Category Archives: Beers

The beers

73. Augustiner Hell

Perhaps I missed a trick by not covering this Munich-brewed lager during October. Or at least during Oktoberfest, much of which—in a rare departure from the traditional Teutonic common-sense approach to matters—is in September.

In fact, this one had been sat around the kitchen for a while before I noticed the Mindestens haltbar bis Ende date on the bottle. I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds fairly sure about it, so we’d better get a move on.

Behind that quite handsome, ornate label sits a predictably pale, golden lager with a thinnish head of white froth which doesn’t hang around.

On cracking open the bottle and pouring, there’s a strong waft of a beery, slightly stale aroma that’s neither alluring nor especially offputting.

There isn’t a great deal of flavour of course: German lagers tend to be made for drinking by the Steinful and getting heartily yet pragmatically sloshed in the Bierkeller rather than savouring slowly by the fire.

There’s a sort of maltiness in there somewhere, along with some strangely sharp-tasting fruit notes, but not even the faintest hint of hops, at least to my palate, which admittedly is more accustomed to gigantic American-style IPAs and whatnot.

All in all, Augustiner Hell isn’t an unpleasant beer by any means, and might be quite refreshing if drunk chilled in the Biergarten in the Munich sun, but it’s hard to get excited about this one.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Augustiner-Bräu, Munich, Germany
Style:	Pale Lagers
Strength:	5.2% ABV
Found at:	City Beverage Company, Old Street, London EC1
Serving:	500ml Bottle

72. Brains SA

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At the very real risk of becoming predictable, it’s back to the Grape & Grain we go for another pint of CAMRA-approved “real ale”. This turns out to be the first Welsh beer to be covered in these pages, which is terribly exciting.

And I use the word “exciting” quite wrongly.

Brains SA is a fairly standard Best Bitter, and as such pours a typically warm, dark chestnut colour, but with the tiniest of frothy heads.

It has a sharp, harshly bitter flavour, which only temporarily masks the fact that it has absolutely nothing else going for it. It’s dry, but in this case that’s really more of an unpleasant aftertaste than a finish. The body is watery and lifeless, and it’s next to impossible to find anything more to say about this beer.

The Welsh and the old guard CAMRA types apparently wet themselves over it, but this is a crushingly unexciting beer. The term “real ale” seems more dated and less relevant than ever.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	S.A. Brain and Co., Cardiff, Wales
Style:	Best Bitters
Strength:	4.2% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

71. Affligem Blond

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OK, I’m a little out of my depth here guys. I ordered what I though was a fairly standard bottle of Belgian golden ale, and I seem to have been served some sort of science lab.

It turns out that there’s a great big wanky ritual to drinking Affligem Blond.

This is a bottle-conditioned beer with a hefty dose of yeasty sediment at the bottom. Fine so far, but apparently about 90% of the beer should go into the larger glass, while the yeast is deposited into the little thimble-like thing. You then have the choice of tasting the yeast separately, dumping it into your beer, or disregarding it entirely.

Having poured the beer itself, the barman poured a dose of yeasty solution into the smaller glass but left the thickest dregs of the sediment in the bottle. I wasn’t about to argue, since quite frankly I already felt like a bit of a numpty by this point.

Bear in mind I’m in a well-respected real ale pub here, and quite the locals’ place it is too. The burly gent at the next table reading The Sun over his second pint of lager is already eyeing me suspiciously. So let’s get this one done.

After all that, this tastes like a pretty run-of-the-mill Belgian golden ale or Abbey Beer. My usual point of reference for this sort of thing is Leffe Blonde, and Affligem is not a million miles away. It’s much lighter in flavour, though, and vaguely reminiscent of a saison. Still it packs a respectable 6.8% ABV wallop, and so provides a pleasant warming glow for a lunchtime. There’s a dense, sweet finish, which isn’t entirely unpalatable.

I elected to sample the yeast solution separately at first. It tasted slightly bitter and, perhaps not surprisingly, quite yeasty, but it didn’t have much going for it otherwise. So I dumped it into the rest of the beer and pressed on. It did add a little depth and body, I think, but on balance, I would still rather have had another pint of Mild instead.

