Beers Of The U.K. Part 2

Beer Name: Kelpie
Origin: Scotland
Type: Seaweed Ale


This beer caught my eye because of its name. Kelpie seaweed ale? How could
one NOT buy this stuff, just to see what it tastes like? This is what I was
thinking when I saw the bottle in the supermarket. I just had to know.

I researched this beer a bit, and uncovered this information. It seems that
those wacky Scotts were into making beer any way they could. This included using
seaweed harvested from the beach as a fertilizer for barley. The beer company
claims to use actual seaweed in the mash tun, along with organic malts - the
darker malts they roast themselves. For those who care, the seaweed is harvested
from the Argyll coast.

The color of this beer is dark. Very dark, almost like a stout. But when held up to light,you can see that it has a deep mahogany color. The taste is rather light, as is
the alcohol content. At 4.4%, this is one of the lightest beers featured in this
blog. The taste is that of a light Scottish Ale. It has a Earthy / smoky taste,
but it is not overpowering. It is lightly hopped, with a malty flavor -
chocolate malt to be exact. The Earthy / smoky flavor is defiantly a background
flavor, the dominate flavor is the chocolate malt.

The addition of seaweed means that according to the purist, it is not proper
to call this anything but a seaweed ale. The Belgians are into adding almost
anything to their mash, but then again Belgian beer is an animal all to itself
(I will visit Belgium on my tour - you can count on that!). If the seaweed were
left out, this beer would be close to a porter style ale, with a slight Earthy /
smoky taste. But to hell with the purists. Good beer is good beer.

I should also note something about its name. Kelpie does not refer to the
seaweed. The Scots do not call seaweed kelp it seems. In folklore, a kelpie is a
creature that lives in EVERY loch (lake) in Scotland. The most famous Kelpie is
Nessie. Kelpies would lure unsuspecting people to a watery grave. The picture on
the label is an ancient symbol for a Kelpie.

My verdict - Kelpie is pretty good. It is light, so it is fairly easy to
drink. It has a low alcohol content, yet comes close to the body of a porter
style ale. If I were in the mood for a dark ale on a hot summer day out on my
boat, Kelpie would be a good choice. Heavy high-alcohol beers are better for
cool days if you ask me. I would rate this one as a 7 1/2.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have some Kelpie to drink.

I think I will tune into some BAGPIPE MUSIC while I finish the beer. Join
me, why don't you? This happens to be the ringtone on my cell phone.

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Beer Name: Whitbread Pale Ale

Origin: United Kingdom (Interbrew LTD)
Type: Pale Ale

Finally! Back to my favorite style of beer. The pale ale. There is no finer
beer than a good pale ale. Be it a hot day, or a cold day, or even in the middle
of a hurricane, nothing beats a pale ale. That is, so long as the roof stays on
your house.

The color of the beer is a deep golden color, typical of a pale ale.
Whitbread is on the darker end of the pale ale color spectrum, similar to the
color of a Bass Ale. Pale Ale fans will know exactly what I am talking about
here.

The flavor is very good. This is not an India Pale Ale, meaning the hops
bitterness is under control. The hops is very well balanced with the malt. The
beer does not have a malty taste, nor are you hit by a hoppy bite - but if I had
to pick a winner I would go with the hops. But only by a razor thin margin.
Something, either the hops, the malt, the yeast, or a combination of two or more
of that stuff, gives this beer a slight fruit taste. VERY slight.

One word of warning. The BLUE LABEL bottle, like the one pictured, is brewed
and bottled in the UK. The RED label is made in New England by the Boston Beer
Company. The red label stuff is not the same as the blue label stuff. Reviews I
have found for the red label are not that great.

My verdict - this beer is good. It does not seem to have a high alcohol
content, so you can kick back with this beer and not get blotto. This would make
a decent boat beer, to pass some time while fishing for nothing (I never catch
squat - but then again I never try very hard). This would also be a good "hang
out on the porch with some friends" beer. One could drink two or three of these
beers without a problem - assuming of course that you do not chug em in a funnel
or something retarded like that. I will give it a 7, but only because I would
feel bad with giving it a 6.

