Lidl donkey

One thing I won't miss about not attending the Pig's Ear festival this year is execrable Christmas beer nomenclature: Rudolph's This, Santa's That -- it's stultifyingly dull. Mind you, the beers are often quite good, at least when they have a bit of oomph to them. I've found in the past that low-ABV Christmas ales are very rarely drinkable.

So it was with trepidation that I approached Shepherd Neame's seasonal offering (sigh) Rudolph's Reward. I was quite fond of their, more soberly-titled, Christmas Ale: a bitter and spicy 7% ABV thumper. But the new kid is only 4%, so how much yuletide cheer is there likely to be inside?

(Can we pause for a second and look at that label? Smirking Rudolph appears to be wearing Santa's clothing, implying some kind of gruesome Animal Farm-style takeover of the North Pole workshop or mid-air sleigh mutiny. Whatever Rudolph is hoisting to celebrate his seizure of the means of production, it is a blonde beer and plainly not Rudolph's Reward.)

The beer looks, in fairness, lovely: dark red-amber, with a long lasting fine-bubbled head. Nothing offensive about the nose: hints of caramel and chocolate. It's the latter which leads the flavour. I say "leads", but there's not really a whole lot else. Just on the finish you get a whiff of Shepherd Neame's signature lightstruck hops, but not enough to contribute much (good or bad) to it. It's mercifully less fizzy than a lot of the brewery's bottled offerings, but the texture is very watery. Stronger it would just be sweet and cloying, however. It needs more complexity before I'd recommend it, even at €1.49 a pop in Lidl.

Cheap Shep set sesh

For as long as Lidl keep bringing out cheap Shepherd Neame specials, I'll keep buying them. Some day they'll produce something as good as Bishop's Finger or 1698. But that day is yet to come. There were three in the latest round, labelled as the "Master Brewer's Choice", all 4% ABV and on sale for the totally-worth-a-punt sum of €1.49 each.

The most promising of the three was called Tapping the Admiral but the anticipation was short-lived: when the cap came off there wafted out an unmerciful stench of lightstruck hops. Open a window and don't nobody smoke: something's crawled into this beer and died. Of dysentry. Ignoring the stink, the beer is an attractive gold colour, but that's it's best feature. Amazingly there's no trace of those pungent hops in the flavour. Instead there's a woeful sickly cheap-chocolate sweetness. This is apparently supposed to evoke brandy, but offers no heat, no wood and no fruit; just a box of Milk Tray from three Christmases ago you found at the back of a cupboard. Avoid.

Autumn Blaze was next. It looks the part, all auburn and russet and the other adjectives from that shelf in the hair dye section. There's no assault on the olfactory nerve, though up close it has a sort of maple syrup woody stickiness. Nothing really jumps out in the flavour: a little bit of roastiness but there's nothing more than fizzy water behind it. Put it on cask to bring out the malt more and this would perform adequately as a workhouse brown bitter. As-is it's perfectly drinkable, but so laid back flavourwise as to be comatose. Your granddad will like it.

Palest of the lot is 4-4-2, with its daft claim to use ten different hop varieties. Using up leftovers, were we? This made its first appearance during the World Cup and my first impressions on tasting it is that they've gone straight for the lager-swilling demographic. Rather than the cascade (see what I did there?) of multitudinous hop flavours it has a vaguely grassy Germanic feel to it. Beneath that there's slight toasty malt and lots of fizz. If the aim was to produce a clone of Beck's or Carlsberg then they've done a bang-up job. But as a tasty pale ale it's a poor show.

And there you have it: two beers that are so-so in their own way and one absolute (literal) stinker. In all honestly I can't say if there's better beer going for €1.50 a half litre in Dublin. Maybe the Franziskaner next to it in Lidl. I'm actually slightly intrigued as to what the Shep-Lidl Alliance is going to throw at us next. I dub this game "Kentish Roulette".

The Adoration of the Shepherds

The Christmas holiday begins today. This year I managed to avoid the worst of the work-related bad-drink events that I tend to get sucked into: just a couple of fairly civilised lunches for me. To celebrate the end of work for two weeks, I laid in a couple of Shepherd Neame Christmas Ales, having seen them last week for the first time.

I cracked one open by the fireside this evening, and was struck first by the heady aley aroma from the neck. It's pretty close to a skunky waft, which wouldn't be surprising given the brewery's ridiculous preference for clear glass bottles. I rather like that smell, however: it's the first signal that this is proper beer. On tasting I was surprised there wasn't more of a Christmas character to it. There's just a little more warmth coming from the high alcohol (7% ABV), and a hint of spice on the very end as it warms, but mostly there are just big, candied, crystal malt flavours, and I must say I loved them.

This is a very easy drinking number, and the sort that could very easily sneak up on an unwary drinker and knock them out. Just a couple as the logs crackle in the grate, though? Lovely.