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Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 3.7% Origin: Maldon, Essex, England Website: www.mightyoakbrewery.co.uk

Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde

This beer won Champion Beer of Britain (CBoB) at the Great British Beer Festival in August 2011, much to the consternation of some craft beer aficianados who saw this as further evidence of CAMRA conservatism and fustiness – […]

Kernel Imperial Brown Stout London 1856

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 10.1% Origin: London SE1, England Website: www.thekernelbrewery.com

The Kernel Brewery

Beers from the Kernel, surely London’s second world class brewery, loomed large in my drinking in 2011. I admit I was a bit late in catching up on them – my first encounter was in January when I visited […]

Harveys Christmas Ale

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 8.1% Origin: Lewes, East Sussex, England Website: www.harveys.org.uk

Harveys Christmas Ale

The end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011 found me tasting an unusually large number of British cask ales as I worked my way round potential places to drink for my London guide. Normally, to preserve as […]

Goose Island Bourbon County Coffee Stout 2010

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 13% Origin: Chicago, Illinois, USA Website: www.gooseisland.com

Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout

I’ve been a fan of Chicago’s Goose Island beers ever since receiving some review samples of their pale ales when they were first imported to the UK (see Goose Island Honker’s Ale), and their pioneering […]

Fyne Jarl

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 3.8% Origin: Cairndow, Argyll & Bute, Scotland Website: www.fyneales.com

Fyne Ales Jarl

Cask golden ales are now as ubiquitous in Britain as traditional bitter, and most, it’s sad to say, make for relatively bland, if refreshing, drinking. One of the ways some of them are marking themselves out is […]

Bruery Saison Rue

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 8.5% Origin: Placentia, California, USA Website: www.thebruery.com

The Bruery Saison Rue

The Bruery gets its name from a pun on the family name of founder Patrick Rue, and was first employed to designate his home brewing kit during his days as a law student. It was ported over when, […]

Steam/Epic Mayhem

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 6.2% Origin: Otahuhu, Auckland, New Zealand Website: epicbeer.com, www.steambrewing.co.nz

Steam / Epic Mayhem, on what's clearly a topless beach.

New Zealand, or Aotearoa if you prefer, is the one of the latest countries to have come to the attention of international beer fans for its vibrant new […]

Full Sail Session Lager

Top Tastings 2011, Beer sellers: The Beermongers

ABV: 5.1% Origin: Hood River, Oregon, USA Website: www.fullsailbrewing.com

Full Sail Session Lager

While beer geeks are bedazzled by the extremities of American brewing, it’s important to remember that the pheonomenal growth of the craft beer sector in the USA is mainly based not on […]

Carlton & United Sheaf Stout

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 5.7% Origin: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Website: cub.com.au

Tooth's (now Carlton United) Sheaf Stout apparently kept these strapping Aussie Rules players fit. Those were the days.

I discovered a plain looking 750ml bottle of this southern hemisphere classic, which I’ve never seen on sale in the UK, in […]

Bayerischer Bahnhof Gose Original Leipziger Bier Spezialität

Top Tastings 2011

ABV: 4.6% Origin: Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany Website: www.gose.de

Bayerischer Bahnhof Gose Original Leipziger Bier Spezialität

Gose remains one of the world’s most neglected historic beer styles, perhaps because the handful of breweries producing it remain small craft affairs and until recently it’s rarely been available outside its Saxon heartland. Michael […]