that’s what she ended up with. Pleasant enough, if a bit cold & fizzy was the verdict. Jo not massively impressed.

Me: Hardknott Code Black (5.6% AV)
A Hardknott beer I’d not tried before? Bring it on! This one was flavoursome and fruity with distinct blackcurrant notes and assorted dark sugars. Not much in the way of hops, but there was a slight dryness in there, somewhere. Was this some sort of milk stout or dark mild? I Googled… nope. A Black IPA, apparently. If so, then it was the sweetest one I’ve had so far. Still drinkable, but I couldn’t help wondering whether it might have been on the turn…

Next round, and they’d made a couple of changes on the hand-pulls so I came back from the bar with three halves that we sipped between us:

Phoenix Monkeytown Mild (3.9% ABV)
A light, creamy, sweet, easy-drinking mild. Inoffensive and suppable, but just a little on the bland side…

Mallinson’s Chocolate Stout (4.1% ABV)
Likewise a light, creamy, dark beer with a hint of dark chocolate & a flash of coffee on the after-taste. Again though, a little slight, not as much roasty malt as either Jo or I like to find in a stout.

Hardknott Colonial Mayhem (8.1% ABV)
It was mostly me sipping this one, I confess. Described as a “colonial mild with juicy new world hops”. It was boozy, wweet, fruity, slightly fizzy, had a good mouth-feel and a touch of cough-sweets and red wine in the flavour department. It was tasty and more-ish (which at 8.1% is potentially a bit tricky…) but it was just a tad too cold – that keg dispense again – so I think I’ll have to track down a bottle or two sometime in order to appreciate the full effect.

After that we called it a night and headed home for a cuppa.

Not a bad session, all things considered. The walk from the far end of Deansgate to Piccadilly basin is a little daunting on paper, but in practice, with four or five pit-stops en-route, it’s both manageable and a pleasant way to spend a summer evening that includes a bit of sedate exercise into the bargain. I reckon we’ll be making a few repeats of that one over the next few months and we’re already working on variations to take account of BrewDog’s likely lack of session options: Knott Bar – Cask – Tampopo – Bank/Kro – Port Street is one. Another would be Cask – Gaslamp – food (Tampopo Triangle or Baekdu on Shude Hill) – The Angel – Marble Arch is another. Or maybe BrewDog will fill that gap of theirs and we’ll become regulars there after all. Who knows? Time will tell.

Beer Notes: Adnams Ghost Ship (redux)

Last September, Adnams launched a bottled version of their Ghost Ship pale ale and sent me a sample, which I tried and enjoyed at the time, but haven’t seen anywhere since.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that is, when Adnams dropped me a line to say that they were launching their new bottled ale, Ghost Ship and would I like a sample? Experiencing a moment of déja vu, I said I’d already tried and liked it, so I’d feel slightly cheeky blagging another freebie. Turns out Adnams had other ideas and weren’t going to take no for an answer: they even sent two bottles, in separate packages, just to make sure. Which was very generous of them indeed, and it would have been rude of me not to give this one another go. So I did.

I was very happy indeed to re-discover that Adnams Ghost Ship is a very good bottled ale indeed. This time around there’s a substantial blast of malt on the nose as the bottle-cap cracks and it poured a light amber-gold, with a light effervescence. Flavour-wise it’s a spot-on blend of deep malt with a sharp, almost lemony-citrus bite and a pleasantly dry after-taste. Last time I mentioned it was a little thin on the mouth-feel, but this time around that didn’t seem to be a problem on that front: for a session-strength ale it was nicely rounded.

I hope Ghost Ship turns up in our local Sainsbury’s before too long, because I’d happily buy it on a regular basis, along with the other session ales I always seem to have in the beer cupboard: Hook Norton Hooky Gold, Williams Bros Caesar Augustus, Black Sheep Ale, that sort of thing. And if I spot it on draught any time then I’ll be in there like a shot. Yep. Very good indeed.

