Castle Rock Screech Owl - Available Now

I wrote back in October about Castle Rock Screech Owl winning SIBA Beer Of The Midlands in spite of its apparently being a one off beer.

My learned friend Mr Reluctant Scooper commented that it would become a permenant beer in the New Year. Well it appears he was right (not that I ever doubted it). I went to three Castle Rock pubs yesterday, and it was available in all three. And very good it is too. Nice and hoppy with a lovely long, almost warming body. I'm glad that it has turned out to be a beer I would recommend and that, indeed, it may be coming to a pub near you soon.

Great American Beers Have Arrived

Not long after I started this blog, and in comments I left on others, I lamented the lack of decent American beers available in this country. Sure we had a few, and some of them are very good such as Brooklyn Lager and Anchor Porter, but the beers available were mostly from the larger breweries.

Since then though the range has improved dramatically. We have seen beers from Great Divide, Flying Dog, Rogue, Goose Island, Left Hand and an increased range from Sierra Nevada. I dare say I've missed one or two as well.

In the last couple of weeks though we've seen more great, and in many cases, pretty rare, beers imported into the country.

Beers Of Europe's American range now includes twelve different beers from California's Stone Brewery, whilst the Port and Lost Abbey beers I mentioned previously, have now arrived and can be found here and here.

None of these beers are cheap - what do you expect with the cost of importation and the standard of them - but should be well worth the outlay. It may be too late for Christmas, but New Year's Eve may be a cause for celebration.

Lost Abbey And Port Brewing On Their Way

Anyone who enjoyed The Angels Share at this year's Great British Beer Festival will be excited to hear that Beermerchants.com yesterday announced the imminent arrival of beers brewed by Port Brewing/Lost Abbey. This excellent brewery which specialises in both American and Belgian beer styles has won multiple awards for its beers.

Having only tasted the one beer at GBBF I'm very keen to try more beers from their range.

I don't have details of which beers are coming yet, but hope to have that information soon. More information on the beer ranges can be found here and here.

These beers won't be cheap, but they represent the pinnacle of US brewing and may never be seen in the UK again. You wouldn't want to miss out would you?

The Geese Are Coming

Yet more exciting news regarding good imported beers is to found on Roger Protz's Beer Pages. Four new beers from Chicago's Goose Island Brewery will soon be available in the UK thanks to James Clay.

We've had IPA, and Honkers Ale here for a few years, but soon we'll have Matilda and Pere Jacques, both Belgian styled ales. 312 Urban Wheat Ale, and the 13% Imperial Stout Bourbon County.

That all sounds good to me. I'll be keeping my eyes peeled.

The Next Wetherspoons Festival

Those of you who have received September's issue of What's Brewing, may have been drawn to the advert on page four for the next Wetherspoons International Real Ale Festival. The festival is set to run from October 30th to November 16th and will feature up to 50 ales.

The last festival was a great success and saw punters trek to Spoons pubs in their droves to sample, amongst others, beers brewed on these shores by the brewers from Stone of California, and Yo-Ho of Nagano.

This festival promises beers brewed by guest brewers from Japan, America, Australia and Denmark. I have it on good authority that the Japanese brewer is again Toshi from Yo-Ho, who, I am sure will do us proud again. However in a change of tack the American brewer is said to be Matt from Firestone Walker, and the Danish brewer is Mikkel from Mikkeller. These are two great brewers with very exciting products, which I hope they can replicate in a similar vein to the Stone California Double IPA brewed at Shepherd Neame.

I've yet to ascertain which brewer is coming from Australia, but as soon as I find out, I will of course share it. No doubt all true beer lovers in the land will want to join me in praising Wetherspoons for this continued support for excellent World brewers, whilst at the same time, bringing us a good range of home brewed stuff.

Struise Black Albert

Struise cannot do much wrong in my opinion. I've enjoyed all the beers I've tried, and awarded Earthmonk my beer of the year last year. I was pleased to see Pannepot, another favourite of mine, on the bottled list at GBBF. Hopefully this is a sign that these exceptional beers are going to be imported more regularly to the UK.

Indeed it's alredy started as BeerMerchants have got some Black Albert on sale. This 13% stout has fantastic tasting notes according to the description if you've clicked the link, and certainly make me excited to try the bottle I traded for at GBBF.

Be warned that supplies are presently pretty small, so get in quick while you can.

BeerMerchants Brewsletter

The latest newsletter from BeerMerchants is available here. It's heartening to see how well the Scandinavian beers they've recently got in are doing. I am very confident that they will continue to break the mould and import some of the World's greatest beers. Heck I may even have some very interesting news for you quite soon.

