Tastes like a dead dog

OK, that's unfair of me: I thought of the title before opening the beer. But I'm not much of a fan of the beer from Sharp's -- MolsonCoors's Cornish operation -- nor of telly chef Rick Stein who put his signature on this one, nor of Chalky's Bite, the other beer named after his late mutt, so I wasn't expecting to be impressed by its little brother Chalky's Bark.

But really, it's not a bad beer. Yes it's massively overcarbonated making it difficult to taste anything in it at first, and at its core there's a watery nothingness where I think I'm within my rights to expect some sort of malt-derived weight, especially at the not-insubstantial ABV of 4.5%. But the centrepiece of the flavour is a lovely bittersweet lemon that teeters a little towards washing up liquid yet never quite gets there, fortunately. That the promised centrepiece of the flavour is ginger, of which I can detect no trace whatsoever, bothers me not in the slightest.

Chalky's Bark is a perfectly acceptable sunny day quaffer, as long as you let the dog blow off some of his trapped gas first.

Reserve judgement

Ruth Deveney tells the story of how she got hold of a case of Knappstein Reserve Lager, from Australia's Clare Valley, over on her own blog. It's an odd fish in many ways: for a start, the winery/brewery where it's brewed works by hand with small batches, despite being owned by multinational drinks giant Lion Nathan, makers of such luminaries as Castlemaine XXXX and Tooheys. But possibly the weirdest thing about this beer is the title and description: it claims to be a Bavarian-style lager -- and Ruth even claims to know someone who's had beer like this in small-town Bavaria -- but it's far away from anything I've ever tasted from Germany.

Light, delicate fruit flavours are at the centre, the sort of melon and passionfruit you'd associate with a Gewürztraminer, or even Tokaji. The texture is reminiscent of a dessert wine: heavy and almost sticky, but the light sparkle removes any possibility of it becoming difficult to drink. This all makes it very hard to believe that it's a mere 5.6% ABV -- it could easily pass for 8 in my estimation. Magnificent post-prandial summer sipping.

The roster of other beers (all English) for tasting last Thursday is here, and there were a few of my current favourites in there. I discovered a new joy of Meantime London Stout, finding it much fuller and tastier than the first time I tried it. The only new one for me was Sharp's Single Brew Reserve 2008 -- of the recently-arrived Sharp's bottled beers, only this is not presented in clear glass.

I don't think I've met a Sharp's beer I've liked -- Doom Bar I found acceptable but rather dull; Chalky's Bite is much too lacking in flavour for a Belgian-style ale. Single Brew Reserve starts promising, if odd, with a nose full of weiss-y bananas and some very girly peaches and flowers, all from a serious looking dark amber body. But there's really not much beyond this: the beer is very light on taste, with only a hint of that fruitiness and maybe a touch of caramel. Another understated mediocrity from Sharp's, I'm afraid.

Needless to say, it was a couple of bottles of the Knappstein I walked off with at the end of the session. There's just the one case, so if you're interested I recommend high-tailing it to Dundrum forthwith.

For the sake of argonaut

If aliens landed tomorrow and announced that they were going to eradicate one of Earth's beer styles you wouldn't hear me piping up in defence of British golden ales. They're an inoffensive bunch (the ales, not the aliens) but mostly very very dull. They were created, I assume, to draw the lager fanatics into proper beer, but when the Belgians tried this they created Duvel; the Brits gave us Discovery.

One beer gives me pause in my condemnation, however: Black Sheep's Golden Sheep. This is a rich dark gold colour and is properly malty with a lovely bitter bite at the end, accentuated by the powerful carbonation. It reminds me of nothing so much as the better class of Czech lager. This is how to ape lager with an ale.

Of course, when it comes to slightly darker ales, the English are world class. Take Emmerdale -- also from Black Sheep -- for example. This amber beer has the understated bitterness of English hop varieties but more than makes up for its lack of bite with a rich and satisfying warmth. No other nation's brewers can create this kind of flavour at such low levels of alcohol.

I tried the Emmerdale next to Betty Stogs, from the Skinner's brewery in Cornwall. This is a dark red-amber ale with a fresh hoppy aroma, redolent of an American pale ale. Sadly, it doesn't follow through to the flavour. The beer is labelled a quaffer and is light on gas and light on taste, disappearing quickly without doing much on the way.

I'm not a fan of Rick Stein. I think he has very preordained ideas about how food ought to be which lead him to make repetitive and often quite patronising television programmes. When I happened across another Cornish beer (in England: those are not my doilies) to which he lends his late dog's name, I was apprehensive. Reading on the label that Chalky's Bite is an attempt to recreate a Belgian tripel put me immediately on the defensive against Steinish little-Englanderism. So I'm pleased to report that the beer is rubbish. It has none of the spice and power of a real tripel, it's just bland and English and golden.

Hey, aliens: start the sweep at Cornwall.