Norway

Norway boasts some spectacular breweries. Tonight I'm trying two new different beers from two different, but very respected breweries.

Let's dive straight in!

First up is Dobbel Dose - a 9% Norwegian Double IPA from HaandBryggeriet. Now this is an interesting one because when I picked it up I didn't notice on the bottle is said "Brygget 03.06.10" which I'm guessing means brewed or bottled on. That sounds a little worrying for a Double IPA, but the bottle also states "In this Double IPA we use all the hops our kettle can take, we recon it will stand the journey to India and back" - could it be, an IPA which isn't meant to be drunk fresh? I'm sure it is great fresh, but it's possible this may be a bit like White Shield, and after a bit of aging, may get a bit more character to it. (instead of turning into a flat, lifeless, no flavour IPA which seems to happen all too often when you drink an IPA which is a few months old... I've gotta say, is anyone else bored of getting old hops in their IPAs and having a beer which only tastes great for about 2weeks??)

It's certainly got a big muddy sediment to it (left in the bottle) and the nose is certainly inviting. Big on the orange and marmalade, quite a bit of toffee, and almost bonfire toffee. You get the impression that, while they may have packed this beer to the rafters with hops, they didn't scrimp on the malts either.
    It's a fantastic tasting beer, even after almost a couple of years. Rich sweet caramels, burnt toffees, ripened oranges, pears and apples with a hint of honey coming in. Just enough of a bitter tang in the finish to make you crave the next mouthful, and deservedly so - it's really really good beer.

Anyone can put shed loads of hops in a beer - it's easy. Can you make a beer which doesn't taste like shoes after 3/4 months? That's the mark of a great brewer. I've had a few beers from HaandBryggeriet now, and if you need any advice about them here it goes: See their beers - buy their beers - simples.

The second beer of the night goes to Beer Here's Pumpernickel Porter. This beer's a little confusing. Where's it brewed for one thing? I read on the side; Nogne O, so most probably it's brewed there - by who I still don't know. Secondly it says it's a "Pumpernickel Porter", and in the description, it's called a "Stout brewed with spices added" - I think this may confuse a few people. I lastly got thinking about what Pumpernickel actually is. Is it just a bread or is it a type of spice/grain that you add to make P.bread, I'm not too sure, so I really don't have a clue how you add it to a beer!

Let's just drink it though ey? It's dark, it's 7.5%, and it smells great! It stinks of dry rye bread, or those crispy rye crackers you spread your cheese on - it's really strange. There's a little lactic, burnt malt/burnt toast essence going on in the beer too which reminds you of the Porter/Stout side of things.

It's really good. A thick, smooth and rich mouthfeel. The flavour is instant and intense, but not too overpowering that it would put a lager drinker off. Lots of the flavours that you want, and would expect from a beer like this (or what you would imagine this to be) Dark chocolate, liqourice, burnt coffee, oak, a little smokey whisky, raisins, rye and rye spice. Rye Rye Rye! There's plenty of burnt bitterness in the finish too, making the beer great all rounder.

As they say on the bottle:

"Hops were harmed in the production of this beer"

Go get some beers from Norway. Oh... and you don't need to go to Norway to get them, I got these from Cambridge.

Close It!

Last night was redonkulous!

Massive props go out to Rick for setting the whole gig up and much love to all my beery geek brethren who were also in attendance.

What started out as a few drinks in Mr Foleys (I didn't get chance to go for the meal) turned into one of the most epic drinking sessions ever seen. The amount of beers which were brought along and consumed was of such a magnitude and quality, that I'm pretty sure not all of them were opened by the end of the night. (glad to see that no one was sick off Gav's 70something+ year old beer.)

I didn't managed to get snaps of everything that was brought along, but Zak managed to put together a good photo selection here.

So here's my "mine's bigger than yours" photo selection of the evening. Cheers to Open It, and Cheers to all day hangovers ;)

It's Electric!

Electricity is a funny old thing.

....and by 'funny old thing' I mean it completely dominates our whole lives.

