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This latest installation of the 12 stouts of Christmas has been on my list for a while. Self-described as a dessert in a glass, compared to a Crème brûlée, Vanilla Milk Stout has been infused with vanilla pods and claims to be rich and satisfying.

Vanilla Milk Stout (4.5%) is packaged in a 500mL bottle.  It opens with a very loud fizz, and pours black with a billowing moussey brown head, which very slowly subsides.

Aromas are vanilla, roasted malts, a whiff of alcohol and a hint of coffee.  The mouthfeel is medium, with a hint of a carbonated bite, and the flavour is very interesting… the vanilla is blended very well with the sweet lactose and toasted notes from the dark malt.  It leaves a very desserty-type flavour, the label is right in comparing it to a Crème brûlée.  As with the style there is very little in way of hops.  The aftertaste is mildly boozy, a little creamy and milky, the vanilla doesn’t stick around but the roasted coffee notes do.  The creaminess stays on the tongue long after the drink is swallowed, inviting you to take another mouthful.

I wonder if you could drink a few pints of this.  It’s pretty sweet, I think maybe one or two would do it for me, but who knows.  I only have this one bottle so I will just have to try it when I see it…

Overall this is a very pleasant drop, it could go very well with vanilla ice cream, and definitely an upward tick from the last beer of the range I reviewed

Rating: 4/5 (a lovely dessert beer).

I picked up this bottle from the Archer Road Beer Stop after reading about some Twitter-based shenanigans surrounding this beer and also Barl Fires blog.  BF has done a much better job of describing the background for this ale so I’ll let you go and read that excellent review.  Done?  Good.

White Stout (7.2%) comes packaged in a standard 500mL bottle and opens with a loud, long hiss.  It pours light amber with a very big, billowy white head (almost homebrewish!).  This only recedes very slowly.  The ale externally appears very heavily carbonated, almost as heavily as a lemonade…

The aroma is very interesting.  Theres a biscuity grainy aroma, a suggestion of fruity resinous hops, orange peel and grapefruit.

Taking a sip, there isn’t as much carbonic character as I’d expected from the external fizziness.

The mouthfeel is medium, I’d say.  There is a pronounced bitterness, it’s resinous and works its way into the nooks and crannies of your tongue, staying there a long time.

Theres a very solid biscuity sweet malt backbone to this, and it almost tastes like theres some chocolate malt in here (when there clearly can’t be!).  It’s a very interesting malt profile, it doesn’t seem to match the colour of the beer, there are roasty and toasted notes, some sweetness that wouldn’t be out of place with a crystal-laden bitter, which is a pleasant surprise.

Taking a bigger slug of this beer I get much more hop flavour.  it’s a continuation of the aromas: orange zest, grapefruit, and I’d be inclined to agree with the Barl Fire review, there’s some fruit-salad/melon in there as well.  It’s very tasty and the bitterness at the end builds up very nicely, lingering around and making you want to quench it again.

This beer is almost like an IPA, but it’s definitely maltier than the average IPA you’d get in a pub.  The hop combination reminds me of something from Blue Bee, similar to Tangled Up IPA (which has ruined me on more than one occasion!).  The alcohol definitely makes itself known as you work your way down the bottle, there’s no deceptive hiding of it as with some other styles.

One thing I can say about this beer, it’s certainly stout in the traditional sense.  It tastes like a powerful, strong ale.  It makes an interesting change and I’m always eager to see new (old) styles emerge.  It’d be interesting to see another take on the style to compare against this one.

Rating: 4/5 (almost a bit full on, but it is a very tasty drop indeed)

This beer also came from MyBreweryTap. What lovely people they are. This is Sierra Nevada’s take on a hefe, one of my favourite types of glugging beer. So I am looking forward to this one.

Kellerweis (4.8%) opens with a loud hiss and pours pale straw with a billowing moussey head that very slowly recedes. Aromas of banana and typical hefe-type yeasty notes.

