Category Archives: Beers

The beers

23. Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted

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Finally, our first of several trips north of the border to Scotland. I’m wondering if this will be a nostalgic experience, reminiscent of my student years drinking 80/- ales in the pubs and bars of Edinburgh until 3am.

That said, my only actual experience of Harviestoun’s beers dates from far more recently, here in London. I’ve had their Old Engine Oil porter a few times in The Commercial, SE24, and couldn’t get enough of it.

This one seems a bit of an enigma though. Its Clackmannanshire provenance suggests a smooth Scottish ale, the name suggests it might be a bitter, but the label tells me it’s a blond beer. There’s only one way to settle this.

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Fair enough, it’s a blond, bitter Scottish ale, and very nice it is too. As is often the case in Scotland, it’s made from Barley, Wheat and Oats, which is about the only thing it has in common with Bosteels Karmeliet Tripel.

At 4.2% the Bitter and Twisted is eminently sessionable. In that respect, we’re vaguely into the territory inhabited by the recent Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, but I have to say this one is noticeably more exciting and indeed satisfying.

This is a really good, hoppy bitter and it’s hopelessly drinkable. I’m not sure I picked up on the “like the twist of a lemon” notes that the bottle promises, but that’s probably for the best given my tastes. The hops are front and centre, and deliver a mouthwatering bitterness, while the restrained use of carbonation prevents things getting gassy.

Good stuff, and I’d certainly knock back another bottle if I had one. Perhaps more to the point, I’d love to find this in more London pubs in place of the relentless tide of Doom Bar and London Pride that we’re usually offered.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Harviestoun Brewery, Alva, Clackmannanshire, Scotland
Style: Scottish Ales
ABV: 4.2%
Found at: Waitrose Food Court at John Lewis, Oxford Street, London W1
Dispense: 500ml Bottle

22. Anchor Steam Beer

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This is the first of the two Anchor beers that I’ve got hold of so far, and I’ve been intrigued by these handsome little bottles, both wearing their San Francisco provenance with pride, with their sailor tattoo label artwork.

As a “Steam Beer”, this particular brew is in a category of exactly one beer in The Book. I’ve actually no idea what a Steam Beer is, and there seem to be several theories as to how the term came about. None of them seem particularly convincing or well corroborated, so I’ll leave the origins of the name as an exercise for the reader.

I’m vaguely expecting this to be a pretty ordinary lager, but I’ve had that preconception about American beer before and been pleasantly surprised, so this could be interesting.

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Just like with the Brooklyn Lager, Anchor Steam Beer pours a lot darker than expected. In fact it’s kind of a butterscotch, caramel colour.

And goodness me, but this also tastes nothing like a lager. It’s a really flavoursome, big kind of beer. There’s a robust malty body, a hint of butterscotch sweetness, and a huge long bitter finish, aided by a light effervescence that helps drive the flavours home.

There’s something very old-fashioned about the beer, to the extent that when you learn that the style dates from the 1890s, when it was brewed for thirsty Gold Rush prospectors, you can believe it.

For all of that flavour, this is a very refreshing, gluggable beer which as The Book says, successfully combines “the richness and fruitiness of an ale with the quenching character of a lager”. I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Anchor Steam Beer is very good indeed, and has been another revelation.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Anchor Brewing Co, San Francisco, CA
Style: Steam Beer
ABV: 4.8%
Found at: City Beverage Company, Old Street, London EC1
Dispense: 355ml Bottle

21. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

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The Draft House, SE22 is a heady, intoxicating place to while away an afternoon. Dangerously so, in fact, and I bloomin’ love it.

Following the delicious, staff-recommended 7.0% ABV Texels Bock with the 8.2% Schneider Aventinus might be considered brave at best, but only a fool would go on to round out the session with this 10.0% ABV hooligan of an Imperial Stout.

Foolish or not, we have no choice: it’s in The Book. There is science to be done.

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Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate stout is black. It’s blacker than ink. I mean, just look. It’s so black it’s actually sucking light out of the room around it.

