An archive of ramblings from an Aussie who once lived in London
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Yellow Hammer
Pressing on with our pub crawl Rich and I decided to decend upon the Old China Hand. This pub used to be an Irish bar, but it has recently been refitted to be a trendy pub that serves good real ale (and a good international bottle selection) and dim sum. The beer of choice here was O'Hanlon's Yellow Hammer (4.2% abv) which is a light session ale and was very tasty. Things were getting on by this time in the evening and we were starting to get a bit tipsy so good beer judgement started to be impared! I would really like to get back to this pub soon for a proper session and a feed as it would be an awesome afterwork/early evening venue.
Sharp's beers seem to be popping up a pubs throughout London. I'm not sure of the exact reasoning for this, but I assume they have a marketing and distribution agreement with one of the bigger players as Doom Bar seems to be available nearly everywhere now. Cornish Coaster (3.6% abv) is a golden coloured bitter which has been brewed as a session beer to celebrate for Cornwall's fishing heritage. The beer itself is not the most balanced of beers with the citrus armoa totally overpowering whatever malt profile and bitterness are supposed to be there. To this end the beer is a little dissapointing as the aroma give the impression that the beer is going to be a big beer. As a session beer, the beer is ok and will keep you sober'ish at 3.6% for more than a few pints. I probably wouldn't have this beer again, but if aroma is your thing, then check it out.
Young's Special Premium Ale (4.5% abv) is a special bitter available only on draft and not to be confused with the much stronger bottled London Special Ale. I enjoyed this pint at the Calthorpe Arms on Gray's Inn Rd a couple of weeks ago whilst attempting a mini crawl through the Mt Pleasant area. The beer is a medium amber colour and has a defining characteristic fruitiness which differentiates special from bog standard Young's Bitter.
Lately I have been having a bit of a debate with some of my mates regarding Young's beers. We believe that since the brewery has moved from Wandsworth out to wherever they make the stuff now the beer has become better and more consistant, especially the standard bitter.
The second beer from my Cumberland Ales pack, Sneck Lifter Strong Ale (5.1% abv) is a deep red ale with roasted barley notes and a nice crisp bitter finish, a definite winter warmer. My colleagues from the north tell me that in local northern dialect a sneck is a door latch, and a sneck lifter is a bloke who used to steal money from under the door latch to buy beer? I don't know, sounds all a bit odd. There is a little bit about this sort of thing on the website as well. I wont be a toff and go into all the ticker speak, but I did find this beauty on rate beer!
Appearance: dark mahogany color. Medium, beige, lasting and dense head. Aroma: intensive fresh toasty unmalted-wheat smell and of others toast grains. This aroma remembers me the fresh “toast flour”. Caramel, cacao, sugar and light smoke aromatic reminiscences. Flavor: lightly sweet start with nice toast-wheat taste and the reminiscences of “toast flour”. Fresh roast-coffee, cacao, caramel, wood, candy figs and plums, toast-breed and light smoke notes. Light dry and lasting final, mainly from the toast. Palate: medium body and light carbonation. Remark: nice toast-unmalted-wheat and light smoke taste. Advisable beer with own-character
I bet this guy is a tosser! I for one could not taste wood, candy, figs or plums in this beer. I suspect that the poor bloke who reviewed this beer with such detail may not be familiar with the intricacies of DMS which is common in some immature ales and has some of these flavours? Anyway, i say talk less and drink more!
Cumberland Traditional Ale (4.2% Abv) is tasty golden coloured bitter from Cumberland in the north of England and is a product of the Jenning's brewery. The guys at jenning's have conveniently put together a Cumberland ale pack with a few of their beers which is available at Waitrose (which is posher than Tesco's I might add!). The beer has a solid and full malt profile and is quite hoppy as well. This one is definetely worthy of checking out! Website
Recently while at my new local 'Old Parrs Head' near Olympia, I had the hankering for a good lager. The pickings on offer were slim, but not unreasonable and I settled in for a pint of San Miguel. I have reported my thought on this beer previously from when I was in Barcelona. The beer is ok, and is a dry example of its beer style, but on the whole is slightly unremarkable.
