If you had to...

Here’s a fun game. It's called ‘If you had to…’ aka ‘Would you rather…’ aka 'What would you do if...' and so on. Just read the question and answer it!

This question comes in response to the Brewers Association Style Guide for 2009 which lists a whopping 138 different styles! 138?! That’s nuts! Check out the list.

If you had to... choose only one style of beer to drink for the rest of your life, and you only had one minute to decide, what would it be? Go! (Don’t try and pick one from the list, you’ll run out of time before you even pass the British styles!)

A Beer Night

Beer nights rock. A few of us get together, everyone brings a few different bottles, we share them, discuss them and then for a little bit of competition we score each out of 10 to see which beer ends up the highest. It’s a great excuse to drink a load of quality beers with your mates.

There will always be a few expected stars in there and a few duds (that’s how we do it), but you never can predict just how well any particular beers will do and often completely different styles of beer receive similar scores. You do find yourself basing marks on the other scores you’ve already given (‘how many did I give the last beer? Because it wasn’t as good as that…blah blah blah…’). There’s nothing too scientific about it, it’s just guys drinking beer and awarding each individual one they drink a score.

Here’s what we had in the order we had it. We didn’t plan an exact route through the beers, although certain ones were placed at certain points for comparative reasons. And we saved the really big boys until the end. There were three of us - Me, Matt and Sean – and we were in Matt’s flat.

1. BrewDog. Chaos Theory. 7.1%. Matt’s choice.

We all loved this IPA but it was marked fairly conservatively as it was the first one up (you don’t want to set too high a benchmarch). It’s hopped with just the Nelson Sauvin and all that mega concentrated fruit flavour booms out the glass. It’s got that addictive IPA quality about it. This was the prototype version.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7.5
Sean: 7
Total: 22

2&3. BrewDog Zeitgeist Prototype vs. BrewDog Zeitgeist ‘Real’. 4.9%. Everyone’s choice.

Us three Men of Kent spent the previous evening knocking back Zeitgeist at the beer’s launch so we wanted to do an immediate comparison between the old and new. The new was smoother, with a greater depth of flavour and topped off with those citrusy hops.

Mark: Prototype: 6, Real: 7
Matt: Prototype: 5.5, Real: 7
Sean: Prototype: 5.5, Real: 7
Total: Prototype: 17, Real: 21

4. Westvleteren 8. 8%. My choice.

I’ve had it in the cupboard for a while now and thought I’d crack it open to share (beers like this are so much better to share with fellow beer lovers). I wanted this early in the night while we were still fresh. We all knew the mythical status of the brewery and the respect it garners from the beer world so it was surrounded by discussions of psychology (which I’ll write about soon) and how we expect greatness from such beers which then affects our perceptions of them.

None of us had tried this beer before. It pours a deep ruby colour and the nose is all dried fruit sweetness and tea bread. It’s very complex with each mouthful picking out different flavours. It tasted very fresh and clean, a slight bitterness to end, lots of sweet tea, something oaky, candy sugar… there’s a lot going on. It’s really drinkable and moreish but despite the complexity it has a simple, fresh quality to it.

Beer Advocate has this as the 8th best beer in the world. Is it? We didn’t think so. Maybe it gets better with age, maybe we just didn’t fall under the Westy spell. It’s a very very good Belgian beer, just not the best.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7
Sean: 6.5
Total: 21

So it scored 21, that same as BrewDog’s Zeitgeist. Are they the same in reality? No. But Zeitgeist gets marks because it’s a beer that you can drink lots of, one that can be enjoyed all the time. Westvleteren is completely different, almost incomparable. Maybe we even marked the Westvletern down because it didn’t live up to the heights of greatness that we anticipated.

5. Becks. Alcohol Free. 0.05%. My choice.

A dud thrown in for fun and deliberately placed after the Westy 8. The marks speak for themselves but here were a few quotes: ‘it smells like arse’, ‘pointless’, ‘like licking copper pipes, but at least the pipes might have mould on that would taste of something, and probably the most succinct, ‘fucking shit’.

