Ale Mary Full of Cloves

It's Christmas Eve and never a better time to break out the dark and festive beers in my stash. Phúca was a wonderful introduction to spiced ale this Christmas and I was thirsty for more. Ale Mary arrived in my CAMRA delivery this quarter and seemed promising with its boast of cloves, coriander and ginger but even a cursory sniff clearly indicates that it has none of the subtlety found in Phúca. Cloves are to the fore, so much that it crossed my mind that this beer would be better served hot in a snifter glass. The coriander is certainly evident, which is hardly surprising because the label states that coriander oil is used in production. It is a very bitter beer indeed, and not all this bitterness stems from hops, though there is certainly a fair measure in there. The bitterness is harsh, a mixture of hops and intense spicing, and quite unpleasant until is passes from the back of the mouth and other more subtle flavours are permitted to speak. The malt comes through with a little ginger, but the bitterness really takes some getting over.

Flying Dog's Road Dog Porter is a different beast. Unlike a great many American beers, this dark ale is a fairly straight down the line porter without intense hop additions or excessive alcohol. It pours a beautiful dark rich ruby colour with mouth watering dense tan foam. Nothing is overstated in this beer. The rich roast flavour that I have come to associate with American porter is present and satisfying, and is perhaps best described as a combination of an absence of English porter flavour probably derived from brown malt, and the addition of richer malts used by American brewers, but it's not a complex beer and except for its 6% abv could be put away in great quantities.

I'm off to the West of Ireland for the rest of the holidays where the internet does not exist so I'll be quiet for a few days. For some Christmas entertainment might I suggest you check out The Beer Nut's very enjoyable work of fiction written to entertain the ICB community, and is deserving of a wider audience. Gargle's Brewery seems very familiar to me, but I can't quite put my finger on it...

Merry Christmas to those who tune in to my musings and a prosperous New Year to all.

Thom.

Ghost of Christmas Future

The first of the seasonal beers arrived in Dublin this week. It travelled all the way from Cork city and will likely be the only one on draught this year, which is a pity, but I am optimistic that the future will be brighter for this type of seasonal brewing as the craft industry gathers pace. Phúca from the boys of the Franciscan Well Brewery in Cork, who have charmed me with Purgatory Pale ale and Shandon Stout in the past, kindly sent a few kegs North to the Bull and Castle so the inhabitants of Ireland's first city might enjoy it too. Phúca (pronounced fooka) is the Irish word for a ghost or spirit, which isn't particularly festive, it seems more suitable for a Hallowe'en beer. Perhaps the brewing schedule didn't go quite to plan in Cork.

It was hard for me to discern the colour of the beer because the entire beer hall appeared to be lit by candle light, but it was reassuringly dark with rich, light tan foam. The most pleasant surprise was the relatively warm serving temperature. I anticipated a thorough chilling but it proved to be just a little too cool than optimum, a testament to the B&C's love of beer and desire to get it to the punter in as good a condition as possible. It smelled suitably festive and well balanced too with the spices mingling amicably with malt. The taste is a similar experience, nothing appears to dominate and the body is nicely full with subtle cinnamon and clove notes. The only draw back is perhaps a lack of warming alcohol which would have set the whole thing off . At 5.2% it is stronger than the average draught beer available in Ireland, but a few more percentage points would make it a true winter warmer.

Letting the side down

The American craft beer that makes it across the pond to Ireland is on the whole excellent stuff. Sadly we have have to pay a premium for the pleasure, particularly on the fare from smaller brewers. The larger brewers such as Brooklyn or Sam Adams are reasonably priced thanks to the economies of scale enjoyed by these guys, but the beer from the slightly smaller breweries seems to cost a lot more. Even Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is an expensive treat over here and thanks to the comparatively high alcohol content of Goose Island's IPA this too can also prove a little pricey.

The recent efforts of Jonathan Spielberg and his business partner mean that we can enjoy fine West coast American beers at far more reasonable prices thanks to the elimination of meddlesome middle men. It was with these prices in mind that I bought this evening's beers. At only 2.50 each I had a vague hope that these might be more tasty American beers bucking the trend of high retail price. In truth I knew that anything labelled a 'Cream Ale' had to be suspect and my suspicions were confirmed on the first mouthful. Genesse Cream Ale taste of very little indeed, but boasts of offering the smoothness of a lager with the flavour of an ale. My initial thoughts were of cream soda on the tongue, but dismissed this as the insidious action of their marketing on my feeble mind. It had a distinct American light lager flavour and feel about. I can't think of anything else to say.

JW Dundee's Honey Brown is a honey lager which doesn't taste of honey. It is sweet though. Unpleasantly so, and also harshly bitter at the same time. There is reasonable malt substance but it tastes a little immature, a little like some of the flavours from early fermentation. It wasn't for me at all, but my wife liked it, which avid readers of this blog will know is the touch of death for any beer. Bud Light is her benchmark and any other beer she favours is likely to be equally unchallenging.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful - great things are coming from The States, but you can keep these two beers for yourself America, if that's OK with you.

