myBrewerytapblog

Drink Along - York Minster Ale

2011-09-30T18:27:00.005+01:00

Old Mother Nature is a cruel mistress at times. The nights are drawing in, the mornings are getting wetter, I’m dreading the clocks going back and then – as if to poke a wound – it starts to warm up. Compared to the terrible summer we had, it’s almost tropical in London at the moment. High’s of 28; where was this weather in August!

Rest assured, it is definitely autumn now, and as we hurtle towards Christmas, it’s time to draw a line under the summer 52 Weeks Beer case. We draw that line with a bottle of York Minster Ale from the York Brewery.

I visited York brewery on a Twissup earlier in the year. Their Centurion’s Ghost ale is great (I wrote about it here). I can force them into a nutshell with this: two flagship session ales, both with pale malt and crystal malt, both with challenger hops, one is called “Guzzler”, the other “Yorkshire Terrier”. Yeah?

York Minster is amber in colour, ‘flame’ if you like, with a slight haze to it. The aroma is very slight. This isn’t even that cold in my glass, but it’s offering very little. Ammonia again, must be me, but I get that hair dye, hairdressers, bathroom-after-the-missus-has-coloured-her-hair aroma. What is that!?

In the mouth it’s quite thin bodied, tart and there’s a tanginess to it. The finish is bitter, bitter in a real prickly, sharp kinda way. There’s some biscuity malt character right on the back end. I can’t taste any obvious faults in this, nothing by way of an infection or bad fermentation or anything like that, it's just lacking in something major to comment on.

Help me out ...

You can find out more about the Drink Along here.

Drink Along - Cotleigh Barn Owl

2011-09-23T15:31:00.009+01:00

After all those golden ales we’ve been drinking, this one comes as a shock to the system. It isn’t golden, or see-through, or highly carbonated! What the hell! It’s getting colder outside though and as much as we try to deny it, the nights are starting to draw in whilst the mornings get lighter. Despite being in the summer case, this style of beer feels kinda right.

The aroma is pretty complex. I get a lot of German Rye bread, the tangy, almost sour, savoury quality you find in that horrible German Rye bread. There’s toffee and treacle; malty sweetness that tag-teams with slight roasty notes to create something akin to Nutella. It smells good. Actually, no, it smells great.

But then when you drink it, it’s a little disappointing. It’s all a bit thin and empty, the body isn’t there and the finish is all metal and tannic astringency. That aroma sets you off thinking about big barley wines, roaring fires and cold toes; but the flavour just doesn’t deliver. Booo!

I mean it’s far from bad, don’t get me wrong. That toffee, chocolate, rye and roast follow through into the mouth and they’re nice. They’re pleasant, and the finish does become increasing balanced-out as you drink down the glass. That aroma though, it just promised so much more.

Let’s finish with two questions. Yep, two. What do you make of the beer? If you had to assign it a style, which would you pick? I – putting arguments as to whether or not it’s a single beer or a style aside – can kinda see this as an ESB. The malt profile hits me all very-small-barley-wine and that just makes me think Extra Special Bitter.

You can find out more about the Drink Along here.

Drink Along - Oakham Ales Inferno

2011-09-16T18:38:00.006+01:00

When Oakham Citra is on form, I think it’s one of the best cask beers around. Ditto JHB. So, in much the same way as when we tasted Dark Star Sunburst, the bar of expectation is raised a little higher this week.

Oakham Inferno is a golden ale of 4% alcohol; it’s brewed with pale malt and five different US hop varieties. In the glass it's a vibrant gold with a loose white head. The aroma is lead by American hops, I’m getting cascadey grapefruit and citrus and a background of pine and slight resin. There’s a leafy, almost dank quality to the aroma that suggests extensive dry hopping has taken place.

The initial flavour doesn’t offer much sweetness; in crash those hops, bringing grapefruit pith and peel, some of that piney quality and perhaps some lemon. There’s a lovely grainy quality towards the backend and then a big hit of bitterness. That bitterness is great at first, but quickly builds and threatens to become too much. A slight suggestion of something metallic and then it’s gone.

And as you get further down the glass that bitterness does get a bit much. There’s almost a salty quality to it - like we saw with the Blond Witch.

Nice though, I liked it. It’s not Citra or JHB, but it’s pretty decent.

You can find out more about the Drink Along here.

Drink Along - Moorhouse's Blond Witch

2011-09-09T18:26:00.000+01:00

"Moorhouse’s first ever ‘Blond’ ale, this beer is as light as you can get with a lager colour (minus the bubbles). Drinks to the strength of any good White Witch."

So ... looks like Moorhouse’s could do with a bit of advice on the marketing front. Far too often I find myself reading a beer description on a brewery website and screaming internally: WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!

I managed to glean from the bottle that this one is 4.5%, is hopped using fuggles and has a sweet-malty and citrus-hoppy flavour. Seriously though, some basic information about the flavour of your beer and how it was made, surely it’s just obvious that that needs to be on your website? Maybe it’s there and I didn’t look hard enough.

To me the aroma is quite muted. I don’t get much citrus at all – but then I wouldn’t expect to from fuggles – instead I get a slight spicy hoppiness and lots of sweet, biscuity malt. First taste is good, some real sweetness up front, a gentle spicy hop character and then a firm bitterness that lingers around nicely after you swallow.

Halfway down the glass, beer is warming up and things are changing a bit. That bitterness is getting big, maybe too big, it’s overtaken the sweetness and I’m left with an almost saltiness immediately after every sip. There’s some buttery flavour lurking in the background too, I don’t know if it’s just me or if there is some diacetyl there, but it’s not very pleasant.

I’m being a bit harsh here because this is pretty drinkable if not mind-blowing, I can imagine this working really well from a cask and the grassy, spicy notes from those fuggles hops are actually quite nice.

In seven words: sweet, malty, bitter, grassy, spicy, buttery, decent.

Is that buttery, margarine flavour just me or is that something that’s definitely in there?

You can find out more about the Drink Along here.

Drink Along - Williams Brothers Seven Giraffes

2011-09-02T18:01:00.000+01:00

For some reason I haven’t really tried many Williams Brothers beers. There always seems to be something more rare or more interesting to try instead, so I never get round to them. They’ve got a reputation for making good beer and, truth be told, if it wasn’t so easy to get hold of their stuff, I’d probably be more active in trying to track it down.

Seven Giraffes – no, the name makes no sense to me either – is a pale ale brewed with seven different varieties of malted barley, lemon zest and elderflower. It’s 5.1% and immediately has me asking myself: why would you use seven varieties of malted barley?

The aroma is initially quite unpleasant; to me it’s got that classic cider-like aroma that typifies homebrew kits made with large percentages of white sugar. Given a while that seems to blow off slightly, and through comes a lot of malty sweetness, perhaps some honey and then a little alcohol. No sign of that lemon zest and elderflower.

Flavour is initially very sweet, malty and honeyed; a bitterness builds in the finish, going far enough to balance out that sweetness. That initial cidery flavour is nowhere to be found – what was that all about – there’s some slight alcohol warmth and a feeling on strength that’s magnified by a smooth, thick mouthfeel. This reminds me of a heller bock, I think lager fans will enjoy this and it might work better served at a colder temperature.

Despite the initial impression, I quite like this. It’s not really the sort of thing I usually go for but I found it pretty enjoyable. Still no sign of that elderflower and lemon zest though ...

What did you make of this one? You can find out more about the Drink Along here.

Drink Along - Ilkley Mary Jane

2011-08-27T01:30:00.000+01:00

Quite looking forward to this one to be honest. I had it from cask at Craft Beer Co on their launch night a while back, and it was fantastic. Simple and elegant, uncomplicated but just really well put together. I’m always dubious as to how well sub-four-percent beers really work from the bottle, so it’ll be interesting on that front too.

Here goes ...

Ilkley Mary Jane is a 3.8% pale ale that’s brewed with large amounts of Amarillo hops (YUM!). It won gold medals at the Northern SIBA competition in 2009/10 and a took a bronze medal at the national finals.

Colour is golden and bright. Aroma is full of toasty, biscuity malt and then very ripe fruits. I get an almost stewed fruit aroma that follows through into the taste. It’s making me think yellow and fruity: peaches, mango, apricot, maybe some tangerine; things like that, all when very ripe. There’s some of that grainy, malty character in the taste too and then it’s all wrapped up and rounded off by a gentle bitterness. Lovely.

I’m really impressed actually; this is flying down, it tastes great and it’s only 3.8 %. I know from homebrew attempts that it’s difficult to pull off beers at low ABV in a bottle; there’s nowhere to hide, mistakes shine through because everything is pared down and scaled back, but this really pulls it off.

Top stuff, no?

Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Ossett Yorkshire Blonde

2011-08-20T03:30:00.000+01:00

The Oval test match getting washed out, evening runs in the pouring rain, taking an umbrella to work just in case, is it really the middle of August? A golden ale like Ossett Yorkshire Blonde almost feels out of place today, maybe something like a strong stout is more suitable. Anyway, no use complaining when there’s important work to be done ...

Yorkshire Blonde is a 3.9% “Lager-Style Beer” that’s hopped with “a generous late addition of Mount Hood hops”. In the glass it’s the colour of lemon peel, pale and bright; there’s a small little head that doesn’t last long.

Here’s a question: why make a “Lager-Style Beer”? Why not just make a lager?

The aroma is very subtle to me, maybe I’ve got the beer too cold but there’s very little to smell at all. As it warms up I get some lemonade aroma and, call me crazy, but ammonia. Ammonia like the smell you get with hair dye – if you’ve ever spent a morning waiting for the other half in the hair dresser, you might know what I mean. Weird.

In the flavour there’s some initial sweetness, this is broken up nicely but the bitterness in the finish. I’m not sure what happened to that generous late addition of Mount Hood, but they don’t seem to have made it into my glass. There’s a lemony tang going on; with the sweetness and thin body it reminds me of lemonade. I said this about one of the other beers we’ve tasted, but if you told me this was a lager top, I’d probably believe you.

There's a biscuity, toasty, malty character that comes through pretty strongly in the finish.

This beer is kinda just there. The ammonia, hair dye thing is odd, but, that aside, it’s difficult to really like or dislike a beer like this. It’s just there.
I bet it’s much better from cask.

Thoughts?

Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Hewitt's Un-Hung Hero

2011-08-13T02:01:00.000+01:00

So the piercing-blue eyes of a fella stare me down from behind the decapitated heads of two horses. Sometimes the bottle label grabs you and pulls you right in, other times it doesn't.

Un-Hung hero is a 5% pale ale that's brewed with Cascade and Northdown hops. The bottle text warns off those that like their beer fizzy and bland; ironic really because this is one of the most carbonated bottled beers I think I've ever drunk. The head is billowy and pillowy in the White Shield mould and sticks around throughout.

The aroma is great, it screams CASCADE at the top of its lungs, lots of really fresh hop aroma, grapefruit pith and peel and freshly squeezed juice. It's one of those aromas that you don't focus on long because it makes you just want to drink the beer.

But that's where the positives kinda end for me. The taste is dominated by a fruity sweetness that moves into green apple - a sure fire sign of acetaldehyde. Usually formed through oxidation or an incomplete fermentation, acetaldehyde is a compound that's almost always unwanted in beer. Imagine biting into a really crisp, cold, fresh green apple; that's the exact flavour I'm tasting here and that's the flavour of acetaldehyde.

Right in the background there's a husky, cereally, biscuit flavour that's coming from the grain. It's nice, but not enough to turn this bottle around.

Faults like this in a beer can be limited to a bottle or a batch. Just because the bottle I got wasn't perfect, doesn't mean the others were the same. How was yours?

Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Hawkshead Red

2011-08-05T19:24:00.000+01:00

I've just been out for a run. London is hot tonight - the sun might be in, but it's still mighty hot out there. This beer is in danger of lasting about thirty seconds because I am THIRSTY.

Anyway, this one stands out in the case because it's Hawkshead. I've heard a lot about Hawkshead, but I'm yet to try their beer. 'Red' is 4.4% ABV and is made with "English hops, malted barley and yeast". Could mean a lot of things then.

Today's glass is a nod towards the trip to Pilsen and Prague that I'm just back from ... in case you were wondering.

The aroma here is full of sweetness, hard-boiled candy sweetness, some caramel, toffee and burnt sugar. This follows through into the taste, lots of hard-boiled sweets and caramel; it feels sticky and sweet and like a whole shed-load of crystal malt was used to make it. There's a slight spicy, grassy hop note in the background that I immediately associate with English hops. It then finishes with a slight burnt sugar dryness and a bright, short-lived, punchy bitterness. There's some metal right at the end there too.

This reminds me of the Shepherd Neame beers I used to drink back home. It reminds me of them a lot!

Decent. Not really my sort of thing, but pretty decent.

And, to end, a question. Is this a summer ale? Drinking this one I'm instantly cast into autumn: browning leaves on the ground, the fire being lit down the pub for the first time - a beer that's not quite a winter warmer, but one that's nudging you in that direction.

Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Dark Star Sunburst

2011-07-29T18:00:00.000+01:00

Dark Star are one of my favourite breweries. They're one of the best breweries in the UK. It's a shame therefore that some of their best beer never makes it into bottle. Sunburst, however, does.

Sunburst is brewed with Maris Otter pale malt and a multi-cultural blend of Cascade (USA), Styrian Golding and Challenger (UK) hops*. It's lager-gold in colour with a slight haze which, when you consider it's a filtered beer, is a little confusing. I get that grapefruit flavour that's synonymous with Cascades right at the end of the tail, before that comes lots of lemon, like lemon balm or lemon curd maybe, lemon but thick in texture, lemon muted by sweetness. Lemon sherbets before you get to the fizzy bit! And then after all that hop comes a grainy finish, a little like biscuits, a little cereal, right at the end there as it starts to dry out. I think that grainy flavour is a product of Maris Otter malt, it just seems to have character about it that other pale malts don't.

The bottle says "enjoy from the fridge for extra sharpness". I've read that two or three times and I'm still baffled by what it means and how it could be true.

More of that lemon sherbet is showing up as the beer warms, it's interlaced with that Cascade grapefruit flavour and it all sits on top of that biscuity malt. Very nice indeed. As it gets warmer I'm either going mad or there's a kinda almondy, marzipan like aroma there. That will sound nuts**, but if you're drinking along, it might make sense.

This is a solid, pleasant, well made beer. The fact I'm not going mad for it is because it's Dark Star, and when you're drinking Dark Star your expectations are raised a notch or two.

* Note: Cascade are actually grown in the UK too, so there is a chance that they aren't from the USA. I always imagine Alan Partridge when I think of Sytrian Goldings - an interesting bit of trivia about Styrian Goldings is that they're actually derived from the Fuggle hop, not the Golding hop. I always imagine Partridge attempting a joke about "Styrian Fuggles" to an audience that just looks bemused in response whilst he chuckles to himself. Just me then ...

** Pun most definitely intended!

Drink Along - Lymestone Foundation Stone

2011-07-22T19:23:00.000+01:00

This is another one that stood out from the summer-case-crowd through the strength of its branding; simple in design but well executed with a modern feel to it. Foundation Stone is a 4.5 % pale ale that’s made with pale and crystal malts and Boadicea and Pilot hops.

It’s lager-golden in colour, really pale, the aroma is quite muted but there’s some malt there, bready and biscuity notes from the malt backed up by some toffee and caramel. The flavour is dominated by the finish and comes and goes quickly. There’s not much up front at all and then in sweeps this pretty hefty bitterness towards the end; it’s a sharp, bright, punchy bitterness that reminds me of something you’d get from a noble hop. Right at the very end it dries out and you get some of that malt coming through, sort of grainy, sort of cereal and then it’s gone.

Perseverance brings a gentle peppery hop note that appears just before the bitterness, you have to go looking for it though. And, whilst we’re looking, I get a slight lactic tartness too, in the flavour and then in the aroma as a sort of yoghurty, sour milk character.

I’m struggling for things to say about this beer, help me out ...

Find out more about the Drink Along here.

Drink Along - Meantime Wheat

2011-07-16T04:57:00.000+01:00

German hefeweizen (or wheat beer if that’s easier) was a bit of a gateway beer style for me. They don’t tend to be very hoppy or very bitter, they’re usually quite sweet and they’re different enough from lager to get make you curious. I guess approachable would be the word I’d use, enough to pique an interest but not palate-shocking enough to scare you off.

Meantime Wheat is a decent enough example of the style, brewed not in Germany but in East London. It’s 5 percent ABV and uses wheat and pale malt, perle and northern brewer hops.

Wheat beers should be drunk with the yeast in. I find this adds a richness to the feel of the beer and gives it a thicker, more velvety texture. When served from a bottle in Germany, the beer will be poured almost completely into the glass before the last few drops are swirled around the bottom of the bottle to pick up as much of the sediment as possible, this is then thrown in too. When pouring, it’s also important to be quite aggressive, you want to create a big pillow of head to sit on top of the beer.

Meantime Wheat is a glorious, glowing amber colour with a white fluffy cloud of head on top. I’m thinking that more must be at work in this beer than wheat and pale malt – how else could that colour have been achieved? The yeast-driven phenols are there but they’re not easy to pick out as one of the traditional banana, clove or bubblegum. I get some orange notes and a sort of hummy, pear drop flavour that I’m really struggling to describe. The body is a little thin, there’s a caramel, toffee sweetness lurking in the background and it feels like it needs more body for that to be brought forward. Combined with the heavy carbonation, I can’t help but think of seltzer water.

I don’t really drink much wheat beer these days; that’s the thing with a gateway, you tend to move on into the house. When I do though, it’s more often than not with food. Wheat beers work really well with desserts I think and one of my favourite combinations is a banana-forward wheat beer with banana pancakes, delicious.

So, am I being a bit tough of this one, what do you think?

Find out more about the Drink Along here.

International IPA Day

2011-07-12T20:34:00.000+01:00

"On Thursday August 4th, craft beer drinkers across the social sphere and across the globe will raise pints in a collective toast to one of craft beer’s most iconic styles: the India Pale Ale."

You can find out more about the first ever IPA Day here, and you can stock up in preparation here.

Drink Along - Bitter End Lakeland IPA

2011-07-08T19:30:00.000+01:00

Our first beer in the 52 Week Drink Along is Bitter End Brewing Co Lakeland IPA. This bottle stood out from the rest of the summer case through the strength of its branding. You can tell the bottle label has been designed on a budget but the information is clear, the presentation is distinct and the styling suggests a modern beer from a brewery that cares about the quality of their product above all else. Top marks so far.

Bitter End are based in Cumbria and have been brewing beer since 1995, their mission statement says: “We pride ourselves in making innovative, progressive and exciting full flavour beers, which are not to be confused with mass produced, bland, tasteless beers”. Sounds good to me. Lakeland IPA is made with pale and crystal malts, cascade, simcoe and first gold hops.

The beer is pound-coin-golden with a white head; immediately after pouring I notice heavy carbonation with lots of tiny bubbles billowing from the sides of the glass. The aroma is subdued but I can detect lemony citrus with a sweetness behind it – imagine the smell of a concentrated lemonade syrup.

The first few mouthfuls are dominated by syrupy sweetness and by those lemony citrus notes; combined with that heavy carbonation I’m immediately thinking shandy! The fizzy drink style shandy you get in two litre bottles, the stuff that’s only something like 0.1% alcohol. Half the glass is gone and it’s perfectly enjoyable, just not what I was expecting at all.

As the beer warms I’m getting more hop aroma and flavour; a pungent, dirtier hop flavour that could be coming from that simcoe. There’re are no faults in this beer, it’s very clean and tidy, I’d guess a California ale yeast strain is at work here. And as it warms further it’s getting better and better, that hop flavour is coming through stronger, I’m getting a floral quality to it now – something along the lines of cut flowers, and then there in the finish there’s a grainy, biscuity flavour coming from the malt. I’m really enjoying this beer as I empty the glass.

If we’re talking IPA, I want more hops. Add to that the 5.5% abv and I’m going out on a limb to say I find this closer to an American Pale Ale than an American style IPA. The bitterness is right but I’d like the beer to be drier, that sweetness becomes a bit too much at times and I think a drier finish could tighten things up and further improve drinkability. Don’t get me wrong though, I think this is a great beer, faultlessly made with some good hoppy presence and nicely balanced malty backbone.

Over to you ... what do you reckon?

52 Week Drink Along - Summer Schedule

2011-06-30T21:50:00.001+01:00

Here's the Drink Along schedule for the summer 52 Weeks beer case. If you're wondering what the hell a Drink Along is, check this out.

Friday 08th July - Bitterend Brewery Lakeland IPA
Friday 15th July - Meantime Brewery Wheat
Friday 22nd July - Lymestone Brewery Foundation Stone
Friday 29th July - Darkstar Brewery Sunburst

Friday 05th August - Hawkshead Brewery Red
Friday 12th August - Hewitt's Brewery Unhung Hero
Friday 19th August - Ossett Brewery Yorkshire Blonde
Friday 26th August - Ilkley Brewery Mary Jane

Friday 02nd September - Williams Brothers Seven Giraffes
Friday 09th September - Moorhouse's Brewery Blond Witch
Friday 16th September - Oakham Ales Inferno
Friday 23rd September - Cotleigh Brewery Barn Owl
Friday 30th September - York Brewery York Minster Ale

52 Week Drink Along

2011-06-28T17:02:00.000+01:00

I love to share good beer with other people. Cracking open that beer you’ve been saving is one thing if you’re drinking it alone, but if you’re sharing it around with two or three other people, it’s always more fun. Share it around and pull it apart. What can you taste in the glass, what can the person next to you taste? What food would you drink it with? What would they drink it with? It’s a great way to take the drinking experience beyond the actual drinking, and it’s a great way to expand your vocabulary for taste. They’ll be times when a flavour is on the tip of your tongue, but you just can’t put your finger on what it is, then suddenly your mate says “coffee grounds” and all you can do is face-palm with how obvious it is! Every time you then taste that flavour, you’ll instantly be able to describe it.

