Beer Of The Month - August 2007

August was completely dominated as far as beer drinking goes by The London RateBeer get together, GBBF and Peterborough Beer Festival. I tried 145 new beers in total from 17 different countries.

You will hopefully already have read my reports of these three main events. The gathering and GBBF saw some world beating beers, and a small amount of average or poor ones. It seemed a feature of the gathering for there to be strong beers. I like strong beers but I think these were overdone a little. One of the best beers though, and the stand out beer for some present was the 4.9% Harveys Black Bull Stout. This is an excellent beer brewed to a 170 year old recipe. It was a delicious wonderfully balanced English stout, and wins my English Beer Of The Month. Other great beers on the day were Achel Extra Bruin, the strongest product of Belgium's youngest trappist brewery; Tyranena Stickin It To The Man, an American IPA; Ølfabrikken Clansman, my first beer from this Danish happening micro; Pike XXXXX Stout from Washington; Mikkeller Monks Elixir a Quad from Denmark; De Molen Rasputin, possibly the best beer ever from Netherlands; Grand Teton Black Cauldron Imperial Stout, from Idaho; Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza a Belgian styled beer from Michigan; 3 Fonteinen J & J Oude Geuze Blauw a beautiful Gueuze, sadly no longer produced; Three Floyds Fantabulous Resplendence, a 10.5% strong ale from Indiana; and, my beer of the day, Amager Hr. Frederiksen, an Imperial Stout from Denmark. Hr. Frederiksen wins my New Brewery Beer Of The Month. It was a real pleasure to be able to taste all these brilliant beers in the company of so many great people.

Of course GBBF had many great beers too such as Ølfabrikken Porter and Nils Oscar Imperial Stout both from Scandinavia. The latter is a stunning beer. It has unbelievable depth of flavour, yet is wonderfully smooth, and all at only 6.5%. It wins my Bottled Beer, Non-English Beer, and Overall Beer Of The Month.

One of the most exciting things about GBBF is the opportunity to try cask conditioned US beers, and I had a few! The stand outs wereThe Cambridge House Abijah Rowe IPA, Gardner Naked Stout and Facelift IPA, Portsmouth Bottle Rocket IPA and Three Floyds Romulus. Out of these I would have to award Gardner Naked Stout the Cask Beer Of The Month.

I don't have a separate category for British cask ale of the month, but advise you to keep an eye out for Goachers Crown Imperial Stout and Leeds Midnight Bell

I expect September to be a lot quieter, but that doesn't mean I won't find some superb beers.