Beer Blog & Beer Reviews

I’ve been taking note of some of the news and entertainment stories around Beer today. This is a list of the ones which I thought people might want to read:

• Copper Dragon blaze through the credit crunch - Real Ale Reviews
• It may be served warm, but real ale is becoming cool - Times Online
• British breweries make a comeback - Yorkshire Post.
• Gales Seafarers Ale launches in a bottle - Fullers
• Beer events Finder - Real ale Talk
• Michelin Pub of the Year - BBC

PS. Next time I do this I will try to keep track of where I got the links so i can credit those involved. But for today just enjoy.

The unassuming little brown bottle Aventinus with purple and silver trim labels smells like crazyness when you open it!

Aventinus Eisbock all the way from Europe via EuroDog

To look at its a very dark brown. Mine has no head to talk of, but maybe I’ve poured it wrong…

It smells like creamy white beer infused with chocolate and raspberries. Aventinus Eisbock smells like it might be quite bitter with notes of white chocolate, maybe a little cherry flavour in the smell too.

I’m pleased I have tried this just for smelling it. I cant wait to taste it!

Tasting the Eisbock

Holly Batmans Corby Press!!! that is strange. It has no flavour for half a second then all sorts of madness happens.

All of the flavour comes after you swallow the stuff. You realise its highly alcoholic as soon as you swallow a drop. It warms you up very quickly, the after taste being like a bottle of chimay but in a condensed format. Its strangely like bitter, sweet, alcoholic black forest cherry to me but with the complex flavour found in a lot of triples and dunkel beers.

If you take your time and savour the flavours you can actually get through to a level where the wheat tastes come through and take place at the very end.

Aventinus Eisbock is a formidable beer not for the feint hearted or the light headed. Its strong flavours, high strength possibly make it a once in while beer for the extreme cold in winter.

Winter is Coming, What Are You Drinking?

With the winter coming some good darker ales are in order! Here is safe and tasty bet, St Austell’sAdmirals Ale.

The last time I drank one of these I was on BBC Radio Tees talking about homebrew and the beer blog. Lisa McComick liked the St Austells ale describing it as dark chocolatey and complicated.

St Austells Admirals Ale

According to bottle:

Brewed in cornwall, to celebrate the 200th anaversery of nelsons victory at trafalgar in 1805. It was at the St Austells blue anchor Inn that the kings messenger carrying news of the battle, first stopped for refresehment on his long journey from cornwall to london.

Admiral ale glugs out of the bottle dark brown with a slightly off white head.

It smells sugary and burnt, deep and dark. I apologise I have a bit of a cold and a blocked nose, so my nose might be tricks on me.

Admirals ale has a light mouth feel, its not thick and viscous like I thought it would be.

It tastes like choclotae and charcoal, malted oats and brown ale. The head lasts about as long as an ice cream at a vindiloo chuging contest and disapears leaving no trace. Pour all the yeast in your glass if you like the bitter yeast tastes.

Apparently Admirals ale is made by using local grains especially malted using a unqiue kilining process for intense flavors. The result is the usual complex deep and intense falvors, non of which are overpowering. St austell balance the flavors with the skill of a old circus tight rope walker from a circus.

In the comming winter months I can imagine I will be having a few more of these.

Opening Maisels Weisse

Opening the bottle shows medium to high amounts of carbonation (fizzyness). Pouring it shows it to be a head happy beer with a dark straw colour and white head.

Maisel weisse Bottle

As with all weisse and white beers (especially a hefeweizen I like this) it looks cloudy. This particular weisse isnt as cloudy as some others like floris or meantime wheat.

What does the weisse smell like?

It has the traditional wheat/wisse/wit smell in droves with the smell finishing with a malty digestive note. It’s almost like banana cheese cake base but with all the usual weisse notes too.

What does Maisels Weisse taste like?

All of the lovely wheaty flavors are there on first taste, the flavors are on your tongue as soon as it hits your mouth. Some wheat beers can have a musty, sweaty taste and smell but maisels weisse happily is missing those sour notes.

I can taste more malt in this than ususal with weisse/wit beers, but with a smooth mellow wheat flavor th biscuity malt blends well with the wheat to make a good rounded beer.

Trying to think about individual flavors there are: dried banana, very slight cloves and crème, plus the usual wheaty ‘yeastyness’. Almost like a savory desert beer.

Some times when you drink beer you can tell right away its quality and that you are going to enjoy every drop of it you ever drink untill the day you die, well this is one of those beers and seriously challenges some of my long held favorites for a place in my favourite beers.

If you take all of the good bits from Leffe, Floris Wit, meantime wheat and add make them into a smooth, seriously tasty beer thats not only easy to drink, but has very good flavor and body then you might be able to imagine maisel’s Weisse. It even tastes good ‘on the burp’.

Summary

Smooth flavors and feel, rounded and balanced, easy going but with plenty of flavors.

This is the sort of beer I made this blog to talk about. Its foreign, interesting, imported, fantastic to taste and out of the ordinary. I might not have known about it if it were not for the Continually kind and knowledgeable people at purity brewery, so again thank you to them for importing this wonderful beer.

Disagreement in the camp?

I’ve heard people say the flavors aren’t strong enough in it which is all well and good if your are drinking beer for the sake of being arty and poncey, but I drink beers looking for a beer to enjoy regardless of the snobbery, I just want something that tastes good and this is it. if you want a challenging you can drink some overpowering, brutal beer, but this to me is beer for the ordinary beer lover who drinks beers of all kinds of beers and loves it because they taste good, not becasue they are challenging and intellectual.

You can get Maisels Weissen from Purity Brewery along with some other great imported beers.

This bank holiday weekend has been a festival of fun and beer, after it all I have finally got some time to myself to enjoy a cold beer watch Dr. Doolittle on my own. Good Times.

St Austell's Clouded Yellow Wheat Beer

When Im winding down after a busy weekend I like to have a nice cooling wheat beer, so on this occasion I’ve reached for a bottle of St Austells Yellow Clouded to try for the first time.

The bottle has a nice butterfly on the front which is the “Clouded Yellow” from which the beer takes its name.

“The Clouded Yellow is a migratory butterfly from Europe which usually settles in the southern counties. When winter comes the adults either die or migrate south.”

St Austells Clouded Yellow can be poured either clouded (like the butterfly) or clear, if you pour it VERY slowly. Bening the kind of person I am; the more ‘cloud’ yeast the better is what I say.

So i’ve just chucked it in the glass. It might just me being ham fitsted without the bottle but it opens with a lot of fizz.

Im so glad it did fizz up though becuase I tried a little of the fizzy head and it tasted like fizzy sherbert. nice!

Poring this out it really is a fizzy little beer. It throths up quite a bit.

There isn’t much smell to it, which is supprising as there is lot of fiz coming off it. once you get a lead on the smell it is very bananna-ery and wheat/creamy.

The bananna, clove and vanilla falvors make Clouded Yellow a nice sweet drink, its got a nice medium mouth feel which is only very slightly viscous.

Imagine a cooked, spiced bananna blended into a glass with a good glug of regular wheat beer and a very thin slice of lemon. If i had never read the bottle or seen the website I would have said this is simething like a wheaty bananna cider beer [That is a Tecnical description ;o)].

Skip dessert with your next meal and drink one of these. Or, apparently its good with fish!