A few days late, I know, but April's Beer of the Month is a real cracker! It's Nogne-O's #100. A superb 10% abv Norwegian Barleywine (although it is also named as an IIPA), brewed to commemorate the company brewing their one hundredth batch of beer. Due to phenomenal demand (you just have to taste it to see why), they then made it again, and again. And again. It's now one of their regular beers. It is packed full of flavour and character, with a deep reddy brown hue and a smell of oak and bitter-sweet fruit. On the palate it is about as complex a beer as I've come across, and the depth of flavour is remarkable. Definitely not one to be missed. Nogne have also recently released their five hundredth batch, known as #500. This is a double IPA which is sure to be great!

Beer of the Month

My 'Beer of the Month' column starts today! These will lead up to a 'Beer of the Year' for 2012. Its the middle of the month, so I'll be posting March's beer of the month instead. Most BoM's will be posted at the end of each month.

March's BoM is actually a set of 4. Brewdog's 'IPA is Dead' is an exploration into the characteristics of 4 individual hop varieties; HBC, Motueka, Galaxy and Challenger. The beers are single hop IPAs built upon the same malt backbone with the same abv. I enjoyed all of the beers, but was particularly impressed with the motueka variety, which had an incredibly complex depth of flavour, combined with a tangy bitterness which gave it an extra kick. However, out of the four, Challenger was my favourite. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for a good old English bitter, but this beer, and this hop, brings back great memories of my first pint of a real ale, which just so happened to be a top notch English IPA. I love the wholesome, course taste that Challenger hops have, and this beer brought it all together perfectly. IPA is Dead shows that simplicity isn't always a bad thing!

   I strongly recommend you go out and grab a set of these great beers while they're still available! 

Ice Cold Beer

It's time for a rant I'm afraid, and this one is about, as you might have guessed from the title, ice cold beer. I just don't get it. Beer is something to be enjoyed, like a good wine, or a single malt whiskey, yet the most popular beers on the market today are sold at temperatures so cold that you genuinely cannot taste a thing when you drink them! Even worse, this is fast becoming the biggest selling point for beer! For example, Coors Light. Any time I watch anything on Youtube now I first have to listen to Jean-Claude Van Damme going on about how his testicles were frozen and even that wasn't as cold as Coors. And he's right, Coors is sold at near freezing, thus it's completely tasteless. Worse than Coors is the truly awful Harp. A speciality of my native Northern Ireland, Harp's big sell is the fact that they have achieved their 'lowest temperature yet', and are now serving their beer at temperatures below zero. In fairness, it's probably for the best that you can't actually taste it. I would dare even Bear Grylls to try a pint of this stuff at room temperature, it really is vile! So, I get why the beer is served so cold, because it's the only way it is at all stomach-able, but I just don't get why people buy it! Yea, it is refreshing on a hot day, but surely a nice bitter IPA would be so much better for quenching that thirst? And better still, an IPA actually tastes of something.

#rantover

Curim Gold Review

The Irish craft beer scene is really beginning to take off. Breweries such as Whitewater, Trouble Brewing, Hilden and 8 degrees are taking the island by storm and we beer-geeks are loving it! Something about the idea of craft beer just seems so naturally Irish, and we are taking to it like a fish to water. Obviously the beer scene as a whole is still dominated by one or two larger companies, and there is no doubt that we still have a very long way to go, but we are definitely moving in the right direction.

One brewery in particular is making huge leaps and bounds. The O'Hara brewery/Carlow brewing company opened in 1996 in Bagenalstown, County Carlow, and hasn't looked back since. They now brew over ten different beers and produce some of the most popular craft beers in Ireland.

One of these beers is 'Curim Gold Celtic Wheat Beer'. The beer pours a lovely golden colour, with almost perfect clarity and a pure white head. The head does disappear quite quickly but while it remains the beer looks nearly perfect. On the nose there are notes of grass and hops with just a hint of banana, creating a dry aroma with a little hint of sweetness. In the mouth the beer feels smooth at first, and the sweetness is what first catches the attention. The taste then develops into a fresh wheaty flavour as the more 'beery' side of Curim comes through. The finish is dry and refreshing, and the fresh grass tastes linger on the palate for some time after it's finished. The only downside is just a little bit of a skunky taste that sometimes comes through when you first taste the beer, but that does't take away from what is a great wheat ale. 

