Well, I promised I would get some Hobgoblin for blogging purposes, and here we are.
I'm impressed, first of all, by the tight creamy head straight out of the bottle. The beer is a deep ruby-amber colour and, despite the creaminess, is exquisitely bitter. There's no trace of the caramel sweetness you sometimes get with this sort, but that's OK: it's not over-hopped and possesses the warm heart of all the best English ales.
It's the sort of beer you can settle in for a few of, though that's probably more economical somewhere where it doesn't cost €3.49 a bottle, i.e. not Dublin.
So here ends the Beer Nut's second year. I've a sad feeling that the third won't feature quite as much travel as the previous two, but I will keep reporting on the interesting and mundane from these shores until normal service is resumed.
Did I mention I'm going to Barcelona on Wednesday?
1 month ago
You could always drive north, fill the boot of the car and go home again :). About £1.59 a bottle here.
ReplyDeleteI could if I had one of those "car" things of which you speak. As is, adding a €36 Enterprise ticket to the price of a case doesn't make for great value.
ReplyDeleteAhh, the dilemmas of carbon-friendly beer import...
Unfortunately Hobgoblin from the bottle is pasteurised and filtered. It's one of those beers, like Theakston's Old Peculier, that is so good from the cask that it always disappoints if you later have it from the bottle...
ReplyDeleteCheers Stonch. The old saw about half a loaf being better than no bread at all comes to mind, but thanks for the heads-up all the same.
ReplyDelete