Brooklyn’s Chocolate Stout—from the same chaps that brought us that rather nice Vienna Red lager—is brewed just once per year and the bottles are dated, a little like a vintage wine. According to my scribbled notes, this example is from the Winter 2011-12 bottling, so I assume it has been sat in a cellar somewhere, quietly maturing for a little while.

And oh my, it’s good.

Unlike Wells & Young’s comparatively puny Double Chocolate Stout, this one needs no artificial help to throw out hedonistic, decadent bitter chocolate notes. It’s all a function of the six combined varieties of black, chocolate and roasted malts that they use.

Beyond the chocolate, there’s a lovely, toasty sort of tar and soot thing going on, and a long bitter finish. And by long I mean that I drank this last week, and can still taste it. Every mouthful is an absolute treat.

It’s all topped off with that head-swimmingly intoxicating, warming double-figures alcohol hit, and suddenly all is well in the world.

Some might suggest that 10.0% ABV is a bit racy, but I believe that once a beer gets this strong and attains this level of quality, you have to stop thinking of it as a strong beer, and that comparisons with a fine wine or a liqueur are more appropriate. This is absolutely to be drunk slowly, and just savoured and enjoyed.

I didn’t expect the Chimay Bleue to be beaten for luxurious self-indulgence quite so soon, but those guys over at Brooklyn have done it.

There’s one more Brooklyn beer to track down, and considering the beers they’ve given us so far, I’m not sure I can wait.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brooklyn Brewery, Brooklyn, NY
Style: Porters and Stouts
Strength: 10.0% ABV
Found at: The Draft House, Lordship Lane, London SE22
Serving: 355ml bottle

20. Schneider Aventinus

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The second of the dauntingly many wheat beers that I have to work my way through is also the first of what I suspect will be quite a few beers sourced from the magnificent Draft House just up the road in East Dulwich.

Costing as it does a hefty £8.50 a bottle, I hope this is a cut above the wheat beers I’ve tried in the past. Let’s see.

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Well, Schneider Aventinus is probably the least attractive beer so far, being a muddy, cloudy greyish-brown colour, not unlike something you’d expect to drain from the back of the dishwasher.

It tastes unmistakably like a wheat beer, though as a Weizenbock, it’s stronger than is typical for the style at a daunting 8.2% ABV. It’s also extra chocolatey and smooth, but still with an odd citrus tang. I’m not convinced that it really works, though no doubt there are drinkers who go nuts for this sort of thing.

Considering the strength, it’s relatively refreshing and dangerously drinkable, but there isn’t the sense of sheer luxury that real top end beers have.

That said, it’s a great deal more enjoyable and satisfying than something like Hoegaarden, and whilst there’s very little chance that wheat beer will ever be my favourite style of beer, the Aventinus is, for now at least, my new favourite wheat beer. Sorry Weihenstephaner!

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Weisses Bräuhaus G. Schneider & Sohn GmbH, Kelheim, Germany
Style: Wheat Beers
Strength: 8.2% ABV
Found at: The Draft House, Lordship Lane, London SE22
Serving: 500ml bottle

19. Timothy Taylor’s Landlord

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There are several beers in The Book which I don’t feel I have to actively seek out, knowing that their ubiquity means they’ll find me: some day I’ll be in a pub where they’re the only thing worth drinking, and bingo, another one ticked off.

And so it was with Timothy Taylor’s very famous Landlord.

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Some say that this is Madonna’s favourite beer. I can only assume that she hasn’t tried many beers, since there isn’t really anything exceptional about Landlord.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a perfectly good example of a sessionable English bitter, but beyond a reasonably pleasing hoppy edge, I’m struggling to find a great deal to write about.

Not so our host Roger, who rhapsodises about the beer in The Book, citing in particular its “beautifully balanced” long finish, and its “tangy fruit, juicy malt and bitter hops”. I’m just not sure I can get that excited about it.

