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Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 5%
Origin: Wambeek, Vlaams Brabant, Vlaanderen
Website: www.detroch.be
 De Troch Chapeau Lambic De Troch of Wambeek is one of the lambic breweries you really wish you could think more highly of. Its pedigree is impeccable: it’s a farmhouse brewery founded by Pieter de Troch in 1780 in the lambic heartland of Pajottenland, and remains in family ownership, with links by marriage to other lambic-brewing families like De Neve. Unfortunately for those of us who care about such things, its business model since at least the mid-1980s has been to ape the multinational-owned lambic brands and more, with a range of sweetened lambics in ever more peculiar and exotic fruit flavours under the Chapeau brand, seemingly devised by the same consultants that develop air fresheners for toilets. Their glass design, shown left, demonstrates quite how keen they are to deaden the challenge of a traditional lambic — the chapeau in question appears to have been borrowed from Carmen Miranda.
And yet…if you want a reason to feel better about De Troch, here’s one — at the base of all this is a competent, traditional spontaneously fermented lambic, although it rarely emerges in its own right. I experienced it at the Zythos festival in Sint-Niklaas in 2009, poured from a re-used plastic mineral water bottle at the brewery’s stand, and I’ve since discovered it can be found increasingly on draught at a few speciality pubs in the environs of Brussels. I approach pure, unblended lambic with trepidation and with more of a sense of duty than an anticipation of delight, but I can confirm this is one of the most approachable plain lambics I’ve tasted, and well deserving of wider exposure.
My sample was a hazy gold colour with an orange tinge, and almost flat with a few bubbles by way of a head. A complex sharp typically lambic aroma presented to the nose, with mineral and orange notes and a hint of mature cheese. The palate was tart but relatively soft, with lemon juice and a trace of candy, its forgiving sweetness not overstated but enough to drive the pursing quality to the edges. A long, sappy, chewy and sourish finish had a light marmalade touch. Purists will no doubt advocate the steely acidity of a Cantillon or a Girardin — this was as genuine, but easier, and certainly not deserving of the fruit syrup atrocities it is normally condemned to suffer.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/de-troch-oude-lambik/24075/1/2/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 10%
Origin: Innerleithen, Scottish Borders, Scotland
Website: www.traquair.co.uk
 Traquair House by James McIntosh Patrick, National Galleries of Scotland Traquair House is the oldest inhabited stately home in Scotland and a new wave craft brewer ahead of its time. In 1965, several years before the launch of CAMRA, the rediscovery of Britain’s diverse brewing heritage and the subsequent rise of the microbrewery, the then laird, Peter Maxwell-Stuart, discovered an Elizabethan brewhouse in the grounds (what a thing, to own a house so huge you stumble upon bits of it you never knew existed) and brought it back into use with the help of Sandy Hunter from the nearby Belhaven Brewery, now a subsidiary of Greene King. Peter has since died but his daughter Catherine continues the family tradition.
For years the brewery turned out only one beer, Traquair House Ale, to a traditional recipe, but started to diversify a bit in the 1990s, and also experimented with a few commemorative ales. In 2001 it celebrated its 1000th brew with a limited extra-strong edition of its signature beer which, like its standard products, is filtered but unpasteurised and capable of ageing. I found a batch at Ville Nouvelle Wines, in a basement on Broughton Street in Edinburgh’s New Town (thus the name), a nifty little wine merchant that also does a small but well chosen range of Scottish microbrews. Noting the best before date of December 2010, I bought a trio with a view to seeing how they developed.
I first opened one in 2003, discovering a soothing, rich and well-balanced very dark brown beer with a reddish tinge and a moderate foamy head. A rummy, cakey aroma had Turkish Delight notes, heralding a prickly malty cakey palate with rum and raisin and blackcurrant and mint flavours reminscent of Australian Cabernet Sauvignon wines. A toffeeish warming finish had more malt, burnt toffee, and lingering hints of subtle smoke and hops.
In January 2009 I dipped into my stash again to find a dark mahogany beer with a bubbly yellow head and a finish that had turned leathery, with meaty gravy notes and spice. There were also thick gravy notes in the sweetish, rummy, spirity palate, with mint and dry wood to balance the maltiness. A long and complex finish dried out with a touch of roast, more mint, powdery hops and woody red wine tannins. Surprisingly the beer slipped down easily, registering little of its true alcoholic weight.
