The Beer You Are Drinking Right Now

[UncleEbenezer]

Aldi Karlskrone? https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/karlskron ... ier/40224/

Erm, No.

But you prompted me to look it up: https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rheinbach ... er/146802/
Also had a bottle of it this evening. Not the greatest ever, but thoroughly refreshing on a hot evening (as a Weizenbier should be), and pretty decent for the price.

[Hallucigenia]

Punk IPA. Did my weekend shopping at Sainsburys, and almost asked to see the manager to complain about the ale selection and demand, as a shareholder,.

Just avoid. The worst beer deal of any of the majors except the Coop (which I suspect varies more between stores and regions).

From memory, the half-litre bottles I buy:

Sainsburys: three bottles for a fiver, very limited selection, keeps changing.
Morrisons and Tescos: four bottles for £6, better selection. Though some nasty Gotchas, including at Morrison mislabelling that wasn't fixed when I pointed it out.
Asda: four bottles for a fiver, excellent selection, no gotchas.
Lidl & Aldi: good prices but very limited selection, not much that I'd like

Hmm. Personally I'm not so sure there's much to distinguish between Sainsburys, Morries and Asda - a lot depends on how they segment your local store. For instance, the Asda I go to most often is definitely on the bottom rung and the beer selection is pretty terrible (although they still have Guinness FES), whereas my usual Sainsburys obviously got upgraded from rung 2 to rung 3 a while back and all sorts of things I'd got used to at a previous Sainsburys suddenly appeared on the shelves, both food and drink. Their selection is very southern biased, it's heavy on Fullers, Sheps and Sharps with the likes of Bath as their token micros, but they do seem to go more for heavies than others, you see things like Old Tom and ESB there. If you look at MySupermarket : http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/Shopping ... And_Bitter most of the main supermarkets have around 150 lines in the Ale & Bitter category, but Morrisons is up at 200 - most of that is because they're heavily in bed with Marstons so have lots of subbrands to play with.

Tesco is interesting as they've just ditched a lot of samey lagers in order to put a big bet on "craft". I suspect that means they will be having a great bin-end sale in a few months, but it will be interesting to see how it goes. I'm sure all the other supermarkets are watching closely. Seems to be pretty heavy on Diageo and some of the big brands, but they have got a handful of the smaller guys too like Fourpure.

And obviously none of them come remotely close to Booths for beer.

It's interesting watching to see how this all shakes out - we've definitely reached a new era for "craft" beer, as it gets into supermarkets with all the pressures and compromises that entails. I find it interesting how differently people shop in supermarkets - in the pub the people who might be agonising over how local and micro their beer is, will go to the supermarket and go into a frenzy at the sight of 4-for-£5 deals. But it's almost impossible for the interesting breweries to compete at that level - I know one who sent off a pallet at a profit of £1 - for the pallet. So if you support the x-for-£y deals, you're encouraging beer made with cheap ingredients from macrobrewers like Marstons and Greene King - personally I'm not so sure that's a Good Thing.

[GrandOiseau]

I have a Bargain Booze down the road that does 3 for £5 and has a range as good as most supermarkets.

[GrandOiseau]

Was in the Strands at Nether Wasdale in the Lakes on Monday. It has a microbrewery attached and they had 6 beers from it on! Weird thing 4 were relatively standard, in the 3.8 to 4.4 range but two were 6%+. I tried 3 different ones including half of the 6% mild. They were all pretty good and the mild was dry and coffeeish. Excellent. Not the sort of place you are going to pass by but worth making a special trip. Great country pub, food is good. Been in the family 30 years apparently. Staff are friendly and they have rooms. Oh, and a good selection of whisky!

[DiamondEcho]

I was waxing lyrical about Weihenstephaner Vitus on April 29th in the topic 'Anyone for an Italian beer?' viewtopic.php?f=20&t=990&start=20

I just went to get a beer from the fridge. I sometimes mark the end of a work-day with something a bit special, especially if it's been a productive day. I knew I have a few treats obscured in the fridge door, including some obscurities, currently being my three remaining bottles of various Norwegian craft beers picked up on a trip there a few months back. But what a pleasant surprise to also find two, TWO, bottles of Vitus! I wonder how long they're been there in duplicate? So today's starter beer effectively selected itself.

