Likely Moose

Two beers that I received this Christmas (thanks Mum!) were Fire in the Hole (4%) and Black Death (5.2%), both from the Fallen Angel microbrewery in Sussex.

The first thing you notice when you look at the two bottles is that there is no continuity between the bottles, nothing in the imagery which would make you even think that they were linked. I don’t know why but that puts me off some of the smaller breweries, curiously though, not when the bigger brewers do it. The other thing that you notice is the “CAMRA says this is real ale” label on the side. Well, it is nice to know that they approve.

Fire in the hole – 4%

Pours a hazy strawberry blonde colour, lightly carbonated but still noticeable.

Big hit off the nose, some sweetness, definite green chilli, vegital in a not too displeasing way. Fruit sweetness like apricot jam or the sweetness from ketchup.

Taste: more of the same as from the smell. Definitely ketchup, some vinegar, but in a good way.

The after taste had most of the heat from the chilli’s. There is a slight burn to the back of the throat. Tingling on the tongue which lasts for long after the beer had been drunk.

Black Death – 5.2%

Pours a deep, dark  maroon-y brown, not quite black, although looks it at first glance. No head retention at all.

Same big hit of chilli when poured. Immediately filling the room with the thick sweet smell. Although the sweetness was more strawberries than apricot.

More heat when first tasted that in the first beer. A definite stronger burn on the afterwards as well, leaving the back of the throat with a real kick and the tongue tingling a lot. A more yeasty element to the taste. There was a raw, nutty after taste.

I can see why it says on the bottle to serve this one cold. The more you drink, the more you need a drink and, inevitably, grab a beer. By the end of the bottle I was drooling and with ever sip the burning got a little worse. I felt a little dizzy by the end, I could’t work out if it was from the chilli’s or from the alcohol.

Verdict:

I give the Black death a 5 / 10. This was quite nice to start with and is a nice drink, but to have more than half a pint it becomes less enjoyable and more of a challenge to finish. Male bravado does however pull you through to the end, however afterwards you have no idea what you are drinking because taste-buds have been slightly stripped away.

I give Fire in the Hole 8 / 10. A pleasant drink with a ripe sweet taste. Some of the chilli kick, which you want in a chilli beer, but remains enjoyable throughout.

Note: Black death does come with a health warning on the label. Is this just a publicity stunt or a legal requirement  I don’t know but we have all been warned!

This is the first beer which I have tried from the small selection which I was bought for Christmas. An offering from Ridgeway Brewery (I would link to them but their website seems to not exist), which, by its labelling at least, looks like it should have been exported to America. The label, for all the writing on it, tells nothing of what is inside except that it is a winter porter.

Pour and colour:
Deep and dark chestnut colour, not as dark as I would have expected for a porter. Off white head which disappeared fast. Visually you can see the bubbles bursting off the top of the beer, seems very lively, but calmed down quickly.

Aroma:
Very little, possibly some fruits, strawberry, blackcurrants, but it is very faint. Hardly any smell to it at all.

Taste:
Light coffee, quite sweet and spicy. There is a back of the throat sweetness like butterscotch. A small amount of dark chocolate.

Mouth feel:
Medium bodied. Quite sparkling to start but settled down by the end to a lightly carbonated all round pleasant feel, just as I like it.

After-taste:
Quite a warming alcoholic kick to it in the after-taste. A slightly more pronounced coffee and chocolate characteristics.

Final Verdict:

7 / 10

At first I wasn’t so sure about this one. Way to carbonated for my liking, but it did settle down and I could enjoy the taste and the warming feeling as it went down.

Edit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKpGdo5LI0A.

Another one of my “found un a supermarket for less than a quid” beers. 1849 (4.5%)  was only 99p in Tesco in Burnley. I decided to buy it, and review it in the hotel tonight. The label “gold medal champion ale” for the international brewing industry awards 2004 gives me high hopes.

Pour and colour: 1849 has a dark copper colour with a thin white head which doesn’t all together disipate.

Aroma: caramel and chemicaly, slight hint of cut grass.

Taste: Bigger caramel flavour than you expect from the nose. Rounded and balanced in general. Slight citrus, lemon possibly as well.

Aftertaste: More citrus, not exactly hoppy though.

Final verdict:
6 / 10
Well rounded, with a citrus finish. Not especially different or special but definitely worth its 99p, infact, it’s a bit of a bargain.

The following happened a few weeks ago, I know, I thought I was getting better at posting as things happened too, then I remembered this post which I has planned to write.

Basically all I want to say is that me and my mate Jay are in the process of making a batch of mead.

We had been saying about doing this for some time now and a few weeks ago we finally Got our added into gear and got on with it. Were going with a very basic recipe of honey, water and yeast. That’s it.

We did read a few blogs and got some ideas about the details. We learned from a video on basicbrewing.com that it is best to use spring water or to boil tap water, this means there will be no chlorine in the must. In hind sight it was probably better to buy spring than what we did, which was wait hours for tap water to boil.

Different website’s suggested differing amounts of honey, we went with an average of 5.1kg for our 5 gallon batch.

When it was all said and done we got a hydrometer reading of around 1.072, if we can get that to fement down to around 1.000 then were looking at about 9.7%. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and incase you were wondering we have no money so we used Tesco Everyday Honey.

Last week I ended up in a CostCutter on Edgeware Road, near Colindale, London. We finished work in Earls Court and dived in here on the way home. I was surprised to find that it had a large selection of bottled beers as well as the usual cans of lager which you expect at a late night convenience shop. This bottle of Dragon Stout (7.4%) caught my eye having never heard of it before. It is brewed by Desnoes & Geddes of Jamaica.