I feel I’m being a little harsh: in fairness, in the same circumstances, I’d actually buy Landlord again, and enjoy it too, but it’s not something I’d go out of my way for. Still, that’s another one under my belt.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Timothy Taylor & Co, Keighley, West Yorkshire, England
Style: Best Bitters
Strength: 4.3% ABV
Found at: The Alleyn’s Head, Park Hall Road, London SE21
Serving: Cask, pint

18. Young’s Double Chocolate Stout

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Oh cripes, here we go again. From Wells & Young’s, the incorrigible beer-botherers who took a bitter and turned it into the lamentable Wells Banana Bread Beer comes another flavoured concoction. This time they’ve taken a stout and flavoured it with chocolate.

The thing is, there is actually a valid style of beer known as Chocolate Stout, but the term comes from the use of chocolate malts (named for the colour, more than anything). Young’s have apparently taken one of those and made it “double” by the addition of “natural chocolate flavour”, which doesn’t fill me with optimism.

Now, I do love a good stout. Enough to know that a good stout or porter should not really need any extra help to give out chocolatey, coffee notes. That this one does need a leg up has me fearing the worst.

Still, it’s in The Book, so I think we all know what comes next.

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Sniffing the brew with some trepidation, I’m almost relieved that I’m not actually getting a lot of chocolate. In fact this smells a lot like a decent, normal stout with a faint whiff of something extra, yet subtle.

That carries through to the taste. Again, there are no strongly discernable chocolate notes beyond what might be expected from a stout. In fact Young’s Double Chocolate ticks all the stouty boxes: it’s full-bodied and smooth with a good long bitter finish. If anything the chocolate addition just helps to take away a little of the rougher smokiness that many stouts have.

To my surprise, the result is really quite a nice beer, and I soon find myself settling in and enjoying it.

This perhaps doesn’t attain the level of “pure luxury/pur luxe” that the label aspires to, and it’s not a patch on, say, the Guinness Foreign Extra we saw recently, or my current favourite, The Redchurch Brewery’s Hoxton Stout, but it’s really OK.

Whether by luck or by judgment, this time Wells & Young’s haven’t created a monster by ruining a perfectly good beer. This is, on its own merits, a perfectly good, enjoyable beer.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Wells and Young’s, Bedford, England
Style: Porters and Stouts
ABV: 5.2%
Found at: Jolly Good News, Rosendale Road, London SE24
Dispense: 500ml Bottle

17. Chimay Rouge

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Having enjoyed Chimay Bleue quite so much, I was keen to crack on with trying the other two Chimays in The Book, the Rouge and the Blanche.

The latter two seem to be harder to get hold of, but a lunch hour stroll to the City Beverage Company was all it took to get my hands on this, the weakest—well, least strong—of the trio, weighing in at a mere 7% ABV.

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Chimay Rouge pours somewhat less dark than the Bleue, which is to say that light may actually penetrate it. It’s still a very dark, very hazy brownish colour, with a smallish off-white head that dissipates to a fine beige lacing quite promptly.

To taste, the Rouge has a noticeably lighter body than the Bleue, with more of a vinous, wine-like finish. There is also more hoppy bitterness, and a warming booziness that reminds you that if you weren’t comparing it to the 9.0% Bleue, this would be considered a very strong beer.

There isn’t the sheer luxury here that the Bleue affords, though, and the Bleue remains my favourite.

I’m aware that I’m making the Rouge sounds like a poor second-best by constantly comparing it to the Bleue, which isn’t really fair, since it’s still a genuinely good beer. It’ll be very interesting to see where the 8% Blanche fits in to the range. I feel a walk up to Old Street coming on…

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Bières de Chimay S.A., Baileux, Belgium
Style: Trappist Beers
Strength: 7.0% ABV
Found at: City Beverage Company, Old Street, London EC1
Serving: 330ml Bottle

16. Früh Kölsch

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Our second visit to Germany sees us breaking new ground. This is my first ever experience of the style of beer known as Kölsch.

Kölsch is native to Köln, Nordrhein-Westfalen and in fact use of the name is protected by law, and restricted to a handful of breweries in Köln and a couple of surrounding cities.

For all of that. I suspect this is going to be a pretty ordinary lager. Let’s pour ourselves a glass and find out.

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Früh Kölsch looks a lot like a lager, but in fact is warm fermented, so I suspect that to use that term would be technically inaccurate. Even so, it’s the palest and fizziest beer we’ve come across so far. At a mere 4.8% it’s also the weakest.