If you’re a member of the MyBreweryTap 52 Week Beer Club, then I’m willing to bet that you’re a lover of good beer. And, as a lover of good beer, I’m also willing to bet that you’re interested in expanding your appreciation for beer, for learning more about it and for becoming better at appraising beer flavour. At the heart of all that is a simple question: “do I like it or not?”, but beyond that is an appreciation for brewing technique, for beer style and history, for a whole new vocabulary of flavour descriptors and for beer ingredients and the roles they play in what you taste in your glass.

Many of us find it hard to regularly get together with friends and drink beer; geography gets in the way, work and family commitments have to take priority or maybe you’re just someone whose friends are all content with drinking cans of any-old-lager. Well, the 52 Weeks Beer Club gives us a chance to avoid all those problems. How about a drink along where each week we take one of those 52 beers and we all drink it at the same time? We then use the MyBreweryTapBlog as a place to discuss the beer, what we taste in it, what we like and dislike about it, what food we’d like to eat with it and so on. It’s your chance to share a beer with a houseful of like-minded people, without ever having to open your front door! Sound cool?

Let’s start with the summer case. If you’re already part of the club then you’ll be receiving yours through the post very soon - hold on to those bottles (or at least make some notes so you can join in when we get to those that you can’t help but drink)! If you haven’t signed up but would like to, don’t worry it’s not too late, have a look here. The summer case runs from July through to the end of September, so I’ll post a running list of bottles by week at the end of June and then the first bottle post will happen in the first week of July. My post will have some thoughts and opinions on the chosen bottle, and then it’s over to you guys to tell me how wrong you all think I am in the blog comments section.

If you’ve got any ideas or comments in the meantime, post them below or drop me an email at beerbirrabier at gmail dot com.

Cheers,
Mark

Allow Me To Introduce ... Me!

2011-06-21T19:23:00.000+01:00

Starting up a brewery takes time and dedication you know. Time enough that you aren’t really left with a chance to write blog posts anymore. And so, with a face-full of malt dust and hands covered in hop resin, @magicRockRich hangs up his keyboard and his mouse and draws a line under his blogging days. Well, for the time being at least …

Which I guess means I should introduce myself. Most likely you don’t know me at all, but if you do, it’s probably through such blog posts as “Beer Festival. This Time It’s Personal”, “Colin Valentine on Beer Bloggers” or “Dry Hopping Bottled Macro Lager”. My name is Mark and I often go by the alias beerbirrabier; I write a blog at beerbirrabier.com and I tweet about stuff here. With Rich dedicated to making great beer at Magic Rock, I’ve been given the opportunity to write content for the MyBreweryTap blog - and it all starts with this post here.

My aim is to carry on the great job that Rich was doing, and I’ve got some cool ideas for posts over the next few months. We’ll start with a “Drink Along” idea that I’ve got for members of the 52 Week Beer Club (more details on that in the next entry) and we’ll build on things from there. There’s no reason why we can’t build a real community of MyBreweryTap customers, of beer lovers, taking your interaction with MyBreweryTap beyond the checkout, all the way up to the beer in your glass.

By way of a disclaimer, I’d like to say from the outset that I’m writing blog content here for free. I’m doing it because I think it’ll be fun, I think it’ll improve and further my appreciation for beer and because I genuinely am a fan of MyBreweryTap. Lack of payment also means that I have no ulterior motives or any obligation to say that I think something’s great if I actually think it’s a bit crap. What you’ll read on this blog is my honest opinion and the opinion of me alone; but that being said, I think this should be a blog for anyone that buys good beer from MyBreweryTap, so please get in touch with me (beerbirrabier at gmail dot com) with any comments, ideas or views.

So let’s do this then! Let’s talk beer.

Mark.

Guest Blog #11 - Danny Gazzi on Spring 52wbc

2011-05-27T11:47:00.000+01:00

10. Oakham Ales, Citra

I’d been looking forward to this one, because Oakham’s JHB had been my favourite beer in the 52WBC so far. On the label, Oakham claim to have been the first in the UK to use Citra hops, way back in 2009.

It pours light golden, with little head but some lacing down the sides of the glass. Good, fruity aroma. At first sip it has a lemony aftertaste. Very smooth and well-balanced with a refreshing bitterness.

The glass was empty before I could finish making mental notes – always a sign that I enjoyed it. 4.5/5.

I must try the rest of their range. It’s a pity that more of them aren’t available as a Pick & Mix.

11.Stroud Brewery, Budding Organic Pale Ale

Pours light brown with a small white head. Pleasant, fruity aroma.

It starts off quite sweet, but then becomes more well-balanced. I’d call it pleasant and inoffensive. 3/5.

And now on to the two bottle conditioned beers in the case. Normally I would keep BC beers in the cellar longer than this before drinking them, up to their best before date, or even beyond, as I think that they develop more flavour with time. In fact I haven’t yet touched most of the BC beers from my three previous 52WBC cases. However, I realise that many of you are logging on daily, anxious to read my latest review, so I can’t keep you in suspense any longer.

12. Breconshire Brewery, Rescue Brew

Pours mid brown. I poured it very carefully, so as not to disturb the sediment and get a clear beer; perhaps too carefully, as it’s now got no head. The bottle has broad shoulders to help retain the sediment. An appetizing, yeasty aroma that couldn’t be mistaken for a pasteurised beer.

With the first taste, bitterness grasps your tongue. Then a maltiness follows, and these seem to alternate in grabbing your attention. Very enjoyable.

I always used to leave the sediment in BC beers, but the Belgians usually drink theirs “for the vitamins”. Now I usually pour even British sediment into the glass after I’ve drunk most of it. It doesn’t taste any better than the clear beer, but it’s not bad, and waste not, want not. 4.5/5.

The Breconshire brewery was put up for sale earlier this year. Whatever its fate, I hope that they keep up the quality of beers like this.

13. Three Castles Brewery, Longbarrow

Pours dark brown with some brownish head. A yeasty and fruity aroma. It tastes richer than I was expecting, and stronger than its 4.5%. There’s also quite a strong spice in there that I can’t place (possibly nutmeg?), but not unpleasant.

So, a brown ale rather than a bitter. 4/5.

That’s the end of my reviews of this case. Thanks again to Richard for providing it and for running the 52WBC. It’s all down to opinions, and if you enjoy a particular beer, don’t worry what anyone else says. If you look at http://www.theormskirkbaron.com/ you’ll see that he and I have some very different opinions about this case. In fact, the only one that we appear to really agree about is the Oakham Citra, which was my particular favourite from this case.

A big thanks to Danny for his excellent reviews... If you'd like to guest blog one of our 52wbc mixed cases in future please get in touch: richard@mybrewerytap.com

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer Club here, we still have a number of mixed cases of the same selection available here.

Guest Blog #10 - Danny Gazzi on Spring 52wbc

2011-05-05T16:25:00.000+01:00

Here’s Part 2 of Danny Gazzi's review of the spring 52WBC case.

5. Fynes Ales, Jarl

Jarl arrives with a very high reputation.

It pours very pale gold, practically a lager colour, with a large, white head. Pleasant, hoppy aroma. A clean, bitter taste, it’s very similar to the Stringers in Part 1. Apart from the colour, I’m not sure I could tell them apart. On paper, they’re very different though, the Stringers being a 5.5% IPA made with Amarillo hops, and this being 3.8% and described as a golden/blond ale made with Citra. Baron Orm says he can taste loads of marmalade in the Stringers, which I couldn’t. I haven’t retried that one yet, but I did drink my second bottle of Jarl to see if I could detect the claimed “full-on citrus experience”, but I still failed to do so. Maybe my taste buds aren’t up to this beer reviewing. Nobody tell Richard, please. 4/5

6. York Brewery, Centurions Ghost Ale

This was the only beer I’d had before, but on draught. I remember it as being quite rich and malty, and good.

It pours very dark indeed, with little head. A malty aroma, with some roasted barley.

The taste is similar, with also a hint of liquorice.

I feel that strong, dark beers usually do better in bottle than others, and this is no exception. Tasty and enjoyable. It could do with a touch more bitterness to stop it becoming a bit cloying. 3.5/5

7. Brentwood Brewery, Gold

Pours golden brown, with a small head which soon vanishes.

A sweetish, fruity aroma. Tastes of boiled sweets (acetates?).

Golden ales aren’t my favourite beer style, as they usually have less flavour than a bitter or an IPA, but this one isn’t my thing at all. The brewer’s notes describe it as “heavily hopped with fruity Cascade hops which come through at the end to provide a great finish”. Whoever wrote that must have a very sweet tooth.

Another organic beer that disappoints. 1.5/5

8. Tring Brewery, Side Pocket For A Toad

Pours mid brown, with a small head which soon vanishes. My wife, Maggie, informs me that the presence of protein would be one cause of a larger head and longer head retention. I have noticed that beers with a bigger head are normally higher quality, and perhaps more protein is the reason.

A floral/malty aroma, and the taste is quite similar. It’s well-balanced, although I can detect that bottle, pasteurised taste coming through with the bitter finish.

According to the list of ingredients it contains wheat as well as barley. 2.5/5

9. Bays Brewery, Gold

I chose this to drink next because I’ve just come back from a few days in the West Country, and it’s from Torbay.

Pours pale gold with practically no head. As I mentioned above, I’m beginning to see this as a bad sign. A faint, slightly fruity aroma, and a neutral taste. Few golden ales excite me, and this is no exception. 2/5

Thanks again to Danny for more honest unbiased reviews, more to follow... If you'd like to guest blog one of our 52wbc mixed cases in future please get in touch: richard@mybrewerytap.com

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer Club here, we still have a number of mixed cases of the same selection available here.

Pick and Mix Functionality Now Live!

2011-05-03T12:37:00.000+01:00

Its taken a little while longer than we would have liked but we're happy to announce some important functionality additions to myBrewerytap.com.

Firstly we're pleased to announce that individual Pick and Mix functionality is now live on the site. You can now select up to 16 individual bottles per case from the beers we hold in physical stock.

The pick and mix section of the site contains many rarer UK beers and imports from the US craft brewing scene which we enjoy sourcing and drinking ourselves, have a look here to see if there are any beers you've been wanting to get hold off. The section will expand and be ever changing as exciting new beers become available to us so please keep checking back to see what stock we have in.

Secondly we are now able to offer Multi-Case Shipping Discount on orders of more than one case from the same brewery (or Pick and Mix). Our standard shipping rate is £5.99 per case, but subsequent cases will now be charged at the lower rate of £3.20 per case.

Lastly we are now able to offer International Shipping to the EU countries listed below.

Channel Islands / Scilly Isles, Southern Ireland
Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands
Denmark, France, Germany & Monaco
Corsica
Italy
Spain
Greece & Portugal
Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden & Switzerland
Estonia, Latvia, Malta, Romania & Turkey
Bulgaria, Canary Islands & Gibraltar

A full list of areas and rates is displayed here.

Unfortunately due to different US State legislation we are still unable to post to the US for the time being. We are however investigating the possibility of adding more international destinations including the US to the site in future.

We hope you'll agree that these changes are a welcome addition to the functionality of the site, we're constantly looking for ways to improve the shopping experience for customers and are always happy to receive feedback. If you have any comments good or bad, please let us know: sales@myBrewerytap.com

Keep up to date with all our latest news via Twitter and Facebook .

US 52 Week Beer Club Final (4th) Quarter

2011-04-27T15:16:00.000+01:00

The selection for the Final Quarter of our US 52 week beer club is now finalised. As with the last release we've decided to bring the shipping date forward, once again partly due to the beers available to us but also as we are keen to start planning and sourcing the beers for next years US 52wbc.

The final case once again contains some excellent US beers, as well as some great seasonal brews from well known US breweries there are two great beers from Great Divide Brewing from Denver, Colorado. We've also been able to include two big bad US barley wines in Flying Dog's "Horn Dog" and Sierra Nevada's revered "BigFoot".

We hope you have been happy with the quality and range of beers we have included in our first ever US52wbc and and very much hope you will renew your subscription for 2011/2012.

As before it will be a fixed subscription club, which due to demand we've increased to a cap of 100 members. Please be aware that we intend to re-visit a few of the classic US beers you have received in your first subscription (such as Goose Island IPA) as we feel these are too good to leave out for any new members.

We expect to be opening subscriptions to the club in May/June time but keep checking our Twitter and Facebook pages for official news on the launch of next years club.

The fourth quarter tasting notes are below, the beers will ship next week after the bank holiday.

Guest Blog #9 - Danny Gazzi on Spring 52wbc

2011-04-22T20:27:00.000+01:00

As an introduction to this review, I’ll explain where my beer tasting is coming from.

My favourite type of beer is a well-kept draught cask bitter. Always has been, probably always will be. For many years I didn’t drink bottled beer at all, finding it gassy with an unpleasant aftertaste, which was probably the pasteurisation.

Then, when working in Belgium, I discovered Belgian bottle beers, which were much nicer, and realised that the best ones were usually bottle conditioned. I started trying British bottled beers, and found some good ones. Again, the best were usually bottle conditioned. My favourite was the supermarket own brand Morrisons The Best, brewed by Freeminer, which was discontinued a couple of years ago. So I searched for a replacement, and this brought me to MyBreweryTap and its 52WBC.

I use the following scoring scale for the bears:

1 – Unpleasant. I wish I hadn’t finished the bottle.

2 – Not very good. An average, bottled British beer.

3 – Good. I’ll stock up with some of these if it’s on special offer.

4 – Very good.

5 – Wow! Very enjoyable, and memorable.

I’m glad to say that none of my previous 52WBC beers has merited a “1”. Only one of them has reached a “5” so far.

So, on to the Spring Case, which MyBreweryTap has kindly sent me to review.

On opening the case, I was pleased to find that they are all 500ml bottles this time, but a bit disappointed that only 2 of them are bottled conditioned; previous cases have had 3 or 4. More about these two in a later review. I’d never encountered any of the beers in bottle before, and only one of them on draught.

1. Inveralmond Brewery, Lia Fail

Pours dark brown with a good head.

Rich aroma which reminded me of a good Belgian brown ale. A rich, malty, sweetish taste, as you’d expect from a dark Scottish beer. Slightly thin finish, but then its 4.7% ABV compares with 7%+ for a typical Belgian.

I couldn’t detect the chocolate tones that are mentioned on the label, but it’s a very good Scottish Heavy. 4/5

2. McMullen Brewery, AK XXX

Pours mid-brown with a good head (I poured it too quickly, as you can see from the photo), and a good lacing down the glass.

Pleasant, hoppy aroma, possibly due to the whole leaf hops. Quite well balanced, but it would be a better session beer with a bit more bitterness.

At first,I thought it had a bit of that characteristic “bottle taste”, but that soon vanished. 3/5

3. Saffron Brewery, IPA

Pale brown with practically no head, and what there is soon vanishes.

Little aroma and little taste, with no finish and a thin mouthfeel.

It’s a nothing beer, although it still made me burp. By coincidence (?) it’s the weakest beer in the case at 3.6% ABV, but I wouldn’t have thought that this was a drawback.

It’s an organic beer. Now, all the organic wines I’ve tried have been good, but I’ve been less impressed with organic beers. It may be something to do with having to take greater care of the grapes to make up for the lack of preservatives, but with barley it doesn’t matter; I don’t know. But back to the Saffron, I was left asking myself why bother brewing and bottling it at all. 2/5

But I’d like to try it on draught on a warm summer’s day. It might then make a good session beer.

4. Stringers Beers, IPA

Pours pale brown with a good, white head. Little aroma. A plain and bitter taste, with a bitter finish, but it is very good. There’s very little I can say about this, except that I like it. The brewer’s notes claims tropical fruit, then marmalade, before the bitter finish. How did I miss all that? I’ll have to revisit it.

Apparently, it features Amarillo hops. I don’t claim to be able to identify the hops used from the taste, but I’m willing to try an learn. 4/5

Overall, that was a very promising start to the case. I’m looking forward to the rest.

Thanks to Danny for the excellent review, more to follow...

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer Club here, we still have a small number of mixed cases of the same selection available here.

Spring Update/Magic Rock Brewing

2011-04-01T20:13:00.000+01:00

Firstly I'd like to apologise to anyone who might be reading for my pathetically lazy upkeep of this blog. In my defense I have been pretty busy, as well as helping run myBrewerytap.com and my day job as a graphic designer I have for the last 6 months been in the process of starting a brewery.

As you can imagine this has taken a lot of organisation and effort but we are nearing completion of the installation and ready to start brewing soon. I am in the process of resigning my old job as a graphic designer and working full time for our new brewery "Magic Rock Brewing". I will also continue as a director of myBrewerytap and continue to do what I can to make myBrewerytap the best online beer shop in the UK.

As different business entities myBrewerytap.com and Magic Rock Brewing will be for the most part kept separate and while there will be some cross over (mBt will retail the Magic Rock bottles) mBt will continue to be an un-biased market place for UK breweries to sell their beer. If you'd like more info on Magic Rock Brewing please check out Mark's blog here.

myBrewerytap's sales since Christmas have been great and we've been paricularly pleased with the response to our pick and mix stock list. With this is mind we have decided to push ahead and invest in the development of pick and mix functionality within the main site. What this means is as well as buying full and mixed cases direct from many breweries around the UK, you will also be able to pick and mix individual bottles from the beers we hold in physical stock. We are comitted to sourcing the best beers we can for this part of the site, and will endeavour to bring you the rare, unusual and best beers that we can get hold of.

As this functionality comes on line we will be looking to invest in more stocks to complement the range as well as more excellent mixed cases and special offers. We are also implementing a 'multi case discount' across the site, meaning that if you want to buy more than one case from a brewery the second case will be at a discounted shipping rate.

We are also getting closer to implementing international shipping on the site. This will initially be to EU countries but we'll be looking at the feasibility of expanding that worldwide as soon as possible.

The other big news for this summer is that after the fantastic response we have received so far we are definitely going ahead with our popular US 52 Week Beer Club for 2011. I've had some really exciting conversations with our importers and am confident we can continue to source an eclectic mix of new and old favourites from the US and push these fantastic breweries products who we feel are at the forefront of the world beer scene. We still have to decide the format for this years membership but there will definitely be more than the 50 spaces available last year, and there will definitely be some amazing US beers included. We expect to be offering subscriptions late May/June, if you're interested please watch the usual places for info..

Our current best selling US mixed case featuring 15 bottles is available here.

Spring 52 Week Beer Club preview

2011-03-10T10:24:00.000Z

Its time for another release of our 52 Week Beer Club. We hope you enjoyed the winter case featuring many darker ales, we had lots of great feedback about the beers Acorn Breweries “Gorlovka” and Hawkshead Brewery’s “Brodies Prime” proving particularly popular.

As the days are now getting lighter and to get you in the mood for warmer weather this case see’s a return to predominantly lighter ales and bitters.

Below is a preview of the beers in this quarters case. Let us know what you think! any beers you'd like to see in future cases?

We're just in the process of consolidating and packing the beers, and the cases will ship to 52wbc members early next week. The case will also be available to buy as an individual mixed case here.

If you'd be interested in guest blogging the contents of the case, please email me richard@myBrewerytap.com

Guest Blog #8 - Rachel Soens on Winter 52wbc (part 2)

2011-02-21T14:11:00.000Z

Espresso Stout by Dark Star Brewery
Wow, this Stout has the strongest scent of coffee ever. However it was utterly lovely. I would happily drink this after a meal instead of an actual coffee. I’d happily munch biscuits with this stout. In fact if I was feeling particularly naughty on a camping trip I might be tempted to have the Stout for breakfast! Totally delicious and one of my favourites.

Black Dub by Wensleydale Brewery
Now this Stout was one definitely on our favourites list. Rich and yet light at the same time. Very easy to drink and very tasty. I would love to try a drop of this in a steak pie and the richness would enhance the meat and enrich the gravy. Tom wants to try it ice cold in the summer.

Bitter by Butcombe Brewery
This Bitter had a dark stewed tea colour. A properly bitter bitter if that can be a description. I would really enjoy this in a bitter shandy. I would also like to try it in a rich gravy with plenty of tomato in a sausage casserole. Good hearty food would complement this brew.

Black Pearl Stout by Wooden Hand Brewery
This Stout has a very rich scent; it is very heavy, very very heavy, like a treacle pudding after a big roast dinner. I couldn’t drink many as it’s very filling. It would be a lovely winter warmer. I found the more I drank of the bottle the more I enjoyed it. A nice comfort drink after a long walk in the cold.

Highlander by Fyne Ales
Even though this bottle of bitter had lain in the fridge for a couple of days untouched when I opened the bottle the liquid frothed up and out when I took the lid off. However the Highlander was instantly forgiven once I tasted it. Delicious! As tasty as Connor McCloud himself. I could quite happily make this a regular tipple. My favourite out of the entire crate. I would love to try a little of this tipple in a beer batter for battered fish.

Stocking Filler by York Brewery
Tom says this Dark Ale reminded him of a mince pie. Perhaps my taste buds are playing up because to me it tasted like smoked chicken, (which I once tried in Lancaster – very nice). Well Tom loved it and would get it again. I thought it was okay but wouldn’t fight him for a bottle.

