Blueberry Addiction

I do love a tasty blueberry-tinged beer so if you have any recommendations beer buddies, then send them this way please.

When I worked for Marston’s I was lucky enough to go to visit Shipyard Brewery in Portland, Maine and sipping that Seadog Wild Blueberry Wheat Ale was an absolute dream!

My obsession grew on that trip – in fact, it blossomed beyond belief.

The blueberry beers I’ve had the delight of tasting lately are: Northern Monk’s ‘Blueberry Wild Ale’ and Deya/Odyssey ‘Beautiful Blueberry’. Both looked striking in their respective packaging but would the taste match the outfit?

As part of the Patrons Projects, Northern Monk’s blueberry delight is a collaboration with Alefarm brewery is certainly an interesting beer. With an almost reddy purple tinge when poured, it certainly got me salivating, while the blueberry and candy-esque aromas were very enticing. It’s taste wasn’t as sweet as I was expecting and this actually wasn’t a bad thing because it wasn’t overpowering and sickly as some blueberry beers often are.

The Deya and Odyssey collaboration was a little bit too reminiscent of Ribena for me, however my boyfriend/volunteer taster actually preferred this to the Northern Monk offering. This blueberry and mosaic IPA provided easy drinking but it really wasn’t as punchy as I’d hoped.

Onwards to the next Blueberry beers…

Coffee & Beer – The Ultimate Buzz

I love coffee and I love beer, so when the two are combined I get majorly interested. There’s loads of coffee beers on the market and I’m pretty sure I have at least another thousand to taste – wish me luck.

Thanks to my buddies at Coffee Architects I visited the London Coffee Festival in April which got me thinking about coffee beers and how my love affair with them is intensifying by the day. At the festival one of my favourite coffee tinged delights was available to sip – Wild Beer’s Wildebeest, if you haven’t tried it yet get out there and hunt a bottle down pronto. It’s so good that I have one bottle that I’m coveting in my cupboard for a ‘special occasion’.


Coffee being a stimulant and beer being a ‘depressant’ in classic terms should surely cause some trouble, right? When combined though they are an unbeatable combination. So why do they pair so well? Well if you’re a fan of porters and stouts you’ll know that they are already on the malty side of the spectrum anyway – giving hints of coffee aromas and flavours, especially in the delectable finish.

Although classically attributed to these beer styles this has now been turned on its head and brewers are experimenting with a new breed of coffee beers. Craft beer and craft coffee go hand-in-hand and as a major coffee fan, I like my coffee rich, complex and chocolatey – similar characteristics to some of my favourite beers! We can rejoice and cheer while we benefit from some these tasty craft partnerships like Beavertown and Caravan, or Wild Beer Co and Tincan Coffee.

So what other coffee beers should you check out? Try these gems:

  • Weird Beard – Out of the Office – I’m in love with this coffee IPA! It’s the right side of coffee without being sickly. I actually think I could drink a couple of these quite happily but at 7.0% I better pace myself. It’s brewed with Hasbean Ethiopian Yirgacheffe Konga Sedie Natural beans and it’s as smooth as hell.
  • Marble – Chocolate Marble – This really is sublime. I would normally steer clear of anything that says ‘liquorice’ on the label so prominently but the liquorice is subtle, in fact the cocoa finish makes it super moorish.

marble beers choclate marble review

  • Nest Beer – Espresso Stout – Nest never disappoints me so I had to give this beer a whirl. I finally purchased this from Beer Gonzo, Coventry and I like it a lot. After a few sips I could actually taste currants in the aftermath of sipping it. Very different to other coffee beers I’ve tried, not as thick and there’s is certainly a tinge of fruitiness about it.
  • Beavertown/Caravan – Spresso – I first sipped this at the Beaver for my Valentine event and if I see any cans of it around again I’ll be stuffing them in my bag pronto. This beer gave me a major hit, like a big coffee clenched fist in fact. If you like your coffee flavours big then this is the beer for you.

Beer of the Week – 04.04.2016

The last few weeks you could say I’ve gone for some pretty crazy flavour choices for the title of ‘beer of the week’ so this week I’m choosing a good ‘ol golden blonde beer.

