On Holiday

Right, that’s me done and I’m outta here for two weeks. I thought about setting a few blogs to auto-post themselves but bugger that. I’ll be on twitter while I’m there and I’ve shifted the twitter feed so that it takes up the top part of the blog, so if you want to see what I’m up to then check out that mini-blog. I’ve managed to get twitpic working on my phone too so I’ll put up a few pictures when I can.

Allow me to be solipsistic and link to some of my favourite posts while I’m away.

The If you had to… game is fun.

My 'Ode To's... These are probably my favourite posts and I’ve got quite a few more to come.

The As-Live Tastings.

If you are hungry then click on the FAB POWS – the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week.

Some of my favourite recipes: Crunchy Nut Cornflake Ice Cream, stout ice cream and cupcakes and this totally awesome summer salad.

You can check out my youtube channel. There’s a video over there which I haven’t mentioned on here yet – Innis & Gunn’s Canadian Cask.

And if you get thirsty and want to buy some beers then click the links on the left to beermerchants and BrewDog.

Eat and drink well and don’t write anything unmissable because I’ll miss it. I’ll be back soon, full of vigour, thirst, blog posts, book reviews, holiday snaps of Mythos and a sexy tan. Laters.

Ramsgate Brewery and Gadds' Barely Barley Wine

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep on saying until everyone knows it, but Ramsgate Brewery are going to be big. For a moment forget BrewDog, forget Thornbridge, forget Harviestoun, Fuller's, Sam Smith, Dark Star, forget Oakham; remember Ramsgate.

Their core beers are superb. There’s No.3, No.5, No.7, named after the number of pints the brewer can have before his wife knows he’s pissed, and they are classic ales: No.3 and No.7 are pale and No.5 is a best bitter. Dogbolter porter, which I had cask for the first time last week, is really very good - Fuller’s London Porter good. Then they’ve got a few which are most often found in bottles (although they come out for beer festivals sometimes). I’ve written about these before - India, Ancestors and Black Pearl - and they are all excellent.I went to the brewery and shop a few weeks ago to get a few bottles. They also sell a really good range of European beer alongside the Gadds’ stuff. I got a Mikkeller Warrior Single Hop; a couple of Trappist brews ready for a tasting – Rochefort 8, Westemalle Dubbel; a La Chouffe Houblon; a Taras Boulba, a bitter Belgian blonde; a De Molen Amarillo and a couple of bottles of geueze. Big shop. But it was all about the Gadds’ beers.

And it was two new ones in particular that I wanted; their barley wines: Oooks!, dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvins and Reserve Barrel Aged Barely Wine which is aged in red wine barrels from Chapel Down winery (who also make beer).
Oooks! is a deep red-brown going fiery orange at the edges, the head is thick and creamy and then it’s unmistakably dominated by those Nelson Sauvin hops – brash and bold, resinous, massively condensed tropical fruits, peppery and strong. There’s something about the Nelson Sauvin that I really can’t put my finger on, but it makes it incredibly drinkable. There is something about this that feels like a rich double IPA with plenty of toasty, caramelized flavours. It’s excellent.

The Reserve is a different beast. A near-mythical beast. It’s phenomenal. What makes a phenomenal beer? For me, in this case, it’s a complexity that is almost unrivalled. It’s the same base beer as the Oooks! (minus the dry-hopping) but it’s aged in Rondo 2005 French oak casks and the result is a complete spectrum of awesome. It starts with a brett funk, an air of countryside and chlorine on the skin, there’s understated berry sharpness and red fruits, then comes the base beer all toasty and caramelised, then it goes all red-wine-barrel with spicy wine notes and a near-tannic woody finish and a drum-crescendo of hops. It has an incredible evolution of flavour and you never quite know where it’s come from or where it’s going; there’s a little bit of magic in this beer, something intangibly evocative and different. It’s truly unlike anything I’ve had before. In a very good way.