I’m not sure I can show my face in the Grape & Grain again in a hurry, but in fairness that’s five beers in a row that they’ve provided for this blog, so I’m sure this won’t be the last we’ll be hearing of that particular boozer.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Affligem Brouwerij, Opwijk, Belgium
Style:	Abbey Beers
Strength:	6.8% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	330ml Bottle

70. Banks’s Mild

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Following a recent pub conversation with a colleague who was lamenting how difficult it has become to find a pint of Mild these days, I realised two things: firstly, he was right, and secondly, he was so right that I’m not sure that I even know what a Mild is.

So I was particularly grateful to spot this one at, you guessed it, The Grape & Grain. Time for your correspondent to learn a little bit more about good old-fashioned beer.

While modern Milds are typically quite low in alcohol—this one tips the scales at a sober 3.5% ABV—the term “mild” does not imply weak in that sense. Rather it means a beer lower in hop bitterness and sweeter than, say, a bitter. That’s why it’s no contradiction whatsoever for a brewery such as Partizan to create a rather tasty Mild weighing in at 6.4%.

The Banks’s Mild pours a lovely deep chestnut colour, with a thin off-white head. Despite the low ABV, it certainly isn’t mild in taste: it’s a hugely full-flavoured, full-bodied ale, not unlike a Best Bitter.

It’s dark, fruity and rich, and there’s a delicious underlying caramel sweetness followed by a satisfyingly long bitter finish.

Whatever the current score in the keg/cask debate, this is a beer that absolutely must be cask conditioned, and by someone who knows what they’re doing. I certainly cannot fault “the Grape” on that front.

This is a relentlessly sessionable beer, and at just £3.20 a pint (less for CAMRA members) I would happily have had another. Trouble is, I think I just spotted beer number 71 in the fridge…

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Banks’s Park Brewery (Marston’s), Wolverhampton, England
Style:	Brown and Mild Ales
Strength:	3.5% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

69. RCH Old Slug Porter

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In retrospect, when I blogged about Pendle Witches Brew, I may have been a little harsh on The Grape & Grain, one of Crystal Palace’s very best pubs.

I criticised their slightly conservative selection of ales, but in fairness, recent weeks have seen guest visits from ales from some of London’s new wave of craft breweries: London Fields, By the Horns and The CronX have all been represented. To top that, the G&G have now provided three beers in a row for my humble blog, so I really should learn what side my bread’s buttered on.

The very day after I sampled the cask “Witches” and a lovely bottle of Worthington’s White Shield, this one came on tap: a curiously-named porter from a Somerset brewery I’d previously heard absolutely nothing about.

Any excuse to pay another visit to what is, truth be told, a great, authentic beer lovers’ pub where all walks of life rub shoulders.

Despite the name, RCH Old Slug Porter certainly is a fine looking pint. At first glance it’s as black as night, but closer inspection reveals a beautiful deep ruby red colour with a tan head.

It tastes just like a top-notch porter should. It’s dark and rich but medium-bodied, which is ideal for a porter. There isn’t too much of the tar, soot and smokiness that are more typical of a stout, and instead the “Slug” is full of dried fruits and christmas cake.

There’s a hugely satisfying dry, bitter yet wine-like finish, but the whole thing remains relentlessly quaffable and refreshing. Many people don’t expect that sort of drinkability from a dark beer, but my pint lasted no more than 10 minutes, and I’d gladly have had another.

It may be named after the least glamorous of creatures, but this is a first class porter, served here in prime condition.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	RCH Brewery, Weston Super Mare, Somerset, England
Style:	Porters and Stouts
Strength:	4.5% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

68. Worthington’s White Shield

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Worthington’s White Shield is a near-legendary India Pale Ale from one of Britain’s most venerable brewing names. White Shield is the world’s oldest surviving IPA, and the one considered by connoisseurs to be as close as you can get these days to the original IPAs brewed in Burton-on-Trent in the eighteenth century to be exported to India.

The Worthington’s brand and White Shield in particular have had something of a chequered recent past, having been shunted around various regional breweries, and almost disappearing from existence at one point, having been deemed surplus to requirements by previous owners.

However, in a perhaps surprising turn of events under the stewardship of international brewing giant Molson Coors, in 2000, production of White Shield returned to Burton-on-Trent where it is brewed to this day almost entirely unchanged from its original 1829 recipe.

