Booths

For those that don't know, Booths are a small, independent, supermarket chain based in Preston with around 29 stores.  The nearest to me is Media City in Salford.  Think of them as the Waitrose of Lancashire and you won't go far wrong.  They are noted among other things for their large and very varied beer selection which has most connoisseurs of bottle British beer, not only nodding their approval, but actively seeking them out.  I like them and make a point of popping in when I can, though more usually for their foodstuffs rather than beer. Still, I like beer too and while I don't drink beer at home that much, I was nonetheless grateful to receive three samples from Booths of their latest in house range.  Now I tend to leave beer descriptions to those that are adept at it, such as the Beer Nut and those who are not such as.... well, let's move on there, but last night, pre-thunderstorm seemed a good time to give them a try, sat out in the garden in the warmth and sunshine.  I also had the lovely E on hand to give here usual forthright views, so what could possibly go wrong?

First of all the labelling. Plain, striking and simple.  Full marks.  Beers descriptions actually told you useful things, rather than "Brewed from the finest malt and hops".  More plaudits.  We started off with Booths Summer Ale, brewed for them by the highly respected Ilkley Brewery at 4% abv.  The helpful label told us that it contained wheat as well as barley and was bottled by Holdens.  More praise here.  This geek didn't know Holdens had a wholesale bottling operation.  Well interesting to me, though E seemed less impressed funnily enough.  Right away E identified orange notes in the nose.  I agreed and the taste of Seville oranges throughout was very pleasing indeed.  It claims to be refreshing, though E thought it too bitter to be so.  It certainly wasn't a gulper, but to me the Frank Cooper marmalade notes were very attractive.  There was maybe just a hint of the promised peach, but neither of us could detect the label's passion fruit.  I don't doubt the dreaded crystal malt was there too, as a slight barley sugar note could be detected, but hey, Ilkley clearly know their stuff and it worked.  We'd both buy it.  Me in a heartbeat. I loved it and could see myself drinking two or three in a row with pleasure.

Next up was Booths Lemongrass Ale (also 4%), made by Lancaster Brewery and bottled by Robinson's in Stockport.  It promises "natural lemon and lemongrass".  There's always a difficulty in this kind of beer which to my mind tend to veer between toilet duck and lemon furniture polish.  E didn't like the nose or her first taste, but became a little more enthusiastic as she moved on through her glass.  She detected lemon sherbet and thought it rather woody from the lemongrass.  My own thoughts were rather sentimentally of the old Huntley and Palmer Lemon Puff in a badly done liquid form.  It had lemon and biscuity malt, buy sadly it didn't really work for me at all, though oddly, I liked it more, the more I had of it.  E concluded that it was like a "badly made shandy."  Funnily both of us would like to try it again, so pick the bones out of that.

Last, but by no means least was Black IPA, brewed by Hawkshead Brewery and bottled, oddly, by Agricola in East Yorkshire.  I love that.  Another new one on me.  Now this was almost guaranteed to divide opinion, E not being the biggest lover of dark beers.  She loved the piney resinous nose though, but the distinct roastiness wasn't to her taste, but it was right up my street.  Now here I have a dilemma. It tasted to me of roast barley, but it could be a modified carafa. I don't know, but even less do I really know what the difference between this and a bitter stout might be.  I'd suggest if you changed the label, no bugger would know, or care, or shout foul.  Whatever, it was the kind of classy beer that you'd expect from Hawkshead.   I liked it and E didn't really.  I'd love to see it on cask form at a boozer near me. No real surprises there.

To conclude. Three beers, two great and one a bit of a puzzle.  Not so bad.  Well done Booths.

Tasting notes from me eh?  Whatever next?   My thanks to Booths for the samples.

Difference of Opinion

I sometimes, despite protests, get sent bottles of beer to try.  I do give them a go, but as I rarely drink at home, it usually takes me a while to get round to them.