Yes frat boys, beer funnels are retarded. Now go order some pledges to strip
down to their underwear so you can paddle them. That is not gay at all.

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Beer Name: Hen's Tooth
Origin: Morland, England
Style: English "Strong" Ale.

WOW! This is a good beer. The Greene King people came up with a real winner
with this offering. Hen's Tooth is bottle conditioned. For all you non-beer
people out there, what this means is that the beer is put into the bottle flat.
It gets its carbonation from yeast that is added to the bottle. The vast
majority of bottled beer used a method of forced carbonation, where all the
yeast is filtered out and the beer is bottled under pressure to retain the fizz.

In bottle conditioned beer, there is just a little unfermented sugar in the
beer, which the yeast can feed on. This gives the beer a nice, mellow foam head.
And extra vitamin E from the yummy yeast that gets into your glass.

Alcohol content of this beer is 6.5%. I would classify this as a weaker
"strong ale", but I am not complaining. This stuff is just plain great. At
first, I taste the hops. but then I can taste some complex stuff going on. There
are hints of fruit (probably caused by the active yeast), and of course the
malt. A little research led me to conclude that the most likely malt suspects
are traditional pale ale malt, with some lighter crystal malt added for good
measure. I can not pin down exactly what kind of hops are used, but if I had to
guess I would go with Fuggles or East Kent Goldings.

You can always tell a bottle conditioned beer by the presence of sediment on
the bottom of the bottle. You can, if you wish, pour the beer carefully and
prevent the yeast from getting into your glass -but that is for wussies! I
suggest you do not worry about a little yeast in your beer. It will not kill
you, and the yeast flavor is part of the beer. Enjoy it.

Another cool thing to note about this beer. The bottle says 50cl. You almost
never see this. Most bottles this size say 500 ml. It is very rare for me to see
anything measured in centiliters. Milliliters yes. Liters yes. But CENTI-liters?
No. Almost never. Very cool. For all you non-metric people out there, 50 cl, 500
ml, and 1/2 liter are all the same. In archaic US measurement it equals 1 pint
0.9 fluid ounce.

Hen's Tooth English Ale is the closest thing to "real ale" you can get in a
bottle. By real ale I mean not forced carbonated. There are other bottled beers
that are bottle conditioned, but not many. If you ever see this beer in a store,
buy a bottle or two. If you do not like it, send it to me. I will properly
dispose of it.

This beer gets a solid 10. Cheers to the Greene King Brewing Company! You
guys really did a wonderful job with this one.

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Beer Name: Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Pale Ale
Origin: Yorkshire, England
Style: Pale Ale.

I love my pale ale! And I have tried Samuel Smith's before - their Nut Brown
Ale. So needless to say, my expectations were pretty high. I remember the Nut
Brown Ale as being some good stuff.

But first, some background on this beer. Research indicates that Samuel
Smith's Brewery is the oldest brewery in Yorkshire, and one of the few remaining
independent breweries in all of England. I do not know how reliable the
independent brewery thing is, but the oldest brewery in Yorkshire is probably
true.

Now on to the important stuff. The color of this beer is somewhat dark for a
pale ale. Not that this is a bad thing, on the contrary I rather favor the
darker pales. For my American beer drinking readers - beer is supposed to come
in a whole slew of shades. So just because two beers are pale ales does not mean
they will be the same color. American beer is pretty much all yellow. The same
color it is when you wizz it out.

The brewery suggests drinking this beer at about 55 degrees, which is a bit
warmer than my fridge. So I had to let this beer warm up a bit. Hold on a minute
while my beer warms up a bit.
Click HERE for a musical interlude while my beer warms up. If you require another
interlude, try THIS ONE.

