Enjoy the dark.

It's getting colder (well, at least it's supposed to be) and darker. Now's the time to start thinking about matching your choice of beer to the weather.

Dark beer should be served at cellar temperature (12-14 degrees), but most places these days simply don't have the space to cater for lovers of cold and "warm" beer, so more often than not it sits in the fridge with the rest of the other beers. Just let it sit for 5 minutes to let it get up to room temperature - or simply tell the barstaff to take it out of the fridge while you get on with drinking another beer. It really does make a huge difference. The aromas become multi dimensional, the flavour profile develops many layers, and the finished product is much improved. In my beer tasting that I do at Kook (http://www.kook.fi/) , we taste two types of dark beer. One is served on ice, the other isn't. It's amazing how different the two beers taste. The clever part is, that they are both the same beer. Many don't believe it.

We've got a dark beer award winner at Drink. Huvila X-Porter won gold medals at the Helsinki beer festival and San Diego beer festival (this is why it's called "X Porter - it's exported to the states also) in 2010 and won best overall dark beer in Finland at this years Finnish beer festival.

Huvila X-Porter (http://www.ratebeer.com/ rating 94) is in a 500ml bottle and comes in at 7%. It's made by the Malmgard brewery which is located about an hours drive from Helsinki. It's available in both Drink Bar and Shop, aswell as Kodu, Porgu, Stockmann and Kaubamaja.

It's a traditional style Baltic porter - pretty high abv, lots of dark roasted malt giving an almost black colour with a tan head, and coffee/burnt aroma.

It pours Cola black, with quite a high amount of carbonisation. This gives the finished glass that classic porter look - rich dark topped with a creamy off white head. The aromas given off are the usual coffee, burnt toast, roasted malt notes, but there is also some toffee and licorice (it's Finnish afterall!) and a hint of nuts.

The taste is similar to the aromas - pleasingly there isn't so much sweetness, and the palate is dominated by dark caramel sugars, roasted coffee malts and a dry bitterness in the finish. It comes in at 50 IBUs. Mouthfeel as you can see by the picture is excellent - the creamy head lasts down the glass.

All in all a worthy winner of it's awards.

We don't sell Guinness in our bar - simply because we sell beer like this. If a customer comes in and asks for Guinness, then the girls won't say "ei ole" as many other barstaff in different locations in Estonia are programmed to do, they'll inform the customer that we have other dark beers and porters available. It's always pleasing to see a seasoned Guinness drinker try a real version of "their beer". The look on their face is as if they have just seen the light.

Or should that be the dark?

There is no Santa - but there is good beer.

This is a limited edition from Brewdog, and in typical style, it's got a bit of attitude on the label. It's the label that is probably going to make this beer appeal to a broad range of people, and it's one of the reasons I brought it to Estonia. It's only made in small batches, and I was very lucky to get the last 35 cases. Stockmann immediately ordered 10, Moku in Tartu wanted 8, Drink Bar and shop naturally got some, which left 15 cases. Porgu, F-Hoone and Moonshine heard about and ordered some, and to my suprise - Molly Malones wanted some. They sold out on the first night.

But what does it taste like? It sounds promising on the label - telling us that its got ginger and cocoa tips in the brews. What interested me was that it was 65 IBUs - almost the same as Punk. Christmas beers normally omit the hops, and make do with the bitterness of chocolate malts instead.

Its http://www.ratebeer.com/ rating is 59, which is actually one of the lower scores for Brewdog. You've got to remember though, that not everyone likes Christmas beers. 33cl, 4.7% abv.

When you open the bottle, it's not the hops that jumps out of the bottle, but the spice. It's like opening a packet of gingerbread. It's there in the pour too, a rich dark colour with a caramel head. The smell of ginger and other spices - cinnamon, cloves, vanilla come to the top of the beer and rest in the head. I couldn't smell much chocolate though.

It tastes just like it smells. It's almost like drinking liquid gingerbread, and while that might not be to everyones taste, I think most people come around to the taste of ginger and cinnamon at this time of the year - so it's ok for a Christmas beer to taste like this. In fact - it's nice. It makes you feel Chrismassy.

