More power to yours

So here's the second beer from the enigmatic new Cork beer brand Elbow Lane, kindly sent to me by the boss. Bravely they've gone for a 4.4% ABV pale lager, called simply Elbow. It's a tough market in which to sell craft beer, but I guess that having their own chain of restaurants will help keep it moving. It's also a very difficult style to brew well, but I think they've more-or-less nailed it.

Elbow is a slightly unpleasant brassy colour but absolutely crystal clear. There's a very mild sourness in the aroma, which presents in the flavour as a kind of coppery tang. I'm guessing the hops are somewhat responsible here as there's very little sign of them otherwise. The centre of the flavour, however, is dominated by soft biscuity lager malts. There's an almost breadlike filling texture which I think will make it an ideal food lager. But best of all is the carbonation: a gentle cask-like sparkle which makes it very very drinkable.

With my classification hat on I'd place it more towards the Bavarian helles side of the house than Czech pilsner. If I didn't know the strength I'd be suggesting märzen. But even more so it reminds me of the lovely cask lagers of the UK like Schiehallion and Latitude.

A welcome addition to the somewhat hit-and-miss realm of cool-fermented Irish beer.

Arbitrating the arbitrary

Random shelf sweeps in off licences are a fairly routine part of my drinking life. A recent one turned up a bottle of Honey Brown Lager from the Sleeman brewery in Ontario. The amber colour (or "honey brown", if you prefer) is impressive, and there's a gently sweet honey aroma and foretaste. Coupled with the light carbonation and full mouthfeel, a sip of this is a pleasant experience. However, it's also a short-lived one. After a second the honey flavours give way to... nothing, and the drinker is left with just another quite tasteless North American lager. A shame, because a little tweaking could make this one of the very few genuinely tasty honey beers. I can't complain too much, however: with random selection, it's not the quality of the beer that counts so much as the knowledge it brings. *Tick*

Very occasionally, I get to do the opposite of random selection when a beer I've been looking for shows up on a shelf in front of me. Top of my want list, until yesterday, was Old Engine Oil from Harviestoun. My experiences with Bitter & Twisted and Schiehallion tell me that this crowd know a thing or two about making beer. While their other two are readily available in Dublin's better off licences, the lack of the final beer in their range seemed like an anomaly. Some distributor has now rectified that, thankfully.

The pour leaves one in no doubt why the brewer who invented it, an ex-engineer, bestowed this particular name on the beer: it's very thick and very black. Carbonation is light and results in only the thinnest of heads. There's an aroma of ripe, dark fruits which reminds me a lot of the Trappist ales. Unsurprisingly the mouthfeel is thick and chewy, as one gets with much stronger dark beers. Conversely, the taste is rather more subtle than one would expect for a dark beer of 6% ABV. That's not to say it isn't complex, however. The ripe fruit is there again, included in quite a sharp sourness. I served it chilled, as recommended, but found that the sourness gradually subsided as it warmed and was replaced by richer bitter chocolate notes. When combined with the lack of gas, this makes for some very smooth drinking indeed.

My bottle was dated March 2009, so I'm wondering if the sourness was a product of the beer being too young, as it may have been with the Westvleteren 8 I had recently. At the moment I have a box of beers I'm planning to set aside for a year or so to see if they improve. I reckon I'll throw one of these in there as well.

London (not) for beginners

It's 3.30 yesterday afternoon. I've just come out of a meeting in Camden, north London and have arranged with a colleague to meet at Paddington Station at 5 for the train back to Heathrow. At Camden Town tube station I discover that the Northern line is severely disrupted and all service on the Circle and Hammersmith & City lines has been suspended. The question: have I time for a quick pint of St. Peter's excellent cask ale at the Jerusalem Tavern in Clerkenwell?
'Course I have.

Had I not been navigating on the hoof I'd have hopped out at Euston, walked to Euston Square, and taken the Metropolitan line to Farringdon. I didn't spot this easy option, however, and opted instead to leg it from Euston, across Bloomsbury, past Gray's Inn field and into Clerkenwell.

I arrived at the Jerusalem in Britton Street at 4.15. It's a strange, simple little pub, furnished in rickety wood and giving the appearance of being held together by paint and varnish. The taps on the bar serve Bitburger and Aspall's cider. Behind it, however, a row of spigots promise beers from the pub's parent brewery: St. Peter's in Suffolk. Though tempted to order something I know, and compare its cask and bottled incarnations, I went instead for a pint of mild, a beer style which is nigh-on impossible to find here at home. St. Peter's Mild is very dark, with a thick creamy head. The taste is indeed mild, offering subtle coffee and roasted grain notes.

As I sunk my mild, I consulted my map and figured that I'd be able to take a much shorter route back to Paddington: from Farringdon, changing at Baker Street. And that meant I had time for another pint. This time I went for St. Peter's Grapefruit beer, having read good things about it, and to find out how the wizards of Bungay do fruit beer. More than anything, it reminded me of Früli. It doesn't look like it, taste like it, smell like it or feel like it, but it has a similar beer-fruit relationship, with the fruit definitely wearing the trousers. It's clear, almost headless, a deep red-gold colour and tastes overwhelmingly of real grapefruit. Marvellously refreshing and innovative.

At this point I took my leave and was back at Paddington at the appointed hour. We arrived at Heathrow with time to spare. Anyone who flies at all regularly between Ireland and Heathrow will be very familiar with the complex of metal tubes housing gates 80 to 90 of Terminal 1, affectionately known as "The Paddyshack". Time was, the Paddyshack Wetherspoons had Theakstons on draught and the last couple of pints at the airport was something I always looked forward to. Alas those days are gone, and it's necessary to drink landside in order to get anything better than Heineken these days. Armed with this knowledge I led us to the main landside Wetherspoons, where the handpumps were pouring Schiehallion, Marston's Pedigree, Bombardier and Deuchars IPA. The last of these was the only stranger to me, so that's where I started. I was disappointed from the first sip. This is a rather bland affair, lacking the hoppy citrusy warmth one expects from British IPA. Instead, it's creamy and smooth with only the fainest hop character at the very back.

Having polished that off I should really have opted for a Schiehallion, knowing that I really like it. Instead, I decided to give a dull beer a second chance. Having been disappointed with bottled Marston's Pedigree, I tried a draught pint and found it to be exactly the same forgettable sensation. Marston's should be proud that their bottling process manages to reproduce the cask experience perfectly. If only it were an experience worth having...

Flowers of Scotland

From Edinburgh comes Innis & Gunn, an exclusive-looking amber ale in a 33cl bottle. The unique selling point here is that it's aged for 77 days in whisky barrels which gives it a distinct oaky flavour as well as a scotch malt bitterness. This makes for a heady mix of strong flavours which I found a little overpowering, though there is a refreshing lightness at the back of the taste to stop it from taking over the palate entirely. Nevertheless, 33cl is enough of this one.

Of course, the Scots like their lager too, and the Harviestoun brewery make a fantastic one called Schiehallion. This beer has been very precisely crafted to just the right level of dryness and bitterness. There's a grainy complexity in the flavour too, making for a perfectly balanced lager. The same brewery make Bitter & Twisted which has a sharply bitter hops taste up front but again this is fine-tuned to keep it on the good side of tasty. The flavour is also tempered with a gentle lemony fruitness. Both of these Harviestoun beers are finely honed and plainly the work of people who know exactly what they're doing.

No run-down of Scottish beer would be complete without a return to an old favourite - Fraoch heather beer. There's really nothing else out there like this ale made from real heather. It's as easy to drink as any light ale or lager, but has an immesely complicated taste that defies description. Just try it.