Mark: 0.5
Matt: 1
Sean: 0.5
Total: 2

6. Okell's. Aile. 4.7%. Sean’s choice.

A ‘Smoked Celtic Porter’. It’s got a great looking cappuccino head, there’s a hint of charcoal and bonfire in the nose but the smoke is really lulling and gentle. It’s very smooth and drinkable. We all loved this beer and we all were sad when the bottle was finished. Superb.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7.5
Sean: 8
Total: 23

7. Whim Ales. Dr. Johnson’s Definitive. 5.0%. Sean’s choice.

None of us had seen or heard of this beer before and we will probably quickly forget it; it was just okay. A fruity dark ale, some spice, cereal and dried fruits. Probably affect by following up the excellent Okell’s Aile.

Mark: 6.5
Matt: 6
Sean: 6
Total: 18.5

8. Stone Brewing. Ruination IPA. 7.7%. My choice.

I didn’t know when to bring this big gun out. It has a ruining effect (100+ IBUs!) on your palate and I didn’t want us to all just be tasting pine, orange and grapefruit for the rest of the night. So we had it before dinner, figuring that the food would clear our palates.

This is one addictively good beer. It’s brutally elegant in the cyclical nature that it makes you drink: sweet first then bitter which blows up in your mouth, then you want the sweetness again to ease the rampant hops and so on and so on… Incredible. Sean is a dark beer guy and Ruination IPA may well have changed his life forever (it changed my life when I first had it!).

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Sean: 8.5
Total: 26.5

Next up: Dinner.

Matt’s lives right by a fish and chip shop so we just went there for something cheap and sustaining. I had burger and chips, Matt had sausage and chips and Sean devoured two huge battered sausages and chips (although did later complain of blurred vision). In keeping with the scoring, here’s what we gave the food:

Mark: 6
Matt: 6
Sean: 5
Total: 17

9. Desperados. 5.9%. Everyone’s choice!

A beer with huge sentimental value for all of us. We have demolished a fair few kegs and bottles of this trashy-delicious beer. It’s a tequila beer that you serve with lime. It’s quite unique, kinda sweet and limey. The flavour is just so familiar to all of us that we were gushing with Desperados-induced memories throughout. This scores highly because we love it for its sentimental value (plus it just tastes pretty good! Our trashy beer of choice!).

Mark: 7
Matt: 8
Sean: 8
Total: 23

Yes, it scored higher than Westvleteren 8!

10. Rogue. Dead Guy Ale. 6.5%. Sean’s choice.

A copper coloured maibock. Loads of apple and spice. Fairly drinkable but unfortunately it just wasn’t anything special, and by this time we were all getting pretty discernible, wanting nothing less than awesome (that’s what a Desperados will do to you/us!).

Mark: 6
Matt: 4
Sean: 4
Total: 14

11. Fuller’s. Vintage Ale 2004. 8.5%. Matt’s choice.

We stepped it up from here. This beer is older than the friendship between Matt and I which he bought it in our first year at uni together. We had two and opened one almost two years ago before we left uni. This is a sentimental beer that has been loving looked after.

It was bottle number 05325. Russet coloured with a big sherry and dried fruit nose with caramel and vanilla. It’s gorgeously complex with honeycomb, dates, marmalade, liquorice, oak, sherry and cherry… every mouthful gave us more and more flavours and complexity. We all agreed that it was probably the best beer that we’ve each tried. The sad thing is that we’ve had it for almost 5 years and now it’s gone forever!

Mark: 9.5
Matt: 9.5
Sean: 9
Total: 28

12. Goose Island. Bourbon County Stout. 13%. My choice.

I’ve had this knocking around for a while now and thought the beer night would be a great time to open it. If we thought the Fuller’s was unbeatable then this gave it a fair old fight. It’s an amazing beer. Black, oily, huge boozy bourbon nose, vanilla and coconut. It’s thick and rich, woody, vinous, chocolatey with a berry sweetness. It’s complex and warming and flipping good. I’ve got another hiding away for a few years time.

Mark: 9
Matt: 9
Sean: 9.5
Total: 27.5

13. BrewDog. Paradox Isle of Arran. 10%. Sean’s choice.

We probably should’ve had this before the Bourbon County as it’s fairly similar just a lot more mellow and toned down. It still stood up to the plate but it was stuck in the shadow of the beer before. But this is one of the best beers I’ve had this year and I love it. It’s chocolate and vanilla and coconut and cherry and ginger and berries and it’s superb. It’s like the Bourbon County’s little brother who may not be as strong and up in your face but is probably more intelligent and complex.