The great news is that you can buy this beer online or from the shop and try it too. Beermerchants have just got in a selection of the Ramsgate beers and they are totally worth buying. Seriously. Re-read my opening gambit and then go buy some and see for yourself. And there’s a beer festival coming up in a few weeks. Get down there.

There’s a gallery of images here. I managed to sneak into a couple of the pictures taken by Phil, including some where Eddie Gadd the brewer is wafting the aroma of fresh beer my way (just before he gives me a Nelson Sauvin hop pellet which I was tasting for days after!).

If you had to...

Hoorah! I go on holiday to Santorini next week and I can’t wait. Two weeks of sun, sea, girlfriend, reading, swimming and continental lager. And I will drink a bucket load of ice cold Mythos, sitting on the beach, in the hot sun… there’s nothing better. I’ve had Mythos in London and it was terrible but over there it’s something else. But I know this for sure: at some point I’ll have a serious craving for big hops. No matter how much I love Mythos, there will be a couple of times that I just need a hop fix to feed the junkie in me.

We’ve paid for extra luggage allowance and I’ve decided to take less clothes so that I can fit in a couple of bottles of beer to drink while I’m out there, which I think is a sensible move. Realistically I think I can squeeze in three or four bottles. But the question is this… what bottles do I take?! Or, If you could choose… Which three or four bottles would you take away on a two week beach holiday? Choose realistically from the beers you’ve got or can easily get.

I still haven’t decided on what I’m taking yet… Do I want all IPAs? Do I want something big and dark and strong? Do I want something refreshing yet complex like Orval? Do I want to take special bottles or standard ones? What the bloody hell do I do?! I’ve mentioned before my difficulty at choosing beers, so how will I manage to pick just a few to last for two weeks?!

Beer with a Story

There’s something about the creative possibility of big beer which excites me. I found this article in the New Yorker and this article by Michael Jackson about extreme brewing and Sam Calagione and they really are superb reads. If you haven’t already read them, and you love the creativity behind beer, then you must take a look at them. They aren't short, especially not the New Yorker, so get a beer and sit down and take the time out. They are fascinating, inspiring, exciting. They form part of the essence and ethic of why I love beer so much.

The articles show the heart of Dogfish Head brewery and the craft/extreme beer movement in general. The New Yorker is punctuated by the always-intelligent Garrett Oliver who provides the malt to Calagione’s hops while Michael Jackson grabs hold of the creative side of things. And that's what it's all about. It's not just about getting the hardest or the fastest on the extreme beer roller-coaster, it’s about creating works of art, and for some of Calagione’s beers it’s about rejuvenating ancient works of art.

Many of the beers have a story. The Palo Santo Marron, for example, is aged in a super-rare and super-expensive barrel ($140,000 expensive). Calagione explains the inspiration for the continuous hopping of the 60/90/120 Minute IPA series (the combination of a chef talking about seasoning food and a kids game). And he is recreating history with post-modernised nods towards past drinking - Midas Touch, Sah’tea, Pangaea, Theobroma and Chateau Jiahu.

I may be fickle and romantic but this kind of thing really grabs me. Maybe it’s a desire to understand past drinking, maybe it’s the scooper in me who wants to try everything going, maybe I just can’t resist the premise, whatever it is I feel an enormous thirst towards a beer with a story. Especially one told by someone like Sam Calagione.

But what do you think? Do you care about the stories behind particular beers or doesn’t it bother you? Can the story behind a beer make it ‘better’ or more appealing than it deserves to be? What about recreations of old recipes – good or bad? Does the article about DFH make you want to try the beers or does it have the opposite effect?