Curim goes well with all sorts of foods and Irish cheeses, and goes down equally well on its own! I personally am looking forward to long summer's evenings with a couple of bottles of this Irish Gold!

Scores

Looks    9

Smell    7

Mouthfeel   6

Taste   8

Overall   7.5

Drink Irish Craft Beer!

Brewdog

The UK is experiencing a true brewing revolution. The age of the cheap lager is over and the craft beer is taking its deserved place at the top of the pile. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Scotland. Beers ranging from a 4000 year old recipe for heather ale through to a 55% head melter called 'The End of History' make the Scottish craft beer scene one of the most diverse in the world. Breweries such as Williams Brothers, Innis and Gunn and the Orkney Brewery are showing what Scotland is capable of. However, one brewery in particular stands out as a true pioneer. Brewdog. 

The wee brewery up in Fraserburgh has made a huge impact on the craft beer scene since it was opened for business in 2007. It has shocked the brewing world on more than one occasion, brewing progressively stronger beers, culminating in the astonishing 55%abv 'End of History'. The brand's provocative marketing strategies and 'punk' image almost clash with the amount of care and attention that has clearly been put into the making of their beers. Their flagship brand, 'Punk IPA' is a brilliantly hoppy pale ale. Drinking it could be described as being like biting into a ripe grapefruit.

    Despite the rough image and extreme beers, the market for Brewdog beers isn't exactly niche. Brewdog is now Scotland's largest independent brewery, and bottles of Punk, along with more of their brands, can be seen on supermarket shelves right across the UK. This is a further sign that the general drinking public are now looking past the cheap lagers and generic mainstream beers and are looking for something different and new, which is something Brewdog can definitely offer.

Outside of the brands seen in supermarkets, there is a huge array of speciality beers. As mentioned, the brewery were involved in a 'beer war' with a German brewery, resulting in the two breweries competing for the title of the World's strongest beer. The beers which were produced were a freeze distilled stout, 'Tactical Nuclear Penguin' (32%), a quadrupel IPA named 'Sink the Bismark' (41%) and 'End of History', which also broke the record for the world's most expensive beer, retailing at £500/£700 depending on which bottle you wanted (the choices being a stoat or a grey squirrel). The beer which kicked it off, an 18.2% imperial stout called Tokyo* is probably more within the price range of an everyday drinker. Also notable is the brewery's experimental 'Abstrakt' series, as well as a number of collaborations with other breweries. 

James Watt, one of the two founders, clearly has a great business head on his shoulders, and knows that any publicity is good publicity, and their attention grabbing stunts, such as the arrival of a tank at the opening of the new Brewdog bar in Camden, goes to prove that they'll do anything to get a headline. Brewdogs image may be seen as a bit of a marketing gimmick, designed to catch the attention of a new generation of drinkers, but nonetheless, the brewery produces some damn good beer. I look forward to seeing what Bracken and the boys are going to bring us in 2012!

P.S- A Brewdog Bar on the Emerald Isle wouldn't go amiss ;-)

