A Dent in a beery universe

The end of January saw our annual beer-tasting/fell-walking trip to the sweet village of Dent, confusingly in Cumbria despite being in the Yorkshire Dales, and home to at least two breweries (and, perhaps more importantly, our friend's mum's spare house).

For me, it's a long old journey up there on the train, although a spectacular one on the Settle-Carlisle railway. I stopped off at Leeds for an hour en route and thought I should take my first pint of the weekend at the legendary Scarborough Hotel at the station. I chose a Huna Red from the Stubby Republic brewery in Dorset - thought it sounded interesting.

And you know what? Interesting it was. Fruity and flowery - I've written "hibiscus" here, which sounds remarkably poncey - but sweet and hoppy, albeit a little flat and with a short ending. The Scarborough Hotel is a Victorian style traditional boozer - all wood carvings and ornate decoration - and on a Friday afternoon full of the 50+ ale drinking clientele, many sporting superb beards.

I got back on the train and headed for Dent. A couple of hours later I was sat in the George and Dragon awaiting my first sip of Dent Aviator, the local brew.

Well. "Yuck" was my first reaction. I've had Aviator regularly and it's generally been ok, but this was absolutely vile. Horrendously malty with a sour, ropey aftertaste; I could barely finish it (I did, obvs). Not sure whether it's the brewery at fault or the pub, which with every passing year seems to diminish. Next I tried a Dent Porter, just to see if I'd been unlucky. Now I like a good porter but this was not a good porter - my tasting notes say "sour, minging, I feel ill".

At this point we sacked off the George and Dragon as a bad lot and headed across the road to the Sun Inn. What a revelation! The pub looks unchanged since about 1880 (this is a good thing, of course) with a roaring fire and people with beards (that was just the women, etc) - and a range of ales. First up was Kirby Lonsdale Tiffin Gold. Maybe it was just the bad beer in the G&D, but this was superb - blonde, hoppy, tonnes of lemon zest and grapefruit - delicious. Let's be honest here - it was a summer ale and we were quaffing it in a storm in January, but what the hell - it was lovely.

After a few pints of that we headed home and Nelly cracked out a crate of his homebrew. First up for me was Mandrake. It's a black ale with, um, a mango flavour. Now I like mango and I like ale, so this seemed a good combination - but perhaps on the back of six pints previously and a long day I just found this hard work. It was good, sure, but personally I found it hard going.

However, I'm no quitter, and so I headed back to the box and pulled out a Kiwi, a 5.4% New Zealand Pale Ale. Now we're talking! This is the real deal - a fruity, hoppy, well carbonated pale ale. I really enjoyed this one and not only stuck to it for the rest of the night (until I hit the Glenmorangie) but a couple of bottles even found their way up the mountain the next day. 

This was one of Nelly's entries in the Craft Beer Co Homebrew awards. It didn't win, but I'm intrigued to see what the feedback is. It's superb, and you'd be delighted if you were served this in a pub.

Our long walk ended in the nearby (er, by car, not by foot) market town of Sedbergh. This Pennine metropolis is stuffed full of posh kids from the nearby public school stiffly entertaining visiting parents in sterile cafés, but we were looking for the Perfect Post-Walk Pub - roaring fire, amazing beer, you get the picture.

We ended up in the Red Lion. Despite its age and external appearance, it certainly wasn't welcoming - we walked in, dripping wet, to be told they were shutting soon so don't get comfortable. We had some beer - it was good, but I don't know what it was (perhaps Jennings?) - then again anything would've tasted good after a 12km walk in a howling gale and driving rain. It was by the by, as they kicked us out after two pints...at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Why, you fools, why?? Oh, and the tacky topless postcards behind the bar need to be sent back to the 70s. Grow up.

Anyway. We were sent to find a pub called the Dalesman. This was a complete change - really stunningly decorated inside to an extreme high-quality - but they wouldn't light the wood-burning stove for us. Miserable sods. They had their own beer - cunningly named Dalesman Ale - and it was sodding awful; Dan had a sample, pulled a face, and ordered a Guinness. The landlady looked most affronted and pointed out that "it's marvellous stuff, that; bloody lovely". I felt guilty and ordered a pint. Piss. Overly malty and beyond redemption. We left. They weren't sad to see us go.

