Cheshire Brown Ale (Marks & Spencer)

I have to be honest its up there as one of the least exciting ales I’ve seen on a shelf, as a result it was the last of the Marks & Spencer winter seasonal range to review.

It smells of fudge, toffee and crumbly brown sugar. The colour, well its not just brown, but a rather delightful caramel.

Big powerful malt to start, sweet, blending into more creamy fudge flavours coating the mouth. The middle has pockets of ripe fruit bursting through but not overpowering the initial creaminess, hints of hazelnut give a lovely depth of flavour. Gentle hopping at the end provides balance and fresh finish.

8/10 A wonderful sweet malty fudge of a beer. Great for all seasons, the pick of the range for me.

Thanks! St Austell

The bunker was very impressed with St Austell Tribute 8/10, and the near legendary Admirals Ale 10/10, so we were particularly pleased when St Austell sent us the above to review the rest of the range.

Looking forward to reviewing! You can buy there beers here as well as in most good Supermarkets.

Winter Ale (St Peter's)

St Peter's , the Bungay brewery, gets a second review this week with their beguiling Winter Ale - perfect for an evening by the stove when outside resembles Tromso in the depths of the Norwegian winter night.

St Peter's claim this is a ruby ale on the label, although up against the light only the faintest trace of a murderous red frames the solid darkness.

Really, it's a highly charged porter to my eye, as the label warns of a weighty 6.3%abv.

The head is lacy and fluffy, and the solidness of the pint makes it look like it weighs a ton. The nose is all chocolate, peatiness and malty molasses, only mulled wine could smell more wintry.

The first taste is delightfully munchy coffee/toffee/dark fruit with edges of caramel. I got a pinch of cinnamon at the back, possibly a fleeting winter mirage. The carbonisation is soft and perfectly pitched.

If I were to give any drawback, its that perhaps the texture is a little thin for a winter comforter, perhaps a creamier pint might have seemed slightly more apt. This just keep keeps it off the 9 spot for me, although as gripes go it's pretty tiny. What the texture does though, is make it remarkably quaffable for a 6%+ drink.

Finely bittered out at the death of the taste, just enough to tip the balance back from the heavy initial flavours, it's a gorgeous pint. I'm not sure who is doing the quality checks at St Peter's, but I hope those tastebuds are insured. Easy drinking strong seasonal beer.

8/10 - St Peter's strikes gold again. Insulating hearty ale.

- The Broadside

Ginger Ale (Marks & Spencer) 6%Abv

Strong aromas of freshly grated wet Ginger. Pours lighter than expected a very dark mahogany.

The first taste is fresh and sweet, and well, very gingery. This progresses into a more recognisable maltiness and beery taste, with nice hints of biscuit, Ginger nuts obviously. The finish is lacking somewhat, apart from the obvious powerful Ginger flavours. Beyond that it lingers on the palate like, dare I say it, a can of coke. Yep, this beer actually tastes rather too similar to Ginger Coke.

Maybe it's unfair to review this as a "beer" it is after all labelled as a "Ginger ale" ? The ingredients list "Glucose syrup" as a main ingredient, the taste of which is all to prevalent, making this taste more like a soft drink than a beer.

3/10 This really could be sold in cans as Coke Ginger

Farmers Glory (Wadworth)

Wadworth kindly sent through a nice selection box of their ales recently, this is the first out and opened.

An unassuming bottle with a simple green label, Farmers Glory promises a "celebration of the hard work and fruits of our agricultural industry", so big love out to any farmers reading.

In the pour its Proper Standard Beer, a regulation but comforting chestnut brown. Malt and hops carry on the scent, and the smell promises balance.

First sup and through the sizable malty front door a sweet and orangey fruit hallway presents itself, along with light fixtures of strawberry and laced with a carpet of nuttiness. It's Christmas pudding tasty, if that pudding were to contain no dark fruit, or brandy. Perhaps another cake metaphor needed.

The alcohol (4.7%) isn't very prominent, and that's testament to the brewers guile. Unfortunately for me the end note is a touch crude on the hops, its a sort of gripey hop wallop which doesn't really extend with grace away from the initial sweet tastes. The final taste is a sort of mingled sweet-bitter. I'm a big fan of balance, but I do prefer it to be in the mid-taste and then pinch off gracefully or extend with clarity.

Make no mistake though, this is Good Beer, and certainly one I'd head for in a session at the pub.

