by colinmcgray | Mar 20, 2015 | Vault Reserve: March 2015
Here’s the full lineup for the March 2015 Vault Reserve box. I hope you, our members, are really excited by the beers this month and can’t wait to try them. I really enjoy everyone sharing with us on social media your opening of the box and the beers, so get in touch! With our Vault Reserve box we always strive to showcase the very best of the of the UK beer scene. We’ll throw imports in there to keep things exciting, and to allow us to genuinely showcase a rounded selection of the very best beers in the world to our members, but ultimately it’s UK beers that really get us going. So it’s with some great excitement I can talk you folks through this month’s selection. Wild Beer Tom Yum Gose – 4.5% – 750ml Tom Yum Gose is an intercontinental amalgamation of flavours, travelling from Europe to Asia to escape the restrictions of the reinheitsgebot, but finally settling down in rural Somerset, England. Wild Beer have taken a beer style revived from 16th century Germany and added to it’s base of coriander and salt, an array of floral, citrus fruity and spicy flavours from Thailand. These work together to create a deliciously crisp and refreshing 4.2% ABV amber wheat beer, with carefully balanced spices, reminiscent of a Tom Yum soup (but definitely best served cold). The base of this beer was initially fermented using local wild yeasts and bacteria from our local environment, creating it’s initial sour notes. Which are complimented by the tart citrus of lime, and followed by the floral aroma of lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and galangal. The finish...
by Lee Williams | Feb 16, 2015 | Vault Reserve: February 2015
Wild Beer Co. Wineybeest | 11.0% ABV. | Imperial Stout | Evercreech, England | 750ml bottle | This spectacular beer is Wild Beer Co.’s luxurious and much praised 11.0% ABV. Imperial espresso chocolate vanilla stout Wildebeest aged in Burgundy Pinot Noir barrels for nine months. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Wineybeest. Only two oak barrels of the beer have been produced and only five hundred bottles released. In keeping with our mission to source the best and most exclusive limited release beers for our Vault Reserve members each month, we’ve secured one tenth of those bottles just for you. Wildebeest is an incredibly rich, unctuous and desserty beer, loaded with sweet vanilla beans, Valrhona cocoa nibs and roasted Colombian coffee. To this already multi-layered and sophisticated sipping ale, the extended nine month red wine barrel maturation delivers a vinous and jam-like red berry quality that is akin to the cherry topping on an expensive cheesecake. In other words, it just makes the whole experience even more indulgent. From massive saisons to sours and strong ales, Wild Beer has produced no shortage of very high caliber beers suitable for cellaring. In addition to Wildebeest and Wineybeest they’ve also produced Whiskebeest, which as the name suggests is a whisky cask aged version of Wildebeest. In fact, so prolific and consistent have the Somerset brewery been at cranking out cellarable hit after hit, that you’d be forgiven for not having a cupboard full of Wild Beer goodies. Wineybeest then has pedigree and follows in some very well established and highly regarded footsteps, and it definitely comes through in the beer. Hyperbole and...
by Lee Williams | Jan 3, 2015 | Vault Reserve: January 2015
| 10.8% ABV. | Imperial Porter | Henley-on-Thames, England | 750ml bottle | A strong and sophisticated Maker’s Mark barrel aged Imperial porter that pops with notes of vanilla, coconut, tart dark fruit and maple syrup. One of two very interesting rare barrel aged beers in our Vault Reserve box this month, Lovibonds Dark Reserve No.4 is a massive Imperial strength porter aged in Maker’s Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon barrels and packaged in an impressive red wax dipped bottle, aping – possibly intentionally, the iconic red wax sealed Maker’s Mark bottle. Alongside the likes of Thornbridge, Moor Beer and BrewDog, Henley-on-Thames based Lovibonds are one of Britain’s true craft beer pioneers, having opened for business way back in 2005. Brewery founder and brewer Jeff Rosenmeier has since gone on to earn a deserved reputation as producer of some of the very best beers across the brewing spectrum, from winning international awards and kudos for his wine barrel aged sour beer Sour Grapes to building a dedicated drinkership for his generously hopped and expertly executed American IPA, 69. The Dark Reserve series of beers started life as a stronger incarnation of Lovibonds core beer Henley Dark, a traditional style London Porter that was then aged in Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey barrels. The winning creation was bottled and designated Dark Reserve No. 1 and clocked in at pleasingly robust and chocolatey 7.4% ABV. (alcohol by volume.) This latest entry in the series steps up the alcohol to a warming and highly cellarable 10.8%. If you choose to, this is a beer than can be stashed away in your beer cellar for...