A Piercing Scream

I’ve just taken out my last remaining piercing. At one point, a few years ago, I had 10 metal bits somewhere or other in my body and I’ve had 13 piercings altogether (more if you include ‘stretching’). Now there are none. I’ve only got tattoos left. I love tattoos but I only have three. I’d have an arm full if I could afford it (I’d probably ask this person to design some of it). It’s a work of art. An art collection. I often think - when pissed - how I’d like the outline of a pint on my arse. Maybe I’ll get it done one day. Let’s say if I win beer writer of the year! I don’t quite know how to feel now that I have no piercings left. These were things I had done between 16 and 18 years old. I’m a different person now and they weren’t a part of me in the way they used to be. I was rebelling back then, I think. Against what, I don’t know, but I was rebelling something. Either that or it was a creative way of expressing myself. I was also addicted to the thrill of getting them done. There’s the worry, the excitement, the nerves, the anticipation. It’s a heightened sense of your self. The clinical smell of the studio. The pictures of other piercings all around. You know it’s going to hurt. But you think it’s going to look great. You sit in the chair, a pair of tweezers clamped around whatever you are getting modified, the spot is cleaned, it tingles and numbs and stings, then the needle comes out, your heartbeat races, you breathe quicker, you brace yourself. The needle goes in. It goes through. It burns, it sears, it slides clean in and out the other side, a barbell pushes through a plastic tube, it’s just hanging there, suspended, stuck in it’s new home, a new piece of me. The balls are tightened on each end. It’s done. It still burns. It hangs heavily. A foreign object stuck in me. I’m not used to how it feels, it’s heavy. It takes some getting used to. There’s a huge adrenaline rush like nothing else. Light-headed, full of energy, laughing, excited. What do you think? No it didn’t hurt that much. That’s what they always ask: did it hurt?

You will not believe how difficult it was to find a decent picture for this post. In every one of me where there’s a piercing in shot I am completely wasted or it’s totally unpublishable (because I’m completely wasted). It also seems the digital camera wasn’t invented until 2005, at least that’s how far back my photos go. And if you want to know what I had pierced then use this: if it dangled it got pierced. I got my tongue pierced twice and I twice ended up in hospital because things went 'a bit wrong' (none because of my tongue - one was an adventurous ear piercing which required me to be on a drip for two days). For a while I also had 8mm holes in each ear (as the picture shows). Crazy. One time (read: more than one time) someone placed a straw through my ear and drank their drink. If you are interested, check out BMEzine, I used to love it! I kind of miss them already.

Beer and Food Night at Pete's

Last weekend I went down to Pete’s for dinner and to open a few bottles of beer. He knocked up wicked array of food and he’s written about the dinner on his blog, so I won’t go into the food stuff other than to say this: Pete is a bloody good cook and his dessert was flipping fantastic (the dessert recipe is on his blog post). As he covered the food side, I’ll get the beers stuff down.

We started in the best possible way: a bottle of Punk IPA to ease us in. Then came an Boon Oude Kriek, all light and blush and sweet and sour with cherries and an air of a cool summer breeze brushing against a clean t-shirt standing out in the countryside. It was a great pre-dinner drink.

We had a Rother Valley Boadicea Pale Ale which was pretty average, kind of citrusy. Then we stepped up a bit and opened a De Dolle Extra Stout. It looks like coca-cola with a frothy head, it smells of coffee, chocolate, smoke and spice. It’s got a great balance to it, an elegant lightness, an earthy hop finish. We enjoyed this one a lot.

With the main of sausage stew we had Hopdaemon’s Leviathan, a 6% ruby-coloured strong ale which is very sweet and malty with dark, roasted fruit. It worked well with the dinner (it was a ‘let’s just open this one!’) but for me it was just a little too cloying on it’s own – an earthy porter would’ve been a great match. Hopdaemon’s Skrimshander IPA, on the other hand, is a superb beer.

It was here that we opened the star beer of the night: Gadds’ Ancestors. A 9% whisky-barrel aged porter. I really enjoy BrewDog’s Paradox Smokehead for it’s earthy-salty-phenolic quality, but I thought the Gadds’ was even better than that. Smoke, a phenolic, medicinal note and dark chocolate all lavishing around the glass. In the mouth it’s so smooth and clean, so chocolatey and smoky and rich but at the same time elegantly subtle with just the faintest hints of some berry sourness that worked oh-so well. Bloody good. I only wish I’d bought a few more (although, as of this weekend beermerchants are now stocking a few Ramsgate beers - there's a blog post here too).