The mouthfeel is medium and has a carbonic bite that yields to a very pleasant wheaty/banana/clove flavour, this tapers down to a mildly bitter finish.

Hefeweisens are eminently drinkable and I have had more than a few, what they risk is all tasting the same – this one is a nice example of the genre but it is “basically a hefe”. Very easy to drink, smooth, velvety and sweet on the tongue, and suddenly you’ve had a gallon of it.

I could probably even take a stab at the ingredients: Pilsner malt, wheat malt, mounthood hops and WLP300 yeast. Someone tell me if I’m right!

There’s nothing to make it stand up head and shoulders above it’s peers (in fact, most of its peers are stood at the same level!), but when all’s said and done I love a hefe and this one is a nice example of the style.

Not one for the trainspotting beer geek, but I could demolish a stack of these at a BBQ no problem.

Rating: 4/5 (one extra point for its massive drinkability… is that allowed? Yes.)

While beer shopping for a friend over in France (I’ll make a post about that once the cat is out of the bag!) one of the places I visited is the trusty Dram Shop in Commonside.  They have Thornbridge Bracia on the shelf almost every time I visit, and each time I resist it – it’s a bit pricey for me.  After a day of beer shopping however, it finally ground me and my wallet down to submission.

Thornbridge are a exciting local brewery, and I’ve reviewed their beer before.  Love them or hate them, you cannot knock the quality of the beer they consistently produce, they are all very well thought out and great examples of their styles.  Think of some of the recent beers coming from there:  Raven, Chiron, Sequoia; all delicious and always with the legendary Jaipur to fall back on.

Bracia is brewed four times a year at the iconic Thornbridge Hall, and is infused with chestnut honey sourced by their head brewer.  The back of the label is a phone book of hops and grains:  Maris Otter, Brown, Munich, Dark Crystal, Black, Chocolate, peated and roasted barley, Target, Pioneer, Hallertau Northern Brewer and Sorachi Ace.  Impressive!

Bracia (10%) comes packaged in an elegant 500mL bottle (the style Thornbridge reserve for their special brews, such as Evenlode and Coalition Old Ale), and opens with an assertive fizz.  Sniffing the bottle before pouring, I am finding it hard to describe the aroma.

It pours thick and treacly, very dark brown/black, with a head that almost settles like a nitrogen-infused Guinness.  The head becomes resilient and compact, and is dark tan.

The aroma is massively complex, and probably beyond my current ability to describe properly:  peaty, cereal/biscuity hazelnuts, a mild whiff of TCP, liquorice, and a sweetness I am finding it very hard to describe.

The mouthfeel matches the pour, very thick and syrupy, and the flavour is as complex as the aroma.  There’s a strong backbone of booze, roasted malts, black chocolate and peaty flavours.  Having never sampled chestnut honey I am finding it hard to pick out as an individual flavour, there is so much going on here.  Somewhere in there is also a creamy sweetness which rounds out the power of the other flavours.  More than most ales, the alcohol is very present and really warms the back of the throat.  The aftertaste is mainly roasted malts, toasted hazelnuts, and alcoholic warmth, maybe a glimpse of peaty/TCP flavours right at the edges.

There are parallels to be drawn with the Bristol Beer Factory Ultimate Stout in here, actually.  In terms of malt profile they are quite similar.  Bracia however has kicked it up another notch and added in a few more flavours, making it almost robust-porterish.  I’m going looking for hops and I’m having trouble picking them out.  I guess the malt loading here is so high that they are mainly there to balance out the sweetness, and there is still some sweetness present.

I wonder if I am mistaking Italian chestnut for hazelnut? I guess without finding some I just wint know.

