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Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
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"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
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 Gueuze Girardin 1882 (Zwart etiket) ABV: 5%
Origin: Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, Vlaams-Brabant, Vlaanderen
Website: www.brouwerijgirardin.com
Date: 8 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. Thankfully this world classic is still very much around, and you can find a more recent review of it for my 2012 Top Tastings here.
Perhaps not as famous as other artisanal lambic houses like Boon and Cantillon, the old established Girardin brewery in St-Ulriks-Kapelle is certainly among the first division, and it was good to see it represented at 2000’s Catford Beer Festival. The black label identifies its most traditional gueuze, which is unfiltered and even uncentrifuged and consequently pours a very cloudy straw colour from its champagne-style bottle.
There is some straw on the aroma too, and also a very acidic appley, rough cider whiff. Despite the pungent nose the beer itself is very fine, slightly kinder than the uncompromising Cantillon but still startlingly dry and acidic. The palate is very complex with all sorts of aromatic flavours: hay, apples, some pineapple and a lemon-juice sourness. The beer lingers long at the finish, rich with grapefruit and sour apple flavours.
This is certainly one of the best examples of the style I’ve tasted, with just the right balance of stimulating acidity, a quality it shares with good fino sherry. If you ever meet a wine buff who scoffs at the idea of beer being sophisticated, this might just be the bottle to convince them otherwise.
 Hartwall Lapin Kulta ABV: 5.2%
Origin: Tornio, Lappi, Finland
Website: www.lapinkulta.fi
Date: 8 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. I’m certainly no longer the same beer drinker I was when I wrote the opening sentence below.
The brewery was founded simply as the Torneå Bryggeri in 1873 and taken over by Finnish national brewer Hartwall in 1980. The recipe was changed in 2007 and the ABV reduced to 4.5%. Though promotion for the beer still makes much of its Lapp roots, the brewery itself was closed in 2010 with production moved much further south, to Lahti. There have been several claimants to the title of the world’s northernmost brewery since: currently it’s the Svalbard Bryggeri in Norway.
I confess I’m not the greatest fan of pale lagers but I’m always prepared to give the better reputed ones a chance. This, the flagship beer of Finnish national Hartwall’s outpost in Tornio, Lapland, comes highly recommended in several beer guides so when I spotted it at specialist beer shop Bottles it seemed an obvious purchase.
It’s golden-yellow in colour and pours with a decent but not overly long-lived head; the initial aroma is intensely herbal and hoppy (Saaz and Hersbrucker) but this gives way to more restrained hops and a little toasty malt. In the mouth it has a clean but very malty palate at first, with a gentle but nonetheless clear note of hops present from the start, and a pleasantly full mouthfeel with a good mousse without being over-gassy.
Some complexity then develops, perhaps attributable to the unmalted grains that make up some of the grist, with fruity notes like sour apple and melon and even an alcoholic hint of whisky despite the moderate gravity. In the finish, the hops become more pronounced but never over-bitter, and the beer leaves you with a tangy aftertaste and a hint of grapefruit.
The brewery is the most northerly in the world and apparently takes its liquor from a fjord, which led me to expect something bracingly refreshing, but actually this sweetish, malty beer is more on the warming and comforting side – which, when you think about it, is a rather more desirable quality in such a cold and inhospitable part of the world.
 Prignon Fantôme Saison ABV: 8%
Origin: Soy, Luxembourg, Wallonie
Website: www.fantome.be
Date: 8 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit.
Dany Prignon is still brewing his eccentric beers today: indeed it appears hey have had far more influence on international craft notions of ‘saison’ and ‘farmhouse ale’ than more straightforward examples like Dupont. Re-reading my notes on the vegetal hop aromas and an ‘acidity bordering on rough cider’ I’m no longer quite as convinced if this influence was quite such a good thing!
A cult following attends this tiny farmhouse brewery in the Belgian province of Luxembourg, which looks like a tourist brochure study in rurality: it has even inspired a ‘Confrèrie’ who dress up in white cloaks and sashes to celebrate both the beer and other local produce. Some bottles appeared at the 2000 Great British Beer Fesitval and a glass of the product, with its friendly ghost label, quickly demonstrates its appeal.
As a bottle-conditioned artisanal blond beer in a champagne-type bottle from rural Wallonia, it is often lumped in with the Saisons but it is really an idiosyncratic speciality of its own, flavoured with locally-collected herbs and surely also including some wheat. It’s light amber in colour, with a thick sediment that makes it pour very cloudy, and an intense estery nose with a pungent hops and yeast aroma that borders on the vegetal.