Read the newsletter, click on the links and order some beer. Have fun!

Enjoying The Beer

I went for quality rather than quantity at GBBF this year, mostly sticking to the full third pint of the beers I tried, or a large enough amount out of the bottles we opened. When I wrote my piece the other day, I didn't have my notes with me, and it may have come across that I didn't enjoy the range of beers I had as much as I should have.

However now I sit here with my notes in front of me, I'm reminded that I had a pretty decent number of good beers. On the whole some of the IPAs and APAs from USA underwhelmed me, but they weren't bad by any stretch. What did it for me was the darker beers, and not just the strongest ones either.

Beers I tried which warranted a score of at least 3.6 on the RateBeer scale were:

The Tap Mansfield Sweet Stout
Lost Abbey The Angels Share
Kona Fire Rock Pale Ale
Tommyknocker Maple Nut Brown Ale
Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout
Gritty McDuffs Punch You In The IPA
Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron
Cape Ann Fishermans IPA
De Molen Amarillo
De Molen Tsarina Ezra Reserva
Mayflower Porter
De Molen Bloed, Sweet & Tranen
Warbird Warhawk Pale Ale
Brooklyn Blast
Cricket Hill Colonel Bildes Altbier
Ducato Verdi Imperial Stout
Marble Janine's One
Smuttynose Wheat Wine

I'm not going to provide tasting notes for all of those as that will be very boring, but reading this list tells me three things.

That's a big list bearing in mind I tried just 52 beers
I didn't score the Italian beers particularly highly.
Taking notes on the beers does allow you to remember the good stuff from the crap. As much as it's nice to tinker about blagging and socializing, it is the beer that we go for.

Nils Oscar At BeerMerchants

My favourite beer at last year's Great British Beer Festival was Nils Oscar Imperial Stout. It was an excellent stout coming in at a reasonable 7% but tasting much stronger with an excellent roasty body. Sadly there doesn't appear to be any beers from Scandinavia this year, but blog sponsor BeerMerchants have secured six beers from this Swedish brewery for your enjoyment.

Amongst them is the excellent Stout, together with the almost as good Barley Wine an IPA, a smoked porter, and a couple of lagers; one in the dortmunder style and one in the vienna style.

As stated before, BeerMerchants certainly know how to package their beers so you can order these safe in the knowledge that they will arrive snugly and promptly. I'm sure you'll enjoy a little taste of Sweden, especially the Imperial Stout!

GBBF 2008 - The American Beers

Sometimes you get some news which is almost too good to share. I've been keeping my eyes on the list of foreign beers that will be at this year's Great British Beer Festival for a few weeks, and although the list has slowly grown and with that growth become slightly better, nothing has prepared me for the final list which has appeared today.

The cask list has been there a week or so, and is very impressive. I am particularly looking forward to the highly rated The Angel's Share. However, just check out the list of American bottled beers we are promised. There's a couple of breweries there I've not heard of, although I'll be researching them before going to Earls Court. OK, so there are limited quantities of about twenty odd of them, but these are beers which we may never see in this country again, and are not to be missed.

For those of us who are going to be there for the first couple of days, we are really spoilt for choice. Thank you BSF beer purchaser!!

Mikkeller Beers In The UK

Blog sponsors BEERmerchants.com have today announced what is a major coup for a British importer. They have imported a fine selection of beers from Denmark's Mikkeller Brewery. I've eulogised about Mikkeller beers a few times on this blog and awarded one of their beers Beer Of The Month in March.

The case features nine different beers from the brewery awarded sixth in the World in the latest RateBeer Best awards. All of these beers are highly rated and only two (Jackie Brown and Beer Geek Breakfast) have been sold in the UK before. There are hoppy American styled ales, a couple of Belgian styled beers and a 17.5% Imperial Stout included in the box. So a varied selection of styles as well.

Hopefully this isn't a once in a lifetime opportunity to get hold of these beers but I do recommend people get in quickly as advance orders are being taken from today. Oh, and you get one of the splendid Beermerchants glasses too. What a bargain!!

Hats Off To Hertfordshire

One of the joys of being a beer and stats geek and a premium member of RateBeer is that the package of pretty useless statistics is growing. I say useless because to most people it's just a collection of meaningless numbers only of use to the anoraks. But I'll come out and say that lists and numbes have always fascinated me. I can look at cricket scorecards and averages all day long, and if figures like that are available for beers then whoppee doo!

