Fab ale tasting night at Source deli (Ormskirk)

Wednesday night this week saw the much tweeted (by me) ale tasting night at the Source deli in Ormskirk.  Twenty six tickets were sold for the event which made Paul & Matt of Source very happy (twenty five was the target number) although three of the people were not able to make it on the Wednesday night.

We were greeted at 7pm by Paul providing us with a little aperitif in the form of a glass of Mallisons Trabant.

It was crisp and refreshing with a slight sour taste if I remember correctly and was a pleasant way to start an evening of beer tasting. Source has only recently started stocking Mallinsons ales so it was a nice way to try one.

I've previously blogged about the menu (both the beers and their paired food) but here's a shot of the evenings line up:

•  Mallinsons Trabant

• Moorhouse's Black Cat [baron rating 3/5]

• Alhambra Negra

• Marble Lagonda IPA [baron rating 5/5]

• Goose Island IPA [baron rating 5/5]

• George Wright Cheeky Pheasant [baron rating 4/5]

• Coopers Sparkling Ale

• Southport Old Shrimper [baron rating 4/5]

• La Trappe Quadrupel

• Innis & Gunn Rum Cask Oak-Aged Beer [baron rating 2/5]

• Bon Secours Myrtille

I'd tried most of the british ales so it was nice to find out what other people thought of some of my all time favs such as Marble Lagonda IPA [baron rating 5/5] & Goose Island IPA [baron rating 5/5].  One local ale which received mixed reviews was Southport Brewery's Old Shrimper [baron rating 4/5].

This thick malty dark winter ale is lovely when at room temp and sipped for an evening but I think was a little extreme for some of the ale novices. Another suprise for me was Alhambra Negra - this Spanish dark lager had the taste of a dark mild (like Moorhouse's Black Cat) but with a crisp lager finish, for a few of the other people there, this was the best beer of the night.

The food was top notch, everything was perfectly cooked and prepared and the vast majority was an excellent match to it's ale partner - they set the bar high by matching not only a food suitable for the type of beer but also ensured that it came from the same country as the beer as well - deep fried mars bars and Innis & Gunn was a pretty cool match!

It was a great mix of people and the room had a good buzz about the place, especially as the evening came to a close... ;)

Paul & Matt were then able to relax & mingle a little not having to get the food sorted and the beers poured and Paul even pulled out a bottle of wine for us to taste after the evening had finished!

One of the other attendees was Mike Nolan: he was our BeerSpotr for the evening, snapping photos of the various ales & tweeting them to @beerspotr. You can read about Mike's view of the evening over on his blog.

Here's Source's limited but carefully selected stock - a mixture of locally produced ales and rest of world beers; spot the abundance of Marble: Paul loves anything that Marble produce (don't we all!) and manages to get a pretty decent stock of it most of the time.

 

It was a fab evening only possible due to the power of Twitter to connect like-minded folk together to enable Source to get the ticket sales they needed to offer the night. Almost all attendees came due to word-of-mouth talk through twitter & blog posts - Source did no advertising at all. Paul didn't even both getting proper tickets printed as all the places were sold before he got round to it! :)