Who shares wins pt. III

About a week before we were due to meet up to share some special bottles, something scary happened. Splashing out on a pint of Gamma Ray at the Evening Star, I found the hop flavour oddly muted. In fact, it tasted like a pint of sparkling water with the tiniest dash of hop oil dropped in. It wasn't the beer – it was me. I’d been feeling a little sniffly all week, and consequently getting no aroma at all. Given the upcoming occasion, I decided I to blitz my body with every remedy I could think of. To de-congest my nose, I held my head over a bowl of VapoRub dissolved in water, which makes your face feel simultaneously freezing cold and boiling hot, with the added sensation of someone holding a hairdryer over your eyelids. My ears felt a little blocked, and your ears, nose and throat are all connected, right? In with the ear drops, then, along with some warm salt water to gargle with, calming down my swollen throat. My five-a-day became seven or eight or nine as I piled all the veg I could conceivably fit on my plate each evening. Anything to avoid cracking open a carefully guarded bottle of beer and then failing to taste the delights within. It worked, anyway, and my palate was soon restored to full power.

What better way to celebrate than Burning Sky’s Cuvée Reserve? Cuvée is a blend of the brewery’s highly regarded Saison a la Provision and imported Belgian lambic, and this extra-special incarnation then rests further in an oak barrel over lambic lees. It has a strong, funky farmyard aroma with a hint of rustic cider. It is still recognisably a variation on a la Provision, and many of this beer’s flavours carry through - tart and juicy green apples hit immediately, then lemon, dill and the phantom of the Chardonnay barrel that houses the saison. A tart finish suggests the quinine bitterness of tonic water. It’s a fascinating, extremely accomplished and, most importantly, delicious beer. I'm endlessly excited to have a brewery of such ambition and invention just a few miles from my front door.

Next was Her Majesty 2015 from Yeastie Boys. Though Yeastie Boys are now brewing at BrewDog for the UK market, this beer is imported from their native New Zealand, and brewed at Invercargill. It’s a pale ale, but doesn't look like one – the addition of beetroot gives it a pinky-purple hue, and it looks gorgeous in the glass. The addition of the beets gives a notable soil-like aroma, but there’s blackcurrant on the nose, too, along with some rose. There’s a slight earthy undertaste – the brewery reckon you won’t taste the beetroot, but I beg to differ – and loads of rich, dark berries – blackcurrant, blackberries, cranberries – over a smooth caramel malt foundation. There’s a dry and bitter hoppy finish, but the hop flavours are a little muted, perhaps owing to the age of the bottle (around 6 months). It’s an interesting and tasty beer, but it doesn't blow any of us away.

Another New Zealand beer followed – Tuatara’s Black Mojo Espresso. Unsurprisingly, there’s a bit whack of coffee on the nose, with chocolate and toffee closely following. The taste has an earthy note, and there’s an unexpected hint of peaty smoke in there. Coffee flavour in stouts often mingles with roasted malts, but there’s little roast here, and the espresso quality is smooth and low in bitterness. The decadent silky body is the final triumph in an extremely impressive beer.

To finish, I pulled out a bottle of Brew By Numbers Barrel Aged Traditional Porter (12|04). I was given this just before Christmas in 2014, and it is just approaching its suggested best before date, meaning it has been in the bottle for almost two years. The bottle conditioning has made it quite lively, threatening to gush over if never quite doing so, and there is a slightly distracting fizz which takes away from the body of the beer. The flavour is beautiful, though, with the Jim Beam barrels that housed the beer contributing a lot, but never overpowering the base porter. There’s lots of vanilla and a rounded-out booziness that isn't hot or spiky, and the base beer brings spades of dried fruit and rich dark malts. Masterful barrel aging from a brewery I'm beginning to think of as one of the UK’s best.

Nervous thought: are posts like this remotely interesting? I always enjoy reading similar things on others' blogs, but it all seems a bit insubstantial and basic now that I've written it all out. I hope someone gets something out of it other than a list of beers, anyway.

