Cooking with Beer: Imperial Chilli

This chilli is like all the other chillies out there, only it’s much better. It’s made with a bottle of imperial stout and loaded with fresh chilli peppers, including a couple of searing scotch bonnets, hence the Imperial name it’s been given.

Looking through recipes online, a number are cooked with cans of Budweiser (seriously) and occasionally a slug of bourbon. Taking this up a few levels of awesome led me straight to a chocolatey, full-on imperial stout aged in whisky barrels – BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran (an extra step up would lead you to adding Tokyo*). The beer adds depth, richness and a sweetness that can’t be added from elsewhere in the food world. Just be careful not to get a stout that’s too bitter as the last thing you want is a loser-takes-all battle between Scoville and Lupulin.

No recipe for this, just a list of ingredients laid out around the kitchen like a flat-pack cupboard ready to be assembled without the instructions. The only important information: add the beer after the tomatoes but before the stock (you don’t want too much liquid and it’s better to have more beer) and cook it for a few hours in the oven, if you can. This serves about four, even though I was cooking for one.

Pork mince (about 400g). Two big onions. Finely chopped carrot. Four cloves of garlic. Lots of fresh chillis (I also added chopped scotch bonnet, plus a whole scotch bonnet to the pot). Paprika and smoked paprika. Turmeric and cumin. Salt, pepper and sugar/honey. Tomato puree. Tinned tomatoes (maybe two tins). A bottle of imperial stout (less a little for the chef). Beef stock. Kidney beans.

It’s worth cooking this for hours rather than minutes. I cooked mine for two hours, removed it from the oven for two hours and then cooked for another hour before serving. It was the most delicious chilli I’ve cooked which I can only credit to the beer adding a chocolate and booze depth that worked so well against the different levels of spice and heat. It also works really well with a beer but go for something dark and smooth like an oatmeal stout or a milk stout, something that perfectly fits the deep tomato and savoury flavours but has a cooling quality (I served mine with Meantime Chocolate but it didn't quite have enough body to hold it all together - the flavour worked well though).

Chilli: How do you make yours? Beer in it, with it, neither or both?

Nectar Ales Black Xantus: Open It!

Some people are just nice and want to give you bottles of beer because they think you will like them. This happened to me when I was in San Francisco. A tweet arrived saying something along the lines of ‘I’ve left some bottles behind the bar for you.’ I never met Bill (I don’t think so, anyway, although I don’t remember much of SF as I was either completely wasted or disgustingly hungover with very little in the middle UPDATE: I did meet Bill! It was in City Beer Store where I was at my drunkest! Sorry Bill and thanks again), the guy who left them, but I’m incredibly grateful. The first was a Russian River Damnation 23 (an oaked tripel) and it was sensational. The second was Black Xantus by Nectar Ales.

It’s an 11% imperial stout with coffee, aged in bourbon barrels and hopped with US Fuggles, which is just my kind of thing. It pours a dark brown with a chucky head that you can’t help but dip your finger into. Immediately it bursts with bourbon and throws out vanilla ice cream, oak, coconut and milk chocolate. One mouthful and I’m in love (and lust): imagine an amazing chocolate milkshake with bourbon and you aren’t far off. It’s a smooth glugger, packed with chocolate, iced coffee, fruity and roasted coffee, lots of barrel and a little liquorice. It’s – here it comes – awesome.

Simple as that. I don’t know much about the brewery or the beer but it doesn’t matter. The beer is excellent and I’ve finally got around to drinking it. The joy of Open It! is that it isn’t necessarily about drinking the superstars or the rarities of the cellar (though this may well be a rare superstar...), it’s about drinking the beers you’ve been meaning to drink.

There’s still time for people to take part in Open It! and lots have already been drinking something good from their selection. Just look at twitter to see what people have been drinking.

FABPOW! P2 Stout with Strawberries and Clotted Cream

A chance meeting: the National Brewery Centre, a buffet with strawberries and thick clotted cream for dessert, cask P2 on at the bar. The thinking: strawberries covered in dark chocolate with a dollop of rich cream. The beer: smooth, roasty cocoa, silky, a hint of blackberries, a cakey sweetness, an incredible thing. The combination: tongue-covering creamy richness, a burst of strawberry juice; the beer swathes through, becomes more chocolatey, blends with the cream, feels totally luscious and a little bit sexy. A perfect chance combination, a brilliant FABPOW!

(The picture looks a little sorry for itself, I know. The trouble is I ate a bowlful, realised how delicious it was, told everyone else who also had a bowlful and then there were only two strawberries left.)

Hardknott to like Aether Blaec

It seemed timely that as I was about to open a bottle of Hardknott Ӕther Blӕc I was reading a post by Dave about the labeling of the newly branded beer and how the best before date is an ‘irrelevant and contradictory semantic’ for beers like this, which are perfect candidates for cellaring.

My bottle, number 68 out of 456, had the old label on, a rather less dramatic design compared to the new one, which I think looks great. The beer is a stout aged in 30 year Caol Ila whisky casks, 8% ABV, according to the new label (the old says 6.7% - to dispel the rumours of grogging, Dave wrote this post). In the glass it has a fantastic chocolate aroma with waves of sweetly phenolic oak and Islay beneath, subtle but still self-imposing, the kind of intriguing deftness which makes you stick your nose so far into the glass to smell it that it comes out with beer on the end. I jabbed a still-swirling glass under Lauren’s nose (as I always do) and she got it too: “Smoke, like that BrewDog one.” The beer is silky smooth, chocolatey and roasty before the barrel creeps in, delicate but still unmissable, adding a perfect depth without tasting like a pint of stout with a shot of whisky crudely added. In some barrel-aged beers the barrel bit of it is just overpowering but not here, and instead it adds so much to the overall enjoyment. Phenolic but not TCP; a dry, almost-savoury quality which I love in beers like this; hints of berry sweetness to tease the playful wisps of smoke; a bitterness which develops throughout, spiking the end with something new; every mouthful enjoyable and interesting.