I’ve still one bottle left which, I suspect, has a good few years’ life left in it. Look out for future reports.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/traquair-1000th-brew/11994/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 11%
Origin: Ashford-in-the-Water, Derbyshire, England
Website: www.thornbridgebrewery.co.uk
Thornbridge is currently one of the most exciting and innovative breweries in Britain, complimenting a range of high quality cask ales with a selection of bottled specialities including fine India Pale Ales and Imperial Stouts and the unclassifiable dark honey beer Bracia. It arose from a collaboration with Sheffield’s Kelham Island brewery at stately home Thornbridge Hall, originally to provide own-brand beer to sell to visitors. It was soon earning a string of awards, and gave a launch platform to Martin Dickie, one of those since responsible for creating the headline-grabbing BrewDog brewery in Aberdeenshire. At the end of 2009, Thornbridge expanded to a new site in Bakewell though brewing still takes place at the hall.
Thornbridge’s place on the rapidly developing international craft brewing circuit is demonstrated by Alliance, a remarkable limited edition that emerged from a collaboration with boundary-pushing Italian head brewer Stefano Cossi and one of the world’s most famous brewers and leading advocate of beer and food matching, the ever-globetrotting Garrett Oliver of New York City’s Brooklyn brewery. In March 2007 the pair brewed a barley wine at Thornbridge specifically for barrel ageing, dosing it with champagne yeast to achieve a high gravity. Some of the resulting beer was matured for 18 months in madeira casks, some was matured for a similar time in refill Pedro Ximinéz sherry casks, while a “control” portion was matured conventionally for comparison.
All three versions were bottled in August 2008, bottle conditioned in champagne-style half bottles like a fine gueuze. I was dead pleased to receive a full set for review when they were finally released in April 2009 — it’s not often you get the chance to taste the results of such an experiment from such a reliable source at your own leisure.
The non-wood aged version, simply called Alliance Reserve, is a fine beer in its own right. It’s amber, with a fine lacy off-white head, and sour plums, bitter herbs and fruity balsamic vinegar notes on a toasty amber malt aroma. There’s a smooth, malty and very fruity palate with dark oily marmalade and lighter citrus flavours to shock the tongue, a savoury note, toffee and whiskyish retronasals. A very satisfying fruity-malty finish has a bite of hops and lingering chewy resins.
Alliance Madeira Reserve is recognisably the same beer but adds an obviously wood aged dimension. It’s similarly amber though my sample was cloudier than the plain Reserve, and has a thick yellowy-white head. There’s wood and wine notes on a mellow casky aroma with notes of whisky and salt. The palate is big and complex with hops rumbling over a sweetish winy background, and a lightly acidic pippy hint, perhaps from the maturation, perhaps from something that intruded during bottling. Wood and toffee flavours spring up on the swallow, and there are vanilla notes and warming alcohol on the fruity-malty finish, ending after a long development with the dryness of sucked wood.
The sherry cask version, labelled Alliance PX Reserve, emerges as the best of the three, with a lustrous but mellow balance and a heady brew of complex flavours that knocks it up into world class. This amber beer with a fine white head has a mellow but estery fruit salad, sherbet and hop aroma. A rich and soft malt palate has figgy fruit, buttery tones, brazils and walnuts, vanilla, woody notes and a distance dance of hops. The bitterness notably steps forward on the tongue-drying finish, but still balanced by satisfyingly dense malt and fruit. A truly fine beer that’s perfect for lengthy savouring.
Read more about these beers at ratebeer.com:
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/thornbridge-alliance-reserve-2007/98859/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/thornbridge-alliance-madeira-reserve-2007/98780/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/thornbridge-alliance-px-reserve-2007/98778/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 5.8%
Origin: Esquelbec, Nord, France
Website: www.brasseriethiriez.com
 Brasserie Thiriez Daniel Thiriez seems incapable of making uninteresting beer: everything I’ve tasted from his self-named brewery has had something to say for itself as well as being consistently of high quality. The brewery is in the historic beer country of French Flanders, still dotted with old-established farmhouse breweries producing the traditional bière de garde style of the region. Daniel’s work pays respect to that heritage without letting it prevent him from pushing the boundaries and innovating in the more recent tradition of the international craft brewer.
Vieille Brune is a case in point, a beer clearly inspired by the sour red ale of East Flanders, some way north on the other side of the Belgian border, but reconceived as a personal interpretation that also connects with the growing interest among specialist drinkers in wood-aged beers. Matured in French oak casks previously used for wine, it was originally conceived as an ultra-limited edition one-off, though more of the same now seems to be trickling from the brewery. I managed to persuade the effusive Simon Thillou of the Cave à Bulles beer shop in Beaubourg, Paris, to sell me a 750ml bottle from the small stock he was keeping back for regular customers, and it was bottle 60 of 250. That was back in July 2008, and I hung onto the beer for six months before tasting.