Cheers - mmm!

[BrummieDave]

Interesting that you have some Scandinavian craft beers tucked away in the fridge DE, as last night I drank my last bottle of Mikkeller Crooked Moon Tattoo dIPA, a collaboration between the Danish brewer and the Swedish Crooked Moon tattoo studio (to celebrate the latter's first anniversary).

As a double IPA weighing in at 9% ABV, it's not to everyone's taste, but it certainly blows the cobwebs away on a Sunday evening!

[DiamondEcho]

Very interesting BD, I hadn't heard of Mikkeller but given the size of their range of offerings I'm surprised I haven't; it's in the hundreds!
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13307/
And the one you enjoyed > https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13307/92717/ sounds wonderful and rather intriguing

We visited family in Oslo at the end of last year and my cousin knows I'm into interesting beer so she had the fridge very well stocked. Good job as alcohol is excruciatingly $ up there, even from a supermarket.

In fact we travelled there via a few days in Tallinn, Estonia. That took me by surprise as I discovered it's something of a craft beer heaven.

[First trip to a big Tallinn supermarket:] 'Ok we're here 4 days, and there must be 100+ local craft beers here on the shelves that I've never heard of, where do I start!?' Nice problem to have! [those are my beer goggles hehe]

[BrummieDave]

Yes, they are very much established if not 'big' by traditional measures, and are well on their way to a thousand brews. They love to collaborate and do short runs, as well as more established favourites.

Your links show the beer I was referring to, complete with label designed by the tattoo studio owners (two brothers, two labels!), although I tend to use 'Ratebeer' as my reference tool of choice: https://www.ratebeer.com/beer/mikkeller ... pa/194686/

[DiamondEcho]

Sometimes I x-ref to Ratebeer but start with BeerAdvocate as I find the reviews usually more methodical, commenting in steps > Smell, Looks, Taste, Mouthfeel = Overall. That gives me a very good idea of what to expect across the Pour>conclusion process. Also the reviews are all in English. Perhaps you could say the audience is more US-centric though IME it's more drawn from the broad English speaking world.

[Hallucigenia]

Very interesting BD, I hadn't heard of Mikkeller but given the size of their range of offerings I'm surprised I haven't; it's in the hundreds!
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13307/
And the one you enjoyed > https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13307/92717/ sounds wonderful and rather intriguing

We visited family in Oslo at the end of last year and my cousin knows I'm into interesting beer so she had the fridge very well stocked. Good job as alcohol is excruciatingly $ up there, even from a supermarket.

In fact we travelled there via a few days in Tallinn, Estonia. That took me by surprise as I discovered it's something of a craft beer heaven.

[First trip to a big Tallinn supermarket:] 'Ok we're here 4 days, and there must be 100+ local craft beers here on the shelves that I've never heard of, where do I start!?' Nice problem to have! [those are my beer goggles hehe]

If there was a Top Gear Cool Wall for beer, then Mikkeller would be in the fridge - probably Cloudwater or Siren are the nearest equivalents here, but they're not as prolific.

You'll probably enjoy the blog of the guy who literally wrote the book on Norwegian farmhouse ales - you can tell his curiosity is piqued by the native beers of the Baltics and seems to get over there when he can eg http://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/357.html

[BrummieDave]

Interesting blog that, ta.

In terms of comparisons, I'd actually put Mikkeller alongside Brewdog more than Siren or Cloudwater, as they've really pushed the distribution network and have their own outlets/bars in several countries now but not, alas, the UK. They also love partnering, again like Brewdog did, particularly in their early days. Over in the US, I'd add Firestone Walker into this 'bigger' category too.

