Estaminet Triple

Not bottle conditioned

Estaminet Triple [baron rating 4/5] - 7% gold ale,apricot smell,light creamy apricot tobacco taste,creamy herbal finish Baron Orm

Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it

Subscribe in iTunes

Such cute frogs!

Thank you to Chris for bringing this round for a baron rating!

Looking forward to baron rating Shepherd Neame Mash Tun No1 ale

Something rather special arrived this week, a large wooden box, labelled "Mash Tun No1" by Shepherd Neame. It's a historic brew celebrating their 100th anniversary of Britain's last remaining wooden mash tuns:

Shepherd Neame Brewery

• Mash Tun No1 - 7.4% beer combines a traditional British grist mix of six malts, with some of the most popular hops from Kent and North America: First Gold, Centennial and Amarillo. The resultant beer is a rich, malty brew with hints of toffee and dried fruits, which is lightened by top notes of spice and citrus.

Look out for a baron rating for this Shepherd Neame Brewery beer soon, and a big thank you to John Humphreys (@ShepherdNeame) for sending it through for a baron rating!

Buy Shepherd Neame ales direct

TicketyBrew Dubbel

Bottle conditioned with perfect carbonation

TicketyBrew Dubbel [baron rating 2/5] - 6.5% ruby ale,mild dried fruit fruitcake smell,spicy fruity thin bittersweet taste,dry fading finish Baron Orm

Looking forward to baron rating Salopian Holly Bush ale

Christmas is coming and the Xmas-themed beers have arrived in the supermarkets, most of them 4% brown bitters with little special going on other than the normally rather cheesy Christmas-themed label...
         ...and then there is Salopian's entry:

Salopian Brewery

• Holly Bush - 5.5% rich, bittersweet red ale, given a fruity twist with lots of new world hops

Look out for a 'baron rating' for this Salopian Brewery beer soon, and a big thank you to Jake (@SalopianBrewery) for sending it through to me!

Buy Salopian ales from Holborn Ales

Looking forward to baron rating Adnams 1659 & Wild Hop ales

Some more new releases from Adnams arrived last week (and one old favourite too), here are the details:

Adnams Brewery

• 1659 - 4.7% smoked ruby beer, made with barley malt smoked over cherry and mesquite wood, with sweet smoky aromas & flavours of raisins, smoke, dates and coffee. Smoky & full on
• Ghost Ship [baron rating 4/5 ♫] - 4.5% ghostly pale ale
• Wild Hop - 4.8% amber beer, brewed with a wide variety of wonderfully wild fresh hops, plus a few tamed garden ones too, this beer is choc-full of grassy, pine & citrus flavours, capturing all the excitement of the year's hop harvest

Look out for baron ratings for these Adnams ales soon, and a big thank you to Sarah (@Adnams) for sending them through to me!

Buy Adnams & Jack Brand ales direct

Cismontane Marea Roja

Not bottle conditioned

Cismontane Marea Roja [baron rating 5/5] - 4.4% dark ruby ale,red berries smell,sour unripe blackberry raspberry taste,sour cranberry finish Baron Orm

Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it

Subscribe in iTunes

Thank you to Paul Kruzycki from Ales By Mail for sending this through for a baron rating!

Buy Cismontane ales from Ales By Mail

Alechemy Ritual

Not bottle conditioned

Alechemy Ritual [baron rating 3/5] - 4.1% gold ale,biscuity caramel floral smell,spicy floral lemon bitter taste,lasting lemon bitter finish Baron Orm

Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it

Subscribe in iTunes

Thank you to Chrissie Saunders from Ales By Mail for sending this through for a baron rating!

Buy Alechemy ales from Ales By Mail

Dark Star Hophead

Not bottle conditioned

Dark Star Hophead [baron rating 5/5] - 3.8% gold ale,spicy caramel orange oil smell,zingy spicy bitter citrus taste,dry fading bitter finish Baron Orm

Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it

Subscribe in iTunes

Thank you to James (@DarkStarBrewCo) from Dark Star Brewery for sending this through for a baron rating!

Buy Dark Star ales direct

Central Coast Lucky Day IPA

Not can conditioned

Central Coast Lucky Day IPA [baron rating 5/5] - 7.2% copper ale,peach pine smell,fresh resin sweet fruity bitter taste,firm bitter finish Baron Orm

Thank you to Paul Kruzycki from Ales By Mail for sending this through for a baron rating!