Vieille Brune pours a very dark ruby brown, with a smooth and plentiful fawn head, and a fruity, woody, balsamic aroma with hints of orange peel that immediately calls to mind the East Flanders classic, Rodenbach. A very complex and sourish malty palate has dates, brown sauce, chocolate, violets, bitter orange and minerally retronasals. The swallow is smooth and fluffy, leading to a tangy slightly citric finish with wood and dirty metal notes.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/thiriez-vieille-brune/84726/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 5.6%
Origin: Masham, North Yorkshire, England
Website: www.theakstons.co.uk
 Theakston Old Peculier Theakston Old Peculier is a stalwart icon of British real ale. Back in the 1970s it was the sort of beer enthusiasts discussed in hushed and reverential tones, with a pedigree dating back to the 1890s, appreciated not only for its quality but for its heritage as one of the few surviving examples of what appeared to be the fast disappearing traditional style of old ale.
And then there was that wonderful, evocative name with its aberrant spelling, the sort of name a roomful of brainstorming marketeers wouldn’t have come up with in a month of focus groups, but which seemed to connote a whole value system for the real ale movement. Inevitably it became the target first of homage then of parody and ridicule.
In fact the name refers not to the beer but to the Peculier of Masham, a mediaeval adminstrative arrangement under which the brewery’s home town was a theocracy, exempt from secular law. The town, in the Yorkshire Dales, was once an important brewing centre, and Theakston is the sole surviving historic brewery –Masham’s second brewery, Black Sheep, is a new wave establishment presided over by a prodigal member of the Theakston family. Theakston is also remarkable as one of the few independents to emerge intact from an entanglement with a multinational: between 1987 and 2004 it was owned by Scottish & Newcastle (now Heineken) but then the family bought it back.
Theakston’s most famous product is brewed from pale and crystal malts, maize, Challenger, Fuggles and Goldings hops, cane sugar and caramel, emerging a dark amber brown colour with a little off-white head. The aroma is malty and treacly with big estery fruit and a cinder toffee whiff. A sweet fruit cake palate is lifted by estery fruit and roast notes, while a soft and lightly cleansing swallow leads to a long and complex finish that turns surprisingly dry after a sweetish start, with chewy vegetal hops over soft malt and a late note of brown sugar. Overall it’s a big and satisfying beer.
I hadn’t tasted Old Peculier for some years — these days I’m usually drinking a beer new to me — but spotting it on offer at the 2009 National Winter Ales Festival in Manchester, alongside a plethora of upstart micros, I took the opportunity to update my tasting notes by revisiting an old friend. I’m delighted to report that, in the age of myriad micros both revivalist and inventive, where things old and peculiar are thankfully no longer so central to the ideology of beer appreciation, Old Peculier still stands up very well indeed. In top condition, the cask version remains a benchmark of the style.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/theakston-old-peculier-cask/44739/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 7.3%
Origin: Santa Rosa, California, USA
Website: www.russianriverbrewing.com
 Russian River Temptation Barrel Aged Ale My first encounter with a US brewpub was a fortuitous one. When I first crossed the Atlantic some years back, it was to San Francisco, but rather than head straight for the city we first went to Santa Rosa in the North Bay Area, where my partner’s aunt and uncle live. The conversation turned to beer — at that time my knowledge of the US scene was relatively slim. Ian’s relatives bemoaned the loss of their local in 4th Street, which had been taken over by a craft brewery, Russian River. I’d probably like it — they did unusual beers and decent pizzas, but they weren’t as homely as the old place. We went for lunch: yes, the pizzas were good, and of course I was very interested in the beers. The hop hit from a half of Pliny the Elder Double IPA almost knocked me over. More intriguing still was the array of corked bottles purporting to contain “Belgian Style Ales” and “Oak Aged Beers.”
I’d unwittingly stumbled upon one of the leading lights of the West Coast craft brewing scene, and I’ve since returned with eager anticipation to both the brewpub and its beers. The area is part of Sonoma County, second only to neighbouring Napa County as a centre of activity for the Californian wine industry, and brewery founder Vinnie Cilurzo is a winemaker who first set up the brewery on Korbel’s vineyard in Guerneville, to the north. The town is on the Russian River, so called because it was first explored by Russian trappers, thus the brewery name, but it’s probably more famous as a major gay resort. The brewery separated from the vineyard in 2003 when the brewpub in Santa Rosa opened — brewing does still take place on site but expanding sales resulted in the business adding additional capacity on an out-of-town site in 2007.