6/10 - A solid opener from the Wadworth box. Good ale brewed with care.

- The Broadside

Festivity (Bath Ales)

A deep dark porter, pours with beautiful coffee powdered foam. The aroma is toffee and lightly roasted coffee.

Intial light sweetness, like muscovado sugar, gives way to fuller more rounded light fruity flavours, hints of cherry maybe.

The finish is dry and bitter, like an expresso coffee it lingers on the tongue, with a slightly spicy, slightly warming rum end.

7/10 A beautifully balanced winter porter, lacks some of the special spiciness for a Christmas beer.

Old-Style Porter (St Peter's)

St Peter's of Bungay have been well reviewed so far at the Bunker, their Ruby Red and Best Bitter both scoring fine 7s . Suffolk is blessed with many fine brewers but this classy traditional operation, which bottles in it's trademark oval green glass, is a margin of quality above most.

Porters have a high bar to hit at the Bunker, as we've had some absolute corkers of late. The Flying Dog and Wickwar porters both hit fine 8s, and the Harviestoun and Fullers efforts were just sublime at 9/10.

At the bottle-cap hiss a pleasing air of chocolate framed with slight coffee wafts up, proper porter smells. Against the light it's actually quite opaque, blood ruby light straining through the dark brown murk.

The head is slight, and never rises on the pour, quickly vanishing to a memory. The first sup is fairly thin, and compared to an 8.7% monster such as Flying Dog Gonzo, almost watery. However, I stress in comparison because second or third tastes reveal a subtle and quite delicious drink.

No slouch on the alcohol at 5.1%ABV, the first note is thoroughly porter chocolate laced with raisin. It's less roasty than other porters I've tried, but seems not to suffer for it. The body is medium, cosy, with toffee/chocolate and is a fine precursor to a lightly smoky extended finish, punctuated by gentle bittering.

Old-Style Porter starts drinkable and only gets more so as the glass goes down. Delicious session beer, will we discover a bad porter?

8/10 - Excellent light porter. An accomplished example of traditional dark ale.

- The Broadside

Which beer goes best with Curry?

Next time you’re settling down to a takeaway or tucking yourself in at your local Indian you might want to consider which beer to order.

Now let’s be clear, I know many people like a powerful IPA or fine Wheat Beer with their curry, and I certainly wouldn't disagree with you, both have their merits, but the below is my attempt to review all the readily available "curry beers" to find out which one comes out on top.

Kingfisher - An old stalwart of the local restaurant, and also a favourite in India and Bangalore where it hails from. But the one you drink in your local will have been brewed in Kent by Shepherd Neame
Cobra - The beautiful ornate labelling would bring many to think this is an Indian beer, think again, it was invented by an UK based accountant. It was initially imported from Bangalore before being brewed by Wells & Young's in Bedford, and now Molson Coors in somewhere in the EU, supposedly Poland.
Mongoose - A new player to the market, its brewed by Wells & Young's using the old Cobra recipe from before they sold it to Molson Coors, relaunched with a new cheeky Cobra eating name.
Bangla - Another relatively new face inspired by the richness of Bangladesh, it’s brewed and bottled in the UK.

So the tasting, we had a range of curries, Dhansak, Jalfrezi, Korma, Tikka Massala. The beers were drunk simultaneously and with myself pouring out of sight to keep the tasting as blind as possible.

The Results
Kingfisher - Crisp, light, clean taste. Light gold beer. Dry finish with hints of toast but sadly very limited, almost unnoticeable hopping. Like a refreshingly blank canvas allowing the curry to dominate the flavour.
Cobra - Crisp taste, slightly maltier, light sweetness. Big bold dryness in the finish, very fresh, slight hints of fruit but again unnoticeably hopped. Slightly more malty and stronger taste allows it to work with the curry but still overpowered quite easily.
Bangla - Big fruity sweet malty, instantly very different to the competitors. A lovely tangy fruit middle, signs of a yeast characteristic, more sweetness. A very disappointing finish, little in the way of dryness or hop bittering. A dominant sweet and fruity, packs plenty of flavour to compete with the strongest of curries.
Mongoose - Fresh, crisp, slight sweetness, noticeable malt. Hints of fruit, maybe melon, dryness and slight hopping in the finish. Of a similar vain to the Cobra but more depth, a lovely balance that rides alongside the flavours of the curries.

