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    Friday 9 January 2009

    Beers Of 2008

    I've updated the left hand column with my Beers of 2008. It's excellent that an English microbrewed stout Old Chimneys Good King Henry turned out to be beer of the year. I had the beer at the excellent Merton Winter Beer Festival; this year's is only four weeks away and is promising a agood list already.

    The stout isn't quite as good as its elder brother the special reserve, but is truly wonderful, with roasty, fruity flavours and a bit of rich soy. The finish goes on forever.

    One thing which was apparent when going through my notes was the low showing for new beers from Belgium and Germany. It would be nice to rectify that this year.

    5 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Did you not drink many German or Belgian beers, or were you just not as impressed by them as those from other countries? Quite a few of our beers of the year were German, but then we went there on holiday twice. And I guess you make it to more beer festivals in the UK than we do (something for us to do more of this year, I think).

    Soy? That's interesting. We've been struggling to pin down a (slightly unpleasant) savoury flavour in one of our homebrewed stouts, and that might be it.

    Mark Edwards said...

    Bailey - I didn't drink as many new Belgians and Germans as in previous years, which obviously is part of the issue. Funnily enough I'll probably be at less festivals this year than previously. I'm aiming to do more pub crawls.

    Unknown said...

    I'd love to find some exciting German beers. Looks like I'll have to try and make it over there this year.

    And I'm now intrigued by Old Chimneys. Never seen it available anywhere and I'd love to find out whether it really is as good as it's made out to be. Not that I'm cynical, mind ;-)

    Mark Dredge said...

    Last year I spent with all the American beers that I could get hold of but I really want to find some exciting European beer this year. The trouble is that whenever I go to a decent beer shop like Utobeer in Borough I'm blinded by the aggressive marketing of the US beers, or I lean towards the bottled UK beers that I haven't had before. I really must pay more attention to Germany...

    I haven't heard of Old Chimneys so I'll have to keep on the look out.

    Anonymous said...

    Old Chimneys is a lovely little Brewery - Alan is a real Journeyman brewer, and a genuinely knowledgeable and interesting guy. Angelo and I drove up to meet him, and his brewery is pretty cool!

    We have the King Henrys Reserve. I would recomend the Redshank too.

    and the location is really beautiful too.