Monsieur Rock (Sharps)

Brewed with Jean Marie Rock of Oval, this Anglo-Belgian collaboration tries to combine the best of both brewing worlds with extended lagering.

It bursts from bottle with perfect BC fizz. The Saaz hops run riot with senses, filling the air with fresh herbal, grassy almost peppery aroma. There are glimpses that transport you back to you earliest days of lager drinking when it was an innocent thing if wonder.

The malt is smoother than a floating Rolls Royce and it exudes a creamy depth that coats the mouth. They seemed to have bottled the brewers holy grail of "mouthfeel". It's sweet and bitter in perfect harmony, the hops don't stamp authority, just arrive with a welcome handshake and begin mingling with the malt.

The genius of this beer is it's simplicity. On one level this could be passed to even the most hardened commercial lager drinker where it would be consumed with pleasure. On another level it can be sipped and pondered, enjoying every note in perfect harmony - like listening to Dark Side of the Moon, in the dark, on headphones, on a bean bag. Try it!

9/10 Wondrous, if only all beer was so perfectly balanced. The most quaffable beer I've had all year. I need another!

Read more about the collaboration and head brewer Stuart Howe here
Or buy Sharps beers here

Pilsner Urquell vs Budvar

The term "Lager" has long been synonymous to tasteless mass produced beer in the UK, long lost from it's east European origins as a method of cold storing beer, but I'm by no means an expert on the subject!

I thought I would visit two legends of this Bohemian Pilsner style for what some would call a taste of the "true lager experience"

Both pour a beautifully clear light amber gold, with Urquell the merest shade darker. Neither give big foamy heads, reducing to no foam after a minute.

Both a light on the nose, no English or US IPA hop power, or premium ale malty depth. Delicate is the key word, both having a subtle freshness, the Urquell is slightly grassier with more hints of those Saaz hops. The Budvar has slightly more caramel maltiness on the nose.

Both have that beautiful clean taste, no fruity middle, these beers are fermented at low temperatures to ensure the flavors a clean and crisp. The Budvar has less malt depth to start, the bitterness is slightly more prominent, with a finish that has the tiniest sharp tanginess to it. The Urquell offers something very different, there is an amazing biscuit crunch to the malt, like toasted bread it provides a fantastic depth of flavour. The following bitterness matches perfectly with crisp and noticeable Saaz hops coming through.

Two great beers, but the Urquell provides fantastic depth, with delicate flavors floating around the taste buds like summer butterflies.

Budvar 7/10 A solid example of the clean refreshing style.

Urquell 9/10 A truly delightful beer, delicate and light, but flooded with flavor.

Both beers are readily available in the UK, and in most good supermarkets.

Jaipur (Thornbridge)

Snaps open and pours with a lively but perfectly controlled fizz, a glorious foamy head. The aroma is all conquering, a big tropical fruit blast, pineapple and sweet fruit.

The malt whilst light golden straw provides a beautiful light sweetness as delicate as it looks. No dryness, ripe fruit or sharp tanginess in the middle just a segway to the big finish. No huge uncomfortable bitterness, just a sharpening of the senses to it's tropical fruit punch. Pineapple, Grapefruit, bitter, sharp, tangy, sweet all fight to be noticed, all held in perfect equilibrium.

9/10 A landmark beer, powerful beery fruit punch. Something else.

Black Adder (Mauldons)

Mauldon's is a fine Suffolk brewery based in Sudbury. They offer five standard ales and Black Adder is their porter.

It's absolutely delicious too. Pouring extremely dark with a thin, dissipating beige head, the nose is a roasted cacophony of chocolate and nutty intrigue.

The sup is gentle and rich, a swirl of dark malts colliding to conjure up a deep, woody coffee-cocoa taste that commences sweet and segues into a sophisticated bittered tail.

At 5.3% abv, Black Adder has a decent chassis to carry a beautiful, ultimately bitter taste voyage. It really is a fine example of stout at it's best from the heart of East Anglia.

9/10 - Sumptuous and smooth, a Rolls Royce stout singing with quality.

- The Broadside

Kipling (Thornbridge)

A highly anticipated beer for the bunker, from the masterful Thornbridge Brewery, who have signed a deal to sell their beers in Waitrose.

Pours a beautiful clear gold, perfect carbonation, lovely foamy head. Wow the aroma! To say it's totally unique... to the world of beer at least, a huge bouquet like fine Sauvignon Blanc wine (this is how the Nelson Sauvigon hops got their name) mixed with hints of tropical fruit.

