This is their Creme Brulee Stout, a definite monster at 8.5% ABV. It was brewed in collaboration with Melissa Cole for last year’s 12 Stouts Of Christmas, and is based on their Milk Stout with the added benefit of having been aged in rum casks to give it that extra little kick.

It sits thick and black in the glass, with a thin, fleeting dark tan head floating on top. The aroma of the rum hits you as soon as the bottle is open, before you’ve even started pouring.

Allowing the rum to evaporate for a while, the nose becomes more complex – gentle, light roasted coffee, milk chocolate hazelnuts and just a hint of the lurking alcohol.

With a thick, creamy and almost syrupy mouthfeel and a nice singed sugar bitterness, I can certainly see the creme brulee theme. The espresso and rum combine to give the suggestion of a Jamaican coffee, and these almost make it seem like two pudding beers in one.

But there lies my problem with this beer; it’s two different things at once that don’t quite blend. The rum slightly overpowers the essential beeriness of it and although there’s what I think is a nice stout underneath, I’m frustrated that I can’t clearly taste it.

The rum gives it a big, warming alcoholic hit and it’s undeniably a big monster. The lack of balance spoils it a little for me though, and I think I could only really give it 3 stars.

I’m a sucker for a good label.

Despite their relative youth, Redchurch have managed to develop quite a broad range, with seven different beers at the time of tasting – although they have since added an eight beer, in the form of their Brick Lane Lager.

We start from the weaker end of their range, although it’s all relative. I apologise now for the crappy quality of the pictures!

Shoreditch Blonde is a pale blonde beer, the weakest in the range at 4.5% ABV. It pours with a fine bubbled, lingering foam and just a hint of yeast haze. This is something of a theme with Redchurch, with quite high sediment levels in their bottles – although not to the same extreme as the likes of Kernel.

The nose is full of fruity hop aromas, and some sugar sweetness. There’s a slightly spiced, wheat beer like hint too, although that might be from the yeast.

On drinking, it’s well restrained – delicious and creamy mouthfeel, light and sweet with fresh citrus fruit and a nicely subtle bitterness. Nicely quaffable.

I was expecting Hackney Gold to be a golden ale, but as the picture above shows I was wrong. It’s Redchurch’s take on a classic Best Bitter, at 5.5% ABV; a deep, rich red ale in the glass, with another nicely fine textured head.

The aroma is well hopped, fruity with toffee notes and an chocolate orange hint.

The flavour is malt and caramel, with orange blossom coming from the hops and leading into a deep bitter finish. Perhaps not the most traditional Best Bitter I’ve ever tasted, but very nice regardless.

Bethnal Pale Ale next, another 5.5% ABV beer. Golden, and nicely clear until I managed to pick up a load of sediment while pouring, which resulted in the murky looking glass above!

The overwhelming aroma is of fresh grapefruit, and just a hint of honey. It’s fruity too, on tasting but that is quickly overtaken by a big – almost too big – bitter finish which is rescued by a sticky sweetness coming in just at the end.

Big and brash, this is not a subtle beer.

Hoxton Stout completes the first batch, a 6% ABV stout that sits black in the glass with a luxuriously pillowy tan head. The aroma is classic stout with a rich, tempting toasted maltiness.

In the mouth, it’s simply magnificent – burnt sugar and a rich, slightly sweet start that leads into a deep roasted bitterness with some subtle coffee notes, and a wonderful dry finish.

The second set (with much better photos!) are from the strong end of the range, all coming in around the 7.5% ABV mark.

Great Eastern India Pale Ale kicks off the strong section, the weakest as a mere 7.4% ABV.

It pours with a huge head (that’s not entirely down to my incompetence!), and a nice rich golden colour which I managed to ruin by picking up yet more sediment.

There’s a gloriously huge hop aroma, sweet peaches and dried mango – the sensation of sticking your nose in the glass is much like sticking your head inside a sack of hops straight from the farm.

It’s initially warm in the mouth, with sweet caramel and sticky summer fruit. There’s a building resinous hop flavour, still very floral but bringing in more and more bitterness to the tail. The alcohol warmth as it slips oh so easily down your throat suggests a much higher percentage and my tasting notes sum it up as “properly, properly huge, magnificent, incredible!”

This has definitely gone onto my Desert Island Beer List.

Old Ford Export Stout is the second stout from Redchurch, stronger than the Hoxton Stout at 7.5%. It’s similarly black in the glass, although the head is thinner and a touch more fleeting.

The aroma is enticing; dark roasted coffee, with a distinct undercurrent of dark fruit hops and just a whisper of dark chocolate. I don’t think I can say “dark” often enough here.

Creamy in the mouth, there’s plenty of molasses and a delicious, dried cherry fruit sweetness that’s countered by a big bitter background and another warming alcohol burn. It’s a cracking stout.