Who shares wins pt. II

With a couple of months passing since our last meeting, this weekend was time for another informal bottle share. Here's what we popped open.

First up was one of my contributions, Dark White from Brasserie Fantôme. There's something appealingly mysterious about Fantôme - the bizarre, amateurish branding somehow draws me in, for one thing. There's the use of unusual ingredients - dandelions, for example, or a green tea which produces a beer that looks like a mad scientist's potion. The brewery's reputation is intriguingly patchy, too - Fantôme have their fanatic followers, but even these seem happy to use adjectives like "rough" and "dirty" to describe the beers. Those who are less keen seem to suggest that brewer Dany Prignon carelessly throws together his recipes with little thought as to what works and what doesn't.

Personally, this is my first taste of Fantôme - billed as a saison with spices, it appears to be brewed with black pepper. It pours a murky orange, possibly as a result of spending time in a suitcase as my Dad and brother brought it home from Brussels for me - it's had plenty of time to settle since, and there were no noticeable pieces of sediment floating around, but few pictures online look anything like as soupy as mine. The substantial white head is lively and fluffy and it has a strong nose of boiled orange sweets and farmyard funk. There are more oranges in the taste, along with oregano and pepper. The addition of pepper is deftly judged - it could easily be overdone, but rather than washing out the other flavours, it accentuates that classic saison dryness, combining with a lingering, zesty fruitiness in a quenching, bitter finish. Carbonation is surprisingly low here - I often think of brisk carbonation as a key feature in a saison, but this is a defining example of the style even without the bracing fizz. It's beautiful, and I'll be seeking out more Fantôme on the strength of Dark White.

Next was Samuel Smith's Yorkshire Stingo, a strong ale aged in oak casks that, if anything, seems to drink beyond it's 8% ABV. It's almost still, and we're not able to produce much of a head on our glasses, both factors contributing to the spirit-like nature of the beer - it does, at times, feel like something that should be sipped in small measures from a chunky tumbler. There's lots of treacle and toffee going on, along with raisins, some faint vanilla and an oaky depth from the barrel. Though it isn't as viscous or sticky as beers like this can be, the booziness is a little overwhelming - although bottle conditioned for a year before release, I'd be interested to see if another couple of years might pull it together.

Partizan Huff followed. A mysterious beer in that the label gives no indication as to style or any other information beyond the eye-popping 14% ABV. It is, in fact, a recreation of a particular ale brewed at Winchester College, which you can read more about here. Although a government laboratory analysed the beer, giving Partizan some guidelines as to what they hoped to achieve, I doubt the historical huff would have tasted much like this. Amongst others, a saison yeast has been used to simulate the original beer's dryness. The resulting character is strongly Belgian, not unlike the Fantôme saison, or leaning towards a strong tripel. The stated aim to highlight hop aroma whilst keeping bitterness low is certainly achieved, and there's an earthy hop background complimenting the flavours of candied orange peel and candy floss. Tasty as it is, it's a little hot, and would probably be more enjoyable at about half its strength.

I also had a chance to taste Beavertown and Evil Twin's XXX, an 'imperial mild' which I recently included in a round-up of bottled milds. Having written fairly exhaustively about it there, I won't repeat myself, but the beer's character has changed in the month or so since I tried it - the zesty grapefruit flavours from the hops have died down a lot, and we're firmly in barley wine territory now. It's still enjoyable, but I preferred it first time round.

Whilst the others shared a Kernel export porter and something from Innis and Gunn which was apparently reduced to pennies in a supermarket, I switched to water and concentrated on banishing an attack of hiccups. Another successful bottle share - though I'll be eating a more substantial meal before we start next time.

Who shares wins

Sharing beer with friends is great. That sounds obvious, I know, but I hardly ever do it. I sit down to drink with friends often, of course, but beyond the occasional “here, taste this”, or, “can I try a taste of yours?” we don’t share beer, and usually sit together drinking different things. The phenomenon of the bottle share clearly appeals to this desire for a group to experience the same beers together. It’s also a great excuse to actually open some of the special beers in your collection. It’s a near-universally acknowledged truth that once beers have been squirrelled away for a special occasion, this occasion never arrives. Some beers improve with age, but it’s a lot more fun to drink beer than to hide it in a cupboard.