I didn’t know what to expect from this beer but I was hugely impressed. Pete Brown tweeted that it’s ‘either beginner’s luck, or one of the best wood-aged beers yet.’ Whichever it is, I want some more bottles, and maybe that way I can put the semantics of ‘best before’ and ‘best after’ to the test. 

Easter, Chocolate and Durham Temptation

It was 2010 years ago that Jesus invented chocolate. Jumping at any opportunity for a FABPOW, I opened my Easter eggs and looked in the beer cupboard. As if by divine inspiration the golden cross and scripture of the bottle of Durham Brewery’s Temptation shone back at me.

The beer is near-black with streams of sand-coloured bubbles streaming to the top creating a head like a slowly erupting volcano - it looks great. The aroma starts bready, then goes toasty, then moves into nutty, roasty and chocolatey. There’s a sweetness, some vanilla and vinous fruit – sensational. Take a sip and it’s big. The carbonation settles down quickly, there’s a boozy punch, a kiss of sweetness, lots of dark chocolate, deeply roasted fruits, a bitter and earthy finish and a woody dryness to end it all and make you want another sip. Beautiful stuff.

You don’t need anything with this, so scrap the FABPOW. I tried four different chocolates and they weren’t bad, they just detracted from the beer and that isn’t good. Just pour it out and let the beer itself be a luxurious treat.

This is the second beer I’ve had called Temptation. The other was from Russian River and it’s just about a perfect sour beer (it's just about a perfect beer, full stop). I got the Durham bottle from Avery in Beer Ritz; I got the Russian River one from San Francisco (I had it a few times, of course). I would be very Tempted by another couple of each.

Hoppy and Roasty

Double IPA festival yesterday. It was pretty nuts. Most beers were around 9% and bragged tongue-wrecking IBU levels. Everything was served in 4oz pours; enough to enjoy it but not enough to pickle you too quickly (though there were a few stumbling around early afternoon - that's another thing, it started at 11am).

Pliny the Younger was the big one (in many ways). An 11% triple IPA released once a year (the Friday of SF Beer Week) by Russian River. But this came alongside an overwhelming list of big beers. Of course, I had Younger as soon as I arrived (it's good but I need some more of it now). Ballast Point's Dorado was excellent, Bear Republic's Five Zero and 11 were very good, a couple from Drakes were superb (Drakes are a very good brewery, one I didn't know about until the trip), Moylans' Hopsickle (140 IBU!) and Triple Rock's IIMAXX were hop bombs.

The interesting thing was the difference between these beers of the same style. Some were sickly sweet and jaggedly hoppy; some were citrus and fruit; some were floral and herbal and dry; some just drop-kicked your face; some were a confusing mix of the above. Drinking just one style is a great way to pick out the subtle differences in each brew (although these beers are not especially subtle...), even if towards the end they did start to converge towards just 'hoppy'.

After the DIPA fest I went to an Alesmith event at City Beer Store (that's an awesomely cool bar). The Alesmith IPA was spectacular but I was there for Speedway Stout - the regular one and barrel aged. They are both sexy looking beers, darkest brown with one of those chocolate milkshake heads. Regular is silky smooth and rammed with roasty coffee flavour and dark chocolate; the barrel aged is an incredible oaky, vanilla, bourbon, chocolate monster with subdued coffee and great depth. Amazing beers.

After this I went to the Toronado where New Belgium's La Folie tasted like a bloody mary and then I nearly fell asleep at the table (jet lag sucks).

That was a good day drinking. I met and got to drink with so many cool people, which is the best thing about this trip. And a lot of people there are brewers from the area, proudly pouring their stuff while also happily drinking other breweries beers. It's good to have that in the beer scene.

Stout Night

I’d been saving up bottles of stout for ages in the lead up to one big, black blow-out beer night. Two weekends ago I finally held Stout Night to coincide with my 25th birthday. I’ve had a couple of beer nights before, where we open lots of bottles, drink, talk about them and then, for the fun of the competition, we give them a score out of 10. It’s no science, it’s no geek-fest, it’s just good beer and friends. This time around our beer night was themed so that all the beers (except one, but it was as black as the rest so it’s okay) were stouts. The range went from 3% milk stout, through coffee stout, stouts with chilli, barrel-aged stout, stout with wild yeast and up to a very imperial 17.5% stout. Pete, Brad, Lee, Sean and Matt (he doesn't write or tweet, he just drinks the stuff) came to my house to drink it (Pete missed the first half as he was at Twickenham and then had to battle high winds and fallen trees on the train journey). This is what we had and how we scored them (the bracket score of the first eight is the average of the others added on to suggest Pete’s):

1. Wye Valley’s Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout (4.6%)

Almost a year old, great beer to start on, bitter chocolate finish was superb for ABV, suffered from over-carbonation, unfortunately. Classic British bottled stout. I got it from beermerchants.

Mark: 7

Matt: 7

Sean: 6

Lee: 6.5

Brad: 8

Total: 34.5 (41.5)

2. Meantime’s London Stout (4.5%)

Smoky flavour to it but lacking something in the body and in the middle to make it more drinkable for us, less bitter than Dorothy.

Mark: 5.5

Matt: 6

Sean: 7

Lee: 6

Brad: 7

Total: 31.5 (37.5)

3. Mackeson’s Stout (3%)

Lactic, smooth, sweet. It is what it is. When would we ever grab a can of this to just drink it?

