by Lee Williams | Dec 16, 2014 | Cellar Builder: December 2014
| 10.3% ABV. | English Barleywine | Buxton, Derbyshire, England Buxton, Derbyshire, England | 330ml bottle | The English Barley Wine is long overdue a widespread resurrection and reappraisal in its homeland. This full bodied and warming incarnation of the style will certainly go someway to seeing that resurrection come about. The quintessential English barleywine should have layers of rich dark toffee and bittersweet burnt caramel flavour and a lingering building warmth from a high alcohol content. It’s a beer style that should be nothing short of indulgent. In essence, a drink to be sipped and savoured over an extended period of time. Possibly by a roaring fireplace. With a plate of stilton and crackers. You get the picture. The barleywine has featured prominently in the craft beer movement in the United States since day one – day one being the mid 1970’s. It’s one of the “old” British beer styles, along with the porter and India pale ale, that the late great Fritz Maytag of San Francisco brewing institution, Anchor, was keen to brew after he took over the brewery. These days, the majority of America’s 3000 plus craft breweries brew some iteration of a barleywine, be it the traditional sweeter English variety or it’s newer and hoppier American cousin. In many instances, American craft breweries will now release a handful of different barleywines, especially sought after are those aged in Bourbon barrels, so complimentary are their respective sweet, warming and malty flavour profiles. The U.K. craft beer industry is quite a bit younger than it is in the U.S, which might go some way to explaining why the...
by Lee Williams | Dec 16, 2014 | Cellar Builder: December 2014
| 4.7% ABV. | American Stout | Bristol, England | 660 ml | A beer that has become something of a Bristol good beer institution – especially now that Moor have relocated to the city from deepest Somerset. This sessionable American stout beautifully marries fragrant hop bitterness and the welcoming roast of carefully crafted coffee. Moor and Arbor’s Dark Alliance is a three way collaboration between Moor Beer, Arbor Ales and Clifton Coffee. It has gone on to become something of a Bristol beer drinking institution. The same too can be said of its much bigger sibling, the massive 9.2% ABV. black hop bomb, Double Dark Alliance. More on that beer perhaps in a future Cellar Builder installment. The 4.7% ABV. Dark Alliance came about, as many brilliant ideas in the beer industry do, after the brewers involved had enjoyed two or three lovely beers at the pub. The beer is a piney American stout brewed with a not insignificant amount of high quality roasty coffee. The taste for particularly hoppy black beers has really taken a hold in the past five years, this can be largely attributed to the rise of the Black IPA – or Cascandian Dark Ale, if you prefer. While Dark Alliance isn’t anywhere near as bitter or as heavily hopped as a Black IPA, with beer drinking palates ever more tolerant of aggressively hopped beers, it’s not hard to see why this sessionable, yet hoppy dark beer, has become such a hit. Perhaps the residual caffeine in the beer from the coffee additition has something to do with its popularity as well? This occasional,...
by Lee Williams | Dec 16, 2014 | Cellar Builder: December 2014
| 7.4% ABV. | American IPA | Buxton, Derbyshire, England Buxton, Derbyshire, England | 330ml bottle | This juicy hop bomb oozes sticky tropical fruit notes and leafy green herbal dankness. There’ll be no confusing this with any English style IPA you’ve ever tasted before. Collaborations in craft beer are all the rage. As well as great cross promotion for both breweries involved, they serve as an excuse to dabble at the fringes of brewing styles and continue to break new ground in what might be possible in brewing alongside the larger volumes of pale ales, stouts and lagers – still the bread and butter of the industry, even at the craft end. For us beer geeks, lots of collabs mean lots of wonderful, new and interesting beers to try, which is never a bad thing. This first Cellar Builder box is testament to that esoteric and experimental collab ethos, featuring, as it does, six very different collaboration beers. Five of the collaborations in this month’s Cellar Builder selection come courtesy of the forward thinking bods at Buxton Brewery in Derbyshire and represent their working with brewers in places as far flung as New York (Evil Twin), Arizona (Arizona Wilderness) and T0 Øl (Copenhagen). The two collabs with T0 Øl represent different takes of a similar idea, American, strong and hoppy. Collateral Carnage is a massive 9.1% ABV. American strong ale brewed with oats. It’s a resinous bittersweet monster with a thick body, is loaded with concentrated tropical fruit and exotic citrus fruit flavours and has an appropriately aggressive finish. All are qualities you want in an American strong...
