October really was a quiet month. I had just 18 new beers, and revisited Rochefort 10. As previously mentioned, I had no cask beer at all.
In order to win a beer of the month category, I have to award the beer at least 3.5 out of 5 on the RateBeer scale. Just four of the new beers I drank acheived this score. Three of these are British bottled beers available in Tescos.
Ridgeway Blue is brewed at Hepworth in West Sussex, and states it is "brewed deliberately to taste great chilled". I had it in the traditional manner, though, of cellar temperature and found it a pleasantly hoppy beer which stood up well to being bottle conditioned. Hepworth do brew some good BCAs. Williams Bros Seven Giraffes is another good beer from this excellent Scottish brewery. This has both elderflower and lemon zest in the brew, but these are not too obvious. Instead it's the US hops which come through and make for a tasty beer. Thirdly Tom Wood Jolly Ploughman which of course is brewed by Highwood which is another quality BCA. This is much more malty than the other two beers and has coffee and smoky notes. I would have to award this as the best English beer I tried in October.
However the stand out winner of Beer Of The Month, and the hot, hot favourite for Beer Of The Year was Struise Earthmonk. I'm not going to repeat everything I said before except to say this is a simply beautiful beer, and scored 4.8 out of 5. If you have never tried this beer, do everything you can to get your hands on it. Why, if I didn't have one more bottle, I would consider selling my daughters (Only kidding!!)
No comments:
Post a Comment