After stubling out of the Williamsons Tavern quite late we decided to try for one more beer. After stumbling around a few back streets between Cheapside and Roman Wall we found a little local boozer which was closing up but didn't mind serving us one final pint. I made mine an Abbot Ale, which I have previously blogged about here. It went down OK, but it was time for me to head on over to Moorgate tube and get my ass home!
Hmm, I think I was pretty battered by the time I had this one! A short stumble down Bow Lane and up a little side alley saw us at another pub called Williamsons Tavern. This pub is a bit of a hidden gem, and it was good to see some unusual beers on offer. We decided to go for Decade from the York Brewery (4.1% abv), a light hoppy session ale which was polished off pretty quickly and came as a great relief after the SA Gold failed to live up to its promise. As I was half turped at the time I had the beer I can't really comment on specific intricacies, but it was ok! Website: Here.
From the Cockpit, Chris and I headed up to Bow Lane, behind St Pauls and settled into a pub which was serving beers from the Welsh Brains Brewery. Rather than have a pint of 'Ordinary' Brains, I opted for SA Gold (4.7% abv) a rich Welsh golden ale. SA Original is more commonly known as Original Cardiff Skull Attack (for unknown reasons?? hehe), and I was hoping that this stuff would follow suit. However, the beer turned out to be slightly disappointing and tasted pretty much like flat lager. I guess it would be a good beer to turn Lagerheads on to real ale, but then that doesn't say much! The most interesting thing about this particular pint was the high population of Essex Wide Boys trying to pick up young attractive city office Secretaries. The young sectretaries themselves are out to score with young bullish multimillion pound a year city boy trader types (who the wide boys are pretentding to be) and hence a vicious cycle of desperation starts, much to our entertainment. Also worthy of note are the obviously underage girls out and about totally smashed of their heads. I'm sorry, there is nothing attractive about a 13 year old wearing her Mum's sluttiest outfit, overdone with makeup , and puking in the gutter! Anyway SA Gold official website: here.
Back in UK again! I enjoyed this pint of Courage Directors (4.8% abv) from a pub near St Pauls cathedral called "The Cockpit" whilst on a mini crawl with my mate Chris. The beer falls into the ESB beers style and is hardly a good example of the style, but is noteworthy none the less. The beer is a deep amber colour and has a slightly dryer taste than say Fullers ESB and a flavour profile that is quite nutty, leaning almost towards a Newcastle Brown style.
A comical event that occured on the evening is the size of my mate Chris's head. its huge and in almost toddler proportions. If you don't really believe me - see the picture below!
A Tesco pickup! At last I have cleared the beers from my trip to Australia and I only have about a months worth of regular drinking to catch up on.....
Dragon Stout (7.5% abv) is a strong stout from Jamaica. It is a product of the Red Stripe brewery and a favourite around London during the Notting Hill Carnival during the August bank holiday weekend.
Rather than the dry Irish stouts, Dragon is very sweet and leaves a heavy lacing down the side of your glass. However, the beer seems to be increadibly thin for a beer of this high an initial gravity. Overall, my impressions are its a fun, strong beer that is widely available. Its a little too sweet for my taste, but it does the job.
Tooheys Extra Dry (5% abv) is the pioneering beer for the dry beer style in Australia. The beer is a relic from the 'Ice' and 'Cold filtered' beer days of the mid 90's and has the same headache enducing qualities of this beer style, whilst hopping on the low carb bandwagon. Again its a highly carbed, flavourless, American Style dry beer. I am probably a bit harsh calling it flavourless as it does have more flavour than a Mexican Cerveza, but not much.