Friday was a lovely warm night, so I dug out two bottles. One, St Peter's English Lager, had been in my fridge for a few months, the other, Brilliant Ale from Shepherd Neame for only a week or so. I do confess though that I did drink one of the two bottles of St Peter's Lager when it was sent and thought it pleasant enough, but somewhat ale like.  A little like those hybrid "lagers" - really more like Koelsch I suppose -  that family brewers used to pass off as the real thing. Think Amboss, Edelbrau, Stein, Einhorn, Holtenbrau etc.

We shared the bottles in the sense that I had one and E the other. We didn't split them, though we each tasted both.  I still thought the St Peter's rather ale like, but E liked it well enough.  My Brilliant Ale was a perfect summer beer.  Light, spritzy, slightly dry and just the thing to watch the sun go down on a beautiful summer at dusk and it would had been even better if I'd had it when the sun was higher and I'd maybe had a couple more to wash down the one I'd had.

E thought it OK but preferred the St Peter's.  That's beer for you.

Thanks to both breweries for sending the samples.  Brilliant Ale (5.6%) is brewed to a recreated recipe from sometime between 1825 and 1855, with the original East Kent Goldings being replaced by Cascades. St Peter's Lager (5.2%) has a classic combination of Hallertau and Styrian Goldings

A Good Afternoon Out

Have I tipped Wilson Potter as a brewery to watch? Dunno. I know I have praised their astonishingly clean beers on Twitter and I may have mentioned them elsewhere.  In fact, on checking I have and I was going to do so again following a visit on Saturday, but have been beaten to it by a fellow blogger,* who writes BeerManchester. So, rather than re-invent the wheel, I'll merely direct you to his report, which is here and which gives a potted history of the brewery and the rather pleasant lasses that own and run it.

One or two things to add.  While their cask beers, mostly hop forward, are really rather good, additionally they really seem to have cracked bottling beer.  Those that know me will be aware that I don't do much by way of bottled beer drinking, but the beers they produce are always worth having and last to their "use by" date rather well, maintaining condition, appearance and flavour.  Many of you will be aware that the ability to put beer in bottles by hand and produce something that isn't yeasty/spoiled/vinegary/ explosive, or just generally horrid, isn't a skill mastered by all.  This is undoubtedly helped by a Howard Hughes like obsession for cleanliness.  I am glad to confirm that they are starting to stride forward and earlier (natural) worries about progress seem to be behind them.  Concentrating on clean, hoppy, drinkable session beers seems to be working out for them and is proof (like their friends at Mallinsons) that brewing good suppable beer that people actively want to drink, is not a bad idea at all. In under six months I'd say they have come a long way.

Lastly, they are members of the Female Brewing collective known as Project Venus, though I'm pretty sure they regard themselves as "brewers" first and "brewsters" by accident of birth. That's as it should be too.

Seek their beers out and you won't go far wrong is my firm recommendation.  (Later this week, at the Oldham Beer Festival would be an ideal opportunity.)

I would tell you my blogging colleague's name, but when I met him, I was a few pints of Bon Don Doon in and either don't remember it, or am unsure that I was told it!

Not Tasting Notes Exactly

While in Leeds on Christmas Eve, I took my wallet in my hands and nipped into Zak Avery's shop for a quick peruse. I bought four bottles and had a chat with Ghost Drinker, who seems a very nice chap. All the more so since he recognised me first, though fair enough, I did have an "I am Tandleman" T shirt on.

Two of the bottles remain undrunk and will be saved a for a couple of months, but since they are Schneider Hopfenweisse and are pretty strong, I have no fears for their subsequent drinkability. The other two were from Thornbridge. The first, their Koelsch tastealike, Tzara, described as a Koeln Style Beer and the second, the so very drinkable Kipling. Apart from a bottle of Jaipur when it first came out, I don't believe I've ever had a bottled Thornbridge beer before.  Now Koelsch is a beer style I like to think I know a little about, so how does Tzara measure up?  Pretty well actually. It has the appealing freshness and clarity of taste that singles good koelsch out, though perhaps, perversely,  it is a little bit too good, being what Koelsch ought to be rather than what it usually is. Nonetheless it is a great beer, not over carbonated, smooth and tasty, with just that hint of fruitiness and that noble German hop finish that should mark it out. And does.  Overall I wouldn't mind buying a few of these again if I could get them locally at a decent price.

