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