Beer Notes: Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale

I picked up this bottle of the Stone Brewing Co.‘s Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale from Utobeer down in London a while back. It had been lurking in my ‘special’ beer cupboard for long enough, so I decided to crack it open and give it a go a couple of weekends ago.

It poured a gorgeous dark chestnut-red colour and was just slightly cloudy – perhaps I wasn’t as careful as I thought I was with the sediment – which probably accounted for the rich, thick mouth-feel. Not much aroma going on, but plenty of big, big flavours: initially a burst of sweet toffee and marsala wine, quickly cut through with a cherry, or maybe citrus sharpness that gave way to a long, dry finish and a lingering tannin sour note that became more pronounced as it went on. For that reason it reminded me more of a Belgian red than anything else.

I don’t think I’ve drunk enough oaked vs un-oaked variants of the same beer to be able to say with confidence what effect the oaking had, but perhaps that sourness was its main legacy. If so, it didn’t spoil the experience, but I think I could live with a slightly sweeter, richer flavour profile. Perhaps that’s what the un-oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale delivers? I’ll have to track one down and find out.

One of those beers that I found very, very interesting indeed and I’m glad I tried, but not a beer I’d want to drink every day of the week.

Levellers Album Launch Party, June 25th, The Garage, London

Speaking of everyone’s favourite crusty folk-rockers The Levellers (as I was) they’ve announced that they’ll be holding an album launch party at The Garage in London on June 25th. You can buy tickets from HMV and if you pre-order a copy of the album at the same time, you can save yourself £7.00.

Or if, like me, you’re not going to be anywhere near London on June 25th, you can catch them on their November tour, with support band Citizen Fish.

Very Good Times at the Forever Bury Beer Festival

Jo and I did indeed head on up to the Forever Bury Social Club at Gigg Lane on Friday to give the Forever Bury Beer Festival a go. And we had a bloody marvelous time.

It was £2 on the door (with a CAMRA discount) and we picked up a tenner’s worth of beer tokens, which would be good for five pints between us (how’s that for value?). The social club’s bar area had been transformed in to a pretty impressive beer cellar, with eight hand-pumps and another thirty or so kegs dispensing gravity-style so it looked as though most of the festival’s ales were on offer at the same time.

Jo made a bee-line for the dark beers, starting with Loch Ness Dark Ness, a 4.5% session stout with a dry-roast character and a decent dollop of chocolate in the malt base. She moved on to try Leyden Black Pudding – a 3.8% mild with plenty of chocolatey malt flavour – and Peakstone’s Rock Black Hole – a 4.8% chestnut-coloured bitter which was good, if a bit on the sharp side – but it was the Dark Ness that she went back to for a couple more halves towards the end of the night.

Meanwhile, I’d decided to stick to the session bitters as I wasn’t really in the mood for widespread sampling. I tried a pint of Tonbridge Rustic – a 4% thirst-quencher that was mostly malt-led with a nicely dry finish – and Sulwarth Brewers’ The Grace – a 4.3% bitter with a light, citrus-hop flavour and a smooth, buttery finish. But the star of the show was undoubtedly the Hawkshead Bitter. Partly because it was rather excellent – a spot-on marriage of hop-sharpness and satisfyingly well-rounded malt – and partly because it was free. Yup. Free Hawkshead bitter, courtesy of a local hairdresser who had sponsored the cask and was merrily handing out a stack of half-pint vouchers. Three pints’ worth managed to find their way into my grubby mitts and thence across the bar, leaving me a very happy chap indeed.

And here’s a thing you don’t find at every beer festival you go to: every single one of those beers was in tip-top condition, very well kept and served at perfect temperature. I tweeted on the night that it was the best-kept festival beer I’d tasted outside of a bar run by Tandleman, and I stand by that. Very good indeed and the best possible advert for a return trip next year.