What about Kipling.  Again it is the clarity of taste that appeals. Full of tropical flavours and each one pin sharp in a beer that translates brilliantly to bottle.  If you want to know more, buy a pint of Kipling, or purchase a bottle with confidence. Well worth the money spent I have to say.  Someone at Thornbridge has got this bottling game cracked. OK I only had two samples, but boy were they good.  They know their stuff there.  They have great brewing skills and technique, bring out some tremendous beers and just quietly get on with doing it, which makes me admire them even more.

Have they sorted out cask Jaipur yet though?

Congratulations too to Beer Ritz, for selling such lovely fresh bottles.

Tandleman - Bottled Beer Man

All Our Yesterdays was a lovely TV programme that only us old farts can remember.  It looked back on the world as it used to be and was a nostalgist's wet dream.  It is also nice sometimes,  to look back through your drinking career and remember how things used to be and recall with rheumy eyed affection, the times when seeking out the new and unusual beer wise, was not only immensely enjoyable, but overwhelmingly exciting  and when I used to drink a fair bit of bottled beer at home and even, God forbid now, lug them back from my holidays.

In a fit of nostalgia, earlier today, I was looking back at my old beer reviews on the Oxford Bottled Beer Datbase. Along with some other dodgy characters like Des De Moor and Jeff Pickthall, I used to search out the exotic and write about them for the benefit of the great unwashed and was part of a beer community before blogging and while Usenet was still going strong. I had forgotten some of the beers I reviewed and that, in part at least, I used to be reasonably good at it. I have proof of that, which I'll share with you later.

Most of the stuff I wrote was around 1999/2000 and the list of beers includes rare Dutch and French artisanal beers, American beers that even now you don't see here and even the odd supermarket atrocity, plus loads of German ones. Names to conjure with include Yellow Rose Vigilante Porter, St Martinus Rabenhaupt Witbier,San Miguel Cerveza de Invierno 98/99, Great Lakes Brewing Co. Burning River Pale Ale, De Tesselse Bierbrouwerij Skuum Koppe, Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes La Salamandre. Names that don't exactly trip off the tongue, even now.

Looking at some of the reviews I did of beers that still exist, it would be interesting to see if these self same beers would be written about by me in the same way, or whether they or me have changed so much, that it would appear to be a different beer entirely. That's the thing about beer reviews (and other things too), they are a snapshot in time and things change. Some obviously and some subtly, but few beers remain the same, even if the recipe doesn't change. I think most of us that drink a local beer by choice and habit are aware of that, some of us more poignantly than others, as to my mind at least, beers rarely change for the better.

I know I sometimes scoff slightly at exotics and the drinking and praising thereof, but looking back, I suppose it is a phase you go through on the path to true beery enlightenment down the pub. It was fun though and while I don't cart beers back these days, it was kind of exciting at the time. Who can forget the thrill of untangling beers from used socks and shirts and finding them still intact? Happy Days, but things move on and offer some unanticipated compensations. While there aren't many when growing old,  looking back and saying "been there, done that", preferably with a shit eating grin, is one of them and smugly satisfying.

So ending on a high note,  Uncle Tanders even gives you hope for the future when you are in your dotage. Things might not get better, but you were there first, in some ways at least.  

Oh yes - I said I'd give you proof of my beery descriptive prowess. It doesn't get much better than this quote from my description of Mendocino Brewing Company Blue Heron Pale Ale on the Oxford Bottled Beer Database:

"Not Mendocino's greatest achievement flavour-wise (Peter Alexander's description is spot-on as usual) but a very beautiful bottle and label design which qualify it for my "Hall of Fame" bottle shelf above the bar."
Jeff Pickthall

What more proof could anyone want?

