Beer Blog & Beer Reviews

On-line beer purveyor My Brewery Tap has launched a money off discount voucher for its Mixed Case Beer Sets.

We are currently discounting our best selling mixed case, an offer which we launched at this years Great British Beer Festival.

The case usually costs £24.99 (+ £5.99 p&P) but can be yours for just £21.24 (just £1.63 a bottle excluding p&p!) To claim the discount enter the discount code (GBBF15) in the coupon field in the checkout when purchasing one of our mixed brewery cases.

The case currently contains some fantastic award winning beers from around the country, including bottles of the Dark Star’s ‘Espresso Stout’, Ossett Brewery’s light and hoppy ‘Excelsior’ and Hogs Back Brewery’s ‘T.E.A’.

To see a full list of the current cases contents click here. As always we’ve also included tasting notes to help you enjoy your beers.

This is likely a limited time offer, so get em’ while they are hot!

I am really considering buying this mixed case myself.

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.

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!

Veltins Pilsner comes in a great botttle. It’s 500ml, Green and has Veltins Pilsner’s Brand Embossed on the neck. Its tall and thin. The Label is classy if not uninspiring.

Veltins Pilsner

An interesting Veltins beer fact is…

“Veltins owns the naming rights to the football stadium of FC Schalke 04 in Gelsenkirchen. It is one of the most modern stadiums in Europe and hosted matches in the 2006 FIFA World Cup.” now that is a beer AND football fact.

I served my Veltins Pilsner slightly chilled, I wanted it to be refreshing but also wanted to be able to taste it.

Veltins Pilsner pours like it should, its a very very clear and pale fizzy yellow. It smells as I would expect but it doest have any harsh alocholoic notes in the nose. It actully smells more malty, and a little largery as you would expect.

The head holds OK, but it is clearly mostly the gas forming up the bubbles without any particles in the liquid holding them together. Its invevtable with a beer this clear and in this style really.

Veltins Pilsner Taste

Now that is seriously good! Its like british largers bigger, older more refined brother. That is suprising to me. All of the tosh larger you get over here, and even the pilsners you can commonly get, are all flavorless piss water (to use the common parlence).

Its not actually that fizzy and has a much fuller more rounded taste than I expected. I can just imagine sitting in Le Mans town centre watching the old car parade drinking this under the french mid day sun.

The flavors go like this: First is very slight harshness as the co2 bubbles hit your tounge and relsease flavor with it, then you get a little bit of bitterness then a little bit of sweetness then a nice warming sesatation as it glides down your throat leaving you with a hoppy after taste as a good bye present.

The malt and barley tastes come through about mid way through the bitter/sweet phase of the drink leaning towards the sweetness.

One thing against the Veltins is that the long term aftertaste leaves something to be desired. Its just like a normal largers but with a consolation of a bit of saaz hop bite at the back of your throat.

This isn’t my usual fare and I will be honest its not a bottle I would normaly pick up if I were in a in a shop or on a website. But for the style of beer, and for the hot summers or even dare I say it the first pint after a “hard days work” its a cracker.

Take this to your larger drinking mates and give them a bottle. The charateristics that Veltins Pilsner shares with theor usual pint will make sure they are not scared off but the added flavors maltyness, hops, roundedness and complexity of the Veltins Pilsner will open there eyes to bigger better things.

If I was forced to compaire it to somehting the average person might recognise I would say its most like Nastro Azzurro by Peroni, but with more malt, hops and flavor in general. Serve chilled at as close to 5pm as possable or with Good helping of the old UV.

I am going to end this post on another beer fact:

“The first batch of modern pilsener was produced on 5th October 1842 by Josef Groll in the town of Pilsen from the Citzens Brewery (Bürger Brauerei)” Thats another beer fact!

You can get Veltins Pilsner from Purity Brewery along with some other great imported beers.

The beer community (especially on twitter) continues to blow me away with the staggering kindness and willingness to help you just don’t see often at all when you live in middlesbrough (UK) and work in advertising.

Today I am so impressedm going to give a Should Out to the people who have made me feel welcome and to the people who are often selfless and kind.

• @EuroDog: I Only met you yesterday and you have been very kind in finding me a relativly rare beer type in the UK and offering it to me. Thank you.
• @RealAleReviews: Thans for so Kindly Sending me a bottle of Rudgate Ruby Mild, you had better come up north soon so I can pay you back the favor
• @ChilliUpNorth: Cheers. He is a very welcoming guy willing to share his knowledge and jokes all day long.
• @beerMerchants: Thank you for the Promocodes and banter around the topic of beligain beer.
• Purity Brewery: Thank you for engaging with your Fans so personally and kindly
• Plus many more

Very nice offer from EuroDog

GBBF 2009 Champion Beer

I had been following the GBBF 2009 with unmitigated amounts envy and so when the over all winner was announced as “rudagte Ruby Bold” I decided I would stop at no length to get some.

Luckily for me a nice guy on Twitter called @RealAlereviews was visiting Beer ritz in Leeds (UK) and agreed to post me a bottle. So thank you to you sir!

Rudgate Ruby Mild. Beer of Britain?

Now I’ve always thought Rudgate was a Novelty brewery, I figured it was born form the near by Viking Centre toutist attraction. But after this bottle I might have to change my views.