One of the things we've recently done at RateBeer is broken down all the breweries into their counties, so that your stats package now includes how many beers you've rated from each county. And of course from that you can see which county has the highest average beer rating.

My top county is Hertfordshire with 48 beers rated at an average of 3.42. That's a high score and it's almost totally due to the quality output from both Alehouse, and Buntingford. These are both breweries with a fairly prolific output but who know how to brew great stuff, especially hoppy beers.

Bottom of the pile comes Berkshire, so the less said about them the better, so well done Hertfordshire - there will always be a place in my heart for Herts!

World Awards For Roosters And BrewDog

The World Beer Cup is a bit of a car crash of a competition with far too many categories, and beers being entered in categories which you would feel they don't belong in. There also seems to be an inordinately large amount of medals for the big boys.

Naturally the amount of beer entered is a tiny fraction of what is actually being produced in the World, with entries from these shores even more so. Having said that, it's still nice for a beer to be recognised by winning. The brewers obviously want to win or they wouldn't enter. Having said that though, I guess even being there is useful for getting your products known.

So it's hats off to Roosters of Knaresborough for winning category 51 English-Style Summer Ale, for YPA and to BrewDog of Fraserburgh, Scotland for winning category 16 Wood and Barrel Aged Strong Beer for Paradox Grain.

These are two breweries I hold in high stead and have discussed on this blog before. Congratulations to them both.

For those who can be bothered to look through the 91 categories, the full list is here.

A Herculean Box Of Beer

It's not every day the postman brings you something special. It's normally junk or, worse still, bills. However on Monday the doorbell rang and there was a very nice man with a delivery for me. It transpires that unsolicited I had been sent a great box of beer from Beermerchants.com

Beermerchants call the selection The Hercules Case due to the strength of all the beers. The weakest of the eighteen different brands is a tear-inducing 8% with the strongest being the delicious Bush Ambrée. Also in there is my all time favourite Rochefort 10. There's also a rather snazzy glass, just perfect for most strong Belgian beers. The box was superbly and safely packaged with enough 'peanuts' to keep a monkey happy for a lifetime. To round off the package is an A4 sheet of tasting notes which include recommendations for food pairings. I've not seen this before from online suppliers, and I think it's a really nice touch especially for the beginner.

For me of course the case was the best value possible, but. at £34.90 for normal customers, it still represents great value. There are other good deals to be had. Give the website a visit and see what you think.

Stone's (I Mean Shepherd Neame's) New Beer Going Down Nicely

I've read three reports now from people who have sampled the beer brewed by Stone brewers at Shepherd Neame. They are all favourable and report that the beer is superbly hoppy.

So this 7% beer which Wetherspoons describe as a double IPA, but Greg Koch himself calls an ordinary IPA is going down a treat, and it seems that being brewed at the Sheps plant which isn't used to seeing so many hops, especially American Centennial and Simcoe, isn't seeing a dumbing down of any flavours at all.

As previously reported, the beer is here for the Wetherspoons festival which officially starts tomorrow and runs until April 14th. I will be going to a Wetherspoons every day until I find this beer. Let's hope it happens soon, or God help me.

Less And Less Liefmans

There's been plenty blogged about the financial difficulties affecting Liefmans, and the will-they-won't-they bankruptcy takeover saga. I wrote just before Christmas of finding Bacchus beers in my local Sainsbury's in their stead, and those two beers remain on the shelf today.

I have though regularly spotted Liefmans beers around, both bottled and draught since then, but it appears supplies are definitely on a downward spiral.

My local has sold both the Kriek and Frambozen on draught throughout these turbulent times, but now they have disappeared. The fruit beer drinkers now have a choice of Bacchus Kriek or Timmermans Strawberry, which coincidentally I can find no reference to anywhere on the web.

Liefmans loss is definitely other breweries' gain, especially Van Honsebrouck and the risk is even if Liefmans beers come back on a larger scale than they are currently available (and in my opinion they are superior products to their replacements), that the contracts with wholesalers will not be resurrected and drinkers will have to settle for a lesser product.

Time will tell obviously, but I really hope Leifmans beers come back as strong as ever.

Brooklyn Lager - It's Lovely

I first drank Brooklyn Lager in early 2004. I was underwhelmed, finding it a little too sweet and cloying for my palate at that time. I hadn't really discovered American beers and hops at that time, and should probably admit to not understanding the hops and even being put off a little by the word "lager".