More Supermarket Beer Bollocks

Having an upmarket break from skulking around Lidl and Aldi, in Morrisons and having bought all the Branston Baked Beans I need for the foreseeable future (best standard baked beans bar none), I thought, like you do, I'd have a gander at the beery offerings. Bloody Hell they are cheap. No need to buy the fizzy pop so beloved of Cooking Lager, as you could get quite royally pissed for a tenner drinking some decent beers and reasonably merry for a fiver if you could force Courage Best down your neck. No wonder people drink at home.

However what caught my eye was this little shelf strap underneath Lees The Governor Ale (Brewed for top chef Marco Pierre White). I spotted something wrong with it. Know what it is? Well I'll tell you. Since it was only brewed for the first time earlier this year, it would have had a bit of a job being "2002 Supreme Champion Beer of Britain". ( In fact that honour went to Caledonian Deuchars IPA.)  While one might also look askance at the claim that it has "intense hop flavours" - in fact it is pretty damn malty - that could be regarded as a matter of opinion, but the 2002 claim clearly is not.


Now I don't know if this is a local or national problem, but don't these supermarket types check things out with people that know before shoving nonsense onto their shelves and thus misleading the public? Not that hard is it surely? 

Top Tip: There is a very good price on Moonraker Strong Ale - 7.5% for £1.85 and it is bloody lovely stuff  too.

Beer Bottle Sizes to be Hit?

It seems that some beer bottle sizes are set to shrink as the industry ponders how to keep up their discount offers in the face of price rises and tax increases.  Sales of smaller size spirits are increasing already, with unfamiliar 50cl bottles becoming more common and it looks like some beers may follow to allow the same price to be maintained for multi pack offers.  Hardly surprising as everything seems to be shrinking to maintain price, from Dairy Milk to toilet cleaner.

Now this is of course unlikely to affect the 500ml size preferred for most premium bottled beers, but maybe, just maybe, it would be possible that we will see some bottle size reductions in the over 7.5% range, recently hit by extra beer duty.  We will have to wait and see on that one, but it could be that some producers would rather see the price increase "absorbed" that way.

Bottled beer sizes and prices are unlikely to affect me unduly of course, as I don't drink much of them, but the subject does allow me to link to my recent experience as a guest at the judging of Sainsbury's Great British Beer Hunt Final - an all bottled beer event and thus a rarity for me. There was eight beers to try and most weren't bad at all,  but overall it reinforced in my mind, that drinking even decent British standard beers at home is unlikely to give you the same taste experience as drinking them cask conditioned in the pub.  (Hardly news I know and I would say that wouldn't I?)  Funnily enough it is to my mind the bottled versions of what you might called "bitter" in all its forms that suffers most from bottling. Stronger, darker beers tend to taste better and speciality beers probably do best of all, with pale hoppy ones also standing a very good chance of success. 

It was nonetheless a very enjoyable event and good to meet a number of interesting and pleasant people. The winner was, perhaps then unsurprisingly, a dark beer, Good King John from Ridgeway Brewing, who remarkably had two beers in the final eight.  The runner up, Caesar Augustus from William Brothers, could be described as a "speciality beer" being a hybrid of lager and IPA, though to this drinker, it had more characteristics of the former than the latter. It was an enjoyable beer though, like most stuff from this brewery and worthy of its place in the top two. My own favourite was Wild Hop IPA from Harviestoun. I could imagine a few bottles of that would not be a hardship at all, though that's clearly not what the judges thought.  Some veterans of Sainsbury's Beer Hunting remarked to me that the best beer wasn't there, namely Williams Brother's Profanity Stout and certainly this has been echoed on the blogosphere, though I can't opine, as I haven't been able to find it myself. 