I'd more readily put Siren and Cloudwater alongside Northern Monk and Beavertown both in scale and approach, with a set of core beers (although Cloudwater obviously aim to be almost exclusively 'seasonal'), and almost a one to one matching of their various staples (Siren's Soundwave, Beavertown's Gamma Ray, Northern Monk's New World IPA etc. and similarly for their various session PAs like Beavertown's Neck Oil, Siren Undercurrent etc.). All good businesses actively developing really strong product lines, core products plus 'specials', excellent branding and market positioning, and a very welcome addition to the growing choice we beer drinkers can enjoy.

[Hallucigenia]

A lot of that is more to do with the stage of development though, isn't it? Both Brewdog and Mikkeller have been around for over a decade, Cloudwater is barely two years old. I was really just thinking of the "cool" factor, which it feels like Mikkeller have retained but which Brewdog have lost a bit. I guess a lot of that is to do with routes to market, Brewdog has chased volume through the supermarkets and can be found everywhere from Thurso to Surbiton, but even 20-odd bars means that Mikkeller still retains a bit of mystique.

In fact, despite their "stick it to the Man" schtick, Brewdog look rather like a multinational-owned craft brand like Goose Island - a ubiquitous IPA, some well-thought of barrel-aged stuff, concentrating more on hops than too many weird adjuncts.

[JMN2]

I think I had Mikkeller first and last time 2010 at and after GBBF from where I bought a few single hop bottles. Their beers were excellent but I haven't seen them anywhere since. The bottles I had were probably their first single hop series and the best of the lot was East Kent Goldings. I still remember that one beer especially, it was crisp and balanced, a real gem...and now I'm thirsty and it's still two days till Friday.

Not big fan of Cloudwater, always murky or lacking bitterness in favour of these modern popular exotic tropical flavours.

[Hallucigenia]

Oh, Cloudwater do bitter - some of their early IPAs were horrendously so - but if you only know them through their DIPAs then it's not surprising that you think they do fruity and cloudy, 'cos that's what DIPAs are like. Some of their lagers are cracking, and are not cloudy or fruity at all - but then they haven't got the buzz about them that the DIPAs have. But it does seem to be a trend, particularly in the US for the industry to be moving from bitterness towards fruit. Partly because the US breweries got caught up in this daft IBU arms race beyond what humans could taste, and then realised that it's not what people particularly want to drink.

[JMN2]

...but if you only know them through their DIPAs then it's not surprising that you think they do fruity and cloudy, 'cos that's what DIPAs are like.....

DIPAs traditionally in the US are robustly malty with resiny pine and firm hoppyness, with hops like Chinook and not like Mosaic and any Kiwi varieties.

[JMN2]

I think a good current example of a DIPA is Great Heck's Yakima IPA at 7.4% ie a tad below "official" DIPA threshold of 7.5%. Firm robust malty body with lots of pine resin and hops.

[BrummieDave]

Well, even taking the point about Brewdog and the extent of its universe, Jack Hammer is a very pleasant (almost) dIPA, weighing in at 7.2% and combining the trends for both hops (200+ IBUs) and fruitiness (just the right amount IMHO).

People who disregard Brewdog due its scale could be missing out on some truly decent beers.

[JMN2]

Well, even taking the point about Brewdog and the extent of its universe, Jack Hammer is a very pleasant (almost) dIPA, weighing in at 7.2% and combining the trends for both hops (200+ IBUs) and fruitiness (just the right amount IMHO).

People who disregard Brewdog due its scale could be missing out on some truly decent beers.

I did like the original recipe of Punk a lot, and even after they changed the beer it is still fruity and crispy and a decent beer after a jog or exercise. But it does lack the bitterness which I want and Goose Island IPA does provide that.

[JMN2]

Anyhoo, I am having some beers today, Citra, Inferno, Ghostship, UBU Purity, etcthe best that Morrisons can provide, 2x 2x4 deal ie £12. Lovely jubbly!

[GrandOiseau]

People who disregard Brewdog due its scale could be missing out on some truly decent beers.

I disregard them because they are all mouth and trousers. The beers just aren't that good.