Fuller's Brewer's Reserve

Tasting notes as promised!

This is a very limited release and we are extremly pleased to have got our hands on a bottle the beer is a blend of 1845, golden pride and fresh ESB, it has been aged in thirty year old whisky barrels for 500 days, so we are expecting somthing special!

The beer poors a deep amber colour with a redish hue with a thin off white head that dissipates quickly. The nose presents figgy fruits with a hint of sweet whisky followed by a complex musty sourness. The 500 days oak ageing is very apparent, notes of wood and vannila are also pronounced in the smell. On to the taste! The beer has a deep sweetness balanced by supberb hoppy bitterness. Predominant flavours are orange peel, bitter marmalade (presumably from the ESB) , whiskey, oak and vanilla with some dark fig and plum fruits notes. As it warms we get a more prounounced whisky flavour, this is truely a brew to to sipped and savoured espeicaly at the steep price tag (£5.50!)

At 7.7% the beer is actually quite drinkable, this being due to it being a fantastically balanced blend. It is very complex, with lots of complex subtleties in the mouth and nose, if you can find some definitely invest in one, this is truly something else, a fantastic beer! Puts the well known oak aged Scottish beer, Innis and Gunn, to shame!

WHAMMY!

We have just got back from our local beer mecca (Bitter Virtue) and have purchased a bottle of Fullers Brewers Reserve! The chap in the shop had recieved it just this morning, so we may well be one of the first to try this amazing beer. We also managed to pick up 3 bottles of Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, double whammy!

Tasting notes will follow shortly!

Mad Belgians...

Recently we have been dabbling in some fantastic bottled Belgian beer. One style that really stood out was the spontaneously fermented lambic beers. Right, first some history on these beers! Lambic beers have been brewed for as long as 400 years. To produce such a brew the malted, wheated and hopped beer is stored in unlined oak casks and stored from anywhere between 18 months to 6 years. During this time wild yeasts attack the beer, making it ferment.

The beers we have been able to buy are Gueuzes, these are a blend of old and new lambic in bottled form. These beers aren't for the faint hearted, they present musty and cheesy noses with huge sour and cidery tastes.

Another style of these beers include fruit in the fermentation process, the most popular, called Kriek, is made with cherries.

Here are some tasting notes of a few Gueuzes we have tasted recently. The first two were bought in our local beer shop, Bitter Virtue.

Girardin Gueuze 1882 Black Label (unfiltered):

We tasted this beer in a large red wine glass. A Burnished orange colour, almost marmalade, with a thick cream head and significant lacing. The nose was hugely complex with baked sour apples, varnished wood, lime cordial, sulphur, minerality like a fine white wine, strong cream cheese and vague hints of pepper and asparagus. The palate was full of deep sour apples, with a hint of oakyness and vinous fruits. All topped off with a deep dry uncompromisingly sour finish - akin to sucking a lemon!

Cantillon Gueuze 100% Lambic Bio:

A thick orange colour with a thin dusty head that dissipated quickly with minimal lacing. The nose presented an intense amount of must with rich orange rind and lime cordial aromas. The palate was intensely sour, the lemony spritz dances on the tongue and is followed by granny smith apples, hints of oak and vintage cider. A long lingering musty finished with a lemon/lime sourness.

Lindeman's Gueuze:

I manged to pick this up in france, haven't seen it in the UK yet, however we do get an awful lot of Lindeman's Kriek in the supermarkets.

A dark orange colour with light copper hints, a full thick dense head that clung to the glass. Sweet caramelised apples on the nose with tart lime cordial and musty smooth vanilla oak. The palate is full of the classic sour apples but followed by soft fleshed fruits. Other tastes of note were raisins and a figgy brown sugar sweetness. This gueuze tasted slightly artificial and was far too sweet!

Our tastebuds head west!

I am sat at home, with the day off, while Rory toils away in the wine rack, I thought I would deliver a little update. A trip to our nearest bottled beer meca has been made since we last posted (Bitter virtue in southampton; http://www.bittervirtue.co.uk/). The purchases were smalll (it was the end of the month!) but extremly worthy. We had a slightly odd selection including a Belgian attempt at a english style IPA, which was actually not bad at all, a distinctly hoppy nose with citrus fruits dominating, but a distinct lack of hop bitterness in the mouth coupled with the distinctly Belgian yeasty note lead to an odd but none the less very drinkable brew. The highlight for us though were the three American beers we picked up; Brooklyn brewery's lager, Anchor's special Christmas ale and Rogue's brutal bitter. Neither of us had tried any of them before; we have had a few American craft beers namely SN's pale ale, Anchor's steam beer and Goose Island's IPA, they made a good intro to what we could expect from the States. And we were not disapointed with our selection! The Brooklyn lager was sensational; a completly unexpected attractive amber colour, with a brilliantly balanced nose of malt and hops. A wonderful quenching beer that we both agreed could be drunk by the gallon all year round. I tried the Rogue ale's Brutal bitter on my own and was blown away by its brillinat nose of bitter orange peel and deep biscuity hops, you could smell this was going to bitter! And it kept its promise being one of the bitterest beers i have ever drunk! The brillant oranges and hints of tropical fruits flooded the mouth leaving a long intensly dry and bitter finish with a final taste of crackers. It was my
favourite of the beers we tried, I had read of the American "hop bombs" and this deliverd big time. The Anchor was tried together and we both really enjoyed its brilliant balance of warming spice and hop bitterness, with tastes of cinamon, cloves and nutmeg this was a winter warmer to savour. An order for some more Rogue brutal bitter, two bottles of Rogue's brown ale, a bottle of their heffe wiesszen and a Brooklyn black chocolate stout have been made on a fantastic beer site. (onlyfinebeer.co.uk) There due to arrive in a couple of days! We are truely are in flavour country!