So all in all a very enjoyable and different afternoon, superbly organised by Sainsbury's and brilliantly hosted by wine buff Ollie Smith who professed to being a beer lover too.

And you know what? He seemed such a genuinely nice guy that I believe him. 

The full Sainsbury story is here.

Bottling It

As I don't drink much bottled beer, I don't come across this situation very often, but it seems that bottled versions of draught beers are often sold stronger, sometimes significantly so. You will notice here that I say sold "stronger" as, inevitably, the beer will be brewed to a higher strength, then "liquored down" for the draught version. Watered down that is. Now I know of course that there are various reasons for this differentiation in strength, from both a practical and a marketing point of view, but it seems to me when a draught version is, say, 3.9% and the bottled version is around 4.8%, leaving the method of dispense aside, that you will have an entirely different drinking experience. In fact you may almost have entirely different drink.

Now it may be of course, even though they have the same name, that the bottled beer drinker knows this and in fact regards the drinks as entirely different. Or acceptable variations on a theme perhaps? Nor do I know whether drinkers of such bottles resort to the bottled version of the draught beer usually, or just sometimes, when they buy such things; or indeed, whether the brand loyalty of a cask beer drinker extends in any way to the equivalent bottle, though I'm sure marketing geeks would say they do. The world of the standard bottled beer is somewhat shrouded in mystery to me.  For all I know, bottled beer drinkers simply don't know or care about this aspect at all.

If I were Mudgie, who is interested in this kind of thing, I'd set up a poll, but I can't be bothered. Instead I'll just await comments.

Some Bottle!

Some months ago, - not that many - honest, I was given a bottle of Kernel Black IPA by Glyn of Rake fame. He'd brewed it with the Kernel lot and bummed about it being pretty good. It sat in my London fridge for a few weeks then was given a new home in my Manchester one. When I moaned the other day about my lack of free beer, my benefactor rightly enquired along the lines of  "Oi Bollocks. What happened to the free beer I gave you then?"

Well as mentioned above, it was safe and sound and yesterday I promised I'd drink it this weekend. Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, as my favourite poet once said, so last night in a rare bout of Saturday night Match of the Day watching, rather than my usual Sunday morning one, as E had gone to bed, I thought, I know, I'll have a couple of beers. So first up to warm up the old taste buds was Hopback Summer Lightning. Now this isn't the greatest cask beer in the world, but it translates into BCA form rather well. It was a good beer and one I'd drink again when the sun shines. Then I opened the Kernel Black IPA. As soon as it went "hiss" I knew I was in for something special. The fresh hop aroma just jumped out. The taste was sublime, the body, mouthfeel and carbonation perfect, the head retention good and the complex, balanced roast and hop flavours a marriage made in heaven. It was also a masterclass in how to use hops well.  I was brassed off big style that I only had one. I won't mess you about. This is simply one of the best bottled beers I have ever tasted and I don't give such praise lightly. Oh and if you want full tasting notes - see the Kernel chaps. I was just drinking it.

Naturally this morning I let Glyn know I'd drank and enjoyed it and asked if it was still available. He confirmed it is now a permanent addition to the Kernel range. Now maybe I just touched lucky with this bottle and the length of time I kept it. I don't even know if it is bottle conditioned, but who cares. Next time I'm in that there London, I'm going to Kernel to buy some.

You should too.  Trust me on this one.

Danish Beers

We had quite a few at NWAF and I picked three at random to enhance my (almost) non existent home drinking experience.

Here they are and don't they look interesting? If anyone knows anything about these, do let me know. I'll let you know how I get on with them, probably sometime in the next few years.

OK - I will try and make it sooner, but my track record isn't good.

Click on image for a bigger view

Not Greene King Bottles Out

Greene King is to close its bottling plant at its Belhaven subsidiary in Dunbar and move bottling of Belhaven beers to Bury St Edmunds. Of course they say that this will allow Belhaven to concentrate on brewing and that the brewery is safe.

We'll see.

