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Aromatherapy… Photo: Tom Stainer Here are 30 beers which really stood out from the many others I tasted during 2009. They’re not necessarily new beers, just beers I hadn’t tasted before, or for a long time, and that from the first taste made me want to laugh, jump, shout or simply chill out […] Top Tastings 2009 ABV: 4.5% Origin: Kilkeel, Dúin, Northern Ireland Website: www.whitewaterbrewing.com Whitewater Belfast Ale Ireland is a mixed bag of a country for the beer connoisseur. The island gave us one of the world’s classic styles in dry Irish stout, but domestically the nitrogenated evolution of that style has been instrumental in […] Top Tastings 2009 ABV: 4.8% Origin: Malle, Antwerpen, Vlaanderen Website: www.trappistwestmalle.be Westmalle Extra The Cistercian Trappist Abdij Onze-Lieve-Vrouw van het Heilig Hart van Westmalle, on the main N12 road between Antwerpen and Turnhout in the Belgian Kempen, is home to arguably the most influential, and alongside Chimay the most commercially active, of the […] Top Tastings 2009 ABV: 4.9% Origin: Glasgow, Scotland Website: www.westbeer.com West For four decades cask ale has been the focus of the British beer consumer movement, and the technical specifications for its production and dispense have become embedded in the ideology of beer appreciation as if they’re judgements of value and quality, with […] Top Tastings 2009 ABV: 2.8% Origin: Horsham, West Sussex, England Website: www.weltonsbeer.com Weltons Pridenjoy Overall this Top Tastings selection exhibits a bias towards very strong beers demanding contemplative sipping, but I also have an affection for low gravity beers, which in many ways are a more demanding test of the brewer’s art. Ray […] 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 […] 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 […] 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 […] |
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