Mark: 4.5

Matt: 3.5

Sean: 5

Lee: 4

Brad: 4

Total: 19 (23)

4. Dark Star Espresso Stout (4.2%)

Big, burnt roasty nose, unexpected monster coffee flavour for ABV, earthy richness but a little thin in the body. If this was 6% with the same flavour then it could be brilliant. I think it’d make a great breakfast beer, if that’s your kind of thing.

Mark: 6.5

Matt: 6

Sean: 6.5

Lee: 6.5

Brad: 7.5

Total: 33 (39.5)

5. Guinness Original (4.2%)

Probably the most recognisable beer in the world and the most famous stout. It had to be in the fridge. The flavour is classic and recognisable too. From the bottle it was thinner and fizzer than the keg. We had a long discussion about Guinness and how people feel about it. These scores are based on the bottle.

Mark: 5.5

Matt: 5.5

Sean: 6

Lee: 5

Brad: 4.5

Total: 26.5 (31.5)

6. Old Chimney’s Good King Henry Special Reserve 2006 (11%)

Fun over. Things step up dramatically here. The highest rated UK beer on ratebeer. Interestingly, the beer was three years old to the very day when we had it (14/11/06). That’s pretty cool. It’s got an amazing nose of chocolate, nutty/oaky/coconut, then a rich, silky and oily body, roasty, raisins and berry sweetness, oak. Wow. I have another bottle of this and I’m so pleased about that, it’s incredible.

Mark: 9

Matt: 8.5

Sean: 8

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 9

Total: 42 (50)

7. Southern Tier Mokah (11%)

Beer brewed with coffee and Belgian chocolate from beermerchants. This was a very memorable beer as a chorus, like a Mexican wave, passed around the room of ‘WOW’ when each of us smelt and then tasted this one. I expected it big, black and bitter. It wasn’t. Lee said it best: ‘Kind of like if Willy Wonka made beer.’ It’s got a candy sugar and cocoa nose, very sweet. And it tastes like this too - sweet, chocolatey, cocoa, not much coffee roastiness. It’s actually laugh-inducing in a good way and really fun to drink. I wouldn’t want much of it, but a glass was great.

Mark: 8

Matt: 8

Sean: 8.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 8.5

Total: 41 (49)

8. BrewDog Tokyo (12%)

From the first ever batch. Not the 18.2% starred version. Thick, dark pour, full roasty nose, smoky with a sweetness in the flavour and roast bitter finish. Very good but not as awesome as the Big One.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 7.5

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 9

Brad: 8.5

Total: 41 (49)

At this point Pete called to say he was nearby. To refresh ourselves we shared a bottle of BrewDog in a moment affectionately termed a 'Movember Mouthwash'. We didn’t rate it because it wasn’t black. It was also a bit disappointing but it’s for a good cause.

9. Stone Imperial Russian Stout 2008 (10.8%)

Big and rich, roasty, thick, great balance, great beer, enough said.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 7.5

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 8.5

Pete: 8

Total: 49

10. BrewDog Paradox Anniversary Edition 004 (10%)

Only 200 bottles of this were made (bottle 124/200). Complete with a great label designed by Johanna Basford. It was aged in an Ex Dunmore Taylor Bowmore 1968 cask. I loved the nose to begin, plumy, smoky, islay, chocolatey but after a while the oxidisation seeped through like cloying tomatoes and vinegar (not undrinkable, just unusual). There’s a lot going on to taste - sourness, roasty, whisky barrel – but the oxidisation was fairly overpowering, unfortunately, and it wasn’t to everyone’s taste.

Mark: 7

Matt: 4.5

Sean: 3

Lee: 4.5

Brad: 6.5

Pete: 6

Total: 31.5

11. Harvey’s Imperial Stout 2003 (9%)

Following the sharpness in the BrewDog we opened a stout deliberately ‘infected’ with Brettanomyces. It’s full-bodied, roasty and rich like charred steak, then comes the sour, fruity yeast and it’s unique and wonderful with a strange yet very drinkable balance. I got this from Beers of Europe.

Mark: 8

Matt: 7

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 8

Pete: 7.5

Total: 45.5

12. Struise Black Albert (13%)

Smooth, chocolatey, delicious. Just a masterpiece of a beer and personally I think it deserved higher scores but it suffered for being too well made and not esoteric enough to sit between all the other extreme flavours.

Mark: 9

Matt: 8

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 8.5

Pete: 8.5

Total: 49.5

13. BrewDog/Stone/Cambridge Juxtaposition Black Pilsner (10%)

No it’s not a stout, but it is black. I wanted to open this and share it as it’s one of the only bottles in the UK, as far as I know. I’m glad I did. Lots of fruity bitterness, big old c-hops, a lemon disinfectant wipe quality which isn’t a bad thing. The roasty-bitterness is not overpowering which is great as it allows the hops to really come through. This is a very cool beer, I just wish I could get more of it.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 9

Sean: 9

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 9

Pete: 7.5

Total: 50.5

14. Birrificio del Ducato Verdi (8.2%)

Italian imperial stout brewed with dried chilli peppers. It’s sweet and chocolatey, smooth and drinkable with (very) distant earthy pepper warmth at the back of the throat. Good beer, although I would’ve liked a tiny bit more heat. This is another that suffers from being too ‘nice’ and doesn’t punch you in the face with over-the-top flavour.

Mark: 8

Matt: 7

Sean: 6.5

Lee: 7

Brad: 7

Pete: 7

Total: 42.5

15. Port Brewing Old Viscosity (10%)

Bottle from beermerchants, imperial stout partly barrel-aged. This one does punch you in the face with over-the-top flavour. Nice bourbon oakiness, chocolate and a roast finish, smooth and very drinkable. A totally great stout. Brilliant. Beermerchants have Older Viscosity available now, that's very tempting...