Green note: tankering beer from Dunbar to Bury St Edmunds and bringing bottled beer and empty tankers back. Not green at all.

Down the Drain

I was persuaded by herself that the garage needed tidying. It did. In the course of doing so, many dusty and not so dusty bottles of beer were uncovered. Although they've been kept in the dark, I rather doubt if most were drinkable, though I rescued a fair number that might well be. Among those biting the dust were beers as diverse as Young's Special London Ale - gone sour - a pint bottle of Hartley's XB, a bottle of Ward's Yorkshire Classic, a Tsing Tao Dark and a huge bottle of an Anderson Valley Ale from goodness knows how long ago. I couldn't resist a sip of this and it didn't seem too bad. The recycling bin was chinking merrily this morning as I put it out for the binmen.

Many survived including a clutch of elderly Orvals, a number of bottled conditioned French artisanal ales, a genuine brewed at Morland's Hen's Tooth, a bottle of Belgian Guinness that expired in 2004, a bottle of Guinness Triple X, (I wonder if that's drinkable) a number of assorted barley wines and various others of all styles.

I must tackle these. It really is a shame to see good (or once good) beers going to waste. I guess some will follow the others down the drain, but some might just be decent still. We'll see, but I need to overcome my home drinking aversion.

Sorry for the poor photo. I must get that new camera soon.

Bottling It

My recent poll on how many bottled beers you drink at home has ended. The results are as follows:

One or two	13 (14%)
Three to seven	32 (34%)
Seven and above	24 (26%)
I rarely drink bottled beer at home	23 (25%)

It probably isn't that surprising, but I was kind of pleased that as many as a quarter don't tend to drink any bottles at home. Rather more surprising is those who drink over seven.

I wonder how many over seven that is?

Jumping on the Bandwagon

Polls on blogs seem all the rage at the moment, so I thought I'd join in the fun. My poll is prompted by last night when I had no intention of going out and I quite fancied a drink. "I know" I thought, "I'll do that side by side comparison of Guinness Foreign Extra Stout and Guinness Special Extra Stout that I've been meaning to do for ages."

What usually happens, happened. They are in the fridge, ready to take out and warm up slightly, so I went to the fridge, picked them up and as usual hesitated. I looked at three or four rare BCA's I had got from Oldham Beer Fest. I hesitated again, then sighing to myself, put the kettle on. You see I just don't really drink at home and when I reach for a bottle of beer, some kind of mechanism kicks in and I usually leave it. That's why beers in my "cellar" more often than not find themselves in a stew, sorry, carbonade. I'm a pub drinker and always have been.

Now I know many of my readers and many bloggers do drink beer at home, so this little poll is designed to tease out how much.

It's not scientific, just a bit of fun.

Beer Behaving Quite Well Really

Neil Morrisey is a TV star who has a pub and brewery in Yorkshire that will shortly be on our screens, showing how he and his business partner, Richard Fox, who is the "beer expert", went about brewing the "Perfect Ale." I am not sure if the beer below will be it, but it isn't bad at all.

The first effort on sale in bottle is Morrisey Fox Blonde Ale, a 4.2% golden beer. It tells you on the label that it is a "hybrid" beer, "somewhere between a lager and an ale." Well, spot on really, I'd say. The beer opens with a distinct whiff of flowery hops. It is clean and almost dry in palate, with up front bitterness and some herbal notes. Medium bodied with a good malt base, it is astonishly clean throughout, through to a short, clean, dry, hoppy, flowery finish. I could have drunk another couple very happily. This is a well brewed beer and worth a punt. My only criticism is that for me, it was slightly overcarbonated.

Try some. I reckon it is a very decent, well made beer with some character and if these guys are aiming for something that will attract both ale and lager drinkers, then they are not far off the mark.

This beer is also on sale on draught (whether cask or keg, I don't know) in their pub, Ye Olde Punch Bowl, in Marton cum Grafton, North Yorkshire should you fancy a day out.