Finally, Baltic Street Porter finishes off the collection although I’m slightly sad to say that it seems to have disappeared from Redchurch’s website. Another black beer, with another ridiculously huge head.

The aroma is rich with orange blossom and a chocolate edge; sweet, rich and enticing.

In the mouth, it’s thick and smooth, sticky sweet like black treacle and chocolate. There’s a delicious fruitiness to it too, with dates and ripe melons, all tied together with a gentle bitterness that leaves the beer sweet without being cloying – just what you want from a porter.

Redchurch don’t do subtle beer, and I’d hate to see their hop bill, but overall this is a stunning range without a single duff pint in sight.

This is the Araku India coffee, grown in the Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike some of their range, it’s nice to see that this is a Fairtrade product.

The grounds have a rich aroma, with dark fruits and old wood and just a touch of molasses. Brewed, the sweetness and the fruit is somewhat lost, and the old wood comes through more strongly.

There’s a richness to the flavour too, with warm dark fruits slowly yielding to a long lasting but gentle tannic bitter finish. The depth of flavour and full body makes me wonder a little about the strength 4 label, but it manages to keep that bitterness nicely subdued.

Overall a very drinkable coffee that deserves 3 stars.

Many thanks to Bord Bia for these samples.

In addition to their core range, they also produce one-off beers in their “Tiny Batch Editions” and I’m pleased to see that a significant chunk of these batches end up in bottles.

This is the second Tiny Batch Edition, Baby’s Got A Temper. It’s an oak aged 8% double IPA, which should mean it’s a seriously big beer.

It’s a fairly dull amber colour in the glass, with a fine bubbled, fairly flat head on it. The nose is sweet with floral citrus notes, and just a hint of alcohol – but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of the oak ageing.

The taste is surprisingly restrained – there’s a reasonable malt backbone, some tangerine fruit and a decently big hop bitterness towards the end, but it doesn’t have a huge body and the alcohol really doesn’t come though. It could easily be a 5% IPA instead of a monster. And there’s still no hint of the oak.

It’s a slight disappointment because I love double IPAs; don’t get me wrong, this is a tasty enough beer but it’s not much of a monster.

I’ll be honest – I don’t understand the point of those machines in a domestic setting. They seem to be an expensive way of restricting yourself to only drinking coffee that comes in the right packaging, and it’s not like making coffee with my trusty Aeropress is particularly complex or messy.

Still, as comments on last week’s post proved not everybody shares my scepticism.

For us luddites, however, Aromo do produce some of their coffee in ground form – although not the full range.

This is Bounce, a strength 5 blend of Brazilian Daterra Bourbon and Sumatran Mahandeling beans. Before I get to the coffee itself, I feel obliged to talk about the packaging.

Packaging performs two basic tasks – it contains the product, and it attracts the consumer. While this bag certainly contained the coffee very effectively, what the hell were Aromo thinking when they came up with this artwork? How does “crazy pouty woman” possibly say to any potential customer “this is going to be a rich, fulfilling coffee”?

The entire range appears to feature a variety of overacting models in different poses, but at least the rest of them look happy – the branding for Bounce makes me wonder what the hell I’m letting myself in for.

Ok, rant over.

The grounds themselves have a nice rich aroma – dark toasted grain, a warm, almost apricot like fruitiness and an undercurrent of dark bitter chocolate. Brewed, the fruit is lost, but there’s still the warm toasted notes coming through nicely.

In the mouth, it’s a very tasty, well balanced coffee – rich and fruity, countered perfectly by a satisfying but short-lived bitter finish. The chocolate aroma doesn’t really put in an appearance in the flavour, but it’s a minor niggle.

I’ll be honest – the branding is such a turn-off, a part of me wanted the coffee to be terrible too, but it’s not. It’s really very nice, and easily deserves 3.5 stars. And for those of you living in the future, with your pod machine things, it’s great to see a company producing a range of coffees in a useable form.

But I’m going to fine Aromo half a star for that packaging – not something I want snarling out of the cupboard at me!

Many thanks to Aromo Coffee for the sample coffee.

This is their Peruvian Pangoa, a medium-dark roasted coffee from the Ashaninka region. This is one of the areas where the wonderfully named Yorkshire Rainforest Project works, so it’s nice to see that 10% of the price of this coffee goes to the project.

The grounds have a nice rich aroma of milk chocolate and redcurrants, an undercurrent of toasted nut and just a hint of pipe tobacco.

On brewing, the toasted nuttiness comes through more clearly and there’s still a fruitiness, but the chocolate has gone.

It’s not a particularly sweet coffee in the mouth and the fruit from the aroma doesn’t really put in much of an appearance. That said, it’s got a decent body to it, and the nutty character comes through nicely. The finish is short but nicely bitter, with a distinctly tannic hit.

Initially pleasant but unremarkable, this coffee has grown on me over time – easy drinking, but complex enough to stand out from the crowd, this earns 3.5 stars.

