If a beer is to your tastes does it matter if it's 'to style'?

I wrote recently about how much I liked the branding of this beer and the idea behind it. But what does it taste like?

Well it tastes very good, but I'm not sure it's a black IPA like that wonderful label would suggest. But does that matter?

The aroma is hot black irish coffee and sweet, boozy orange liqueur. Quite a lot of alcohol in the aroma but it smells good, though not the most floral 'black IPA' I've ever smelt. And therein lies the slight problem for me.

Yes the taste is a big beautifully bitter porter, but for me it lacks the fruity hop flavour that makes the best black ipas really sing. Its also not too heavy in the body and with that clean and bitter finish it drinks way below its weight and is gone before you know it.

So honestly, stylistic geekery aside, this is a lovely beer which opens up to reveal loads of rich coffee flavours spiked by leather, tobacco, and a dry white pepper finish.

Which in itself is interesting enough. So does it matter if it isn't really a true to style 'black IPA'? (whatever the hell that is).

My vote is for no.

 

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The Sebright Arms Homebrew Project

Now this is an interesting idea.

The Sebright Arms Homebrew Project is a fancy name for a simple yet excellent idea - effectively a string of collaborations with specially selected brewers who come and brew something exciting on the pub's nano sized kit.

The first beer out of the blocks is Pure Evil Black IPA, a collaboration between the Sebright Arms and the excellent Redchurch Brewery, with stunning label art provided by local artist Pure Evil.

I couldn't make the launch of the beer last night but the lovely chaps at the pub sent me over a bottle to try anyway, which is pretty nice of em, and what a bottle it is! Just look at that label.

This sort of forward thinking, beer-incorporating-art type stuff can only be good news for beer in my eyes - especially when it comes to attracting new, younger drinkers to the world of good beer.

Most importantly, The Sebright Arms is an East End pub that recognises, along with a string of other bars across London such as the Exmouth Arms near Russell Square and the Black Heart in Camden, that you don't have to be housed in a disused portacabin and serve exclusively cans of Red Stripe to be cool.

Oh, and I can't wait to see what this little beauty tastes like, but more on that to come....

 

 

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My ultimate chimichurri steak sauce - paired with Kernel Pale Ale

Remember me? Things have been a little bit quiet on here of late. A new job and a move down to that-there-London (in my line of work it was almost inevitable) has meant the blog has fallen by the wayside, but I've been spurred into action by a stonker of a dish that I really want to shout about.

The star of this post is my take on the classic Argentinian sauce-for-steak-or-other-grilled-meats, chimichurri. Essentially a sort of south American pesto, the key ingredients of this sauce are fresh parsley, garlic, salt and olive oil, but my version also includes a finely chopped red chilli, dried oregano and red wine vinegar.

Served spooned over a flash fried or barbecued steak it is quite simply stunning. The parsley infused olive oil just works so well with the charred edges of the meat and the heat of the raw garlic and chilli, combined with that little bit of vinegar, cuts right through the fatty richness of the steak. It's one that really needs to be tried to be believed. (I ate it with rump steak and some cous cous cooked with chicken stock and chickpeas).

It goes without saying that your steak should be aggressively seared then well rested.

How to make the chimichurri

To make my chimichurri (this makes enough for two decent sized steaks) finely chop two cloves of garlic and a large sized medium heat red chilli, then add to a pestle and mortar along with a good grind of coarse sea salt and grind to a smooth paste. Next add a good pinch (about half a teaspoon) of dried oregano, one tablespoon of red wine vinegar, one of cold water, three to four tablespoons of good olive oil and a good handful of finely chopped curly parsley.

Stir to combine and season to taste before leaving to infuse and meld for half an hour or so. It should be fragrant, salty and have a nice bit of heat in the aftertaste, but shouldn't blow your head off. No one flavour should dominate.

The beer match

There are some big flavours in this dish so you can go fairly big with your beer choice too - A hop forward beer works well with fresh chilli (not so much with spices) but you also want something with just a touch of malt sweetness to sooth out the heat.