Next stop was the Bull Hotel. Sadly the bar area is done out like a hotel lobby, eg wide drafty spaces and uncomfortable tables. It's all a little tired. On the plus side - Timothy Taylor Landlord! Like an old lover it grasped me in its creamy arms and we danced away the dampness of the afternoon. I haven't had Landlord for ages and this was really, really good - sweet, golden, hoppy, silky-smooth. Finally some joy on a dismal day.

After that it was back to the house (via Cumbria's grumpiest cab driver) for curry and a big fight over the remaining bottles of Kiwi, before slumping in front of the fire and sleeping it all off. Marvellous.

Beers of the year - Nelly

Better late than never, here's my verdict for beers of the year 2013. As most of my drinking gets done at home, I'll do a top 3 for bottled beer and a "special category" for best beer from out and about.

Bottled Beer:

3rd - Thornbridge Jaipur
As Chris rightly said, this is the beer that started it for us. It has a superb hop aroma that I find is still rarely surpassed but best of all, it's quite obtainable, being sold in Waitrose. Jaipur will be responsible for introducing many, many people to craft beer and for that, I'll always doff my cap to it.

2nd - Marble Lagonda IPA
I'm very partial to a big, hoppy IPA and Lagonda is one of the best. It's good enough to come straight out of the fridge and still retain a beautiful complex taste and aroma. A little darker than Jaipur, it has a more rounded, interesting taste and a big, citrusy bouquet.

1st - Fyne Ales Jarl
I'll be quite honest - I only bought this because it was voted best golden ale at the Champion Beer of Britain awards. I'm glad I did jump on that particular bandwagon though, because it was superb. Jarl is not a strong beer, nor does it assault your senses with a big American hop profile. What it does do, is set the standard for what a great golden summer ale should be. Pale, grapefuity and light, it almost bounces down your neck with carefree abandon. Hell, it would probably get your wallet out for the next round if it could. Really marvellous stuff and my bottled beer of the year.

Out and about:

Magic Rock High Wire
2013 was the year I discovered craft beer and it was also the year Magic Rock nearly drove me mad. Very early on in my Beer Adventure, I read great things about this fledgling brewery from Huddersfield. It was unanimous - everyone agreed that MR make liquid gold and High Wire was the best of them all.

Only, you can't have any because nowhere sells it. I trawled the beer shops of Manchester and Cheshire looking for a bottle and there were none. Their own website had no stock and even the online beer suppliers seemed to have run out. Yet their website suggested vast quantities of the stuff being made. I came to the conclusion that they just don't like to see it leaving Yorkshire. Either that, or they operate the Eric Cartman "You Can't Have Any" sales strategy.

I think the real answer is that there's so much demand for their produce on draft that they just don't have the capacity to do much bottling. It was months before I finally managed to track down some MR on keg at the Young Pretender in Congleton. It was Cannonball, their 7.4% IPA. I won't go on about it, suffice to say it was insanely good.

I had to wait until IMBC in October to get myself outside some High Wire and boy, was it worth the wait. I love American pale ales and this is the best of the bunch by a big margin. I suspect a better APA can only be found by actually getting on a plane and heading West.

Worst Beer of the Year

I have to pick two beers here, for different reasons. First up is Tetleys Original, which was just amazingly flat and malty, but then I wasn't exactly expecting great things. The biggest disappointment for me was Thwaites Old Dan, which I thought was going to be so much better. I found it to be heavy and quite hard work. It also seemed to leave a sticky residue on the lips after each mouthful, like there was quite a bit of sugar left behind.

Lesson of the year

Drink 'em young. I bought a fresh bottle of St. Austell Big Job in the Summer and it was great - fresh and hoppy. A bottle from the same batch several months later was quite a disappointment though, with virtually no hop aroma left.


So what will 2014 bring? It'll certainly bring more homebrewing, that's for sure.
My esteemed colleague Chris and I have got a few lads' weekends planned as well, so there may even be some joint blogging. Should be fun.

Nelly Brewery - Hedgehog Down (2)

Well, I'm now down to my last bottle of Hedgehog Down, having variously drunk, given away and thrown away the rest. I decided I'd better do a review!

Well, despite what the last review said, I was really impressed with the clarity of the beer. It's really, really clear - crystal clear one might say, as the photos show. That's where the good points end though, I'm afraid to say. 

The top came off the bottle with a nice pop and a decent head formed upon pouring. However, there just wasn't much body - the beer was rather thin and the head dissipated pretty quickly. The colour was too dark for a pale ale, being a mid-amber hue more than anything. 

