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Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
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"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
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"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
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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/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version first appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 13%
Origin: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Website: http://www.gooseisland.com
 Goose Island Bourbon County Stout Originally brewed to celebrate this outstanding brewery’s 1000th batch of beer in 1992, this became the USA’s first cask matured beer and started a cult phenomenon among enthusiasts. The first batches were matured in ex-Jim Bean casks, but the batch I sampled, at a beer dinner hosted by the brewery at the White Horse, Parsons Green, London (one of the beer events of the year) had enjoyed 100 days in Hampden Hill/Buffalo Trace casks before being bottle conditioned. It’s made using a single hop, Willamette, to an IBU of 60, and a complex grist that includes two row pale, Munich, Chocolate, Caramel and debittered Black malts and roasted barley.
The result was black with a sparse pinky brown head, a malty smoky vanilla, mint, chocolate and raisin aroma with some heady whisky cask fumes. A minty gravy malt palate was syrupy but very drinkable, recalling the old Courage Imperial Russian Stout, but with clear bourbon notes, salty sharpness and stinging hops penetrating the malt. The beer finished creamy and meaty with notes of Belgian chocolate couverture. A truly astonishing brew.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/goose-island-bourbon-county-stout/8909/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version first appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 5%
Origin: Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, Vlaams Brabant, Vlaanderen
 Brouwerij Girardin For the style this is easy drinking but top quality from one of the most respected lambic breweries, a cherry-red beer with a creamy, woody and tannic aroma rich and oily with natural cherry skin perfume. A spicily fruity natural cherry palate has thick and sappy lambic and mint notes, a poised sweet-tart balance , and a chewy finish with lingering cherrry notes that’s fresh and fruity but not oversour. Unfiltered and sampled on CO2 pressure at the Zythos Beer Festival.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/girardin-kriekenlambik/23578/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version first appeared on facebook January 2009.
ABV: 4.7%
Origin: Breendonk, Antwerpen, Vlaanderen
Website: www.vedett.be, www.duvelmoortgat.be
 Duvel Moortgat Vedett Extra White Previously Duvel Moortgat’s wheat beer offering was Steendonk, produced in partnership with Palm, but the partnership ended this year and this beer, DM’s very own replacement, came as a pleasantly good surprise.
It’s cloudy and very pale, with a spicy damp hay, phenol, vanilla and spiced orange aroma. The citric, wheaty palate is well-integrated with a lemon note. An astringent hop charge leads to a crisp citric swallow, then a smooth lemony finish with a hint of chewy hops.
OK, it’s a bit lacking in substance and overbalanced by citric lemon squash flavours, but it’s friendly and refreshing. Sampled bottled at Bar Fringe, Manchester.
Read morea bout this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/vedett-extra-white/91232/
Top Tastings 2008. A shorter version first appeared on facebook, January 2009.
ABV: 5.8%
Origin: Roncole Verdi, Emili-Romagna, Italy
Website: www.birrificiodelducato.com
 Birrificio del Ducato Nuova Mattina (New Morning) I first encountered this unusual saison-style Italian craft brew, “dry herbed” with ginger, green and red pepper, coriander and chamomile, on draught at the Pigs Ear beer festival. Jon, barman at the imported beer bar, and myself agreed that “New Morning”, as it is sometimes labelled, was weird but notable. I noted a hazy blond ale with a thick white head and a twiggy sourish perfumed spice aroma. A fruity pineapple, grapefruit, rose and strawberry palate had a stab of sourness that could have been unintentional but would work well as a nod to Orval. Alcohol was evident on a chewy, subtly spiced, estery and notably long finish, with late varnish notes. It was remarkable enough to make my top tastings of the year.
A bottled version tried several months later at a Ducato tasting at the Rake had a striking spicy aroma that was sweetish and alluring. A peppery palate had complex but not overbearing spices, with a clear ginger note and a touch of not-unpleasant deterget. A lingering bitter and spicy finish is reminiscent of Indian paan but with plenty of decent blond malt beneath.
I’ve been very impressed by Ducato beers overall; I still can’t quite make up my mind about this one but the beer world would be worse off without it.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/birrificio-del-ducato-nuova-mattina-new-morning/76706/
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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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