Stout - and why you should give it a go or Thornbridge St Petersburg Imperial Russian Stout

Let's get on with talking about this beer.  No pissing about here.


As you'll have seen in the bio, Stout isn't my favourite style of beer.  Recently though, I've started appreciating some of the darker arts involved in the process, with some black lager rom a local microbrewery/pub and a wicked black IPA from Buxton.  So I picked up a couple of these when I did my ales by mail shop.  One admittedly was for the wife who is a confirmed stout fan, but as I'm such a fan of their other beers, I thought I should give it a go.


So what do you get?


Well, as always, it's a nice looking bottle and a lovely label - but you didn't really want to know about that did you?


Cracking it open doesn't reveal much, a wisp of smoke and you're done.  Not much doing in terms of smelling the bottle either, so on to the next stage.

When you pour it, it pours, for want of a better word, smoothly.  The picture shows you what happened once I'd finished pouring.  I'm not an aggressive pourer of beer, but it did require me to stop for a moment and take stock of the situation, I spent the few seconds waiting time checking the fridge for likely snacks, you may wish to do the same.


It didn't give away much on the nose either, despite the lovely off white creamy head.


So, first impressions?  It was smooth in my mouth.  Then it wasn't, the bubbles, miniscule though they are, were slowly working their way through the ever so slightly viscous texture and moving the flavours around my mouth.


So what were the flavours?  I picked up some chocolate in there, lovely bitter dark chocolate, some mild hoppiness which was surprising but welcome to a non-stout person like me and then at the end, some lovely coffee, but not an overpowering lasting on the palate forever kind of coffee like some stouts, just some residual decent ground coffee, enough to give you that bitter hit.  I didn't catch much of the peat - but I've been smelling Jura whiskey all over xmas, so I'm a bit spoilt in that sense.


At 7.7% abv, it's a bit of a beast, but it's definitely a beer to savour, I'm savouring it right now in fact.


This beer has opened the door to stout for me, no longer will I worry about the memory of trying the last dregs of a warm can of Mackesons my mum used in her christmas cake.  This has really opened my eyes, and my mouth.

I think the moral of this post is the old, old story, 'try this beer'.  You really won't regret shelling out for it.

ttfn

Kipling - Thornbridge Brewery - A foolish tale

When I first started drinking proper beer, something initially made me stay away from the Thornbridge beers in Waitrose.  Part of the reason was the higher ABV that came with the Jaipur and the Kipling (the only ones they carried), because I was still quite interested in being able to get three or four beers down my neck in a single sitting.

Part of it was beer ignorance as well, as I dipped my toe into the beer water, I didn't think that I would be able to appreciate a beer that was at least 20p more than some of the others, besides which, the range of beers had plenty to keep me amused.

Then one day last summer, I threw caution to the wind and I picked up a Jaipur and a Kipling.

Here beginneth the lesson:

That evening, I cracked open the Jaipur and was blown away (I'll write about Jaipur another day), but what it also blew away was my ability to really appreciate the Kipling.   Kids, if you are doing this at home and trying them for the first time, don't try and drink them in this order.

Luckily, a chance for redemption came my way.  The next week, they had run out of Jaipur, so I thought I'd give the Kipling a proper go, reasoning that although it wasn't great, it was still pretty tasty.

When I drank it that evening, I was immediately seized with the urge to pour a large amount of (metaphorical) egg over my face.

Not only had I been not buying this stuff for a long time, I had inadvertently written it off as a junior partner to Jaipur.

When I guested on the Real Ale Guide (on youtube - check it out HERE ) - I said it was the smarter younger brother of Jaipur.  I'd like to revise that comment now, it's the smarter, younger, step-brother.

It's a different style, it's a hoppy golden ale, but it's surfing perilously close to the outer borders of an IPA, it's still big and hoppy and swaggering all over the place with it's amazing fluffy white head, a cracking grapefruit and gooseberry bitter taste.  It's carbonated with the tiniest of bubbles so doesn't even for a second get near bloating you and you would never know that it weighs in at 5.2% if someone gave you it blind, the alcohol burn just isn't there.  I have recommended this in the supermarket when I've seen people looking lost and I really regret doing it now as it means there is more competition for it.

This is the first beer that I ever felt like giving a 10 out of 10.   It's a beer that you can sit down with for an hour and sip at, experiencing the range of smells that come out of it as the temperature changes.  Equally, it's a jauntily refreshing pint that you could sink just to quench your thirst on a hot day.

So if you are going to the shops later and you see some of this and you haven't had it, buy it, immediately.  I guarantee you that you will be back the following day looking for more, like a zombie hunting for Brains (ooh zinged another brewery there, controversial).

So, in summary

Lesson 1 - Buy this beer ( a lot)

Lesson 2 - Enjoy this beer (a lot)

Lesson 3 - Don't tell anyone else about this beer (it can just be our dirty little secret)

TTFN

Thornbridge - Versa Weisse Beer

My package of many beers arrived from Ales by Mail this morning, I'll do a little list in another blog post, but having chosen them by hand, I'm pretty sure that most, if not all of them are going to end up in this blog.

The choice I had to make was what to go for first from my hard-won beer bounty.

I had several Thornbridge beers in the package, this, Tzara, Kipling (which was a replacement for a Kill Your Darlings) and the Saint Petersburg.

I'm not going to lie to you.  Two of my favourite beers are from the Thornbridge Brewery (Kipling and Jaipur) so the choice of brewer wasn't really a hard decision to make, especially as I've not managed to get my hands on any of their stuff since before Christmas.

I went for this because I've been enjoying (very much as a third choice) from my local Waitrose their own brand weisse beer, so I've developed rather a taste for it.  

So - the experience?

I opened it.

I sniffed it.

I recoiled from sniffing it rather quickly before the contents tried to break into my nose by force, seems an air pocket had formed inside the bottle (or maybe the transit had fizzed it up slightly), so I lost a mouthful - which I was absolutely gutted about.

At this point, this was reminding me of an incident when as a much younger man, I had tried to put on a condom the wrong way round and there was a bit of a delay until I had gotten another - it was important then that I do that, and it was important now that I save the beer and clean the floor (health and safety should always come first in either matter).

Once the bottle had settled and I had ceased cursing and mopping the kitchen floor.  I returned to my new friend.  I sniffed the bottle.

Not wishing to lose the moment, I poured the lot (rather carefully) into a pint glass.  It looked good.  Not like some beers in this style in that it wasn't that cloudy, but in Thornbridge we trust.

Another sniff, a deep long sticking the nose in gave me some amazing smells.   Intense sweet (but not sickly), it reminded me of the ham my mum used to cook at Christmas and it reminded me slightly of bazooka joe.

I couldn't hold on any longer.  So I took a mouthful.

The smell translates directly into the taste, it tastes of heaven, if heaven were German.  It stays refreshing, the sweetness in no way impedes the fact that on a hot day, you would want to surround yourself with endless halves of this, nicely chilled.

This is an excellent example of the genre.  I heartily recommend it.  I have to go now as I am salivating at the thought of opening another and the keyboard is getting messy.

ttfn