That's better

Still in England. Today I went to a supermarket and chose a couple of beers off the shelf, in between sobs at the price difference compared to back home where English ale is a speciality product.

I came away with Wadworth 6X, which is one of the better bitters. It's not quite as sharp as my Bateman's benchmark, but a fruity smoothness comes in to compensate for that. A well-balanced beer, all in all.

My big find, however, was Daleside Duff. This is a fantastically complex beer and achieves the Holy Grail of English bitter by being smooth and easy-drinking while still loaded with flavour. It's all there in spades. Welcome to the pantheon.

Tales from the Dual Carriageway

I'm in England today and just went for a couple of pints in an uber-generic off-ramp pub, the kind of which dots arterial roads from Truro to Sunderland. I was quite pleased, in such a wash of generic lagers, to find Old Speckled Hen on tap. Old Speckled Hen is the kind of English beer that other beers should look up to. On tap, however, it is a whole different ball-game, it seems. What I received was ice-cold with a frothy nitrogen head and took about half an hour in the sun to develop something resembling the taste of Old Speckled Hen from a bottle. However, I'm taking a positive slant on this: by drinking this beer by the bottle back home I am getting a better experience than those consuming it in the pub in its country of origin.

From the same McPub I tried Bombardier. This was at least honest in its approach (or maybe it's just that I've never had it from a bottle). Again it was cold and frothy, but this time there was no attempt at flavour: this is one of those ultra-smooth ales which goes down silkily but basically tastes like air. It's not an unpleasant experience, by any means, but it really drives one's thirst for a decent cask ale.

Blanche, Blonde, Bleuh

Ch'ti is a range of French artisan beers sold in 75cl bottles. The Blanche and Blonde are fairly commonplace in Irish supermarkets. I'm not a fan of either, however. Ch'ti Blanche is a cloudy witbier but is intesely bitter with no fruit flavour offering relief. I had high hopes of the Blonde: at 6.4% alcohol a comparison with Leffe would be in order, I thought. Instead this is a very plain, vapid lager with very little flavour of any kind.

I know France isn't a beer-drinking culture, but there are some good French beers out there: Jenlain springs immediately to mind. I expected better of Ch'ti and won't be trying it again.

Früli amazing

It is not my intention to turn this blog into a rolling account of the seasonal beers available at the Porterhouse, but I can’t pass without mentioning the incumbent. Früli is in the Belgian light fruit beer genre. The base is a gently frothy inert wheat beer, but the overwhelming character comes from the fruit, strawberries in this case. And they did not skimp on the strawberries, either: Früli is a solid opaque red colour with more than a hint of the smoothie about its appearance and taste. It seems pretty obvious that tub after tub of real strawberries have simply been liquidised and dropped into the mix, juice-bar style. The result is outstanding: 100% fruit drink, yet 100% beer. Nice one.

Choc-tastic

Last month I posted a review of Meantime Chocolate (here). Since then the Porterhouse reintroduced their Chocolate Truffle Stout as part of the March stout-fest so I thought I'd do a quick round-up of Chocolate Beers I Have Known.

I won't repeat my Meantime review: just to say it gets points for being different, but isn't a patch on normal chocolate stouts. My usual fallback in this genre is Young's Double Chocolate Stout, which is about as rich and creamy as bottled beer gets, and carries a big chocolate kick in the foretaste.

Yet even Young's pales in comparison to the Porterhouse chocolate stout. I'm not sure what the "truffle" element adds to it (about 500 calories, at a guess) but this seasonal stout is utterly sublime: very smooth, very heavy and very very chocolatey. It is definitely one of my favourite beers: a sure sign it's about to be discontinued.

And happy birthday to the Beer Nut Blog. One year and seven countries done: much more to come.

The bland leading the bland

A quick round-up of some of the less notable beers I encountered on my recent trip to Greece, mentioned purely for completist reasons.

Mythos is the most ubqitous beer I noticed in Athens. It's the standard Mediterranean lager, generically refreshing. Mostly it was served in a frozen pint glass, yet developed what one might call an actual flavour when it warmed up slightly. The other common lager is Alpha, which struck me as blander yet: even when the sun hit it there wasn't much of a hint of a lager taste. Still, it does the job for that place and climate and I'm not complaining.

I travelled through Budapest and just had time on the way back for a swift pint at the airport. The choice was Stella, Beck's, Franziskaner, Leffe Brune or something strange called Borsodi. No contest, of course. Borsodi is pretty cheap and nasty, but when you're drinking it from a plastic cup under fluorescent lights in an eastern European airport it's the only appropriate drink. Just another sacrifice for this blog...

First dispatch from the field

I'm in Athens for the next few days. Currently I'm collecting information on the standard beers hereabouts and I'll make a full report on them in due course. Yesterday, however, I visited the city's only microbrewery: Craft.

The decor is in the mock-industrial brewpub style, rather than the Anglo-German light-wood-and-hops motif. The beer is excellent. They do two fairly basic lagers: the pilsner is classic brewpub lager with that coarse, grainy microbrewed taste: backbone of the industry. Then they do "Athens Lager" which is a more refined, bittersweet, Austrian style beer.

Craft Red Ale is a Belgian-Abbey-style beer: aromatic, fruity and complex. The oddly named "Black Lager" is just like a light stout, sparkling rather than creamy, and full of the burnt caramel flavour that sets it apart.

The Weiss at Craft is a fairly good imitation of Erdinger, right down to the banana aroma, though perhaps a little lighter and softer.

My big find, however, is Craft Smoked Lager. As the name suggests, this is made with smoked hops for a real smoke taste: something akin to drinking a pint of smoky bacon crisps. It is marvellously strange and I look forward to finding another smoked beer to compare notes.

Craft, then, is a first-rate brewpub, and a real find here in southern Europe where beer is not taken as seriously as it should be.