8. Bosteels Karmeliet Tripel

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This is the first time that 300 Beers has taken me quite so far outside my comfort zone.

I honestly don’t know what this is. All I know is that it’s brewed in Belgium, it’s named after some monks and it weighs in at a habit-trembling 8.4%.

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The only bit of English on the label tells me that Karmeliet is made with three grains: wheat, oats and barley. That explains the “Tripel” name, I suppose.

It pours a light blonde colour, with a voluminous, pillowy head. It doesn’t seem to smell of a great deal, so I guess I’m going to have to try this.

It reminds me a little of Leffe Blonde, perhaps an obvious point of reference since that is also an Abbey Beer from Belgium. It’s a little more subtly flavoured than Leffe and less sweet, while the 8.4% alcohol whack is only partly hidden. There’s a pleasant enough yeasty biscuitiness to things, but I’m not sure I’m won over.

Karmeliet Tripel is probably a great example of its style, but I’m just not sure I see the use case for this type of beer. It wouldn’t work well with food, it certainly isn’t sessionable, and there’s not really enough depth to it to let it serve as a slow, fireside savouring sort of drink.

Still, there seem to be quite a few more Abbey Beers in The Book, so I’m going to have to get used to it!

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brouwerij Bosteels, Buggenhout, Belgium
Style: Abbey Beers
Strength: 8.4% ABV
Found at: Waitrose Food Court at John Lewis, Oxford Street, London W1
Dispense: 330ml Bottle-conditioned

7. Brakspear Triple

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Now, this one I really have been looking forward to, not least because I already know it’s a cracker. This is not my first encounter with Brakspear Triple.

Brakspear are based in Oxfordshire and are known for some fairly well-regarded bitters, none of which I’ve tried, but this is their extra special premium beer. It’s painstakingly crafted: double dropped, triple hopped then thrice fermented and nicely presented in individually numbered bottles.

Let’s see if it was worth the effort.

Brakspear Triple

Triple pours a lovely golden ruby colour, with more of a lacing than an actual head. It smells rich, toasty and promisingly boozy.

It tastes of, well, more booze, but it’s a lovely Christmas cakey, sherryish, mince pie sort of booze. There’s a long-lasting and pleasingly bitter finish, offset by just the right amount of butterscotch sweetness.

Brakspear Triple is a complex and decadent yet smooth beer which slips down a lot more easily than its potent 6.7% alcohol payload would suggest, making it dangerously moreish.

An absolute treat.

Incidentally, readers who enjoyed Brakspear Triple may also like to check out the quite similar, and equally lovely Little Brew Ruby. Little Brew is essentially one bloke named Stu, currently making some of the very best beer in London.

Which is seriously high praise.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brakspear Brewing Co., Witney, Oxfordshire, England
Style: Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales
Strength: 6.7% ABV
Found at: Waitrose Food Court at John Lewis, Oxford Street, London W1
Serving: 330ml bottle

6. Theakston’s Old Peculier

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Masham in North Yorkshire is a tiny market town that lives and breathes beer, perhaps almost literally. With two significant breweries – the Black Sheep brewery, and its older brother, Theakston – between a population of barely over 1,200 people, the air must be potent with the aromas of the brewing process.

Masham’s most famous export is unquestionably Theakston’s Old Peculier, a genuine legend which will be deeply familiar to most beer lovers, myself included.

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Old Peculier absolutely must be served at room temperature to really appreciate its depth and complexity. This is a thick, dark, strong Old Ale with roasty, toasty and smoky fruit flavours and a respectable 5.6% ABV.

There is nothing wimpy about this beer whatsoever, but it’s remarkably easy drinking, as the hop flavours are subtle enough to avoid a lot of bitterness, quite in contrast to something like an IPA. It’s really quite moreish, but I think Old Peculier is a perfect beer to be slowly savoured by the fire.

Best of all Old Peculier is available almost everywhere. I found this bottle in the least glamorous of convenience stores. It wasn’t the first time and it won’t be the last!

Facts and Figures

Brewery: T&R Theakston Ltd, Masham, North Yorkshire, England
Style: Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales
ABV: 5.6%
Found at: Costcutter, Norwood Road, London SE24
Dispense: 500ml Bottle

5. Wells Banana Bread Beer

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I haven’t been looking forward to this one. In fact, the only reason it has cropped up quite so early on is that I wanted to get it out of the way. That, plus it is available in my corner shop. It’s to their credit that they stock such a wide range of real ales, and it’s not their fault that this one is banana flavoured.

You read that right, this is a banana flavoured beer. But it’s in The Book, so let’s hold our noses and get this over and done with.