The condition is lively, the first swallow conveying an explosion of fudgey malt and a summery fruitbowl of flavours including strawberry, raspberry and blueberry. There is also some straw-like character, and an acidity reminiscent of rough cider. The long finish affords numerous return appearances from the berry fruits, along with an elusive hint of spicy hops.
It is also dangerously drinkable – the label had soaked off the bottle and I was taken aback when I looked up the ABV after drinking the stuff. Just the sort of beer you hope will emerge from the bucolic idyll depicted on the website: I’m sending off for my white cloak and sash right now.
 Former label for Scheldebrouwerij Lamme Goedzak. ABV: 6.5%
Origin: Bergen op Zoom, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands
Website: www.scheldebrouwerij.com
Date: 8 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit.
Scheldebrouwerij, founded in 1994 and named after the Schelde river, became one of the few border-crossing microbreweries in 2007 when it moved to Meer, just across the Belgian border in Antwerpen province. It remained in Dutch ownership, brewing the same brands largely aimed at the Dutch market, but the kudos of being a Belgian brewer resulted in a marked increase in sales.
Lamme Goedzak is still in the range, though its ABV has been raised to 7%. It is indeed named after the character from the Tijl Uilenspiegel stories that I describe, although not from the original folk tales but from their 1867 retelling by author Charles de Coster. Once again I seem to have had a notable sensitivity to hops.
This Zeeland [actually Noord-Brabant]-based craft brewery seems to have become a regular fixture at the Great British Beer Festival and 2000 brought another batch of specialities. Lamme Goedzak is, if I remember rightly, a fat and jolly character who plays comedy sidekick to Flemish folk hero Tijl Uilenspiegel in the traditional stories, and there he is on the label against a backdrop of the towers of Bruges, stuffing his face with chicken legs and about to quaff a foaming mug of ale.
The beer inside, however, is far too austerely hoppy and also rather too strong for jolly quaffing fodder. Though described as a golden ale, it’s deep enough to be a pale and its hop character edges it in that direction too. Poured without the sediment as recommended on the label, the beer throws a thick and persistent head that offers up a rich aroma of spicy hop with some phenolic notes, reminiscent of ginger marmalade on toast.
The condition is lively, and the hops are immediately prominent in the mouth as well, set against a background of honeyed malt (the beer contains candy sugar) and hints of perfumed fruitiness with lime and pineapple. The hops continue to assert themselves through a grapefruit-dry finish, and linger long after the last swallow. The overall effect isn’t dissimilar to one of those ultra-hoppy pale ales from the USA, though the candy sugar and aromatic German hops give it a Belgian abbey flourish that ventures into Orval territory, but with little of the latter’s complexity.
A well-made beer, then, but it could do with being either more subtle or, given the cheerful presentation, less forbidding in its bitterness.
 Old Chimneys Brewery AKA: Two Thousand Year Ale
ABV: 9.5%
Origin: Market Weston, Suffolk, England
Website: www.oldchimneysbrewery.com
Date: 7 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. Old Chimneys is now something of a veteran artisanal brewer, established in 1995 behind brewer Alan Thomson’s home. It moved to its current site on a nearby farm in 2001. This particular beer appears to have been very much a one-off.
My flatmate returned with this unusual microbrewed Millennium ale from – of all places – a Chinese restaurant. When we drank it in July it was some months past its stated best before date of 1 January 2000 but, unsurprisingly for a bottle-conditioned beer of this strength, it was clearly still in fine condition.
The millennial gimmick in this case involves looking back to the last millennium, thus the label in cod Anglo-Saxon: even the brewery name is given as ‘Eald Flews Breowany’. Additionally, the beer pays tribute to early brewers by including the herb known as alecost [Tanacetum balsamita], once a common flavouring and preservative ingredient in brewing.
The beer is dark brown with little head and a malty alcoholic nose; there is a tarry, malty, Marmitey palate offset by alcohol and developing bitterness, some Brettanomyces-like ‘horse-blanket’ and vegetal hints, and a long bittersweet fruit finish with some aromatic flowery notes.
Though the brewer has chickened out of going completely retro and leaving out hops entirely, the full, slightly cloying flavour of dark malts expresses itself forthrightly and it’s easy to imagine this is something like pre-hop beers might have been. Whether it’s pleasant or not I can’t quite decide.
