Meantime London Pale Ale [baron rating /5] - 4.3% gold ale,marmalade smell, tangy fruity bittersweet taste,slightly tart lasting finish
Thank you to Paul from AlesByMail for sending this through for a 'baron rating'!
Buy Meantime ales here
Meantime London Pale Ale
Thank you to Paul from AlesByMail for sending this through for a 'baron rating'!
Buy Meantime ales here
Goodbye Thornbridge's Kelly Ryan
Goodbye Kelly Ryan
Thornbridge Head Brewer
Sometime previous til November 2010
You are an inspiration to the UK brewing scene,
you brought Nelson Sauvin to our shores,
and now you are buggering off...
...that gets a [baron rating 0/5]
Goodbye and all the best mate!
Thornbridge Head Brewer
Sometime previous til November 2010
You are an inspiration to the UK brewing scene,
you brought Nelson Sauvin to our shores,
and now you are buggering off...
...that gets a [baron rating 0/5]
Goodbye and all the best mate!
Willoughby Trust Gold
Willoughby Trust Gold [baron rating /5] - 3.8% pale gold ale,zesty citrus smell,light sulphurous grapefruit taste,dry sulphurous finish
Tesco Finest Traditional Porter
Tesco Finest Traditional Porter [baron rating /5] - 6% black ale,roasted fruit smell,smooth sweet roasted taste,long roasted bitter finish
Note: This is basically Harviestoun Old Engine Oil [baron rating /5] with a Tesco Finest label on it.
Moorhouse's Blond Witch
Moorhouse's Blond Witch [baron rating /5] - 4.5% golden ale,slight floral aroma,light sweet floral hoppy taste,dry slightly sweet finish
Marble Vuur & Vlam
Marble Vuur & Vlam [baron rating /5] - 7.2% copper ale,tropical piney smell,sweet resiny citrus taste,sweet hoppy bittersweet finish
Buy Marble ales here
Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter
Adnams Broadside
Adnams Broadside [baron rating /5] - 6.3% ruby ale,boozy fruity smell,smooth full bodied roasted dried fruit taste,burnt raisin finish
Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it.Download flash to hear the audio review
Subscribe in iTunes
Buy Adnams ales here
Tesco Finest American Double IPA - 3 for £4 in Tesco (3rd - 30th Nov 2010)
Tesco has 330ml bottles of Tesco Finest American Double IPA [baron rating 5/5] on offer: 3 for £4 until 30th Nov.It's BrewDog Hardcore IPA!
Tesco Finest American Double IPA
Tesco Finest American Double IPA [baron rating /5] - 9.2% amber ale,piney tropical smell,boozy sweet spicy/pine taste,extreme bitter finish
Note: This is basically BrewDog Hardcore IPA [baron rating coming soon] with a Tesco Finest label on it.
Great Marble beers selection in Ormskirk's Source Deli
Popped into Source Deli in Ormskirk today to collect the Marble ales that Paul had put to one side for me from his recent order with Marble Brewery. This is what I picked up:
Marble Brewery
Other exciting news: Marble are now (finally) on Twitter, follow @MarbleBrewers for the latest news!
Marble Brewery
- Chocolate Marble - 5.5% stout(ish) and rich
- Dobber [baron rating 5/5] - 5.9% big heady IPA
- Vuur & Vlam - 7.2% American-style IPA
Other exciting news: Marble are now (finally) on Twitter, follow @MarbleBrewers for the latest news!
Itchen Valley Wat Tyler
Itchen Valley Wat Tyler [baron rating /5] - 5% dark amber ale,toffee smell,slightly floral juicy malt taste,malty bitter finish
Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it.
Download flash to hear the audio review
Subscribe in iTunes
Thank you to Paul from AlesByMail for sending this through for a 'baron rating'!
Buy Itchen Valley ales here
Judging the SIBA North Beer Competition 2010
A couple of month's ago I found out that not only was there going to be a Northern Beer Festival but also they were looking for judges to assist in the SIBA North Region Beer Competition 2010. After a few tweets and emails I had confirmation from SIBA that The Ormskirk Baron was indeed going to be a judge at the event.
I've been 'baron rating' ales now for a bit over a year and never judged a beer competition so I was really looking forward to seeing how it all worked.
