by Lee Williams | Jan 9, 2015 | Lock Box: January 2015
| 4.5% ABV. | American Pale Ale | Finchampstead, Berkshire England | 330ml bottle | A spritzy and bright West Coast American style pale ale loaded with fresh grapefruit aroma. Smooth, with a tart fruity body and a dry finish. We can’t really discuss the outstanding Siren Undercurrent before talking a little bit about Cascade hops. Cascade hops were born in 1972 in Oregon, the product of a U.S. Government funded program to create new, interesting, and yes, profitable hop varieties. It’s safe to say that few involved with the creation of this yellow citrus fruit evoking new hop could have predicted it’s importance to the oncoming craft beer revolution, then still some years off. But, important it definitely proved to be. Few other single ingredients or single factors have done more to provide our 21st century juggernaut of a craft beer industry with such an appreciated and exciting identity. Cascade’s fresh and vibrant grapefruit character is the cornerstone around which Sierra Nevada’s now iconic Pale Ale is constructed. The beer that more than any other inspired so many brewers and brewers to be up and down the West Coast of America to brew beers of a similar expressiveness, flavour and aroma. In many ways, Cascade is “West Coast pale ales”. This new and lively style of pale ale, dry and loaded with yellow citrus aroma, still inspires many new craft brewers around the world who look to the style when designing their core beer offerings. Siren Undercurrent is definitely an American style pale ale that draws heavy inspiration from Sierra’s granddaddy of the craft beer movement. Brewed with...
by Lee Williams | Jan 9, 2015 | Lock Box: January 2015
| 5.6% ABV. | American Stout | London, England | 330ml can | An extremely hoppy American style stout with huge licorice, black treacle and sappy pine needle notes. This is most definitely not your father’s stout. It’s loud, hopped to hell and bristles with bitter character. Beavertown are one of the most experimental, yet consistently delicious, of London’s many, many new craft breweries. The brewery started life in late 2011 in the kitchen of Duke’s Brew and Que, in De Beauvoir, Hackney, London. Beavertown have moved twice since those humble beginnings and now operate out of a much larger facility brewing 30 barrels of beer at a time. That much loved old brewkit, on which they mastered many of their early beers, hasn’t been forgotten though and still has pride of place in the new brewery where it’s used to brew their freestyle Alpha series beers. Beavertown are probably best known as we go into 2015 for Neck Oil and Gamma Ray, their flagship IPAs. Their striking branding and the fact that they’re one of the only craft breweries in the U.K. canning beer, has also gone some way to helping catch the attention and taste buds of many new customers. If you’re a founding Lock Box Member, you will know that we featured Neck Oil in our first shipment in December 2014. We’re long time fans of Beavertown at The Beer Vault. Holy Cowbell India Stout is Beavertown’s latest beer to make the jump to cans. It has appeared as an occasional bottle before, but is now primed and ready to reach a much wider drinkership. The beer’s beautiful...
by Lee Williams | Jan 9, 2015 | Lock Box: January 2015
| 7.4% ABV. | American IPA | London, England | 330ml bottle | Quite possibly the juiciest India pale ale brewed in the U.K. Loaded with orange, mango, papaya and sticky marmalade flavour and aroma. In other words, a right juicy banger! Redchurch Great Eastern India Pale Ale is what some of today’s British beer commentators refer to as, “a juicy banger”. What the heck is a juicy banger? I hear you ask. To answer that, we first need to talk a little bit about hops. Hops are the vital bittering botanical and preservative ingredient in beer. They vary as much in character – more so in fact, than wine grape varietals. A fact that continues to raise the eyebrows of many wine drinkers, and indeed, beer drinkers. Some hops are extremely herbal and are evocative of sage and pine, others effervesce yellow citrus and are overtly lemon and grapefruit, some are unctuous, sweet and tropical, and so on. All of the major hop growing countries of the world – England, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. have unique native and nationally bred hop varieties. Hop producers all over the world these days are rushing to cross breed and create new and interesting hop varieties for a booming craft beer industry ravenous for the next thing. It’s the U.S. hop varieties in particular that have driven the modern craft beer explosion. At the heart of many classic American craft beers and beer styles, are the so called ‘Big C’ hop varieties – Cascade, Centennial and Columbus, with an honourary fourth variety in Chinook. Between them these hops...