Again, these beers are really hard to blog about because they are boring. When I eventually move home, hopefully the low carb trend will be over! Website: http://www.tooheysextradry.com.au/
Another tasteless beer! Hahn Superdry (4.6% abv) is one of the new school of American Style low carb lagers which are flooding the Australian Beer market. Rather than rant on, I will leave a little profile on the beer.
A quick one! Bitburger Pils (4.8% abv) generally has a bad wrap in Australia amongst most of the beer crowd but I think this reputation is undeserved. The beer is a gem, but I can see how it may not suit Australian tastes. For those who have not had the pleasure, the beer is dry and crisp, almost to the extreme, however it also backed up by solid malt and a decent serving of hops on the nose. Overall, its an exteremly refreshing and well balanced beer. However, this aside a mate of mine said.
"Its a bit Rough"
I just dont get it??
Anyhow this beer is widely available around the world so there is really no excuse not to check it out for yourself. I will hopefully get to sample some fresh in Germany itself at the end of the month, and then again at the German Beer Fest in London on May 15th. Bring on the good times! Website:http://www.bitburger.com/
This bottle of James Squire Golden Ale (4.5 % abv) I managed to scam out of my mate Greg for the purpose of this blog! Formerly a seasonal brew it seems to have been added to the full time brewring roster and most likely shifted production from the Malt Shovel Brewery to the massive Lion-Nathan industrial site at Lidcombe. The beer is attempting to be an American Pale Ale and has the right aroma with Amarillo hops on the nose but misses heavily in the bittering department to make the beer slightly unbalanced. Don't get me wrong, the beer goes down a treat on a hot late summers afternoon in the outback but its no Little Creatures Pale Ale or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Again as the beer is relatively new there is not a whole lot to report. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it lives up to James Squire's real gems such as the Porter, Pilsner and IPA. Website.
A relative newcomer to the Australian Beer scene, Baron's Pale Ale (4.6% abv) takes the well established American Pale Ale route and extends the concept by using highly aromatic hops sourced from New Zealand. I had heard rumours about Baron's beers and their growing popularity in the United States and was keen to check out what all the hype was all about. The beer is uniquely bitter, Its unobtrusive, but I think the IBU rating would still be well over 30 IBU's. The aroma is of passionfruit and lychee, but instead of deriving these flavours from Cascade and Amarillo, Baron's have chosen newer hop varieties such as Nelson Sauvin and Pacific Gem to do the job. Due to the beer only being relesed relatively recently, I have been unable to find out too much info. However as always there is a website! Overall, a good balanced beer which I shall crave until I can find it either here in the UK, or when I move back to Australia.
Crown Lager (abv 4.9%) is often described as Australia's original premium beer. However, the only thing premium about the product is the packaging and its price tag! The beer is basically Fosters lager repackaged into a fancy bottle. For a long time it was the beer of choice for corrupt policemen and everyday business men as they made their way to the Chinese restaurant for lunch. It was the Australian Chinese restaurants equivalent to Cobra and Kingfisher in the UK curry house. Crown Lager (known colloquially as a "crownie") was originally brewed in 1919 as "Fosters Crown Lager" and was initially only available to visiting dignitaries that visited Australia. During the first royal visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Australia in 1954 Fosters marked the occasion releasing Crown Lager to the general Australian public . Crown lager is highly recognisable by its uniquely shaped bottle and by its 1954-trademarked logo that has only changed four times in the history of the beer and despite that its utter crap, remains one of Australia's most popular premium lagers. You can find more infor at the Fosters website here: http://fosters.com.au/enjoy/beer/crown_lager.htm
James Squire Original Amber Ale (5% abv) is an Australian produced Nut Brown Ale from Lion Nathan's Malt Shovel brewery. This is the beer that may have pioneered the Australian Boutique beer industry and is certainly the first commercially successful bitter that has hit the scene since I became of age. Michael Jackson, aka "The Beer Hunter" has written this article about the beer, the brewery and the hertitage.