The initial taste is far from malty, it's barely beery, sweet tropical fruit flavours like pineapple and mango snap on the tongue. The more standard beery malt notes arrive shortly after providing a nice segway to the finish. A small stamp of bitterness is followed by some fantastically diverse hopping, a mix of more tropical fruit, satsumas, bitterness and a lingering dry hop finish.

9/10 A mindbogglingly unique beer, quite staggering what power hops can assert. Beer with all the fine aromas and finishing notes of fine New Zealand wine.

Available now at Waitrose across the country, or online from mybrewerytap.com

7 Giraffes (Williams Bros)

This beer is made using 7 malt varieties, hops from around the world, with elderflower and lemon zest added. That's a lot of flavors going on, does it work?

Pours deep golden with a simply fantastic foamy head and light carbonation. The smell is devine, caramel, a lovely whiskey sweetness, mixed in with noticeable fresh wet grass. The very definition of balance.

After such a smell the palete craves the first sip. Wow. Amazing malt blasts through, sweetness, dry bitterness, that whiskey edge again, superb diversity of flavour. The final malt gift is a hint of smokiness before a delightfully smooth passage to the hop finish. Gentle bittering builds on the tongue until fading to leave a sharper lemon zing and a noticeable hint of elderflower intertwined with some more tropical hop fruitiness.

9/10 Outstanding. Amazing diversity of malt flavours, with a deliciously fresh finish, all in perfect balance.

You can buy this beer here, and at the amazing price of £16.30 for 12 I strongly recomend you do!
Thanks goes out to Williams Brothers for providing this to review.

90 minute Imperial IPA (Dogfish) 9%Abv

Pours a rather unassuming caramel brown, unleashes a beautifully sweet smell, liked treacle and melted muscovado sugar.

It hits the tongue like a car crash, a speeding muscle car of sweet malt, big caramel, and an almost lemon sharpness. Like an explosion it then engulfs every corner of the mouth, like a rich barleywine, it's clear this beer is potent. Like Rum soaked sweet raisins this beer is rich and warming.

The finished is not a hell hopped IPA (they boast about dry hopping through out), no big dry hop smells or pine notes. It's sutbly bitter, but not enough to even attempt to compete with the rich boozey malt.

9/10 A rich, boozey malt epic. Potent, yet dangerously drinkable,

Duvel Belgian Golden Ale 8%Abv

Pours the colour of light golden sand. Delightfully delicate fresh aroma, bananas, cloves, caramel, honey. Very reminiscent of wheat beers.

It starts gently and unassuming on the taste buds, light sweetness, hints of bittering, then wham! What follows is an hammer blow to every taste bud in the mouth, a hundred different flavour notes at once that smash and echo into the distance, like dropped tray of glasses in a restaurant.

This punctuation of taste, a big yeast crunch, squeezing out fruit flavours, maybe grapefruit. Spicy notes, cinnamon, cloves, definitely pepper, which lingers on long into the finish, where it is joined by the hops. The hops, arrive on the scene like a band who’s support act have played the gig of their life. They are delicate, but not understated, leaving a pronounced bitterness lingering like the pianos being struck at the end of The Beatles “Day in the life”.

Each sip of this beer is like watching a car crash again and again, you try and piece together what’s happened, but even super slow motion can’t help you disassemble a Duvel.

9/10 An outstanding beer. The only possible way to understand this beer fully...is to have another one.

Imperial Russian Stout (Dark Star)

A+ for image. "Imperial Russian Stout" conjures up pre-revolutionary Soviet glory. The bottle is black labelled and the insides might as well be a bottle-shaped infill of coal.

It pours unfussily. The toffee coloured head doesn't hang about, but a filmy froth does, to my eye making fleeting maps of satellite countries yet to be conquered. Coffee, caramel and currants waft on the nose, superpower smells.

First taste is a colossal barrage of dark malt, warming alcohol, cane-sugar and chocolate. The alcohol (10.5%abv) loiters around the tongue almost like a spirit, especially on the following intake of breath. I picked out a slight vanilla note in this heady concerto.

The finish is a powerful thing of wonder. The bitterness does what it ought to in a strong stout, level out the malty sweetness and no more. This is a treasure of a beer, a black gift of stout demolition. If Father Christmas were to be left this instead of mince pies, he would do his round in double quick time and you'd get some damn interesting presents.

Sublime.

9/10 - Do not let your winter pass without this. Potent and smoky - the essence of leather chairs and fight-to-the-death chess games.

- The Broadside

Old Tom (Robinson's) - 8.5%abv

Old Tom is sold in a lovely little bottle, dark and chunky. It has embossed glass lettering in the industrial-era style, and a small picture of a cat, winking cheekily as he invites you to your downfall.