Mark: 9

Matt: 9

Sean: 8.5

Lee: 8

Brad: 9

Pete: 9

Total: 52.5

16. Stone Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (9.2%)

Bitter – check. Chocolatey – check. Oatmeal – check. Lovely stuff. Their 12th anniversary beer.

Mark: 8.5

Matt: 8

Sean: 8

Lee: 8.5

Brad: 8.5

Pete: 8

Total: 49.5

17. Mikkeller Black (17.5%)

The big finish. A 17.5% beer. Heady, boozy, thick, vinous, port-like, sweet, warming, bitter like dark chocolate, maybe slightly oaky/woody. Quite similar to BrewDog’s Tokyo* and totally fantastic. Another bottle which I got it from beermerchants and I want more. A lot more.

Mark: 9.5

Matt: 9.5

Sean: 9

Lee: 7.5

Brad: 9.5

Pete: 9

Total: 54

18. BrewDog Rake Raspberry Paradox Smokehead (10%)

BrewDog played the encore. A crazy spectrum of flavours which I wrote about here. Roasty, berry-sharp, smoky, all a bit much but still quite enjoyable.

Mark: 7

Matt: 7

Sean: 7.5

Lee: 6

Brad: 7

Pete: 7

Total: 41.5

Stout Night finished. After this I walked Matt, Lee and Brad to the station and managed to lose Pete and Sean. Then I found them loitering and we had a dodgy kebab with some really hot chilli sauce. Then we came home and opened a Punk Monk and watched TV.

Beer nights like this are always interesting. Some of the beers deserved higher marks and probably would’ve got them if we hadn’t had so many different, varied, esoteric bottles to open. The scores that they get shouldn’t mean too much and looking back over them I just think, ‘wow, did I/they really give it that mark?!’, but that’s just how it works. I am almost certain that if we did the exact same line-up of beer and people in a few weeks time the scores would be different. But it’s not about that. It’s about sharing a lot of great beer with mates and talking about them and enjoying them.

The top three on the night were:

Mikkeller Black

Port Brewing’s Old Viscosity

BrewDog/Stone/Cambridge Juxtaposition

There were a cluster of beers scoring 48-50, which is also interesting, and any one of these could easily have scored higher on a different night. As for the top three, I’m not surprised Mikkeller won as it’s a great beer, but also, after all that 10% stout, to have something so much bigger really awakened us. The Old Viscosity is just great and the Juxtaposition was a blast of hoppiness which I think we were all craving, so this stood out. I think retrospectively my top three were: Mikkeller Black, Old Viscosity and Good King Henry, so not far off the overall. Now I need to start collecting stout again as my stock has been completely depleted.

Gooey Chocolate Puddings

This is my favourite dessert recipe in the whole wide world. And just to forewarn you, this pudding is so good that whoever you serve it to will fall madly and deeply in love with you, so just watch who you give it to...

I’ve had this recipe written since January and just haven’t got around to posting it, but the time has come to unleash this dessert and change the world by pairing it with some awesome beers.

The chocolate pudding is feather-light on the outside, hot, rich and gooey in the middle and it’s enough to melt even an iron heart. Pair this with the right beer and it turns all magical and supernatural. But what beer? Some would go straight for the cherry beer, and this is wise, no doubt, but there are better beers to pour with this. Personally, I’m thinking a big coffee stout. Here’s why: coffee stouts and chocolate are killer combos. It’s all about the lustful coming together of sweet chocolate and roasty-bitter coffee beer: it just works. But you need a big coffee beer, something full-bodied, imperial, rich and strong enough to leave you wired. It’s a real pick-me-up pairing, like a do-it-yourself tiramisu (I have to make tiramisu with coffee stout in the base one day…) where the chocolate soothes and the coffee kicks.

The pudding recipe has never failed me and it’s incredible. The pudding coats the tongue in the way that only good chocolate can and then the beer glides in and lifts it all away, making you want more and more and more… But there are careful steps needed to get that oh-so-important gooey centre. First, I add grated chocolate to the mix. Second, I add a little contingency square of chocolate in the centre. Third, make the mix a few hours before you need it (this is helpful anyway) and then chill it. Fourth, bake it for exactly 10 minutes at 220C – no more, no less.

Gooey Chocolate Puddings

This makes 6 puddings.

• 200g dark chocolate (or part and part with milk chocolate)
• 150g butter, plus some for lining the dishes
• Pinch sea salt
• 3 whole eggs and 3 yolks
• 50g caster sugar
• 20g plain flour
• Cocoa powder for dusting

Line the ramekins with butter and sprinkle cocoa into each so it all sticks to the butter. Melt 150g of the chocolate with the butter (in a glass bowl over a pan of bubbling water) and add a pinch of sea salt. While that’s melting whisk the eggs, yolks and sugar until they are pale and creamy. When the chocolate is done take it off the heat for a minute, in that minute grate a few chunks of chocolate (leaving six squares behind) into the egg/sugar mix then add the melted chocolate and butter and stir through gently. Next add the flour and stir into a pudding mix. Pour into the ramekins and pop a square of chocolate into the middle of each one. Chill until you need it.

To cook the puddings the oven must be preheated to 220C – exactly 220C. Add the ramekins and watch the clock very closely. As soon as ten minutes are up take them out, run a knife around the edge and turn them out onto a plate.

I like this served with ice cream. The first time I tried it I had it with a coffee ice cream and that was super but I personally think a more subtle ice cream would be best, and something like the RipTide Stout Ice Cream would be spot on. Another excellent choice would be a banana ice cream (coffee, chocolate and banana is a truly great combo). Or just go for a good vanilla ice cream.