The body is ok, and whilst the head doesn't last as long as their other beers, it still has a nice mouthfeel due to all the different warm flavours that are going on inside the glass. 4.7% alcohol is just right, as you don't get any strong alcohol flavours getting in the way of the main event.

I finished this and didn't feel like I couldn't have another one because it was too sickly (like some other Christmas beers out there) and could have easily had a few more - especially with some food. I can imagine that this would go fantastically well with some traditional English Christmas cake, or something baked and fruity. Or just on its own after being outside in the cold all day. It's a real winter warmer without the side effect of getting too drunk.

I think I'll offer this at the end of the Christmas dinner on the 25th  with the Christmas pudding- by which time I'll be wishing the message on the label was true - due to Lego/Bob the Builder/Peppa Pig overload.

Get some now in all of the places mentioned before it runs out!

Christmas beers

We've got two new Christmas beers available both in the bar and shop. "There is no Santa" from Brewdog, and "Hyva Tuomas" from Huvila.

Most people tend to think that Christmas beers are very high in alcohol, and whilst this is true in some cases (most seem to be around the 6-7% abv mark), some Christmas beers are produced at lower (normal?) alcohol levels to allow the drinker to sample them without the chance of waking up the next day to find out that it's boxing day and you slept through Christmas day.  This is the case for both the beers mentioned here - Brewdog is 4.7% and Huvila is 4.1%.

It's the Huvila I'll review now.

(http://www.ratebeer.com/ rating 46). 50cl bottle. 4.1% abv. Only available at Drink bar and Drink Shop.

Pours a dark rich red, with a lovely creamy head. Aroma is of malt, a small amount of hops, and no spice - which is suprising for a Christmas beer.

The taste is good with, with a nutty flavour - similar to Huvila ESB. The lack of hops in the aroma made me think that this beer wouldn't be dry, but it is - quite pleasingly so. Especially on the finish. Some burnt toffee flavours throughout the taste.  The mouthfeel is not as big as I expected from the pour.

I'm not sure what to make of this beer. On it's own, I'd say it's a pretty decent bitter. But with the Christmas tag, I'd say that it's a little bit lost. The head brewer told me that they've brewed it at 4.1% to make it different from all the other heavy, high alcohol Christmas beers that are out there. I was expecting something that was heavily spiced, but easy to drink. This is easy to drink - but I think that customers buying a Christmas beer are going to want something a bit different from just an every day bitter. Don't get me wrong - it's a nice beer, and will go great with food - due to the fact that it's not heavily spiced. I think that this will be the beer that people turn to after they've had one or two spiced porters. And at 4.1% it's certainly a session beer.

My opinion - forget the santa hat on the label and drink this as if it were just another good beer from Huvila.

There is no Santa coming up next...

Another AmeriCAN beer

Here's another can of beer I got from Stockholm ;  Dale's Pale Ale.

Dale's Pale Ale (http://www.ratebeer.com/  rating 98) is brewed by the Oskar Blues grill and brew company. It's from Lyons in Colorado. It's in a 330ml can and is 6.5% abv.  They say that it's canned, so that it is protected from the sunlight (sunlight quickly kills all the hop aromas giving them a "skunky" flavour and smell. It's the reason why lots of beers are in brown or green bottles)

It's got a nice fresh hoppy smell - once again typical of an American IPA; grapefruit, pine, lemon, coriander. Really big body as you can see from the picture - huge foamy head packing in all those aromas.

Nice dry flavour with quite a bit of roasted malts. Not as quenching as the Ska Brewing beer, but still pretty good. The dryness in my opinion is just a little bit too harsh - because the malt flavours are roasted and not caramel, you don't get that hit of sweetness which balances out the hops. The finish is of orange and citrus - again, maybe a little bit too bitter.

It's still a decent pale ale though - and once again proving that canned beer can stand up to bottles in quality and taste.

DecemBEER

December is here, which means snowy weather, outdoor markets, bad music and of course too much eating and drinking.