80 Shilling by Williams Brothers
I liked this bitter very much indeed; in fact it’s fighting the Highlander to be my favourite out of the crate. It is light even though it had a slipperish texture on the tongue. I will definitely get this one again. It reminded me a little of a Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut bar with it’s lovely chocolately aftertaste.

A big thanks to Rachel for reviewing the beers. If you'd like to guest review our next mix please contact richard@myBrewerytap.com

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer Club here, we still have a small number of mixed cases of the same selection available here.

Guest Blog #7 - Rachel Soens on Winter 52wbc

2011-02-14T14:13:00.000Z

"Well the last few weeks have been eventful. I’ve had a birthday, been offered and then started a new job, various laptop problems, then MyBreweryTap kindly sent me a crate of marvellous booze to review. I was a kind bunny sharing the (mostly) delicious liquid with my other half, Tom. I apologise for the shaky photos of the bottles, I was trying out my new camera (I mentioned i’d recently had a birthday didn’t I and was excited to try out my new toy). As you will be able to tell from my reviews I love to cook and when tasting beers I’m always thinking of different ways to incorporate the flavours within my cooking as well"

Zeitgeist by Brewdog Brewery
This Black Lager was far lighter on the palate and stomach than I expected. As I poured it into the glass the dark colour brought an expectation of heaviness, however the brew is a delicious molten horlicks tasting brew. It has a warming aftertaste that I really enjoyed with definite coffee and dark chocolate overtones. The hint of liquorice is very mild luckily for me as that is not my favourite flavour. Many people when cooking a chilli dish throw in a couple of pieces of dark bitter chocolate to enhance the flavour. I would be really interested in trying some Zeitgeist as an ingredient in a chilli based dish. It would need to be a strong flavoured meat perhaps beef or venison to complement each other. Over all I thoroughly enjoyed this lager.

Dunkel by Freedom Brewery
This dark russet lager was not what I expected at all. It was extremely light compared to it’s colour and easy to drink. Perhaps a little too easy to drink for my taste buds but thoroughly enjoyed by Tom who is more of a Peroni type drinker than a real ale lover. I found the aftertaste was stronger than the initial flavour. The more I drank of it the more I liked it with the aftertaste working well with the initial tasting and the toffee flavour becoming more apparent the more you drank. I would be quite happy knocking this back all evening as it wasn’t too heavy and would make a good party booze. i.e. being able to have a bit of a dance round my handbag between gulps.

Brodies Prime by Hawkshead Brewery
I found this dark premium ale to be very spicy and bitter. It smelt very fruity like a malt loaf. Although light on the stomach the aftertaste reminded me of a Fishermans friend. I found the taste that strong that I could not recommend drinking this when eating all you would taste would be the aniseed flavour. I’m afraid Tom thought it tasted of soap however we still managed it, (waste not want not!). Not one of our favourites.

Gorlovka by Acorn Brewery
Oh dear, yet another liquid Fishermans friend. The aftertaste is not as strong as Brodies Prime although the liquorice flavour is extremely pungent. The bitterness was making the back and sides of my tongue tingle and the liquid had a bit of sparkle to it. I may be tempted to try this if I had a bad cough. Forget a hot toddy, try a Gorlovka instead! Also be aware this is much more alcoholic than it tastes you could accidently end up on your back, but on the bright side your cough would have disappeared.

Holly Berry by Three Castles Brewery
This Ale was an odd one. I loved the flavour, reminded me a little of Leffe. Very pleasant to drink if you didn’t smell it first. It smelt of lemon, but not delicious lemons. Not the sort of lemons that you slice and pop in a Gin & Tonic, not the juicy tasty lemons that you quarter and squeeze over your smoked salmon, not the sharp lemon in a scrumptious summer tart. No, unfortunately it was the lemon that you smell in cleaning products. One whiff of this ale and you are immediately transported back to primary school and being forced to smell the lemony dirty dish cloth the dinner lady insisted on wiping your table with when you are trying to eat your fish fingers and peas. Shame because the ale tastes lovely! As long as you don’t inhale when drinking this is a lovely lovely drink.

JHB by Oakham Brewery
I didn’t spot the citrus in this Summer Ale until the second sip and then it was like a slap in the face. However a playful friendly slap if that is possible because this ale is delicious. Very, very much a summer ale. I could see myself on a warm summers evening enjoying this drink Al Fresco with a fabulous fish based salad. This would also make a fab shandy with cloudy lemonade."

Many thanks to Rachel for reviewing the beers, I'll post the second part of Rachel's review shortly. If you'd like to guest review our next mix please contact richard@myBrewerytap.com

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer Club here, this mix is also available as an individual mixed case here,

US 52 Week Beer Club Spring (3rd) Quarter

2011-02-09T16:15:00.000Z

The selection for the Spring Quarter of our US 52 week beer club is now finalised. We decided to release the third quarter of the US52WBC ahead of schedule as many of the beers recently became available to us and most of the beers included benefit from being served as fresh as possible.

The case includes excellent beers from 9 US breweries including sought after beers from Smuttynose and Ballast Point. It also includes some great canned beers from Caldera, which might change your opinion of canned beer forever!

We're already planning ahead for the final subscription 4th quarter release, we're getting word of some great US beers on their way to the UK in 2011 and we expect to be able to include lots more exciting and hard to find US beers.

We will also definitely be running the US 52wbc for 2011/2012 but as before it will be a fixed subscription club which we'll cap at 50 members so keep checking our Twitter and Facebook pages for news on the launch of the next years club.

The third quarter tasting notes are below, the beers will hopefully ship later this week.

New Thornbridge Bottles

2011-02-04T10:01:00.000Z

We've just taken into stock a couple of new Thornbridge bottles which I think deserve shouting about. The first is 'Wild Swan' a beer I've enjoyed on draught many times. Described as a "White Gold Pale Ale" its a 3.5% very light pale ale with citrus notes and refreshing bitterness.

From the label " The essence of summer in a glass! Wild Swan evokes those long summer days with its brilliant white gold colour, aroma and tastes of light bitter lemon, hints of subtle herb spiciness and a long, hoppy refreshing finish."

Its a bold move by Thornbridge to bottle such a low abv pale ale, bottling ales is a tricky business at the best of times, and beers low in strength tend to be subtler in flavour so any off characteristics have no where to hide. That said Thornbridge don't traditionally bottle condition their beers by re-seeding the bottles with yeast, instead they use a centrifuge to lower the yeast count in the beers. This technique preserves body and flavour in the beers which would be stripped out using a conventional filtering method. I'm not sure what Camra's opinion is of this technique and whether it qualifies in there eyes as "Real Ale" but the beers certainly taste great, and are noticeably more flavourful than a beer which has been filtered and pasteurised. This is an effortlessly drinkable pale ale and at 3.5% you could have quite a few before any ill effects were noticed.

The second new bottle we now have available is another controversial one in some peoples eyes. Thornbridge have produced their first (as far as i'm aware) Lager, "Italia". The beer is a collaboration with Maurizio Folli of Birificio Italiano an Italian brewery with a great reputation particularly for producing flavourful lagers. And this isn't any old lager, in true Thornbridge style its all about the flavour and Italia is a really crisp clean Pilsner packed with European 'noble' hops which give the beer a grassy, herby quality. It also seems more subtly carbonated than your average lager giving it a really easy drinkability, this is going to be another fantastic summer time beer.

According to the bottle label "Ingrediants are fine Pilsner malt and Hallertau Northen Brewer, Perle and Spalter Select hops, after a cold fermentation and a long, very cold maturation the beer offers herbs and lemon zest on the nose with a malty note that appears as the beer warms up. In the mouth it is soft with creamy malty notes and moderately intense hops; the finish is herbal and minty with a firm bitterness"

So why is it controversial? because some people seem to have a problem with even the word "lager" when it comes to good beer. Within seconds of posting on our Facebook site last night there were negative comments because I was drinking lager and I'm sure there were lots of people thinking the same and dismissing 'Italia' because its a lager and not an ale. I can sympathise with this view point, I would have perhaps thought the same a few years ago.

Beer is such a polarizing subject, especially in this country. When people first discover real ale they are so taken with the flavour and drinkability compared to lager that they assume that all real ale is good and all lager is bad. In reality there are lots of flavourful lagers about and lots of badly made real ales. I think a lot of traditional real ale drinkers would get a lot out of checking out some well made lagers from time to time, I know I have. Lager doesn't always mean bland, watery fizz it can sometimes mean crisp, full flavoured and refreshing as with Thornbridges new lager "Italia".

You can buy Wild Swan and Italia here. They are also available via our pick and mix service here,

There will be a mixed case featuring Japiur, Kipling, Wild Swan and Italia available on the site shortly.

We are also now able to offer Thornbridges bottles wholesale, if you have a wholesale enquiry please contact sales@myBrewerytap.com

Scottish Beer Tourism

2011-01-16T12:50:00.001Z

I'm writing this on the train returning from a really enjoyable weekend in Scotland. Chris Mair BrewDogs Scottish sales manager invited me up for the weekend a few months ago, and I'd been looking forward to the trip ever since. Friday afternoon was spent on the train travelling up the stunningly beautiful east coast line. I arranged to meet Chris in the Halfway House pub near the station, where I tucked into my first BrewDog beer of the weekend, a pint of their 3.2% mild, "Edge". I really like Edge it has lots of flavour for such a low ABV, a really enjoyably, chocolaty, hoppy pint and with that relatively guilt free 3.2% alcohol. It would have been rude not have another.

Chris picked me up and we called into a few of the bars/restaurants which take BrewDogs kegs in central Edinburgh, to drop off beer and leaflets. We then headed to Cloisters to meet Craig a seasoned ticker and Rate Beer addict who'd very kindly agreed to bring some special bottles from his collection I was keen to try. After a quick pint we all headed back to Chris's to get stuck in to the beers Craig had brought along, and the rest of the evening was spent enjoying the beers immersed in conversation, beer predictably often the topic.

I woke up on Saturday feeling remarkably good considering the strength of many of the beers we were drinking. The fact there were three of us sharing no doubt saving me from the nasty hangover I'd been expecting. Chris had asked if I fancied visiting BrewDog's new bar in Edinburgh when inviting me up and obviously I'd agreed immediately. I wholeheartedly admit to being a bit of a fan-boy where BrewDog are concerned, while I can see why they rub many in the beer industry up the wrong way, I've got nothing but admiration for what they've achieved in the last few years. I think they've introduced a whole new generation to the idea of flavourful beer and I think they're a breath of fresh air in what can be a fairly traditional and in some respects complacent industry.

After a two and a half hour journey we arrived into Aberdeen and a 10 minute walk from the Station saw us arrive at the bar for an afternoons drinking. It was around 1.30pm and the bar was fairly quiet but soon started to fill up. To ease ourselves in we again went for a half of Edge, this time carbonated and served from a keg line as all the beers in the bar are. This is one area of controversy which has surrounded the bar since it opened before Christmas. BrewDog decided that they wanted to go completely US style and not serve any cask beer in this or any of their future bars (Ironically when I was in New York recently the craft beer bars all had a cask beer option, although the condition of every single one I tried was poor). Bar BrewDog simply features 10 plain keg fonts and a blackboard listing the beers that are on. Personally I think this is a bit of a shame as even though their beers are designed from the ground up to be kegged and bottled, many of them are excellent on cask. Punk and 5am particularly on cask are revelatory in their full on hop profile and flavour especially when drunk fresh. The keg Edge we were drinking while still tasty is not as good as the cask version in my opinion.

The fact that there was no cask beer didn't really bother though, as being a fan of US beers I know that keg beer can often be every bit as flavourful as cask. It certainly didn't seem to be bothering the other customers either, with a large cross section of people filling the bar by 3pm. On one side of me a 70+ year old guy was drinking Punk from a stemmed glass while completing the crossword, while on the other side two young students excitedly eyed up and discussed the blackboard before making their choice. These people, it appeared to me were there to drink tasty beer, regardless of method of dispense.

As the afternoon wore on, we drunk a selection of the beers on offer, but mainly we drunk BrewDog's new Punk IPA which has been re-designed from a very bitter 6% grapefruity IPA into a more sessionable 5.4% aroma packed tropical hoppy pale ale. This was a pretty brave thing for BrewDog to do, I love the original Punk and was a bit worried when I heard what they intended to do. The more I drink Punk X though the more I agree with what they've done. The new beer is stunningly good, better than the old Punk, better than 5am and up there with Hardcore as their best core range beer. I personally think its up there with something like Goose Island IPA in terms of its flavour, balance and full on moreish drinkability.

By 5.30pm it was time for us to head back south, but not without first raiding the fridges for some very hard to get beers which bar BrewDog is alone in stocking in the UK. The selection of beers on offer is fantastic and the prices weren't too high when you consider many of the beers are that rare they're not available outside the immediate vicinity of the breweries which made them. The return journey to Edinburgh passed quickly as we enjoyed some of the beers we'd bought.

What BrewDog have created with their first bar, is a beer geeks Mecca. The design, fittings and ambiance was excellent, I had thought the modern industrial factory styling of the bar might feel cold and impersonal but on the contrary this bar at least felt warm, relaxing and fun. Its also very welcoming and not at all snobby. We chatted for a while with Bruce the manager and he said how keen they were to help the customers in their drink decision making and guide them to a beer they'd enjoy. As well as importing the US style craft beer bar they're keen to offer US style customer service which as far as I'm concerned is very welcome. I can't wait for BrewDog to open more of their bars (the next one is due to open in Edinburgh), if they're as good as this one beer drinkers are in for a treat.

Bar BrewDog, If you get the chance, go there, it rocks.

2011 Aspirations

2011-01-11T14:20:00.001Z

Just realised I haven't blogged yet in 2011.

As I did last year I thought I'd commit my thoughts and aspirations for myBrewerytap in 2011 to paper (so to speak).

Sign up more breweries to the site.
Get a pick and mix section of the website integrated so customers can pick and mix their own cases of our rarer bottles.
Integrate international shipping into the site
Import some great beers for the pick and mix
Source some great UK beers for our 52wbc
Source more great US beers for our US52wbc and re-run the club.
Launch some more style specific mixed cases ie, Summer Case
Visit more beer festivals
Visit a beer festival abroad
Visit more breweries

That lot should do for now.

2010 Aspirations: Update

2010-12-31T16:56:00.000Z

Back in January I wrote a list of aspirations I had for the year ahead, some for the website and some on a more personal level. As its nearly 2011 below is an update on how 2010's aspirations went...

Continue to build the number of breweries listed on our site: In January we had around 40 breweries listed on the site, we now have 120 breweries and over 600 beers but considering there are over 700 micros in the country there's still a lot more work to do here.

Work with breweries to build their range of beers listed including more mixed cases: We've definitely added more breweries products to the site but I still think we need more mixed cases and other brewery products like clothing and gift packs listed.

Find new cost effective ways to market/spread the myBrewerytap word: We've had some success here, joint competitions with Thornbridge and our listing on I Want One Of Those stand out and I've been really happy with response to our fixed membership US 52wbc which I hope to run again in the summer.

Find more interesting ways to 'add value' for our club members, so more glasses, more crisps etc...: Bit of a failure here, we did give away some great extras such as pork scratchings, keyrings and glasses but it soon became apparent that we just couldn't afford to include extra gifts in the club when the margins involved were so tight. We did though add quite a few extra non-beer products to the site including Pieminister pies and T-Shirts from Thornbridge as well as our T-Shirts own which we had designed and made.

Add more features to the site (better events calendar etc...): I'm pretty happy that we satisfied this aspiration by adding a great beer festival calendar (big thanks to Steven at Aletalk!) as well as adding beer and food pairings to many products (big thanks to Alex at Allbeer!). We have lots of new features for the site in the pipeline in the early part of 2011, such as multi case shipping discounts when buying more than one case from a brewery. We also hope to have international shipping integrated and a dedicated pick and mix section for the unusual and or popular beers we hold in stock shortly.

Learn more about brewing /brew some beer: This was a personal aspiration and I've had lots of fun learning more about brewing in 2010. In March myself and two friends enrolled on Brewlabs "start up brewing" course which as well was being a lot of fun, contained lots of practical information on brewing as a career. The course also gave me a lot more confidence in the subject of beer in general with the module on flavour characteristics (bad ones as well as good) particularly helpful . I also enjoyed a couple of brew days at friendly breweries which were great fun.

Start a pilot brewery: Too busy to achieve this in 2010, as for 2011... watch this space!

Visit more breweries/Meet more brewers: I always enjoy visiting breweries (who doesn't) and was lucky enough to visit lots of breweries in 2010 including, Allendale, Bull Lane, Kelham Island, Sheffield Brewery Co, Crown, Great Heck, Wylam, Marble, Moor, Hawkshead and Mallinsons. If you've never been on a brewery tour/visit, make sure you do soon, they really are a lot of fun and I've found without exception brewers to be a very accommodating and friendly group of people. I'm looking forward to visiting more breweries in 2011!

Visit more beer festivals: I went to a few good festivals in 2010, including GBBF, SIBA north and Hawkshead but nowhere near enough.

Drink more (good) beer: Although a completely subjective thing, I think I did this in 2010 although there's always room for more!

Blog more: Hmm not sure I managed this, finding time and/or inspiration continues to prove difficult.

Looking back I've had a fantastic 2010, developing myBrewerytap has been great fun (as well as at times infuriating) but has confirmed that beer is what I want to be involved with going forward. Its such a fascinating and fun subject to be involved in, I've met so many great people and made some great friends in 2010. My only regret is not becoming involved in the industry sooner.

Here's to a great 2011. Happy New Year!

The Golden Pints 2010

2010-12-27T13:27:00.000Z

The Golden Pints are an online awards initiative started last year, it's your chance to talk about the beers you've enjoyed, beery places you've been and say what you've enjoyed about beer in 2010. As far as I know there are no physical awards but its a nice way to recognise great beer and breweries and hand a bit of credit out where it's due.

Post your winners to the following categories in the replies below.

My Golden Pint winners for 2010 are as below...

Best UK Draught Beer: Marble Manchester Bitter, so much flavour for the ABV I could drink it all day long.
Best UK Bottled Beer: Marble Dobber/BrewDog Hardcore, the new bottled Marble Dobber meant I could have my favourite cask beer at home in a bottle. Delicious grapefruity beer which never fails to satisfy. Brewdogs new Hardcore was a revelation, a genuine US double IPA which beat the yanks at their own game at the 2010 World Beer Cup to take the gold. Try it, its incredible.
Best Overseas Draught Beer: Odell IPA / Jever. Odell's IPA is one of my absolute favourites from probably my favourite style. I drank a lot of IPA's this year, Odells version is so fruity and so easy drinking. I had the draught version recently at the Euston Tap and loved it. Jever was also a lager I'd never had on draught until recently but I love its crisp refreshing dry hoppyness. Great to drink for a break in the middle of a session.
Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Stone Sublimely Self Righteous Ale. Amazing cross over of two styles, this beer is almost overwhelming in its full on flavour attack. Massive piney, resinousy hops alongside a roasted, malty, chocoloatey body.
Best Overall Beer: Marble Dobber. Grapefuity, tropical, amazing...
Best Pumpclip or Label: Brewdog Bashah reserve. Another beautifully intricate hand drawn label from Johanna Basford.
Best UK Brewery: Marble. Beers which never fail to deliver flavour wise. It doesn't matter what else is on the bar 99 times out of 100 the Marble will have more flavour.
Best Overseas Brewery: Bear Republic. For their beautifully full bodied IPA's 'Racer 5 and Hop Rod Rye" which I had this year, which have more of a caramel malt charachter than many IPA's alongside the obligatory, pungent, piney hops.
Pub/Bar of the Year: The Grove, Huddersfield. 18 Handpulls, 12 Keg and over 230 bottles. Sheffield Tap. Beautiful pub ressurected from the old waiting rooms at Sheffield station, always has a number of Thornbridge beers as well as great guests and loads of bottles. Always look forward to a visit.
Beer Festival of the Year: GBBF, I thought it was rubbish the year before mainly because I wasn't keen on gravity fed beer, enjoyed it so much more this year. So much beer, so many beery people. It all passed in a very enjoyable blur..
Supermarket of the Year: Morrisons. because they sell BrewDog 5am Saint.
Independent Retailer of the Year: Beer Ritz. Because they got me addicted to hops.
Online Retailer of the Year: myBrewerytap
Best Beer Book or Magazine: Ben Mcfarland, Worlds Best Beers. I received this last Christmas day and spent most of that day with my head in it. Really nicely written, laid out and accessible to the layman. Its got great information and beer recommendations, and a section on beer and food matching. Its also particularly good on the US stuff.
Best Beer Blog or Website: Are you tasting the pith/Pencil and Spoon. Zaks blog is always worth a read, informative, interesting and engaging. Likewise Marks prolific blog is always an entertaining and erudite read.
Best Beer Twitterer: @dogmair. Because he's a nice bloke oh and he keeps swapping incredible beer with me.
Best Brewery Online: BrewDog. They do online so much better than anyone else in the UK.
Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Biltong and anything. Not much of a food and beer matching person.
In 2011 I’d Most Like To…: Sell more beer
Open Category: Best overseas bar visited: Studio Square, Queens, NY. Have a read of my blog on New York here for why..

BrewDog/Stone Bashah 2009 Highland Park and Black Raspberry Reserve ABV 8.7%: Open It!

2010-12-04T21:24:00.000Z

Tonights Open It! is a bottle of the BrewDog / Stone collaboration Bashah which has been aged in Highland Park Whisky casks which have also had Scottish Black Raspberries added.