As for the beer, I’d jump straight to Mikkeller and grab the Beer Geek Breakfast, or even better, the Beer Geek Brunch Weasel (I wrote about that here). I’ve had the puddings with BrewDog’s Coffee Imperial Stout, as the picture shows, and that was fantastic. You could try the Meantime Coffee but I think it might struggle to deal with the awesomeness of the dessert. If you can’t do a coffee beer then go for a straight up imperial stout - Thornbridge’s Bracia would kick serious pudding-fattened ass, Stone’s Imperial Russian Stout or a sublime De Struise Black Albert. The dessert deserves good beer, the dessert demands good beer. But remember the cautionary words at the beginning: whoever you serve this to will fall wildly in love with you.

As-Live Tasting: BrewDog’s Rake Raspberry Paradox Smokehead

UPDATE: I wrote this ages ago but then Tokyo* exploded and I wrote about that instead. I haven’t edited anything of the original post because that’s how this thing works. It’s a little dated (RE: the GBBF quandary) but it still works. And here is the BrewDog post about the beer.

21.09pm. I’m into the newest of the Paradox range and it pours out a big bowl of opaque black with a head the colour of a sunburnt bottom.

21.10pm. I want to smell raspberries and I’m expecting it. I’m expecting a lot; regular Smokehead is a crazy-wonderful beer but add a heck of a lot of fresh raspberries and I’m there.

21.11pm. It smells like milk chocolate, like kindling smoke, like old and dry wood, it’s earthy and it’s bold. And there it is: raspberries. Not a tart in-your-face kind of smell, more of a raspberry milkshake kind of thing.

21.13pm. Ok, wow. So I had to take a few sips back there and really roll around in it. This beer is seriously something. It has Smokehead’s earthy-smokiness but layered thickly above this are raspberries. They are fruity and fresh, sharp and sweet and the balancing act between barrel and berries is knife-edge stuff.

21.15pm. There’s something really opposing about the sweetness of the aroma and the sharpness of the taste. It draws you back in again and again. It’s an intense and new flavour experiences for me, mixing all the tastes in one sip with a crazy interplay and melding of complexity which threatens to fall over into complicated.

21.18pm. Sitting back and chilling, thinking about the beer, trying to get words to describe it.

21.21pm. I think I was unduly harsh last week (EDIT: it’s more like last month now…) about the British beers at the GBBF. Let me explain. You see, I’m an emotional chap and I lead with me heart so when I checked the beer list for the first time I immediately jumped to those breweries that I most want to drink at an event like the GBBF. When I saw none of them there I felt a little bit let down by the whole thing. I want to see Thornbridge, I want to see Ramsgate, Marble, Oakham, Pictish, Moor, Darkstar, BrewDog. And I want to see them put out their best beers along with festival specials. The fact that these breweries won’t be well represented is sad news to me. But, my plan is currently to go on the Tuesday and the Saturday. Tuesday will be BSF o’clock and Saturday will mean a day on the British stuff, so hopefully I’ll be able to scour the place and won’t find many me-too bitters but will be given an education in fine British ales. But just think, how much more excited would I be if I knew there would be BrewDog’s there, especially if I could get something like cask Smokehead. Pfwoar!

21.26pm. Talking of the GBBF… I don’t usually drink Mondays to Wednesday’s if I can help it to try and restore some balance for the huge drinking that happens at weekends, but this week I am changing that. I have a plan you see… I don’t want to rock up to the GBBF and drink three pints of US IPA and be rolling on the floor giggling like a little girl while all the big boys sip away at their beers completely unaffected and trying to ignore my slobbering silliness. My thinking is that spending a week drinking strong beers will build up my resilience and I’ll be able to drink hardcore with everyone else. That’s the vain thinking anyway; I very much doubt it’ll work like that, especially when I see all those barrels of beers!

21.30pm. The beer is warming up and… uh oh, do I smell cheese? And I’m struggling to tell if I’m getting a wild-ness to the beer or whether that is purely fruit and barrel. I don’t think my palate is sharp enough to deal with this beer!

21.32pm. If you like Smokehead then check out this totally amazing food and beer pairing and a few incredible recipes – the flapjacks are brilliant.

21.34pm. I’m nearing the end and I’ve finished it fairly quickly. There’s something very drinkable and alluring about the beer and I think that’s all to do with its mystery: I don’t fully understand it but I want to. I’m telling you, you can expect me to write the word mystery a few more times in coming posts, it’s my latest fave beer idea.

21.40pm. This beer is quite something. What that something is I don’t know. I’ve got two more bottles so hopefully I will find out when I drink those.

21.45pm. Done-diddly-done with that one. I don’t quite know else to say so I’m out.

Beers I Want

I write posts whenever they come to me. I’ve got about 10 ready to go at the mo, maybe more. This one I wrote way back in February and a few things have changed since then so I thought I'd better post it now before it becomes completely redundant…

I read a lot about beers, often books or cruising blogs and websites, checking out tasting notes and other peoples’ words. I guess you could say I’m a beer voyeur, jealous of what others are drinking. I drink a lot of great beer but you always want what you can’t/don’t have. Here is a list of the beers which I really really really want to try.

Dogfish Head’s Pangaea. A beer made with ingredients from all seven continents. That’s cool. It’s water from Antarctica, moscavado sugar from Africa, rice from Asia, hops and malt from Europe and North America (in what order I don’t know), Belgian yeast (from Belgium?!) crystallised ginger from Australasia and quinoa from South America (I think this is right, the DFH website only lists the water, rice and ginger, finishing it with ‘etc…’ which is kinda stupid because I want to know what’s in it and exactly where it came from!). I love the idea behind this beer.

