Craft Beer Reviews & Tasting Notes
If you’re a fine member of The Beer Vault, you’ll find your reviews and tasting notes below. The Vault Reserve comes first, and you’ll find the Lock Box below that. We cover many of our beers in-depth so that you can learn as you taste, developing your Craft Beer knowledge over time.
The Vault Reserve: Our Reviews and Tasting Notes
(You’ll find the Lockbox below!)
Burning Sky Monolith Vatted Black Beer
| 8.0% ABV | English Wild Ale | Lewes, East Sussex, England | 750ml bottle | Monolith is one of a rapidly growing number of English produced sour and wild ales. Bittersweet with an acidic edge and an intentionally funky aroma, this soured black beer spent eight months resting in an oak foudre that previously housed Chianti. Sour beers and ales fermented with “wild” Brettanomyces (or Brett) yeast strains, are becoming more and more popular in the U.K. This is in large part due to the sterling efforts of Somerset’s Wild Beer Co. While there are other breweries in the U.K. producing excellent sour and Brett fermented ales, few are doing it with the dedication, regularity and celebration that Wild Beer are or to the extent that many U.S. craft brewers now are. You can however now add Burning Sky to the short list of British breweries taking sour and Brett beers very seriously indeed. Like Wild Beer Co., this East Sussex based brewery is dedicating significant time, infrastructure and cash to building an ambitious barrel aging and sour beer program. In an effort to help supplement their bold wood based venture, Burning Sky produces a core range of high quality American style pale ales, IPAs and Belgian farmhouse style saisons. The relatively short turnaround time of these ales means the brewery can remain financially operational until the sour projects, which have a much longer maturation time, are ready. Monolith has many of the same characteristics that distinguish the archetypal Flemish red sour ales produced by Rodenbach, the much lauded modern pioneer of aging soured beer on a large... read more
Bristol Beer Factory Wheat Wine
(10.0% ABV. Wheatwine, Bristol, England) 330ml bottle One of the very first commercially brewed wheatwines in the U.K. Rich, desserty and beautifully complex. A beer with massive cellaring potential as well as being moreish and delicious freshly bottled. In keeping with many native examples of this new American strong ale style, Bristol Beer Factory have keenly experimented with the base idea of a strong wheat ale by aging it in bourbon barrels and by blending in some cold brewed coffee courtesy of Bristol’s Extract Coffee Roasters. The malt bill of the beer is 75% wheat. For the uninitiated and non-brewers among you, that is a very high percentage indeed. The result of so much wheat; without getting too sciencey, provides loads of fermentable sugars for the yeast to eat up and convert onward to a hefty 10.0% ABV. Equally important is the uniquely smooth, creamy and full mouth feel that so much wheat protein gives the beer. Add to that the vanilla notes from the oak bourbon barrels and the roasted cocoa notes of the high quality Extract coffee and it’s not a stretch to describe this beer’s overall flavour and aroma as vanilla latte like. This is the third release in Bristol Beer Factory’s new Unlimited series of small batch limited release beers following a 7.0% ABV. Belgian Rye and an 8.5% ABV. Double IPA. This being a robust and strong wheatwine, it’s the first brew in the series that has significant cellaring potential, the Belgian Rye and DIPA being designed to be enjoyed as fresh as possible. The aging and evolutionary potential of Wheat Wine is especially exciting... read moreThe Lock Box: Our Reviews and Tasting Notes
Beavertown Neck Oil
(4.3% ABV. Session IPA, London, England) 330ml can Neck Oil is rapidly becoming one of the most requested and enjoyed U.K. brewed American style pale ales. Light, refreshing, dry and absolutely loaded with citrus aromatics. Citrus forward pale ales with a clean dry finish are staples of the best Californian brewers. This particular style of pale ale has become a calling card for many of today’s best modern breweries, not only across the U.S. but around the world. Beavertown’s Neck Oil is a bright all-American hopped (Magnum, Simcoe, Amarillo) example of this highly quaffable sub style but brewed fresh here in the U.K. Beavertown are one of the U.K.’s most forward thinking and quality focused new brewers, one of a cluster of talented and ambitious breweries that have sprung up in London in the past few years. Their attention to detail, enthusiasm and understanding of modern brewing practices comes through strongly in not only Neck Oil but their core range of beers as a whole. We here at the Beer Vault are big fans of Beavertown and are excited for what they’ll cook up... read more
Buxton Saison
(6.3% ABV. Saison, Buxton, Derbyshire, England) 330ml bottle Say hello to the British farmhouse ale! Saison, Belgium’s quintessential farmhouse beer style is now being brewed to a very high standard across the U.K. Buxton’s is one of the best. Saisons have become a staple of many of the U.K.’s best modern brewers and we here at The Beer Vault couldn’t be happier that this massively overlooked style of beer is finally gaining the recognition it deserves in Britain. This traditional Belgian farmhouse style of ale is hugely versatile and robust. A style in the broadest sense of the word, saisons are beers that were originally brewed upon farms in Belgium in the cooler months when the temperature was conducive to fermentation. The beers were usually then cellared for consumption in the warmer summer months by the farmers themselves and their saisonaires or seasonal workers. Typically possessing a potent spicy aroma, mostly the result of the lively ester producing yeast strains used, saisons are most often very dry and highly effervescent, giving them an almost Champagne quality. Clocking in at 6.3% ABV, Buxton’s house Saison sits very comfortably in the typical alcohol range for the style, which is usually somewhere between 5.0 and 8.0% ABV. although can go as high as 11.0 or 12.0% ABV. Due to their effervescent, dry and floral nature, saisons pair extremely well with a broad range of savory foods and Buxton’s delicate and complex take on this traditional farmhouse ale is no exception. Why not use this beer to experiment with some saison food pairings of your... read more
