Moa Marlborough

One week into a new term and I need nothing more than to go for a beer Friday after work. So it's straight off the train to the post office vaults. I try to order a kolsch by Heller but am told they are proving hard to get hold of so it has been replaced by a Moa methode pilsner all the way from New Zealand. This beer is distinctly ok, nothing special in any way and actually had quite a bitter up front taste that has no place in a pilsner.  The bottle declares two accolades, that it is the beer of Olympians, no wonder New Zealand don't win many golds they are all too pissed, and that it won a gold medal at the Asia beer awards 2011. Clearly 2011 not a marquee year for Asian beer. 

It's completely standard. 1.5 out of 5. 

Schneider Weisse Original (Tap 7)

Now I said in an earlier post that I had been drinking a lot of wheat beer recently and this is my first entry on the blog about wheat beer. Before embarking on my current beer odyssey I was a very occasional wheat beer drinker. It mostly consisted of a pint of Hoegarden if it was on tap, or maybe a glass of Blue Moon with a slice of orange (!?) in it.

I can certainly say that I have enjoyed dipping my toe into the wider variety of wheat beer available out there and it all stated here with a Schnider Weisse Original. As a beer it was light, easy drinking with a nice fruity flavour, I especially got a taste of banana coming through. Overall a very nice easy drinking beer that I could be happy sipping over a long time sat in the sun listening to some oompah music wishing I had the legs to pull off lederhosen. 3.5 out of 5.

Jever Pilsner

Recently I've been drinking a lot of German beer, and I like it. I have found a particular affinity for wheat beer. Unfortunately this isn't a wheat beer it's a pilsner. 

Now I used to primarily drink larger, I went through a phase of drinking in a rough pub in Birmingham city centre where the ale was ropey at best so I mostly drank Peroni. Pilsners and largers in general, there is probably some distinction that I don't know about between the two, are alright but they just don't light my fire. This is a perfectly fine example of a larger, it's crisp, fresh and cool. I just can't get excited about it. 2.5 out of 5. 

Paulaner Salvator

When I went to the bar to order this the barman told me the tale of this beer. Apparently it used to be brewed by monks, and they liked drinking it so much that that just got wasted on it all the time and didn't do any of their monk duties. The pope got wind of this and demanded that a sample be sent to him to judge whether this was a good use of the monks time. So they shipped a crate to him across the alps, fortunately for the monks they did it during the summer and it was hot on the journey. By the time the beer had got to the Pope it was well past its best and the Pope declared it was fit for the monks as drinking it was a more of a punishment than anything else. Whether this is true or whether the barman made it up I have no idea, I can't see anything about it on the Paulaner website.

Anyway the beer itself is a dark dobbelbock style beer and I found it to be very nice.Its quite malty and not too overpowering. All in all its certainly worth a try and a nice beer. 4 out of 5.

Aecht Schlenkerla Doppelbock

So here is a list of things that I like that taste of smoke:

Smoked bacon

Smoked mackerel

Smokey bacon flavoured crisps

Something that I have found that I certainly don't like is smoked beer. This brewery, http://www.schlenkerla.de/rauchbier/beschreibunge.html, make smoke flavoured beer. They do it by some German trickery which involves drying the malt using smoke then aging it in smoked oak barrels. The result is certainly smokey. When I first tasted it I wasn't expecting it, I was pretty drunk and my mother had been to the bar so I wasn't sure what I was getting, but the smokey flavour overwhelms everything else and is a real shock. At first I thought "this is amazing" it's different and full of an unusual flavour but still beer. By the time I was half way through I was struggling, by the time I was three quarters of the way through I felt like I was drinking from an ash tray. I'm glad I tried it, I can understand why people love it, it's just too smokey for me. 2 out of 5.

Oud Beersel Framboise

Now this beer was consumed during a weekend when I had some friends, including the elder of my two brothers, visiting to watch England crush Wales in the six nations. My brother went off to the bar and came back with a raspberry flavoured lambic beer. Now he thinks he is being funny as I have stated numerous times my distaste for fruit flavoured beer. Unfortunately for him what I don't like is sweet fruit flavoured beer, when we have a sour lambic style beer like this one the fruit flavour is quite nice and helps to take the edge off the sourness. This one slipped down quite nicely and didn't get the reaction my brother anticipated. 2.5 out of 5.

Mout & Mocca

So I haven't posted for ages, work has been getting on top of me and plus I have recently got engaged. Now being engaged mostly means that my other half does lots of stuff but I also get dragged into the wedding planning.

This all hasn't stopped my drinking and the blog lies a long way behind the actual beer count, I broke through the 100 mark this week. The plan is to try and put up one post a day looking back at the beers I have drunk.

Now this beer from the De Molen brewery, a Dutch brewery, Is a coffee flavoured imperial stout coming in at a hefty 11.6%. I enjoyed this beer in the company of my mother who was up visiting for the weekend. My mother shares a strange connection to the Post Office Vaults, she is a season ticket holder at the mighty Bath rugby club and she has made good friends with the person she sits next to. From a complete fluke the son of my mother's friend, Toby, is now a barman at the POV.

This meant that rather than meet my mother in Baccus, where she likes to wait after getting off the train, she could go to the POV and not feel too strange to be the only wine drinking woman in the place.

Anyway on a Sunday we had been to the excellent Pure Bar and Kitchen for lunch and then made our way to the POV for a few more drinks. I had quite a few, which I will detail later, and ended with this. I hated it. Firstly I don't like stouts, secondly I don't like coffee. This beer basically embodied everything I don't like. It is the first and so far only beer in the lists haven't finished. I can understand why people would like it. It's thick, syrupy, with a very strong flavour. Unfortunately it's the opposite end of the beer spectrum to my taste. 1 out of 5