One of my favourite things about the Craft Beer Co chain in London is that the invariably have something from Tiny Rebel on and it is invariably pretty good. I recently spent a very pleasurable Saturday evening drinking pint after pint of Hank, a session-able golden ale at the Farringdon branch and very good it was too. Rather light in body but what it lacks there it makes up for in flavour - it has a big tropical fruit flavour to it that belies its 4% ABV. A slightly bitter and dry finish but that doesn't detract from its drinkability. Very tasty.
Bizarrely this is the first Pressure Drop beer I've ever had so I've finally managed to tick off a fairly prominent London brewery that I've inexplicably avoided until now. More fool me, because this bottle of Pale Fire was absolutely brilliant. It turns out that this beer is brewed with different hops and to different recipes, had I known that at the time I'd have noted which version this was but alas, I didn't. Anyway this was pretty much everything you want from an APA - a lovely fruity aroma and a flavour bursting with tropical fruit; pineapple and grapefruit and loads of apricot with a gentle bitter bite. I'm getting excited just writing about it, really, really great and I'm annoyed that I slept on it for so long. Expect to see more from Pressure Drop on this blog shortly.
This was a pretty interesting beer that I shared with a friend recently. It's a 6.8% dark gose brewed by Chorlton Brewing Company, a brewery with a focus on sour beers. I was initially quite taken by the slightly out there flavour which was medicinal with hints of soy sauce and a hefty dose of salt, which from memory is actually listed as an additional ingredient. As I drank more I felt that the novelty factor wore of quite quickly and the saltiness became overpowering, suggesting to me that it could perhaps be more balanced than it is.
Rule of Thirds IPA is a collaboration between three of the top craft beer breweries in the UK; Siren, Beavertown and Magic Rock, that combines the flagship IPAs of each into one beer. Its an interesting concept and a beer that I couldn't really not try. The aroma of this beer is absolutely wonderful, big fruity hoppy notes on the nose as you'd expect, lovely. Flavour-wise its more of the same but with a dominating grapefruit bitterness, its really quite aggressively bitter and is a bit too much for me. Its well worth trying, especially for those that love their hops, but its entirely possible that its no greater than the sum of its parts. I'd much sooner tuck into a Gamma Ray than another of these.
I tried this Greene King collaboration with Cornish brewery Penpont at my regular Wednesday night haunt The Compton Arms a couple of weeks ago - I generally try and avoid the Greene King beers but had this one for want of a better option! This golden ale didn't have much going on flavour-wise; the citrus notes described on the clip weren't really that evident. It was a perfectly refreshing drink that would no doubt be more enjoyable in the summer, but either way its fairly uninteresting.
On Saturday I was in Bermondsey again celebrating my friends birthday. We managed to get to the Kernel for one before it closed at 2pm and I went for one of their two pale ale offerings, brewed with Kohatu, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin hops. Now generally regarded as one of, if not the best, breweries for hop-forward beers, the Kernel didn't let me down with this one. It had a lovely hoppy arome and the flavour was bursting with tropical fruit with some lovely grassy notes too, there is really a lot going on in this beer. It packs a mild bitterness but no more and its just so drinkable as a result. An absolute winner.