Brew By Numbers 03/01 Porter – Original
(6.0% ABV. Porter, London, England) 330ml bottle What goes around, comes around, and that’s a good thing in the case of porter beers. Original is one of three outstanding porter styles that London upstart Brew By Numbers produces. Once upon a time robust dark brown and mahogany porters were the toast of London, being drunk in abundance by the working class and elite without prejudice. They were particularly popular with hard working street and dockside porters after whom the beer style is said to have acquired its name. In terms of aroma and flavour, think of the porter as stout’s slightly more astringent and tart fruity cousin. Porters fell out of mainstream favour in the U.K. in the face of the ever more pervasive mass produced pale ale and lager onslaught of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Happily though, the style, alongside fellow English stalwarts the India pale ale and barleywine, found new appreciation in America among the uninhibited fledgingly craft brewers of the 1970’s – being most notably championed by San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Co. Today porters are brewed on a regular or seasonal basis by most craft breweries in the U.S. and U.K. and are once again a staple of any self respecting pub in the British Isles. Brew By Numbers actually brews three porters as standard, the lushly textured, rich and chocolatey Original that we’re featuring this month, the complex and boozy Traditional, and Liberty, a more aggressively hopped American style porter. So then, enjoy this outstanding ode to London’s brewing past brewed by one of the it’s newest and best breweries. After one bottle, we think you’ll agree... read more
Fourpure Pale Ale
(5.0% ABV. American Pale Ale, London, England) 300ml can Great beer does come in cans! It’s time to explode this silly myth once and for all, and thanks to London’s Fourpure Pale Ale we have some damn fine ammo to do so. Fourpure Brewing Co. are one of the fledgling London based breweries that make up what has become referred to as the “Bermondsey Beer Mile,” a cluster of seven breweries and a specialist bottle shop that include Anspach & Hobday/Bullfinch, Brew By Numbers, Partizan Brewing, Southwark Brewing Co and The Kernel Brewery. Like many of the U.K.’s new craft breweries, Fourpure are heavily inspired by modern American craft beer styles and brewing techniques, especially the gorgeously aromatic and long dry finish pale ales and IPAs brewed in California. Fourpure Pale Ale has the pretty herbal aroma and even bitterness of Sierra Nevada’s classic Pale Ale with a slightly more resinous body and fuller fruity finish. Fourpure have chosen, like some of America’s most leading edge craft brewers such as Colorado’s exemplary Oskar Blues, to primarily can their beer alongside a handful of bottled offerings. It’s a decision that has been made surely in part to help prove incorrect the myth that canned beer is poor quality beer. Fourpure’s striking line-up of cans makes quite a visual statement, a statement that is reinforced thanks to the high standard of the ales and lagers contained... read more
Wild Beer Scarlett Fever
(4.8% ABV. American Amber Ale, Evercreech, Somerset, England) 330ml bottle Wild Beer Co. have many brewing talents, one of which is utilising bold new world hops varieties to enliven old world beer styles. Ladies and gentlemen, Scarlett Fever. West Country craft beer pioneers Wild Beer Co. are rapidly becoming best known on both sides of the Atlantic for their increasingly creative and admirably consistent funky saisons and pucker inducing sour beers. In addition to their more esoteric beers, Wild Beer Co. brew an outstanding selection of core beers, beers like their highly quaffable Fresh pale ale, dank and resinous Madness IPA and their reimagined English red ale Scarlett Fever. Scarlett Fever is the careful result of blending a traditional English amber pub ale with big bold citrus and pine evoking New World hops. The deep caramelised backbone of the beer is perfectly offset by a robust earthy bitterness while the late addition hops provide a fresh pithy finish. The aroma has a wonderfully concentrated herbal bite. Scareltt Fever is proof, if any were needed, that Wild Beer Co. are one of the U.K.’s most exciting and diverse craft breweries, able to brew everyday session beers of the highest standard, as well as some of the most interesting and challenging beers in... read more
Weird Beard Black Perle
(4.5% ABV. Sweet Stout, London, England) 500ml bottle Artisan roasted coffee is rapidly becoming a standard fifth ingredient in the professional brewers arsenal and when the end result is this good, you might start wondering why it took so long! Brewed in collaboration with South London coffee roaster Alchemy, this single hopped milk stout is allowed to condition on heaps of Costa Rican Zamorana beans, producing a rich, but extremely sessionable beer that evokes many of the best attributes of an early morning latte. Sweet, ever so slightly creamy, with a deep dark roasted cocoa roast, it is one the U.K’s standout low ABV. stouts. There’s no actual milk in milk stouts, their sweetness is derived from lactose or milk sugars. The beer is brewed exclusively with Perle hops, a German all purpose variety with a delicate floral quality, perfect for a sessionable stout with a lot of complex and potentially conflicting flavour and aroma characteristics. Try pairing this sweet little number with a bar of your favourite milk chocolate and you’ll be utterly hooked; possibly to the point of writing a thank you email to the beardy weirdies at Weird... read moreBrowse the Rest
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