Mark: 9
Matt: 8
Sean: 8
Total: 25

14. Port Brewing. Wipeout IPA. 7%. My choice.

Another big IPA, this one to end off the night. This is hopped with Amarillo, Centennial, Cascade, Simcoe and Summit. It’s golden with a huge orange pith and juice aroma. It’s rich and boozy with hard-hitting, dry tangy hops which just keep getting more and more bitter. There isn’t too much sweetness either, which can be a problem with beers hopped to the eyeballs. A good IPA but after the glories of the Ruination anything big and bitter was going to fall short.

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 7
Sean: 7.5
Total: 22

And that was the end of the beer night. Although, there was still one bottle hanging around, but it only seemed fitting to have it in the morning with…

Breakfast... Sausage and black pudding sandwiches. Proper food and just the job to deal with the after effects of the night before. The breakfast scores:

Mark: 7.5
Matt: 8
Sean: 8.5
Total: 24

And with breakfast we had…

15. Mikkeller. Beer Geek Breakfast. 7.5%. My choice.

A rich coffee stout, bitter and roasted and full of proper coffee flavours. It has a great grassy/earthy hop finish which perfectly matches the coffee and dark chocolate notes. I thought this was a great (breakfast) beer, but it was probably marked down overall because of our slightly delicate states.

Mark: 7
Matt: 5.5
Sean: 6
Total: 18.5

So there it was. Great fun and a load of great beer. A strong and varied line-up and really interesting to compare so many different styles and flavours. The Fuller’s Vintage was champion of the night but the Goose Island was very close behind and the Ruination was right up there. I guess the big shock was Westvleteren not making the top five and Desperados being in there. The best beers are the best beers, and we agreed universally, but there is also something very important about sentimental value. The Top 5:

1. Fuller’s Vintage 2004
2. Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout
3. Stone’s Ruination IPA
4. BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran
5. Okells Aile and Desperados (joint fifth)

In last place:

Becks Alcohol Free (that was kind of a gimme)

And breakfast beat dinner.

After breakfast we went to the White Horse in Parson’s Green and had a few great beers (Meantime IPA off tap was brilliant) and then out to a Belgian restaurant for dinner (I had Delirium Tremens off tap to start and a Rochefort 8 for main). Then we went to another pub and none of us ordered a beer. I’m guessing we were all feeling pretty beered-out!

BrewDog Zeitgeist

I learnt the word zeitgeist in my first year at uni (maybe last year of A-levels, I don’t remember precisely) and since then it has peppered my essays as I try to sound intelligent, using an irresistibly vague concept which stands for the essence of a community or place or time. It’s a cool word.

Last night BrewDog launched their latest offering: Zeitgeist, a 4.9% black lager, billed as the first mass-market black lager in the UK (read the press release here). It’s a side project, with neither BrewDog’s logo nor name featuring on the bottle, and it was developed in conjunction with Dundee University art students who were asked to design the label. The winner was Heather Brennan with her beguiling military sheep (the more you look at them the more you enjoy them and find their differences fascinating - really cool!).

Zeitgeist comes with a ‘spirit of the times’ kind of idea - in a world of blogs and user-generated stuff - which is pretty neat: when you buy the beer you get a code and this entitles you to one blog entry on the Zeitgeist website here. The entry has no restrictions and the only stipulation (of sorts) is that it’s related to Zeitgeist (irresistibly vague). It’s a wikipedia art project created by the drinkers; the evolution of it undetermined, the content unplanned; a collage of people and ideas and words and images. And they aren’t going to be editing or censoring the stuff (“I’m pretty sure we’re gonna get sued” James told us, “but the site comes with a heavy disclaimer”).

The launch itself was fun, taking place in a small bar-come-gallery opposite Brick Lane in London. People were huddled around chatting sucking the beer out of the bottles. You know what was odd? I hadn’t drunk beer out of the bottle for ages and I loved it! Stuff the choice glassware, I want a bottle. We got chatting to a load of beer people: James from BrewDog, who it was awesome to finally meet, what a great guy!; Phil from Beermerchants and this blog; the effervescent Stonch; Aussie blogger Tim, who I discovered is not a Simpsons character despite his profile pic; and Steve from this blog. And the highlight: Roger Protz walked past me as I was walking in, like a cloaked ninja he fled into the night, with beer in his pockets and a hat on his head.