DogFish Head’s 120-Minute IPA. 21% IPA that is boiled with hops for two hours, fermented with hops (fresh batches added daily) and aged on hops. Flipping insane! I wouldn’t turn away the 60- or 90-Minute brews either. [Edit: see this post – I now have a DFH90 coming my way!]

Another DogFish Head. World Wide Stout. An 18% monster. Enough said.

Alesmith’s Speedway Stout. Another 18% imperial monster, yes please. And they do one in a bourbon barrel so let me at that too!

Some of the stuff from Short’s Brewing Company’s, including crazy-awesome beers such as Imperial Black Cherry Porter, Bloody Beer (Bloody Mary-style beer), Peaches and Crème, Uber Goober Oatmeal Stout (it has peanut puree in it!) and Bananas n Blow (banana and cocoa). Nuts.

Russian River Brewing’s Pliny the Younger: Number 2 on BeerAdvocate’s Best Of and a hop bomb. And I’d obviously need the Elder Pliny too, to compare. [Edit: I got the Elder coming too, see this post again]

Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel made from Civet coffee which has been crapped out of a weasel. [Edit: I nearly crapped myself when I saw this at Planet Thanet beer festival in Margate last weekend! I did a double-take, squealed in excitement and then bought two]

Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh. Old Engine Oil aged in malt whisky barrels. Woo!

Westvleteren 12. Obviously. [Edit: Done it here]

Moor's JJJ IPA. A massive English IPA. Hit me!

The Thornbridge St. Petersburgs aged in three different whisky barrels. Can St. Pete’s get any better?! I have to know. [Edit: I now have one of each which I got when I went up to visit for the day]

Fresh Stone Ruination IPA. I adore the bottle and want to see how much better the cask could be in San Diego!

BrewDog made a beer called Zephyr, a 12% IPA aged in grain whisky barrels for 18 months with a load of strawberries. I want that. A lot. [Edit: This is coming soon!!]

If anyone has any Samuel Adams’ Utopia going then I’d like to a have taste of that too, or some of the other 25%+ beers. Are they really beer?!

And I was born in 1984 so I really want a beer from that year. Any beer, as long as it’s drinkable. To be honest, if it isn’t drinkable I’ll take it anyway. I’m thinking a Thomas Hardy’s 1984 would be the most realistic or maybe some Belgian classics.

And here’s some which have made the list since February… the BrewDog/Stone/Cambridge collaboration which is a 10% Black pilsner. Dark Lord because I’m a sucker for the hype and the fact that they release it on ‘Dark Lord Day’.

As you can see the last few months has seen some good beer come my way, but there's still more that I'm searching for and the list will always be evolving. What’s on your ‘I really want to try’ list? And any ideas on how I could get a bottle of beer from 1984?!

If you had to...

It’s Thirsty Thursday so let’s throw out another If you had to… conundrum.

It’s inspired by my evening at the London Drinker last night. The two beers at the top of my hit list were Thornbridge’s Jaipur and Fuller’s London Porter (cask!). Two fantastic beers with similar ABVs (5.9 and 5.4 respectively) but two completely different beers. So…

If you had to... would you rather drink Pale beers or Dark beers for the rest of your drinking days?

No arguments about the spectrum of brown, I’m ignoring that, this is: Pale Beer (lagers, IPAs, golden ales, etc. – anything lighter than amber) vs. Dark Beer (mild, dark ales, stout, porter, etc. – we all know Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, so anything darker than that). Go!

Pancake Day

I love pancakes so much that I deprive myself of them for the whole year to be able to enjoy them even more on Pancake Day, which is one of the best days of the year. This year I’m out on Tuesday so it’s a Pancake Sunday.

My pancakes are the thin, lacy ones. Like crepes but better. They fry briefly on one side, picking up a golden tan, then they’re flipped over and tanned on the other, going crispy on the outside and soft and flimsy in the middle. So simple yet so flipping good!

Pancake Day, or Shrove Tuesday, is to do with Lent. It was originally a day to use up luxury foods (milk, butter, eggs) before the 40 days of fasting which begins on Ash Wednesday. Now I don’t follow Lent and I don’t give stuff up but I do strictly follow the golden glories of Pancake Day!

I wanted a new spin on things this year and tried to match a beer to go with them. I considered making American-style blueberry pancakes with maple syrup, I thought about banana and chocolate pancakes and I even toyed with the savoury idea, all of which would be fairly easy pairings. But you know what? I have my pancakes with sugar and lemon. I always have and I always will. So I had to find a beer to go with that.

You need a beer that can balance both the sweet and sour while still letting the buttery pancake through and you need the beer to keep its true flavours and not become flabby and lifeless. Pancakes aren’t designed to be a balance treat, it’s a feast of fun, so I didn’t really know what was going to work best, so I opened a coffee imperial stout and an imperial IPA (figuring that it’d need some beer mega-flavours to work), to see what I got. I also thought about popping the cork on a lambic or gueuze, but wasn’t certain how the acidity in the glass and on the plate would work together. Maybe next year I can try my pancakes with sugar and lambic!

The coffee stout was rich and strong, with roasted bitterness, a woody sweetness and a nice smack of hops to finish it. The beer worked well with the pancakes; not perfect but pretty damn good. It’d be better with blueberry pancakes and maple syrup, to be honest.

The IPA was 9%, it’s got a syrupy sweet malt base and then a dry, scratching finish of earthy, pithy bitterness. It’s got hops but they don’t go all the way to 11, they’re about a 7. This worked great when the pancakes were loaded with sugar and lemon and there was a great balance over the palate of sweet, bitter, sour and savoury. Beware: when there wasn’t so much sweet and sour then the beer blew the doors off the pancakes.