Worthington’s White Shield is typically found in bottle-conditioned form. It pours a not-especially-pale chestnut colour with a tight tan head.

There’s a massive, almost paintstripping, hop bitterness front and centre, but it’s perfectly well offset by the fat malt backbone so typical of the older, English style of IPA. There are toffee and caramel notes, dried fruits, and even a hint of esters that are reminiscent of a Belgian Dubbel.

It’s a remarkably complex beer, but all the flavours are in perfect balance, making for a particularly satisfying end product. This truly is a classic beer, and it’s great to see it being brewed to its full potential once again.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Worthington’s (Molson Coors), Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England
Style:	India Pale Ales
Strength:	5.6% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	500ml bottle

67. Moorhouse’s Pendle Witches Brew

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A recent spell out of the office due to a minor injury left me keen to get away from daytime TV and back into the real world. Or at least the pub. Tell you what, shall we go to the pub?

We shall. The Grape & Grain up in Crystal Palace is a great little boozer, and very much one for the real ale purists. I like it. I want to love it, but I don’t yet. With a dozen hand pumps, knowledgeable staff, and discounts for CAMRA members, you know where you stand, and it’s a huge improvement on its previous incarnation.

That isn’t terribly hard, since as a “Jack Beard’s” it was part of a chain of utterly hopeless pubs that were a scourge on the entire South London area.

That’s no longer the case. Excellent management is now in place, the ales are plentiful and in prime condition, and you can even get a salad here if you ask nicely. My only real reservation is that the selection of beers tends to be quite conservative. With that many pumps, a pub can afford to take a few risks and whack on a good craft Black IPA, Barleywine or Imperial Stout, whereas here you’re usually going to be choosing between ten or so inoffensive, sessionable English bitters.

Today at least, one of those bitters was one that we need to cover here on Three Hundred Beers: Pendle Witches Brew.

Pendle Hill is well-known to anyone who, like your author, grew up in Lancashire. It has a long history of association with witchcraft and other supernatural activities, and so it gives its name to this beer.

“Witches” is fruity, vinous, bitter and floral. It’s pleasant enough, but it’s deeply, deeply unexciting. It has won all the CAMRA awards, yet you can drink it without actually noticing it, which, inconveniently enough, leaves you rather short of words if you’re trying to describe it on a blog later.

This is a beer very much from the old guard: safe but boring. It’s beers like this that are the very reason exciting new breweries like The Kernel and Beavertown exist. Breweries that challenge you to think about what you’re drinking.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Moorhouse’s, Burnley, Lancashire, England
Style:	Extra Strong Beers and Bitters
Strength:	5.1% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

66. Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter

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There are no less than four Samuel Smith’s beers in The Book—an honour shared only by London’s Meantime brewery—so it seems like it might be time to try another one. I sampled old Sam’s Imperial Stout a little while ago, but wasn’t completely blown away by it. Nor have I been truly impressed by the several other beers that I’ve tried in the brewery’s pubs.

This one though, the 5.0% ABV Taddy Porter, is really quite famous, and is very well regarded by those in the know. It also makes for the perfect excuse to seek out a pub that I’ve heard a lot of good things about.

The Anchor Tap is tucked away in London’s Shad Thames neighbourhood and wears its long history with pride. As its name suggests, it was originally the brewery tap for the Anchor Brewery, which was situated on the banks of the Thames next to Tower Bridge, but has long since been converted into apartments that you and I will never be able to afford.

The pub these days is operated by Sam Smith’s, and remains an unashamedly unreconstructed oasis of authenticity despite being besieged by gentrification and tourism. It’s a rabbit warren of tiny wood-panelled rooms, darts and pork scratchings, and even has a devoted cadre of working class locals, although goodness knows where they actually live.

And conveniently enough, it has Taddy Porter in Sam Smith’s characteristically generous 550ml bottles.

From the bottle, Taddy Porter pours a sumptuous deep brown, almost black, colour with a gigantic tan head thicker than some of the accents in the main bar. There’s an immediate waft of chocolate, black coffee and dark, bitter malts.

And it’s good. It tastes like the quintessential porter, with bitter and sweet flavours in perfect balance. Taddy Porter is smooth, deep and dark, and thankfully avoids the slight wateriness that can plague lesser porters.