For the last day and a half our street has been without power. Obviously it's back on now, finally, otherwise I wouldn't be able to write this post. It was evident how much we really rely on electricity whilst I was making myself some lunch today. It was midday so I was oblivious to the fact we had no power, and just went about my normal business. I quite fancied some beans on toast to set me up right for the afternoon. I popped two slices in the toaster and opened a can of beans. I tried to put the toaster on, but it wasn't working... duuhhh! 'There's no electricity' I thought to myself! Thoughts then raced through my head about how I could toast these two slices of bread... "I know, I can grill them.... wait.. duuhhh again! The grill is electric!"
     It was about another two minutes later before I realised that all of this was mute, as I had no microwave to heat up the beans either!! I was a bit lost then. "What can I have for lunch now??" I scoured the fridge for some food, but to my lack of surprise, everything needed to be heated up by some method which I was not in possession of. Turns out a ham and cheese sandwich wasn't too bad.

All this does relate to beer, before you go elsewhere... It really got me thinking about our dependancy on the sparky stuff and what that could mean for the brewers of today, be it at home, or on a massive industrial scale.

Say your ten minutes into your boil, and there's a blackout. What do you do? Is that a wasted batch, or do you wait for the power to come back on? What if it doesn't come back on for a couple of days... is all the mornings hard work and effort to making your beer a waste, and do you have to pour it down the drain? It would certainly be annoying but maybe not too much problem for a homebrewer, compared to a commercial brewer with maybe hundreds or even thousands of gallons to pour away.

It got me thinking of how people went about making beer before the emergence of electricity. I mean beer has been made for quite a many number of years pre 19th century. I thought about how you'd go about an average boil. Fire is the obvious answer, but it's hard to imagine people making beer, in the same way as cooking, on the levels of scale that we have today - even for a small brewery.

When industries started using machines and electricity, things changed for ever, and very dramatically in fact. I reckon brewing in some breweries today would be almost unrecognisable to people from just a few hundred yeas ago.

While all this innovation, progress, change, whatever you call it, is a fantastic thing, what happens when something goes wrong with it? I reckon we're pretty damn useless if our new computerised breweries fell foul of a little electricity hiccup. I mean I wasn't about to crack up a fire just to make my beans on toast.


All this came together while I was drinking a beer from Short's Brewery. Why did it come to me? Because I didn't need electricity to open or enjoy it. (I did need it to take and upload the picture though..)

Short's Ginger in the Rye is a 7.8% Imperial Rye Munich Ale, "A most distinguished effervescent potable of total consciousness." and you know what? It's just plain delicious! Let OpenIt continue!

PunkCake FABPOW

Today's post, and FABPOW, is brought to you with inspiration found from many forms.

First off It's Shrove Tuesday. Secondly, it's OpenIt this weekend, so I thought I'd start cracking a few early just to be cheeky. Thirdly, I got quite a bit of inspiration from Mark's FABPOW, and decided to make some pancakes and beer for myself. The last bit of inspiration comes from BrewDog's 'PunkCake' twittering ideas - I read some interesting ones and thought I'd make my own. Turns out I had the perfect beer to bring it all together too.

Anyone remember this one?

I guess it was bottled in 2008. That's one thing I do like - when a brewery puts a 'bottled on' date on their strong beers.

You get a massive earthy, woody coffee aroma from the beer. It pours quite flat, but it seems to still have a good amount of carbonation about it. More of the same in the flavour. Huge earthy coffee and loads of oak, with a long bitter chocolate finish - a fantastic drop.

It has a really long drying finish as well. While I thought about sweet pancakes, I didn't think this Imperial Stout would work too well with them.
    So the match this time was with a savory pancake. I've never really had savory pancakes before, previous Shrove Tuesdays where usually a competition to see who could get the most golden syrup on one pancake, so this shall be a little different. The best foods I've ever matched with Imperial Stout have always been strong cheeses, rich foods, stuff like that - so I didn't really know where to start when it came to making up my own savory pancake recipe.