He was some character. James Squire, of Kingston, near London, was a highwayman, convicted of robbery with menace in 1785. Althoughhe had stolen nothing more than chickens, he was sentenced to be transported tothe British penal colony in Botany Bay, Australia. The convict ships also brought hops, and Squire seems to have been the first person to grow them successfully in the new colony and to brew beer there commercially. He eventually owned extensive hop gardens and a brewery and pub called the Malt Shovel, at Kissing Point, near Sydney. The romantic-sounding location seems to have been appropriate; in the course of his life, Squire had at least four wives or long-term mistresses and begat a dozen children. Today's revived Malt Shovel brewery in Sydney is in a former furniture factory dating from 1900. This brewery was established in 1988 by an American, Chuck Hahn, who once worked for Coors. He left the United States when he was headhunted for a senior post with one of the major Australian brewers. Hahn had worked in Colorado in the early days of the microbrewery movement, and has since done much to encourage the production of more flavourful beers in Australia, which is better known for light-tasting, sweetish, lagers. He operates his brewery under the ownership of the Australasian group Lion Nathan. The main entrance to Hahn's brewery is through the brewhouse, with brass handrails and traditional copper kettles. They were acquired second-hand, but are in beautiful condition. They were in the midst of being polished by the crew when I first visited the brewery in 1992. At the time, the brewery's flagship beer was the hoppy Hahn Premium. This is now made at the larger Toohey's brewery, also in Sydney and owned by the same group. I returned in 1999, to be a judge at the Australian International Beer Awards. The beer chosen Best Australian Lager and Grand Champion turned out to be Hahn Premium. On that visit, I also revisited Chuck's brewery, which was in the process of being relaunched under the name Malt Shovel (having been known before as the Hahn Brewery). A guest bar, open to the office, had been installed, and the whole place reminded me somewhat of Anchor Steam, in San Francisco. I tasted from the tank a maltier, spicier lager called James Squire Original Pilsener. I would later be sent a fresh, orangey-tasting, Belgian-style Summer Wheat Beer, brewed as a special. But the toast of the day was the newly launched James Squire Original Amber Ale, which was being served cask-conditioned in the brewery bar. This distinctive brew is made from three malts (pale, crystal and Carapils) and three additions of hops (using Tasmanian Pride of Ringwood and Willamette) and a top-fermenting yeast that has been used in Australia for 125 years. James Squire himself has been gone for 180 years, but his story is kept alive by the beer. A series of back-labels charts his progress . . . from thief to brewer, constable, banker and eventually magistrate. His headstone said that he "lived respected and died lamented." PS: In the 2000 awards, the brewery received medals for the Pilsener, the Amber Ale and the new James Squire Porter, which I have yet to taste. TASTING NOTE: The designation Amber Ale is to be taken seriously. This brew has a full, amber-red colour. It also has a full flavour, though it is restrained and soft in body. It has an attractive, cinnamon-like hop character in both the initial aroma and the balancing dryness of finish, but in the middle the emphasis is more toward a malty creaminess and a melony, marmaladey, fruitiness. Very refreshing. FOOD PAIRINGS: A fruity, full-flavoured ales goes best with red meat. Chuck Hahn, a keen promoter of beer-and-food pairings, suggests kangaroo. Having myself eaten this meat many times in Australia, I agree. If your neighborhood food market does not run to kangaroos, try lamb.
You can find out some more at the Lion Nathan website here. I also suspect that they are now brewing this with a lager yeast? Does anyone care to comment?