Cheers

American Wheat Beers

  Over the past week or so I've been thinking long and hard about what my 'favourite style' of beer is. I love big hitting American IPA's, you just can't go wrong with a biscuity, wholesome English Ale, and, of course, I'm always in the mood for a Guinness, but I've decided that, whilst I don't have a 'favourite style' as such, I do have a genuine love for wheat beers. Nothing is better on a cold afternoon than a stein of HefeweiBe and a bratwurst at the beer tent of a Christmas continental market. In saying that, a wheat beer goes down equally well on a lazy summer evening, served in a tall glass, with some cheeses and olives to nibble on. But when I think of wheat beers, I nearly always think of German or Belgian beers, like Unertl, Schneider WeiBe, Franziskaner or Hoegaarden. It's only very recently that I've begun to explore the variety of wheat beers and weizens from across the globe, and most notably, America.
    The first beer I tried was Goose Island's effort, 312 'Urban Wheat Ale'. 312 comes in at a pretty normal 4.2%abv, so no real surprises there. The first thing which struck me as I poured the beer was the appearance. Although this is an unfiltered beer, I still found that it was just a little transparent. I expected a swirling, opaque, yeasty foggyness and instead I found it was almost like a cloudy lager. The carbonation was very visible and the colour was a sort of golden straw colour rather than pale . This wasn't necessarily a negative point, it was just different from what I was initially expecting. The smell was infinitely more pleasing. It had notes of lemony zest and spices, along with heaps of wheaty aromas. This carried on into the taste, which was, again, quite lemony. It had a fair amount of aromatic hop flavours, with just a little sourness. It had flavour, but for some reason I found it to be just a little bland and lacking in kick. The liberty and cascade hops which were used just seemed to have been suppressed by the wheatyness. I wasn't expecting a pale-ale style bitterness, but just some sort of bite would have helped it.
  I found Sierra Nevada's Kellerweis was much closer to its European counterparts. It poured a hazier amber colour, and had a thicker, longer lasting head. The nose had banana with a hint of coriander, and plenty of spice. The brewers spent a long time looking for the perfect recipe before this beer was released in 2009, and the yeast strain which they eventually settled on gives this beer it's more German feel, with notes of bubblegum and clove coming through in the aroma. The taste is definitely more American however. It has the feel of a real craft beer, expertly made with real thought. The spices come to the fore and the flavour changes hugely in the mouth, going from coriander, to lemon, to bubblegum. The only downside to this great beer is the mouthfeel. I think there is just a little bit too much carbonation, which takes away from the smoothness I would expect from the style, this however is just a minor point and it doesn't take away from what is a very good effort at a wheat beer.
   Finally, I had a Blue Moon. Blue Moon is brewed by Molson Coors, so, whilst technically a 'craft beer' it isn't exactly micro brewed, nevertheless, I really enjoyed it. It pours a more orangey colour than the other two, with a really good, bubbly head. On the nose it has huge orange and coriander aromas, which are amplified when the beer enters the mouth. The citrus and orange flavours work really well with the tartness provided by the wheat, to give a really good all round taste. The mouthfeel is smooth and the overall style of the beer is more akin to a Belgian weizen. So much so, in fact, that in 1999 the Confederation des Brasseries de Belgique filed a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of 'misleading the public' with regards to the beer's origin.
   So, out of the three I think Blue Moon was the personal favourite, although I still think a tall glass of Aventinus is very hard to beat! I look forward to trying more wheat beers from the U.S and further afield, but for my next one I'm coming a little closer to home, for a Curim Gold Irish Wheat Beer. I'm looking forward to it!

Westmalle Dubbel Review

 The Westmalle brewery, based in Westmalle, Belgium, is one of the last remaining truly Trappist breweries. The abbey has held the Trappist label since 1836, and their first beer was brewed in the same year. The Trappist code requires that the abbeys survive on enterprise rather than charity, so many of them chose to brew. As with most of the Trappist abbeys, Westmalle also produce their own range of cheeses, which I am sure would go excellently with their beers. Today, although still officially a Trappist brewery, most of the work is done by workers in a secular setting, separate from the abbey, however 22 Trappist monks still supervise the brewery's activity.
  Anyway, on to the beer. Faced with the choice of a Tripel or Dubbel, I was quite stumped, so was eventually reduced to a game of eeny-miny-mo, and came up with the Dubbel. It poured a wonderful cloudy dark colour, with some hints of redness when held up to a light. At 7% it had a surprisingly thick head which laced the glass almost perfectly as I drank the beer. The nose was rich and fruity, but managed to keep a hoppy dryness which I have come to expect from darker Belgian ales. In the mouth I was hit by the aromatic flavours and soft mouth-feel. The flavour wasn't as robust as I had imagined it would be, but this didn't take away from the fact that this was a truly exquisite beer. Easily quaffable and remarkably smooth, this one would go perfectly with some soft cheese, or even possibly a lighter meat dish. I'm now really looking forward to the Tripel!

Scores
Presentation(Packaging)   8
Pour/Colour                     9
Nose                               8
Taste                               8
Mouthfeel                        9

Overall                           8.5/10