The day was last Thursday (28th October) and Chris (also picked as a judge) & myself got the train from Aughton Park to Manchester Oxford Road (via Liverpool). The judging and following beer festival was in the Grand Hall, a massive room down in the bowels of the building. Tandleman & numerous other beer volunteers had been extremely busy over the previous days assembling the largest row of handpulls that I've ever seen.
First of all we collected our official name badges and I was pretty chuffed,see you yourself:
On the badge were the table numbers you were to sit at for the three normal rounds of judging, my preference was for bottled ales (as that is the focus of this blog) and they respected that pretty well - I was judging bottled beers for all three rounds!
After that there was around thirty minutes to 'mingle', which basically means find the people that you already know and don't move from that spot! Luckily we found Richard from myBrewerytap, Glyn from Utobeer, Rob from HopZine & Jeff Pickthall so the time past pretty quickly.
There were around thirty tables in the hall, seating about six people per table (although not all tables were full for each round). We were told how to judge & score the beers and that unlike wine tasting it was pretty important that we swallowed the beer rather than spit it out in order to assess the aftertaste.
Appearance was scored out of ten (with clarity a very important part), aroma was also out of ten. Taste was out of twenty and the aftertaste was out of ten. An interesting additional score was require for saleability (which was also scored out of ten) - this ended up being one of the hardest scores to give, how saleable is a 10% hop monster?
My first round was for "Bottled Bitter (up to 4.9%)" and I judged it along with Paul from AlesByMail. We were later joined by Matt Lambert from Label Apeel who due to travel issues had a lot of catching up to do! We judged nine beers in just under an hour - it was a lot more fast paced than I thought it was going to be.
The bottled beers had been decanted into a jug first which just had a number, that number along with the scores were written down on the judging sheet and then totalled up at the bottom to give an overall score for the beer.
Next up was "Bottled Bottled Porters, Milds, Old Ales & Stouts" - we had an hour to judge eleven different black beers - there are only so many scores to can give for a jet black ale with a mocha head!
The final round was "Bottled Gold Beers" which was a little slower paced, we had six different ones to try and they were a little more varied than some of the other rounds.
Once us 'normal' judges had finished a select panel of experts disappeared off into a separate room to do the final judging of the competition and pick the overall winners. Whilst they were sampling the rest of the room was being packed up and turned into the Great Northern Beer Festival 2010.
The festival was open to the public at 4pm, luckily we finished judging the final round about 3pm so we had the pick of the beers to ourselves. From this moment the day starts to become a bit of a blur but I remember speaking to Matt & Katie from the excellent Hawkshead brewery, two top guys from Bushy's brewery - the 'ale of man'. There was also much banter with plenty of chaps from the Twitter beer circle as well as talking to some of the award winners mainly the Ossett brewery team & the Ilkley brewery guys.
I had a thoroughly excellent day, really enjoyed the whole judging process and would jump at the chance to do it again - thank you SIBA for allowing me to be part of an excellent competition and beer festival!
SIBA has a full list of the award winners on their site, as well as a load of great photos from the day.
Thanks also go to SIBA who kindly allowed me to use their images in this blog post.
I've been 'baron rating' ales now for a bit over a year and never judged a beer competition so I was really looking forward to seeing how it all worked.
The day was last Thursday (28th October) and Chris (also picked as a judge) & myself got the train from Aughton Park to Manchester Oxford Road (via Liverpool). The judging and following beer festival was in the Grand Hall, a massive room down in the bowels of the building. Tandleman & numerous other beer volunteers had been extremely busy over the previous days assembling the largest row of handpulls that I've ever seen.First of all we collected our official name badges and I was pretty chuffed,see you yourself:
On the badge were the table numbers you were to sit at for the three normal rounds of judging, my preference was for bottled ales (as that is the focus of this blog) and they respected that pretty well - I was judging bottled beers for all three rounds!
After that there was around thirty minutes to 'mingle', which basically means find the people that you already know and don't move from that spot! Luckily we found Richard from myBrewerytap, Glyn from Utobeer, Rob from HopZine & Jeff Pickthall so the time past pretty quickly.