A low alcohol evening

I dined in Monty's again last night. It wasn't planned that way but the evening was all a bit last minute and every restaurant we tried was booked up with irritating Christmas parties. Monty's isn't a second best option mind you, the food and service is excellent, we just hadn't planned on going again so soon. I started the evening in my study with a bottle of Sussex Bitter from the Marks and Spencer ale collection my wife bought me. I mentioned previously that my hopes were not high for these beers, based on previous experiences but it gave me great pleasure to be proved wrong about this particular ale. It was just what I was after in the form of a low alcohol hoppy beer with decent bitterness to stimulate my appetite before dinner. The malt aspect was quite striking for a beer of a mere 3.8% and when balanced with the English hop character this made for the perfect pint of session ale.

You might recall my experience of Monty's house beer Shiva that I wrote about a few months ago. I wasn't impressed with it at all, but The Beer Nut didn't note any major problems during his encounter with it, and I am aware that such problems are quite probably batch related so I opted to try it once again, only to be told by the very friendly waiter that their brewery had shut down. I'll make no further comment.

After dinner drinks were taken in The Porter House, Parliament Street where I had a couple of wonderfully on form pints of TSB. My last pint, albeit in a different branch of the franchise, was freezing cold and disappointing. I was very happy to sink a few pints of the full flavoured, cellar temperature bitter having forgotten just how pleasant an evening on this low alcohol beer can be. Perhaps it was a fresh cask, but rich malt really jumped out of the glass with little of the harshness that can sometimes plague this beer. I've said it before and I'll say it again; we need more full flavoured low alcohol beer in this country, preferably from a cask, but keg would do very nicely indeed.

So Much Beer

And there's more to come in the shape of another CAMRA Beer Club delivery. I am awash with beer I have never tasted before. It is exciting and expensive in equal measure. Bottled beer is bloody heavy and when coupled with postage from Britain the cost really starts to add up, but I will not be denied and besides, sterling is taking a hiding at the moment so things could be much worse. This collection of beer came from Beers of Europe through their on line shop. I discovered this company through a tip off on Irish Craft Brewer and very nearly soiled myself with excitement when I saw what they had on offer and realised they would deliver to Ireland. There are a lot of Stone Brewing Company beers in there, including the infamous Arrogant Bastard and the very tasty sounding Smoked Porter. Flying Dog are represented too with a couple of dark beers I have wanted to try. Brooklyn Brewery's Local 1 has been of great interest to me since I read about it last year and I was surprised to see it in the catalogue. A very special one for me in the group is Anchor's Old Fog Horn which I have waited years to taste. For balance I grabbed a few English ales from Tadcaster's Samuel Smith's Brewery which are unavailable in Ireland. And I couldn't resist Duvel's Tripel Hop having come so close to getting a bottle last year through a friend who while on holiday brought me back plain old Duvel instead, thinking he had got me the desired bottle.

I also have some Mark's and Spencer re-branded ales presented in a wooden trug. (No, I haven't heard of the word either). Their beers are often a little bland and in this instance grossly overpriced at 23 quid for the four bottles and wooden carrier, but it was a thoughtful gift from my wife who lugged the thing home on the bus for me and I look forward to trying them.

Back To the Tun

I have been away from these pages for a while but once again with good reason; I finished my brewing exams last Friday and found myself without a minute to do little else except work my day job and wearily trawl through study notes. I could have done the whole thing more intelligently. Last year I opted to cover all the really interesting brewing science aspects which I enjoyed greatly, but for the last six months I have struggled through hundreds of pages of engineering and process technology. Don't get me wrong, this stuff is essential to brewing, particularly at large volumes, but it was very mathematical, covering fluid flow, pressure changes and refrigeration cycles among many other topics. It was all a bit difficult for a lowly biochemist to cope with.

To ease the pain somewhat I dusted off my brewing equipment on Sunday and set about brewing a pale ale. I had in mind a winter type ale gently spiced perhaps but then realised that it was in fact nearly mid December and it would never be ready for Christmas and besides, my recent attempts at any beer had been awful suffering as they did with a flavour I can't account for but suspect stems from oxidation of hot cloudy wort. With this in mind I thought a straight down the line pale ale was in order to see if in fact I could brew beer at all, let alone fancy spiced ones. The recipe looked a little like this:

4.8 kgs Maris Otter
300g Crystal 60L

46g Target 9% AA 60 mins
30g Challenger 7% AA 20 mins, 10 mins
25 g Progress 5 mins, 0 mins.

Mashed at 66 C

Saf 04

OG 1.048

Some of you with a built in bittering units calculator might note that the amount of bittering hops is mental, and you would be correct. I had small amounts of hops lying around the place and just decided to throw them all in to tidy the freezer up. As I said, I am interested to see if I can brew beer at all, let alone a well crafted one, so I went a little slap dash and just used up all my spare hops. It might not be too bad; if that bloody flavour turns up again perhaps the hops will drown it out.