Then dessert and the star pairing: cherry beer with a dark chocolate and sour cherry pot. So simple, so delicious and just perfect pairing. The cherry beer was just the usual red-paper-wrapped one from the supermarket but it was ideal, mixing with the heavy roast bitterness in the pudding and catching onto the pockets of sour cherry. A ballet of fruity and bitter-sweet with roasty and dark. Also with dessert we opened a BrewDog Longrow which is all smoke, cherry and chocolate and fantastic. The beer is totally excellent but it didn’t work as a pairing this time, which just meant that we finished the bottle after dessert with blue cheese - yay!

We opened a Cooper’s Pale Ale at one point but I barely had any before throwing it down the sink – I didn’t think much of that one! There was a BrewDog Hardcore IPA to go with the strong cheddar and this was a good match, although maybe slightly overpowered by the brash hops. An Anchor Steam beer also popped up, a classic. And then I had to leave for the train (with bottles left unopened!) home and I was absolutely stuffed.

I do love nights of eating good food and drinking good beer just for the sheer hell of it.

If you had to...

We’re pretty much halfway through the year now and I want to know: If you had to… Which beer has defined the first half of 2009 for you?

Maybe it’s the beer that you’ve drunk the most of? Maybe it was just a one-off beer that has a great memory or story attached to it? Maybe it was the night you drank too many pints of it and had the best night ever, creating a beer memory to last forever? It could be new or old, rare or everywhere. Whatever it is, pick the one beer that stands above all the others for the first six months of 2009.

And have a great weekend all - I'll be splitting mine between The Bull (for Epic Halcyon) and Brighton (Evening Star here I come).

A Few New Beers

I’ve opened a few new beers recently as well as trying to get through some of the bottles which have been filling the cupboards and fridge. Here's a few notes.

Ramsgate Brewery Gadds’ India 8.3%
A cloudy pale ale. Boozy nose of candy sugar alongside citrus and earthy hops. Really surprising mouthfeel, all thick and biscuity and bready without tipping over into too-sweet. It’s got big hops, earthy and peppery and strong and there’s more booze too. There’s a great middle moment when you aren’t sure whether it’ll go sweet or bitter, it balances on a tiny point, see-sawing, then drops over into bitterness. Really drinkable for the strength and even though it wasn’t super-fresh it still tasted good. I went down to the brewery last weekend so expect more from Ramsgate to come.

Lovibonds Henley Dark 4.8%
Coca-cola colour with a thick and creamy tan head. Aromas of milky chocolate and sweet smoke. Drinking it brings out much more roasted bitterness with dark chocolate and coffee alongside smoke and a pleasing earthiness. It’s packed with flavour and complexity which is great for its fairly modest strength. As it warms it gets earthier and the smoke comes through more (edging towards a great phenolic complexity). I served this with lasagne and it worked really well – the smoke buffers the rich tomato sauce.

Mikkeller Stateside IPA 7%
Hopped to buggery with Chinook, Cascade and Centennial (that's what the bottle says, the website says it's got Amarillo?). It’s a deep amber with little carbonation. The nose gives off caramel, bread, pine, booze and burnt tropical fruit. There’s plenty of sweetness which is balanced by a great bitterness with pine, grass, grapefruit, tangerine and tropical fruits. I don’t think it was especially fresh and so it could be even better, but I really enjoyed this (but then how could a beer with those hops not be good?!).

Kasteel Cru Rose 5.0%
I might write-up a larger blog about this beer but in the meantime let me tell you this: the beer is pointless and completely shit. One word: drainpour.

Nils Oscar God Lager 5.3%
I didn’t expect too much with this one but was pleasantly surprised. It’s a great golden colour with a nose of brown bread, toast and distant lemony hops. The flavours are really clean and crisp with plenty of biscuity malt and some toffee bread finished off with some simple, earthy-lemony hops. Nice one. Follow the link to go to beermerchants, that's where I got mine from.