by Lee Williams | Jan 9, 2015 | Lock Box: January 2015
| 6.6% ABV. | Saison | Caerphilly, Wales | 330ml bottle | An unfiltered Belgian farmhouse ale brewed with a boatload of tart and luscious pomegranate and aged for 2 months before bottling. We’ve featured a few saisons in our beer boxes during our first two months of business here a The Beer Vault – both British brewed and Belgian. This noble and storied Belgian farmhouse beer style went for far too long unnoticed and thus underappreciated here in the U.K. Not only was it hard to find saisons on shop shelves, save for the occasional bottle of Brasserie Dupont’s classic, it wasn’t a style that any British brewery cared to brew either. Thankfully all that has changed now. For a few years now, many forward thinking British breweries have turned their hand to this beautiful and most versatile of beers, some even brewing many variations of the style – London creatives Partizan spring to mind immediately, as do new Brighton based brewery Burning Sky. Both seem to have a particular affinity for the style and thus brew saisons throughout the year, many brewed with all manner of interesting flavouring ingredients. Caerphilly based Celt Experience are another brewery that in recent years has made no secret of their love of farmhouse ales, and not just saisons either, but it’s even more esoteric French cousin the Bière de Garde. We have discussed the story of saisons at length in our reviews of previously featured beers, Buxton Saison, Partizan Iced Tea and Blaugies La Moneuse, so if you fancy reading about the style in more depth that’s a great place to...
by Lee Williams | Jan 9, 2015 | Lock Box: January 2015
| 5.5% ABV. | Smoked Beer | Bristol, England | 500ml bottles | A bold mashup of traditional British and German beer styles. Loaded with dark chocolate and smokey bacon notes. Impressively decadent and characterful for a session beer. Smoked beers or Rauchbier (“smoke beer” in German), are traditionally the domain of Bamberg, Germany. It’s here that the art of beers brewed with wood smoked malt has been elevated to an art and has been perfected over many generations. The smoky bacon flavour is imparted by drying malt over an open flame. In the era before more industrialised indirect kilning technology, this flavourful method was a point of practically more than anything else. Smoky flavoured beer was at one point pretty common all over the World, but new brewing technology meant that this, and many other old beer making techniques were eventually supplanted in favour of producing a more consistent, profitable and “clean” end product. Thankfully though, the populace in the Bamberg region of Germany rather enjoyed the smoky character of their beers and were in no rush to clean them up, as it were. And so, a small pocket of the World retained its much loved smoky beer. In today’s lively and creative international craft beer industry, many brewers around the World are eager to try their hand at every beer style imaginable. Smoked beer is one such style that many brewers in the U.K. and U.S. are have been keen to experiment with. The smoked malt produced by Bamberg maltster Weyermann is the most highly prized in the World. Proof, if ever, that holding on to old ways and means, isn’t...
by colinmcgray | Nov 11, 2014 | Lock Box: December 2014
(3.8% ABV. Saison, London, England) 330ml bottle Like tea? Like beer? So do Partizan, so much so that they’ve carefully fused the two most enjoyed beverages in the world together for your enjoyment. Partizan love saisons and clearly love experimenting with adjuncts in them. In beer terms adjuncts are anything other than malts, hops, yeast and water. In the past, the bold and clever bods at Partizan have spiced saisons with everything from black pepper, thyme and mango to lemongrass, fennel and lychee. The practice of adding unorthodox grains and fruit to farmhouse ales isn’t without historical precedent. French and Belgian farmers would frequently use leftover small batch grains and fruits to add fermentable sugars and flavours to their provisional ales. With Iced Tea, Partizan have taken this notion and ran with it in a quite literally fresh direction. The beer is brewed with lemon, lime and orange zests and a healthy amount of green tea. The result is a spicy and refreshing Belgian farmhouse table beer with an earthy, slightly astringent body and dry finish. Needless to say the aroma erupts with citrus notes. We think Partizan are one of the most exciting new breweries in Europe, so expect to see more beers by them in future Beer Vault...
