SKUNKED Beer???

We've all heard of the phrase: this beer is 'skunked'. Until now I've never had a skunked beer in my life, I'm a good ghost who keeps his beer out of range of the evil sun. You may or may not know that the hops used in the 'making beer' process have a certain dislike of UV rays. These evil UV rays which so many people love for making them tanned, will also make your beer taste bad, so they say. The UV rays take a certain dislike to some hop compounds and break them down, causing the beer to have a certain off flavour.

It has been said that clear and green glass offers no protection against the sun and only brown glass can ward off these devious rays. Or so I've been told.

I wanted to indulge in a little experiment today.

Above are 6 bottled beers. 3 of these beers have spent over 4 hours in direct sunlight, and in that time they became rather warm. (very warm indeed actually!) These 3 were then put back with their counterparts and mixed up so I wouldn't be able to make any pre-conceived tasting notes in my brain about what may occur.

I started off with the Brooklyn Lager.

A beer being packaged in brown glass, I was under the assumption that 4 hours under the guns wouldn't affect it. But I was also interested to see if a very high temperature change would affect the beer at all. It seemed I needn't worry at all though. Both beers looked, smelled and tasted exactly the same. A win for the brown beer bottle then, and for Brooklyn beer too. Not only did it withstand 4 hours in the sun, but it also withstood being roasted to the gills! Well played indeed Brooklyn.

Next up was the Tsingtao.

On the pour nothing looked out of the ordinary. In fact when I lifted the glasses to the nose, no un-trained (or trained for that matter) aromatic professor would be able to tell the difference between these beers.

What of the taste though. Well to be perfectly honest, I couldn't find a single difference. It seems that Tsingtao has the same luck in the draw as Brooklyn Lager. Both beers were tamely delicious.  Could it be that the rice used in the production of this beer has some UV preservative qualities? Probably not, but it passed my test.

On to the last beer and offending glass transparency: Tooheys Extra Dry.

Once again there was not much difference to the aromas of the two. In fact there was no difference at all.

If there was a beer which you thought would not pass the test, you'd think it this one. But NO!

I didn't understand. It tasted exactly the same in both glasses! What was going on, I wondered to myself? Did I not leave it in the sun long enough?? Did it even have hops in it?? The bottle didn't state that it did.

Maybe I was just trying to make excuses. It's not a bad beer. It won the Gold Medal in the category for best dry lager in the 1998 World Beer Cup, so it must have hops in it at least.

What's going on!?!?

I'm no bio-chemist, I'm not even any form of chemist. But I left 3 of these beers in direct sunlight for over 4 hours!!! And they all got to a temperature of that well above of your average take away pizza!!! Please tell me what I've done wrong because:

I've tried this experiment with three bottle shades, and yet to have tried a 'Skunked Beer' in my life!!!

The Session 52. Collectibles & Breweriana

A bit late to the party, but here goes:

I've always been a bit of a collector of Beery stuff. It started about 6/7 years ago with a couple of empty beer bottles. Over the next couple of years I amassed quite a collection of them:

This was the peak of my bottle collecting. All different bottles, no repeats. I was quite proud, but indeed they took up far too much space, so I decided on recycling them and making a new collection of things.

The next thing to pre-occupy my geeky side was to take form in writing beer notes in mole skin notebooks. I filled just over 3 - 500 page notebooks aver the next 3 years on all different beers, and loved seeking out different ones to add to the collection. This, I must point out, is different to 'ticking' because I could look back and remember (by reading) what each beer was like and where I was when I tried it. (even if you have 10000 ticks in a book, their just ticks)

I still do a little of this to this day, but my geeky lust has now moved into beer blogging and taken on its newest form. Who knows where it will go from there.

I'm no pro though. That accolade goes to collector above all collectors ever heard of; - my father!

Below is just a snap shot of the hundred odd bar towels he's collected over about 20 years:

And below this is just a snap of the (around a few thousand) bar mats he's accumulated over the past 20 years:

It doesn't take a genius to see that there's a shed load of beer history here, and that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

An Unforeseen Perk

A few weeks back, whilst I was staying down with Ghost Girlfriend (yes that's her!) we decided to have a nice day out at Waddesdon Manor - part of the National Trust.

Now while I'm very up for a good day out, I was under the full assumption that there would be no beer involved in the trip. Not that I'm not used to having dry days, it's just I like to sample the wares of everywhere I go on trips out. Now the family owners of the Manor are know vine growers and wine sellers, and I was very interested to look around all the cellars and learn a little bit more about fine wines. For instance: I didn't know they use egg whites in wine in the same way that a brewer will use finings - both to get clarity out of the finished product. (it was rather strange to see them cracking eggs into the large barrels!)

A few snaps from the cellars:

The biggest surprise for the day though was to come whilst browsing through the gift shop at the end of the house tour. Not only did I find a copy of 'Man Walks Into A Pub' by Pete brown in the books section, (a book I'm a few chapters in and loving it) but they were selling local beer as-well!!

I managed to pick up three beers from Buckinghamshire brewery: Vale, so will now see if any of them are any cop!