Predictably enough, it also tastes like a lager, but a rather thin, mildly-flavoured one, quite in contrast to the Brooklyn Lager that opened my eyes recently.

It’s light and refreshing, and there’s a pleasant dryness to the finish, but apart from that, there really isn’t much to write home about here. The beer is clearly designed to be rapidly sunk several Steins at a time in the local Bierkeller without too much trouble, but it’s pretty forgettable stuff.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Cölner Hofbräu P. Josef Früh KG, Köln, Germany
Style: Kölsch
ABV: 4.8%
Found at: Waitrose Food Court at John Lewis, Oxford Street, London W1
Dispense: 500ml Bottle

15. Chimay Bleue

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With the two previous Belgian beers I’ve tackled, I’ve wondered aloud what the exact use case for these super-strength blonde bombshells is.

I have no such qualms about this one. Chimay Bleue is pure luxury in a glass. This is a beer just made to be savoured slowly, late at night, in your favourite armchair by the fire.

This is the first of three Chimays that are in The Book. All of them are brewed by Trappist monks at the Notre-Dame de Scourmont Abbey in Hainaut, Belgium.

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Chimay Bleue pours almost black, though if you hold it up to the light, you can see it’s actually a lovely dark ruby colour. There’s a small and very velvety beige head, and it tastes like the beer you always wanted to drink.

You absolutely must serve Chimay beers at room temperature, as it’s only then that the sheer quality and depth truly become apparent.

Bleue is rich, dark and chocolatey without being sweet. It has the smoky depth of a good stout, such as last night’s Guinness Foreign Extra, but without any of the bitterness and grit. It’s boozy, decadent, and hopelessly moreish. Still, at a Special Brew matching 9% ABV it might be wise to stick at one, and take your time over it.

Enjoyed that way, Chimay Bleue is just a wonderful beer, and the perfect nightcap.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Bières de Chimay S.A., Baileux, Belgium
Style: Trappist Beers
ABV: 9.0%
Found at: Waitrose, Whitecross Street, London EC1
Dispense: 330ml Bottle

14. Guinness Foreign Extra

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It’s March the 17th and so, predictably enough, it’s time for a Guinness.

Yet this is no ordinary Guinness. Bear in mind that there are countless incarnations of this most famous of beers, many of them quite different and most of them pretty ropey.

But this. Now this is the real deal. This is the 7.5% Foreign Extra version brewed right where it all began: St. James’s Gate, Dublin, Ireland, and it’s a bit of a stunner.

Bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra Stour

Foreign Extra was originally brewed in 1801 for export to places such as the Caribbean and Africa—I guess all those Catholic missionaries enjoyed a beer or two—and was made with extra hops as a preservative, and brewed to double the usual strength, presumably in the fear that some of the alcohol would evaporate on the way over.

It didn’t, and so the lucky recipients got rather used to the heady black stuff, and so it is still brewed to that strength both in Ireland and in Nigeria to this day.

It’s almost ironic now that by virtue of South London’s dynamic social demographics, the absolutely rough Nigerian-brewed Foreign Extra is far easier to get hold of around here than the original Irish version.

And yet, hold of it I did get.

So what does it taste like? Well, it is rich, dark, toasty, smoky and smooth, with a huge hop bitterness (60 units—more than many IPAs) offset by a lovely, subtle caramel sweetness.

It’s deeply complex, not least due to its production methods, which see beer being matured in wooden tuns for up to three months, and then blended with younger, fresh stout before being aged in the bottle for a further month. There’s a lot of work goes into this stuff.

In short, Guinness Foreign Extra is a quite different beer to the bland, artificial draught imitation that so many people will be drinking too much of tonight. My recommendation is steer clear of the phony Irish chain pubs and the drunken English people in silly hats, then grab a bottle of this, find somewhere quiet, and take your time over it.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Guinness & Co, Dublin, Ireland
Style: Porters and Stouts
ABV: 7.5%
Found at: Costcutter, Norwood Road, London SE24
Dispense: 330ml Bottle