Jo and I were heartlily entertained as well, both by rock covers band Restrospex who belted out a string of ’60s – ’80s classics on stage, and by the two leery old geezers we ended up sitting next to (can we pick ‘em, or can we pick ‘em?) one of whom was on his fourth pint of 6.5% perry (after five of Carling at a funeral earlier, apparently) and regaled us with tales of his thirty year career in globetrotting, smuggling and touring European prisons (I suggested “Around Europe in 25 Gaols” as the title for his proposed autobiography). The other chap was just as far gone but seemed content to chat amiably and occasionally inform us that his companion was “full of bullshit”. We didn’t mind though, especially as they were both on the cider and so were happy to donate their Hawkshead Bitter tokens (cheers, fellas!)

All in all: a bloody good night, one we’ll look forward to repeating in twelve months’ time.

Forever Bury Beer Festival 2012 – tonight and tomorrow…

I’ve been extremely remiss in not yet mentioning that this weekend it’s the 8th annual Forever Bury Beer Festival, which is on at Bury FC Social Club, Gigg Lane, Bury (home of the mighty Shakers!*)

Here are the details, in case you’re anywhere near a Metrolink tram-line or a Bury-bound bus-route and fancy supping from a range of tasty ales and ciders at just £2 a pint, whilst doing your bit to support a grass-roots football club that’s constantly fighting to survive in the shadow of the two biggest teams in the Premiership.

Jo and I will most likely be nipping down there this evening. See you there!

*I know, I know, it’s a bloody silly nickname. I mean, who nicknames their football team after an obscure nineteenth-century religious sect, for crying out loud? Well, apart from Darlington F.C., of course, who are in the same boat. Mind you, it could be worse. As far as I remember, Leeds United’s official nickname is ‘The Loiners’. Funny how you don’t hear “Come on the Loiners!” echoing around Elland Road when you see them on Sky Sports…

Raise the Roof: Music, Ale and Fundraising for the East Lancs Railway

Definitely one for any Greater Manchester-based steam + ale / music + ale / steam + music + ale enthusiasts out there: the East Lancashire Railway is holding a fundraising event on 21st July 2012 to raise money to help restore the nineteenth century station canopy at Bury’s Bolton Street Station.

The venue is The Trackside – in its own right probably the best real ale venue in Bury (unless there’s a W’spoon’s Festival on at The Robert Peel) – and for the evening of the 21st, the station and pub will play host to a selection of musical talent, as per the Raise the Roof page on the East Lancs website:

6.30pm: Dr Butlers Hatstand Medicine Band – eccentric band that defies description
7pm: The Cheap Cuts – power pop trio
8pm: The Arizonas – four indie rock and roll musicians
9pm: Loop Asnavour – weird, wired and wonderful post punk pop
10pm: Cellar Machine – popular five piece indie covers band
11pm: Molly Bloom – Trackside regulars and purveyors of folksy alternative music

Tickets are only a fiver and the craic promises to be mighty. With any luck, Jo and I will see you there.

Beer Notes: Chimay Grande Réserve 2010

I’ve had this bottle of Chimay Grande Réserve in the cupboard for a while now, I think it came as part of a Belgian mixed case I ordered sometime towards the end of 2010. This Saturday just gone I opened up this 750ml beauty and decanted it into a jug (there was a lot of sediment in there that I didn’t fancy mixing back in to a second glass).

This one poured a lovely, deep, reddish chestnut colour and was lightly effervescent, with a gently frothy head that didn’t last long.

First sip: very, very sweet indeed, but with a savoury edge, like salted caramel. After a few more sips, complex fruit flavours came to the fore: raspberry, blackberry, that sort of thing – which matched up with the slightly sticky mouth-feel – and the spicy finish became more peppery as the beer warmed up. And it was big, bold and boozy throughout, as you’d expect from a beer weighing in at 9% ABV.

Very pleasant indeed. I wonder what the 2011 vintage is like? I think I spotted a bottle in the Microbar in Manchester last time I was there…

Beer Notes: Storm Brewing Hurricane Hubert

See that? That’s most of a pint of Hurricane Hubert from Storm Brewing, that is (with a half of something ending in ‘Tup’ lurking in the background). Jo and I were down in Cheshire yesterday, doing some civilised, middle-aged stuff for my birthday, which included a pub lunch at The Wizard in Nether Alderley and those were the two cask ales they had on offer.

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