Themed beer night No3: Belgian beer night

Last weekend was the advent of Belgium’s national day, the 18th of July. To celebrate I decided to conduct a Belgian beer night at one of the fine Belgo restaurants in London (the primary intention of the journey being to watch the cricket). The session was shorter than originally desired due to the extortionate price of beer, but a good number of quality Belgians were consumed including an undiscovered by myself Delirium Nocternum. Following this many great pubs were visited each housing excellent beer ranges and proving once again that London has an excellent range of quality pubs. Although I don’t get to visit much, this year I will be lucky enough to be attending the GBBF for the first time ever, something I have been meaning to do for some time now.

Beer Judging during ashes tension.

What does one drink during the tensions of Ashes test cricket you may ask? I do have bottle of of single malt single cask whisky in my cabernet that exceeds 50% abv! But this was not touched as last weekend I was to act as an official judge for the World beer awards, where beers from around the world are categorized and compared to be awarded prestigious awards.

I shall note that my achievement of becoming an official beer judge was ascertained at Beer Of the World Live, mentioned on a previous post. Here I entered a competition whereby anyone could write tasting notes on a beer of choice that is available on the day on designated tasting cards. These were put in ballot, and the taster giving the most accurate notes was awarded the chance to be an official taster for the World Beer Awards. After spending half the day filling out numerous tasting cards, and waiting for weeks afterwards with anticipation, I was finally given the news that I had blazed gloriously to triumph and won the competition.

A few days later a box of different beers arrived in the post and the reviewing could begin. The standard was pretty high featuring a good variety of different beer styles including legendary Meantime London Porter, Dark Star Espresso beer, some impressive lagers, and a couple of quality ales from the mighty Rogue brewery. Unlike the ashes first test, the victors were mostly English beers, however the result was a little unfair as nearly half of the samples reviewed were English.

Comparisons between the beers themselves also affected my judgment of score. But this could only really be done between beers of slightly similar characters, examples such as Rogue Smoke ale were completely individual. Which brings me to another idea I had some time ago. In the context of beer judging competitions, I thought, wouldn’t it be great to do (in a sense) a beer battle between breweries. In this the beers from two or more brewers could be reviewed by a panel of judges and whichever brewer gets the highest overall scores wins. Sadly I do not have a panel of judges, and even getting mates and bottles together would be awkward even if it was a bi-monthly thing (especially considering some beers could not be done justice unless/are only available on cask). But alternatively using the opinion and experience of you, the reader, I could gain more votes and opinions. These battles could become even more interesting between rival brewers, or those with something in common, for example Black Sheep vs Theakstons. Who do you think would win (even though its just subjective)? And what other interesting beer battles could you think of?

Themed beer night No2: American beer night.

OK I knew from the start the difficulties in composing this session. How can I do justice to American beer when the majority of the greatest US beers are not available in the UK? The answer was to work with what I could find, which were mostly the classics. To start things off I reached for the Anchor Steam Beer: A traditional west coast ale/lager hybrid style revived by the legend that is Fritz Maytag in San Francisco. Many of you may know of Fritz as one of the great founders of the modern American craft brewing movement, which kicked off in the 70’s/80’s era. Another classic beer to come from the west coast beer movement was my second beer of choice:

Sierra Navada Pale ale; another well published American classic, clean and zesty showcasing plenty of American hops. This was followed by:


Sierra Navada Stout; Dry, roasty and clean textured Irish style stout, probably one of my favorite examples of the style.

After this came the more exotic:

Goose Island Matilda: The Chicago based breweries interesting take on an Orval style Belgian ale. Nicely rounded with a smooth orange fruit like character with an obvious lack of the lively carbonation the style requires. In this very rare case, I actually find the American interpretation to be less assertive than the original Orval. In comparison Matildas hop flavor has a bigger role in this beer and the carbonation is lower, making it cross into non Belgian ale alittle. Orval is far more distinctive, but despite this Matilda is nothing less than a great beer.


