UK beer in the new era

i know v little about beer but love beavertown (my local brewery) neck oil and gamma ray as every day beers. they did a blood orange-brewed beer earlier this year which was excellent. love kernel, and wu gang chops the tree, by pressure drop, which reminds me slightly of a weiss beer, my go-to kind of beer before the new era.

I drink a lot of five points pale and Fourpure's pilsner, which is the best pilsner imo

Also had a delicious Norwegian pale ale called Thirsty Frontier in Lisbon last week which I guess I won't be able to find in London

I only know about eight adjectives to describe the taste of food and/or drink with and one of them is "crunchy", I'd like to improve on this because some of the beers I drink are quite fancy and I sometimes worry I'm not selling them v well

oh yes, five points is great

some beers are pretty crunchy imo

Thirsty Frontier - only in cans according to a quick Google.

i had a can of thirsty frontier last night! you can buy it in clapton craft. was nice. that brewery is generally reliable.

i also had a can of mikkeller's peter pale and mary - that's one of my main go-to beers at home, a really nice fairly light pale ale.

on saturday i had a kernel black ipa, which was welcome given my complaining upthread, and i tried that new beavertown, lupuloid. i didn't think it was great tbh - it was fine but too sweet. i prefer gamma ray or neck oil.

Oh ok

Maybe it is time for me to spend all of my wages in hop burns and black on a Monday night

Is HB&B local to you, Sgt. B? (It is to me.)

(I really like The Beer Shop in Nunhead, is why I ask.)

The great off license near Seven Sisters tube, next to the Sainsburys, has Beavertown cans cheaper than I've seen anywhere else (£3.50 for two neck oil, iirc), and stocks more local beers, if there's any fellow Tottenham dwellers about.

I am, but see above re: beer-hating savage. Though at that price I may chance my arm (my girlfriend is less of a savage, anyway).

Is HB&B local to you, Sgt. B? (It is to me.)

Yeah I'm near there on the Dulwich side, Bossman wines on Lordship Lane has started stocking cans of crafty stuff that I like lately and is mostly a fair bit cheaper, but H B&B has a really big choice and also occasionally sends e-mails indicating that someone called "ken c" has won some kind of chili/karaoke endurance contest there

Hooray for having a beer thread I can contribute something to! I'll drink anything with "saison" or "gose" on the label, find sours and wheat beers hit/miss and tend to skip on IPAs. Favourite UK breweries would be Brew By Numbers and Wild Beer Co but the one I find most interesting is probably Buxton.

a man after my own taste

we're drinking beers tonight. Ticketybrew (yes, I know) have done a Münchner that, while not especially sour (and yet, quite hoppy), does a decent job of...hmm. nah, jury's out. the hops are a bit askew. it's quite refreshing but the finish is wrong

Anspach & Hobday - The Sour Dry Hop - now this is MUCH more like it. feels like a hoppy sour beer with the two integrated rather than harshly juxtaposed. much subtler and smoother hoppy notes and a fuller body on the sour. thumbs up

Pressure Drop - Wu Gang Chops The Tree - it's ok. preferred the previous one. this gets a shout-out upthread i think, which surprises me a little - it's a bit too sweet and bland

sweet and bland is where i live, louis!

Beavertown knows what's up imo

The 'Lupuloids' can they've just come out with is maybe the best they've ever made. Not too unreasonable at 6.7% plus hey the top of the can is pink. Easily stands toe-to-toe with the best American IPAs from the Alchemist, Ballast Point, Dogfish Head etc

Otm although I've only just started, every time I pop a can of strong a/ipa I think "omg this is the best thing ever", which changes to "well that's enough of that" by the end. Will see how this one lasts.

Here goes #2. Must be good.

Yeah this is super drinkable for something so strong. A bit of astringency but not crazy hoppy, malty sweetness, maybe a bit of citrus. Sorry, my glossary of beer flavours is limited and predictable. No idea what the oats are meant to impart...