There were around thirty tables in the hall, seating about six people per table (although not all tables were full for each round). We were told how to judge & score the beers and that unlike wine tasting it was pretty important that we swallowed the beer rather than spit it out in order to assess the aftertaste.Appearance was scored out of ten (with clarity a very important part), aroma was also out of ten. Taste was out of twenty and the aftertaste was out of ten. An interesting additional score was require for saleability (which was also scored out of ten) - this ended up being one of the hardest scores to give, how saleable is a 10% hop monster?
My first round was for "Bottled Bitter (up to 4.9%)" and I judged it along with Paul from AlesByMail. We were later joined by Matt Lambert from Label Apeel who due to travel issues had a lot of catching up to do! We judged nine beers in just under an hour - it was a lot more fast paced than I thought it was going to be.The bottled beers had been decanted into a jug first which just had a number, that number along with the scores were written down on the judging sheet and then totalled up at the bottom to give an overall score for the beer.
Next up was "Bottled Bottled Porters, Milds, Old Ales & Stouts" - we had an hour to judge eleven different black beers - there are only so many scores to can give for a jet black ale with a mocha head!
The final round was "Bottled Gold Beers" which was a little slower paced, we had six different ones to try and they were a little more varied than some of the other rounds.
Once us 'normal' judges had finished a select panel of experts disappeared off into a separate room to do the final judging of the competition and pick the overall winners. Whilst they were sampling the rest of the room was being packed up and turned into the Great Northern Beer Festival 2010.
The festival was open to the public at 4pm, luckily we finished judging the final round about 3pm so we had the pick of the beers to ourselves. From this moment the day starts to become a bit of a blur but I remember speaking to Matt & Katie from the excellent Hawkshead brewery, two top guys from Bushy's brewery - the 'ale of man'. There was also much banter with plenty of chaps from the Twitter beer circle as well as talking to some of the award winners mainly the Ossett brewery team & the Ilkley brewery guys.I had a thoroughly excellent day, really enjoyed the whole judging process and would jump at the chance to do it again - thank you SIBA for allowing me to be part of an excellent competition and beer festival!
SIBA has a full list of the award winners on their site, as well as a load of great photos from the day.
Thanks also go to SIBA who kindly allowed me to use their images in this blog post.
Meantime Chocolate
Meantime Chocolate [baron rating /5] - 6.5% dark ruby ale,sweet dark choc smell,refreshing bittersweet choc taste,bittersweet choc finish
Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it.
Download flash to hear the audio review
Subscribe in iTunes
Thank you to Paul from AlesByMail for sending this through for a 'baron rating'!
This was also part of the autumn pack of the superb '52 week beer club' by myBrewerytap.
Buy Meantime ales here and here
Beams British Ales pack for £3.99 in B&M Bargains
Was doing my weekly browse of the Ormskirk B&M Bargains today, looking for any cheap un-'baron rated' ales to pick up to add to my ever growing beer box. Found an interesting looking mixed pack called "British Ales" from Beams International:
It was priced at £3.99 and contains four 275ml bottles of:
An interesting selection of low ABV ales from real breweries, not the usual nameless rubbish that normally fills these types of Christmas gift packs.
For £4 I thought it was reasonable value as a basic ale gift pack (not sure if they are any good though) - I found the same pack on the Boots website selling for a quite unreasonable £8!
It was priced at £3.99 and contains four 275ml bottles of:
- Cotswold Farm Ale - 3% ale
- Felinfoel Double Dragon - 4.2% full drinking premium Welsh ale
- Ridgeway TVA - 3.4% Thames Valley Ale
- Young's Light Ale - 3.2% light refreshing bitter
An interesting selection of low ABV ales from real breweries, not the usual nameless rubbish that normally fills these types of Christmas gift packs.
For £4 I thought it was reasonable value as a basic ale gift pack (not sure if they are any good though) - I found the same pack on the Boots website selling for a quite unreasonable £8!
St Austell Korev
St Austell Korev [baron rating /5] - 4.8% gold lager,straw savoury smell,balanced slightly sweet taste,long dry bitter finish
Listen to what Chris and the Baron have to say about it.
Download flash to hear the audio review
Subscribe in iTunes
Thank you to StAustellBrew from St Austell for sending this through for a 'baron rating'!
Buy St Austell ales here
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