Surprise delivery

I've been away awhile. Haven't much to write amount in truth. I had the privilege of working Christmas day in the lab, which proved to be more depressing than I thought it would be. I was kept busy with incidents of gastroenteritis, no doubt a result of poorly prepared Christmas dinners. I didn't get out to a single pub over the holiday season either. A couple of days before a roaring open fire in the windswept West of Ireland did my heart good as did a lively wedding just after New Year. There was little in the way of interesting beer to be had until a surprise delivery from the nice people at CAMRA arrived. It seems the lads at Realale.com fixed their delivery issues by using a courier that I suggested to them. So bottled real ale is flowing in my house once again. I grazed on the delivery over the last week or so and declare myself quite happy with it.

Hobson's Choice proved to be a golden ale I could really get on with. I have griped about English golden ale in the past, with good reason, but this one really bucked the trend with lip smacking bitterness, full body and rounded malt.

Cheddar Ale's Totty Pot started a little weak wristed but soon gave up the goods upon warming - treacle like roasted notes were the reward for not rushing.  

Grumpling Old Ale was a solid, if uneventful ruby ale. Plenty of malt and fullness but fairly typical of many other ales. There are a lot of these ales in CAMRA deliveries, but it doesn't stop me from enjoying them.

Palmerston's Folly was unusual for a winter selection - a sweet ale with a decent dose of wheat made for refreshing drinking, but seemed incongruous among the heavier ales.

The most striking ale came from Wiltshire in the shape of Chimera IPA - heftily hopped with English fare and authentic at 7% abv. A fine beer with uncompromising bitterness and malt to match.

Deliveries are bimonthly now, instead of quarterly so I can look forward to even more tasty beer this year than last. True, there are quite often a dud beer or two to be had but on the whole my CAMRA beer instalment is well worth anticipating.

Ginger nut

I can't recall having a ginger ale before. Of course I've had the alcohol free version many times - it's a favourite of mine, especially Fentimans interpretation. (Their cola is pretty damn good too, and something of a curiosity to me because I find it tastes exactly like cola bottles, which is great, but I would never have considered cola bottles to be a very authentic cola containing foodstuff, but Fentimans cola is definitely more natural than other of the major producers, so perhaps the humble cola bottle deserves more respect).

Anyway, back to the alcoholic version. In Keystone Brewery Gold Spice the ginger is  vaguely present in the form of a mild, yet pleasant dry heat in the back of the throat. Even without the ginger this would be a dry beer; it has little residual body and an irrepressible stream of bubble sustaining frothy foam throughout. The bottled yeast were clearly hard at work during the conditioning of this beer. There is English hop character in there somewhere too, both aroma and a distinct bitterness, but the intense condition makes the carbon dioxide burn a little and a metallic note creeps in with it. The best part in the colour of the beer; it really lives up to its name, sporting a stunning golden hue with brilliant clarity.

This beer arrived with my last CAMRA beer club delivery, but disaster has struck. CAMRA recently outsourced the distribution and selection of their beer club to realale.com  - a company I recently visited in London and were very impressed with, however they claim to have had bad luck with deliveries to Ireland in the past, with missing boxes and broken bottles occurring all too regularly. One or two of my deliveries suffered this fate, so realale.com are struggling to find a more reliable courier firm. The problem is that most couriers want to charge a fortune for delivery to Ireland. The cost isn't much of a surprise -  the average box of goodies from CAMRA weighs in excess of  20 kilograms. So it looks likes no more deliveries for me in the near future until they broker a better deal. I must confess to being a little irritated.

Cobweb ale

I dusted the cobwebs off my brewing equipment yesterday. Literally. Too long a stint in the attic draped them with silken threads. Another golden ale was my plan yesterday, but this time with a little more body than the last one. To this end I added 10% dextrin malt to the grist, which will fill out the body but will not alter golden colour I desire. It looked like this:

3.9 kg Maris Otter
400 g Carapils

35g Northdown 60 mins
15g Cascade 20 mins
15g Centennial 10 mins
15g Centennial 0 mins

Mashed at 66 C

40 IBU

Saf o5

OG 1.040

I made modest additions of calcium sulphate and calcium chloride to boost the calcium in my liquor and add some fullness. I had to make some major adjustments to my tap water because a grist that pale will not tolerate 200 ppm alkalinity, which is what I found in my water. I used lactic acid to bring the pH down to around 5.5 which corresponds to alkalinity of around 25 ppm.

