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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
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
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Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2008.
ABV: 12.5%
Origin: San Marcos, California, USA
Website: www.lostabbey.com, www.portbrewing.com
 Lost Abbey brewer Tomme Arthur. Pic: Port Brewing Another rare treat on draught at the Great British Beer Festival, this extraordinary barrel aged beer has spent six months in Heaven Hill Wheat Whiskey barrels, rather than the brandy barrels used for the standard release. Lost Abbey is the range of very special beers created by Tomme Arthur, head brewer at Port Brewing, who is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most appreciated craft brewers. The name is a reference to whisky distilling — the “angels’ share” is the quantity of spirit that evaporates during maturation.
The beer emerges from the barrels black, with a bubbly yellow head, and an intense winy woody dark malt and whisky aroma heady with calvados and marzipan fumes. There’s a winy malty fruity spicy palate with notes not only of whisky but liquroice and a tartish tannic note, syrupy but balanced and very approachable, and a soothing fruity woody finish long developing with late nut, herb and root flavours. Probably my beer of the year.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/lost-abbey-the-angels-share-bourbon-barrel/72798/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 6%
Origin: Lafrançaise, Midi-Pyrénées, France
 Brasserie Oc'Ale One of the surprises in store at specialist French beer shop Cave à Bulles in Paris is that craft brewing in France has now spread far beyond its historic home in the North, even to the warmer climes of the Midi. Oc’ale is one example — “oc” is the southern dialect word for “yes”, and the region is called the “languedoc” or “‘Oc’ language”, as it was originally distinguished from the “langue d’oeil”, or “‘oui’ language” in the north. Still it’s no surprise to find brewer Jack Courmont is originally from Lille.
This is an unusual stout-like black beer with a low light fawn head and a fresh biscuity malt aroma with banana milkshake and subtle roast notes. A malty but slightly sour pineapple juice and dark cake palate with liquorice and more banana sets up a sweet-sour finish with fruit, dark malt, chocolate syrup and a hint of roast.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/ocale-noire/25922/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 4.5%
Origin: Sudbury, Suffolk, England
Website: www.nethergate.co.uk
 Nethergate Augustinian Brewer Ian Hornsey, a former microbiologist, has been turning out excellent beers on a commercial scale since 1986, and has worked from his current site since 2005. He’s particularly renowned for reviving the use of herbs in brewing and contributing to the resurrection of the porter style but has lots of other good stuff too. He’s produced several beers under the Augustinian name, nodding to the nearby priory at Clare, but this bottle conditioned bitter is arguably the best so far
It’s a rich amber with a big rocky orange-tinged head head and a pungent hop aroma with a balsamic, sulphurous and phenol note, its hop flavours (Styrian Goldings) twiggy and intoxicating. A full biscuity slightly oily palate follows, with complex spicy seedy orange strawberry and hop notes, and a peppery caramel liquorice finish turning sternly hoppy. It’s a premium bitter with a pungency that reminded me of Orval, and well worth checking out.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/nethergate-augustinian-uk-version/64279/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2008.
ABV: 11%
Origin: Bodegraven, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands
Website: www.brouwerijdemolen.nl
 Molen de Arkduif, where Brouwerij de Molen is based. Photo: PH Louw, from Wikimedia Commons. Available from a huge claret cask at the Great British Beer Festival, this limited edition imperial porter is from one of Europe’s most innovative and consistently interesting brewers: regular versions are also available bottled. It was near-black, with almost no head and a heady winy estery aroma over smooth but intense dark malt, leading to an equally estery and winy warming palate with vanilla and spiced orange liqueur, and a lightly smoky smooth finish with fine chocolate and a little charred wood. The finish was perhaps a little shorter than expected, but there’s no denying this is an outstanding example of a cask matured beer.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/de-molen-tsarina-esra-reserva/89159/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2008.
ABV: 7.5%
Origin: Grimstad, Aust-Agder, Norway
Website: www.mikkeller.dk, www.nogne-o.no
 Nøgne-Ø Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast As the name of this beer suggests, Danish-based but itinerant cult brewer Mikkel Borg Bjergsø is well aware of the enthusiast market and unsurprisingly the denizens of ratebeer.com and the like have taken very well to his products. I also tried Mikkel’s strong, hoppy brown ale Jackie Brown in 2008 and rated it very highly, but I’ve limited myself to one beer per brewer for the Top Tastings and this just pips the post. It’s a superb oatmeal and coffee stout with a lengthy ingredients list — Pils, smoked, caramunich, brown, pale chocolate and chocolate barley malts, malted oats, roast barley, oat flakes, Centennial and Cascade hops and a dose of Rico’s Coffee Barn gourmet coffee. I’m assuming the batch I tried was brewed at Norwegian brewer Nøgne-Ø as it’s in similar bottles to their output, but the recipe has also been cooked up elsewhere.
This near black beer has a thick and deep fawn head and a fruity, malty, chaffy and chocolatey aroma with a slightly acidic sharpness and a relatively restrained coffee note. A very complex dry and dark malty palate has sophisticated dried fruit flavours, with red grape tannins, raisins and raspberries as well as coffee and a wash of brown sugar reminiscent more of a Belgian dubbel. Maltiness reasserts itself on the finish, turning marmitey as the coffee turns black, with some late ground black pepper developing. Cult status well deserved.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/mikkeller-beer-geek-breakfast/53853/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 4.7%
Origin: Penjamo, Guanajuato, México
Website: www.tequilacorralejo.com.mx
 Mexicana Potro This beer, which claims to be a porter, split our tasting team down the middle when it popped up at the Tesco Drinks Awards judging in 2008. Although a blind tasting, the stylish and distinctive blue bottle was a giveaway. There’s a lot of contradictory stuff on the web about where it comes from, but it appears to be a product of Cerveceria Mexicana, a brewing sideline to a tequila producer at Hacienda Corralejo in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato.