There! The beer is at proper drinking temperature. Now I can rate it
properly. The smell, or nose, of the beer is pleasing. It smells like a fine
ale. By that I mean it seems that aromatic hops were added to this beer. There
is the slight fragrance of the hops on the beer. I like that.

I already covered the color. It is slightly dark for a pale ale. but upon
tasting, it does not have a strong dark malt flavor at all. This is a good
thing. You do not want your pale ale to taste like a porter! If so, you would
just buy a porter! I like the way this beer pulls off the deep color without
having too much of a chocolate malt taste.

Like any good pale, the hops taste is there. You can not ignore it. It
overpowers the malt flavor nicely. Of course, I am a hop head so I like this.
Yea, I have been known to drink some malty beers, but given a choice I gravitate
to the hoppy stuff every time.

Wow am I off track here. With all the regimental marches and hurricane Wilma
on the way and stuff. Back to the beer! The beer has a distinct hoppy taste,
without any malty sweetness. This is a pale ale fit for any hop head! I like it
very much. I am going to rate this one a 9, but only because I drank it on the
same night as the Hen's Tooth. I like Hen's Tooth better.

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Beer Name: Fuller's ESB
Type: Extra Special Bitter
Origin: England

It is hard to find a bitter in the United States. I think that the name
scares people off. Who would want something called a "bitter"?

But a bitter is not really bitter at all. Now don't get me wrong here. If
what you want is a malty sweet beer, a bitter is probably too hoppy (bitter) for
you. But for someone like myself who favors a nice India Pale Ale (the king of
pale ales), a bitter is much like a pale ale, only with less hops. In other
words, I like the stuff.

So to recap, a bitter, or in this case an ESB (extra special bitter), is like
a pale ale. Pale ales and bitter use the same type of yeast, the same type of
malt, and the same type of hops. Only bitter style beers use less hops. So a
bitter is less bitter than a good pale ale. Get it? I knew you would.

But for the 53,000,000 people who voted for Bush in 2004, this is very
confusing. So as a result, bitter is hard to find in the USA. People see the
name and figure that they ought to just drink Michelob Light or some other
"quality" swill that passes for beer, but only in America.

For my American blog readers, bitter style beer is a huge seller in the UK.
It is at least as popular as a pale ale, and possibly even a bigger seller. It
is everywhere. In America, you can go to any bar and order a "Bud", where in
England you can walk into any pub and order a bitter. The only difference being
that bitter is way better than Bud.

So now to the beer. The color of the bitter is what I would expect from a
pale ale a little on the dark side. In other words, a rich, deep gold-red color.
It tastes like a good pale ale as well. In fact, if I did not see the bottle
label I would have guessed this beer to be a pale ale. But it is not. It is a
bitter. An extra special one.

The biggest clue that this is in fact not a true pale ale is the color.
"Pale" ales are usually more yellow in color (hence the name pale ale). There is
a restaurant that I like to go to in Miami called Titanic Brewery. As you might have
guessed, they make beer there. They also have food. Titanic makes a bitter
(named Britannic Best Bitter) and an IPA (or India Pale Ale named White Star
IPA). I usually order the IPA, because it is noticeably more hoppy than the
bitter, and I like hops. The color difference is also noticeable, with the IPA
being more yellow and the bitter being more red. I like both beers, but I seem
to gravitate to the IPA more often than I go with the bitter.

It is hard to know exactly without comparing this bitter to Titanic's bitter,
but I think that the Fuller's is slightly more hoppy.

I will rate this one as a 10. Another perfect score. I would absolutely buy
this beer again. If you are lucky enough to find this beer anywhere - buy a
bottle or two. Try it. Do not be afraid of the label. If you do not like it, you
know what to do with it. Send it to me. I will turn it into pee using magic.

