Tasting notes. Sort of

A rare pleasure today. Beers with Ian Harrison; half the brains behind pubsandbeer.co.uk, upstanding member of ratebeer.com, 2006 winner of the Best Bloke To Share Mead With In A Reading Travelodge Award and possessor of one of the keenest palates I know.

Who found a German pils to be like "licking walnut shells on the outside".

Who nailed "strawberry cherry" as a malt descriptor.

Who brings out the best and worst in me. And our shared tasting notes.

Mr Grundy's Lord Kitchener wasn't just toffee and banana. It was, specifically, banana-flavoured Toffo.

Derby Malt Teaser was 'malt water'.

Poretti didn't just taste of cardboard. It was 'enough cardboard to build the homeless a mansion. But enough lemon to reset your palate'.

Which led us to this epic conclusion:

Poretti is the Control-Alt-Delete of beer.

Malt Teaser is the Blue Screen Of Death.

You know, tasting notes are all bollocks. But in that moment, the fuggy beery moment when you blurt them out loud, it's like you've finally comprehended constellations as alien code. In the moment, they make absolute sense.

Which is why, looking back through notes of old, you wonder how you know a beer has the aroma of  "a pair of pants pissed in and abandoned in the dank corner of a poorly ventilated stable".

Ah, they were the days...

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