I went with a fruity, juicy yet bitter Kernel Pale Ale Columbus and it worked really well. The citrus and pepper of the hops dovetail nicely with that chilli and garlic, but there's also a fresh almost grassy side to the beers flavour profile which works well with the parsley and olive oil.

The beer match was good, the steak sauce is amazing. You have to give this one a try for your next BBQ.

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On finding favourite pubs: The tricky second visit

Finding a new favourite pub is a funny thing. Often the reason you like it so much isn’t something you can easily put your finger on, as it can be as much about the overall feel of the place, or the memories of time spent there, as what’s on offer in terms of drinks or surroundings.

Some of my favourite pubs are, on the face of it, a bit crap. The King’s Arms on the riverbank in York, aka ‘The Pub That Floods’, springs to mind. A Sam Smith’s pub with a single boring cask offering and a decidedly mixed clientele doesn’t add up to much on face value, but when I’m sat with a cool pint in the sunshine, with legs swinging over the high (but obviously not high enough) river walls, there’s nowhere I’d rather be.

Other pubs, like the The Exmouth Arms near Kings Cross and Russel Square in London, have a much more obvious appeal and seem to tick all the boxes. Well chosen, well kept, well served beer from around the UK and further afield, a well stocked beer fridge with plenty of big sharing bottles and a short, sharp pub grub menu executed with an awareness of current trends (posh American junk food) all add up to create my sort of place.

Last time I was in there I wolfed down one of the best pub burgers I’ve ever eaten. High quality beef served ever so slightly pink, with pickle, mustard and a little topping of pulled pork, all served in a properly shiny n’ squishy brioche bun - Washed down by glass after glass of great beer.

We worked our way through the draft offerings and onto the bottles, wobbling away towards King Cross some hours later, catching the last train home.

But thinking about it on the train afterwards, there was something I liked about The Exmouth Arms which went beyond the great beer and food, it was the sheer normal ‘pubbiness’ of it. People were there to enjoy a few drinks and the company of their mates, not to tentatively sip a third of an uber-rare beer while scribbling notes. The excellent beer and food was secondary to the atmosphere and enjoyment of the place, just as it should be.

But here’s the problem, I’ve only been once, and I’m certainly of the opinion that you need to visit a pub a fair few times before you really make your mind up about it. Was it love at first site with The Exmouth Arms, or a fleeting fling?

Only my visit this Saturday will tell.

 

 

Photo from the excellent Travels with beer

 

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Successes in ageing beer

I've banged on before about keeping hoppy beers in the fridge and drinking them fresh to preserve the hop flavour and aroma in the beer. But not at all beers need to be drunk fresh, and in fact some benefit greatly from being laid down in a cool place to slowly mature and develop over months or years, like (cliche alert) a fine wine.

Fullers Vintage Ale is brewed specifically with ageing in mind and is probably the most famous and readily available example, but there are others out there which either specifically recommend ageing, or by their style certainly lend themselves to it. Beers with big flavour and high abvs such as Imperial Stouts, Barley Wines, Strong English ales and even some big IPAs can all age wonderfully.

One beer which is certainly brewed to be aged is J W Lees Harvest Ale, a beer with a thickness and sweetness of body that has to be tasted to be believed and which seems to get better and better over time. The bottle I opened recently was brewed in 1999, meaning it has had 14 years in the bottle. Yet it was in fantastic condition and poured with a thick head that stuck around and a carbonation that was soft yet present, perfect for the style.

The combination of high alcohol content (11.5% abv) and intensely malty backbone, combined with that long slow ageing, give the aroma notes of brandy, musty wooden barrels, boiled brown sugar, caramel, and toffee.

The taste is thick, liquid bonfire toffee, molasses rum and caramelised banana alongside brandy soaked raisins and malt loaf. Rich, fruity, and delicious. A really huge mouthfeel and slick, chewy toffee finish has just a hint of spicy bitterness, that leans more towards fruitcake than herb or citrus.