Kasteel Triple 11%
I don’t really get triples. Maybe I just haven’t had one that I love yet. This was gold with tiny streams of bubbles. It’s boozy at the back of the throat with a gin-like dryness. There’s some spice, something vaguely sweet and more booze. To be honest it just didn’t taste quite right.

Brasserie Dupont Saison Dupont 6.5%
I was sitting in the garden reading in the sun and needed a cold, refreshing beer to open. This was my choice and I’m glad I went for it. Wheaty, earthy, spicy with a faint orange peel aroma and distant twangs of sourness. It’s fresh and quenching, some fruitiness, some earthiness, some peppery spice and a great lingering dry bitterness.

Mikkeller Warrior Single Hop 6.9%
A flame colour with a juicy aroma of peach, orange and mango closely flanked by a leathery-pineness. It’s completely hop-heavy and condensed in its bitterness but it’s great for that reason. It’s very bitter, fruity, floral, pithy and roasted tropical fruits with that requisite clawing finish. Nice and I think this one is up there alongside the Cascade single hopper. I picked this up from Gadds' Beer Shop, where you can also get the India.

The Session 28 (Better Late Than Never): Hollow Way Brew Co.

I wrote this for the previous Session (hosted here) but was feeling a little rough after drinking the night before and didn’t get around to posting it. It seems a waste to just leave it unpublished, so here it is.

I visited Hollow Way Brew Co. earlier this year. It’s an unreal place. Grayson Holloway, the owner and head brewer met me when I got off the bus in the middle of nowhere. He’s younger and better looking than I expected (if a movie of his life were made he’d be played by Kevin Costner circa 1998 or Ryan Gosling) and he drives me in his pick-up to the ranch where he has built his brewery.

It’s only been around for a few years, he tells me. I tell him that I haven’t been able to find any information on the place and there’s no website. They are working on the whole PR side of things and he has big plans for the next year. His girlfriend, Abbie, is setting up the brewpub and she’s also helping out with the website. The brewpub will be the big draw, he hopes.

We arrive at the brewery-come-ranch. It’s a hot and dusty day and the air hangs still, full of the heady aromas of fresh hops. The place consists of two large barns and two old farm houses (he lives in one, the other will be the brewpub). He has around ten acres of land, part of which is used for growing hops (currently Eroica, Green Bullet, Olympic, Symphony and Zeus – a bunch of lesser-known varieties) and part is an established vegetable garden which will supply the brewpub. He also has a large greenhouse where he grows herbs and spices and other delights. It’s a pretty wonderful sight for a beer geek like me.

The brewing area is split in two: the main brewhouse barn and the experimental/storage barn. The main one has the capabilities for one 35hl brew a day, plus 4 UNI conditioning tanks. The other barn is like a secret cave a goodies (plus a cave of barrels and bottling machines). There are old whisky barrels filled with beer, there are a whole range of ingredients like dried fruits and spices, coffee beans and tea. Plus there’s one of his first projects: Wild One. It’s his own lambic which he brewed over a year ago and which he hopes will be ready in another year or so. That’s his baby, he tells me. There is also a Wild Two (working title) ageing in champagne barrels.

Following Gray around it’s clear that he’s hugely passionate about brewing. He started the brewery up after receiving an inheritance and now he wants to make it big. He’s seen the craft beer market take off and he wants to be involved in that. He wants his name as well known as Stone, Dogfish Head, Russian River and Mikkeller. He wants to see his beers flying up the ‘Best Of’ lists. He wants to win awards. He wants people to visit him from far away and to love his beer. He wants to be someone special.

But what are the beers like? I got to try a few while I was there but to be honest I was a little disappointed. I expected more from all of the beers and none of them really delivered. I think Gray sensed that I was slightly underwhelmed and it was then that he said this: ‘They aren’t perfect yet, I know, but they will be.’ His voice was full of a raw emotion, something intangible, something deep-rooted; a sadness that he hadn’t got it right, but a hope that he will. And you know what? He’s an impressive guy. He knows about beer. He knows what he wants and I’m pretty sure that he’ll get it.