I did discover that the pancakes would work with a softer beer, lower in alcohol and less punchy, so there’s plenty of choice for Tuesday. English IPA or porter would be cool; the Meantime beers, White Shield IPA, Gadd’s Dogbolter porter. A strong ale like Fuller’s Golden Pride, or something like Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale. Great Divide’s Yeti Imperial Stout would blend the coffee stout and the IPA and that’d make for an interesting combo. And some barrel aged beers with their buttery, oaky sweetness; Innis & Gunn Original or even a leftfield choice of BrewDog’s Storm (see the Lemon Cheesecake for why it’d work a treat).

Pancakes – makes 8-10

• 120g plain flour
• Pinch salt
• 2 eggs
• 300ml milk
• Butter and some plain flavoured oil
• 2 lemons
• A bag of sugar

Mix the flour, salt, eggs and milk into a batter, add a pinch of sugar and a splash of oil, stir and leave it to chill out in the fridge. If you want, you could replace half the milk in the recipe with beer, but go for a mild or something with little hop bitterness.

To cook, heat a large pan so that it’s hot hot hot and melt a small knob of butter with a trickle of oil and put just enough batter in to cover in a thin layer. Fry until golden and crisp on one side, flip over and cook for another minute or so. Slide onto a plate and lavish in as much or little lemon and sugar as you like. I roll mine up here, but you can have them flat. Lovely stuff.

Now I’ve got two half-drunk bottles of imperial beer to see me through the night. Oh the hardships of searching for cool beer and food matches (I just tried a cheeky black and tan too and that was blinding!).

Beer and Cheese 1: Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout

Today comes the first of a series of beer and cheese pairings to try different beers with a range of different cheeses to see what works with what. The possibilities are endless.

Today’s, the first, takes CAMRA’s choice for the 2008 Bottled Beer of the Year: Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout from Wye Valley Brewery. It’s a 4.6% stout and very good indeed. It’s smooth, gluggable, full of fantastic roasted grain flavours, chocolate and coffee with a lingering dry hoppy finish.

It’s got a really cool logo with the voluptuous pin-up of Dorothy draped across it. The beer itself is pretty sexy too; dark, enticing, complex and full of flavour. The bottle says it’s good with cheeses, but doesn’t mention specifics, so this little impromptu tasting was to see how it worked with a few cheeses that I had in the fridge. I hadn’t tried the beer out of the bottle and I hadn’t tried it with any of the cheeses before I recorded it, so it was all off the cuff.

The Brie was creamy and mild but the beer did nothing to enhance the flavours, and what you most want is for the match of cheese and beer to lift off into a new direction, not lie flaccid and flat and skirt around each other awkwardly.

The sharp, creamy goats’ cheese was much better: the cheese is full of goaty punch and the beer sweeps in and lifts the palate with plenty of sweetness while the cheese still lingers throughout. This was a surprisingly good match.

The mature cheddar was Black Bomber from Snowdonia Cheese Company, and it’s fantastically strong, tangy and rich. The match was okay but not great; the cheese is probably too much for the beer to handle and the beer doesn’t get its chance to shine.

The Colston Basset stilton is one of my favourite cheeses there is. It’s creamy, smooth, strong and delicious. It worked really well with the stout, softening the coffee roast flavour and bringing out the sweetness within. And eating this after, with some crackers, it was an even better combo.

The final cheese was thrown in as a Valentine’s special - a white stilton with strawberries and white chocolate. It’s almost unpalatably sweet, kind of crazy, mainly full of strawberry flavour with the mildly sharp stilton underneath. It’s interesting. But it did work fairly well with the stout. The strawberry and chocolate paired up and the cheese and the roast flavours danced around a bit.

I say in the video that the goats’ cheese works best, but when I tried them all again after it was the stilton which I enjoyed the most. The best thing about this was the actual beer itself. It’s a really great bottled stout. And while none of the matches were amazing, there were some good ones.

Thornbridge Brewery at The Bull

I officially love Thornbridge Brewery and their beers (read about it here), so when I heard that a pub not too far away was putting on a showcase event of their beers I was delighted. I read about it here on the Ale Affinity blog and arranged to meet Dubbel and Jimbo at the pub. They are great guys; it’s cool to meet other young beer lovers.

The pub was The Bull in Horton Kirby, Kent (check out their website here, or their Facebook group here). It’s a fantastic little corner pub with a bar lined with a selection of cask beers impeccably kept by Garrett the landlord (a proper beer lover!). There’s always Dark Star stuff on as well as ales from all over the country and a fridge with some beauties in too. It’s pretty much your ideal local.

For the Thornbridge showcase they had seven beers served off gravity. What a sight. Available was: White Swan, Lord Marples, Ashford, Kipling, Jaipur, Handel and St. Petersburg. That’s a party right there.

I started on the Ashford and worked my way upwards. Ashford is a glorious brown ale with a great malty base and a big hoppy finish – it’s surprisingly complex for a 4.2%-er. Kipling was next. I had opened a bottle of this the night before and loved it for its gorgeous fruitiness and all the tropical flavours from the Nelson Sauvin hop. From the cask it was one fine beer, judged by almost everyone as the second-best of the night. Jaipur followed and this is a near-magical IPA with a buttery-caramel-honey base and loads of tropical hops banging at the end (I also really love – maybe even prefer – the bottled version).

