Guest Blog #11 - Danny Gazzi on Spring 52wbc

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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