Yes, I know it's almost the first day of spring. I enjoyed a bottle or three of Thornbridge's finest over the festive break but never quite got around to writing about it. Too busy drinking the stuff, you see. So, time to dig out the old notes and then crack open another bottle to see if the rapture still holds fast...

You know how you never forget your first time? My first taste of Bracia was at the brewery in November 2008, the impossible smoothness of the beer being as impressive as the brewers' enthusiasm for it. Kelly Ryan gave me a bottle to take away which I intended to have over Christmas, but it seemed too good to drink so soon. Fortunatley, they were able to slap labels onto a production batch in time and so I was able to pick up a dozen bottles direct from the brewery.

This beer is a Thornbridge labour of love steeped in history. Its inspiration lies in an alterstone inscription found at another Derbyshire country house, Haddon Hall; Bracia possibly referring to a honey-sweetened high-alcohol beverage drank by the occupying Romans. That connection inspired Italian head brewer, Stefano Cossi, to develop a rich beer infused with chestnut honey sourced from the foothills of north-east Italy.

Into the glass, Bracia bursts forth with molasses and creamy coffee. An initially sticky beige head came unglued into a frogspawn of stubborn bubbles above a burnished brown body. And onto the nose, in waves, came honey like no other. Not sickly sweet, not funky fresh comb, just wafts of that chestnutty tang.

A first sip revealed softer sensations, the chestnut flavoutr carried sharper on the underpeel feel of a waning oraange, all tempered by easy honey rewarming on the palate. Fifteen minutes later - yes, I can actually leave a beer this long - rewards are reaped as the crema topping is capable of being whipped up again and flavours of damp honeycomb and milky chocolate come through. Like a Crunchie dipped in cold coffee, the beer left some lovely cream on the lips with a prickle of sweetness at the end and enveloping nuttiness on the way down.

After half and hour, flavours even out to a coffe-laced sorbet with honeycomb flakes, a soft and frothy praline ebb and an assured sweetness that melts away in the mouth.

So far, so orgasmic. It would have been plain rude of me not to sample some alongside chocolate, so I dug out some single origin Amedei samplers that I treated myself to for my birthday. The Venezuelan had a superb freshly sweet aroma with notable clear honey traces that complemented the Bracia well. The Ecuadorian offered pronounced powdery cocoa, accentuating the nuttiness of the beer.

What an epic beer. There was virtuoso honey, subtleties of nuts and coffee revelling in a fantasia of flavours. It had taken me an hour to enjoy the bottle; the next one was polished off within thirty minutes but by then I knew the tune. Bracia offered a bittersweet symphony; I look forward to the same notes (albeit not neccessarily in the same order) when I try another bottle in a few months time. >

I've just realised that I've yet to christen the stein I bought during the summer from Beers Of Europe. As it's Andechs branded, the Schneider and Hacker-Pschorr can stay on the shelf and a doppelbock dunkel can come out to play.



This was the beer with which I celebrated my 1000th rating on ratebeer.com (ah, the halcyon days of rating like a madman). My impressions then were of a belting brown beer that had a 'sweetshop medley' of flavours. It certainly looked good in the stein, a billowing head collapsing to slick wisps with bready notes wafting upward. There's a smokey edge kept in check by fresh toffee, a sweetness through dried fruits. And that sweetshop is still there for me - liqourice nibbles, Scottish caramel, sugared almonds, honeycomb....

With an assertive malt finish and just enough alcohol heat, Andechs Doppelbock Dunkel was a joy to savour alongside a huge plate of schinkenwurst sarnies. A great beer of a style that I love yet don't drink as often as I should. I'l have to keep the stein out of the cupboard and fill it up on a regular basis.

One last thing - if you haven't already seen it, check out the 'brewery tour' on the Andechs website. I think it's one of the simplist, clearest illustrations of the brewing process that I've found on the internet.
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Winter isn't the same without a massive stout to savour. The US microbrewing revolution seems to have been built on three styles: Belgian ales, hyper-hopped IPAs and super-strong stouts. So, before the decs comes down, let's try the impy that's at the top of the style tree on ratebeer - Stone Imperial Russian Stout.