Handel came next, their Belgian-style ale, and I adore this beer. I wanted more and more of it (I still do! And check out Reluctant Scooper’s blog as he just cooked a great dish with the beer). Handel is so light and gluggable but so full of earthy, sweet, spicy flavours. Amazing. And it was exactly at this point that the complimentary buffet opened. Are there any finer words than ‘complimentary buffet’ at a beer festival (other than ‘free beer’)? A few blocks of cheese came out and being on a massive cheese-and-beer kick I helped myself. A strong-blue-and-Handel combo blew me away: that was pairing heaven.

Onwards, finishing at the crowning glory that is St. Petersburg. An immensely brilliant imperial stout that superlatives cannot do justice. At 7.7% it’s rich, thick, creamy and full of roasted grain and dark chocolate but it’s still a beer you can drink a pint of.

And then I had to leave for the train. I said earlier that Kipling came number two for most, well number one was of course St. Petersburg. Personally, I thought Handel was right up there alongside the St. Pete. Thornbridge rock. I’m going up to visit next month and I can’t wait. Oh, and Kelly, the Brewery Manager, has just started a blog here.

Harder, Faster, Bigger, Better… Double my IPA!

Our tastes change and develop. And because taste is subjective, everyone is different. My favourite cheese used to be a mature cheddar, now I want the mouldiest, stinkiest, creamiest blue I can find. A few years ago a sprinkle of curry powder was too much, now I want whole chillis, freshly ground spices and I want my mouth to tingle. I started drinking my coffee with ½ a heap of granules plus two of sugar, now it’s no sugar and three times the coffee. Booze too: Malibu and coke is now bourbon and ice; beer was lager; white wine was mixed with lemonade; Guinness started with a dash of blackcurrant to soften the roast bitterness…

But what is common about all these?!

The more we have them, the more we want them as we ‘acquire’ the taste. These acquired tastes are for those things which are unnatural to our palettes: spicy foods, dark chocolate, salty oysters. To begin we have sweet chilli sauce, milk or white chocolate, fish fingers…

But tastes change.

I got into beer by drinking lager-pop. I’d have bitter shandies. I eased into Guinness, with a shot of blackcurrant cordial. I started on ales by having smoother, sweeter dark beers, and for the last few years it has been these dark beers that I have regularly leaned towards. I love them for their richness, the sweetness, the flavour of the grain, the taste of autumn fruit, dried fruit, caramel, chocolate or coffee. I preferred them for their relative lack of hop bitterness. And I was always searching for bigger and stronger beers, winter warmer’s, barley wines, Belgian triple’s, anything black and imperial. I was a malt monster.

But my taste is changing.

It seems there are two growing divisions in the beer world. These aren’t divisions away from each other, rather two interweaving and developing trends. Both are towards the extremes of flavour; one is for IPAs and the other for stouts. These new imperial or double IPAs are mega-hopped and massively bitter; the imperial stouts are thick, strong beasts, often aged in some-kind-of barrel to impart bourbon/oak characteristics. You just have to look on Beer Advocate at the best rated beers in the world right now to see this, and the trend seems to be growing. It started in America as they brought older styles to modern drinking.

We all know the history of IPA, which was shipped from England to India with added strength and hops to stop it going off on the boat trip. While (imperial) stouts have a similar-ish background, being brewed in London in the 18th century and transported to Russian Czars. For this reason it had to be extra-strong and well-hopped to survive the distance and the extreme cold. The styles have been around ever since, but it’s only in the last years that they have become the phenomenas that they are. Any why? Because tastes change.

In beer, the change has come as drinkers want ‘more’. More booze, more grain, more hops, more character, more flavour, more extremes, more history, more age, more more more. It’s the IPAs which have really piqued my interest of late. IPAs never really did it for me. That was until I tried BrewDog’s Punk IPA (available in Tesco’s – a perfect modern IPA) and their Chaos Theory (simply amazing and currently available on their website, but hurry!). After these the malt monster in me transformed into a hop-headed thrill-seeker.

The bitterness in these beer is high, but that’s what makes them so awesome. They have a supreme drinkability which makes you want to go back for more and more. In the mouth you get the sweet caramel grain then the hops flood in and ambush your palate, making the saliva glands gush, as the tropical fruits, citrus and pine flavours come through. It’s intoxicating what a few extra hops can do to you. For me, they work because the beer develops in layers: massive malt (it has to be massive to attain the extra higher ABVs) followed by the wave of juicy hops. The reason the ‘best beers’ are the ‘best beers’ is because they are so well balanced. It’s easy to go extreme on a beer, but it’s surely much harder to make it good. The same applies to food. Look at the top chefs in the world and their food – it challenges what we think we know about eating and food combinations, but it works because of the chef’s skill and supreme palate make it work.

I find it fascinating how our taste buds change, especially with stronger flavours. Blue cheese, slippery-salty oysters and coffee are foods which take some getting used to. The same applies to stronger, bigger beers. And the limits are always being pushed. Sam Adams’ Utopia is brewed at around 27% (it’s a beer!). Your ‘standard’ imperial stout now comes in at around 10% and if it isn’t aged in a bourbon barrel for extra complexity then why bother? And where a mass-produced lager may have 5-20 IBUs (International Bitterness Units – the scale of measuring a beer’s bitterness) and English bitter 20-40 IBUs, there are some double IPAs which measure in at 120 IBUs and beyond! That’s enough to make your taste buds explode!!

Barrel-aged stouts are incredibly exciting and complex and they are brilliant to sit down with on a cold night, swirl around a snifter and sip for while. It’s sophisticated, it’s smooth, rich in flavour, it’ll make you think about the world, think about the barrel it came from, the history that it has. But a double IPA is like a rollercoaster ride with ups and downs and twists and turns. It’s fresh, fun, intoxicating and exciting. It makes you want more and more as your taste for it develops. Who knows where it’ll go from here!