Weird Beard - Amarillo Belgian IPA

Weird Beard are one of my favourite UK breweries, mainly because they make some quite unusual beers and they like a good bit of carbonation. With this 7.5% offering, they've really excelled themselves on those two counts.

First, the carbonation. Now, I like my beer to be cold and fizzy but this was way over the top. It had to be poured in a few stages, allowing the foamy head to recede between pours. When that happens, I reckon the carbonation is just too high. Rather than being a pleasure, just pouring yourself a glass of this is rather a faff. Easing off on the carbonation would be of benefit here, and I don't often find myself saying that.

That aside, this is a really interesting brew. The Belgian yeast flavours were strongly evident, sitting right alongside orangey, citrus hop notes. This made for a very unusual beer as you don't normally get big hop tastes and Belgian yeast together, but it kind of worked.

Weird Beard - Little Things That Kill

It seems like many microbreweries offer a low ABV beer these days, which is no bad thing. Big IPAs are all very well but there's definitely room in the stable for a beer you can drink several of without being completely out of action the following day.

At 3%, Simpleton by Magic Rock is my favourite of these. Making a low-strength beer that's still full of flavour and body is technically quite difficult but MR pull it off brilliantly. When I saw Little Things That Kill, from Weird Beard (my second-favourite brewery!), I had to grab a bottle.

At 3.4% it's a little stronger though, and those few tenths of a percent will make the brewing process much easier. It's easy to forget that this sort of strength is fairly normal for most beer. As with all Weird Beard beer, it was well-carbonated, which I really like.

The Centennial, Nelson Sauvin and Cascade hops provided a lovely aroma. Grapefruit citrus was the main taste and it felt like drinking a 4-5% ABV beer, which is a compliment.

IndyManBeerCon

With tickets sold out months in advance, kegs outnumbering casks, the brewers themselves serving the beer and Camra nowhere to be seen, IMBC is like a beer festival but much better. Held in the magnificent Victoria Baths, the venue itself adds greatly to the theatre of the event. If the brick exterior is spectacular then once inside, the labyrinth of tiled corridors, the stained glass windows and the wrought-iron beams are a joy to behold. IndyMan would be a great event held anywhere but by holding it at Victoria Baths, the organisers have added the magic touch.

Once in, we made a beeline for the Turkish Baths, which had been taken over for the duration of the event by Magic Rock from Huddersfield. Everything I had read on the subject suggested that Magic Rock make fantastic beer but unfortunately it's virtually impossible to get hold of. My one and only taste of their produce so far had been a Cannonball IPA at the Young Pretender in Congleton and it was bloody marvellous. Much as I'd like to buy a few bottles though, I've so far not been able to because in all my travels, I've never seen one for sale. Their website says that they make around 13,000 pints a week and I can only assume that the Yorkshire folk are so keen on it that they don't like to let it come this side of the Pennines.

And I don't blame them one little bit. Our first beer of the night was a High Wire, served by Magic Rock's Head Brewer, Stuart Ross. High Wire is a 5.5% American Pale Ale which has a light amber colour. The first thing that surprised me was just how cold it was served. I'm not quite sad enough to carry a thermometer round, but I'd say it wasn't much over 6 or 7 degrees if I had to guess. On the whole, it was cold, fizzy and utterly delicious. Just the way I like my beer. I won't attempt to describe the delicious hoppiness in any further detail because it wouldn't do the beer justice. My drinking partner Nick knows his beer and was blown away by High Wire. Just get some and see for yourself.

We stayed in the Magic Rock cave for a bit and had a Cannonball, a Great Alphonso and a Simpleton. Simpleton is a great idea - a low strength 2.6% pale ale but with loads of delicious hoppy taste. I would love to try some again, when my tastebuds haven't just been assaulted by a bunch of other, stronger beers because I suspect it's really rather good.

Eventually it was time to leave the Magic Rock grotto and have a look round. We moved on to the main room and had a Marble Farmhouse IPA, which is the only beer of the night to get an unhappy face drawn next to it on my programme. Whether it genuinely wasn't very nice or whether it just wasn't as good as High Wire I'm not sure. It's always difficult to remain objective at these events but whatever the reason, we weren't keen and unhappy face it was.

A Blackjack/Weird Beard Weird Wit was next, served by Jay Krause from Quantum Brewing. Another first for us was a dark beer from Brewdog called Dead Metaphor, which was very pleasant. We rattled through a Cromarty AKA IPA, a Cromarty Red Rooster, a Quantum NZ Light, a Thornbridge Sequoia, an Arbor Tasmanian Devil, a Buxton Dry Hopped Gold and a Buxton Axe Edge before it was time to make a move.