Pour and colour: The stout pored with no head what so ever. Very dark in colour, but not quite black. I would have said a very dark mahogany brown but held up to the light was more reddy hue. Very simalar to coca-cola.

Aroma: There was a hard alcoholic kick in the back of the nose, cheap red wine.

Taste: It is sweet but not sugary, red berrys, dark fruity flavours. I know this is a terrible tasting note but it’s all I can think of when I try this beer and that’s some home-brew red wine I made last year using e-z caps and Welchs grape juice. There was a harsh alcoholic burn as well.

Mouth feel: Thick, sticky and sugary. Highly carbonated, loosing carbonation as the beer goes down –  by the end completely flat.

After-taste: lingering irony blood like taste. There was a dryness in the mouth with subtle hop bitterness which sticks in the back of the throat.

Final Verdict:

2 / 10

For me this really wasn’t to taste. I was expecting the usual stout flavours but it seemed like it was made with grape juice of something odd. The alcoholic kick was quite harsh. Not really enjoyed at all.

Available at CostCutter, Colindale.

I have always been a big fan of the band Elbow. And so a year ago when they first released their own beer, with the help of Robinson’s, I couldn’t help but get a little bit excited. I went onto the website and tried to find where my nearest retailer was going to be. Turned out about two-hundred miles away. Well thank-you-very-much! I could have had a crate sent to me but, not knowing what it’s like, plus the cost, plus tax, plus p&p, plus this, plus that, plus that, plus the other, it wasn’t a goer.

Last week I was in Leighton Buzzard (much more local) and in the Morrison’s there I discovered they had Build! (as I believe it is more commonly abbreviated). Finally, more than a year after it came out I finally had my chance. In the year since it had built up quite a reputation, raising more than £25,000 for Oxfam’s East Africa Appeal in the process. I have since tried a bottle which I bought from Morrison’s, this is what I though of it.

Pour and colour: Dark straw, moving towards amber in colour. Not much head, thin and white. You can see a large amount of bubbles keeping the little bit of head in place. I haven’t even tried it yet and I’m guessing it’s going to be too carbonated for my taste.

Aroma: Very little at all, maybe a slight hint of biscuit, like shortbread, quite a sweet smell but nothing very bold.

Taste: Like its smell it was hard to point out at first, a slightly lagery taste but with more build. I was expecting a proper English bitter and so expecting more oompf. When you dig a little deeper there is a malty base to it all but has an overriding hoppy bitterness giving it that crisp back of the mouth feel that you expect from something like an inexpensive lager.

Mouth feel: As I thought, fairly thin, way too effervescent for my liking. It has a dry kick in the back of the throat.

Final Verdict:

6 / 10

I’d love to give Elbow’s beer a higher score as I really rate the band, unfortunately, not so much the beer. For me, although it is drinkable, the flavours are not very well pronounced and to be honest the carbonation is a little much for me. I can see exactly why it is so popular, it is perfectly drinkable and I could happily drink several of them without complaint, it’s just there isn’t much to praise either. Long may it continue to do well, just not for me.

Bought in Morrison’s Leighton Buzzard
www.elbowbeer.co.uk/ 

Going for an entire pound in Tesco in the low alcohol section at the minute, I figured that I’d give Tolly Cobbold’s Totally English Ale a go.

At only 2.8% I knew it was never going to set the world alight, but for a quid? Anyway, some of these low strength beers can be really nice, right?

Opening the bottle and pouring produced little to no aroma. There was a thin head which stayed well. Carbonation was not too over the top, which is right up my street and helped to keep the thin layer of foam on the top or the glass. Light chestnut brown in colour.

A horrible title, I know. I couldn’t think of anything better, sorry. A while ago now I went into London with the lads. We pin-balled all over the capital to visit different pubs and bars across the capital. While there I ended up being forced to make a decision which I don’t often face these days. Drink lager or don’t drink at all. While we were at Wembley for the England game against San  I dug my heels in and refused on the basis that it was Carlsberg. Elsewhere I decided to give it a go.

Bearing in mind my drinking history which went something like… start on Tesco own brand lager… move on to Stella… get far too drunk and find I can’t drink lager any more… move on to mass market cider, mainly Strongbow… discover a whole world of real ales, craft beers and all sorts of other goodies and never looking back. So having drunk lager and gone off it, I stayed clear of it. There was an incident in Germany at the beginning of the year where I was nearly sick (literally) because someone offered me a beer and without thinking about it I gulped down a load of Heineken.

So when I have three different lagers in one day (Samuel Adams, Amstel and Camden Town’s Hell’s Lager), and I enjoy them all, I have to start reassessing the situation.

So drink more lager’s it is then. I’ve decided to kick start this little experiment with Pilsner Urquell. The reason for this is simple. Every blog I read, every book that passes me by, every person I talk to. No one has a bad thing to say against it. There isn’t even “Yeah, it’s good…. for a lager”, it just seams to liked anyway. And my choice to try Urquell certainly doesn’t have anything to do with the badge you can get on untappd at the minute either.

So how did I find my lagers rediscoverey? Bloody lovely! I tell you it was not what I was expecting. I’m sure most people reading this will know what Pilsner Urquell tastes like, so I won’t go into too much detail about that. I will say though that its light golden colour was more inviting, its aroma was bewitching and it tasted fantastic. For me it was like that great feeling that you get when you bury the hatchet with an old friend after a pointless argument that went on for way too long.

When I had my drink the other night I gave it a 3 out of 5 on untappd. Thinking back, this was mistake. It was much better than that. I never thought I’d say this about lager, but here it goes…

Final Verdict:

8 / 10

An absolute joy. Although lager still isn’t my favourite beer style it has way gone up in my estimations. Pilsner urquell itself is fantastic and I’d have it staunch any day.