Had my first Lupuloid last night. Sturdy, very drinkable but also deliciousness enough that you want it to sluice around the mouth a few times before swallowing. The strength, for a man who, since parenthood, has mostly fallen on the wagon, ensured I was asleep by 10.30pm.

Yeah I was surprised I managed two cans without falling over, or being woken by the baby at the usual 7am with a thumping headache.

7am? LUXURY.

Well I didn't mention the 2am or 4am wakings. (I know, save it for the people making board. Fucking breeders with their children in bars and children in the beer thread.)

imago have you tried this time travel beer?

http://www.beergonzo.co.uk/buy/beer/mad-hatter-brewing-co-tzatziki-sour-p1463

I had a Siren Sea and Sky last week, suitably enough while on holiday in the Shetlands. If you like gueuze beer with a salty tang, I can recommend it highly.

I also sampled the local brews, Valhalla and Shetland are the two breweries up there. The former were more memorable, including a couple of smoky, light golden beers, which sounds like a contradiction but actually worked very well.

imago have you tried this time travel beer?

http://www.beergonzo.co.uk/buy/beer/mad-hatter-brewing-co-tzatziki-sour-p1463

― minimal hat spiritualism (seandalai), Wednesday, October 5, 2016 12:40 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this could be fun! although i'm usually much harder to impress when they're aping the berliner weisse rather than the belgian gueuze. if i find it i'll give it a try for sure

That tzatziki sour was... Not for me. Not even close.

btw let it be known that I had a few sips of Rodenbach Grand Cru again the other day, and yeah it's the greatest beer ever

dear sour beer upstarts, this is your target

Just been sampling the Beavertown 'Sour Power' farmhouse red (a collaboration with Arizona Wilderness and Mikkeller) and measuring it up against RGC for strongest test conditions - and I'm delighted to say it really holds up! A great effort, very nicely balanced with a strong sour kick powering through the initial bitterness. Not as perfectly integrated as its control, if we're splitting hairs, but I'm not sure it's trying to be. A very fine beer. Beavertown had been good for a functional if mostly dull IPA up until this point, feels like a bit of a gamechanger

i think beavertown gamma ray is pretty great. on tap it's really lively.

had a really nice estonian porter last night, by a brewery called pohjala. been drinking a lot more dark stuff - had a thornbridge raven on friday and on saturday i had an omnipollo imperial stout made with vanilla and marshmallow - not as wacky as that might sound, was very strong and coffee-like.

and a nice mikkeller pilsner with my dinner yesterday evening.

I don't know if Gamma Ray has changed or my expectation for beer, but the first time I had it, which I guess was 3 years ago, it was a revelation. It's still a decent option though.

the Beavertown brewery is worth a visit if you are in reach of Tottenham Hale, straight from the cask in 1/3 or 2/3 measures and pretty cheap with it.

Wild Beer Co's new lobster and cockle beer cannot be good, surely.

lol

Gorblimey.

I will be waiting for someone I trust* to taste that before I go anywhere near it.

*basically nobody anymore

I had a banging pint of gamma ray at the weekend, thinking about it is ruining my Tuesday

I have one of their weird new IPAs in the fridge that I probably shouldn't drink tonight

You should drink it

Drink the beer

Don't listen to Hand.

Unless you want to.

There's a £45 'rainbow' package of weird collaborations on offer at the local Oddbins, featuring some really enticing sours and goses (including Beavertown, I think, and also a slightly saner WBC effort). When we've dispatched the Danish sours we bought yesterday we'll probably grab the lot and report back

yeah I drank the "Beavertown Lupuloid IPA", it gets the thumbs up

It was very zingy

The one I had was fantastic.

Had a pint of Gamma Ray last night, it's fine and perfectly enjoyable but I don't really get why people like it so much compared to other similar beers.

This IPA arms race has jaded us all!

it is the best of the commonly available pale ales - like it's approaching meantime prevalence. there are others i prefer that are less commonly available.

i dunno if there's an issue of how it's kept either but i have really come to love it since moving to clapton, the windsor castle 5 mins from my flat always has it and drinking there has made me rate it really highly.