by Lee Williams | Jan 3, 2015 | Vault Reserve: January 2015
| 6.5% ABV. | Dunkler Bock | Bodmin, England | 330ml bottle | An eyebrow raising combo of fruity red wine barrel and robust dark Bavarian style lager, and a truly delicious example of the boldness and creativity of British craft brewing in 2015. A rare beer that deserves to be savoured as such. It’s still very early days for the craft beer movement in the U.K. but as it continues to grow and mature, we’re already seeing the first signs of creative and exciting long term wood barrel aging programs of the sort that every state in the U.S. already has multiple of as we enter 2015. Back home the likes of Cornwall’s Harbour and many others are now following boldly in the wood pioneering footsteps of Wild Beer Co., Harviestoun, Siren Craft Brew and BrewDog by putting interesting beer styles in wood for extended maturation and enhancement. The practice of wood aging beer is hardly new, it is in fact of course the way beer was fermented and stored for most of the history of brewing. The age of affordable and much easier to manage and sanitise mass production steel meant that wood fell out favour almost overnight. Much was gained in the beer industry with the introduction of steel, cleaner beer and the ability to quickly produce more of it in a shorter space of time being the most obvious and significant gains. It’s safe to say that most beer drinkers, publicans and brewers didn’t miss wood all that much to begin with. That said, something was indeed lost when wood was taken out of the...
by Lee Williams | Jan 3, 2015 | Vault Reserve: January 2015
| 8.0% ABV. | Saison | Dour-Blaugies, Belgium | 750ml bottle | A quintessential dry and funky rustic saison brewed in rural Belgium by a small family run brewery. Saisons don’t get much more authentic or small batch than this. Saison is a beer style born during the 19th century in the Wallonia region of southern Belgium. Traditionally these beers were brewed by farmhouses in the winter months when fermentation temperatures were naturally amenable. Winter also tended to be a slower season for farmers than spring and summer thus allowing more time to fit in time consuming brewdays. Saison is French for ‘season’ and these beers were usually stored for many months after being brewed so they could be used to quench the thirst of seasonal labourers who worked the farmland in summertime. Water at the time was often of questionable cleanliness, so having a good stock of provisional ale on hand provided a beneficial substitute. The fact that these often robust beers provided a significant amount of spent grain was also a bonus as it could then be used to feed hungry livestock during the harsh winter months. These rustic and storied ales were a vital part of farmhouse life and indeed survival during the 19th century in rural Belgium. To ensure their storage potential and in an effort to avoid spoilage and infection during their many months in the cellar, saisons were usually brewed to a fairly robust ABV. (alcohol by volume) of somewhere between 5.0 – 8.0%. They tended to be fermented out until very dry and were often brewed with herb and spice additions which could provided...
by colinmcgray | Nov 19, 2014 | Vault Reserve: December 2014
(10.2% ABV. Quadrupel, Westvleteren, Belgium) 330ml bottle Westvleteren 12 (XII) is the most sought after beer on the planet, bar none. A world class Trappist Belgian quadrupel style beer with few peers. The most limited production, regularly brewed, Trappist ale. Laden with rich candied dark fruit and bittersweet molasses flavour and aroma. Matures incredibly well when cellared. With few notable exceptions, Russian River’s Pliny the Elder and Younger, and Three Floyds Dark Lord aside perhaps, no beer has ever garnered so much buzz and rumour as Westvleteren 12 (Westy 12 to its friends). For many beer lovers and beer geeks, Westy 12 is an extremely elusive fermented pot of gold at the end of a hoppy rainbow. To say you have actually tasted the beer continues to be a point of pride for beer drinkers both old and new. A mark as it were, of just how serious a beer nerd you actually are. There are a few simple reasons why this one Belgian beer has become such an iconic point of desire. It is brewed in relatively small amounts at the Trappist monastery Abbey of Saint Sixtus of Westvleteren, alongside only two other beers; Westvleteren Blonde, a 5.8% ABV. Belgian style pale ale and Westvleteren 8 (VIII), a malty 8% ABV. mahogany coloured Belgian style Dubbel. With the exception of a small amount that was sent to market a couple of years ago in Europe and the U.S., the beer is not distributed at all and must be collected from the brewery itself. This lack of distribution combined with the fact that the beer garners the highest ratings...