There was a strong fruity smell, which I think was estery. I'll readily admit that I'm not experienced enough to be 100% certain but from the various guides to beer off-flavours that are available online (like this one), estery smells and flavours are my best bet for what was going on. Beyond the fruity tastes, there wasn't really much else going on, with no discernible hop character at all.

Looking back at my notes for this one, I don't think the fermenting temperature was too high, being 18-19C all the way through. I'm more inclined to think that the fruity taste was both an inherent product of the English yeast used and also due to the long ferment time. I racked this on day 19, after a really slow ferment. 

My latest thinking is to use cleaner-tasting American yeast and more of it. I used 2 packets of US-05 for the latest batch and it was finished in about 5 days, with really encouraging results so far. I talked to a pro brewer about this last week and his beers stay in the FV for 7 days before racking so I hope I'm on the right lines here.

I'm currently planning to use 2 packs of US-05 for my next 2 brews, to keep this variable the same, before moving to reused or harvested yeast from then on.

So to sum up, Hedgehog Down wasn't great but it was another step along the learning curve.

Hedgehog Down, Nelly Brewery

In a slight shift from the usual format, I will be sharing this review with another beer enthusiast - in this case my Dad - who was desperate to sample the latest offering from the Pride of Holmes Chapel, the Nelly Brewery - hence the two glasses below. 

It's an English Pale Ale hoping by the name of Hedgehog Down - read the story to see why - although it doesn't look particularly pale, as you can see; it was also rather cloudy. 

I might have expected a hoppy boutique, but instead it was rather more yeasty. That said, first taste was meaty and full frontal, with the taste sitting on the front of the tongue. "Needs more hop", said Dad, and I was inclined to agree. 

A note about my Dad

Dad likes to think he knows about beer, as he's been drinking it since the early 60s. He doesn't. I'm not saying I do either, but bear that in mind for the rest of the post. 

Back to the beer...

"It's almost the same on the front of the mouth as Jaipur," claimed Dad, extravagantly. "But it doesn't linger". Let's not be too harsh here - Jaipur is utterly amazing. I was struggling to identify a decent aftertaste, although noted that "the meatiness is accompanied by some fruits". Maybe like a lamb curry with raisins?

Dad held the empty bottle up to the light, to reveal a huge lump of brewer's yeast. He then regaled me for the fifteenth time of the tale of the Sixties home brewers who would scoot round the back of Liverpool pubs for the yeast remaining in the bottom of Whitbread bottles - "worth it's weight in gold that...you couldn't buy brewer's yeast as an amateur in them days". Rightio. He may, however, have had a point when he noted, "you shouldn't be leaving yeast in the bottom like that...that's why it's so cloudy. Perhaps it was racked off too early?"

Now I know little about the brewing process, but last time I heard the phrase "rack off " it was going shouted at Bouncer as he stole a cricket ball on Ramsey Street. The flamin' galah. I assume in this context it refers to the point on time at which a beer is bottled - but I'd be interested to know if this us a real phrase or just a Dadism. 

I asked Dad for his final thoughts. "As a homebrew, it's excellent" he declaimed, as he chewed the last of the yeast thoughtfully. Would you drink another bottle, old man?

"Christ, no."

Old Crusty Bishop - Nelly Brewery

It's with a mixture if honour and some trepidation I approached this - being the first beer writer to review an ale from the new powerhouse of independent Cheshire breweries, the House of Nelly in Holmes Chapel. Mostly, I was worried it would make me sick.

I was given three bottle to try. The first is this, a 4.7% ale called Old Crusty Bishop. 

Given its progenitor, I was expecting something hoppy, but instead the first impression was of the immense cloudiness post-pour...which didn't clear. I was now worried I'd face a long night on the toilet, especially as the foamy head was a shade of yellowy brown rather than the traditional white. Still, being a brave chap I dived straight in....

It was surprisingly decent. Very fizzy, which you wouldn't expect from such a cloudy ale, but quite crisp and surprisingly drinkable. I have to say though I was struggling to identify any specific flavours - my tasting notepad just had the word "malty" written on it, and when I passed it to Mrs Woose for a taste she wrinkled her nose and said, "hmm...malty". I would also add "yeasty" to that too. 

If asked to summarise, I'd say "not minging", which is quite a compliment for (I think) only the second brew from this potentially revolutionary new brewer.