 Trophy Special, as brewed in Castle Eden. ABV: 5.5%
Origin: Castle Eden, Durham, England
Website: www.cameronsbrewery.com
Date: 7 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit.
The history of Castle Eden, before and since, is rather tangled. Founded in 1827, it was acquired by Whitbread in 1963, and saved by a management buyout when threatened with closure in 1998, as mentioned in the review. Whitbread retained the brands, which it licensed back to the new owner. In 2002, however, the brewery was closed anyway when the owning company bought out another historic brewery, Camerons in Hartlepool, and relocated all production there.
The Hartlepool brewery was known for a while as Castle Eden & Camerons but the Castle Eden brands disappeared completely between 2009 and 2013 following a dispute with current owners AB InBev on the renewal of the license. Today, Camerons is once again brewing cask best bitter Castle Eden Ale, plus a keg 4% version of Trophy, though under the Camerons name.
The County Durham brewery recently regained its independence through a management buyout when threatened with closure by Whitbread, and as a farewell present from the big brewer the staff were each presented with a bottle of commemorative pale ale based on Whitbread’s Trophy Special recipe. Now the brewery is making a similar – unfortunately pasteurised – beer, available commercially through outlets like Tesco, in a rather handsome old-fashioned bottle.
The beer has a delicate, faintly spicy hop aroma, and a firm, fruity malt palate with a touch of wood and slight hints of ginger biscuit that are unfortunately rather obscured by over-carbonation. Hop bitterness, ginger and pepper spice linger in a warming finish. Pleasant and well-made but not as special as all that.
 Your fanmail to Frank Boon arrives here. ABV: 5%
Origin: Lembeek, Vlaams-Brabant, Vlaanderen
Website: www.boon.be
Date: 7 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. This particular beer is something of a mystery as I’ve never been able to find another reference to it since and haven’t been able to confirm the ABV. I suspect it was a one-off strong Faro that Boon racked into cask for a CAMRA festival. If anyone can shed any light on it, I’d be grateful.
This seasonal line from the renowned lambic brewer based in Lembeek, Frank Boon, was on sale at the Catford Beer Festival 2000, emerging foaming from a cask and having to be left in the fridge in a jug to settle. It’s an extremely unusual beer that seems to be in an idiosyncratic category of its own, probably best described as an intensely-flavoured cross between a brown ale and a Faro (it bears some similarity to Boon’s highly distinctive ‘double Faro’, Pertotale).
It had a sourish, hoppy bouquet, a fine bead, and a whole spectrum of intriguing flavours in the mouth, from brown sugar on the tongue through fruity, sourish hints of cherry and blackberry to a long finish alternating between sweet and refreshingly sour, with hints of herbal hops. The sourness indicated a lambic presence, but I’d suspect there was a more conventional dark ale in there too, as well as spices and some sort of sweetening. If you like your beers dark and interesting, you’ll love this.
 Berliner Kindl Weissbier mit Schuss Waldmesiter ABV: 2.5%
Origin: Berlin, Germany
Website: www.berliner-kindl.de
Date: 6 September 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD), where it required webmasters Tom and Jasper to create a new ‘beer colour’ symbol in green! I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit.
There have been major changes with Berliner Kindl since this review was written. Its owner the Oetker group (known at the time of the review as Binding) grew to take over its longstanding rival Schultheiss, and in 2006 its historic West Berlin brewery in Neukölln was closed, though it’s still standing as a listed building and a microbrewery operates on part of the site. Brewing for both brands is now concentrated at a plant in another suburb, Alt-Hohenschönhausen.
Even more remarkably, Berliner Weisse has undergone an unexpected revival largely outside its home city, with beers inspired by the style, some of them rather loosely, part of the regular repertoire of craft brewers worldwide.
The Berlin style of wheat beer is one of the world’s most unusual and hardest-to-find beer styles. Only two breweries in Berlin, Schultheiss and Kindl, still produce it, and although it still has a reasonable local following, it is rarely seen outside its home territory even in Germany. Kindl, the largest producer, is part of the Binding group and seems to have been a little more visible lately with a small presence at a handful of beer festivals in Britain. Now some of its beers have turned up on the shelves of Bottles, the [long since closed] specialist beer shop in Stepney, East London.