If you’re expecting a straight porter you’ll be surprised as there’s a presumably deliberate wild yeast streak of lambic-like sourness to this dark ruby-brown beer with its smooth fawn head. The sourness is softened by dark, slightly treacly malt and a genuinely porterish touch of roast. There are more tart notes in the finish with chocolate and a scattering of hops, fruit and smoke.
Sourness would of course quite likely have been a characteristic of historic porters with their long maturation in wooden vessels, but has largely been smoothed out in contemporary versions, so it’s surprising to see it cropping up again from such an unusual source. Unlikely to be to everyone’s taste, but I loved it.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hacienda-cerveza-potro/34633/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 9.9%
Origin: Ithaca, New York, United States of America
Website: www.ithacabeer.com
 Ithaca Beer Co Celebrating 10 Years According to the bottle, “too many malts to list” and “an excess of American hops” went into this rather special beer, which I bought bottle conditioned in a 750ml bottle from Bierkraft in Brooklyn. Ithaca was founded by Dan Mitchell in the town of the same name in New York state’s wine country in 1998, and has since established a very firm reputation. Ten was the anniversary beer, brewed as an “Imperial Strong and Special Double Red Ale” with additional hopping during fermentation. The website gives the hops as Chinook, Cascade and Amarillo and the malts as pale, Extra Special, C-60, smoked and black. The beer has since been superceded by further annual anniversary issues in the brewery’s limited edition Excelsior! series.
It’s a red-brown beer with its big, bubbly orange-yellow tinged head. Ripe fruit, spice, and slightly dirty, sulphury, cream and ceramic notes are apparent on the aroma, while a firm malt palate has thistly, intense nettly hops and ripe fruit, starting fruity and malty and turning bitter with some coal-like hints. There’s lots of overripe fruit plus mineral notes and a touch of roast in a bitter but warming finish with well-defined hops and a hint of pepper. Vivid and very hoppy, yes, but also well integrated and stimulating.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/ithaca-excelsior-ten/84751/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 5.5%
Origin: Beerzel, Antwerpen, Vlaanderen
Website: www.thofbrouwerijke.be
 't Hofbrouwerijke hofblues Hobby brewer Jef Goetelein dipped his toes into commercial brewing as a hirer of other brewers’ kit. In 2005, frustrated with this arrangement, he set up on his own “little farmyard brewery”, although still on a very small scale. His dry stout, hofblues, was one of the more obscure beers to get selected by Tim Webb and Joris Pattyn for their 100 Belgian Beers to Try Before you Die in 2008. I’ve heard some complaints about gushing, contaminated bottles from Jef’s plant but my sample, bought at the Pigs Ear festival, was fine and very enjoyable.
The beer is a solid and rich dark ruby with a thick deep fawn head. A leathery, spicy blackcurrant, marmite and coffee aroma heralds a dry and spicy caramel and coffee palate with a bite of hops and a slight washing up liquid note. There are chewy roast spicy flavours in a chocolatey finish, with a little more caramel signing off a decent and rich beer. Stout, especially in its sweeter manifestations, has a long if obscure history as a Belgian beer style to which this example is a worthy addition.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/t-hofbrouwerijke-hofblues/70595/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
Beer sellers: Cerveteca
ABV: 5.1%
Origin: Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Website: www.hoepfner.de
 Hoepfner Kräusen Krug Hoepfner is an undersung family-owned independent founded in 1798 in Liedolsheim. It relocated to Karlsruhe in 1849 to take advantage of natural ice caves for lagering, and now claims to be one of the oldest established businesses in the city. It won a Champion Brewery award and several individual medals in the 2008 World Beer Cup, thus a good few of its lines were on offer that autumn at the Cerveteca in Barcelona as part of their World Beer Cup selection, including this gold medal winning unfiltered Kellerbier.
The beer was a lovelly pale cloudy yellow with a fine white head and a smooth, subtle, slightly sweet vanilla honey aroma with vegetal notes. A soft, lightly citric and very clean light malt palate had slight hints of soft fruit and beautifully judged hops. A refined and complex citric-hoppy finish was gently cleaning with berry and vanilla hints. A delight.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hoepfner-krausen/1702/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 5.3%
Origin: Enschede, Overijssel, Netherlands
Website: www.grolsch.nl
 Grolsch Premium Weizen They may have been bought up SAB-Miller but Grolsch are certainly keeping up the quality with this relatively new Bavarian-style wheat beer, which raised eyebrows by beating several German producers in blind tastings at the 2007 World Beer Cup. My sample of this Reinheitsgebot-compliant brew came from Asda.
It’s an orange-yellow beer with a good white head and a tangy citric clove aroma with vanilla and drying phenols. The slightly sweet and citric palate is chewy and pippy but without any bitter hop flavours. The texture is a little thin but the flavour is substantial with rounded orange and strawberry notes. A light, fresh and tangy finish sustains chewy hops and plums. Overall the beer is impressively well balanced, full bodied but refreshing — you can understand how it challenged the Germans.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/grolsch-premium-weizen/51721/
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Cask  This pioneering new book explains what makes cask beer so special, and explores its past, present and future. Order now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
London’s Best Beer  The fully updated 3rd edition of my essential award-winning guide to London’s vibrant beer scene is available now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
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