Multi-award winning Temptation is one of the brewery’s most appreciated specialities and one that best illustrates the vinous influence on Russian River’s approach to beer. It’s a strongish Belgian-influenced blond ale aged that has a secondary fermentation in French oak chardonnay barrels, including a dose of brettanomyces, and is also conditioned in the bottle. Brewed in limited batches, it doesn’t come cheap — this 750ml bottle from batch 004X3 came from San Francisco’s excellent City Beer Store and set me back $22.99.
The beer is a cloudy blond with some fine white head. It has a sour, cidery and old wine aroma with an oaky touch. The base pale malt comes through on soft and smooth palate with tropical fruit notes, but you can’t ignore the complex cider and wine like flavours from the ageing process, masterfully integrated with the sourness in excellent balance. A woody and sappy finish has a gentle hint of hops, with apple and oak flavours emerging and a warming quality that’s unusual for the strength.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/russian-river-temptation/13145/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 10%
Origin: Roeselare, Oost Vlaanderen
Website: www.rodenbach.be
 Rodenbach Vin de Céréale Rodenbach of Roeselare is a Belgian beer icon, one of the key breweries celebrated by Michael Jackson back in the 1980s when he first introduced the country’s remarkable beer culture to the wider world. It’s renowned then as now for perpetuating the historic style of sour red East Flanders ale and the traditional technology behind it, notably the brewery’s 294 “foeders”, the Slavonian oak maturation vessels, some of them more than 150 years old, that host the microflora, including brettanomyces, responsible for the beer’s characterisitic acidity. Beer historians delight in this living connection to a western European brewing tradition of maturing “stale” beer for blending that also links to the tantalisingly near-lost history of British porter and old ale.
Rodenbach was founded in 1836 by an expatriate from Koblenz and remained in the same family for generations. Since 1998 it’s been owned by national brewery Palm, who despite the fears of beer lovers have proved relatively responsible custodians, recognising the uniqueness of Rodenbach’s products as its unique selling point.
In 2007 the brewery capitalised on its reputation with vintage dated Vin de Céréale (grain wine), a beer that clearly responds to both the US interest in barrel aged limited edition brews and the growing Belgian penchant for posh beers to serve with food. The standard Rodenbach is a blend of aged and new beers; Grand Cru is the pure aged beer and Vin de Céréale goes a step further in presenting a higher gravity product matured for three years in a specific vessel, number 132, in attractive paper-wrapped form.
The beer pours a clear amber with hardly any head, yielding a biscuity, oaky and corky aroma with notes of vanilla bread and wine and a pencilley perfume. The palate is acidic, winey and very complex, starting almost as tart as a lambic then sweetening up with cherry flavours. A tartish winy finish has more oak on the tongue. Overall this is a delicately flavoured beer which I found very moreish when I sampled it one quiet afternoon in the famous Kulminator specialist beer pub in Antwerpen, accompanied by an excellent portion of oudekaas and mustard.
Zie een videoclip van de Rodenbachse foeders van de TV-serie Tournée Générale hier / See a video clip of the Rodenbach vats from the TV series Tournée Générale here: http://video.canvas.be/rodenbach
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rodenbach-vin-de-cereale/81890/
Top Tastings 2009
CAMRA North London tasting 2010
A shorter version of this review was first published in BEER February 2010 as part of a piece about beers to taste with chocolate. For more beers tasted with chocolate, see Hoggleys Solstice Stout.
Also known as IPA in the USA, under which name it was reviewed.
ABV: 5.4%
Origin: Hertford, Hertfordshire, England
Website: www.redsquirrelbrewery.co.uk
 Red Squirrel IPA in the USA A more experimental pairing to taste with chocolate [compared to the darker beers reviewed in previous posts] is a hoppy IPA: again bitter chocolate notes will calm the hops as the sweetness of the confectionery offsets them. A great new discovery among contemporary British IPAs is Red Squirrel American IPA (formerly IPA in the USA) from a Hertford-based micro.
Established in 2004 by Gary Hayward, the brewery is a supporter of red squirrel conservation in the UK, where this native species has largely been supplanted by the North American grey squirrel, but is unafraid to use North American hops, as with the Cascade and Chinook that appear alongside Fuggles in this beer. Complexity is also added by a grist that includes pale crystal, carapils and Munich malt alongside standard pale ale malt.
My sample was a good amber colour, if slightly cloudy, with a foamy yellowish head and thick resiny tobacco like aromas with chocolate and tangerine notes. A notably US-inspired firm malt palate had peppery grapefruit juice hops and a touch of biscuit crystal malt. A smooth swallow heralded a long bittersweet finish with developing rooty pepper hops and grassy pineppale flavours. Tasting with chocolate brought out some tropical fruit notes and contextualised the bitterness. “You’ll either love it or hate it,” says Gary, and when I presented the beer at a tasting it did indeed split the room, but I think it’s a very approachable British version of this newly reinterpreted style.