Flying Dog Brewery Snake Dog IPA: From Denver. This beer I recall drinking a few years back as a less experienced taster and found it to be the most explosive hop bomb I had ever encountered. After visiting California myself, coupled with more beer drinking experience I can conclude this is not as extreme as I first thought, but still has that fairly explosive hoppiness making it probably the most aggressive American IPAs available in the UK.


Anchor Old Foghorn Barleywine style ale: Saved this one for some blue cheese at the end of the night. Brilliantly bold with rounded malt, warming alcohols and a well balanced hop character. In a strange way it reminds me alittle of my home made Vintage 2008 ale, but with completely different hop profile.

Still to this day I come across people who think American beer is all about fizzy, bland, pale, mass market pap. Around 30 years ago they would have been right, but today the US contributes massively in brewing innovation, beer style evolution and the production of bigger, bolder more extreme beers.

The Americans were inspired by the great brewing nations of Europe, which is why today most beer styles found in the states are ether derived from or are European styles (Steam beer being an exception). In the present day Americas brewing innovations have rubbed off on brewers worldwide. This has led to brewers in places like Australia, Scandinavia and Japan all thinking, ‘hey, we don’t need a brewing heritage to live the dream, lets set up shop and kick out some crazy styles’. I have also been to America myself (only California, on a beer hunting holiday) and the range of craft beer available, as well as the respect for craft brewing is superb. One of the most refreshing things is getting away widely regarded UK beer concept that the beer market is roughly divided into two groups, those who drink keg beer, and those who drink ‘real ale’, but this is slowly changing.

That’s Independence day over with. The beer was drunk and copious amounts of burgers fries and doughnuts were eaten as a further part of the tribute. Next time readers I shall be attempting to conduct a Belgian beer night in one of the Belgo restaurants of London on Belgians national day. July 18th.

25 Today, and a new Daleside seasonal release!

In the last few weeks I have been given the privilege of milling the grains, monitoring the fermentation and transferring the new Daleside summer seasonal beer Summer Blonde, which arrived in pub cellars only a few days ago. The very pale hoppy summer seasonal at 4.7%abv retains the soft rounded house character of Daleside’s beers whilst integrating well balanced bouncy tropical fruit and citrus notes from the hops. By my rating an excellent quality golden ale for drinkers of the north east to look out for.




I can also mention that today is my birthday and I have the day off to get ready for my trip up to Scotland to climb Ben Nevis. This has also given me the time to prepare the formidable quantities of strawberries for the maturation of my pending strawberry beer and to get tucked into my new presents, which include a really nice watch, beer books by Randy Mosher, Pete Brown and a new one by various authors in Tribute to the late Michael Jackson called Beer Hunter, Whisky chaser.

Because of the big climb, I also decided to make last night the time to open a bottle of my highly reserved 2008 Vintage ale (less than 30 bottles left now). It seems to have taken on a slightly drier character since its early bottling in January. The body has changed and the alcoholic notes have mellowed. Still fine stuff, but I sometimes wish I’d made a bit more than two gallons.

Strawberry beer.

Now here’s a moment in my brewing life that’s out of the ordinary. This weekend I have been making the base beer for my first ever fruit influenced beer, a strawberry influenced golden/pale ale. Here is a basic outline of the methods:

Total volume: 4 gallons
OG: 1048 PG: 1012

In the mash:
British lager malt, Torrified wheat, Wheat malt, Crystal malt (1%) (I was going to use around 5%carapils but they smelt distinctly cheesy and were replaced by the tiny quantity of crystal)
Mashed at 66oC, sparged at 76-78 oC.

In the copper Hallertau Perle hops were used to create 20-25IBUs, and then used late at around 55min before flameout at 60min. A British ale yeast strain was pitched for primary fermentation.

The plan is to create a fairly light, soft natured golden/pale ale with some underlying sweetness to be matured in around 1-1.5kg of fresh strawberries per gallon for a number of weeks. In theory sugars from the fruit will trigger a second fermentation in the conditioning vessels effecting the flavor profile over time. Has anyone else ever tried making fruit beers, if so let me know what you think?