Beer of the week – 28.03.2016

When I picked this beer up I did so with a feeling of total intrepidation. I’d normally steer clear of such a flavour combination but Northern Monk Brewing Co. aren’t ones to let the side down in their experiments, so I thought ‘what the hell?’ Brewed with Grub & Grog as part of its refectory series, this beer really messed with my mind and my tastebuds!

On opening the Northern Monk Parsnip & Black Pepper Dunkelweiss the aroma had hints of wheat, caramel and banana. As to be expected from a dunkelweiss it was banana flavoured and there were definite hints of spices.

Before you get scared about the word ‘parsnip’ on the label take a chill pill because the taste isn’t overbearing at all. Yes the black pepper is evident but it isn’t so intense that it smacks you in the face, its actually pretty alluring.

This beer was a little bit more surprising with every sip, giving a number of different dimensions. At times I felt it was sweet and at others spicy which as a consequence kept me coming back for more.

The bottle is quite large at 660ml so grab a buddy (or two) and give it a whirl – it will certainly give you a lot to discuss.

 

Beer of the Week -21.03.2016

I’ve been through an awful lot of amazing beer of late and I can’t believe I haven’t given this mighty beer the title of ‘Beer of the week’ yet!

Dark Star has a knack for producing great beers that my tastebuds are certainly thankful for. Yes, I know that Creme Brûlée and beer combined sounds remarkably sickly but damn, this beer is so good! As a milk stout it’s definitely smooth as hell, yet there’s something remarkable about this beer and I’m unsure whether it’s the fact that they managed to produce something that’d the potential to go oh so wrong.

This is so delicious that I stocked up on multiple cans. Vanilla and caramel flavours are obviously present as you’d expect but there were definitely tinges of coffee and a weirdly palatable custard taste. Dark Star brewed this ‘pudding in a glass’ with unfermentable lactose sugar, vanilla beans and plenty of roasted malts giving it a pleasantly sweet taste,  I actually managed the whole can with ease.

Beer of the Week 14.03.2016

To say I’d be waiting ages to get my hands on this beer is somewhat of an understatement! Every time I laid eyes on Instagram photos with proud people displaying this beer in all its glory I felt a slight twinge of beery jealousy.

Coconut is a flavour that I love but I really wasn’t sure that it would work with beer. After reading one review that stated: “it tastes like liquid bounty” (an awesome chocolate bar I absolutely love) the hunt for this beer intensified!

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I managed to finally bag a can from We Brought Beer and I was patient enough to wait one evening before busting it open. Man, it was intoxicating. The swirls of cacao, the divine coconut and the smoothness of this choc-infused bad boy gave me the hit I’d been waiting for. It is like pudding in a can, but a frickin’ awesome pudding that you had in some amazing little restaurant on the other side of the world years ago, that you now reminisce about often (I do this a lot with amazing food / drinks).

This semi-sweet porter is rich yes, but not sickly. The chocolate flavour is sublime and is wrapped perfectly by the indulgent coconut flavour. This for me will certainly be like cat-nip – if you see any cans around grab them before I get there first! Oskar Blues yet again you’ve kicked ass with this beer!

Beer of the Week – 07.03.2015

 As a tea fan merely seeing the words earl grey on a label attracted me! This beer is phenominal – it has the quaint and rosey appeal of a lovely little old granny but with the ballsy attitude of her bolshy friend always proding people with her shopping trolley!

Just like one of my favourite teas it’s as aromatic but don’t think for one minute that this is a gimmick like the Rate Beer reviews lead you to believe. This beer is solid. Everytime I sipped it I was balled over by its complexity. During one sip I was transported back to my favoruite tea house in China with a enticing combination of earl grey blue flower teawith bergamot  orange and then the next sip my senses were awoken with spicy and citrus flavours. Considering this is 6.5% I almost felt saintly after drinking it like I oftent do after a herbal tea.

Beer of the Week – 15.02.2016

So, following my visit to Beaver My Valentine it seems only fitting to mark Beavertown’s Double Chin as my beer of this week. Still feeling the love from Valentine’s day, this seems pretty apt!

A one-off double edition of its session IPA, Neck Oil this is a monster (and not a scary one). I think I admire it’s ballsiness, the almost herbal hoppy notes definitely woke me up whilst its grapefruity, cirtus hints were delectable. I’ll definitelty be hunting down more cans of this! It’s sold out in most places online ;-(