One final point: when tasting with chocolate, forget Dairy Milk and go for the premium stuff – great beer deserves great chocolate, and 70% plain works best.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/red-squirrel-ipa-in-the-usa/39104/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 10%
Origin: San Marcos, California, USA
Website: www.portbrewing.com
 Port Old Viscosity Ale Port Brewing has its origins in the Pizza Port restaurant founded by Vince and Gina Marsaglia at Solana Beach, California, one of the pioneers of the craft-beer-and-pizza formula now found throughout the USA. The original Pizza Port brewery was opened in 1987 and as the business expanded through more restaurants and increasing external demands for beer, the Marsaglias decided to increase their brewing capacity, in 2006 taking over the old Stone brewery site in San Marcos, though they also still brew at Solana Beach. The story is complicated further by the fact that the San Marcos brewery is also the source of the über-cult Lost Abbey range of beers, produced under a separate brand.
Old Viscosity is a fine name for a strong and special ale and the beer behind the name doesn’t disappoint. It’s brewed from a complex grist of two row pale, US and English crystal, Carafa III and chocolate barley malts, with wheat malt and German Magnum hops, and two yeast strains, including White Labs California Ale yeast. My bottle came from the welcoming Ledgers Liquors store in Berkeley, a treasure trove of rare craft beers and speciality spirits.
The beer pours near-black with amber highlights and a creamy beige head. There’s a thick and distinctive aroma of chocolate, spiced prunes and raisins, leading to an intense but smooth palate, vinous and chocolatey, spicy around the edges and with a tangy tart note, oily orange flavours and emerging hops. There’s more of that tang as the beer goes down, and the finish has dark chocolate cake, marmalade and roast notes, with slowly unfolding hops, late prunes and chocolate and a whiff of bacon smoke. An impressively complex beer that more than fills its gravity with flavour.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/port-brewing-old-viscosity/19220/
Beer sellers: Scottish Real Ale Shop
Top Tastings 2009 (bottled 2007), Top Tastings 2011 (draught 2010)
ABV: 10%
Origin: Quoyloo, Orkney, Scotland
Website: www.orkneybrewery.co.uk
 Orkney Dark Island Reserve One of Britain’s northernmost breweries and one of Scotland’s strong collection of distinctive micros, Orkney was founded in a derelict schoolhouse by an Englishman in 1988. It later formed a partnership with the Atlas brewery and since 2006 both have been owned by Orcadian restaurateur Gordon Sinclair.
The standard Dark Island, in cask or filtered bottled versions, is the brewery’s signature brand and a natural choice on which to base its move into the upmarket gourmet beer sector. The Reserve is a souped up version of Dark Island at twice the strength that has been matured for three months in refill malt whisky casks from an uncredited Orkney distillery — in fact the world renowned Highland Park. It comes handsomely presented in 750ml swing top bottles labelled with a gyle number — mine was Gyle 2, brewed in June 2007 and one of 1,498 bottles.
The mahogany beer has a thick light brown head with a complex spirity malt aroma yielding notes of vanilla, artichoke and liqeur coffee and a slightly acidic vinous hint. There’s a soft chocolatey palate, again with a lightly acidic touch, chewy sappy fruit and peaty whisky notes. A drying well-balanced finish has oak and ashy roast, with salty, lingering with complex salt and blackcurranty flavours to mull over. It’s warming but nicely soft, one of the gentler examples of whisky cask-matured ale.
Update September 2011: There have been other releases of Dark Island Reserve since, including a cask version, still at the full 10%, that appeared in summer 2011. The recipe, is far as I’m aware, is unchanged: pale, chocolate and crystal barley malts, malted wheat, and First Gold and Goldings hops.
A sample of the cask beer tasted at Wetherspoon’s Counting House in Glasgow was jet black, with a fine beige head and a very fruity rum and raisin aroma. Slick dark cake and drying wood notes dominated the palate, with a slightly aged sharpness and developing oak, sultana and chocolate flavours. The beer warmed the mouth and slipped down silkily, with more chewy wood and a touch of molasses on a long and dry but still rich and sticky finish. Rich and sophisticated but astonishingly on sale at only £1.25 a half pint (285ml), this must have been the beer bargain of the year.
Orkney’s sister brewery Atlas, incidentally, was closed in 2010 and all production including the Atlas brands centred at the Quoyloo site.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/orkney-dark-island-reserve/66103/
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