Wychert: this Auburn Bitter comes in at a wee 3.9% - a great one to start with. Not a lot to the aroma to be fair, just a small hint of darker malts. The flavour is ok, very easy drinking session ale. Hints of caramel malt with a little sweet toffee and some big nutty body notes. It's got a little heat/spice in the flavour and has a very drying finish - overall not a bad beer, but not one I'd mow people down to buy again. The bottle states that CAMRA say's this is real ale, but then again I could tell that by the small chunks in the bottom of my glass.

V.P.A (Vale Pale Ale): This 4.2% Golden Ale comes across the nose a lot more promisingly. Aromas of lemon sherbet and little sweet hay. Light and incredibly soft beer, this is a proper South summer sessional! Dry, check. Citrus, check. Balanced bitter aftertaste, check.  I like this beer because it has a great balance of a good malt body and the perfect amount of hops, it's not 'hops thrown in your face' sort of deal and it's not 'look at how outrageously malty am I'. It's the ale answer to lagers Corona - one to sink a few of in the sun. What more do you really want in weather like this!

Gravitas: I may have drunk these the wrong way round, this 4.8% Bitter looks and smells the lightest of the bunch so far. Oh well, I'll just give it a good swig! Prominent grassy citrus aromas to this SIBA Gold Medal winning Premium Ale. Light and fruity in flavour, my pick of the lot tonight. Citrus pith, with a nice sweet biscuit malt flavour in the body. The most easy drinking of the group, I put that down to it not being as dry as the others, but that's just my tastes.

That's it for the beers tonight. It's almost a shame because drinking them took me back to that great day out me and Ghost Girlfriend shared and I'm not sure if we'll be back there in the future. Time will only tell. Three beers from the South - one not to my tastes, the other two very refreshing and pleasant. I've had a couple of Gravitas on cask before in Arcadia and I can say it's very good.

With a sparkler on of course....

LS6 Beer Festival

It's that time again: time for our own little beer festival in Leeds, with far too much great beer and awesome live music. A couple of days for awesome local breweries to show off their wares and for locals to have a jolly good time.

It would take far to long to tell you all about the super beers and the great time I, and we all had tonight, (and more people will have tomorrow) so I'll just tell the story in this awesome photo montage!!

oh.... and I'll gladly show my actual ghostly surfing face for Leeds Beer Fest!

People within Images: Two very good friends of the Ghost. Rhian: My old super boss from my Arcadia days, and Jess from my old Arcadia days who brought along her traveling book suitcase! (special mention goes to all the people serving up the beers aswell!!

What a fantastic venue! What a fantastic beer festival! If your still around tomorrow (saturday) get your buts down to the LS6 Beer Festival!!!!

Newbies

Time for a couple of new beers to try tonight. (as you know I love me a new beer - whoever doesn't shall be dealt with ;))

Starting with the Citra King. Looks good no? Don't go out trying to look for it though, as it was a very nice gift from fellow home brewer: Rob Derbyshire, editor of the famous HopZine.

I really like the idea behind the style for the beer: a bandwagon straddling IPA! 'Yes it's an IPA, yes it's hopped with Citra, so what, it'll taste great!' ...and you know what, it does! It has a great aroma of lemons and mangos. It smells very fresh even though it's been in the bottle for a while. A nice smooth brew with the obvious 7.4% coming through in the warming finish. Roll it round the tongue and you get a great pithy bitter bite on the sides. Long finish and great refreshing IPA classic flavour. I should say it's not just Citra in the brew, there's Warrior, Chinook, Columbus, Cascade and Centennial in there too!

Robs got some quite adventurous aspirations when it comes to his homebrews. I think his next one is a big-ish stout flavoured with cocoa nibs which have been aged in a bourbon! I don't think there's anyone holding this boy back, tell him to make an average great tasting pale ale and he'll want to chuck something else in there! (I do think making the same beer twice does tell you a lot though, I don't know, he may have done that before - I'm not here to judge.... too much ;))

The next brew comes from a brewery we all know and love. The one. The only. The Kernel! We've just got a couple of new Kernel beers in at the shop today, so I thought it was time to get this one supped to make room in the cupboards for some newer, new ones.

Kernel London 1890 Export Stout.

What can you say about the Kernel's beers which hasn't been said before? Well I'll give it a go!

It pours black and as flat as a pancake. (even from a great height) It has that powerful aroma of a strong coffee which has had a little too many drops of milk added to it. Properly roasted, it smells of burnt biscuits dipped in hot chocolate. (a tiny hint of the rubber tyre aroma that I've found with a few of Kernel's beers - it's really not a bad flavour!)

The 7.4% on this beer is masked almost completely! (see, I did have a link in there....) Thick, smooth and rich. The flavour fades away quite quick though leaving a big burnt malt bitterness in the mouth. A bit of light (verging on tart) unripened fruit flavour, mixed in with the cappuccino and slight drying chocolate flavours.

Two new beers for me tonight - very nice indeed!

Till the next time I drink new beer..... (probably tomorrow!)

Keep preaching the good word of good beer.