This is probably the best porter I’ve covered on the blog so far, and one of the best I’ve ever tried. Given that porter is the most London of beer styles, it’s both impressive and refreshing to see this idiosyncratic little brewery from Yorkshire show the London boys how it’s done.

If I’ve been slightly disparaging of Sam Smith’s beers in the past, this one has given me a newfound respect for the chaps from Tadcaster. This was a cracking beer in a cracking pub.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Samuel Smith Old Brewery, Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England
Style:	Porters and Stouts
Strength:	5.0% ABV
Found at:	The Anchor Tap, Horselydown Lane, London SE1
Serving:	550ml Bottle

65. Ommegang Abbey Ale

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Since there apparently are not enough Belgian beers in the world, we now turn to an American brewery doing their best to recreate famous Trappist and other Belgian ales in a postmodern mockup monastery in Cooperstown, New York.

Brewery Ommegang was founded in 1997 by Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield, two Americans with a genuine passion for quality beer, and everything else Belgian, but primarily with a keen eye for business.

With Don and Wendy having sold their share of the company in 2003, Ommegang are now owned by the European brewing giant Duvel Moortgat.

Despite the pretensions to authenticity and Belgianness, since Ommegang’s website contact page lists an extensive roll call of Public Relations, Marketing and Accounts managers, and almost nobody remotely involved with the brewing process, it’s probably fair to assume we are not dealing with an artisanal craft brewery here.

In terms of colour, Ommegang Abbey Ale is a lovely deep ruby, turning almost golden syrup-like in the right light. There isn’t much in the way of aroma beyond a few peppery Belgian-style esters, but it certainly isn’t lacking in flavour.

From the first taste, this is an intensely flavoursome beer. It’s rich, dark and treacly, and packs in dried fruit, christmas cake and rum notes. It’s every inch the Belgian Dubbel, but with every flavour turned up to 11.

The hefty alcohol content is hidden behind a slightly cloying sweetness, and unfortunately there’s a somewhat watery finish that lets the whole ensemble down a little.

I suspect some people would absolutely love this beer, and it genuinely has enough to say for itself to justify some enthusiasm, but to me it just isn’t the finished article. It’s a good beer, but I suspect there won’t be many Trappist monks losing sleep over Ommegang’s run on their territory tonight.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, NY
Style:	Abbey Beers
Strength:	8.2% ABV
Found at:	Utobeer, Borough Market, London SE1
Serving:	355ml Bottle

64. Hoegaarden

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One of the slight downsides of the 300 Beers project is that occasionally I’ll have to sample a beer that I already know I’m not keen on. Hoegaarden, almost certainly the most famous of the Belgian-style Wheat Beers, is a case in point. But never mind, let’s give it another try.

Hoegarden was created in 1966 by Belgian milkman Pierre Celis, regardless of what the “Anno 1445” on the label is intended to imply. It’s made with 55% malted barley and 45% unmalted wheat, and spiced with milled coriander seeds and dried Curaçao orange peel. Finally, each bottle is primed with a small amount of sugar and fresh yeast, to encourage subsequent fermentation in the bottle.

I’m struck that Hoegaarden pours a pale, golden straw colour, in contrast to the cloudy whitish colour I remember it being. I wonder if the yeast in this particular bottle has settled more than usual in the several months it has been sat in the kitchen while I dragged my heels over drinking it.

It certainly smells like a wheat beer, albeit a fairly light one, with those distinctive Belgian esters present as ever. Served chilled, Hoegaarden is a reasonably refreshing, summery beer, but it just isn’t exciting. There’s a bit of a void where the flavour should be—I can barely detect either the coriander or the orange peel—and I wonder if that’s why some folks like to dress Hoegaarden up with a slice of lemon, so that at least it tastes of something.

While I’ll probably never know for sure, it’s a little hard to believe that today’s Hoegaarden, brewed in vast quantities by international brewing giant AB InBev, let us not forget, is quite the same beer that old Pierre gave up his milk round for back in the sixties.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Brouwerij Hoegaarden (AB InBev), Hoegaarden, Belgium
Style:	Belgian-style Wheat Beers
Strength:	4.9% ABV
Found at:	Maxy Supermarket, Norwood Road, London SE24
Serving:	330ml Bottle