For this is strong ale, not just your 5/6 percent sturdy pint, but a whopping 8.5%, a beer to hearten the soul before a day at the factory. That said, it's from Stockport , and the brewery appear to be extremely proud of this Victor Ubogu of an ale. "World's Best Ale 2009" says the label. This is some feat, as the brewery has been going since 1899, and the beer itself sold for almost as long.

Old Tom is sold in chocolate and ginger variants, but the bottle I have is of the standard ordnance type. It pours very dark indeed, somewhere between ash and bitumen in colour, and if it were served to me as a pale porter, I'd not disagree. The nose is mostly soft chocolate malt, but with a mere hint of banana and edged with peril.

The taste is sweetly, thickly malty but an immediate second channel of aniseed hops opens up to counter this. The unbroken rodeo-bull of the alcohol has a sturdy back, and carries these combative tastes with ease, allowing them to dance but never obliterate each other. The malty brass and hoppy woodwind notes are joined by picaresque strings of coffee and molasses, and the whole sum is a striking hybrid taste - new yet very old and refined over the years.

The final note is a sweetening port strain, seductive and moreish. The temptation and hazard within this small bottle could as easily be named Old Nick as Old Tom, such is it's infernal allure.

It's a head-kicker, have no doubt, but it's also genuinely sumptuous ale, and a prime example of how to create a potent barley wine. Fantastic.

9/10 - Near faultless. Delicious sturdy old-world flavours.

- The Broadside

Hardcore IPA (Brewdog)

Pours into the glass with all the colour of a port casked whiskey. The smell is like a nuclear detonation of hops. Pine resin, strong citrus, like a lime and rum cocktail.

Initial taste is warming malt sweetness, almost like liquor rather than beer. What follows nothing can prepare for, its like a kick in the balls with a jackboot of bittering hops. This is quickly once again engulfed with more warming malt and that potent ABV.

The dry hop finish hits the tongue like a fizzy cola bottle of hops, leaving an explosion of bittersweet flavours, hints of pineapple in the finish.

9/10 An awesome beer, this is 11 on Spinal Tap's amp. This beer is the Sex Pistols, but with a bit more balance and delicate class it could have been The Clash.

Thanks to Brewdog for providing, i suggest you read their blog

You might want to read our AB04 review

London Porter (Fuller’s) 5.4% abv

A dark porter with glimpses of amber at the edges. Invigorating smells of dark chocolate and fresh espresso powder. Beautiful big bubbles sit in a creamy cappuccino foam.

Initial sweetness, hints of toffee is followed by a biscuity middle, that famous Fuller’s yeasty crunch is there. The finish is one of rich dark chocolate, like bitter cocoa, in turn followed by coffee notes, and some noticeable but gentle hop bittering.

9/10 The benchmark of porters, a superb example of full complex flavours in perfect balance.

A huge thanks to Fullers for sending this one through. The Fuller's online shop is now open, with full online beer sales coming soon. Until then check out your local Waitrose or Occado who stock the full range.

Old Engine Oil (Harviestoun)

This one is delicious.

The label promises "viscous, roasty and chocolatey", in fact this is the only thing I've ever heard described as roasty but it does fit.

It's consistency is perhaps just shy of a true stout, more porter but it matters little. The pour is eager and creates a pleasant latte coloured head which lingers a short while. The nose is a touch of coffee and full roast notes.

The taste is initially sweet with a rub of cherry and the feel is velvet-creamy, tending to bitterness in the mouth. Slight carbonisation only helps matters, and for the taste is just right. This is the third porter Goldilocks will have tried.

The mid section is a waft of chocolate surfboarding on a riptide of malt - but whilst bold and assertive it is not overpoweringly so. Part of the pleasure of this beer for me is the well-heeled subtlety of the mix, and there's nothing here to make the drinker make their gnarly face.

It finishes with a rising quip of hops, but just for the sake of bittering and is a delicious keepsake of the sup. I love it.

9/10 - Best in it's class for me, this slim bottled thick black ale is a treasure - full credit to Harviestoun.

- The Broadside

Special London Ale (Young's)

Pours a beautiful Amber colour, slightly caramel. A beautiful smell, somewhere between fresh grass and caramel.

Fills the mouth instantly with a delightlful rounded, mature, creamy, maltiness that lingers all the way to the finish. The finish is filled with big fruit flavours, like a rich fruitcake packed with cherries and maybe a gentle smokey flavour.

9/10 Outstanding, full, rich flavour. One of the best bottled beers out there. Surely another CAMRA win can't be far away?

Buy one of these today! Availble in Sainsbury's, Waitrose and most good stockists.