I loved the original Bashah, a black IPA fermented with a Belgian yeast strain. I was amazed at the depth and complexity of flavour. Roasty, Hoppy and 'estery' as in giving of fruity/bubblegum aromas and flavours from the strain of Belgian yeast. I've sinced learned that the recipe was very similar to Stones 'Sublimely Self Righteous" albeit with that different yeast strain.

Its worth mentioning what a beautiful label this beer has. The bespoke hand drawn label by Johanna Basford is as nice as I've ever seen.

Here are my tasting notes:

Pour: After a bit of persuasion the cork explodes out of the bottle. Dark black pour with a big off white head, which is mottled with something, yeast? Raspberry residue?
Aroma: Earthy Hops, Raspberry, Whisky, Chocolate, hint of Coffee, Summer Fruits, pleasant bubblegum/estery sweet aroma.
Flavour: Raspberry, Summer Fruits, Chocolate, soft, full mouth feel, fruity esters, very light Whisky, soft carbonation.
Aftertaste: Subtle, warming aftertaste with slight bitter Raspberry and Chocolate.

I loved Bashah and I really loved Stones Sublimely Self Righteous, but this is a different beast all together. Its amazing how much the barrel ageing has changed this beer. Its a while since I had a Bashah but i'm sure it was much more bitter than this. The ageing in the Whisky casks and the Raspberrys have really softened the beer and infused it with fruit flavours which in turn are really complemented by the belgian yeasts, estery flavours.

The alcohol is really hard to detect as well, as is the Whisky but if you think about those flavours and taste the beer, they're there, just in great balance. There are myriad flavours in this but you have to think and taste to pick them out, as with the Founders KBS I drank last night the alcohol is really well disguised.

I really loved this, big thanks to BrewDog's Scottish sales manager Chris Mair for sending it down.

Thanks to Mark and Andy for coming up with the great idea of Open It, there's still the rest of tonight and tomorrow to get involved!

Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout ABV 11.2%: Open It!

2010-12-03T22:52:00.000Z

My second Open It! beer tonight is one I've been looking forward to for a while: Its a barrel aged US Imperial Stout from Founders brewery of Michigan. Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout or 'KBS'. Its Founders Breakfast Stout which has been aged in Kentucky bourbon barrels.

I've had the normal breakfast Stout and it was phenomenally good... rich coffee ,chocolaty, roasty, amazing... the picture on the bottle was very apt, it felt like you could have eaten it with a spoon.

After drinking the normal Breakfast Stout I'd been eagerly wanting to try this special version of the breakfast stout and Open It! seemed like a good time to indulge...

Here's what it says on the bottle: Founders "The Amazing Kozicki's" Highly Acclaimed KBS. A Stout Ale Aged in Oak Bourbon Barrels. DOES NOT GIVE RELIEF FROM: rheumatism, neuralgia, sciatica, lame back, lumbago, contracted muscles, toothache, sprains, swellings, and all manner of distress. IS GOOD FOR EVERYTHING A STOUT OUGHT TO BE GOOD FOR" 70 IBU 11.2% ABV

I bought this bottle mail order from Cracked Kettle in Amsterdam.

Here are my tasting notes:

Pour: Thick consistency, decent carbonation, dark brown black colour with a mucky dark coffee head
Aroma: hazlenut, milk chocolate, coffee, vanilla, bourbon
Flavour: Coffee, Chocolate, Hazlenut, lovely thick velvety mouthfeel, soft Bourbon, sweet but incredible balance and drinkability, some citrus hops hiding in there, zero alcohol harshness, soft carbonation.
Aftertaste: Lingering soft bitterness, sweet chocolate, sweet bourbon aftertaste.

This is right up there with the best beers I've ever had, its like a glass of hot chocolate, soft, warming and decadent. Its astonishing that this is 11.2% ABV it drinks like its 5%. A absolutely fantastic beer which deserves its revered status. In short a beery masterpiece.

Thanks to Mark and Andy for coming up with the great idea of Open It, now what to have next?

Thornbridge Alliance Strong Ale Reserve 2007: Open It!

2010-12-03T21:39:00.000Z

Open It! is all about a reason to open those bottles that you never know quite what to do with, you've earmarked them as for a special occasion, but how many special occasions are there? My saved bottles are usually pretty strong so the times I want to open them are also limited. Open It is the perfect excuse to dig into the back of the beer fridge.

My first 'Open It' bottle, is a Thornbridge Alliance, Strong Ale Reserve 2007 11% ABV. I bought this bottle about a year ago from The Groves excellent bottle list.

Here's what the label says:

The Alliance Strong Ale Collection, During 2007, an alliance based on friendship and love of great beer between Thornbridge's Head Brewer Stefano Cossi and Brooklyn Brewery's Garrett Oliver led to the brewing of this refined Strong Ale which has been matured for over 18 months before being bottled. The Collection includes the unoaked Alliance Strong Ale and two finished exclusively in fortified wine casks. Spanish oak Pedro Ximenez Sherry (PX) and American oak Madeira.

My bottle is #258 Unoaked Strong Ale.

Here are my tasting notes:

Pour: Burnished golden/amber colour, good carbonation, off white head
Aroma: Fruity, syrupy, figs, raisins, alcohol
Flavour: Raisins, figs, sherry, maple syrup, fruity hops, some bitterness, smooth, well hidden alcohol, very well rounded.
Aftertaste: Lingering fruity hop flavours, alcohol, cleaning carbonation, some residual bitterness.

I'm not a fan of these type of 'strong/old ale' style beers usually, I just don't go for those complex malty, dried fruit falvours but I enjoyed this, It was very refined and easy drinking despite its high alcohol content, in fact it drank like a 6 or 7% beer rather than the hefty 11% it is.

Thanks to Mark and Andy for coming up with the great idea of Open It, now what to have next?

Cheers!

Marble Specials

2010-12-02T20:47:00.000Z

We took delivery today of Marbles latest corked and caged 750ml special bottles. One is a US style IPA called "Utility Special 2010" and the other Marbles "Stout Porter Stout" which previously has been bottled in the smaller 500ml standard bottle. I'm always excited to try anything new from Marble, so I thought I'd crack them both and share my thoughts.

Utility Special 2010 IPA ABV 6.5%

Aroma: The cork comes out with little force and a decent 'pop' and the beer pours a lovely golden colour. The beer is slightly hazy with a bright white head. As might be expected the aroma is typical Marble, a big sweet fruity aroma reminiscent of pear drops. Its dry hopped with Nelson Sauvin but smells more of pears than gooseberries to me; pears, grapefruit and maybe some tropical fruits.

Taste: The Nelson Sauvin really comes through as the beer hits your mouth, the flavour and astringency remind of white wine flavours, its slightly thinner than the 7.2% Vuur and Vlam but has a similar smoothness. Its also a bit thinner in mouthfeel than 5.9% Dobber and definitely more bitter than both. The flavour is more grapefruit, gooseberries and a sort of candied pineapple. Its nicely carbonated, less so than US IPA's, but still plenty and it makes it very drinkable.

Aftertaste: I like bitterness in beers and this one doesn't disappoint, and as mentioned above the carbonation is soft so the beer goes down easily. You're left with loads of bitterness at the back of your mouth/tongue which just makes you thirsty for more.

This is another great IPA from Marble. I believe its one they've brewed in the past when experimenting but didn't put it into their regular line up. Maybe tastes have changed? I'd say its not as refined as Vuur and Vlam and its slightly thinner and more bitter than Dobber. To me It's sort of an IPA version of Marbles session beer PINT and a very satisfying hop fix if thats whjat you're after. Another great Marble IPA.

Stouter Port Stout ABV 5.1%

This is a beer I've had before both on draught at the Marble Arch and in the bottle. To be honest though I can't remember exactly what it was like.

Aroma: This cork also leaves the bottle with a satisfying 'pop', the beer pours a thick black/brown colour with a milky coffee coloured head. The first thing I smell is chocolate and then roasted malt. There's a rich plummy smell and a bit of a burnt toast aroma.

Taste: The tastes in primarily bitter chocolate, coffee and a slightly vinous charachter (as you might expect). Once the beer warms up a bit there's a decent velvety mouthfeel. There are lots of hops in there, and lots of roasty malt flavours.

Aftertase: There's a cleaning carbonation on swallowing and the aftertaste is a hoppy bitter astringency to the sides of the tongue rather than the back of the throat.

This is another very tasty beer, which stands out in its strength of flavour for its relatively low ABV. Its very roasty and bitter and very Christmasy. I can see myself tucking into one of these with some cheese or christmas cake over the Christmas holiday.

You can buy Marbles beers including the new specials here. They're also available via our pick and mix list here.

Winter 52 Week Beer Club

2010-11-24T15:38:00.000Z

Its hard to believe that 2010 is nearly over, and its almost time to start thinking about Christmas.... its also time for another release of our 52 week beer club.

For this winter case we’ve put together a selection of beers which are traditionally enjoyed at this time of year. As the days become shorter and the weather turns colder our minds turn to fuller bodied, maltier, rich and warming beers, such as stouts, porters and black lagers.

There are award winning beers from Hawkshead and Fyne Ales not to mention Dark Star’s delicious ‘Espresso Stout’ which last year was named Worlds Best Speciality Beer at the World Beer Awards. We’ve included contemporary black lager style beers from two mavericks of the British brewing scene, Freedom and BrewDog and also a traditional Scottish 80 shilling beer from the excellent Williams Bros. There are also winter seasonal beers from Three Castles and York breweries, and three tasty full bodied stouts from Wensleydale, Wooden Hand and Acorn (their awesome 6% ‘Gorlovka’).

Also included in this case is a beer with a massive following in the South West which has only just been bottled for the first time; Butcombe ‘Bitter’, and if you need a break from the dark beers at some point there’s a classic pale ale ‘J.H.B’ from the very popular award winning Oakham brewery in Peterborough,.

Don’t forget this case makes a cracking beery present and will be available as an individual mixed case on the website here for just £24.99. We also have fantastic US mixed cases, mBt T shirts and some very special corked and capped Marble bottles on the way some of which will no doubt make it into my stocking on Christmas morning!

You can subscribe to the 52 week beer club here. The case above will shortly be available as an individual mixed case to find out exactly when please follow us on (@myBrewerytap) or 'like' our page on Facebook.

The full case tasting notes are below.

Craft beer in cans?

2010-11-19T19:38:00.000Z

These crazy 80's designed canned beers from Maui have recently come into my possession and I've been excited all week about drinking them. The thought of decent beer in a can is a bit of a struggle for a lot of people, but after drinking some canned Oskar Blues beers earlier in the year I've been eagerly looking to get my hands on more.

Why cans? I hear you ask, well I suppose some of it is novelty factor, cans are traditionally what crap beer comes in, and as I've still had very little decent beer in can its still a real surprise to crack the top and smell a big hoppy beer or a roasted stout and even more of a surprise to pour something thick in body like a 10% imperial stout out. This is obviously a bit pathetic but my reaction is still 'wow its just like in a bottle', in fact the cans I've had so far have seemed fresher and sharper in flavour than bottles. Lets see what these two are like.

Maui Brewing Co. 'Big Swell IPA' 6.2%
I pull the ring-pull and there's a familiar crack then hiss, and then WOW the hop aroma pours out of the can toward my nose. Poured into my glass its a golden colour and hazy, not much filtration evident here. Its packed full of fruity tinned satsuma flavour and tropical, piny hops. Its has a great mouth feel which again is alien out of a can, its smooth and bitter, but not massively so. Its very drinkable and reminds me of a few other beers I've had in bottles but I can't pin it down... Vuur & Vlam?.. Southern Tier IPA maybe? Whatever, its another superb beer in a can, and all the way from Hawaii in this case.

Maui Brewing Co. 'CoCoNut Porter' 5.7%
This has a roasted, caramel sweet aroma and pours jet black with an off white head. I'm still slightly surprised that its coming out of a can. Its sweet at first but the taste then gives way to fruity chocolaty malt and toasty coconut. As you'd expect from a porter the mouth feel isn't too thick and there's a decent dry mouth cleaning carbonation to it. Moreish beer definitely.

If you think about it, canning beer makes a lot of sense compared to bottling, firstly there's much less risk of the cap seal failing and the beer oxidising, and there is no risk of the beer within being spoiled by daylight and becoming 'light struck'. They're easier to carry, easier to store and quicker to cool. I'm led to believe than aluminium is a much better recycling material than glass, so they're green too. They certainly take up a lot less space when empty (and crushed).

The principal problem with breweries canning beer is the public perception of cans, in that its previously been the packaging method of choice for industrial lager. Discerning beer people associate cans with crap beer which is often overly filtered and carbonated. I'm sure this was just the same in the US though before breweries such as 21st Amendment and Oskar Blues pioneered the canning of craft beers. It took the first taste of one beer to change my mind. There is of course another problem in that canning equipment is expensive and contract canning requires large minimum quantities making it unfeasible for many small UK craft brewers.

Personally I think its only a matter of time before we see canned craft beer in the UK and I think whoever does it first will have a great marketing angle to help the advertising of their beer. No prizes for who's been thinking about canning recently.

A massive thanks to Chris Mair, BrewDog's Scottish sales manager for getting me the beers!

Mark Dredge wrote a great blog on canned craft beer on his Pencil and Spoon blog earlier in the year here.

Raising a glass to Thornbridge(kel)...

2010-11-05T21:30:00.000Z

I've been saving this bottle for a while now, Its Thornbridges (Caol Ila) barrel aged St Petersburg "The Islay Whisky Reserve" from 2006. I bought it from The Grove about a year ago and its been looking at me ever since, tempting me to indulge.

Beers like this are supposed to benefit from some aging, this bottle has had a very lazy few years and I seem to recall someone tweeting a month or two back that the beer was nearing its best, so as the clocks go forward, the nights draw in and with the weather turning filthy it feels like the right time to open it.

I'm intrigued as I pop the cap on this 4 year old beer, will there be a hiss from the carbonation? what will it smell like? how will it pour? what will the condition of the beer be like in the glass?

Only one way to find out...

Cap off: There is a decent hiss suggesting the beer has held its carbonation over the years, I don't have to get very close to the bottle top at all before I'm hit by the aroma.. a big evocative smell, heady with phenolic (TCP like) and peaty Islay aromas.

Pour: The beer pours a beautiful black, thick and smooth in appearance. Its pretty much opaque as I hold it up to the light but with cola brown edges. The condition looks good, as I tilt the glass away from me bubbles emerge from the deep black liquid, morphing through shades of brown to leave a light browny/white slowly dissipating head,

Taste: Its not quite as thick as I'm expecting but its smooth, very smooth with a skimmed milk consistency. The whisky character is dominant as the aroma precedes the taste but as the beer hits the middle of the tongue it gives way to sweet chocolaty malt, treacle, raisins, figs and an oaky woody flavour that's either phenol confusing my taste buds or coming from the casks the beer was aged in. There's also a distinct but distant saltiness.

Aftertase: Smokiness comes through now, smoke, peat, a touch of tar and loads of alcohol, not biting on the back of the throat burn, but a mellow yet spicy whisky note on the back of the palate. There's a touch of carbonation as the beer goes down, but not a bite, this beer is smooth. You are however left with an amazing lingering phenolic Islay whisky flavour, and the aforementioned oakey woodiness which gives a slight astringency on the sides of the tongue almost like you might get from a nice cigar. Its anaesthetising my palate like you might expect from a good Islay Whisky.

This beer was worth the wait. Its boozy and big, and thankfully I like Islay whisky, because if you didn't this would probably be a bit of a struggle. There is so much whisky character in this beer, its smudged all the way through it from first to last. I wonder if the whisky character has become more prevalent with age? Just as I hoped this beer was a fantastic antidote to the foul weather outside, all I was missing was a roaring hearth. It was yet another great Thornbridge beer for me and a very enjoyably and decadent drink indeed.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish Kelly Ryan, Thornbridge's soon to be ex brewery manager every success in what ever he ends up doing back in his native New Zealand. I don't know Kelly particularly well and I don't pretend to be an authority but its obvious to me that he's has been an important part of the current renaissance in British brewing not only in his work as part of the innovative brewing set up at Thornbridge but also in his embracing of social media on behalf of Thornbridge. His tweets and blogs have been an informative and exciting link to Thornbridges happenings over the last year or so I've been reading. Thornbridge along with a few other breweries continue to lead the way in British brewing, and their beers, ideas, and ethos have been a big inspiration to me.

Good luck Kelly, and cheers!

You can buy Thornbridge beers here

Guest Blog #6 - Graeme Hilton on Autumn 52wbc

2010-11-01T10:23:00.000Z

This is the third and final part of my review of the 52 week beer club autumn case. The last four beers are all at the darker end of the colour spectrum. Judging beer flavour from the colour is a rough and ready way to quickly work out what you want when you get to the bar, but there are some surprises in the mix. Thornbridge brewed a beer named Raven which was a darkly coloured IPA. Blind tasters said it was an IPA, but then were flabbergasted to be shown they were drinking what appeared to be a stout! Thankfully there are no such surprises in the final four bottles in the autumn case, which means I've left the rich, dark beers for when we really need them - when the nights are swiftly drawing in and we want something rich and warming while we watch rubbish television with our WAGs!

RCH Ale Mary
This is a 6.0% bottle conditioned beer that's listed as "Something Different". Pour carefully to avoid the sediment. The aroma on this is quite interesting; it's like you've opened the oven while the Christmas cake is in there. Loads of clove, ginger, cinnamon and other seasonal spices. I'll admit I didn't chill this beer before tasting, but I think this benefits from being a little warmer than usual. The flavours really come out; all plum pudding and brandy butter. This is definitely one for a cold night when you need cheered up. Also, my wife's only comment was "Oo! That's lovely", so I guess I'd better get a few in for consumption over Christmas!

Felinfoel Double Dragon
The 4.2% flagship brew of the Felinfoel Brewery in Wales. This is a deep copper colour and pours with no head. The aroma is a little nutty, as is the initial flavour. Later there are some toffee notes that come through. To be honest I was expecting more from this beer, but it seems to lack depth to me. What do you think?

Hogs Back TEA
Another 4.2% beer, but from Hogs Back Brewery in Surrey. This one is "Brewery Conditioned" which means there is no sediment. On pouring there is no head, but there is a constant stream of bubbles which slowly form a thin head round the rim of the glass. The initial taste is very smooth and there is the hint of grass from the hops in the background. The whole beer is held together with a smooth malty flavour. This is definitely a beer you could drink quite a lot of!

Meantime Chocolate
And finally, the strongest beer in the case at 6.5%. This is a small bottle, 330ml, but worth every millilitre! It pours a deep black, with practically no head, just a thin rim of bubbles around the glass. The aroma is like standing in a Belgian chocolate shop; all heady chocolate and praline. The first taste is like rich dark hot chocolate with a hint of lightly roasted coffee. This is a truly great beer.

So that's the end of my review series on the Autumn case from myBrewerytap. I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing the reviews.

A big thank you to Graeme for his great unbiased reviews of this quarters case. We'll have another guest bloggers thoughts on our Winter case as soon as its available. If you'd like a stab at reviewing and guest blogging in exchange for some free beer please get in touch - richard@mybrewerytap.com

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer club here. The current excellent selection is also available as an individual mixed case here but don't leave it too long as they'll all be gone soon!

Twissup Manchester/Huddersfield

2010-10-27T17:44:00.000+01:00

A 'Twissup' for the uninitiated is the name that was devised to describe a piss up organised by and involving the people who blog, write, sell and above all use Twitter to network and discuss all things beer. The inaugural Twissup was held in Sheffield in January 2010 (which I attended), the next one was in Burton on Trent in May 2010 (which I didn't) and Saturdays venue was to be split between the beery delights of Manchester and my home town of Huddersfield.

As I only had to travel from Huddersfield no early starts were necessary and I rolled up to Huddersfield station at about 10:15am to meet Matt and Mark from Hawkshead and James and Andy from Summer Wine breweries. The train journey passed quickly and after a rendezvous with the other Twissup'ers at the front of Piccadilly station, we were guided by Dom (one of the brewers at Marble) on to the first destination of the day, an eagerly awaited visit to the Marble brewery.

I've made no secret of my love of this brewery and its beers, since my first sip of PINT a few years back I've been hooked on their aggressively hopped beers and contemporary branding. The breweries reputation has been growing quickly in recent years, with their beers often discussed at length online and well deserved acclaim coming from further and further afield.

The tour started with us being handed a glass of Dobber, quite a strong beer to start an all day session (5.9%) but one of my favourites so I wasn't going to complain. The group was split up into manageable portions and we were each given a 15 minute talk through the processes and intricacies involved in producing Marbles beers. The Marble brewers James, Dom and Colin were great hosts, they always give an impression of self deprication and of being slightly overawed at the praise heaped on their beers, praise which to me at least is more than justified.

The brewers then led us 100yds up the road to the Marble Arch, the brewery tap which also used to house the original brewery in its depths somewhere. The Twissup is all about socialising and putting a face to a name while enjoying great beer, and there can't be many better pubs in the country to do that in than the Marble Arch. The pub is a beautiful grade 2 city centre Victorian building replete with sloping tiled floors and and mosaic decoration. My first pints were W90 followed by Bitter, both were bitter, fragrant, hoppy and perfect lubrication for the socialising which was in full swing now.

As the Twissup gained momentum we all pushed on to the Angel just down the road where the drinks of choice were Pictish Centenial (another of my favourite breweries) and Harviestoun Ola Dubh (stupidly strong for 1pm drinking). I can remember very little about what I talked to people about but the great thing about Twissup is that you know the people there even if you don't, and there is always another conversation to be had often inevitably about everyones shared passion.