This is a beer with a huge reputation. Loved by ratebeer raters, coveted by UK drinkers and now available in select outlets such as Beers Of Europe. But I've often wondered if there's more than a whiff of hype behind beers like this. A revered brewer, imposing beer style, bottles rarely imported, hard to obtain.... sometimes, these factors make average beers seem (in the eyes of some reviewers) slightly more special even when the aroma, flavour and palate don't really deliver.

And many of the American beers I've tried have been over-assertive. Even aggressive. More hops, more alcohol, more oak-barreling than is strictly necessary. So I was really hoping that Stone IRS would deliver the goods without feeling the need to turn everything up to eleven. My bottle was from Spring 2008 so there was every chance that it would pour feisty and have an alcohol-steaming feel.

Uncapped and let loose in the glass it poured pitch black, a rough laced dirty linen head eventually sheared into a spectral Rorschach blot. Certainly lots of liquorice spilling up to the nose, slashed with cracked leather and clodding earth. Coffeechoc is there and thank boggery for that - no uberhop, no sinus-streching alcohol.

And then.... smoooooothness. Part of me feels cheated- where's the blast? But the beer-sensible part of me is loving it; there's an elegance to the coffee & cigar feel, enough dryness to shave your alcohol-coated craw, berries tarry as bitterness cuts across the oleaginously enjoyable roastiness of it all.

This is impy stout restrained. And magnificent for being so.
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It's been a lovely lazy Saturday. Forest beat Man City, there's toad in the hole for tea and I'm sat planning my first country walk of the year whilst enjoying a glass of Hopshackle Restoration.


My first experience of this beer was at Peterborough CAMRA festival in 2008. And damn impressive it was - bags of spiced alcohol, leather, pepper and chocolate. More impressive was that this was an English brewer taking on a Belgian style and investing enough time and care to make a wonderfully complex and satisfying beer.

When I was offered the chance to buy a case of this year's brew, I jumped at the chance. Restoration is brewed annually around February/March and then aged for six months before bottling. My bottle was quite feisty, a blossoming head thinning quickly to a drumskin-tight mushroom cover. There's a rich sugary aroma, vineous notes and crushed plums fighting past a peppery edge. Just enough carbonation delivers a soft feel with stacks of fresh malts and warming alcohol.

This was delectably easy to drink. A proper sit-by-the-fire and chill-out beer. So super soft, simply spun-sugar sweet. As good as this is now, I can't wait to try one during Christmas 2009 to see how those flavours may change.
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I'm just shagged out with all these heavyweight beers sipped out of fancy glasses. Time for a criminally underrated beer swigged straight outta the bottle. Showing me the way to Amarillo - Nils Oscar India Ale.



I had a fun time with a selection of Nils Oscar beers back in September. Their Imperial Stout was massively entertaining but tonight requires something subtler to accompany the salmon en croute. India Ale has a sublime balance, soft malts and an assertive level of Amarillo. I just love the soft carbonation, the silken feel on the palate. Pine cream notes, hops wrapped in malty pillows, an absolute dream of a beer.

For someone who likes a bastard-mad-hoppy IPA, this has no right to command my attention. But it does, and respect is earned; softly softly wins out over the overhopped monkey.

This beer and many other of its brethren can be found over at beermerchants.com
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Christmas is a time for classic repeats, so here's my De Dolle Stille Nacht review from earlier this year. With those annoying 'updates' that makes it into a revised repeat, therefore a new episode. Got a problem with that? Go tell it to the judge in the morning!



Perhaps the greatest thing I can say about this beer is - 1.49 GBP a bottle.

It was in a sale somewhere. Let it be said, I am not driven by price. But when a beer this good is this cheap, WAY HEY!

Second greatest thing - liquid easter cake.

Christmas Cake. Quite clearly, I meant to say Christmas cake.

Third - the sugar has rotted my teeth and I am dribbling dentine all over this incredibly expensive keyboard.

It's not madly-sugar-candy-ADHD-inducing anymore. These were 2007 bottles, that spun-sugariness has subsided to a thick apricot tart sweetness.

Fourth - surprise and fear, fear and surprise.

This still stands. Perhaps now moreso with an aged bottle - is it still living? Have the corners been rounded off or just planed away? Something to make you go mmmmmm? Or urrrgh? Is there life on Mars? Is there life in Peckham? What's that switch over there for. Et cetera....


