Golden Pint Awards

I was already drafting a 'best of...' but when award winning blogger Mark Dredge provided a template well that made things alot easier. I'll just add in a welsh element just as the Beer Nut added his Irish slant in his great yearly review.

Best UK Draught Beer - Moor 'Revival' - wonderful beer, fresh hoppy and beautifully balanced.

Best Welsh Draught Beer - Not sure about this, i've not anything really outstanding, although i recently had the  Tudor brewery offering 'Blorenge' which was pretty good

Best UK Bottled Beer - Marble 'Lagonda IPA' , absolute quality.

Best Welsh Bottled Beer - Untapped 'Eclipse'

Best Overseas Draught Beer - when i go oversea's i'll let you know!

Best Overseas Bottled Beer - Anchor 'Porter' was pretty amazing i thought, i'm late to the party i know!

Best Overall Beer - Actually i loved the M&S Cornish IPA which i know is their labeled version by St. Austell brewery, i've not tried their 'original' yet, but its way of bouncing flavour around your mouth was unbeatable. 

Best Welsh Pumpclip or Label - Untapped 'Eclipse'

Pub/Bar of the Year & Beer Festival of the Year - well i know i dont get out much but my few visits to The Boars Head  have been pretty good, and i've another planned soon. 

Supermarket of the Year - well its was sainsbury's until they just canceled our xmas online shop this week because of a little fucking snow, with no alternative slot offered - so its goes to Morrison's who for the first 6 months really tried i thought, did get a little dull later in the year though. Keep up with the Brewdogbeers though guys.

Independent Retailer of the Year - Cardiff Discount Supermarket

Online Retailer of the Year - i've not actually bought from an online retailer this year, except picking up a Brewdog Abstract 04 from some guy on Ebay, and at cost price too! so Ebay gets the award.

Best Beer Book or Magazine - Camra's  'Beer'

Best Beer Blog or Website - my go to blogs are Beer Nut, Cooking Lager, the Baron, Blog o' Beer, Robs beer quest. For sheer enjoyment it has to be Cooking Lager, joint winner with Real brewing at the Sharp End

Best Brewery Online - Brewdog, i mean most others barely update monthly.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year - crisps and beer is the best.

In 2011 I’d Most Like To…obviously drink more new beers, get to the pub more, when on my cornwall holiday to do a brewery tour with the guys. Get into Cardiff to the Artisan brewery to try their bottles.

Cheers, merry christmas to all who read this stuff!!!


Edit - not sure what gone wrong with the formatting on this one, cannot seem to correct it????!!!!

Warcop 'Furnace' & 'Honeyed Stout'

The final two bottles from Warcop are 'Furnace' a ruby ale, and their 'Honeyed Stout'. Again the bottles have interesting pictures on them, alot of religious iconography and some other odd pictures, here is the list of their ruby ales alongside the label pictures, check them out yourself.


Onto the beers, first up 'Furnace' 500mls, 4.8%. This indeed pours a nice ruby colour, a small head that quickly goes. Aroma has a sourness about it, reminds me of a heavy oaked white wine. Taste has a solid malt element but i'm struggling to differentiate between bitterness and sourness. I put away 2/3rds of it before i knew it i must admit, but i'm really not sure about it, whether i liked it or not.



The 'Honeyed Stout' sounded really interesting, they use honeycombs from local beekeepers and its aged for at least 2 months. It had a just off white head which was light and frothy, its body was relatively light for a stout but not thin. Again the aroma has some sourness to it, plus a sort of burnt malt element. Upon drinking i get dryness and a little smokiness at the end, little sweetness, no honey at all though. Although there is a spicy edge to it there is again that same sourness i got with the ruby ale, i'm not sure whether this is a feature of the yeast they use or something else.
Some of the other beers they had on sale sounded interesting also (and i really wanted to like these), but they possibly might make me a little hesitant before buying any of them is all i can say.

Warcop Caspa Lager

One of the three bottles i bought from the Warcop stand at the Cowbridge Food and Drink festival this year was this Caspa Lager, a 5.7% 500ml bottle, with an interesting label which is another reason i bought it really. I've not had great success with 'real lagers' generally, they have been either flat or underwhelming, an recent exception being the Teignworthy Beachcomer.