On a slightly different note, can I make a plea to all online coffee retailers – if you’re going to include photographs of coffee beans, could you make them of the actual beans and not just a random generic “beans” image? I say this because Bettys have clearly used exactly the same photograph for this, their Nepal Snow River and Ethiopian Mocha Limu coffees.

To be fair, this is hardly an issue unique to Bettys – I actually struggle to think of any online shop that doesn’t do this – and it’s not like anyone actually buys coffee based on how it looks, but it (perhaps irrationally) annoys me.

Many thanks to Bettys for the sample.

This is Cherizena‘s Jumbo Maragogype, although I’m not sure they’re any more Jumbo than a standard elephant coffee bean.

The grounds have a wonderfully fruity aroma with rich dark berries against a hint of milk chocolate. Brewed, the fruit is considerably reduced, and there’s more of a woodland smell; that rich aroma of wet leaves and old wood – I know that doesn’t sound good in a coffee, but it’s actually really rather pleasant.

The taste doesn’t quite live up to the tantalising promise of the aroma, however. It’s a decent enough coffee, with some dark fruit flavours quickly yielding to a generous, but not overwhelming bitterness. It’s got some body to it, and a nice but gentle tannic finish, but it’s not setting my world alight.

On the taste alone, it probably only deserves 2.5 stars, but the aroma of the grounds bumps it up to 3 stars.

This is Panama, a strength 4 coffee grown on the slopes of the Baru volcano. I’m not sure I’ve ever had a coffee from Panama, so it will be interesting to see what it’s like.

The grounds are quite dark, with a rich fruity aroma of dark berries, a hint of tobacco smoke and an undercurrent of bitter dark chocolate. Brewed, it’s more of the same – a rich, fruity aroma with some tobacco and very little sweetness.

It’s a decent coffee in the mouth; rich and darkly roasted, with some fairly deep bitterness coming through the subtle dark fruits. I find it a touch unbalanced, lacking the sweetness that it needs to hold the bitterness in check – it is perhaps more deeply roasted than my tastebuds prefer.

Overall it’s a tasty cup, but it’s not setting my world alight and earns 2.5 stars.

One of the newest kids on the block is Shamblemoose – so new in fact that at the time of writing, they’re still in the process of moving into their brewery. They’re one of two outfits who will be brewing out of the same premises down in Penge, sharing the space with Late Knights.

Last month they launched their first beer down at the Union Tavern – a pretty awesome pub that serves an impressive range of London beer and probably deserves a post all of its own – and I headed down to try a pint or two.

The beer in question is their #4 American Brown Ale; the picture probably says everything there is to say about it. I failed to keep more than half a pint in the glass long enough to take a picture.

It’s good.

Breweries tend to split into ‘traditional’ – brown ales with English hops and CAMRA approval, and ‘funky’ – pale hop bombs where every hop has to begin with a ‘C’ and every pint has to come out of a keg.

Shamblemoose have deliberately taken a middle ground. The beer is named perfectly; it’s a very traditional, approachable Brown Ale with a sweet caramel character perfectly balanced out by a slowly building but not aggressive hop bitterness. Those hops are all American, sweet citrus and floral aromas; but they’re subtle, at the sort of level you’d expect in a Brown Ale.

The balance is perfect and genuinely different, and I take it as a good sign that Shamblemoose have something new to bring to the table. I can’t wait for them to start growing their range, not least because I heard mention of a Smoked Porter – something that requires a real deftness of touch, which they appear to have in spades.

However, when the folks at The Forge & Foundry down in Camden invited Pete Drinks to visit they tempted us with talk of Espresso Martinis. Coffee and booze, as we’ve already established, can be an excellent combination.

The Forge & Foundry is actually two venues in one – The Foundry is their restaurant and bar, while The Forge is a small music and and performance venue in the same building providing an impressively diverse range of events.

This is their Espresso Martini, looking like a rather scarily large espresso with a rich crema and some extra beans to top it off. And I’m happy to say it’s a seriously coffee-y drink, with Kahlua and a fresh espresso contributing to a rich, bitter coffee which balances perfectly against the strong vodka kick.

The coffee comes from the Camden Coffee Shop, a fantastic looking old-fashioned coffee roasters a couple of doors down from the restaurant. George, the owner there, roasts his beans on the premises and produces a unique blend of Brazilian coffee for the Forge & Foundry. Sadly the shop has been closed every time I’ve been in the area; but I hope to visit when they’re open soon.

We sampled some of their other cocktails too – Kavey was a big fan of the Cherry Drop cocktail of the month – and both their alcoholic and non-alcoholic offerings are well balanced, richly flavoured without any component becoming dominant.

Combined with some good food, interesting performances and an easy walk from Camden Town tube, not to mention some delicious coffee, it’s hard to imagine that we wont be back for another martini!

Pete Drinks was a guest of The Forge & Foundry