It’s also the third Westvleteren beer to be featured here, after the Blond from 2014, and the much more recent Extra from last month.

This is kind of the big one: a double-figures Belgian quad weighing in at 10.2% ABV, and one many consider to be the finest beer in the world. I was saving it for number 300, but practicality won out. Really, there’s no guarantee we’ll even make it that far, and it needed using.

I won’t bore you with the mythology, and the hoops that you—in theory—have to jump through to0 find this beer, because I just bought it at De Biertempel in Brussels back in 2014. I did try a relatively fresh one at the time, so I guess I do have something to compare this veteran one with, if only I can remember it.

Even a decade beyond its best before data, there’s a healthy, controlled “pssst” on opening, which is reassuring. I’ll pour this one a bit more carefully than the Extra, not least because the hefty puddle of dark yeast sediment is again present. It’s darker and less fizzy than that one, with perhaps a tiny bit more head retention. Well, perhaps not a head, but a ring of foam, at least.

It’s chocolatey on the nose, and there’s definitely booze in there. Of course, any real hop character has long gone, leaving this one perhaps a little too sweet for my tastes. In fact the body is a little syrupy, and it’s sticky on the lips too, which I don’t remember from the fresher one.

There’s more body than the Extra and toffee or caramel notes, rather than dried fruit. It’s nice enough, but is it the best beer in the world? When I had the fresh one I asked myself that question and I kind of concluded that if it wasn’t, then I don’t know what you’d have to do to make it better.

In this case, drinking it sooner would probably have helped. People do age these for decades, but at that point you just have to admit you’re more interested in owning it and pointing at it occasionally than actually drinking it.

Still, I wouldn’t call this a disappointment: it was still a nice bottle of beer to have as a break from the chaos of the last couple of days before a big move.

Facts and Figures

But reality got in the way and this was the second of three beers left in the cupboard before a long-distance move. Also there’s a Belgium World Cup game on at the moment. Any excuse, right?

This was another one sourced from De Biertempel in Brussels, seemingly in February 2014. I make that over 12 years it has been sat around “maturing” so it’ll be interesting to see how it has fared. Sadly I don’t have a fresher one to compare it to.

In fact I’ve talked about the scarcity of Westvleteren beers before, and you can read all about it on the internet, so I won’t labour it again here. Suffice to say, this is the first chance I’ve had to try the 8% Westvleteren Extra, often know as the “8”.

In the book this is listed as a Trappist Ale, which seems to be a bit of a catch-all term, style-wise. I believe this is pretty close to a Dubbel, which is a much darker, maltier syle than the Blond, or something like the Westmalle Tripel.

It pours an almost copper colour, with a surprising amount of fizz. There’s no head retention and not a great deal of body after so long. There’s a hefty amount of very dark, almost black, yeasty sediment, and of course I’ve poured it like an idiot so quite a bit of that makes it into the glass.

There isn’t much in the way of aroma, and certainly no hop character has survived the passage of time. To taste though, it’s full of black treacle, dates, raisins and toffee. It’s really quite sticky on the lips, which perhaps surprised me.

Hopefully one day I’ll get a chance to try a fresher one, as I suspected it would be quite different. This one was in no way unpleasant, but I wouldn’t say the lengthy period of ageing has worked magic.

Facts and Figures

The project isn’t over, it was just on hiatus for a while. I won’t bore you with my life story but an impending house move means we need to revisit the contents of the kitchen cupboard, which yields this: a 2012 vintage Alaskan Smoked Porter.

It’s currently 2026 and this one was found at Brew Cavern‘s previous premises in Nottingham on a day trip with The Official Threehundredbeers Sister, in January 2015.

Well, some time has passed and she is no longer with us, but this beer, miraculously, is.

Alaskan Brewery beers are not easy to come by in this country, and I literally had to send someone to Alaska to find Alaskan Amber. For a while though, the 2012 vintage of this one did crop up on the shelves of specialist beer shops in England. There are rumours that a consignment was destined for USAF bases in Europe, but a van somehow took a wrong turning…

It’s hard to know what to expect from a 14 year old beer, let alone one you’ve never tasted fresh. It’s either going to be magical, or food poisoning, isn’t it? Fortunately there’s just a gentle “pssst” on opening.

There isn’t a huge aroma immediately, but on pouring we do get a waft of, well, beer, but also some chocolate/cacao kind of notes. The body isn’t huge and there’s very little head retention, which isn’t a great surprise after so long.