This Warcop bottle uses US Hops (unsure which) and a lager yeast, providing "a subtle taste of citrus/grapefruit" . 

There was good carbonation on opening, a small fizzy head, and a pale yellow colour as you see in the photo. Aroma was lemony and crisp apples, and this followed through upon tasting. The citrus is certainly there with a nice dryness. However its body was quite thin and if i was blind tasting this i would have thought someone had given me a slightly watered down cider. Drinkable, but slightly disappointing ultimately. 

Bigger picture 

Cowbridge Food and Drink Festival 2010

So this weekend was the Cowbridge Food and Drink Festival, which tied in nicely with a stag do i was going on, my friend Rob is the lucky man.

After a morning shooting we headed straight for the festival, although a slight detour into the Horse and Groom was a big mistake, if you want lager and pretty much nothing else then thats where to go. Straight up to the Vale of Glamorgan pub which has hosted the real ale festival now for a good few years running. Standing room only, the pub was heaving, so straight out to the marquee for the beer list . I some how only managed to photo the second and third lists. Some like the Purple moose beers had already sold out and the Otley O8 and O1 soon followed by early afternoon. Other brewery's present on the first list were Moor's of Somerset, Bullmastiff from Cardiff and Newmans of Caephilly. 

The Otley Kowhai was one of the first i tried being a new one to me, very pleasant start drinks lighter than its 4.9%, nice bitterness overall , could definatly drink a pint or two of it. I had to wiki Kowhai to find out what it was named after, a common New Zealand garden tree apparently. 

Next i had a Newmans brew called 'Last lion of Britain' which was not to impressive which is a shame as some of their other beer are quite nice. Waen's 'Blackberry stout' was up next, which was strangely disappointing, the first few sips seem quite pleasant with lovely blackberry notes coming in sweetly, but after that i really started to not enjoy it, seeming a bit watery and unnecessarily harsh, i only had a half and didn't finish that, nor did one of my friends.

After a couple of other halve's i fail to recall i tried the Gwaun valley 'Bitter' which was as good as it is in a bottle thankfully, and the Breconshire brewery 'Baroque ale' was next - unfortunately i cannot remember what it was like, i think i pointed it out to someone but i'm not sure if it was a 'have that next' or a 'avoid avoid!'.

By far the best i tried, despite being surrounded by welsh breweries was from Somerset's 'Moor Beer' . Their 3.8% bitter 'Revival' was wonderfully refreshing, great hoppy flavours, singing in the mouth, citrus, and nice dryness comes through. Really good beer.

After a food stop in the chippy we headed to the Brains' Duke of Wellington to try and find a seat after hours of standing at the Vale. This pub hosts the Cider festival for the weekend and a few of the party wanted to sample these delights. 

It was strangely situated out the back in a marquee set at the back of the garden but seemed forgotten, little signs telling us where it was, the conservatory we walked through was mostly empty and would have been a far better setting for it. Seemed very under promoted, and even the cider heads with us in the end didn't make the trek back out, just going to the inside pub bar for the pump stuff.

Anyway a couple pints of a lackluster Rev. James, couple of Dark and for once a surprisingly decent SA.

 

The following day i went back to the food festival side with the wife and family, always enjoyable, loads of tasting samples and great lunches to be found. Among the exhibitors were Otley, Pen-lon, and Warcop.

I bought the xmas offering from the lovely ladies at the Otley stand who very very friendly, apparently the new coloured bottle top wrapping is to aid identification of the different beers for retailers, probably needed as often you see their beers in Spar and the like, wrongly lined up to another price ticket.

I then had a nice chat with the guy from Warcop, (website a little outdated but they reply to emails quickly) about the Great welsh beer festival and my disappointment on the day i couldn't try his beers, and bought his Honeyed Stout 4.5%, Furnace ruby ale 4.5%, and his Caspa real lager 5.4% and look forward to trying them all, reviews as and when. 

Meanwhile my utility room has far to much beer in it for my wife's liking so i'm off to move some to the shed for a bit.