Session One. 5%
The session ale modeled on a British bitter. A deep amber with a thick, creamy head. It has a nose of toffee, bread, earthy hops, blackcurrants and spicy citrus. The body is a little thin but it drinks well enough. There’s a good malty base, nice and bready, finished with plenty of rounding-off hops.

Session Two. 4%
A pale ale. Zingy and fresh and light. Biscuity malt and finished with a hefty load of hops. This was a good beer (in the same vain as HopHead) although he tells me that it doesn’t sell too well.

Dark One. 8%
Hollow Way’s stock stout. Big and black. A nose of coffee, milk chocolate, liquorice, heavy soil, toasted nuts and a berry bitter-sweetness. Great nose. Unfortunately it doesn’t carry through onto the palate which is a little one-dimensional.

IPA Two. 10%
A double IPA. This is more my kind of thing. It’s hopped with a selection of the ones he grows at the brewery along with Centennial, Columbus, Simcoe and Cascade: a real hop bomb. The nose is just what you’d expect: citrus and pine with floral hints of mint, and sweet notes of white chocolate and toffee. It’s the best brew I tried there. Brutish, strong, in your face. Fairly well balanced although I’d want it more bitter, in truth, something which he intends to do anyway with the next brew.

Super One. 15%
This one took 15 hours for Gray (and his assistant Jacob) to brew. It then spent 10 days in primary fermentation and a year in whisky barrels. It’s massive and I was so excited about trying it. It pours a thick crimson-brown with little head. The nose is immediately smoky from the barrel aging, then it’s got dried fruits and a slight sourness, blackberries. Drinking this was a little odd though. The smoky and oxidized sour notes clashed in a strange way. The strength was fiery and there was little sweetness to claw it back. Gray is disappointed with this one, but he’s working on a few more in the Super Series (Super Two, Three and Four).

While I was there I also got a quick taste of the Wild One (a big privilege as this was the first time Gray had even tried it!). He tapped a little off into our glasses and held it up to the light: a blush of pink. The aroma: winter fruits, mustard, hay. He was smiling at this point. The taste: still sweet, straying into sour with cherry and under-ripe plums. This one is turning out well and he’s delighted with it. Although it’s not perfect yet.

So there we are, my little trip to Hollow Way Brew Co. Gray is doing some cool things and he sure is ambitious. You may not have heard of him yet, but remember his name because someday soon I’m sure you will.

I didn’t get any pictures because my camera wouldn’t work when I got there. I was really pissed off about that.

Ode to Stella

A mistress. She is everywhere. You shouldn’t but sometimes you just can’t help yourself. You certainly don’t want to get caught doing it though. Especially not around these parts. But forget that. Forget right and wrong. Forget the waxed lyricism. Forget the rare bottles, the hyped-up stuff, the big names. Forget everything. Beer goes deeper than that. Beer is simpler than that. There’s nothing else like it. Nothing hits the spot like a beer. And sometimes a pint of lager is exactly what’s needed. You don’t have to taste it. You don’t have to think about it. You just drink it. And beer’s for drinking. It’s golden, it’s cold, the sun is hot, it quenches like a dip in the pool, it chills like a cool breeze. A pint of lager please. I feel naughty for ordering it. Having a second one is completely outrageous. By the third I’m thrill-seeking. The fourth is the default choice: I’m in now. The sun is going down, it’s warm, my skin is zinging, my friends are smiling and so am I as I sit here glowing with the effects of my summer mistress. Our affair is out in the open. Her name is Stella.

FYI: I usually choose Kronenbourg but it just didn’t have the same ring as Stella when I was writing this! And a quick edit: I NEVER drink Stella. I can't stand the stuff! In this post 'Stella' stands as the symbol and figure of lager-pop.