Alaskan Smoked Porter is inspired by the smoked beers of Bamberg, Germany, such as the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier, and as Roger Protz says in The Book, it:

…may give us a glimpse of what the early London porters tasted like, when malts cured over wood fires had a smoky tang.

I’m not smelling smoke at all, and whereas the Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier was overpowering, I don’t taste it either. Whether this is just a more subtle beer, or whether the years have taken their toll on the smoke flavours—as they clearly have on the hops—is hard to say. As I mentioned, I’ve never tried a fresh one of these, so have nothing to compare it to.

The body is fairly light, perhaps befitting a porter as opposed to a stout. There are subtle fruity notes, a little chocolate and some kind of umami thing going on which perhaps reminds me of dark soy sauce or Bovril.

I’m told that probably is the smoke flavours breaking down over the years, and whilst the Chinook and Willamette hops have faded in terms of aroma or flavour, there is still a subtly bitter and perhaps slightly numbing finish.

Otherwise it’s, dare I say it, a fairly normal beer. No fireworks, but no food poisoning either. I think if I had another I wouldn’t wait over a decade to drink it, but I was pretty pleased to find it at all, so no regrets.

Facts and Figures

Bridgeport brewery—formerly of Portland, Oregon—sadly no longer exist. What better excuse could there be to head to Colchester’s very own Yorkshire Embassy, the wonderful Victoria Inn, and to sneak in a beer from one of Threehundredbeers’ very favourite breweries, London’s The Kernel.

Back in London, Threehundredbeers spent many a lunch hour enjoying eye-wateringly fresh Kernel pales ales and IPAs, taking refuge inside the wonderful The Lyric in Soho. Not to mention the 9am starts sipping Imperial Brown Stout at the brewery itself. So it’s always an emotional moment to find a Kernel brew in this modest provincial town city.

Quite literally every batch of Kernel Pale Ale is unique: everyone who works there, even the van driver, has their own brew day and gets to define the recipe. That said, there are some constants. This is a hazy, hoppy pale, based purely on Maris Otter malt and fermented with American yeast.

Yes, it’s deeply hazy, and that’s a good sign, CAMRA members. The beer is unfined, meaning it isn’t artificially clarified using whale sperm purely for cosmetic reasons (note to author: more research needed). Instead the flavour and beery, malty goodness go in your mouth rather than down the drain.

This batch is, as one might expect, deliciously citrussy, dry and with a crisp, bitter finish that lasts. That’s all balanced by a smooth, clean rounded body and tropical fruits from the Simcoe hops. It goes down a treat, so Threehundredbeers was straight back to the bar (mind the step) for another.

A superb pint in a great pub. There’s very little doubt that you’ll see more from both the Kernel and the Victoria in these pages in due course.

Facts and Figures

And of course, after a nine year wait, two come along at once.

Sapporo Yebisu is listed in The Book as a Dortmunder Export, which is apparently a German style, although this particular example is from Japan, and the only previous one we’ve come across was Švyturys Ekstra from Lithuania. The one in the gold can—weighing in at 5.0% ABV—is what I believe to be the beer included in The Book.

It’s basically just…OK. It’s a can of lager. It wouldn’t be worth the £6.65 I paid for it if I didn’t have a stupid project on the go. But in defence of Starry Mart, they import it themselves and you’ll struggle to find it elsewhere, unless you fancy a round-trip to Tokyo. I really do, but then I also want a solid gold toilet, and it’s just not on the cards now, is it.

There is little to say about this beer. You know what lager tastes like. This one isn’t the worst I’ve had, which is damning with faint praise. Apparently the brewery take pride in the fact that this is made with all malt in the mash, eschewing adjuncts like rice. Which is, again, a fairly low bar to set.

I’ll try the blue one a bit later. I think it’s an ale, but I fully expect it to taste like another £6.65 I’ll never have back.

Facts and Figures

Which isn’t necessarily as exciting as it sounds. Still, this little provincial town does have its moments. One of the nicest of those moments is a wonderful pub named The Odd One Out, which is basically my local. As far as I know it dates from the 1930s and is largely unchanged since then. The pub is full of character and characters (yes you, Annie), is dog-friendly—even if the dogs aren’t always unconditionally friendly unless you have snack-based bribes to hand—and is effectively the brewery tap for the magnificent Colchester Brewery.

Which brings us to the matter at hand.

Colchester Metropolis is a beautiful Golden Ale. It isn’t in The Book, but it’s my site, my rules, so I’m using it as a substitution for a discontinued beer.

Metropolis is always my first beer of the night in this pub, before I start to work through the guest ales and the impressive cider selection. At 3.9% it’s sessionable, utterly drinkable, yet full of flavour courtesy of the Cascade and Brewer’s Gold hops.