However recently I've read a few comments from people whose taste in beer is similar to mine stating how much they enjoy the beer and at £1 a bottle in Sainsbury's, what a great 'go-to' beer it is.

So I parted with my quid and tried a bottle on Sunday. What joy! It's actually a beautiful little beer. The aroma is so subtly hopped, you can smell the cascades but it's far more delicate and welcoming than some beers with that hop are. I guess that's the hallertauer mitelfruh talking. The taste too is beautifully balanced. It's still got that sweet edge I noticed before but it's a bitter sweetness with really pleasant hop notes coming through. It doesn't even taste like it's bottom fermented to me. I would have said it's a pale ale if I'd tasted it blind, albeit it with a lack of any agressive hopping.

I drank a bottle of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Sierra Nevada Celebration straight after and easily enjoyed the Brooklyn more.

And all that for just 100pence. I think I'll get me a few more bottles.

Looking Forward To 2008

The end of the year is traditionally the time we vow to do loads of worthy things during the following 365 days, but rarely keep our promise beyond a week or three. However in spite of previous attempts of mine failing I'm going to try and keep the following resolutions and now that they are being published on this blog I cannot dent ever having said I will do certain things.

As you would expect of a beer blog most are beer related, but not all are:

1. Try to lose weight - Who hasn't tried to do this over the years? Truth is though that between the beginning of October and Christmas I lost 14 lbs. Christmas has seen five of these go back on, but a really concerted effort should see success for me this year. Mind you that doesn't mean cutting down on the beer

2. Eat conscientiously - By this I mean only eat meat farmed organically, or at least that the meat is free range (I really cannot go vegetarian). I already do this at home but I need to stick to my laurels and abide by this when eating elsewhere, like others' homes and beer festivals for example. It's pretty inexcusable not eating more ethically; good food is more expensive but it is most definitely worth it.

3. Leave more comments on other blogs - I'm sure people appreciate comments being left, I know I do, so I'll try to devote more time to show that I read and enjoy other blogs.

4. Respond to comments on my blog - Sometimes I just read and publish without joining in the debate, I must get out of that habit.

5. Don't be so bothered about drinking new beers - this will particularly appeal to some of my readers. I will have had 850 new beers in 2007 by the end of tonight. I aim to reduce that number in 2008.

6. Drink more local beers - Wherever possible I will drink Northamptonshire beers whenever I see them.

7. Revisit all of the following beers - I really need to try these beers again in deference to new stuff. To that end, one day a week I will only drink stuff I've had before.

Orval

All three widely available Chimays

Rochefort 6 and 8

Westmalle Triple

Aventinus

Thornbridge Jaipur

Crouch Vale Brewers Gold and Extra

Dark Star Hophead

Bush Ambrée

Girardin Gueuze Black Label

Cantillon Gueuze and Rose de Gambrinus

Becks

Okay that last one is a joke, but the list isn't exhaustive anyway.

So let's see how I do, I'll try and report back in a years time. Meanwhile Happy New Year To All Of You, and thanks for reading my little space in surfdom.

Two Awards For Adnams

Adnams Brewery has won two recent awards. Its Bitter was first named Champion Beer Of East Anglia and now head brewer Mike Powell-Evans has been chosen as Brewer Of The Year by The British Guild Of Beer Writers.

I like Adnams beers; they are consistently good, and they haven't gone down the road of saturating the market with new beers on a weekly basis. My Dad states that Adnams Bitter is the only real ale which doesn't give him a headache. This is a pretty bold statement but it's clear that he enjoys drinking it and seeks it out wherever possible. Particular favourites of mine are Tally Ho and Old Ale both of which should be around the market at the moment, and certainly shouldn't be missed.

There is one bizarre side to Adnams though. As reported by Stonch, they introduced a strange hybrid beer Spindrift last year. I've not seen it yet, but I'm not in a hurry.

A Pint Is Best With Your Pie

It's nice to see beer getting a mention in a food writer's review of a meal. I found this piece on the blog of the Manchester Evening News' food critic.

She clearly enjoyed the pint of Acorn Barnsley Bitter she had, and appreciated the part it played in the cooking of her pie. It's good that she preferred the beer a great deal more than the house wine on offer. Acorn is a particular favourite brewery of mine making clean simple English style ales which all somehow seem to taste like they know how best to use quality products. I mentioned them in my ten happening breweries piece, so it's good to see them enjoyed in this way.

In spite of all this praise on the beer and the meal, I will have to say though that the picture of the pie, chips and peas does't make my mouth water nearly as much as the pint of bitter would!