Unfortunately they’re not the pure product: this very sour, lactic beer is almost invariably served in Berlin pubs with a ‘Schuss’, a dash of raspberry or Waldmeister syrup, and Bottles have only the ready-mixed versions, already flavoured with syrup, which the brewery produces for home convenience. The Waldmeister variety is flavoured with the herb woodruff, which grows wild around Berlin. The drink boasts one of the most shockingly unexpected colours ever to have emerged from a beer bottle, a lurid green that would look more at home garnishing a 99 from your local Mr Whippy ice cream van! The syrup colours the head as well, although this lasted only briefly and was not as thick as the photos I’ve seen of the draught version.
The aroma is restrained and barley-sugar sweet, with a faint hint of hops (added, according to the label, as extract) and a dry, slightly medicinal scent from the woodruff. The taste is initially honey-sweet and faintly herby, soft in the mouth with restrained carbonation, then an intriguing sourness rapidly emerges that is quite unlike any other sour beer I’ve tried. The finish is gentle, initially apple-citric but mellowing into boiled sweets and traces of the herb. If it’s conventional beer you’re after, you will probably be disappointed at how any recognisably beer-like qualities are obscured by the added syrup, but at such a low gravity, it’s probably better to enjoy this one more as an interesting and unusual adult semi-soft drink.
 Jenlain, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France ABV: 6%
Origin: Jenlain, Nord, Hauts-de-France, France
Website: www.jenlain.fr
Date: 14 August 2000
Another review from the archive written for the pioneering Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD). I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. Another beer and brewery that are still very much around, although sadly no longer stocked in Sainsbury’s. When I reviewed this beer it was labelled Bière Blonde Spéciale — in 2005 it was renamed No. 6, and a new stronger 7.5% Jenlain Blonde introduced.
The Jenlain brand is one of the best-known amongst bières de garde, the Duyck brewery having pioneered the re-marketing of the style in the 1980s. This blond variety has recently appeared in Sainsbury’s in a redesigned, very distinctive screw-top green glass bottle with a clear printed label that departs dramatically from the ‘traditional’ retro style in which such beers usually appear and approaches the aesthetics of alcopop marketing!
The beer inside, however, is reassuringly good. Though sharing the colour and something of the hop character of a pils-type lager, and recommended to be served cold (5-6°C), the designation ‘Spéciale’ and the notably honeyed fruitiness of the taste suggest a top-fermented brew.
The beer has an extraordinarily perfumed, honeyed nose that makes the taste that follows a minor disappointment: a soft, sweetish, slightly bland malt palate, with full but not overstated hay-dry hop character (Saaz?), and a good honeyed fruit finish with some hop and faint pineapple notes. It’s primarily a refresher, and, as beers of this type go, not overstrong, but it has enough complexity to sustain interest over a more considered swallow.
 ABV: 8.5%
Origin: Saint-Sylvestre-Cappel, Nord, Hauts-de-France, France
Website: http://www.brasserie-st-sylvestre.com/
Date: 14 August 2000
Another review from the archive written for the Oxford Bottled Beer Database (OBBD), a pioneering crowd-sourced beer review website founded in 1992, and predating the likes of Ratebeer and Beer Advocate. I’ve left it uncorrected — so please read it in that historical spirit. Another beer and brewery that are still very much around, although almost impossible to buy in the UK these days. What I didn’t pick up was that the name is a nod to Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables.
This beer, another top-fermented, bottle-conditioned treat from the brewery responsible for one of the very best artisanal bières de garde of French Flanders, Trois Monts, was on sale at the Great British Beer Festival 2000. The festival notes described it as ‘very rare’ and certainly I can’t find any reference to it in my own sources, so perhaps it’s a new line.
The name, which for British people will most likely bring to mind a very posh French restaurant in London, is actually the slang term for a 19th century Parisian street urchin, and the packaging has an old-fashioned feel.
The beer itself is deep amber, and the label recommends it is poured carefully, presumably without the sediment: my example came out cloudy from the start, but tasted none the worse for it. It has a dry, crisply malty, almost papery aroma with the faintest hint of floral hop on first pouring.
The condition is very lively, and the beer pours with a beady and very sustained head. It has a smooth, creamy mouth feel and a very firm, malty and initially slightly sweet body reminiscent of a Scottish ‘wee heavy’, but a notably full bitterness soon develops and lingers, with an almondy character I’ve noticed in the brewery’s standard-issue Trois Monts. The finish is clean and bitter, with pleasant malt and hints of apricot. The label suggests serving at 10-12°C but I noticed that as the beer warmed it gave up more fruit and slightly spicy hop flavours. Overall, an imposing, ‘serious’ beer that gives the impression of subscribing to the ‘quality’ values of the past.
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