Buy Central Coast ales from Ales By Mail

Looking forward to baron rating Beer52 ales

I got sent a box of mixed ales from Beer52 as one of the perks of attending the European Beer Bloggers Conference in Dublin this year. Well I got contacted again recently to see if I would like to review another one of their packs, this time their Autumn pack:

• Barcelona Cerdos Voladores -6% "Hi, this is #14" our rowdiest beer, made with the finest hops
• Belhaven Scottish Oat Stout - 7% oat stout, dark, rich and layered with a wonderful silky texture and a lingering finish
• Einstok Icelandic Toasted Porter [baron rating 5/5] - 6% toasted porter
• Freigeist Abraxxxas - 6% smoked Lichtenhainer Weisse. Inspired by the easten German tart wheat beer style once known as "Lichtenhainer", Abraxxxas is sour and complex, with a balancing smoky maltiness

• Medus Blonde - 5% blonde, a light beer which is refreshing while having a full body and a characteristic bitterness
• Oppigards Golden Ale - 5.2% golden ale with a twist, American Cascade was used late in the boil to give a hint of flora & citrus
• Mordue Ascendancy - 7.4% Belgian double IPA-weizen hybrid brewed with candy sugar. A head storm of tropical fruit, mango and banana with a hop-forward, resiny finish
• Redwillow Wreckless [baron rating 5/5] - 4.8% pale ale, when you want a big hit of American hops and aroma, but don't want to fall off your seat

Savory popcorn and a beer mag too!

It also included some tasty-looking savoury popcorn (fiery worcester sauce & sun-dried tomato) from the Propercorn company and issue #4 of Beer52's Ferment mini-mag/newspaper (24 pages of articles about the beers in the box, and interviews/recipes with the beers from the box).

Look out for 'baron ratings' of these beers soon, and a big thank you to Laurie from Beer52 for sending them through to me!

Buy all these ales from Beer52

UPDATE: If you do plan to buy some, make sure you use enter this discount code ORMSKIRK10 entitling you to £10 off your first box. All you have to do is visit beer52.com and click on 'got a special code?' underneath the 'get started' button!
 

La Lutine Pale Ale

Not bottle conditioned

La Lutine Pale Ale [baron rating 3/5] - 6% amber ale,sugary sweet caramel smell,biscuity apple pear taste,fruity bittersweet finish Baron Orm

Bought from Domme market whilst on holiday in the Dordogne region, France.

Looking forward to baron rating Cheshire Brewhouse ales

I've been chatting with Cheshire Brewhouse brewer Shane Swindells on Twitter for some time, he's very passionate about brewing and seems pretty good at it based on the limited number of bottles that I've tried of his so far. Once particular tweet some weeks back really caught my eye though, where he mentioned that he was bottling a salted caramel porter

A few weeks later I got a message from Shane saying that he's dropped a sample bottle off for me at one of my local bottled beer shops, Holborn Ales in Ormskirk. I popped down there the next day to collect it and found that he'd left a couple of other interesting bottles for me too:

Good looking bottles full of lovely sounding beer!

The Cheshire Brewhouse

• Govinda IPA (red cap*) - 6.8% IPA, barrel aged Head Brewers Reserve. An English IPA brewed to a Burton recipe from 1830ish, brewed with Pale malt and a large charge of East Kent Goldings.
• Govinda IPA (silver cap*) - 6.8% IPA, barrel aged Head Brewers Reserve. An English IPA brewed to a Burton recipe from 1830ish, brewed with Pale malt and a large charge of East Kent Goldings.
• The Smokehouse Porter - 6.2% slightly smoked, salted caramel, chocolate, sticky toffee pudding porter

The different coloured caps indicated which cask it came from, half of the brew went in one wine cask, and half in another. I'm not sure what wine casks they were, Shane if you are reading this, care to leave a comment below?

Update: I got a reply from Shane last night via Twitter, here are his words:

The diff between the two GOVINDA bottles, I bought two 225ltr Oak Casks.Both white wine, I believe they had come from Germany, I didn't want to do spirit casks due to grogging issues.

When I opened them, one had white wine in & the other had had Brandy in! I therefore purged both casks for 5 days with hot saltwater. And filled, the red cap was the white wine cask, silver cap the brandy cask.

Even though they barrels had been purged you can clearly taste the difference between the two
I think the brandy cask is softer with less wood, but I love both beers and I'm brewing the next batch of it with Chevallier malt and barrel-ageing that too in 4 barrels

Look out for baron ratings for these The Cheshire Brewhouse beers soon, and a big thank you to Shane Swindells (@shaneswindells) for sending them through to me!

Buy Cheshire Brewhouse ales from Holborn Ales

Summer Wine Maelstrom

Not bottle conditioned

Summer Wine Maelstrom [baron rating 4/5] - 9% amber ale,sweet tropical smell,piney resinous tropical bitter taste,spicy herbal resin finish Baron Orm

Buy Summer Wine ales from Source Deli