The Winner?
Well if I had to drink one on its own without out the curry it would be Bangla, its the least like commercial lager, it has big malty fruit sweetness and you can taste some of the yeast characteristics. This full malty flavour goes beautifully with the curry, matching its strong flavours. Sadly the finish is a bit thin, and its sweetness might clash with a sweet fruity curry like a Dhansak or a Ceylon.
Mongoose takes the runner up prize, it’s a good all-rounder with a decent malty depth and finish. The Cobra isn't vastly different to the Mongoose but slightly thinner tasting. As for Kingfisher, some may love this, but to me it’s very thin commercial lager. But I do accept it could be considered crisp and refreshing by some.

Gold - Bangla
Silver - Mongoose
Bronze - Cobra

Nutz (Bowman)

I approached this one nervously. I like nuts, have nothing against them and like the rest of the public, sometimes only nuts will do with beer - but in beer? We're open minded here, and I'll not let the unforgivable txt-spk spelling of 'nuts' sway my opinion.

Bowman Ales hail from Hampshire, and have a taste for the experimental, having brewed with both ginger and elder flowers.

I have a habit of holding bottles up to the light to check for yeast sediment, and this time I saw actual small nut segments sitting in the deeps. The bottle opens with a gentle whiff of the nut, but not overpoweringly so, it's mostly fine hoppy beer smells.

The head is initially fizzy tending to thin, and the colour a deep chestnut (tout naturellement). On the taste it's not at all bad, and certainly beats the various "beers brewed with honey" I've had, such as Slater's and Well's. In fact, only Well's Banana Bread Beer (must review it here) seems to work as light-strength supermarket speciality beer to my experience so far.

The initial taste is beery and not unpleasant. Light malt arrives in a taxi driven by a couple of nuts, and then more nuts get in the back. The nut thing increases through the length of it, hand in hand with a sort of demerara sugar lilt . It's toasty and spicy on the tongue, and the finish is bitter but leaves a grippy, not entirely beautiful aftertaste on the back of the tongue. The 5%abv alcohol makes itself known in the background and mild bitterness rears up at the death.

As the pint goes down, I tire a little of the taste. It ought to be recognised for what it is, and that is not a session beer. It's an odd sort of early/mid evening ale, and for nut fans, maybe it's nirvana. For me, it's a bit of a struggle to finish a whole pint in quick-order, but that's not to say I didn't enjoy it at times.

5/10 - Competent and interesting speciality ale, I'm happy to have tried it the once.

- The Broadside

Butty Bach (Wye Valley)

"A burnished gold premium ale, full bodied, smooth and satisfying. Serve with mustardy sausages with apple or rich mushroom risotto" - these are the rather specific food instructions on the label from Wye Valley.

It's bottle conditioned, 4.5%ABV and arrives in a smart little pot. A tidy label explains that the malt is crystal and the hops are Fuggles, Goldings and Bramling Cross (a new one to me).

The beer pours very clear and gold, and has the fastest dissipating head I've yet reviewed, in fact it looks rather like a quenching pint of apple juice once settled in the glass. The nose is full of oranges and has an almost pick n' mix trace of sweetness about it.

First taste is crisp malt with a fairly sizeable bread note. The fruit continues, and morphs between orange and grapefruit. The finish turns bitter, but not overly so and there is a slightly metallic aftertaste which fades to dry and is not unpleasant.

I'm probably drinking this in the wrong season as during the thermal clasp of summer this would have been just the ticket. As it is Bunker Station Two sits wind-locked in a minus four degree cold snap and moose have been sighted grazing on the cliff.

Still, with imagination this is a crisp, quenching summer beer and has some surprisingly novel flavours. None of them stand out enough for me to pick it out as truly special, but Butty Bach is by no means a poor option in the supermarket.

Decent soft golden beer, and one I'd like to try on draught.

6/10 - Like malty wine in its delicate blend of subtle flavours. Good refreshing session beer.

- The Broadside

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.

IPA (Isle of Purbeck Brewery)

A deep golden brown beer, very clear. Lovely grassy charcoal smell.

Rich malty start, the limited sweetness is soon matched and over powered by predominant bitterness. Brief glimpses of fruit followed by that unique Purbeck yeast character giving a gentle smoky charcoal taste that lingers to the finish. The finish is crisp and dry, noticeably hopped, but perhaps lacking a bit of diversity in the linger.

7/10 Another very good ale from Purbeck, malty, dry and bitter.