Fifth - the sugar subsides to a licking candy sweetness. The alcohol warms cockles but never muscles in. So, no alarms, no surprises.

Sadly, the Jesus and Mary Chain never actually recorded a track called 'Just Like Candy', so I can't quote it here in a clever-dick stylee. Even though the unborn chicken voices in my head keep telling me it must be true... pardon? The beer? Oh, it's crammed with apricots and toasted nuts and that bit in the middle of a poorly-torched creme brulee that doesn't quite caramalise and is all the better for it. And it's still effervescing.

In summary - the right side of que sera, the wrong side of brouhaha.

Do you ever get that feeling that you know you're going to do something wrong if you carry on doing what you do, but don't care, and do it anyway, and then repulse yourself when with grinding inevitability that thing happens? I've just picked my nose and rubbed snot into a semi-open wound in my hand. Strictly speaking, this is more information than you need to know. Ever.

I'm really chuffed with this beer. It's another over-inking of the HUGE tick that is - buy beers, cellar beers if they have the obvious potential for improving with age, keep your drunken mitts of said beer by hiding them somewhere you don't look/cannot reach; behind your bike/underneath your tax return/next to your wife's sanitary towels.

I'm really, really chuffed to have bought a dozen-ish bottles of this, kept six and given the rest away under strict instructions not to open until 2009. Because one of the great beer experiences for me is giving a good beer to someone who's never tasted anything quite like it before. Some will vomit. Some, with tastebuds sequestered, won't appreciate it. But spreading the love ends inevitably in another convert to the cause. Rather than a slave to the Coors.

PS - Reluctant Scooper would like to apologise for the piss-poor wordplay in the last paragraph.

PPS - this gives me the chance to say "I was more than usual pissed"; quoted from the mind-blendingly wonderful 'Bremen Nacht' by The Fall. See what I did there? This stuff doen't just throw itself together, you know?
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I should have spent the day sorting out the Scoopies awards, but instead I decided to plough through 500 emails and then slice my hand open on the fractured neck of a bottle of fizzy stuff. So, with the blood swabbed from the laptop and a beer needed to ease my beating heart, it must be time to uncork Lost Abbey's Gift Of The Magi.


Let's dispense with my dearest darling's words of wisdom first. "It's not like potpourri" proved to be a stunningly accurate impression of the aroma, although the bulldog-licking-piss-off-a-nettle face followed by "it tastes better after a slurp of Coca Cola" doesn't somehow sum up the complexity that you feel Tomme Arthur intends with this beer.

It pours an interesting burnt orange body, with a spongy off-cream head folding like a cheap hooker who got punched in the stomach. Yes, Joey, that's the way I play poker too. There's orange peel, there's cinnamon (fair play to Mrs Reluctant, that was her first impression) but there's also an sourness (in a healthy, Belgian way) and a fair amount of Brettyness.

I had wondered about laying this down for next year - every other sip says I should have done (lose the sharpness, mellow the brett). Yet every other other sip says GREEN LIGHT GO for the fresh spice feel, raw lemon, more funk than a drummer strung out on Bolivian marching powder.

There's warmed turned earth, yesterday's pissy straw, liquid bread.... it's fun to drink but just a little, ahem, challenging on the palate. Truth be told, there are times when it feels like it's sticking in my clack a bit. Was that warm licorice? A cruel and unusual spice that's been recently relieved all over?

Having consulted the back bottle label, I now, like, totally get the Magi reference - gold beer made with some frankincense and myrrh. Yeh, the Frankenstein and Grrrr are clearly evident - WTF? I particularly liked the ratebeer review that said "I really need to smell Frankincense and Myrrh again to figure out what they are contributing here". Hint; if you've just written down seven different aromas and flavours and you're still left with something you still can't quite put your finger on, I wouldn't worry much about it. Like beeswax on an old oak table, I figure those Yemen resins are there to lift the beer to a higher plain, not to define its soul.

It's enjoyable, just not as enjoyable as I'd hoped. Rather like suffering Sunday school to join the Thursday night youth club only to find the snooker table was only half size. Yet there's a certain joy in continually topping up the glass, refunking the beer, blossoming the head, loosing an aroma that switches from fresh to dirty faster than a convent girl with a late pass.

