by colinmcgray | Dec 16, 2014 | Cellar Builder: December 2014
| 4.7% ABV. | Sour Pale | Buxton, Derbyshire, England Buxton, Derbyshire, England | 330ml bottle | An exciting fusion of fresh, hoppy and tart sourness, and a brilliant example of the creativity that underlines so many of the collaboration projects happening in the craft beer industry at the moment. In 2013 you would have been very hard pressed to find a British brewed sour beer at all. As we enter 2015 though, it’s a very different story altogether. Throughout 2014 we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of U.K. produced kettle sours. Without getting too sciency just yet, think of kettle sours as quick-to-produce sour beer. There has also been an increase in the number of more traditional long maturation Belgian inspired sours, of the sort that can take years to produce. By their very fickle and slow to produce nature, we just haven’t seen as many of them on the market yet, but they’re coming, trust me. Somerset’s Wild Beer Co. has been forging some particularly impressive ground when it comes to long maturation sours, but that’s a story for another day. Buxton are one of the English breweries creatively spearheading the bleeding edge of craft beer in the U.K. alongside the likes of The Kernel, Magic Rock, Siren, Beavertown, Partizan and Wild Beer Co. This band of colourful breweries isn’t just making waves at home in the U.K. either, but also in the significantly more well established and demanding craft beer market in the United States. Collaborations, like sour beers, are all the rage in craft beer at the moment, they serve to excite the brewers...
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
| 8.9% ABV. | Spiced Beer | Buxton, Derbyshire, England Buxton, Derbyshire, England | 330ml bottle | If one of the purposes of a collaboration beer is to push boundries and create something new and exciting, then a strong stout brewed with bacon, maple and smoky chillies is definitely a big step in the right direction. Few ingredients have found as much new and versatile fame in the past few years as bacon. You name it, the vulnerable breakfast meat has been used in it or on it. From bacon topped donuts to bacon flavoured vodka and everything imaginable in between. There have been a few attempts to add bacon to beer, or at least the flavour of bacon, by some of America’s more adventurous craft brewers. One of the most impressive and bacon-evoking beers ever brewed was surely Reinschweinsgebot, a bacon fat infused brown ale produced in very limited quantity in 2009 by Brooklyn Brewery’s world renowned brewmaster Garrett Oliver. The beer truly did smell and taste like savoury smoky bacon. Without getting too sciency, the main hurdle facing any brewer wanting to add meat or indeed nuts to a beer, is that fat can interfere with fermentation and also kill head retention, in addition to causing all kinds of other undesirable things to happen to the beer before it reaches the consumer. That said, such has been the desire to bring beer and bacon together – surely two of humankind’s greatest creations, that brewers continue to beaver away trying to figure how to make a truly great “bacon beer.” If you are wondering how Brooklyn’s brewmaster Garrett Oliver was...
by Lee Williams | Dec 16, 2014 | Cellar Builder: December 2014
| 9.1% ABV.| American Strong Ale | Buxton, Derbyshire, England Buxton, Derbyshire, England | 330ml bottle | One of the only examples of a British brewed American Strong Ale. Exactly the sort of concept ripe for a international collaboration beer. One of the most interesting beers you’ll try all year, for sure. 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...
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...
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,...