I will also fail to answer a question commonly asked about this beer. Is it worth the money? It’s a tricky one. As An almost OCD collector of strong, put-away beers. If you view them like wine, It’s not so bad. I would certainly cellar one of these and open it to share with a good friend… with complexity like this I wonder how it will age. Maybe when I have some spare cash I will find out

Rating: 4/5 (Complex, bold, unique, but not for everyone, I fear…)

As I continue to slowly but surely demolish the 12 stouts of “Christmas”, I now come to the “Ultimate Stout”.  I believe this one is the base stout for some of their funkier brews, so it’ll be nice to see what the beginning is meant to be like.  The label has words like strong, black, unctuous and delicious on it.  It’s like Greg from Masterchef.  Oh hold on, he’s not black.  But anyway.  The beer says it’s made from a Belgian yeast strain and roasted malts… interesting.  No food to pair this with but at 7.7% ABV it’s a meal by itself.

Ultimate Stout (7.7%) comes packaged in a 500mL bottle and opens with an assertive hiss.  It pours very dark brown with a compact tan head, reminiscent of a Belgian dubbel, the bubbles are fine and moussey.  These slowly fade with no lacing to produce a patchy covering.

Aroma wise we get notes of rich dark chocolate, with booze-soaked christmas fruit. If Green & Black’s did a Christmas pudding…

Taking a taste, the mouthfeel is deceptive – I was expecting a lot of body but it’s medium/thin with a carbonic bite to it (that quickly fades).  I wonder if that’s a property of the yeast, or maybe they’ve used candi sugar.  The flavouring is very intense, I expected but didn’t get any kind of dry, sharp roast barley type flavour but did get a more rounded, boozy, black chocolate flavour.

I’d compare this with a boozy Belgian digestif type beer.  I think it would be formidible after some chocolate ice cream.  In fact, I might even go and make some with it in future… that’s one for the notebook.  The intense black chocolate flavour is comparable to a very high % cacao chocolate sauce.  The finish is alcoholic and slippery, but still quite pleasant, drying out on the tongue to maybe reveal hints of that elusive roast barley.  It’s hidden somewhere in there I think.  I also think the 500mL packaging may be a bit full on – I’m about 2 thirds through the bottle and I am quite sated.  This is coming from a guy who enjoys pints of DarkStar Imperial Stout at Glastonwick every year!

Rating: 4/5 (I’m going to give this one a bit of a break and round it up half a mark.  These guys clearly know their way around a stout and this is nice, but I think there’s a bit too much in a 500mL bottle.  Also: TODO: make some ice cream with it!)

So my Janopause is over, and I can drink beer again. Awesome. Although the diet is going so well, I think I will dial back the beer for a while. Still, today marks the end of my dry spell so I’m having a couple to celebrate.

Today I’m trying a couple, the first of which is Thwaites Old Dan. This was recommended to me by a friend. There’s a lot on the bottle about it being bottle conditioned, though I’m not sure what the fuss is about – there are lots of bottled conditioned beers out there. Still, it’s the right thing to do so I’ll let it slide.

They’ve helpfully listed the ingredients, which are: Maris Otter, Pearl and Crystal malts, Fuggles & WGV hops, and Thwaites yeast. It’s a strong one and promises fruit-cake flavours and it will mature well with age. My kind of beer!

I’m presuming that “Old Dan” is a dig/endearment at Daniel Thwaites, but I see no evidence on the bottle to support this… anyway, on with the good bit.

Thwaites Old Dan (7.4%) comes packaged in a 300ml brown bottle, opens with a moderate hiss and pours chestnut with a quickly-receding off-white head. The bubbles are quite large and visually, the beer looks fairly bubbly with sub-mm sized bubbles clinging to the side of the glass with a slow but steady stream of them flowing upwards.

On the nose we get a dry fruity aroma, with whiffs of boozy alcohol and a touch of toffee.

Taking a sip, the body is full and rich. The flavours are very powerful: rich dark fruit, raisins, burnt toffee and a touch of chocolate. The boozy alcohol is like a chocolate liqueur, hot and clinging to the edges of your tongue.

Theres little hop flavour to pick out but it is definitely there, having just made a beer with WGV I can pick that flavour out, perhaps the characteristic earthy fuggle is buried in with the fruit.

