A long brutal winter

As many UK readers will have realized, this winter has been the longest and coldest for a long time with plenty of snowfall, ice, sleet and blizzards. It is such weather that calls for hard core winter warmer beers such as Scotch ales, Barley wines and various Belgian strong ales. By inconvenience most of the harsh weather has been after New Year, and hence after the bulk of my winter beer supplies had been consumed. Non-the less tonight I shall be visiting the might John Bull, the greatest pub in Alnwick to hunt some winter beers. Landlord Gus usually changes his cask beers to suit the occasion, and does so quite frequently unlike many of the other inferior, pub-co owned Alnwick pubs.

Arguably winter brings some of the most exciting and varied seasonal beers. In fact some breweries even release wheat beers as seasonal (a white colored beer to resemble snow perhaps?) something only done for the summer usually. In fact for my wedding in December I will be having a small but good selection of winter beers available, which reminds me I still have a bottle of Rochefort 10 tucked away in my beer stocks.

A beer to be sadly missed this winter, the mighty Old Rasputin Russian imperial stout is a mighty 9% abv winter warmer from North Coast brewery in California.