There’s a sturdy malt base, which isn’t always the case for certain other Golden Ales, providing a rich, almost honeyed body to the beer. It will always be in prime condition here, since the head brewer’s missus drinks it, and that’s the kind of quality control that you don’t argue with.

As always, Metropolis is served in the correct glassware here, and with that moreish bitter finish, there’s no doubt I’m buying myself a bottle to take home for the fridge.

Great stuff.

Facts and Figures

Yes, it has been quiet here since that Perła Chmielowa post from way back. In 2018 I moved from London to Colchester (of which more later) to do some studying, specifically a bit of research. Which—long story short—means I’m now a published actual scientist. I’m as surprised as you are.

All of that kind of killed my momentum here, so that’s my excuse for neglecting the project. But stay tuned because there are some very nice beers coming your way—or at least, my way—soon.

Love,
Simon

This will do nicely. You can find plenty of canned Polish lagers in the convenience stores of South London, but Perła Chmielowa is one I haven’t seen before. Let’s take a can or two back to our park bench, as is probably fairly traditional for a lager of this calibre.

Perła Chmielowa is listed in The Book as a Pilsner, so it’s a can of lager then. It packs a fairly respectable punch at 6.0% ABV and perhaps that’s why there’s a distinct aroma of Special Brew about it. That carries over to the taste too. It’s pretty thick and sweet for a lager, and the booze isn’t exactly hidden.

I’ve a feeling this is probably a cut above the more commonplace Polish lagers. Faint praise perhaps, but while it was always going to be difficult to find much of interest to say about this one, I don’t hate it. That said, I’m in no particular hurry to crack open the second can, and instead head to The Plough for lunch and to see what they have on tap.

Facts and Figures

It’s about time we drank this one. It has been sat in The Official Threehundredbeers Kitchen Cupboard for longer than I can actually remember. The “best before” date appears to be some time in 2015, and it was purchased from the long-closed and much missed BottleDog shop on Gray’s Inn Road.

I opened this one over the sink with some trepidation: with a beer this old—especially one at only 5.4% ABV—you never know what kind of chemical reactions may have happened in the bottle in the meantime. Thankfully there’s no gushing to contend with, merely a gentle “pssssst” on opening.

What does burst out of the bottle is a huge aroma of chocolate, raisins and booze. Old No. 38 is certainly one of the finest-smelling beers I’ve come across in some time. This should be interesting.

Hailing from Fort Bragg, California, North Coast Brewing Old No. 38 Stout comes to us from the same brewery that brought us that rather nice Old Rasputin Imperial Stout a while ago. It’s named after a steam engine that used to work its way up and down the Fort Bragg to Willits route, about which I know nothing whatsoever, but which I assume to be fairly picturesque.

Pouring a deep, dark, almost opaque brown colour with a smooth tan head, Old No. 38 sticks to the glass like a much stronger stout should. Perhaps on pouring the beer looks a little thin-bodied, but once you get it into your mouth, that couldn’t be further from the case.

Instead, Old No. 38 is rich, smoky, roasty and very smooth indeed. There’s a prominent dark chocolate bitterness that never becomes overwhelming, it’s full of juicy dried fruits, and it’s ridiculously easy-drinking for a stout. This is gorgeous stuff, to be frank.

This is a truly excellent beer. It’s hard to know what role the ageing played in its development, but what is certain is that if I ever find another bottle, it won’t hang around nearly as long.

Facts and Figures

As soon as the sun finally came out, it was time to wander back to Lordship Lane and liberate a bottle or two from the fridges at my local Eastern European bodega, which I didn’t actually know existed until this point.

Brewed in St. Petersburg, Russia, Baltika No. 3 is strangely hard to find in the UK. Strange because the No. 7—which I assume to be pretty much identical—is all over the place. It’s a regular fixture in any branch of Spoons, for a start. There are probably some other numbers in the range. Who would know.

Initially, it’s hard to find anything to say about this beer to make it sound interesting. It simply isn’t. It’s a bottle of 4.8% lager with quite a smart label. It’s cold. It tastes of lager. The bottle is quite big. If it were more than 5°C on my park bench this afternoon it might even be quite refreshing.

But there is a little bit more than that going on in there. There’s a fairly solid malt base, a faint aroma that I guess is from a Noble hop, such as Saaz, and some vanilla ice cream notes that suggest the brewers have at least tried, even if they are owned by Carlsberg these days.

Fine. Nothing life-changing to see here, but this isn’t a terrible beer.

Facts and Figures