On Wednesday evening at 8pm I'll be hosting the
next live twitter tasting for
Ales By Mail. They got in touch a couple of weeks ago and asked if I was familar with Okell's and would I like to run the session.I am quite familiar with
Okell's, the Isle of Man's largest brewery as I've been to the IOM a number of times, and make a point of hunting out some cask pints of
Olaf or
MPA (two fantastically tasty sub-4% ales). My initial pick of
Okell's bottled range was
Aile &
1907 but supply issues of 1907 meant that we've gone with my backup plan of their
IPA.
 |
| Nice clean branded bottles and a lovely pint glass! |
Okell's Brewery
- IPA - 4.5% "extremely light-coloured beer with a surprising full-bodied taste. The sweetness is offset by a very strong hopping rate. That gives the finished beer an overall roundness with very spicy, lemony notes and a fine dry finish to counteract the initial sweetness"
- Aile - 4.7% smoked porter, "Aile is the Manx Celtic word for Fire and this crafted Okell's beer has delicate, smokey aromas derived from the careful addition of peated malt. This malt is made from selected barley that uses burning peat during the malting process"
If you've taken advantage of the free bottle codes then I'm looking forward to you joining me at 8pm on Wednesday night as we walk through the two beers, I plan to start with the lighter IPA and then move into the slightly stronger in alcohol but much stronger in taste Aile.
If you've got them in the fridge (I have), make sure to take them both out around 15 minutes before we start, you want the IPA to be coldish and refreshing but not so cold that the subtle balanced of flavours is lost, make sure the Aile comes out at the same time as you want that to be a bit warmer to really let those peated smokey aromas open up.
See you on Twitter at 8pm Wednesday, please use the hashtag
#beerybits so that we can all follow along and see what everyone is posting. Oh and make sure you are following
@AlesByMail as not only will they be joining in but they might be running some competitions as well! Also you might like to follow
@OkellsAles which is the account for Dr. Mike Cowbourne, head brewer at Okells who will be joining us online for the evening.
Thanks to Chrissie Saunders from
Ales By Mail for asking if I would like to host the tasting session and sending through the bottles and glassware.