As the beer warms you get a little of the WGV on the nose as well, and unless I’m kidding myself, maybe a snatch of the minty fuggles aroma. I’m probably living a lie.

The boozy flavour is less evident as the beer warms, consequently the burnt toffee dominates, but I agree with the recommendation that it should be served cool, the flavours mingle very well that way.

Rating: 4/5 (overall a very nice beer. I will be saving some of these to mature and see what the future holds).

I picked up a bottle in The Rutland Arms in town, they also stock it in Waitrose.

Another mini review.  Picked this bottle up from Waitrose, a festive porter.

Lovely silky mouthfeel, roast coffee and definite chocolate malt combine to make a very satisfying beer.

A good mix of hops (Challenger, First Gold) round off the drink nicely and leave a well balanced flavour.  It’s finished off with a toasty aftertaste.

Perfect for Christmas night!

Mini-Rating: 4/5 (more please)

This little guy has been sat in the back of my fridge for a while, and rather than crack into my newer ones I thought I’d dust it off.  It came from the MBT 52WBC, and the label says it is “Inspired by the Red Planet, has a warm red glow and a smooth malty flavour”.  They brewed it for the Beagle 2 launch (cool!) and contains Dark Crystal and Progress hops with a hint of roast barley.

Mars Magic (4.6%) opens with a gentle hiss and pours ruby with a dense off-white head.  There’s an interesting toffee-apple aroma, I should have had this on bonfire night!  Fruity and caramelly.  Taking a sip, theres a very slick silky mouthfeel and a real toffee explosion – dried fruit, caramel, theres little hops on the flavour, but plenty in the aftertaste.  The aftertaste lingers a while, its astringent and broad – a pleasant counterbalance.

Letting it warm, the aroma becomes more roasted, and it carries through to the flavour.  Not so sweet now, more balance to it, there is a very interesting candied quality to the toffee, I guess that must be the dark crystal and roast barley mixing together.  Very nice.

This like many is a much tastier beer when let to warm up a little.  Very nice!

Rating: 4/5 (when warmed up, it would only be a 3 from the fridge despite its lovely aroma!)

So I was on the hunt for one of these after fellow imbiber Barl Fire recommended it in his list of top 5 UK IPAs.  I then got home and was putting some beers in my fridge, and lo and behold!  There was one in my MyBreweryTap 52W beer club.  Ace!

Acorn Conquest claims to be a well-hopped traditional IPA and promises citrus and a bitter finish.  I’m a fan of Acorn, their Gorlovka has had me on my arse a couple of times Let’s see what we have.

Conquest (5.7%) opens with an assertive loud fizz and pours light copper with a meringuey white head that slowly recedes, coating the sides of the glass as it goes.  A promise of hop oils to come?

The aroma is spicy and syrupy, almost candied oranges.  It’s not sharp, but it’s a broad aroma.  I did expect more of a hit but it’s very pleasant.  The mouthfeel is medium.  The flavour is where this ale kicks in, it’s very big!  There’s a definite citrus flavour front and centre, oranges.  It’s a very smooth drink but the bitterness builds in layers on your palate, delicious and clever.  It’s not all bitterness though, in the background theres a rounded sweetness that I wasn’t quite expecting, it’s a welcome counterbalance to the bitterness.  Taking a break, the bitterness recedes pretty quickly and you’re left with the familiar astringent tongue feeling that you get when it’s had it’s fill of hops.

Warmed a little, the aroma takes more of a caramelised aspect, still candied oranges.  The flavour really opens up, it’s delicious.  Theres a new, solid malt backbone to this beer that I never noticed.  Theres almost a syrupy feel to it and it perfectly balances with the hops.  You can’t tell it’s 5.7%, another dangerous beer!  The flavour is formidable, and very different from the comparative whelp it was when cool.  Drink this beer at 12 degrees C!

Rating: 4/5 (this beer is lovely, and I expect is exceptional on cask.)