It's a barley wine like no other I've tried and a truly surprising and impressive beer.

As well as this Harvest Ale, and the aforementioned Fullers Vintage Ale, one beer which I've found really improves with age is Stone Imperial Stout. Drank fresh it is a bit of a bruiser, with the super aggressive hopping giving the beer an intense bitterness which for me slightly gets in the way.

Give it a few years in the bottle though and that bitterness falls away from an upfront pine resin smack, back towards bitter dark chocolate - This combines much better with the body flavour of the beer and creates a more rounded coffee and chocolate flavour.

There's still enough bitterness to keep things in check but the beer is more rounded and balanced, and certainly has much more of what I'm looking for in an imperial stout.

So, where have you had success with ageing beers? Or equally, where has it not worked? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

 

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The best dish I have eaten in a very long time

I was lucky enough to be dining in Naga in Kensington recently for our anniversary. It's a stunning looking restaurant with a reputation for great food that sounded right up the missus' street ( I was right).

We ate a lot of good food - tempura soft shell crab, fillet of beef stir fried with black beans, spring onion and chilli, black cod perfectly cooked and smeared in a sweet yet savoury orange miso paste - but of everything we ate there was one thing which stood out above all else, and it's that which I would like to focus on.

As seems to be the case with many an Asian menu they royally undersell the magic of a dish with its description (my two favourite dishes at Leeds' best Thai restaurant, Thai Aroy Dee, are 'pig leg with rice' and 'shrimp paste rice'), and the same was true at Naga. I'd not even considered this unassuming dish until it was recommended to me by an enthusiastic member of staff.

Duck and watermelon salad. It sounds so innocent doesn't it?

What it actually is, is the single best dish I've eaten in a very long time. The duck itself is of the slow cooked crispy variety, ah la duck pancakes, but done to such a high quality that you get meltingly tender meat and crispy skin in every mouthful.

The duck is then complimented by great bunches of Asian herbs (Thai basil, coriander and mint), chunks of refreshing watermelon, as well as slithers of cucumber, red chilli and a sweet and salty dressing which pulls the whole thing together.

The dish is just so perfectly balanced between salt, sweet, umami (the duck) and the refreshing, cleansing juice of the watermelon. It's a masterclass.

http://www.nagarestaurants.co.uk

 

Oh, the beer? They sell Tsingtao and Beer Lao, but that's hardly the point.





 

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Framing refreshing

I was house hunting recently, which as many will know is possibly one of the most exhausting activities known to man, both mentally and physically. After looking at the 5th straight apartment in under two hours and traipsing halfway across town (a new town I might add... But more on that at a later date) we had a half hour window to catch our breath.

Luckily a good pub was close to hand, but what to have? Obviously nothing too strong, as I needed to keep my wits about me for 'the hunt', and something which is refreshing but also not too bitter. I don't know about you, but when I'm just having one quick pint as a thirst quencher, it isn't the really hoppy beers that I look to.

Anything with too much of an after kick will just make me more thirsty ten minutes after I finish it - a nice crisp golden ale is fine but anything even approaching IPA in the IBU stakes is a no go. In these situations the drink that I really want is a proper, old school, totally unfashionable, mild.

This time around it was Oscar Wilde (mild), which fitted the bill perfectly. It's the beer that was announced as Champion Beer of Britain in 2011 to many a beer geeks guffaw of "pah, a mild", yet it's one I've never had the chance to try, and as such I reserved my judgement.

Best beer in Britain? Pushing it. One of the best traditional British milds? Absolutely.

In terms of ticking all the stylistic boxes and doing exactly what a good mild should, this beer knocks it out of the park. Refreshing in a satisfying and thirst quenching (rather than weak) kind of way, but with loads going on in terms of flavour: Milk chocolate cocoa, faint roasted coffee and a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bitterness that keeps the lightly sweet malt backbone in check.

It's a little stunner, and at 3.7% abv fits the 'genuinely refreshing' requirement quite nicely.