And the beer? We chatted to James about the development of Zeitgeist from prototype to finished beer. There’s a considerable difference. The prototype was a simple dark lager; some roasted notes and gentle hops and fizz to top it off. The real thing is a different beast: rich, smooth, stout-like, chocolatey and it’s got a hefty hop hit at the end giving citrus, spice and all things nice. It’s lager, but not as we know it. I got a bit carried away asking people whether they preferred the beer cold or ‘warm’: the decision was split. Cold it was a glugger, refreshing, easy to knock back; when it was warmer the depth of the roasted notes and hops pushed through and it was a lot more complex. I think they’ve pitched it just right for the full spectrum of drinkers.

And where can you buy the stuff? BrewDog’s website: here in its own case or here it comes in a box with Chaos Theory which is a wicked IPA. And while you are there check out the food and beer pairings that I wrote for their blog (there’s one more to come, look out for it, it’s a goodun').

I like the beer and I love the concept. I want to see how the website evolves. A negative to end: drink too many and your head thumps in the morning, especially if you get up early to do silly things like write beer blogs. Time for work.

Buying Beer

This follows on from last week’s post about The Best Supermarket Beer and asks: Where do you buy your beer from?

I like to drink new beers; ones I’ve not had before. There’ll also be a few staples in the house, picked up from wherever, but it’s the new beers that I’m talking about here.

I think I’ve pretty much exhausted the supermarket selections now and I tend to only buy from there if I want it for a specific occasion, food pairing or if I see something new. There are some brilliant beers available in the supermarkets, I’ve just worked my way through them so want more choice.

I go to Utobeer in Borough Market a lot and there’s a decent selection in my favourite farm shop, Macknade Fine Foods, including plenty of local beers and the range of Sam Smith’s.

I’ve bought my last few hauls online. Beermerchants (run by Phil who has a cool blog here) have a load of European beers and also an ever expanding selection of American beers (that’s what I’m after!), some which can’t be bought anywhere else yet, from Port Brewing, Lost Abbey and AleSmith. I put in a big order a few weeks ago and most of the beers I bought I’d never even seen anywhere else before (I actually only live 15 minutes drive from the depot so maybe I’ll pop over sometime!).

I’ve ordered from Beers of Europe recently too. They’ve got an excellent selection of beers from all over the world, including lots of British and American bottles. My order arrived within 48 hours (in spite of the snow). They also have Europe’s largest beer shop.

What about the others? Zak Avery runs a beer shop in Leeds. Beer Ritz are an online beer shop and they have a large selection of bottled beers from around the world. There’s RealAle.com, which is based in Twickenham (while I was at Royal Holloway University a few miles away we used to venture over to pick up our beers); they have expanded their selection recently to take in more American and world beers, and they sell online. There’s also Beer Ventures and Only Fine Beer (I don't know much about these two). Some breweries sell direct too, which I like, but there aren’t enough doing this.

Who else? Who do you recommend? Where do you buy your beer from? I need to know where to go to next!

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!).

Meantime IPA and London Porter: The best beers in the supermarket?

I’d walked past the two 750ml Meantime beers with the black bottles, their smart/classy labels and their crowned top for ages without ever buying them. That was until a few weeks ago, which was when I discovered what I’d been missing out on.

They are both proper British beers; famous styles which are seeing a worldwide surge that has seen them morphed into completely new (imperial) beasts. These Meantimers, I imagine, are much more proper, as it were.

The IPA is a punchy 7.5% and hopped with Fuggles and Goldings. It’s a copper/amber colour with a large fluffy head and big bubbles. The nose is candy sugar to begin, moving into apples, marmalade, sharp fruits and spice. It’s big in the mouth with loads of caramel and biscuit malt, then the earthy, spicy hops come through with a tangy and long biting finish. The hops develop throughout the bottle, wrapping around your palate and getting stronger and more citrusy. It’s a flipping good IPA. I served it with fish and it went great, it’s also a brilliant cheese beer, particularly a good strong cheddar.

