UK beer in the new era

Beavertown's Tempus project is shaping up very nicely indeed! Screw Tropigamma, this is where it's at. Their Moonshiner berliner weisse and their El Mariachi gose are both *excellent* - refreshing and intensely flavoured. Just get the price down next time

Fierce Beer from Scotland have done a nice tropical sour, the Tropical Tart - refreshing and authentically tangy with good fruit and a nice nutty aftertaste. Also pretty cheap as these things go

Thornbridge are far too up and down for my liking, although Love Among The Ruins and Days of Creation were truly great sours the only beers of theirs I'd seek out are the raspberry Imperial stout, and Serpent.

From aldo's megapost upthread. I can confirm that Days Of Creation, a prizewinning lambic red, is astonishing. They've more or less matched Rodenbach, except with notes of stilton and (as my friend noticed) strawberry supplanting the earthier cherry of Grand Cru. Cost me £17 for a bottle but worth it tbh as a one-off. Now do it again but cheaper. One of the best beers I've ever drunk

Now, in a stunning pvmic, I'm about to tuck into Timmermans' pumpkin special :D

Oh - raspberries, not strawberries! xp

Too many ales are too strong %. Something like 4.5% should be the max. Below 4% is what it should be. It's so rare to find bottled ales that low today. I'm not sure why they're cranking it up so high. Belgian ales is a slightly different affair, but english ales are session ales, I'm baffled by the 6% ales I see.

there've been strong English ales since almost literally forever though?

Yes, the sub-4% standard is a legacy of the first (and second?) world war I think. Stronger ales respond better to bottling: the pasteurisation process knocks the body/flavour/mothfeel/whatever out of most things below 4%, so you end up with thin, bland beer. For sub-4% to work, it's really got to be unpasteurised on draught.

I agree with that, but tbf there are some p decent low ABV beers about these days, purposely brewed with flavour in mind, e.g. Redemption's Trinity

early 19th century stouts were often over 7 percent.

Drinking Love Among The Ruins right now for tt's 29th. Thornbridge, it is safe to say, have cracked the code

Also, she is 'doing' my eyebrows right now what's going on

http://i.imgur.com/uAT8T6l.jpg

get a haircut ya hippie

back to london, and we've got ourselves all manner of beers to get through, starting with Chorlton's 'summer/blanc double sour' and 'sour death' ipa....holy shit, why haven't I drunk their stuff before? it's lethal

Sour Death about as sour as any hoppy beer has a right to be, and the summer sour is....a concentrated blast of malevolence, more pls

let's rep the Marble Brewery of Manchester and their Sister Agnes cherry sour effort - pitched halfway between a Flemish Red and a barley wine, with most of the good points of either

I suspect I'd prefer the ether tbh.

(But yes I'm pretty keen on Marble beer, in the main)

siren's 'acid jam' perhaps the first siren to really hold my attention

Imo it's pretty astonishing but a really difficult drink.

Had Beavertown's Brose - a rose-derived sour - at the brewery the weekend before last. AVOID.

The blood orange IPA, however, is even nicer off the tap.

I've a bottle of Brose but haven't summoned the courage to open it yet.

There's a limited run of Hamerton Earl Grey Black IPA out there right now and it's excellent.

So I drank the Brose. Kind of weird tasting, not as sour as I'd have liked and the rose was oddly sweet. Like a massively inferior Acid Jam.

WBC's Yadokai effort has finally been drunk then...it's very good. Also faintly redolent of Acid Jam, but obviously with a sake-meets-abbey-beer weight to it all. I wouldn't call it subtle, but it's arresting.

There's a limited run of Hamerton Earl Grey Black IPA out there right now and it's excellent.

― Matt DC, Saturday, May 6, 2017 1:02 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

enjoying this right now. it's really good and i say that as a sceptic of anything that isn't sour these days. in fact i prefer it to the beer tt is drinking right now, siren's new grapefruit sour. she disagrees. but what is indisputable is that siren won't come close to topping 'acid jam' for a good long while

we also have the brosé lying in wait, like some dismal portent of oversweetened doom

my mouth puckered just reading that, lj

"brosé"!!! is that pink wine for dudes????

it's a rose-themed ale from beavertown and it is BAD BAD BAD

oh timing!

it's by no means offensive and I'd even say a bit refreshing, but nothing special for a speciality sour - the sour base is nice but the 'rosé' flavour doesn't quite do enough to stand out. enjoyable though, and the sweetness doesn't kill it

but i'm a sour beer nut, and stevie, well,

sweet and bland is where i live, louis!

― A bear made of Tetris blocks (stevie), Friday, September 30, 2016 8:44 AM (eight months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

:P

rosé-themed, not rose-themed, btw

rose nectar sour would be one of those things you simply wouldn't know the greatness or shitness of until you tried it

but i'm a sour beer nut, and stevie, well,

haha, yes, true!

someone was telling me about a tangfastics-brewed beer the other day. oh brave new world with such things in it etc etc

oh god, beavertown's tempus project has seriously gone too far now

we've moved onto their 'appelation' bramley apple saison

my feelings are perhaps akin to what stevie's would be, except i'm supposed to like this stuff

tangfastics beer courtesy of mad dog, whom i've always been a bit skeptical of. would still taste, probably

yeah, i'm tempted too tbh

correction: 'applelation' ffs

aiui Haribo sicked their lawyers on Mad Dog and they had to recall all of the Tangfastics beer so you'll probably not find one now

I drank their granola breakfast stout last night, it was just OK tbh

Beavertown's X Trillium IPA is pretty good as IPAs go. Probably the most impressed I've been at Beavertown yet

! my local shop is not carrying it

I went to the Beavertown festival on Friday - it was p great. Ticket paid for all your beer, many, many breweries from all over the world present. Slightly weird being at an event where the event is drinking rather than anything else, but it was good nonetheless, I would go again.

My beer festival this year was Ales Tales, a Belgium-only festival. It was superb, obviously

brick brewery's rhubarb sour is a low-key pleasure, endlessly drinkable

OK, Partizan's Mango Ceylon Iced Tea saison, achieved with nothing but barley, yeast and hops, feels like a bit of a paradigm shift, in UK terms at least. Not the best beer I've had recently but one of the most boldly-realised

Rhubarb sour? Nice

Rhubarb sour sounds right up my street but I had a rhubarb cider recently that didn't taste of rhubarb at all, so I dunno.