 

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The problem with silly beer

As ever, Boak and Bailey have been writing posts that are well worth reading, one of which ties in nicely with a personal experience of mine. Their post on silly beer, aka 'high concept' beers, is great and makes some very good points on the values of experimentation and the importance of breweries taking risks.I totally agree, but a beer I tried recently definitely shows the other side of the argument, and how bad experimentation can be.

I was drinking in the truly excellent Exmouth Arms in London (more on that to come) with an old friend recently and as the early afternoon turned into evening and we were still ploughing through the beers our eyes began to wander to the bigger, more unusual bottles of beer stacked up at the top of fridge. Isn't that always the case?

After a few truly excellent beers, Stone Old Guardian and Schneider Weisse Nelson Sauvin spring to mind, we decided to give the weirdest beer in the fridge a go, Rogue/Voodoo Donut Maple Bacon beer (brewed in collaboration with Voodoo Donut who featured on Man vs Food). It's a mental looking bottle of hot bright pink paint and it's brewed to taste of a maple bacon donut, how bad can it be?

The answer, if you haven't already guessed, is very, very bad. Genuinely, truly disgusting. Unbelievably sickly sweet, as thick as syrup and with a cheap, nasty fake maple flavour like the pots of syrup you get from McDonalds. No bitterness to speak of and very little flavour reminiscent of beer, it wasn't even smokey, I really don't know who could enjoy it.

The worst part? I've got a bomber at home which I purchased in New York. More fool me.

 

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Making beer the focus

When I first started really getting into beer, or more specifically, when I first started buying interesting bottles of beer from Beer Ritz to drink at home, I definitely found myself drinking more. Like Augustus Gloop in Wonka's candy wonderland it's easy to get carried away, I mean there's so much good stuff to try isn't there?

It's a feeling I still get now and then, particularly in certain bars (I'm looking at you The Grove) where the scramble to try everything good outweighs the time I have to spend or the amount of beers I should really drink. But as time moves on I find myself in that situation less and less, and particularly with the beer I drink at home, I'm getting more choosey.

Drinking one really good beer interests me a hell of a lot more than drinking four cans of low flavour* beer that you can knock back without actively paying attention. Sure the beer I'm drinking might be 7, 8, even 9%, but I'm only having the one, and that means less units and, seen as it's January, less calories than drinking a couple of big cans of boring beer. Plus, with the beer I buy being a touch pricey I don't really liking plowing through a load of bottles in one sitting.

I'm not saying that getting really into good beer will necessarily make you drink less, but I really do believe that when flavour comes first and you make beer the focus, it can help with moderation.

And if you're still unconvinced, ask yourself this: Who's more to blame for the rise in obesity, Michelin star restaurants, or fast food?

 

*Lets get away from saying 'crap beer' shall we? From a technical point of view it may be faultless. It's a matter of flavour.

 

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Looking ahead to 2013

Maybe we're a little bit too far into January for a 'looking to the year ahead' type post, but indulge me, as it brings me nicely to my first point.

1. Blog more. I want to blog more often and on a wider variety of subjects than I did during 2012. I regularly eat out and don't write a review or cook something delicious at home and keep it to myself. Why?
2. Get more writing commissioned. Getting paid to write about beer feels a little bit like getting paid to play football. I want to do it more often.
3. Work in the beer industry. This is a long term goal that I feel is ready to come to fruition. I've got the experience, I know the industry, I love beer, hell I love food and drink in general. So why shouldn't 2013 (sooner rather than later I might add) be the year that I move things forward.
4. Learn more about the brewing process. Yes I know the basics, but could I write a proper recipe with amounts and boil times? Probably not. 2013 needs to involve more brew geek reading And hands on experience than the last year did.
5. Expand my knowledge of other drinks. I'm just starting to dip my toe into the smokey waters of single malt whisky and loving every minute of it. Current favourite is a far too drinkable bottle of Highland Park 12 year old. This next year needs to contain more drinking of drinks of all varieties. Pity my liver.

 

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