Next stop was Bar Fringe where I have to admit I can't remember what I drank, or talked about although I did talk to Cooking Lager author of the very funny eponymous anti-beer blog, and thoroughly nice bloke. Bar fringe seemed a nice place with a decent selection and one I'll no doubt re-visit. It was getting to around 4pm by this time and time for the group to press on for the Huddersfield leg of the day. After a brief stop at the Staleybridge buffet bar for halves of porter and bowls of black peas we were on our way to my home town of Huddersfield.

Huddersfield has loads to offer beer wise and it was a bit of a shame that by this time there was no way we were going to fit in more than one or two pubs. As it was en-route we called in first to the Kings Head for pints of heavily sparkled perfectly conditioned beers. This pub is a regular haunt for me, either pre-match or first stop on a night out and I have honestly never had a pint in there that wasn't served in perfect condition. The pub itself isn't the most salubrious but the beer more than makes up for it. I would definitely recommend stopping in there for a pint of something light and hoppy (as the beers there generally are).

As I mentioned before I would really liked to have taken everyone to a few more Huddersfield pubs, particularly The Sportsman, The Star and The Rat and Ratchett. All places deserved of a beer lovers time, but as with the Marble Arch in Manchester, the main attraction on this leg of the Twissup was The Grove at Springwood.

The Grove is a beer lovers paradise. 18 hand pulls, 11 draught fonts and over 230 bottled beers. The pub has permanent hand pulls for some of the UK's best breweries including, Thornbridge, Marble, BrewDog, Gadds, Fullers and Dark Star. I've been spending more and more time in this pub in the last 6months and am always very happy to be spoiled for choice beer wise. I have to be honest and say I used to have a bit of an issue with this pub largely around the fact that they didn't use sparklers even though the pub is slap bang in the middle of northern sparkler country. I do think though that the quality of the beer at The Grove has really improved in the last 12 months and great credit has to be given to Ian, Chloe, Brian and the rest of the team at The Grove for attracting beer lovers from far and wide with their excellent selection of beers.

The Grove had promised to look after us at Twissup and we weren't let down, Thornbridge Halcyon, Moor JJJ, De Molen Blood, Sweat and Tears Bruichladdich cask and Stone Levitation were just four of the beers amongst loads of others I can't remember. It was a great destination and final pub stop for Twissup, and everyone got stuck into the beers with varying degrees of commitment and gusto, (bearing in mind we had been going for around 7 hours). Personally by this point I was doing my best to stay on sessionable beer with a view to not disgracing myself on home ground but remember particularly enjoying the Stone Levitation and Jever pilsner.

As the evening moved on everyone's thoughts turned to food and I was happy to send an advance group a few hundred yards to the excellent Kabana in Trinity Street for their famous BBQ platters which we refer endearingly to as "bin lids" (see the picture for why). This is a great Indian restaurant for hungry drunk people, the food is served without cutlery in a very communal way (basically everyone dives in) which really suited the atmosphere of Twissup and was a great end to the day.

After settling the bill and leaving a few coats we made our way back for a swift nightcap at the Kings Head before people caught there Trains on to where they were staying or back home. I'd had a great day, which again enforced my positive opinions on the people who surround and are part of the beer trade. I'd been pretty apprehensive on attending the first Twissup in Sheffield in January, but just 9 months later many of the people I'd met then are starting to feel like old friends.

Big thanks go to Andy Mogg (beerreviews) and Mark Dredge (pencil&spoon) for doing the majority of the organising for this Twissup, and also Dom (& Janine), James and Colin for the Marble tour and Ian, Chloe, Brian and Staff at the Grove for making us feel so welcome. Oh and of course the Kabana for yet again staining my fingers yellow for the next 24 hours.

I also really enjoyed chatting with - Matt and Mark from Hawkshead, James and Andy from Summer Wine, Rob and Matt from Hopzine, Martin, Steven from Aletalk, Zak Avery, Glynn from the Rake, Kelly (and Cat) and Caolan from Thornbridge, Yan from The Sheffield Tap, Baron Orm, Mark from Realalereviews, Mark beerbirrabier, Leigh Goodstuff, Chris McBride, Edwards80, Dave and Anne from Hardknott Brewery, Cooking Lager, Tandleman, Matt and Karen from The Evening Star and anyone else I missed. Roll on the next one! (apologies for only taking 1 picture on the actual day).

You can buy Marbles excellent range of beers here. And like The Groves excellent Facebook page here.

Guest Blog #5 - Graeme Hilton on Autumn 52wbc

2010-10-17T18:31:00.000+01:00

I started my last blog entry with a little explanation of how great it is to get free beer, especially beer of this quality. The next step on from receiving beer is giving beer, which is what I was doing last weekend at the inaugural Woolston Beer Festival in Southampton. I was volunteering behind the bar on Friday evenings's sellout session. There was one customer who professed he was a lager drinker and hadn't a clue what to ask for. Great! A chance to demonstrate to someone what good beer is all about! He was duly given a couple of tasters before he decided on a Barbury Castle from Three Castles Brewery . This is a light, hoppy, easy drinking pale ale. Excellent starter at 3.9%. I had hoped the customer would return and say "That was fantastic, what else can I try?", but instead he said "That was fantastic! I'll have a pint of that." He returned to the bar five times and each time had the same beer. Now, I can't criticise because he was drinking and enjoying cask ale instead of his usual Fosters, but I can't help feeling he was missing out on tasting any of the other twenty real ales, three ciders and a perry that were on offer. That's enough from the soap box, on with the beer-tasting!

These five beers are in the mid-range of the autumn selection, going from Summer Ale through Golden Ale to Bitter. These are all slightly darker than the previous ones I've reviewed here.

1. Hawkshead Lakeland Gold
Even while pouring you can smell the enormous fruitiness of this 4.4% golden ale. It starts with a sweetness that soon gives way to a mellow bitterness. You can detect that these are the same hops as used in the Saltaire Cascade as it has the same zesty freshness combined with the fruits.

2. Crouch Vale Brewers Gold
This pours an extremely pale golden colour. The aroma reminds me of the Williams Bros. Good Times. The flavour starts very light with a slight sweetness going on to a gentle bitterness, but tempered by some tropical fruits. An extremely well balanced beer, as noticed by the judges of the Supreme Champion Beer of Britain competition in 2005 and 2006. As with the Lakeland Gold, this is one you won't get tired of.

3. Inveralmond Ossian
The third Scottish brewery that I've tasted in this selection, and probably the least well known of the three. Which is a shame because they produce some excellent ales. Ossian gives off a powerful aroma while you're pouring. On the first sip you notice there's a slight rawness to the flavour which I think comes from the wheat that's included in this recipe. The initial malty sweetness is carried away by a citrus bitterness that also clears quickly. Very drinkable.

4. Marble Manchester Bitter
A small brewery in Manchester which is making some fantastic beers. Manchester Bitter is a light golden colour that pours with a loose head which quickly dissipates. The aroma is chock full of grapefruit. I could happily sit all night just sniffing this, but I suppose I'd better taste it for you. As expected, grapefruits, but I also detect a hint of vanilla which is pleasantly surprising. As this is a bitter, you'd expect it to be, well, bitter, but I didn't think it was overwhelming so, unlike the next beer.

5. Mallinsons Station Best Bitter
This is a bottle-conditioned beer so be careful pouring it, and leave the last 1/2 inch or so in the bottle. Even so, so of the sediment escaped into my glass which is why the picture shows a slightly cloudy pint. With no head, and a cloudy appearance I was a bit worried about this beer. However, it smells and tastes of nothing but citrus. It's not as sweet as grapefruit, but definitely has lemons, possibly limes. At first I thought it was too much tartness, but as the level in the glass went down so did my worries. Stick it out, it's worth it.

Next time I'll have the last four beers from the case, the darker, more autumnal end of the spectrum.

Thanks again to Graeme for a great review, Graeme's thoughts on the remaining beers in the case coming soon!

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer club here. This selection is also available as an individual mixed case here.

Thornbridge Kipling

2010-10-15T20:25:00.000+01:00

This is the fourth bottle to get the new Thornbridge 'treatment', that is the fourth to be prepared using their new bottling procedure and branding, and as no-one seems to have reviewed it yet as far as i know, I'm going to have a bash.

I was probably more excited by the news of the new bottled Kipling than any of the previous newly bottled Thornbridge beers, as its been a favourite of mine since I first tasted it. If you don't know, Thornbridge Kipling is a pale ale (they label it with the appealing title.. "South Pacific Pale Ale") which uses the New Zealand hop Nelson Sauvin . This is a hop that has created a big stir in the UK brewing scene in recent years, and one which I really latched on to.

The first time I tasted a beer which used this hop (Marble's Pint) I was amazed. This hop transforms beer into another realm altogether. The hop imparts an incredible tropical fruit flavour to beer, a fruit juice character which is really surprising and very moreish. Nelson Sauvin judging on the beers I've had seems to work especially well when used as a late and dry hop, ie, used at the last minute (as you might do with Coriander in a curry) to let the flavours and particularly the aromas really sing.

Anyway on to the tasting...

Cap Off, and straight away I get the tropical aromas, Passionfruit and Pineapple, candied sweets. The beer pours a beautiful pale golden colour as you might expect. There's a nice head, but not too much (this is a fairly new bottle so carbonation will probably increase with bottle age).

Taste, you drink beers like this as much with your nose as your mouth, you get the aroma a split second before the beer hits your mouth and the same aromas explode on your tongue, bringing through more assertive bitter fruits now, grapefruit, and kiwi maybe.. Then the malt comes, sweet caramel, enough to let the hops do their thing but no more.

Aftertaste, the malt dissolves into superb biting hop bitterness, which in turn is washed away by the carbonation which is perfect. Not biting but enough to cleanse the pallet and make you want to taste again.

This really is exceptional beer, Jaipur has taken more plaudits generally and deservedly so (although Kipling has taken its fair share of Gold Medals including most recently at the Nottingham beer festival), but Kipling has always been my favourite of the Thornbidge beers, most likely born out of my love of Nelson Sauvin. I keep toying with the idea that I'm tired of its overtly fruity 'in your face charachter' it is brash in some ways, maybe a bit obvious? but its so moreish and flavourseome and it continues to appear in all my favourite beers... Pint, Dobber, Kipling... If you haven't familiarised yourself with Kipling or Nelson Sauvin, I envy you... check it out... ale will never be the same!

You can buy Thornbridge Kipling here and the rest of Thornbridge's fantastic beers here...

Guest Blog #4 - Graeme Hilton on Autumn 52wbc

2010-10-03T18:38:00.000+01:00

When Richard asked if anyone would like to review the 52 week beer club case I jumped at the chance to get some free beer! As Cooking Lager so eloquently put it: "Free beer is, I have decided, one of my favourite things in life. [...] People that send you free beer are clearly among the finest examples of humanity on the planet. If there is a heaven, they have their place, secured by the happiness they have created."

Having already sampled a few of these beers before, I was keen to try and capture their flavours on paper. I've divided the Autumn case into three instalments and the first includes the four hoppiest, lightest beers. Hopefully we'll have at least a couple of sunny days to enjoy these!

1. Saltaire Cascade
Cascade by name, cascade by nature. This pale golden ale is bursting with fresh zesty flavours. Best drunk slightly chilled - say 20 minutes in the fridge. The citrus freshness is nicely backed up by a slight sweetness from the malt. And at 4.8% it's a beer you could drink several of in a night!

2.Williams Bros Good Times
I don't know where to start on this beer. Pour carefully and then take a long deep sniff at the glass. Now, do the same again. I know! Good isn't it! The meadowsweet and elderflowers really come through on the nose, but not so much on the palate where the freshness of the hops dominates. There are also oats in this beer which give it a slightly silky mouth feel. Dangerously drinkable.

3. Thornbridge Jaipur
This modern classic starts with a sweetness that fills the mouth, but it swiftly gives way to tropical fruits and then a huge,almost overpowering bitterness which washes through the sweetness. It's difficult to emphasise just how well balanced this IPA is. The huge bitterness might be too much if it wasn't tamed by the juicy tropical fruits. Truly excellent.

4. Brewdog Punk IPA
Apparently based on the same recipe as the Thornbridge Jaipur this 6.0% IPA takes it up a notch. Bursting with huge tropical fruits and a decent backbone of malt this is a beer I keep coming back to. One thing, and as with all highly hopped beers,I would drink this young, and often.

Thanks Graeme! we'll have more of Graeme's thoughts on the current case soon.

You can sign up to the 52 Week Beer club here. This selection is also available as an individual mixed case here.

Beer In New York

2010-09-29T20:17:00.001+01:00

I've spent the last 5 days in New York on a holiday break with some friends. I'd been looking forward to the trip and the beer possibilities it presented since we booked last October. The trip wasn't supposed to be about beer but such is my obsession with beer these days and my love of US beer, that for me at least it was going to be a major part.

It seems that the beery gods had decided to shine on me and decide that New York Craft Beer Week would coincide with our trip. Craft beer week comprises of a number of independent events/tastings and beer/food evenings organised by the brewing community and craft beer bars of New York. There's lots going on for the duration of the week including a major cask festival featuring beers from all over the US a number of food evenings featuring beers paired with food by well known chefs and lots of special evenings where bars hand over their taps to a particular breweries offerings. There were are also a number of educational events lined up notably (for me) a historical bicycle tour of Brooklyn pre-prohibition brewery sites and even an amazing sounding sailboat cruise around Manhattan while Garret Oliver discusses the history of IPA.

What it also meant at the very least was that the city's best beer bars would be upping their games to provide an increased number of beer tourists with the widest selection of beers available. As I was travelling with my wife who can't drink beer and two friends who aren't as obsessed as me I was more than happy to settle for this amazing stroke of luck and shoehorn in a visit to the famous Brooklyn brewery home of the aforementioned charismatic Mr Oliver.

Instead of boring you all with in depth reviews of each and every bar we visited and the beers we drunk, I'm gonna list the 5 bars I liked best and the 5 particular beers which stood out...

Bars
1. Studio Square
2. Brooklyn Brewery
3. Blind Tiger Ale house
4. The Ginger Man
5. Rattle 'n' Hum

I have to pick Studio Square in Queens as the favourite place we visited. I loved the communal German biergarten style of the place with everyone sat together outdoors on long tables sharing pitchers of beers in the sun. The main seating area was a nicely laid out courtyard with lots of room, there were also massive indoor areas with lots of seating, perches, and long bars without queues. The bar regulalry features live music although there wasn't any that Saturday afternoon. To be fair compared with the other bars on the list above the beer choice at Studio Square was small but it was still large by your average bars standard and well thought out with a number of sessionable Oktoberfest beers and pale ales. There was also plenty of carb heavy food on offer to soak up the beer which was definitely needed after our chosen pitcher of Racer 5.

I also really enjoyed our visit to Brooklyn Brewery. On Friday nights and Saturday/Sunday afternoons a large part of the brewery is converted into a bar and (by the look of it when we were there) a studenty/local crowd gather to drink and be merry. The Blast which I believe is fairly rare on draught outside the brewery was delicious and I would have gladly stayed all afternoon if with some beer loving friends its a really laid back, fun place. It was however VERY loud and busy, which limited conversation somewhat. As it was so busy we skipped the tour, which we were told is more of a lecture in one of the hot brew rooms and concentrated on the beer.

Of the other well know beer bars we visited I liked The Ginger Man, it was bigger, cooler (temperature wise) and had more seating and food on offer than Rattle 'n' Hum or The Blind Tiger. I'd guess its generally less raucous than the other two in the evening as well. All these three bars had vast beer lists 40+ taps of draft, 100+ bottles and surprisingly for me at least all had cask offerings, either on hand pull or gravity. They may have had more cask offerings because it was beer week, but I thought it was interesting that the Americans are getting into cask whilst the British in some small way are getting into US style decent keg ale. Its worth reporting though that all the cask I tried was too warm. And varied from the disappointing - Great Divide "Wood Aged Anniversery" (which I've had in a bottle and was fantastic) through weird - Cigar Citys, "Guava Grove" (a sour cloudy Belgian made with guava puree) to the fantastic (Bear Republic "Racer 5").

Beers
1. Bear Republic: Racer 5 (cask & keg)
2. Troegs: Dead Reckoning Porter
3. Avery: The Maharja IIPA
4. Brooklyn: Blast IIPA
5. Unibroue: Ephemere

I enjoyed / had the best beer experience of the trip perhaps predictably with Bear Republics Racer 5. This is probably tied up in my particular enjoyment of the hour or two spent at Studio Square. Its just so dangerously drinkable for its ABV, full of pithy orange and grapefruit hops with just the right bitterness to make it very moreish. It was also really great and fuller in flavour on cask in Rattle 'n' Hum but it was dissapointingly slightly too warm. To be honest though, I found it difficult to order anything else when I saw it on and it remains a firm favourite.

Of the others beers I drank Avery's The Maharaja was a brilliantly balanced tropical, citrusy and slightly sweet double IPA. I also really liked Troegs, Dead Reckoning Porter which going on recent debate would please people not only with its flavour but also with its naming. A fantastic roasty, coffee flavoured porter with great mouth feel and loads of pungent hops, I'd have called it a Black IPA.

I did plenty of online research on where I'd like to visit helped in a large part by the 'places' section of Rate Beer and the amazingly useful and new to me beermenus.com a website which provides up to the minute listings for beer bars, restaurants and shops in a growing number of cities in America. Being able to see what was on and what was available in bottles in advance was a great help in planning where I wanted to spend my limited time and where to find the best bottled beers to bring home with me (Whole Foods Bowery and New Beer Distributors).

Obviously the site is only as good/current as the information added but this site appears to have users updating content diligently in an effort to stay with the pack. Most of the decent bars in New York are making use of beermenus.com or updating their own pages and I'd loved to see more of the same in the UK. The Grove in Huddersfield is one pub locally which knows the value of advertising real-time listings of their beers and I'm also aware of a new business over here called yourround.co.uk which is offering a similar service in the UK, good luck to them. Andy at Beerreviews.co.uk has recently done a blog on the importance of the Internet to pubs/breweries and my recent experience in the US confirms his opinions. Check it our here:

I had a great time in New York and in some way was fairly glad that my time in the great bars I visited was limited. There was a distinct lack of sub 5% beers on offer and the temptation to try the stronger offerings was hard for me to resist. I'd recommend a trip to New York wholeheartedly whether for beery reasons or not, I'll definitely be heading back...

Autumn 52 Week Beer Club

2010-09-20T10:26:00.000+01:00

Another three months has passed which means its time for another release of our 52 week beer club. We hope you enjoyed last quarters selection of beers, personally speaking I was amazed at how good some of the beers that were previously unknown to me were, Oakleaf “Hole Hearted” in particular.

myBrewerytap will be 1 year old at the end of the month so for this quarter as a celebration of our first year anniversary we’ve pulled out all the stops to give you a case that reads like a who’s who of the UK’s contemporary beer scene.

There's a bottle of the the twice champion beer of Britain 'Brewers Gold' from Crouch Vale, as well as award winners from the excellent Hawkshead and Saltaire breweries not to mention a bottle of the incredible Manchester Bitter from one of our personal favourites Marble Beers. Continuing the award winning theme we have beers from RCH, Meantime, Williams, Hogs Back, Felinfoel, and Mallinsons as well as the 2010 champion golden beer of Scotland from Inveralmond Brewery.

If that wasn't enough we’ve also included two beers from the new ‘rock and roll’ superstars of UK brewing. There’s a bottle of Punk IPA from the inimitable BrewDog and seeing as its our birthday we also made the decision to re-include another of our favourites and a beer that wins festivals on an almost weekly basis Thornbridge Brewery's fantastic (and now re-labelled) Jaipur. Rumour has it that these two beers were born from the same recipe, so feel free to do your own taste tests and let us know what you think!

We intend to run a couple of 'virtual' tasting events on this current case and there will also be some independent guest reviews on the beers going up on the blog so please watch this space.

Can I just remind members who joined the 52wbc before December 09 that your subscription has now expired. We‘d like to thank you wholeheartedly for supporting our young business and for the encouragement you’ve given us in our first trading year. We hope you found the club interesting enjoyable and above all value for money and we hope you'll be re-signing for the next year!

You can subscribe to the 52 week beer club here. The case above will shortly be available as an individual mixed case to find out exactly when please follow us on (@myBrewerytap) or 'like' our page on Facebook.

In the meantime to make way for the new mixed case stock our previous mixed case is available for just £19.99 (+p&p) while stocks last here.

myBrewerytap Beer Geek Pic 'n' Mix

2010-09-06T15:53:00.000+01:00

The idea behind myBrewerytap.com is to connect customers to source, the business model is primarily a stock-less one whereby we list products and then arrange the fulfillment when an order is placed.

This is great for breweries as they get an online presence and control of stock and pricing for minimal outlay. Its also great for the site and our customers as it allows us to list a large array of products without the associate risk of carrying large volumes of perishable stock.

As the business has grown and we've tried different things its become necessary for us to hold stocks of some special beers that we really wanted on the website but for one reason or another don't fit our business model (such as US craft beers).

We're very happy to announce that after a few trial runs with friends and family you can now pick and mix selections of your own choosing from the small number of special hard to get beers we hold in physical stock.

Pick and Mix functionality is now live on the site here: Pick and Mix choose up to 16 bottles from the speciality beers we hold in physical stock. The delivery charge is £5.99 per case and £3.20 thereafter per subsequent case.

US 52 Week Beer Club

2010-08-26T14:22:00.001+01:00

The US 52 week beer club is a US beers only version of our popular subscription beer club. For £119.99 (+ a one off shipping charge of £5.99) you’ll receive a different bottle of fantastic US craft beer for every week of the year.

The club will be a great way for you to explore the exciting, challenging, flavourful beers emanating from the United States beer scene.