In the end I thought I'd try my hand at making some Spicy Pork & Blue Stilton Pancakes.

There will be no photos here. It didn't matter what I did, I wasn't going to get an appealing photo of this meal... but you know what they say - sometimes the messiest meals are the best! I had it quite hot too so the creamy Stilton ran from the pancake. I didn't use too much though as I feared it might overpower the spicy pork, turns out it was just the right amount. The dry earthy coffee flavour in the beer went really well with the spicy meaty pork in my humble opinion, and the rich Stilton just topped the whole thing off into on decadent meal for the evening!

That was my FABPOW OpenIt PunkCake for the night. I'd love to hear what other people will be indulging in on this magnificent night of nights: Shrove Tuesday.

Watering Holes

Considering beer is (usually) over or about 95% water, you could take pubs to be considered as watering holes. The following is a round up of my favourite 3 I have visited in the past few days whilst visiting Cambridge.

First up was the Cambridge Blue.

This pub is most probably the best in all of Cambridge. It's not the first time I've written about it and it probably won't be the last. I've only been here a few days but I've already been twice. The other day I had a fantastic pint of Oakham Citra straight from the cask with the juiciest bacon and cheese burger. If you don't already know, the Cambridge Blue offers a range of 14 real ales, seven of which are on the bar through lines, and the other seven (the upper pump clips) are served straight from the cask from a cold room next door - a beast of an idea if there ever was one! Today I tried a great pint of Osset Snow Drop; from God's Own Country, and some more Oakham - Preacher - a 4.3% dark ale with the best looking pump clip.

The Cambridge Blue is about to undergo some serious building renovations, and will be closed for about a week, but I'm sure it will work out for the best.

The second pub on my list would be Live and Let Live.

This would be my first visit to this pub, it was recommended by a number of people on Twitter so I thought I'd give it a go. Turns out I was to be pleased and disappointed in quick succession. My first look in was late at night so I only managed a couple of halves. Oakham Dreamcatcher and Darkstar Smoked Porter were the order of the night. I wanted to get a proper sense of the place so I popped back the next day to be disappointed that they were closed on my arrival. Turns out I fell into my usual trap of thinking that all pubs were open all day, a mistake I make a little too often when I venture down South.

What I did see and partake of the place the previous night was all excellent though, and I shall be making tracks back here hopefully sooner rather than later.

The third pub on my charts to haunt was an excellent recommendation and find: The Kingston Arms

This place is great. It seemed like a very friendly, family oriented, foody pub during the day when I went. In fact the food menus looked great too! I don't think I've ever been in a pub where I got to choose my selection of sausage with my mash, or my choice of cheese for my panini! I may have not been in many pubs in my life, but I've never seen jars full of freshly baked cookies either. If I hadn't just had another warm meal in the Cambridge Blue, I think the Marinated Baby Squid and mixed olive salad would have been my choice, but I did enjoy perusing the "Recession Section" - a selection of standard (but tasty) meals all for £4.99 each. Oh.... they had Mars Bars too for 49p each!

The pump selection was vast and varied. It was very nice (for me) to see Jaipur alongside Harveistoun's Bitter and Twisted - two supreme beers. From the selection of 13 hand pumps I spied some Leeds Gathering Storm Stout also, and decided to see how it travelled. 

Turns out beer from my home town travels quite well indeed! I think this dry Stout is a perfect example of how distance isn't an issue when good care and good cellar manship come into play. 

I was a big fan of the massive hop vine that
spanned the entire bar.

I enjoyed my drinks here. I like it when you find games like Buckaroo alongside books which look like they're 1 hundred years old.

I've really liked my time down South in Cambridge, I usually do, similar activities are usually undertaken, just see last time. I can't shake the feeling that drinking down here reminds me of when I get a lock in up North: you know, when you get a beer, but all the sparklers have been taken off to be cleaned... Even though It's not what I'm entirely used too, it's still not so bad.