In the absence of a more formally organised bottle share event, I recently invited a couple of friends round for a small but perfectly formed gathering of my own. The idea was to bring a beer that you wanted to share – not necessarily anything expensive or rare, though larger bottles are best, but something that you might not casually crack open and might benefit from some discussion.

We kicked off with Wiper & True’s plum pudding porter. I usually wouldn't start with a dark beer, but before I’d had a chance to raise the issue of sequencing, my friend Scott had eagerly popped the cap off with a lighter. An astringent, roasty bitterness is my first impression – this is something I enjoy in dark beers - followed by a boozy, brandy-like warmth. The plum and other additional flavours are far from overpowering, and in fact I might not have picked them out without being told they were in there. The fruit comes across as a general richness and depth of flavour, and whilst there’s some warming spice in the finish, it stops well short of tacky novelty Christmas beer territory. Classily done.

My own headlining contribution was BrewDog’s latest Born to Die double IPA. Despite having said I wanted to open something from my stash, I decided to go out and buy this instead. I've been reading a lot about US IPAs recently, and reports of fresh pours of the likes of Pliny the Elder and Heady Topper, legendary hop-bombs which I have never been lucky enough to taste, provokes a state in me which I can only describe as anguish. A beer like Born to Die is, I figured, the closest I’ll get for now. And, whilst I find the blundering BrewDog P.R. machine extremely tedious, they do pale and hoppy very well.

Born to Die smells like Haribo, and tastes like fruit juice. It’s very pale – IPAs of this strength are often closer to amber in colour. The object, it would seem, is to produce a beer as pale as possible, with little malt character, to further accentuate those fresh, juicy hops.  It’s citrus zest, pineapple and mango and, despite the hop dominance, to me it’s not excessively dry or bitter or extreme. The slick mouthfeel only makes it more drinkable. This might be my Platonic ideal of an IPA, or as close as I've come to it thus far.

Next was Wild Beer’s Ninkasi. I’ve tried this before and was distinctly impressed, and this occasion is no different. It’s instantly reminiscent of Orval in it’s peppery yeast character and dry effervescence. There’s more tropical fruit hop presence than I remember – as Scott points out, it actually tastes a bit like Lilt. It’s an indulgent, decadent beer, and I'm happy to have another bottle in my possession.

I’d also previously enjoyed Mikkeller’s It’s Alive! –specifically the Grand Marnier barrel-aged edition, which is exactly what my friend Ollie brought along. That was around two years ago, and got me very excited – it was probably the first beer I’d tried with such a prominent Belgian yeast character, and I remember exclaiming “this beer tastes like champagne!” Unfortunately, tonight’s bottle is an example of time being unkind to a beer. All the complexity I remember is gone, leaving behind a beer that’s flat, overly musty with Brett, and tasting overwhelmingly like sherry.

Thornbridge’s Rhubard de Saison followed. The recipe comes from a homebrewer who won the chance to have Thornbridge brew his beer. It smells bizarrely like Sprite (the second fizzy pop comparison of the evening), and my first mouthful seems to taste of almost nothing – it’s unbelievably bland. But the flavour builds and builds, and a beer of significant complexity reveals itself. The ever-so-slightly tart rhubarb and dry, spicy saison yeast is a perfect marriage, and a medicinal, herbal quality (eucalyptus?) adds depth. The body is a little thin for my liking, but that’s a small gripe.

I stopped taking notes then, though a few more bottles were opened. They were, from memory, Thornbridge and Wild Beer's Tart (disappointingly bland, especially as I really enjoyed it on keg), Duvel Tripel Hop 2015 (still great, though the hemp-like hop dankness has mellowed since I last tasted it, and more of the classic Duvel flavour shone through) and Buxton’s New World Saison (simply a beautiful, harmonious beer).

So if, like me, you haven’t made time to share beer with your friends in too long, clear a Saturday night and fill the fridge. It’s a lot of fun.