There'll be Pale Ales, Porters, IPA's, Double IPA's, Imperial Stouts, special Seasonal beers and even collaborative beers between different breweries. We will endeavour to source classic and unusual US beers in a wide range of styles.

Contrary to most peoples opinions of American beer, the US has arguably the most vibrant and interesting craft brewery scene in the world. Craft brewers unhindered by traditional styles and flavours have since the late 70's been re-inventing and re-defining styles of beer with amazing results. Our mission is to bring you an interesting mix of the best of their output.

Our US 52 week beer club will deliver you 13 interesting and eclectic US beers in four quarterly deliveries, September - December - April - July. We'll also include tasting notes to help you enjoy the beers.

Due to availability, the club will be capped to 50 members, so if you love US beers and would like to become a member please don't wait too long!

Tasting notes for the first case are below. We're already planning the second case which will feature many more hard to find beers previously un-seen in the UK.

You can become a member of the 'US 52WBC' here

Win Free Jaipur for a Year... The Winner!

2010-08-26T12:03:00.001+01:00

We had a fantastic response to our competition to win free Jaipur for a year, click the video below to see who won! (apologies for the film quality, we will invest in a better camera once we've sold some more beer).

Win Free Jaipur For A Year from myBrewerytap on Vimeo.

Don't forget you can still get 15% off a case of Jaipur by using the discount code GBBFJAIPUR when purchasing a case of Jaipur here...

Saltaire Brewery with Oz and Hugh...

2010-08-13T10:03:00.000+01:00

I don't need much of an excuse to visit a brewery and so when Tony Gartland of Saltaire Brewery invited me along to a special event at his brewery I wasn't about to say no. The brewery has been gaining a reputation and awards in the last few years for its flavourful beers and this had obviously been noticed by Oz Clarke (or his programmes production crew) as they were due to film a section for his new "Oz and Hugh Drink To.." series.

As I wrote about a couple of months ago here, Saltaire Brewery regularly opens its doors for its "beer club" where local beer lovers come to enjoy the Saltaire brews from the source. The invite I received from Tony said this was to be a special "beer club" for invitees only, there would be a free bar and we were needed to help participate in tasting some beers that Oz Clarke and Hugh Dennis had brewed and give our verdict.

I arrived on Wednesday afternoon just after 4pm and met Rob from Hopzine and his wife and about 50 other people milling around outside. We weren't allowed in the brewery yet as they were filming something or other, but the Saltaire staff were mingling taking drinks orders.

After 10 minutes or so we were ushered inside to participate in the filming. After a brief run down from the director on what was going to happen, Oz and Hugh emerged with trays full of sample glasses of the 'beers' they'd made. One was supposed to be a stout type "beer" and one a weird fruit "beer". As far as I can work out they'd both been given a table full of ingredients and been allowed to do what they want with little or no guidance, and it showed.. I wasn't really expecting them to be good, but they were both comically, un-drinkably bad. The 'stout' had a disturbingly sweet, cloying hot chocolate flavour which wasn't pleasant at all, (presumably because one of them had gone mental with the Triple Chocoholic ingredients). The 'fruit beer' was thinner and tasted strongly of cherries but not in a nice way. It reminded me of Rinstead pastils or warm dentists mouthwash. Not good.

Oz and Hugh then passed through the crowd filming reaction to their beers and chatting with the audience. We didn't get filmed but managed to grab Oz for a chat and a quick picture. I don't know how much beer he'd had but he came across well and was happy to chat for a while admitting that neither beer was up to much. I'm not sure how long they'd been filming for but both of them looked pretty bleary eyed to me.

After voting on our favourite of the two offerings the results were read out and the last section filmed. We then headed upstairs to taste some Elderflower Blonde, and the aforementioned Triple Chocoholic , which as expected were tasting great, especially after what we'd just tasted. I left soon after, conscious of the fact that I was in a brewery with a free bar on a school night.

If you want to know which 'beer' won watch out for the next series of Oz and Hugh Drink to.. I'm not sure when its on but I'd expect around Christmas time.

You can buy Saltaire Brewery beers here.

Guest Blog #3 - Adam Bruderer on Summer 52wbc

2010-08-12T14:56:00.000+01:00

The third part of guest blogger Adam Bruderer's review of our current 52 week beer club case...

9. Oakleaf Brewery Co Hole hearted – A surprisingly powerful golden ale. Hints of floral aromas and a strong after taste. (3.5/5)

10 Felinfoel Brewery Stout – Ah, stout! I’ve been looking forward to this one. A typically rich full bodied stout. A thick creamy head, smooth and malty. Very drinkable (3.5/5)

11. Belvoir Brewery Melton Red. Full flavoured with bitter undertones, typical of a red beer along with a strong aftertaste. One to be drank slowly and savoured (3/5)

12. Atlantic Brewery Gold is described as an organic pale ale spiced with ginger. So here was an opportunity to do a taste test and compare it with Williams Brothers Alcoholic Ginger Beer. The ginger flavours of the Atlantic Gold were much more subtle. Not the ginger-y kick of the Williams Bros beer but refreshing none the less. (3.5/5)

13. Finally Acorn Brewery Conquest. As a fan of Acorn beers and IPAs, I left this one until last and it did not disappoint. This golden IPA is full of hoppy goodness and an enjoyable bitter aftertaste (4/5)

Well, that brings to an end my first stint of beer blogging. I hope I have done all the beers justice. Many thanks for myBrewerytap.com for supplying the beers and if anyone would like me to review any of their beers, please contact me!

Thanks Adam. More un-biased guest reviews of our cases soon! You can sign up for the 52wbc here, or buy the mixed case with the same contents here.

Pieminister Pies

2010-07-28T17:14:00.001+01:00

We've recently started listing pies from Pieminister for sale on the site. As a big fan of pies in general (who isn't), I thought I'd test them myself (I was also keen to see how they'd stand up to delivery) and so put in an order.

I hadn't heard of the pies myself prior to us listing them but was assured on Twitter and Facebook of their quality and reputation, after checking out the different pies on offer my mouth was literally watering as I typed the ingredients when adding them to our site.

Pieminister was started in 2002 by Jon Simon and Tristan Hogg with the intention of offering the British public a true gourmet pie experience. Make no mistake these are no ordinary pies, ingredients including, goats cheese, chorizo, olives and vermouth (not in the same pie) make these very much 'gastro' pies. These are pies to be made a proper meal of rather than shoved down at the footie with a Bovril chaser.

I decided to order the 'Mixed Pieminister Box' of 12 pies and arranged for them to be delivered to our holiday address. The pies arrived within a couple of days of ordering and were packed extremely well. Pieminister has developed a bespoke box for transit in order to make sure the pies arrive in top condition. They were individually boxed then placed within a plastic bag which sat inside the outer which was also polystyrene lined to maintain freshness. There was also sheet of Pieminister plastic ice cubes within the box which although no longer ice had clearly kept the box nice and cool on its journey.

The pie that appealed to me most was the 'Matador Pie' made with 'Free range beef steak, chorizo, olives, tomato, sherry and butter beans'. I was a little confused initially as to whether I could just start chomping on it as I would do with a butcher bought pie, but the instructions on the side seemed to suggest it needed cooking (25mins) so I whacked the oven on and got cooking.

On to the pie... mmmmm I wasnt dissapointed , the first thing I noticed was the quality of the ingredients, the beef was succulent and tasty, the chorizo juicy and the olives soft and tender. The pastry was also spot on, dense but not greasy and a perfect contrast to the juicy contents of the pie. The Matador as you might expect with the herbs and sherry had a grown up Mediterranean flavour so not perhaps what the kids are going to like but perfect for a posh pie. The only criticism I could level at this pie was that it the Chorizo could have perhaps had more of a spicy chilli kick. This is possibly just my Chilli damaged taste buds though and is easily rectified with a splash of whichever is your chilli sauce of choice.

So there you have it, one pie in and I'm impressed. Obviously at £45/12 (+£5.99 p&p) these are not a flippant purchase. However they do apparently freeze very well and basically you then have 12 restaurant quality pies in the freezer at less than £4 each, which is pretty good all things considered. Ideally you'd probably want to add some chips or some special peas or beans (thanks Beer Reviews Andy) but I enjoyed the pie straight up, and it sustained me for a 20 mile bike ride an hour or so later...

You can see the full range of mixed Pieminister boxes we're offering here.

Hawkshead Summer Beer Festival

2010-07-26T13:55:00.001+01:00

Driving towards Windermere last Monday at the start of our summer Lakes holiday I noticed a sign advertising Hawksheads Summer beer festival. After excitedly checking my calendar I was very happy to realise that the festival was the following weekend.

As I've mentioned in previous blogs I'm a big fan of Hawksheads beers but our regular visits up here never seem to coincide with their festivals. A quick check of the beer list for the festival and I was even more excited, the list was a who's who of the best of the UK beer scene with only a few notable omissions (no Marble for example), there was however going to be beers from Thornbridge, Dark Star, Brewdog, Saltaire and Highland Brewing Co. amongst others.

After much pleading and bartering of family duties, I finally managed to get to the festival on Saturday afternoon ready to get stuck into some quality beers. Myself and roped in family friend Dan (a beer festival novice) headed over to Staveley around 4pm. Unfortunately on arrival I realised that Saturday afternoon was too late as many of the beers I'd been looking forward to had already run off.

The festival had been running since Thursday and I guess had been very popular everyday. This scenario is common of many beer festivals these days and obviously a sign of their growing popularity. I appreciate it must be difficult and this isn't a criticism aimed particularly at Hawkshead but I do wish festivals would plan to have enough beer for the Saturday night which traditionally is when the main entertainment is planned and should be there busiest night.

To be honest I was half expecting this to be the case as its the same at a lot of the other festivals I've been to recently, unfortunately I wasn't able to get there any earlier on this occasion.

Luckily there was still a number of beers available including one of my favourite beers Thornbridge Kipling and a full compliment of Hawksheads range: Lakeland Gold, Red, Bitter, Brodies Prime, Organic Stout and Damson Porter. We also tried tasty beers from RCH, Greenmill and Purity Brewing. To be honest I could quite happily spend all my Saturday nights at Hawksheads beer hall regardless of there being a beer festival, so I wasn't too upset.

I also remembered that Matt Clarke, Hawkshead brewer had told me to come and say hello if I made it to the festival. A member of staff located Matt; and after brief introductions Dan and I were soon being treated to a behind the scenes tour of the Hawkshead operation. These are exciting times for Hawkshead, since there beginnings in 2002 they've expanded rapidly and are currently in the process of creating a new modern visitor centre/bar in adjoining buildings at the Mill Yard Staveley.

The brewery currently a 30 bbl set up was full of beautiful sparkling German stainless steel vessels, including some large new fermenters waiting to be enclosed behind glass in the new brewery tap. I'm sure I'm not alone in loving being shown round breweries, Its great to see behind the scenes especially when the brewery in question is one of your favourites.

Inevitably there is also usually some special or at least very fresh beer involved in brewery tours and at this point we were treated to a taste of a special one-off brew that Matt has devised which was just in the process of conditioning. Matt (like Kelly Ryan of Thornbridge) is from New Zealand originally and the beer: "Captain Cooker Manuka Beer" is infused with the leaf of New Zealand's, Manuka plant giving it a slightly perfumed, sweet, spicy, tea like quality. it tasted great, experimentation with ingredients like this is to be encouraged as far as I'm concerned and I'm hoping to be able to try this beer again somewhere soon.

We also checked out some fermenting Hawkshead Red, discussed the planned new developments and beer in general. After shoving my head inside a bag of Citra hops (like a demented dope fiend), we returned upstairs to the beer hall to be met by Dave and Anne and friends from Hardknott Brewery and enjoyed another couple of pints and some friendly conversation before arranging our taxi home.

After my initial disappointment at missing out on many of the beers at the festival, I'd come away having had a really enjoyable few hours and I've made a promise to myself note to visit the festival earlier next time. If you're in the area you really should check out the Hawkshead beer hall and its excellent beers, if you've never tried them you really should. Hawkshead are to my mind masters of flavour and consistency. The new brewery tap looks like its going to be very impressive indeed (unfortunately I was enjoying myself so much I didn't take any pictures).

The epilogue to this blog is the great news that we will shortly be listing Hawkshead's bottled beers on myBrewerytap, with any luck we'll get the bottles into our 52 week beer club and mixed cases soon as well.

Guest Blog #2 - Adam Bruderer on Summer 52wbc

2010-07-25T18:18:00.000+01:00

Here's the second part of guest blogger Adam Bruderer's review of our current 52 week beer club case

4. After one Best Mates Brewery Vicar’s Daughter which was as sour as a Van Bommel tackle (had to get that line in!) I tried a second which was considerably better. This bottle conditioned IPA poured slightly cloudy with no head but was easily drinkable. A slightly hoppy taste made for a refreshing pint. (An acceptable 2.5/5)

5. Cotleigh Brewery Barn Ale: fine dark premier ale. Good head, rich and malty, smooth and fruity. One of the best of the batch so far, I’d look out for this one again. (A great 3.5/5)

7. Wold Top is a brewery I’ve come across before and found their beers enjoyable. And I wasn’t disappointed by the Wold Gold. Having had a very good beer in the Cotleigh Barn Ale, this was immediately surpassed by the Wold Gold. A delicious tangy blonde beer with a refreshing fruity taste. Great for a hot sunny day; it’s a pity this wasn’t one! (A highly commendable 4/5)

8. “Your beer cupboard is getting very full” says Ryn. Guess I’ll just have to drink some more beers then! Next up was the Potton Brewery Shambles. Best described as a light Friday evening session beer with some subtle undertones, detected by both me and Ryn. (2.5/5)

9. RCH Brewery, Pitchfork. This was an extremely lively RAIB. After waiting patiently for the large head to clear, this light golden bitter had a slightly sweet and citrus taste. Another good Friday evening beer. (3/5).

More from Adam on the beers in this Quarters 52wbc case shortly.

Anyone who's interested doing a guest blog on one of our future cases please get in touch: richard@myBrewerytap.com

You can sign up for the 52wbc here, or buy the mixed case with the same contents here.

Guest Blog #1 - Adam Bruderer on Summer 52wbc

2010-07-13T10:43:00.000+01:00

It's become apparent to me lately that keeping up to date with this blog on top of other commitments and daily running of myBrewerytap is not easy.

As a solution to this I decided I'd ask (via Twitter) if anyone would be interested in helping me add some content to the blog by writing guest beer reviews.

I had a great response, and was pleased that each person said they'd not blogged before but was happy to give it a go.Hopefully this will become a regular feature on the blog where we get guest reviewers to blog on the contents of the 52 week beer club selections. Each guest will submit a few reviews for the case.

First up reviewing the Summer quarters case is Adam Bruderer from Manchester, over to Adam...

“Is there no end to your geekiness?” despairs my long suffering partner, Ryn. “You’ll do anything for free beer”. Well - not absolutely anything, but with a request from myBrewerytap.com for people to review beers, how could I resist giving it a go?

Having spent my formative years collecting beer mats and pub names, progressing to photographing pubs and amateur scooping, it was kind of inevitable. As a subscriber to the myBrewerytap.com 52 Week Beer Club, I am familiar with their varied selection of mainly light beers. My mission was to review the Summer 2010 case.

1. So I started off one sunny Wednesday evening sitting in the garden with an IPA. It’s all the Raj. Ossett Brewery Excelsior to be precise. It poured light and clear with a good head and unusually lively. A good thirst quenching beer, described as an IPA but more like a golden ale to me; darker than an IPA and hasn’t got the hoppy kick. Aren’t true IPAs supposed to be above 6% ABV? Goes down easy – not as formidable as the name may suggest. Halfway down the pint still has a head and is active (a drinkable 3/5)

2. Derventio Emperor’s Whim is slightly darker, creamer and more bitter than the Excelsior. Definitely a golden ale. Less distinctive than the Excelsior and pretty nondescript really. (a slightly below par 2/5)

3. Time for a bit of World Cup Final drinking. Hidden Brewery Old Sarum is a dark traditional bitter. With a strong fruity malty taste, it resembles Courage Directors of old, but better. (an enjoyable 3.5/5)"

More from Adam on the beers in this Quarters 52wbc case shortly.

Anyone who's interested doing a guest blog on one of our future cases please get in touch: richard@myBrewerytap.com

You can sign up for the 52wbc here, or buy the mixed case with the same contents here.

American beers on myBrewerytap

2010-07-05T12:26:00.000+01:00

If you've been following this blog you'll realise by now what a fan of American beers I've become since starting the business. I still love great British beer but I'm always looking for new US beers to try and am delighted that we can now offer a decent range on the site.

Contrary to most peoples opinion of American beer, the US has arguably the most vibrant and interesting craft beer scene in the world. Craft brewers unhindered by traditional styles and flavours have since the late 70's been re-inventing and re-defining styles of beer with amazing results. If your idea of US beer is the fizzy tasteless liquids we are usually served in the UK you're in for a shock! Steam Beers, fruity Pale Ales, Indian Brown Ales, Imperial Stouts, massively hopped Double IPA's, these breweries are not afraid to experiment and we intend to bring you the best of their output.

We are now listing full cases of beer from Anchor, Brooklyn, Dogfish Head, Flying Dog, Goose Island, Sierra Nevada and Victory Brewing. We also have a Mixed Case of 12 (Mixed Case 1) which is a brilliant introduction to the different styles and flavours of US beers, and two other mixed cases; Mixed Case 2 and Mixed Case 3 both featuring 2 x 6 different bottles.

We'll be adding more interesting US breweries and beers as we get hold of them and the mixed cases will change regularly depending on availability so keep checking back to see what we have.

Saltaire Brewery

2010-06-26T21:36:00.000+01:00

I finally got round to visiting Saltaire brewery on Friday night for their 'beer club' night. The last Friday of every month the brewery opens its doors and the local public stream in to drink the brewerys beers straight from the source. As a fan of their beers I'd been meaning to visit since the first time a year or two back I'd seen the night advertised. A short train journey from Leeds saw myself and a friend at the brewery for around 7pm to meet Shipley resident Rob and Matt from Hopzine.

The brewery is located in an old generator house originally used to power Saltaires trams, and is now filled with a beautiful custom built 20 bbl Moeschle brewery from Germany. The building is half visitor centre and half brewery with two bars and various informative signage dotted about. Its a really welcoming place and on a warm June evening was the perfect place for any beer lover to be.

We started the evening with a pint of the 'Summer Ale" a 4.0% a really refreshing blond ale conditioned to perfection as you'd expect with it not having to travel more than 100yds. Next up was the Amarillo Gold, a 4.2% pale ale with the lovely distinctive grapefruity Amarillo hop flavour. On my way to the bar for our next choice I managed to collar Tony Gartland head brewer and one of the breweries founders for a quick chat.

Tony was busy collecting glasses and looked very content to have a full brewery full of people enjoying his beer. We talked about what a success the 'beer club' nights were and he told me they can expect to sell about 20 casks (1440 pints) on a typical 'beer club' friday night. It made me think how nice it would be if more breweries had regular open nights like this. There really is no better way to taste a breweries beer than straight from the brewery, the beer looked after meticulously from its inception and completely as the brewer intended.

Our next pint was Saltaires flagship beer "Cascade" pale ale, packed with citrussy Cascade hops with their lovely lip smacking flavour and tangy bitterness, and again on perfect form. Next up was the Raspberry Blonde, a beer of theirs I tried last year. Described as having "delicately infused raspberry flavours" I actually think the raspberry flavour in this beer is really strong. It has a great assertive fruity raspberry character that your mouth thinks is going to end up sickly sweet but finishes nice and bitter making you want another drink. Its not a beer I'd want pint after pint of but its definitely one to try.

We were already running out of time before we had to leave for our train but managed to slip in a half of another of Saltaires acclaimed beers 'Hazelnut Coffee Porter'. I had tried this beer before and drinking it again brought back the same feelings. Its a beer that tastes (maybe unexpectedly) just as described, there is sweet coffee and a chocolate charachter in there but the flavour and aroma is dominated by a fruity hazlenut flavour. Its a really unusual and interesting beer and well worth trying if you get the chance.

Unfortunately the recently crowned SIBA champion beer "Triple Chocoholic" wasn't on cask on this visit but I loved it so much in the bottle that its a good reason for me to return soon.

If you can get there, you really should try and check out a Saltaire "beer club" night, great beer in a beautiful slightly quirky brewery. Ill be back as soon as I can.

We've recently started listing Saltaires beers here.

There's a great profile of Saltaire brewery on Hopzine.com here.

Summer Quarter 52 week beer club

2010-06-13T16:25:00.000+01:00

Our summer quarter cases of the 52 week beer club are now ready to ship. If you're not aware, the 52 week beer club is a great way to sample some of the beers featured on myBrewerytap. Members receive 52 beers over the course of a year (13 bottles quarterly) and we also include tasting notes and complimentary gifts.

Last quarters case was incredibly well received (how great was the Fyne Avalanche?!) and we’ve pulled out the stops to deliver you another great selection of beers for this quarter. In this case amongst others there’s a former national SIBA champion in Ossett Breweries ‘Excelsior’, there’s also a bottle of ‘Pitchfork’ from the multi award winning RCH brewery and a bottle of the champion beer of Hampshire 5 years running (and a 90%+ on ratebeer.com) Oakleaf Brewery’s ‘Hole Hearted’.

As ever these beers will be available as a single mixed case on the site. We’re also now offering an alternative mixed case ‘myBrewerytap mixed brewery case 2’ featuring an alternative range, you can check it out here.