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Beer Name: Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Tadcaster or Taddy Porter
Origin: England
Type: Porter

Time for more beer history! Porter style beer arises from the good old days
when people traveled over land by rail and over seas by ship. Back then, a good
job for a laborer to have was that of a porter. You would help rich people load
and unload the excessive amounts of luggage they would carry with them, or you
might even load and unload cargo. It was ass busting work, but better than
working in a coal mine. Porters would work hard, and party just as hard. While
it was a decent job, it did not exactly make one rich. OK so it was a crap job.
No point in sugar coating the past.

Being a hard, labor intensive, back breaking, thankless job - who the hell
would take the job? Why, the Irish of course! There were many non Irish porters
as well, but you get my point. So what does this have to do with beer? Good
question! Irish men are known for their love of stouts. The closer to the color
of used motor oil, the more the Irish will like the beer. Englishmen on the
other hand seemed to like pale ales and bitters. Got it? Good.

Porters were born when people who loved stouts moved into areas
infested with pale ale drinkers. Porters were not wealthy, and could not really
afford to pay for stouts (stouts typically use a lot of dark roasted malt and
hops to balance out the flavor). So pub owners invented "porter" beer. You can
think of a porter as a stout light. Just as dark as a stout, but without the
rich stout flavor. The ratio of dark to light malt is higher (so less malt is
needed to get the used oil color), and since less malt is used less hops are
required. Bottom line is that porter beer was cheaper to make, and therefore
cheaper to sell. Porters could afford to get pissed after a long day of loading
heavy wooden trunks full of rich people's crap on and off boats and trains. The
beer style became known as "porter" as a result. Even today, the name lingers
on. Kind of like the stink in the bathroom after burrito night.

So back to the beer. The color of this beer is dark. Dark enough so that you
can not see the sun through a glass filled with the stuff. Dark as Miami is
right now with 90% of the power still out. You get the idea.

The beer looks like a stout, kind of smells like a stout - but the taste is
lighter than a stout. Just as I would expect from a porter. You can taste the
dark roasted chocolate malt in there, but it is not very strong. The hops level
is rather low, the dominate flavor is the chocolate malt - but just barely. My
highly tuned beer taste buds can detect some yummy hops in there.

The overall flavor is that of a mild stout - which is exactly what a porter
is. It does not taste like a pale ale or a bitter, so a stout drinker would like
this stuff. On the flip side, someone who drinks pale ale or bitter might also
like a porter. Maybe. It all depends on how the person feels about dark roasted
malt.

I like stout. Every so often I have to kick back with one. Sometimes my stout
consumption is purely recreational ( like when I do car bombs) , and sometimes
my stout consumption is more civilized. But really now - since when are stout
drinkers civilized? But the truth is that South Florida is just too friggin HOT
for stout. While not necessarily high in alcohol, stouts do pack a deep rich
super full body flavor. Not exactly something you want to drink when it is 90
degrees in the shade, and the beach sand is just a few degrees away from turning
into molten glass. High alcohol content beers, and stouts, are (for me) more of
a cool weather thing.

But a porter might be a happy middle ground. They are lighter in flavor than
a stout, and do not pack any more alcohol than a pale ale. Drinkable even when
it is hot outside.

I will give this beer a rating of 10. It is an excellent example of a porter
style beer. It has a stout like taste, without being too heavy. If you have ever
tried a stout, and thought that it needed a bit of watering down - try a porter!
On the other hand, even if you like a full bodied stout, you will not turn down
a porter. This is a very good beer from the Samuel Smith people.

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Beer Name: Old Nick
Origin: London
Beer Style: Barley Wine

So, it is Halloween night and I have no party to go to. So what should I do?
I know! Crack open the bottle of Old Nick that has been hanging out in my fridge
since Hurricane Katrina!

Anyway, back to the beer. Barley Wine is a very special beer. If you thought
that you could only make wine out of fruit, you were wrong! Well not really.
Barley Wine is actually beer. It uses beer ingredients. With one important
difference - the yeast. Usually beer yeast is not used for barley wines. The
proper yeast to use is wine or even better champagne yeast.