While brewing I sampled two ales from this quarter's CAMRA beer club delivery. Interestingly, in the literature with the delivery CAMRA almost apologised for the inclusion of a golden ale, noting that a great many of them are not up to standard. I have whinged about this for quite some time, having been plagued with entire deliveries from CAMRA of listless, thin and gassy golden ales. Crop Circle from the Hopback Brewery was the worrisome golden ale in this delivery, but it can't be dismissed as bland. In fact this ale packs quite a bit of flavour, with a harsh hop character. Lemons strike you on the nose and the addition of maize to this beer gives it a lighter body. Along with this I tried Potholer from Cheddar Ales. This is my kind of English ale. Full biscuit malt with lip smacking, well rounded hop bitterness, topped off with rich foam and a mouth watering copper hue.

Five for five

My latest CAMRA beer club delivery arrived yesterday and in a fit of gluttony fuelled by high spirits due to a spell off work I got stuck into the 5 ales on offer. First up was Ridgeway's ROB, an organic ale which assures you on the bottle that organic malt is a bugger to work with but organic hops are the business. The beer itself has a pronounced malt character like I have never tasted before, it is biscuity, almost wheat like and lingers forever. The hops are indeed good, plenty of orange and spice but over all it's an unusual ale and I'd struggle with any more of it.

Next up was Hopdaemon Brewery's Skrimshander, named after a character in Moby Dick. It pushes itself as an IPA and doesn't disappoint on the hop and bitterness front. Plenty of hops on the nose and in the finish, an attractive copper colour and brilliant clarity along with low carbonation make for a top English ale.

Meantime's Wheat is far from English but it is by far the best non German wheat I have stumbled across. It's all about the yeast selection with these beers but the grist composition is important too. Meantime have nailed both with this beer producing a true weisse in the Bavarian tradition.

Liberation from Suthwyk ales is another honest English ale sporting a mouth watering golden hue accompanied by a slight haze despite a careful pour. It has the cold tea tannin character that I don't get to taste enough and has even less carbonation than Hopdaemon's Skrimshander resulting in near perfect cask character. The hops are earthy, and once again I would say this is an example of a solid English ale save for the use of American Liberty hops, but Liberty is not an American hop in the mould of Cascade of Centennial - it has a earthy character more typical of English hops so the over all impression is of a well crafted English ale.

Last of all is Otley 08, a bitter sweet barley wine from a relatively new brewery in Wales. The 8% ethanol swimming around the glass is evident in a comforting warmth, but there is plenty of bitter orange from the hops to balance things out. The citric hops match the golden colour well, and it is a thin beer for its weight without the cloying that can make some heavy hitting beer hard to manage.

A satisfying selection this quarter made all the more so by the relatively little cost thanks to a weak Sterling. Sure, the Euro is crippling Ireland's exporters, but it's not all bad....

My gaff, my rules.

Bottled Landlord is described as 'strong' pale ale on the label which is a little curious because it is only 4.1% and far from strong in my book. A recent trip to Doncaster sheds some light on this somewhat unusual nomenclature because I had the pleasure of drinking with a group of bone fide northern English blokes who loved their bitter. All the bitter I drank while over there was around 3.5% abv and very malty, with an almost total lack of late kettle hops, except for the beer at hand this evening: Timothy Taylor's Landlord. This is set apart from other Northern English ales primarily because of the more aggressive hopping and slightly stronger alcoholic strength. I must also add that I enjoyed this beer more than the others I tried that weekend mainly because I am a fiend for hops and find malty bitters without the addition of richer malts to add a bit of compexity a little unsatisfying.

While in London last week I chanced upon a bottle of Landlord and jumped at the chance to try it because I was fascinated to compare this award winning cask ale with the bottled version, which is filtered and force carbonated. There can be no doubt that it is a very different beer, arguable less enjoyable but still very good as bottled ale goes. My admission that it is inferior to cask will be music to the ears of the CAMRA member who engaged with The Beer Nut recently in a debate on exactly why CAMRA exist. He sees no real value in force carbonated beer, even if it is excellent, and makes me wonder just what CAMRA are up to. TBN makes the point that it would be better to fight the predominance of bad beer rather than worry about where the CO2 in the beer came from. There is plenty of awful cask and bottle conditioned beer out there. I have quite a lot of it inflicted upon me by the CAMRA beer club each quarter. They feature little on this blog because they just don't stir me sufficiently to write about them. Filtered, force carbonated beer on the other hand is very common on this blog, mainly because it is the most available form of beer I consume and also because it many cases it is outstanding in flavour and quality. What concerns me most about the discussion is the CAMRA member's opinion that every artificially carbonated beer he has tried is inferior to cask. Perhaps he has a point when comparing two indentical beers; often filtration and over carbonation will kill a flavourful beer - I have experienced this a number of times, but to suggest that all artificially carbonated beer is inferior is just rubbish. From my old pages here we need only look at Big Daddy, Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Sierra Nevada Stout as examples of outstanding filtered, force carbonated beers. These beers are world beaters in my opinion and deserve as much respect as real ale. They simply cannot be dismissed and anyone who would do so should question their ability to appreciate good beer.