We hope you enjoyed the free curry sauce from The Curry Sauce company, their complete range of sauces are now available in the ‘beer related foods’ section of the site here. This quarter your complimentary gift is a bag of that quintessentially English pub snack, Pork Scratchings! Not just any old scratchings, they’re the award winning ‘Q’ pork scratchings from the Black Country recently voted the best in the country! We’re continuing to search out other great ‘beer related foods’ so if you’ve any suggestions please let us know.

We’re always looking to receive suggestions for new breweries or beer related products we should be listing so please get in touch on the website or via Twitter (@myBrewerytap) or Facebook (search for myBrewerytap).

myBrewerytap continues to go from strength to strength, we are now featuring 70 breweries (over 400 beers not generally available in the supermarket) including multi award winning breweries such as Saltaire, Hogs Back, Dark Star and Crouch Vale. If you haven’t had a look for a while please take a few minutes to browse the site and see if we’re listing some of your favourite beers.

A full list of this quarters beers can be seen below, you can join the 52 week beer club here.

Riding to the pub..

2010-06-03T21:58:00.000+01:00

My other main passion in life apart from beer is riding my mountain bike. Traditionally this is done every Tuesday night with a group of extended friends but I also try my best to sneak in rides around family duties. Most of the time this is the odd hour or two at weekends, but at this time of year when the evenings are longer I often go out on my own to do a loop of the local villages and woods. Part of the reason for this is the excercise and making sure I'm fit enough to 'keep up' on a Tuesday, but a big part of it is that its also a great excuse to get out for a pint...

Ive concocted what I think is the perfect "quick blast" route. To save boring you too much I'll try and condense the route. It starts with a very steep quarter mile drag up tarmac to gain some height. After leveling out I can catch my breath I then head into some woods which skirt the crest of a hill for a brilliant half mile of flowing singletrack path before emerging at a small village.

Another mile or so on road brings me to a large pine plantation cris crossed with bike routes, full of rooty pine needle scattered singletrack, with bumps, lumps, berms and an optional (if I'm feeling brave) full on downhill course. After this I pass through another small village before climbing up through another set of woods on the return loop. Another couple of miles of wooded track, a train track and river crossing, a couple of walls to negotiate and I'm on to the home straight. I'm about 8 miles into the ride now and a steady pull up a quiet country lane brings me to a major point of the excercise ... The Rose & Crown at Thurstonland.

Now this isn't a perfect pub by any means (the food could be better IMO) but its a great rural village pub, perfectly placed for my little route lying as it does at the top of a big hill which my house is at the bottom of. The pub has certainly improved in recent years though, It now being a sort of a brewery tap as the landlord is a partner in Brass Monkey Brewery. The bar features seven hand pulls which usually (although not always) feature 3 or 4 Brass Monkey offerings and 3 or 4 guests. They've also recently filled their fridges with a number of good imports: Orval, Flying Dog, Liefmans etc...

This part of my solo rides is usually spent sat at the bar or outside if the weather is nice. Sometimes chatting to the locals, sometimes trying to warm up, and sometimes contemplating the nettle stings and bramble scratches on my legs. More often than not I'm lost in thought, completely relaxed basking in the contentment of a well earned beer and, really enjoying my pint in that post excercise glow that seems to heighten flavours and experience.

A couple (or 3) drinks is usually enough and then Its time to strap on a light, put a jacket on (as its usually dark and cold by now) and brave the kamikaze chute which takes me down a steep rocky and dark path between farmers walls and hedgerows for a quarter mile roller coaster ride before depositing me, laughing and often more scratched/stung at the bottom of the path almost within spitting distance of my front door.

Tonight was the perfect evening for this ride, I didn't even decide to go until 7.30PM but I'm so glad I did. The weather, the ground conditions, how I rode, the peace and quiet, the beautiful countryside, the promise of beer all conspired to make it a very uplifting couple of hours. Unfortunateley the cask selection wasn't very inspiring tonight but a couple of Flying Dog Pale Ales more than made up for it.

Right time for another beer...

Brewday at Crown Brewery, Sheffield

2010-05-19T19:43:00.000+01:00

A quick blog to say how much I enjoyed Tuesdays brewday with Stuart from the Crown Brewery. If you're not aware, the Crown brewery is situated underneath the Hillsborough Hotel on Langsett Road in Sheffield, its a 4 barrel capacity set up and Stuart Ross is the one man dynamo that keeps the brewery ticking. Nothing amazingly out of the ordinary there you might think but Stu continually and consistently knocks out beer that is far from ordinary.

Unlike many breweries who excel at one particular style, (ie pale and hoppy) Stu makes a broad range of regular and one off brews which always seem very well crafted, flavourful and true to style.

Pale Ale, Blonde Ale, Mild, Stout, Porter, Damson Porter, Wheat Beer, Wheat Stout, IPA's, and Smoked Rauchbier are all beers he's produced which have been well received in the past couple of years. Obviously many breweries turn their hands to different beer styles regularly with varying results but Stu seems to nail the styles he attempts first time more often than not which has to be down to more than luck.

More recently he brewed a massive 11.5% DIPA collaboration beer with Stefano Cossi from Thornbridge, which saw them both putting in a 17 hour stint in the Crown brewery to get the beer brewed (this beer will hopefully be available to buy on myBrewerytap later in the year).

It was really interesting to watch Stu brewing through the course of the day, he's very comfortable at work in the brewery, knows what works and what doesn't, never rushing or flapping. I guess to a large degree this efficiency and control is because he's very accustomed to his breweries processes and nuances and understands them inside out. He's an experienced brewer having previously worked for two other award winning local breweries Kelham Island and Acorn, but experience aside he's clearly a natural brewer if such a thing exists.

Seeing different brewers at work is great from my perspective (with an eye on a possible future in brewing myself) and its really valuable for me to get different viewpoints and advice on all aspects of the process. Its interesting that what works for some brewers doesn't work for another.

Stu has been very supportive of myBrewerytap, we set up the business with breweries like Crown in mind, I'm particularly happy that he's pleased with the service our site offers the brewery and we've been really happy to help give his great beers the wider audience they deserve.

You can find Crowns beers on the bar at The Hillsborough Hotel, Sheffield every day of the week and as Crowns reputation grows, at more pubs and beer festivals up and down the country.

Crowns bottled beers are available direct from the brewery via myBrewerytap here.
Follow the Crown Brewery's blog here

Down south for MooR beer

2010-05-16T22:24:00.000+01:00

I set off Friday morning for a couple of business meetings down south with the expectation of meeting new business contacts, and the hope of making new friends and the promise of good beer and good company.

After a 3 hour drive I picked up Ed at Bristol Parkway and we headed (after a productive meeting in the welsh borders) south to meet Justin Hawke from Moor beer company. I'd met Justin at the SIBA conference and we'd got on well, a passionate brewer he has a unique view point on the British real ale scene having brewed both in his native US and in the UK. I'd agreed in Stratford that we would come down and see his brewery and taste his beer at the 'source'.

We picked Justin up from his home in the beautiful Somerset countryside and our first stop was a tour of the Moor brewery; a converted milking parlour with a 10 barrel capacity. Justin is a really interesting brewer, his beers have one foot in the US beer scene in terms of their style but he's also firmly entrenched in the UK real ale scene. He's a great believer in traditional beer conditioning but despite winning multiple CAMRA awards doesn't have the same hang ups about methods of beer dispense that CAMRA members usually have.

We left the brewery and after loading the car with Kegs and picking up Justins wife Maryann we headed to the first pub of the night The Devonshire Arms at Long Sutton. First beer of the day was Moor's "Northern Star" a malty beer featuring the new "Citra" hop in large quantity. For anyone who knows Moors beer I'd say this was most similar to their "Revival" but with a maltier body. We also got chance to taste Moors Somerland Gold on draught, that is to say on Keg straight to a bar font. The beer tasted fantastic, perhaps a touch cold but with a great C02 'prickle' and as full of flavour as the cask or bottle versions. Justin had wanted us to taste his beer served this way, and it served as an affirmation to me that, flavour as far as good beer is concerned is not limited by the method of dispense.

We then headed to the awesome Queens Arms at Corton Denham. The Queens Arms is a beautiful pub set in the rolling Dorset countryside and has everything you could want in a rural pub, great beer , great food and great rooms (so i'm told). The pub is all stripped floors and roaring fires but its all done in an unpretentious way and not at all the stuffy "gastro" atmosphere that often attaches itself to pubs like this.

We were fortunate enough to have turned up at the Queens Arms during "Moor Beer Month" and so got stuck straight into "Queens Revival" a dry hopped version of Moors already awesome "Revival". This was amazing beer, pungent aroma hops followed up with smooth malty body and dry citrus finish, a great session beer.

We eventually moved to the dining room for food and enjoyed great steaks and amazing seafood dishes to accompany the great beers we were drinking. Pudding meant a fantastic spread of French Savoie cheese and the main event beer wise; a special dry hopped version of Moors famous JJJ IPA. This is normally a massively hoppy, sweet and piney double IPA in the US style that weighs in at a heafty 9.5%. This version of JJJ had also been 'dry hopped' with fresh Citra hops added to the cask. This gave the beer a massively pungent aroma quality which was fantastic. The beer still maintained its bold sweetness and hoppy bitterness but gained another dimension of pungent piney citrusey hops that dominated aroma and first taste completely.

From this point on the evening got a bit hazy. More JJJ was purchased conversation flowed and time got away from us. We ended up saying our goodbyes swapping a few bottles and vowing to return some time soon. I'd urge anyone who ventures down this way to have a look in to this beautiful pub.

Mark Dredge wrote an excellent blog on the Queens Arms recently here. The pubs website is here.

Spring Update

2010-05-12T14:22:00.000+01:00

A quick blog just to update people on happenings at mBt. We've had a really busy start to the year, the 52 week beer club is getting new members daily and we're shipping mixed cases as fast as we can pack them. The last two quarters of the 52wbc have needed re-orders from breweries due to us underestimating demand.

We're continuing to sign up great breweries; amongst others we're now listing beers from Acorn, Crown, Fyne Ales, Williams Bros and Thornbridge who all make award winning, brilliant beer and are really great additions to the site. We've got more great breweries committed to coming on the site and we're approaching new breweries all the time so make sure you're following my Twitter feed or our Facebook page to get the latest news.

The last month has also seen us help Thornbridge launch their hotly anticipated new bottle conditioned beers St Petersburg and Halcyon 09 both incredible beers causing quite a stir in beery circles and which have been blogged and tweeted about plenty. The Halcyon 09 in particular is selling fast and is a limited edition so if you want some you need to be fairly quick.

The new bottle conditioned Jaipur should also be ready to ship shortly, meaning people will be able to get even closer to the intended draught flavour of Thornbridges iconic beer.

In recent weeks we've added beers from two of my favourite breweries, the first is Mallinsons a local brewery who have a dedicated following in the area for their light, hoppy flavourful beers. They're a relatively new outfit and a great advert for the new wave of brewing in the UK. Their beers always sell out first at the local festivals in West Yorkshire and are always worth trying.
We are listing 3 of their regulars beers as well as their Grand Canyon pale/summer ale.

The other brewery we're now listing is just about my all time favourite UK brewery, Marble. I met Dominic one of the brewers recently and was really pleased and flattered to find out he knew about myBrewerytap and was keen to get their beers on the site. Marble are a fantastic brewery who originate out of the Marble Arch pub in Manchester, they brew a delicious range of beers covering a mix of styles and abv's. They're a dedicated bunch and have a real commitment to quality and flavour and their beers are never dull or run of the mill. They're also very good at understated but classic branding and packaging.

The Marble Arch pub itself is a quirky grade 2 listed building complete with sloping floors and vaulted ceilings, the food there is also brilliant. If you ever get chance to visit you really should, Its one of the only "real ale" pubs I visit regularly which my wife is also more than happy to visit, which is praise indeed.

On the "brewing project", I'm hoping to expand my knowledge with some more hands on brewing experience soon and we (me and a couple of friends) are still discussing and planning the best way to go about getting into brewing ourselves. We've lots to discuss!

You can buy Thornbridges beers here , Mallinsons here and Marbles Beers here.

Brewday at Great Heck Brewing Co.

2010-04-22T19:07:00.001+01:00

As I mentioned in my aspirations for 2010 blog and with a view to a possible future in brewing, I've been keen to get some hands on brewing experience for a while now, to help better understand all aspects of brewing and what life as a brewer would be like. I've been really grateful to get a few offers from different brewers recently including Denzil from Great Heck Brewing Co, who was very supportive of myBrewerytap from the beginning and who'd I'd got to know at the SIBA annual conference.

Brewers tend to start brewing early and so I was up at 5.45am to drive over to Great Heck a picturesque small village out in the flatlands east of Wakefield toward Goole, and roughly an hour away from Huddersfield.

The first part of the brewing process and so first job of the day was to 'mash in', meaning to mix the malt and liquor (water) into a porridge like soup in order to extract the sugars from the malt. I was glad to find out that the brewery had an upper level and a grist case (hopper) to help mash in as I knew this meant a lot less lifting work. This second floor is also the malt and hop store at Great Heck and thankfully was fully stocked meaning there wouldn't be a load of shouldering heavy malt sacks up a ladder to start the day.

We would be brewing one of Great Hecks regular and most popular beers "Dave" (Dark And Very Enjoyable) a 3.8% moderately hopped dark session beer. This meant mashing in a few different malts, including some chocolate malt to give 'Dave' its dark color. The 'mash' was then left to stew while Denzil made us a very welcome fry up.

After breakfast the next job was to run off the now sweet liquor or 'wort' (containing all the necessary sugars to create the desired amount of alcohol) into the brewing kettle or 'copper' via the underback, which is there to prevent any detritus from the mash ending up in the kettle.

I've been on plenty of brewery tours in the past but I was enjoying seeing the actual brew process in action; watching closely and trying to understand a seemingly endless swapping of hoses and switching on and off of pumps. I was assured that while initially daunting these processes in the brewery soon become second nature.

Once the transfer was complete, and the wort at a rolling boil I was tasked with sorting out the hops for the brew. I was looking forward to this and enjoyed grabbing handfuls of the pungent sticky compacted hop cones out of their foil bags, breaking them up and weighing out the correct amount required. I know they're just part and parcel of the brew process and maybe taken for granted by many brewers but to this novice at least there's something really alluring about hops, they're probably the most visually appealing part of the process and their aroma while recognizable in raw form is often also noticeable in both the flavour and aroma of the 'finished' beer. These particular hops (Pilgrim) were no different and triggered off memories of beers I've enjoyed in the past (but annoyingly couldn't quite place.)

After the hops were added to the kettle and the boil left to finish it was on to the hard but necessary work of digging out the spent grain from the mash tun. This job is obviously one of the reasons why brewers don't mind having apprentices in, but I'd been looking forward to getting stuck in and finding out what these tasks would be like.

As expected it's hard work, (especially with puny wrists) but I eventually dug all the grain out and managed to wrestle the filled sacks out to the yard, where they would wait for the local farmer to collect. As the day wore on the filled sacks made a warm and comfy seat for me to idle a few minutes away in the sun while waiting for various processes to complete!

Lunch was a welcome break and Denzil knocked me up a sandwich which was gratefully washed down with Great Heck's, "Stormin Norman" straight from a hand pump rigged up in the kitchen. The 6.5% hoppy pale ale went down a treat and helped fuel the ongoing lively conversation as the brew day progressed.

After lunch and while we waited for the boil to finish Denzil gave a short master class in cask washing. This is by common consent the least favourite job in the brewery, probably down to its monotonous nature. I was expecting to spend at least part of the day doing it, but thankfully there weren't many casks needing washing and Denzil seemed to be enjoying himself so I left him to it!

Once the kettle had finished its boil it was time to start the transfer of the hot wort (now infused with hops) over to one of the fermenters. Before this could happen I watched on as Denzil performed more necessary processes of switching hoses, re-circulating water, pumps on, pumps off etc.. He then cooled the kettle down and It was once again time for me to experience one of the dirtier jobs on offer, namely scrubbing the kettle down, (which meant getting in it) and removing all the soggy spent hops by hand. This waste from the process was also left out for the farmer, apparently it's "not good for much" but is left out as part of the deal whereby the farmer gets loads of free grain to feed his cattle, which seems fair to me.

It was 4pm by this time and as the brew day was more or less complete (with just a bit more cleaning to be done) and it was time for me to head back home. The day went just as I'd hoped with plenty of laughs a lot of questions answered (and advice gathered) and a bit of hard work, in a very friendly environment.

Denzil was a top host and I'd urge anyone reading to seek out Great Heck's beers, they don't profess to be at the cutting edge of British brewing, but Great Heck's beers are by no means 'traditional' or 'boring'. They're brewing beer for the best reasons, in that it's beer that "they like to drink' and their beers cover the whole gamut of styles from pale session ales through to full bodied stouts and hoppy wheat beers.

I know Denzil is on with the long process of creating decent bottles, which we'll have on myBrewerytap as soon as he does...

For some great background on Great Heck Brewing Co check out www.Beerreviews.co.uk's meet the brewer interview here

Below are some pictures I took on the day.

Spring Quarter 52 week beer club

2010-04-07T21:57:00.000+01:00

We are now shipping the spring quarter 52 week beer club cases to members. If you're not aware, the 52 week beer club is a great way to sample some of the beers featured on myBrewerytap.

Members receive 52 beers over the course of a year (13 bottles quarterly) and we also include tasting notes and complimentary gifts ( this month there's some delicious sauce from The Curry Sauce Company, while stocks last).

I'm really excited by this quarters case as it contains some fantastic beers from around the country including the much sought after and multi award winning “Jaipur” by Thornbridge brewery, the 2008 World Beer Awards Pale/Blond category, winner “Avalanche” from Fyne Ales and the excellent"Ginger" an alcoholic Ginger beer from the brilliant (and again multi award winning) Williams Brothers brewery.

There’s also a bottle of the up and coming (and hard to find) Crown Brewery's “Unpronounceable IPA” a delicious 7.0% US style super hoppy beer and one of my personal favourites.

Membership of the club costs £79.99 (+ one off shipping charge of £5.99) which we think is great value and a great way to try lots of beers which you can't get in your supermarket.

If you're not ready to commit to the club yet as a special offer there is currently 15% off a mixed case (same selection as 52wbc) for a limited time only. Just enter the code: BEER0610 when checking out.

A full list of this quarters beers can be seen below, you can join the 52 week beer club here

Brewlab "Start up Brewing" course

2010-04-01T21:46:00.000+01:00

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were spent doing the three day "start up brewing" course at Brewlab in Sunderland. My brother a friend and I had booked the course in January, a decision we'd based around a desire to start up a brewery project of our own and make the kind of beer we want to drink.

Monday morning started early, we needed to be in Sunderland for 9.30am so we were off by 6.00am to pick up in Brighouse before making our way up the A1. Obviously 6.00am starts will be something I'll need to get used to if I want a future in brewing but it felt very early to me especially as the clock had only just gone forward the night previously.

We made it to the location for the course in Sunderland with 10 minutes to spare and settled into the classroom to meet our fellow 'would-be' brewers also on the course. There were about 20 people on the course, all at different stages of planning their future in brewing; some nearly ready to start up, some toying with the idea, some just investigating but all with a shared love of beer. It was nice to see that the students weren't all men either, with about 30% of the students female.

Mondays course was split into a number of different modules, starting with a brief overview of the brewing process, followed by brewery design and layout, and Ingredients, water and yeast. After lunch we covered Ingredients, malt and hops, and then finished the afternoon with a useful session on business start up. By 5pm we were all ready to get stuck into some proper R&D and so headed with the tutors to Fitzgeralds to sample some local beers. I was pretty tired by this point and not feeling particularly sociable but joined in a few conversations and relaxed a bit after a few pints. We ended up over the road in the Wetherspoons for some food and a pint or two from the surprisingly poor selection on offer.

Tuesday started with a frantic march across town to try and get to the business centre on time. The mornings subjects covered the brewing processes in more detail including Recipe formulation , fermentation and racking, fining and beer conditioning amongst others. The tutors were very knowledgeable and accommodating but went into the science a little bit too much in my opinion especially considering the length of the course. They often went off rambling on chemical reactions/processes etc.. when a simple explanation would have sufficed. Having said that everyone's queries were answered (eventually), it was all good solid stuff, and a good insight into what the longer courses Brewlab offers would entail.

I wasn't particularly looking forward to the the afternoons subjects: Marketing and publicity and Tax and Excise/Profit and Loss but was surprised at how interesting they were. These modules served to bring home the reality of running a brewery and as the tutors said themselves; their job in some ways is to put you off starting a brewery so you won't go into it without realising the pitfalls, hard work and difficulties every start up brewery faces.

5.00pm saw us off with the tutor for more after course R&D (ha, ha), and this time we walked the short distance to the Clarendon on Bull Lane, a pub which while not officially a "brewerytap" enjoys a symbiotic relationship with the small 2.5bbl brewery which operates in the cellar. This was much more my sort of pub, good beer (well some of it), traditional in every sense of the word and with no pretences. Everyone was starting to relax a bit now and as we got to know our fellow course mates better, the conversation and drinks started to flow.

The final morning of the course, and the plan was a 7am start, to walk across Town, get some breakfast and be at the business centre in time to meet our minibus at 8am. Unfortunately nowhere in Sunderland city centre is open before 8.30am, which along with the number of unused retail units is an obvious symptom of the unmissable decline which permeates the whole city. Newcastle this is not.