Victoria Bitter (4.9% abv), VB, Virgin Busters, Vomit beer, Visitors beer, everyone has a new and even more demeaning name for it! You either love it or you hate it. The brand stems from a rivalry which is as old and sacred as Holden vs Ford and opinions of the beer generally tend to come from brand loyalty rather than the quality of the actual beer. Contrary to the name, Victoria Bitter is actually a stock standard pale lager and would be the defining example for the beer style of Australian lager. The beer has been available since the 1890's and has grown into Australia's best and biggest selling beer. It has a reputation as a beer for men who work hard and play hard. Contrary to what you may have heard VB is actually a nice beer to drink on a hot summer afternoon, and I am proud to admit that it is still one of my favourite beers. I guess that is because I was brought up on the stuff, but there is definetely more to it. I think its the nice firm bitterness, slight nuttyness and low carbonation (well lower than most Australian beers) which makes VB so good. The fact that, "it is what it is" and does not pretend to be something else like the majority of gimmick beers that are currently being released on the Australian market is refreshing in itself. The fact that the Australian beer market has grown into three segments is disturbing. There is the staple and core market which has existed since the dawn or time, this is the bulk of the market. No frills beers such as VB which sell loads and are the real bread and butter of Australian beer. Then there is the boutique market which has emerged over the last few years. At first this was a revelation, quality beers being offered at reasonable prices. A few small breweries daring to stand up and show the big boys what beer is supposed to be like! However, the big boys responded and either bought these small breweries or released their own boutique brands which offered substandard beer at inflated prices. The latest market segement to emerge is the low carb dry beer thing. I'll spare you all that rant again , but I will make the point that with a market which is so keen to exploit the drinker, its refreshing to know that beers like VB will always be available and that as long as you know what you are getting, you will never be let down!
Carlton Dry (4.5% abv) is the latest low carb offering from the Fosters group. It tends to follow the American formula of high carbonation and very little taste and is what most people would describe as a lawnmower beer (ie. a beer that is cold and wet and goes well after a morning of mowing the lawns!). This trend in Australian brewing towards low carb beer is a little concerning as several brands have jumped on the bandwagon producing bland flavourless liquid and pricing it marginally cheaper than existing products to gain following presumably before jacking the price up. It seems like its the cold filtered/ice trend all over again and that Carlton dry is the new carlton cold ( a terrible and equally poor beer). I guess as Tooheys Extra Dry's market share has risen to close to that of Tohheys New, Carlton and United breweries have jumped on the bandwagon with their own offering. I wont bore you too much with my rant, but you can check out what the marketers have to say here:http://www.fosters.com.au/enjoy/beer/carltondry.htm
And what is it with 355mL bottles? The accepted Australian standard for the size of a stubby is 375mL. 355mL is just plain ripping people off by 20mL or more than the equivalent of a whole beer over the course of a carton (24 beers). Shame. Shame. Shame....
Firstly, I would like to apologise for the lack of posts over the last three weeks. The reason for this has been that I have been on holiday in Australia for my brother in law’s wedding, and whilst there I managed to sample enough beers to create a hefty backlog! The first beer I enjoyed was James Squire Pilsner (5% abv), an old favourite from the Lion Nathan owned Malt Shovel Brewery. James Squire or specifically Chuck Hahn (brewery founder and brewer) have taken the traditional Pilsner beer style and brought it up to date with some modern twists. The bitterness is the first most prevalent as it is quite firm, but more pronounced than Pilsner Urquell. I have it on good authority that they are using NZ super Alpha for bittering. The hop aroma is like a super citrusy saaz flavour and also I have it on good authority that these flavours are supplied from NZ grown Saaz B hops. Overall, a powerful beer that has been toned down enough to make it session worthy whilst retaining enough clout to hold its own with the best pilsners.
Pressing on with our pub crawl Rich and I decided to decend upon the Old China Hand. This pub used to be an Irish bar, but it has recently been refitted to be a trendy pub that serves good real ale (and a good international bottle selection) and dim sum. The beer of choice here was O'Hanlon's Yellow Hammer (4.2% abv) which is a light session ale and was very tasty. Things were getting on by this time in the evening and we were starting to get a bit tipsy so good beer judgement started to be impared! I would really like to get back to this pub soon for a proper session and a feed as it would be an awesome afterwork/early evening venue.