It would have been rude not to finish off with a bit more High Wire so we snuck back to the Turkish Baths for a couple before calling it a day. A night out in Manchester wouldn't be complete if I didn't subsequently fall asleep on the train and end up in Crewe and once again I didn't disappoint.

One thing that I took away from the night was just how good Keykegs are as a serving method. I usually like my ale a little colder and more carbonated than average and keg beer gives you exactly that. We only had one or two cask beers on the night and they were noticeably warmer and flatter than the others. To my taste, they were less enjoyable for it.

As ever, the next day I managed to read the programme in more detail and saw loads of beers I'd like to have had but didn't. The offerings from Mikkeller and Tool would probably top that list. IndyMan was so enjoyable that I can't imagine not going next year so hopefully I'll make amends then.

MOSI beer festival

This is now the third consecutive year I've been to the MOSI festival and it never fails to impress. A magnificent setting, in the Steam Hall, you get to wander round the trains and contemplate other mysterious-looking contraptions from the industrial revolution while supping your ale.

The first time we went, they pretty much ran dry by early Saturday afternoon. It was a bit better last year but this time, we went on opening night - 5pm Thursday. Apart from having to go to work the following day, this was a good decision. There was a modest queue at the door but once in, the waiting was over and we had unfettered access to the bar all night.

I'd planned ahead by looking at the beer list and had decided to start with an Elland 1872 Porter. I'd never had a current Champion Beer of Britain before and wanted to have some before it ran out. In hindsight, this may have been a bit over-cautious because nothing runs out on Thursday night! 

It was very nice but I'm not the biggest porter fan and to be fair, didn't have much to compare it to. It was very strong and complex, with tons of roasted malt taste but the main problem was that it completely broke my taste buds, meaning I just couldn't get any meaningful taste out of the next two or three drinks. A schoolboy error.

The beer of the night for me was Weird Wit, a collaboration between Blackjack in Manchester and Weird Beard Brew Crew, who I've fawned over before in this blog. It was a wheat beer, so pale and hazy but strongly hopped as well, which is unusual for that style. It took a minute to get used to but once you were onboard with it, it was sensational. 

Another stand-out was Cumbrian Five Hop from Hawkshead, which was a lovely hoppy golden number. I think we may have had a Windermere Pale as well but it was all starting to get a bit fuzzy by that point and I can't be sure. 

I follow a lot of brewers on Twitter and there was much excitement over the annual hop harvest recently, with a rush to use this year's fresh "green" hops in a brew. With this in mind, I tried a Dunham Massey Green Hop. I had been expecting some sort of different, fresh taste but what I got was a bit odd; kind of like a grassy taste. It was difficult to describe - it did taste fresh but not in a particularly good way.

All in all, I really enjoyed MOSI and the beers were all very well served. Festivals can be awful when you have to fight to get to the bar but by going on Thursday, we avoided the queues nicely. The next one is IMBC in October. Can't wait.

Weird Beard Brew Crew - Hit The Lights

Well, I said I was going to try another Weird Beard ale before too long and in the end it took precisely 24 hrs. Was my trip to the Beer Emporium to buy a bottle of Hit The Lights worth it?  

Yes. I was a bit unsure what to expect as this was described as "a mixed-up IPA", brewed with Target and Aurora. These aren't particularly popular hops and I was interested to see how they came across. I've used Target in my first few homebrews and although it smelled nice in the packet, the dodgy results led me to ditch it for the latest batch.

As with Mariana Trench, this is a well-carbonated beer, perhaps a little too much so. Despite a slow and tilted pour, the head easily frothed up to the top of the pint glass. The aroma was a really pure and clean hop smell, just like sticking your nose into a packet of Target. The mouthfeel was really creamy and frothy, which I quite liked and the taste was very nice too.

Hit The Lights isn't fruity or citrusy and is a bit more challenging as a result. I liked it but I'd pick a Mariana Trench off the shelf if I had to choose.

Weird Beard Brew Crew - Mariana Trench

This is billed as a "Trans Pacific Pale Ale" due to being hopped with New Zealand and West Coast US varieties.

It was really well carbonated, which I tend to like in bottled beers. Upon pouring, a frothy head developed and this stayed around for quite some time. The general carbonation lasted too, giving a really nice mouthfeel and allowing the flavours out.

The aroma was great, packing a hoppy punch and the taste was spectacular - just enough biscuity malt base to carry a wonderful tropical fruit and hop flavour. Unsurprisingly, I felt it was reminiscent of the American pale ales.

I was seriously impressed by this offering and as Weird Beard do quite an extensive range, I'll be checking out their other beers as soon as possible.