We were all feeling a bit worse for ware but looking forward to the days itinary of brewery tours/visits. 1st up was a visit to the Bull Lane Brewery we had been in less than 24hrs earlier. This was the smallest brewery we were to visit, a 2.5bbl set up and a real working brewery, with a minimum of modern efficiencies. What really struck me though was the enthusiasm and love for brewing of the brewer (whose name i can't remember embarrassingly).

Next stop was Wylam Brewery a successful rural brewery based in old farm buildings about 30 minutes away in the minbus. Our tutor Chris did the tour and explained how the brewery had evolved from a 5 bbl set up a few years a go into the large and very busy 20bbl set up it now was.
It was useful to see how the brewery had made use of the space it had and the ingenuity they'd employed to help with brewing processes (a reccurring theme on many brewery visits i've been on)

The last brewery tour was another 45 minutes away at Allendale Brewing Company, where Tom Hick has set up a succesful brewery after completing a masters in brewing at Sunderland University. I've had Allendales beers before and always liked them and they were one of the first breweries to list on myBrewerytap. An informative Q&A session with Tom followed and we got a good feeling for the challenges the brewery and its local pub face in the current climate.

After returning to the business centre the last module of the course was a flavour and beer quality assessment session, which saw us learning about different aromas/tastes and studying how to identify 'off' characteristics of beer . This was a really great way to finish the course, and probably the module I enjoyed most.

All that remained after receiving our certificates (woo!) and swapping email addresses was to make our way across town, gather our belongings and make the journey home down the A1 to Yorkshire.

In summary I would say that this is a course anyone who wants to take their interest in beer to the next level would thoroughly enjoy. The Tutors were knowledgeable, varied in opinion and engaging, and i left feeling like I'd had a lot of questions answered.

We now have a much clearer idea of what is involved in brewing and how we are going to approach our project.

Watch this space!

Brewlab course details are available here

SIBA Conference

2010-03-08T11:12:00.000Z

When we started myBrewerytap one of the first things we did was to become a supplier associate member of SIBA (Society of Independent Brewers). SIBA are the main body which represents Independent UK brewers, we had contacted their entire list of members in setting up the site so it seemed right that we should join up for the networking potential.

We decided when approached that it would be beneficial to attend SIBA's annual national conference which was being held for the 2nd year running at the Holiday Inn, Stratford upon Avon.

I headed down from West Yorkshire early on the Thursday morning, not really knowing what to expect but very hopeful I'd at least meet a few brewers and get to drink some decent beer.

After a two and a half hour journey I arrived at the venue and found we'd been allocated a small table within the trade stands area towards the back of the conference hall. I was very pleased to shortly after be joined by our member of staff Katherine who was down to help out for the day.

After I'd set our stand up and before the conference started I had a quick look round to see which other businesses were represented. As you might imagine at a brewers conference the main trade exhibitors were Keg/Bottle suppliers, Maltsters and Hop suppliers. It was great for this non-brewer to see big bags of hops and help myself to a beer (later the next day) on the Charles Faram hop stand made with a new experimental type of hops. I also made sure I picked up plenty of contact info for the brewing project I'm hoping to be involved in later this year.

The format for the conference was a bit strange from an exhibitors point of view. The trade stands are within the conference hall, meaning any exhibitors have to be quiet while speakers are addressing the conference. Any discussions/selling need to take place before the conference starts, in the breaks between speakers or at the end of the day when the conference has finished. This meant a relaxed pace to the event and a much friendlier inclusive feel than other trade exhibitions I've been to in the past.

These time windows were still plenty of time to meet brewers and discuss what we could offer them. Without exception myBrewerytap was well received and it was brilliant to meet some of the breweries who've supported the business from the beginning. It was a great experience to meet and talk to so many brewers and breweries and a real confidence boost to get positive feedback from them.

Around 3pm the conference was actually partitioned from the trade stands so that the AGM could commence, I took this as an opportunity to sample one or two halfs of the beers on offer outside the main hall (@ £0.75 a half) and chat with any "speaker weary' members hanging around outside. After the AGM and the trade stands had closed down for the day there was more opportunity for networking at the "Chairmans Reception" held in the main conference hall complete with free bar. The night progressed steadily and myself and some newly acquainted brewers headed over the road to The Bear for some food and more beers. A surprisingly good meal, lots of great conversation and a night cap of Alesmith IPA (I'd brought down with me), rounded off a great day, and it was time to get some rest.

Fridays format was much the same as Thursdays, with the annual SIBA awards ceremony at the end of the afternoon followed by the members dinner in the evening. To be honest, after the nights excesses I wasn't feeling quite as enthusiastic about beer as I had been 24 hours earlier but still managed to have some meaningful conversations and meet some new breweries/brewers. Unfortunately due to family constraints I wasn't able to stay for the dinner and would be heading back home at the end of the afternoon. I listened to the awards ceremony while quietly packing the stand down and after a few handshakes and goodbyes, headed wearily back up the M1 into the Friday rush hour traffic.

I was pretty apprehensive before the conference, I had no idea how we'd be received as a business and was nervous at the prospect of meeting breweries and selling our business to them. As is often the case there was no reason for me to worry, our business model was very well received and I feel there was a massive benefit in attending. Email and telephone are great but they are no substitute to actually meeting people in person, and chatting over a beer or two.

As I've mentioned before the brewing trade is an unusually friendly business, and as Pete Brown alluded to in his recent post on the conference here, where else would you get competing businesses in the same room openly admiring and complimenting each others products?

I've come away from the two conference days, with renewed confidence and optimism for the future of our new business. I'm really pleased with the way things are going and without going into specifics I'm confident that our customers can look forward to some brilliant new breweries and beers on the site in the coming months.

Roll on next year...!

A full list of this years SIBA winning breweries/beers can be found here

On Sparklers

2010-02-28T14:36:00.000Z

A sparkler is a small plastic nozzle attached to the end of the dispense pipe of a beer engine (hand pull) with a number of small holes in it. Dispensing the beer through a sparkler agitates the beer which has the effect of producing a creamy thick head on the beer. Lovers of sparklers would argue that the resulting pint has improved mouth feel, and a more consistent head which lasts to the bottom of the pint. Everyone else thinks that sparklers change the flavour of the beer by forcing bitterness and aroma from the body of the beer into the head of the pint.

Living in West Yorkshire, I've been brought up on beer served through sparklers. My opinion has until recently always been that sparklers are completely necessary for a pint of real ale; this opinion was largely formed by the fact that every single local pub I drink in uses them in the dispense of their beer.

A sparkler dispensed pint was to me what real ale was all about, I loved the creamy thick body and mouth feel of a well pulled pint and associated sparklers with good beer. Whenever I left the area or went to beer festivals where the beer was served without sparklers (or even worse gravity dispensed straight from the barrel), I was always disappointed. I felt the beer was 'thin', lacking in mouth feel and was particularly put off by the beers appearance which lacking a nice tight head looked flat and watery.

Recently though I've more or less done a complete U turn. In years gone by I would have defended the use of sparklers to the death, (and have openly argued the point with people in pubs) but I've come to realise that what sparklers actually do is disguise and remove subtle flavours from the beer, sacrafice flavour in exchange for texture and make it very hard to judge what the intended natural carbonation level of the beer was ever supposed to be. In this way sparklers 'average out' beers so they all have a similar mouth feel.

I've also come to realise that the use of sparklers in some instances is disguising the quality of bad beer by giving it a head it would never have usually had. I now know that great beer, kept well and pulled through a sparkler-less handpull will still be agitated sufficiently to create a decent foamy head which lasts to the bottom of the glass; and not at the expense of losing too much flavour.

I think one of the reasons I've come to this conclusion is because of the amount of bottle drinking I've been doing where I've been able to concentrate on the flavour of the beer, and forget about how its been served. The use of sparklers is so ingrained in the real ale culture in this area that many people are not keen on drinking bottled ale at all, as they consider it to be an entirely different drink to what they are drinking in the pub which to be fair in terms of texture it is.

Changing my mind on the use of sparklers has not been easy, the issue is a very divisive one, and when not understood properly its easy to see why. Dispensing with a sparkler does create a thicker creamier quite different drink which while loved and defended by those familiar with it, is equally loathed and derided by those to whom beer served this way is completely alien.

In recent weeks I've been in the very confused position when I drink in local pubs of enjoying the thick mouth feel of a sparkler dispensed pint while lamenting the loss of flavour from the body. I've seen both sides of the argument and have decided that flavour is the most important thing and reluctantly I'd now say that a normal hand pulled pint without sparkler should be the order of the day.

To all the people who I've argued this point with over the years I'd like to apologise, you were right and I was wrong. I would quite happily have drunk and defended sparkler dispensed beer for the rest of my days, but the pursuit of good beer has changed my opinion. I would still respect anyones decision to want sparkler pulled beers as I think it does to some degree create a different drink, with a very different texture and the creamy but bitter flavoured mouth feel is very pleasant when its what you're used to.

I will most likely continue to drink beers in the area the way the landlord/lady decides, be that with or without (usually with) sparklers. At least one local pub we drink in serves some beers with sparkler and some without, so perhaps other people round here are changing their minds too?

I haven't asked for a sparkler to be removed yet, but I think it might be only a matter of time....

Lakeland Drinking

2010-02-16T09:28:00.001Z

A lot of my holiday time is spent in the Lake District, maybe more so since I became a father and this half term was to be no exception.

I always look forward to coming up here as its a great excuse to indulge my two favourite pastimes - mountain biking and drinking beer. As far as the biking's concerned the area is a complete Mecca, there are literally hundreds of miles of interlinked bridleways with terrain to suit all abilities, but as this is a beer blog I better mention the beer.

The area is well known for its beer with a large number of breweries from large concerns down to true micros with interesting and varied outputs. The biggest brewery in the region is Jennings of Cockermouth which understandably has a large presence in the pubs of the area. The other breweries are Coniston, Hawkshead, Tirril, Youngs, Keswick, Watermill & Barngates as well as Bitter End, Dent & Hesket Newmarket (who's beers are available direct through myBrewerytap!). I'm sure there are many more I've forgotten but these are the ones I regularly come in to contact with on my trips up here.

I guess its no surprise that such a beautiful tourist area is so well represented breweries wise as there's a never ending supply of tourists craving the true English Lakeland experience which obviously includes a pint or two of local ale. From a personal point of view I'm particularly fond of Hawkshead beers and so first port of call whenever possible is the Hawkshead beer hall at Staveley on the road between Kendal and Windermere. The beer hall is above the brewery and as well as offering a full selection of Hawksheads output sells a decent selection of bottles and arranges a number of regular beer festivals (which annoyingly never seem to coincide with my holidays).

From a food point of view, the beer hall is interlinked with the much loved Wilfs Cafe and drinkers are allowed to bring food, coffee and cakes through to enjoy, which is a great way of making sure the whole family are catered for and dad can enjoy another pint. If you really must try every beer while you're there, the brewery also offer mini sampler trays of their beers where you can choose three, third of a pints from whatever is on the bar that day. I'd thoroughly recommend a visit to the beer hall, it can often be busy but its a great place to enjoy great beers in a relaxed welcoming atmosphere.

Another of my favourite breweries and one that features on myBrewerytap is the excellent Bitter End brewing company of Cockermouth in the western lakes. I've been meaning to visit ever since they joined myBrewerytap and finally got round to it last Sunday. Bitter End make a great range of what I would called "contemporary" full flavoured beers, a particular favourite of mine being their Lakeland Golden a 4.2% abv golden ale, well hopped with various American "C hops" including Chinook and Cascade. These beers are to me representative of the new wave of brewing in the UK, one that's not afraid to be inventive with its recipes, and is committed to converting people over to well made flavoursome beer.

We arrived at the eponymous Bitter End Pub slightly late for our Sunday lunch but with big appetites ready for some great beer and food. We were greeted by Tony Ingham one half of Bitter End Brewing company and settled down to pints of Lakeland Golden, and as much beer talk as we could fit in to our brief visit. The beers used to be brewed on site at the Bitter End pub but in the last few months the brewery has relocated to a bigger premises to keep up with demand. Tony also told us that the brewery has plans for 'one off' specials and seasonal brews; this is a brewery well worth keeping an eye on.

As we enjoyed our Sunday lunches the conversation inevitably turned to the devastating floods which hit the area last November, unlike many of the businesses we witnessed on Main Street, The Bitter End pub luckily stands on slightly higher ground and was unaffected by the flood, escaping with the water eventually coming within feet of the building but no further. The new brewery was not so lucky but apparently the power cuts suffered by many were the main problem and no beer was lost.

The pub has a lovely welcoming interior and I'd thoroughly recommend a trip to The Bitter End, we had great food and great beer in a nice relaxing atmosphere what more could you want? My only regret on this visit was that we couldn't spend longer there enjoying the great beers and Tonys hospitality. I'm not sure if this is correct across the whole industry but from my experience so far there does seems to be an inordinate amount of nice people in the beer trade.

The area in general is also well worth a visit, as Tony pointed out "we have 60% of the Lake District and only 20% of the visitors. If you've had enough of the crowds in Bowness get yourself to the western lakes and make sure you check out the excellent Bitter End in Cockermouth.

Bitter Ends beers are available direct from the brewery through myBrewerytap: here

New Horizons

2010-02-04T05:56:00.000Z

Greetings from Oro Valley, Arizona.

I'm over in America on business with my usual job buying rocks, minerals, crystals and jewellery (yep fairly strange), but since I started myBrewerytap I was looking forward to the trip and an opportunity to visit the US for different reasons.

Due to the direction my life had taken business wise toward the end of last year I decided to re-educate my palate beer-wise, this obviously involved leaving my comfort zone of "session beers" and checking out what was available with the variety of world beers. The starting point for this was visiting the excellent Beer Ritz in Headingley, Leeds; where I instantly gravitated towards the American selection of beers and particularly the IPA's and and Imperial Stouts. 3 or 4 visits, much too much money spent and a very beery Christmas later and my beer perspectives were altered completely.

I was therefore looking forward to my trip to the US for different reasons to previous trips, buoyed not only by the effusive tweets and blogs I was reading (much of which was focusing on the quality of beer emananting from the US) but also as this would be an opportunity to seek out as much, weird, wonderful, extreme, flavoursome beer as I could find.

First impressions were good, a 4 hour stop over in Atlanta spent in the TGI franchise with 3 or 4 pints of very acceptable local Pale Ale (Sweetwater 420). Once arrived in Tucson it wasn't long before my expectations were met fully with a visit to the local beer lovers store "Plaza Liquors". This shop is a real treasure trove, very innocuous on the outside but completely amazing on the inside. A vast selection of big bottles, 6 packs and single bottles to choose from the fridges along with a wide selection of brilliant wines and whiskys meant I was pretty much blown away. This store is well rated because it has a massive range of singles where customers can mix 'sixes', which apparently isn't all that common over here. We bought a fair selection of stuff including a couple of bottles of the excellent Deschutes "The Abyss" a highly sought after beer (not least by Rob from Hopzine) and enjoyed them over the next few days at the hotel.

We've also had chance to visit a couple of the brewpubs in the area, namely "Thunder Canyon Brewery" and "BJ's Brewhouse", the first of which is an idependent brewpub serving a wide range of beers, obviously we tried the lot. The one I remember being the "Good Vibrations DIPA". The BJ's brewhouse was perhaps less authentic being some sort of chain or franchise, but in theIr favour they carried guest beers which meant some wonderful Stone IPA and the SKA brewings massive Decadent DIPA.

To be honest, there has been much more great beer over here than I thought. The popular conception is one of Miller Lite and Budweiser (the crap one), and clearly thats true for the majority but you really don't have to scratch very deep at all over here to find exceptional beer; even the sort of stuff that you'd be overjoyed to find in the UK is not vey far away.

What's mostly surprised me most is not just the availability of great beer, which might be expected in a medium size city like Tuscson, but the sheer variety and spread of what I thought was 'great' craft beer. We are currently staying 40 miles outside of Tucson, in Oro Valley half way to the complete desert of north eastern Arizona but the local bog standard supermarket has 6 packs of Stone Ruination, Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale in 24 pack boxes and most surprisingly of all Samuel Smiths Oatmeal Stout.

I'll blog again about the beer I've bought while over here (providing I can get it home). Even though I've been over here lots before, this trip has been a real eye opener, and I'm feeling pretty spoilt beer wise.

Will a pint of Timmy Taylors ever be the same again?....

2010 Aspirations

2010-01-25T12:19:00.000Z

Little bit late in posting this, but I thought I'd make a list of my aspirations for 2010 before January is over both for myBrewerytap and for me and beer in general.

Hopefully by committing them to this blog, there will be a documented reminder for me to get on with making them all realities! no excuses...

Continue to build the number of breweries listed on our site.
Work with breweries to build their range of beers listed including more mixed cases
Find new cost effective ways to market/spread the myBrewerytap word
Find more interesting ways to 'add value' for our club members, so more glasses, more crisps etc...
Add more features to the site (better events calendar etc...)
Learn more about brewing /brew some beer
Start a pilot brewery
Visit more breweries/Meet more brewers
Visit more beer festivals
Drink more (good) beer
Blog more

There we have it, some maybe more achievable than others, I'll keep the blog updated with my progress!

Session Beer

2010-01-10T18:40:00.000Z

I thought my next blog should be about the type of beer I drink, which is (or has over the last 7 years or so) essentially been what is known as "session beer". I would define session beer as anything below 4.2% (up to 4.5% at a push) ABV.

The reason this is the "type" of beer I've drunk has been partly out of neccessity. The thing is I like going out and drinking beer, and that means drinking new beers and as many of them as I can fit into a "session", without feeling ill. Don't get me wrong I don't pile it down as fast as I can, but I do like to stay out for the duration and remain compus mentis. I want to remember stuff and generally enjoy myself. Through trial and messy error I discovered (not that it's a secret) that the best way to enjoy a 'sesh' fully is to stick below 4.2% ABV.

I've got to be honest here, I don't like getting drunk. Don't get me wrong I love the warm bonhomie and banter involved with drinking and getting "on my way" but as soon as I start to feel a bit 'spinny', I hate it. A journey home in a taxi doing 30mph (that feels like 230mph) is not a good end to the night in my book. Obviously different people have different tolerances but as far as I'm concerned a decent day "session" involves me ,wherever practical, obeying what I call "the 4% rule" (catchy eh?), I've bored loads of my friends with this particular theory over the years but I still maintain there's some merit in obeying the 4% rule, I do sneak in a stronger beer from time to time, maybe at the end of the night but generally if I'm going out and about, especially if a rail trip is involved, this is what I try to do. There's nothing worse that having the "whirlypits" an hour away from home on a hot train with no seat.

I must admit to being a little intimidated by the beers being mentioned by the twitterers Ive started following recently (9% this, 13% that) as these are traditionally not my domain. Up until recently my beer experience has been spent in the pubs of Huddersfield drinking 'session beers'.

After a concious decision (spurred by the influence of reading beer blogs/twitter feeds) to expand my beer horizons, I have been getting into more 'world beers' (courtesy of the excellent Beer Ritz in Headingly, Leeds) and my eyes have been opened wide open. I had spent some time in my late teens drinking weird belgian stuff from a long gone beer shop in Lockwood, Hudds and I was aware of the American "Hops race". Indeed I've drunk Sierra Nevada and Brooklyn Lager wherever I've found them in the last few years, but until very recently Ive probably avoided stronger "out there beer" as my experience has not been in this type of beer. In fact I wouldn't have even associated these beers with what I've been drinking which is strange when you think about it. I suspect the controversial "sparkler" has a part to play in this but thats worth a blog of its own.

I've generally been solidly a UK ale drinker when out and about over the last 7 years, and more recently I've tried to drink decent UK bottled beer when at home (which let's face it is fairly hard, its easy to get bored with the selection generally available, which is why I started myBrewerytap).

Anyway I digress, here are my top 10 session (ie. under 4.5%) beers of the last few years, I realise they are all light summer style beers but these are what I've been mainly drinking in the last few years. I do also love Milds and Porters and will blog on them seperately in future.

1. Marble "Pint" 3.9% - awesome, just awesome.
2. Pictish "Atlas" 4.0% - (I think) it was at the Kelham Island Tavern January 09 and was utterly brilliant, but really any Pictich beer they're generally fantastic, Brewers Gold is very available round here so I take it for granted but its also fantastic imo.
3. Darkstar "Hophead" 3.8% - no intro needed
4. Hawkshead "Lakeland Gold" 4.4% - fantastic, I visit the lakes a lot and always look forward to pints of this.
5. Mallinsons - (take your pick, most recently "Gator" but they're all great. Bottles hopefully available on mBt soon.
6. Brewsters"Decadence" 4.4% - only had this recently but its amazing, like Marble pint.
7. Church End "Goats Milk" 3.8% - lovely thick creamy mouth feel. Hopefully available on mBt soon.
8. Riverhead "Leggars Light" 3.6% - incredible flavour at just 3.6% you could literally drink it all day.
9. Goose Eye "Chinook" - fantastic single hopped beer.
10. Elland Brewery - "Gary Mitchell Best" - another "not like you think a best bitter is at all" beer. I can't find any info on it online but I drink it at the Barge and Barrel Elland and its delicious. See also their "Best Bitter" another not anything like the name implies.

This list could basically go on and on, I haven't included any Yorkshire Dales, Saltaire, Roosters, Howard Town, Bradfield, Acorn, Salamander etc..etc.. all breweries which I go for by default and could have substituted into the list.

Anyway there we go, I've got a lot of respect for brewers who can provide exceptional flavour at low ABV, seems to me that alcohol tastes nice in itself (or no one would drink Vodka right?).

Brewers who can find flavour and balance at a low (sub 4.5%) ABV are my heroes, and these "session" beers are clearly more saleable as you can keep on drinking them all day long!

Cheers...