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There really isn’t much to say about this, other than it’s an unexceptional bitter which has been artificially flavoured with banana. That’s what it smells like, and that’s what it tastes like.

The underlying beer is pretty bland and watery, since no brewer in their right mind would waste a batch of good ale this way. The banana flavour tastes nothing like actual bananas, and everything like those yellow foam sweets you used to get as a kid. The only saving grace is that it is less sweet than I expected.

This isn’t my thing, and more objectively, I really don’t see who this beer is aimed at or what the point is. Judging by the dust collecting on the bottles in the shop, not many people do.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Charles Wells, Bedford, England
Style: Beers made with Fruit, Spices, Herbs and Seeds
Strength: 5.2% ABV
Found at: Jolly Good News, Rosendale Road, London SE24
Serving: 500ml bottle

3. Shepherd Neame Bishop’s Finger

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This is the first of the 300 beers that I tend to drink from time to time even when I’m not obliged to by this ridiculous challenge.

Shepherd Neame Bishop’s Finger is a bit of a classic. It’s a Best Bitter and has been brewed in Kent since 1958, but only on Fridays, for some reason. I’m led to believe that it’s the only British beer to be granted a Protected Geographical Indication by the EU, meaning that only Bishop’s Finger may call itself a “Kentish Strong Ale”.

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It’s a distinctly dark and full-flavoured brew, which is no bad thing in my book. It packs in hefty malt, dried fruit and hop flavours along with an interesting wine-like finish. There’s a lot going on, but it really does combine into a balanced whole.

Bishop’s Finger would go particularly well with traditional food, such as a hearty beef casserole or game sausages and mash.

Highly recommended, and relatively easy to find these days too. I picked it up in my local corner shop along with a couple of other goodies that I’ll be sharing with you before long.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Shepherd Neame, Faversham, Kent, England
Style: Best Bitters
ABV: 5.4%
Found at: Jolly Good News, Rosendale Road, London SE24
Dispense: 500ml Bottle

4. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

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It’s straight back to the States for beer number four, and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is reputedly something of a legend around those parts. This is the beer that some say was almost single-handedly the catalyst for the resurgence of craft brewing and real ale in the US, amid a bland, lagery ocean of mass-produced Duff, Duff Lite and Lady Duff.

Interestingly it’s the first beer so far that explicitly asks to be served chilled, while many of the better beers tend to excel at room temperature. Whether that’s because Sierra Nevada Pale Ale expects to be enjoyed in the Mediterranean climate of Chico, California from whence it originates, we cannot be sure.

Chilled it is then. Let’s get this 350ml, bottle-conditioned Pale Ale and her charmingly folksy label artwork out of the ‘fridge, and crack her open.

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There’s an immediate hoppy aroma, not unlike that of an IPA, though a little more subdued, as is appropriate for a PA with no I.

At this point I should confess that I’ve actually had this beer before, but at room temperature, and wasn’t blown away. There was a muddy confusion to the flavours, but I must admit that chilling it does bring everything together into a much tighter, smoother package. It also makes it pleasantly refreshing, even on a greyish March evening in South-East London.

The ale is much more subtly flavoured than the previous American ale, the Goose Island IPA, but in many ways is a lot more pleasant. Thankfully that sweetness that spoilt the Goose Island for me is completely absent. As the beer warms a little, some extra malty flavours come out, which turn this into a genuinely satisfying, drinkable beer.

This is probably even the kind of beer that could be enjoyed by folks who don’t actually think they like real ales, as it’s really quite accessible, and there’s very little about it that would offend anyone.

Good stuff, all gone in about five minutes, and I believe there’s another Sierra Nevada beer I have to track down before long. I look forward to doing so.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., Chico, CA
Style: Pale Ales
ABV: 5.6%
Found at: Waitrose, Whitecross Street, London EC1
Dispense: 350ml Bottle-conditioned

2. Goose Island IPA

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Beer number two on our journey, and we’re already globetrotting. It’s straight across the Atlantic to Chicago to see if our American cousins can knock up a decent India Pale Ale.

I do like a good IPA, and am instinctively sceptical about the idea of this most British of beers being brewed abroad, but I know IPA is all the rage on the thriving US craft brewing scene, so let’s give it a try.

Goose Island IPA

There’s a huge white head straight out of the bottle, and this is certainly an aromatic beer, with plenty of floral, citrus and of course hop aromas. There’s no doubt that this is an IPA. There’s also something a bit soapy about the nose, but it isn’t overpowering.

This beer is apparently made with water from Lake Michigan, and is bottle conditioned, so there’s a tiny amount of yeast collecting at the bottom of the bottle. This is a very good sign indeed.