I started off intrigued, became disillusioned and now have grudging admiration for certain aspects of its outlook. Insert your own religious allegory here.

Thanks to beermerchants.com for the beer
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Our guests have gone, there are only a few hours of the old year left and I'm ready for another beer. What better way to see out 2008 with the only ten-year-old beer in my cellar - a bottle of J W Lees Harvest Ale.

I picked up a stack of these a couple of years ago, no idea where from. They seemed like a good idea at the time, but became the beers that I never really wanted to break open (my inherent beer guilt). But I can only manage one more beer tonight, so there's a certain romanticism about rounding out the year with a ten-year-old beer.

It poured like a good scotch, a deep smooth amber that had weight to it - like an oily single malt does. There was fiery alcohol escaping, fumes pent up for a decade and rollicking rampant as they were released. There's a body segueing from deep tea brown to ruby red at the base, a whirl brings a tight light beige head, leaveing sticky legs down the snifter. A fresh Christmas cake dough scent is suddenly swamped by alcohol that I can feel in the back of my throat- it actually makes me blink.

Watching the head dissipate into a galaxial swirl, a moire pattern collapses into no more than a mere tea stain on an unbuffed mahogany desk. Seemingly I can't tire of playing with this beer. To the lips, then. Here be black treacle, candy sugar, brandy, thick fresh caramel, a carbonation pinpricking and just the most amazing sustained sweetness.

That was all half an hour ago. Now, the head has left and so has any underlying alcohol harshness. Instead, there's a placid glass of dark sherry and light spices. There's still tight alcohol that you can actually inhale into beneath your eyelids if you sniff hard enough. The complexity has unwound, the code broken, malt and hops: sweet.

I have no more ten-year-old beers left in the cellar. Just a nine-year-old. And an eight-year-old. And those beers are - J W Lees Harvest Ale 1999 and 2000. They'll be the taste of Christmases to come.
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It's a cold New Year's Eve and I'm several beers behind in this 'twelve beers' malarkey. Truth is, I've not been in the mood over the last two days - too tired, a palate jaded by overly spicy food. But now I'm ready for a real Christmas cake of a beer by the fire as I warm my chestnuts. My wife will settle for anything as long as it's a quad. So, hello St Bernardus Abt.


Actually this is beer whilst on the go - my in-laws have just arrived for drinks and nibbles. They're having a Wii so, whilst the falafel's in the oven, I can tell you the five things about St. Bernardus that I absolutely adore.

#1: It's not Westvleteren. It might be close, given the historical similarities, but by not being Westy I can order it online, friends and relations can buy me bottles and the price doesn't get driven through the roof by beer hunters on some ale-lust-for-glory.

#2: My wife loves it. How foolish I was to think that she'd be more attracted to fruit beers. Now, every Belgian bottle that I crack open is met with the question 'is it a quad?' - and she has an air of faint disappointment if the answer's no.

#3: They get the job done. Basic website, no overblown marketing on the bottle label, even though they have a history that most breweries would boil their heads for.

#4: I don't suffer from beer guilt when drinking it. Some bottles I want to share, some bottles I want to age, some lone bottles I want to cling on to like an only child. Some bottles I want to neck back, some bottles I want to drink with fey abandon, some bottles I want to hand out to strangers in the street. When I drink any of those I suffer from beer guilt. Not Saint B - I enjoy the very thought of the bottle top hitting the table, the pillowy head filling and not spilling from a chalice glass. The first whiff of coffee and yeast. And.....

#5: The sheer RaisinNutSpicySherryDoughyOrangeAppleyExcitingCaramelCoating fun of that first sip.

And there you have it. The last sweet drop drained. The stuffed vine leaves nearly all gone. The evening's about to grind through the gears, all champers and salmon and rhythm and blues. It'll be fun but not as much as a fireside, a flickering candle and another Saint B.

Thanks to beermerchants.com for another damn fine beer

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I've been at a wedding this afternoon. Free champers and wine tempered the presence of Mansfield Smooth on the bar. To be honest, spending three hours previous imbibing a gutfull of Thornbridge Jaipur at the Old Poets Corner, Ashover, helped tremendously. But now I'm back, from outer space, and I want to be lost in hops. Ladeez and gintelmin, I give you - Struise Mikkeller.