The London Porter is 6.5% and pours on the ruby shade of dark brown. The nose is sweetly smoky and nutty with some sugar, coffee and dark chocolate. In the mouth it’s all roast grain: chocolate, coffee, toasted nuts, smoke – all of it subtle and smooth. Sweetness comes through at the end after the hops have finished nibbling and there’s some maple syrup, dark fruits and nutty milk chocolate. It’s really drinkable too; I polished off the 750ml bottle in no time at all. I served it with meatballs and spaghetti, which is a fairly challenging match, but it was a stunning pairing: the smoke blended with the sharp-sweet sauce, an earthy-nuttiness came through in the beer which was delicious and the roast sweetness in the beer was perfect with the meat. I was surprised by how well it worked. I’ve been looking for a beer to pair with tomato-based pasta dishes for ages and now it looks like I’ve found it.

I think these are two of the very best beers available in the supermarkets. And £4 for a 750ml bottle is a pretty good deal, if you ask me.

What do you think is the best beer available in the supermarket?

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.

A Storming Lemon Cheesecake

I've decided to try out some video blogging. I have a youtube channel which you can view at www.youtube.com/user/markdredge. While you are there, check out Zak Avery's brilliant channel or click here.

If you’ve seen the video above then you won’t need much of an intro to this dish (this is my first attempt at a video, so be kind! EDIT: I've uploaded a new and improved version with better sound). Whether you want it with the beer or not, that’s up to you, but it’s an amazing match – actually amazing! - and I can’t think of a single other beer which would work with a lemon cheesecake. Even sitting here now this combo still baffles and excites me.

Like I say in the video, it’s difficult to do the beer justice with words. If you are a beer person then it’s one of those beers you need to try. It’s in-your-face awesome, it’s challenging and it’ll make you think about what beer is capable of being. I love it for its complexity. There’s more on the BrewDog website, including their own video and some more food pairing (written by me!), and you can find that here.

This cheesecake is so easy to make and tastes great. It’s perfect for a light finish to a meal, a great summer dessert or even a fancy dinner party – it can do it all with ease. The whisky-spiked sauce is intended for the beer and acts as a stepping stone between the food and drink, linking the flavours in each, but it works perfectly if you don’t serve this beer.

This makes a big cheesecake, easily enough for 8

The base:

• 125g melted butter
• 225g digestive biscuits (I used the Hovis ones shaped like bread)

The topping:

• 300ml double cream
• 300ml soft cream cheese
• 250g mascarpone
• 4 tablespoons icing sugar
• 2 lemons – juice and zest

The raspberry sauce:

• 200g raspberries
• 50ml whisky
• 1 tablespoon icing sugar or honey (you may want more than this)

Butter a loose-bottomed cake/flan tin. Crush the biscuits into a fine dust - I do this by putting them in a sandwich bad and smashing them with a rolling pin (make sure the bag is on top of a kitchen towel or something soft and ensure there is no air in the bag). Then add this to the melted butter and stir through. Push the biscuit mix tightly into the base of the tin and chill.

Mix together the double cream until it is as thick as you can make it before it turns to butter. In a separate bowl mix the cheeses and icing sugar, then add the zest and juice of 1 lemon. Stir it through and add the double cream, folding it in. Give it a taste and add as much of the leftover lemon juice and zest as you like. If you are making this for the Storm then go easy on the lemon or it’ll overpower the beer – it may be a beer full of massive flavours, but it is still only an 8%-er so you need some delicacy.

Once everything is mixed together, layer it on top of the base and chill until you want it.

To make the raspberry sauce just blitz up 200g of fresh raspberries, a tablespoon of icing sugar or honey and 50ml of whisky. Give it a taste, if you want more sweetness then just add some more sugar or honey. Pour it through a sieve to remove the pips and set aside.

Serve this with the Storm which should be just cool. I’d like to suggest another beer to serve with the cheesecake but I really can’t think of another which would work.

BrewDog are Biting Back

I wrote about The Portman Group banning BrewDog's Speedball here. So many other bloggers took up the story too. Well, now BrewDog are taking action.

They are suing the Portman Group for Defamation. Read their article here.

And while you're there, check out BrewDog's Dinner 1 & 2... The guest writer may be familiar to you!