Goose Island IPA is a little fuller-bodied and much sweeter than the modern British IPAs, as exemplified by something like Thornbridge’s excellent Jaipur (which we’ll encounter in the fullness of time), but I think that’s quite typical of the American approach to the style.

There’s a pleasing, lingering bitterness, but for me the sweetness does mar the overall flavour. I just don’t want beer to make my teeth hurt.

Overall, a perfectly decent example of the style, but perhaps not one I’ll return to in a hurry.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Goose Island Beer Co., Chicago, IL
Style: India Pale Ales
ABV: 5.9%
Found at: Sainsbury’s, Westow Street, London SE19
Dispense: 355ml Bottle-conditioned

1. Robinson’s Old Tom

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Where better to start then, than with the self-professed “World’s Best Ale”? At least, that’s what it says on the bottle, although it doesn’t elaborate on the basis for the claim. I think we’ll be the judge of that.

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Old Tom is a strong Old Ale weighing in at a daunting 8.5% ABV which, following on from Old Freddy Walker’s 7.3%, is enough to have me thinking this 300 beer challenge could be more than I bargained for.

The beer pours a very dark ruby colour, with a large off-white head that quickly dissipates to a faint lacing. There’s a toffee/caramel nose that suggests we can expect a lot of sweetness to help cover that hefty ABV.

So, is this the world’s best ale? Well, no. In fact it’s pretty unpleasant. That tooth-jangling sweetness is there in abundance, while the body is cloyingly sticky and thinner than Posh Spice’s left contact lens.

Aside from the sugar, the predominant flavours are of an inevitable hangover and £2.15 that I’ll never have back, though there’s a smoky, bonfire toffee note that just about saves this beer from being utterly repugnant.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Robinsons, Stockport, England
Style: Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales
Strength: 8.5% ABV
Found at: Sainsbury’s, Westow Street, London SE19
Dispense: 330ml Bottle

0. Moor Beer Old Freddy Walker

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Here we are then, the first beer on our arduous journey, and I’ve purposefully started with an absolute stonker.

To my surprise, I’ve also started with one that isn’t even in the book! We’ll deal with that minor technicality in due course.

I first came across Old Freddy Walker quite recently at the magnificent Westow House in Crystal Palace, London. They regularly stock offerings from Somerset’s Moor Beer, and they’re always top-notch. The sublimely decadent and sadly – but necessarily – very rare Sloe Walker is a particularly memorable example.

On learning the price, my jaw hit the floor quicker than Luis Suarez after a gentle brush with a defender, but the beer was poured, and I was thirsty from the climb up the hill to SE19.

One sip was all that was needed to realise that, unlike the Uruguayan thesp, this was worth every penny, and that I would be back for more as soon as 300 Beers was underway.

Moor Beer Old Freddy Walker

The beer has a smallish coffee head that dissipates quickly. There’s surprisingly little on the nose, though I did detect an exotic whiff of Shaoxing rice wine. The mouthfeel is thick, silky and unctuous and there’s no doubt that we’re dealing with something a bit special.

The hefty alcohol content, whilst thankfully not hidden behind excessive sweetness, isn’t intrusive, but there’s just enough booziness there to remind you that this is a pint to be savoured slowly. Overall this is deep, rich and complex, both malty and hoppy in spades, and one for real beer lovers.

Apart from the price, the other big surprise was how much I found myself enjoying a keg beer. The cask versus keg debate has been done to death, but as I’m kind of old fashioned I’d always associated cask with genuinely good beer, and keg with bland, mass-produced lager.

A blog post from Pete Brown had recently got me questioning that assumption. Pete suggests that “the best method of dispense becomes a function of recipe and ABV”, with cask being more suitable for weaker, more subtly-flavoured English-style beers such as an Ordinary or a Best bitter, while keg is more suited to stronger, heavier, darker brews.

Weighing in at 7.3% ABV and blacker than the All Blacks’ favourite liquorice during a power cut, Old Freddy Walker certainly falls into the latter camp, and on this evidence I think Pete may just be on to something.

This is a five-stars-out-of-five beer, and the next 300 will have their work cut out following Old Freddy.

Which is why I’ve started here. Well, also because I took Moor Beer at their word and wrote this post before actually reading the book. It isn’t in there, but I can only assume it was in an earlier edition.

Either way, I think this is a suitable benchmark against which subsequent beers can be compared. If I find even one beer that matches Old Freddy on this journey, it’ll be worthwhile.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Moor Beer, Somerset, England
Style: Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales
ABV: 7.3%
Found at: Westow House, London SE19
Dispense: Keg, pint