Getting back to the beer in hand, it is an excellent ale brewed very well with mouth watering foam, full body and perfect carbonation. The hop aroma that I enjoyed from the cask is not there and I have at last experienced the harsh bitterness that The Beer Nut has decried. The bitterness is indeed rough and I can't say I have experienced this from the cask, but what makes this beer for me is the action of the yeast used in the Timothy Taylor brewery; it really gives this beer an extra level of complexity that has made this strain so sort after by home brewers. Wyeast offer it on a seasonal basis and I would rate it up there with the stubbornly flocculant Fuller's or Brakespeare house yeast which make their beer so wonderfully complex and chewy.

Not as enjoyable as cask but certainly not to be dismissed.

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.

Black Lightning & the DMS Issue

This quarter's CAMRA Beer Club belatedly arrived yesterday, just as I was starting to get a little concerned about it. A previous delivery had gone missing in the post so I get a little nervous when it's overdue. This month's motley crew of real ale look quite promising. Among them is Entire Stout by the Hopback Brewery of Wiltshire. So effective is the marketing of their golden ales it is very strange indeed to see a black beer coming from one of their bottles. I have enjoyed Summer Lightning many times in the past both bottled in Ireland and on cask in England and each time thought it a wonderful beer. I was surprised when Tim said he noted a distinct DMS note to it, and swiftly commented that DMS in unlikely in a beer brewed with pale malts. I had to eat my words shortly afterwards when I tried a bottle out of curiosity and was met with a strong vegetal note, typical of high DMS levels.

I might take a minute to jot down a few notes on dimethyl sulphide (DMS) to clarify why it is unusual to note it in some beer rather than others. It is a sulphur compound as the name suggests, and like most sulphur compounds is quite unpleasant smelling. It is a common feature of some lagers because lager malt contains large amounts of the precursor to DMS, S-methyl methionine (SMM), but the levels are low enough to add a distinct character to the lager which is often desirable. SMM is broken down into DMS by heat which in brewing occurs during the boil and during kilning in the production of malt. Thankfully DMS is quite volatile so it is driven off to the atmosphere during these processes. Pale ale malt is kilned at a high temperature compared to lager malt and as a result most of the DMS is driven off leaving very little in the finished malt. This explains my surprise that a golden ale brewed presumably with pale ale malt would have a strong DMS element to its character. The smell of DMS appears to vary with its concentration. Bamforth describes it as 'cat urine' which I can agree with because this is the distinct smell I get from Heineken, particularly in bottles. This might sound like I'm slagging Heineken off, but in fact a high DMS aspect in a lager suggests that it is made with a great deal of malt, rather than cheaper adjuncts that might thin out the body. The other smell commonly used is cooked corn, which I must confess I have never experienced. Another common smell is a rotting vegetable like odour, clearly outlined to me during a brewing course I undertook during which a concentrated DMS solution was passed around for us to smell. It had the unmistakable odour of cabbage left to rot in the drain of a sink after the washing up is done.

Getting back to the beer in hand, it's a nicely bitter stout with some chocolate in there somewhere, which really comes through during the swig when your nose is buried in the glass. The roasted barely is clearly evident to me at the moment because of late I have been drinking my own dark beer which is without any roasted barley at all. The bottle states it is suitable for vegans because it is not fined and has no residue of marine swim bladders in the form of isling glass. It seems common enough practice for brewers not to fine or filter their stouts, the Porterhouse don't bother either because stouts will hide any haze issues. All the better for us because nothing is stripped from the beer. It might not be so good for a work colleague of mine with a yeast sensitivity who asked me a few years ago if there was any yeast in commonly available draught beers. In my then ignorance, I told her no, it is all filtered, except for wheat beer, so she'd be safe enough. Let's hope she doesn't get a hankering for decent stout anytime soon...