December also means that I can jump off the beer wagon that I've been on for the best part of a month. I did actually get off at an early stop, because during the last weekend of November I was in the UK, and there is absolutely no way that I was going to say no to a decent pint of British ale. I was in Liverpool for three days and had the pleasure of visiting some absolutely fantastic pubs. It's really lovely to see, in a country where 40 pubs are shutting a week, that the pubs who do something different are the ones that are packed to the rafters. I went in about eight CAMRA recommended pubs at various different times of the day, and each one was busy. One of them had a winter beer festival, offering over 70 cask ales, and it was standing room only (in what was quite a large pub) at lunchtime. The others all offered something different too, be it a particular meal that makes them stand out (research the origin of the word "Scouse" on wikipedia), or a selection of ales from a local micro. It was also pleasing to see that the pubs that only offered generic lagers and beers, with the standard "live sports" sign outside, were either empty or shutdown.

The British pub is part of our heritage, and is on the same level as fish and chips, red telephone boxes, London buses and David Beckham when it comes to things that "Non - Brits" associate with the country, and just like Beckhams image, it will only progress and win new fans, if it offers something different and stands out from the crowd.

The same goes for beer.

As well as visiting the UK, I've also been to Sweden. I went there to visit my old mate Jorgen, who owns the superb Oliver Twist pub in Stockholm. This pub was the blueprint for Drink Bar, and Jorgen offers over 65 draught beers, and over 100 bottled beers. He's the largest importer of American craft beers in Scandinavia. He always gives me somthing interesting to take home, and it's one of these beers that I'll review.

When you think American beer, you generally think of something light and uninteresting. The 4 main brewers in the US have 98% of the beer volume. The remaining 2% is made up of about 500 small breweries - microbreweries, nano breweries. No one has heard of these breweries, because as Jorgen quotes "when you spend all your money on sourcing the best possible ingredients available, you don't have any money left for marketing". Now you can see why Budweiser has such a huge marketing budget.

When you think of canned beer, you generally think of the contents as being something light and uninteresting. So now I'm going to turn this all on its head by reviewing a canned American beer.

Modus Hoperandi IPA (http://www.ratebeer/ rating: 97) is produced by the Ska Brewing company from Durango, Colorado. (http://www.skabrewing.com/)  It's 6.8% abv and comes in a 330ml can. Yes - an IPA in a can.  These guys are at the forefront of American craft brewing, and they've canned this beer (although it's available in bottles too) to prove that decent beer can be served from a tin. Just like Brewdog in the UK do things because they can (but generally to prove some sort of point), Ska do the same.

I'm not going to do a long winded article about American beers and the current rapid growth of the micro market - I brought enough back with me from Oliver Twist to review more beers and talk a bit more, so let's get straight down to the beer.

It pours a lovely burnt amber colour, and you get a huge whiff of hops -zesty hops - as you pour into the glass. It's got a great body, and the head is huge and substantial. Especially when you consider it's from a can. The last time I had a beer from a can with so much body, was when it had a widget in the bottom.

The taste is something similar to Punk IPA. The IBU's on this beer are pretty much the same level - approx 65. If you shut your eyes away from the can, you'd never guess you were drinking a canned beer, and to be honest, you wouldn't be looked at funny if you thought someone had just handed you the beer straight from the bar. Its got that typical USA zesty, pinecone taste from the hops, but this also has quite a bit of malt to back up the flavours. A nice dry finish, not too bitter, but certainly dry enough to make you reach almost immediately for the next sip.

Definitely the best beer I've had out of a can since the times when I used to drink draught Bass (they brewed it especially for can - it was less carbonated and matured over time) out of a can when I used to come in from doing the gardening. Back then, four cans of Bass whilst I was warming up from the cold, hardly used to touch the sides.

I'm tempted to bring this to Estonia. It's got a cool name and a cool image on the can. But it's in a can. And it's American. And it will be more expensive than local beers. And...Finns drink out of 330ml cans.  So all in all, a fantastic beer - but I'm just not sure if it will sell in Estonia. Which is a shame, because cans are so much easily stored/transported than bottles. It's also available in bottles, and I'll look into the possibility if they are available to bring to Estonia.

Or is a bottled craft beer now too mainstream?