Opening The bottle

It has a lively opening, do be careful not to let it fizz over.

There is a strong smell as soon as the bottle is open, even at half an arms length away.

The smell is two part as you inhale it. 1st) It smells sweet and ‘beery’ 2nd) caramel and very slightly treacle smells.

Pouring It

It pours dark and the head likes to come up fizzy and caramel brown. The beer is not black but its very dark. You can barely see a hint of brown as light travels through it.

There isn’t much hop smell but as you put it to your mouth to taste you get another blast of that wonderful strong burnt flavor.

Drinking the Ruby Mild

mmm… nice, from the smell and looks I thought it would be thick and viscous drink but its a good light consistency. The flavours are nice and light. The types of flavors in this beer are really bold flavors but in manageable amounts.

The malt and lightly burnt sugar comes through first, then lastly comes a light treacle flavor (especially on the breath). If I were brave I might even suggest a little licorice flavour buried deep in the beer hiding behind the other flavors. But I’m not so you will have to decide for yourselves.

This definitely isn’t a light summary beer in my opinion. Its a beer to drink in a low ceiling pub near a fire and a dog possibly playing a game of dominoes (you not the play playing dominoes).

These aren’t the types of flavors I usually go for (burnt dark sugars), or even like, because they are usually so strong and overbearing but in Ruby Mild they are light and airy. If you do try to drink dirty great big mouthfuls of this the flavors will intensify mind and give you a huge flavor.

My Ruby Mild Review

Yes it is a good beer, is it the best in Britain? Maybe in its category, but I’m not sure about best in Britain.

Now I can be cynical if I try and if I didn’t know any better I might say that Ruby Gold winning gold might be an attempt to re-invigorate the mild style of beer which has been less popular in recent times.

Anyway Its a good beer, its not my favorite style, but it is clearly made with skill and care as its not just another ale, it does have some good qualities which I didn’t expect. So maybe try it for yourself and see what you think.

Purity Brewery: UBU Ale

UBU premium amber ale is quaintly named after purity brewery’s unfaithful companion, UBU the dog.

“god love him the dog is mad. But an inspiration to all who enjoy doing what they do and want to be love for being what they are”

The UBU label has a distinctive Typographic style with a sketched dog which will site well with younger drinkers and stand out on shelf. You can also spot it from above by there red star logo.

If you care to join them on face book their infamous dog ubu has his own face book group to join.

Opening UBU

UBU does Not have much fizz but it pours with a good head with a bit of encouragement.

UBU has a Lovely hoppy smell, it smells like it will be quite hoppy. This defiantly has a strong smell off cascade hops.

The head dies off UBU quite quickly leaving some residue on top of the amber colour beer.

Does UBU’s Bite Match the Bark?

The Ale has a good hoppy flavor at first which mellows out into, the smell that comes through when drinking is like sweet fruit bread, brown sugar, malt loaf.

The bittering is medium on the palette the malt is simple and clean. I like the lack of fuss that this beer comes with. Its a basic amber ale with a sort of normal pint thing about it, but with extra flavor especially as you drink it more and more.

Could UBU be Adictive?

This beer improves consistently with the amount of it you drink. As you get used to the taste it changes and almost matures in your mouth and it becomes more flavorsome and full. I think it must have some some nefarious additive agent in it!

Conclusion

I am a big fan of Beers with plenty of aroma hops and this is right up my street. UBU is a honest beer with honest flavors and for a pint to drink in a pub I would be chuffed if it was a regular on the pumps.

Purity Brewery Pure Gold ale is a premium ale made in a eco friendly way.

Green beer means beer made with as little impact on nature as possible, not to be confused with the drinks often made on St patrick’s day by adding green food colouring.

Purity Brewery Pure Gold Ale

The Official Line on Pure Gold

Talking to the brewers the say “We say it’s an easy drinking beer with a lovely dry and bitter finish”

What Pure Gold Smells Like

Pure Gold smells a little like tribute ale by st austell. It smells like a good traditional golden ale with a small hint of something like a continental lager.

Good Head?

Gold has a good head which is quite thick compared to mad goose.

Its quite gassy having either been gassed up with co2/nitrogen or being fermented a second time under pressure. It has alot of fizz for an ale, but this seems to help the head.

What does it taste like

This is a really nice beer, when drinking it and smelling it at the same time the lemon/lime zesty dry taste and the hops blend together seamlessly into a really nice citrus hop bitter taste.

The after taste is dominantly hops, but the taste doesn’t dominate your mouth if your know what I mean?

There is a definitely a slight sweet theme running throughout the beer when the zesty bitter hops aren’t there on your taste buds.

If i could change one thing about this it would be too let some of that gas go and leave it to warm up a little. This beer is probably best served slightly warmer than some others.

Pure Gold Review

To me Pure Gold is a almost a modern twist on a classic golden ale. It brings some of the fizz from modern lagers and adds it to the classic fuggles and goldings hops but even these are grown in exotic Slovenia soil.

Very Nice, very drinkable and a easy beer to drink especially on a warm evening. Its interesting to note the cask version is 3.8% while a bottle will come with 4.3 ABV, its is because it easier to sell bottled beer at higher ABVs. The brewer assures me they taste the same anyway.