Now you need to know a little about yeast! Yeasty beasties are NOT all the
same! Different strands of yeast impart different flavors to beer. Breweries
that develop their own special strains of yeast guard that stuff like it was
gold. Beer yeast comes in two basic versions - bottom fermenting yeast (used mostly
in lagers, these yeast like a cooler temperature to do their magic in) and top
fermenting yeast (used more often in ales - these yeast like a slightly higher
temperature). The Japanese even went to the trouble of inventing a fast
fermenting yeast used in their "dry" beers. There are also a whole lot of
different wine yeasts, but I do not know as much about them.

Yeast "eat" sugar, and "pee" alcohol. They "fart" carbon dioxide. In beer,
fermentable sugars come from the malt. The same happens in wine, but wine makers
allow all the CO2 to escape (unless that wine is to be champagne). In this
regard, wine and beer yeast are identical. But wine yeast and beer yeast are not
the same! Wine yeast strains can ferment sugars to a higher alcohol content than
beer yeast can. Most beer styles are in the 4% - 6% range, while wines are
usually 15% percent or so, and can be as high as 20%. Beer yeast just can
not get up to 15%. Beer yeast, placed into an environment with that much sugar,
will simply result is a stuck fermentation (when not all the sugars are
fermented out). The resulting beer will not be very good.

You can probably figure out the rest. Barley Wine makers use a whole heaping
load of malt, together with hops and wine yeast to ferment out all the sugar.
Sounds simple huh? Well, it is not. Barley wine is perhaps the most complex of
all beers to make. The only rules are the alcohol content has to be higher than
normal. That is it. It can be sweet, it can be bitter, it can have a smoky
flavor, it can have a fruity flavor - anything goes. Any type of malt can be
used, and any type of hops can be used - in ANY amount. It can be light in
color, it can be dark - but usually ends up darker in color.

As a result, barley wines vary greatly in flavor depending on who the brewer
is.

Old Nick is darker in color. Held up to a bright light, the hue is a very
deep red. VERY deep. Not exactly dark as a stout or porter, but much darker than
an ale.

The flavor is more on the sweet side than the hoppy side. I can taste the
hops in the beer, the beer is not super malty sweet - enough hops were used to
balance out the high amount of malt. The overall flavor is actually quite
complex - there is the malt sweetness, the hops bitterness, and some other stuff
going on in the beer too. There are some subtle fruit like flavors, most likely
caused by whatever yeast were used. I like this version of barley wine very
much!

I have had exactly four barley wines in my life. The first was at Prescott
Brewery, in Prescott Arizona. The second was at Titanic Brewery, located very
close to my home. The third barley wine was imported from Germany just for me (I
have a ex-patriot friend who is currently living in Germany - he brought me 2
liters of some stuff made near his home last time he flew in). Old Nick is my
fourth barley wine.

The Prescott Brewery and German barley wines were sweet. Titanic's version of
barley wine is more on the hoppy side. Old Nick is in the middle.

I should note at this point, barley wines are known to be better when aged -
just like regular wines. I might go buy a few more bottles of Old Nick and put
them into storage for 6 months and 1 year, just to see what happens.

At only 7.2%, Old Nick is the weakest barley wine I have tried. Any lower in
alcohol, and it would be hard to even call something a barley wine. In fact,
some might argue that 7.2% is too low to qualify as a barley wine - but I will
not press the issue. As far as I am aware, there is no rule saying that barley
wines have to be above 8% or 9% or whatever. I would draw the line closer to 6%,
as most beer is below 6% alcohol by volume.

Old Nick is a velvet smooth barley wine, without a high alcohol content to
kick your ass. This is a barley wine that one can enjoy a few of, without
getting blotto. The lower alcohol content makes this beer more refreshing than
other barley wines I have tried. Also the lower alcohol content means that one
can enjoy this barley wine in warmer climates. Young & CO'S Brewery did a
fantastic job with this beer.

I will give this barley wine a 9. Very excellent! If you can find this one,
buy it! I think it might be a seasonal brew, so grab it while you can!