OOOOOHHH MIIIII GODDDDDD. My tabs are laughing so much they have fallen off and wandered into a crap Sony advert. Frankly, I've had this beer next to me for ten minutes and I don't want to dare taste it. The aroma is just spellbinding. Remember as a kid how you'd drag your almost-skateboarding scrapy knees down to the ice cream van? Imagine if they'd been piping out huge fecking whirls of vanilla and HOPS HOPS HOPS into a tight malt pipe.


A sip gives a velvet feel soon perverted into a hop shag. If Heston Blumenthal brewed beer, here's where he'd end up. Cream - HOP - lemon - HOP - baked vanilla - HOP - leaking yeast - HOP - dwarves taking turns to do handstands - HOP. (and before you start- yes, that is a bottle of Thornbridge Bracia in the background. It's what I have knocking around the kitchen on a regular basis. Because I'm a beer cnut. Get over it)

Sense out of me? You may as well go shag a pillow. This is a field of hops ploughed thoroughly with an earthy mien. I want to die now and wake up in eternity, face down in a bucket of this stuff. It's a Terminator of beers; never stops, doesn't understand the concept. I have a thumbful of this beer left and the only thing that's stopping me throwing myself out of the window for the lack of more of it is that I live in a bungalow.
I have to leave now. I have an appointment to satiate my ravaged taste buds. Except that I've just messed my pants in excitement and drank the exquisite dregs in one.

Bugger.

I now have to go find a beer that's OK enough to see me through clear until midnight. Thornbridge something will suffice. In the meantime, anyone who hasn't discovered the sheer bliss that is Hem, do try to keep up. Some of us have to go and drink great beer and go one-two-three-two-two-three.
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Ho ho ho. My twelve beers of Christmas has to start somewhere; Port Brewing's Santa's Little Helper seems an appropriate place to start. But I'm sick to the back teeth hearing about how wonderful these American beers are - are they just a heap of hype or do they have the balls to back up the braggadocio?


Beers like this have a good rep on website such as ratebeer. Sometimes, I feel this is the result of our colonial cousins bigging themselves up, particularly when the beers are imperial stouts, 'belgian' quads or quintuple hopped IPAs. Othertimes, it seems to be by the virtue of such beers surviving the long journey over the pond and falling into the hands of over-eager acolytes.

I *want* to be impressed by beers like these. I really do want them to be a lush canvas swiped by landscaped flavours. Not a madly overhopped, over-alcoholic mess. SLH (as henceforth it shall be known) starts off promisingly - a viscous pour, tight carbonation, a mocha top subsiding to a mushroom wisp. There's a strong coffee crema aroma with prominent alcohol.

(here's an aside - needing to check spellings in this story, I went to fetch my breeze-block sized dictionary. Rather than Googling the words or spellchecking them. Now, there's old skool for you).

That first taste - surprisingly thin. Slight coffee, a vein of light fruits... swamped by a bittering of burnt chocolate and burning alcohol. Is the depth and complexity hiding behind the admittedly cool serving temperature or does this bottle need a couple of years to mature the edges off it?

Another glass an hour and a half later tells a different tale. My better half dives into the snifter and proclaims the presence of orange peel. I'm finding more plump raisins in there than before. The carb has subsided, leaving behind a calmer beer with a tad more molasses and a keener hop finish. Still trickles across the palate rather than sticking to your ribs, but at least now the booze is warming rather than excoriating.

The coffee, too, has decided to step back on the palate and let fat boozy fruits through to play. There's still that last-coffee-cup-in-the-pot feeling, but this beer's now playing to a tune kept taut by a highly strung quartet; roasty malt, warming alcohol, biting chocolate and washy coffee are all in time with each other. No more dropped bollock notes or inappropriate cymbal crashes.

Over the period of three hours, SLH morphs from brash cousin, through to assured nephew and ends up as gentle uncle. It becomes a safe stout; undeniably well crafted, just that I wish something from those mad first few sips had kept kicking all the way to the end.

Thanks to Phil at beermerchants.com for this beer. >