Beer Posts

Fuller's & Friends: Flora & The Griffin

In the last couple of years I've grown to realise what a great ingredient rye is. My consistent 'go-to' beers from London Brewing - the mighty Mad As Hops when they have it, and the almost-as-good Rye 'The Hell' Not when they don't - are both Rye IPAs. At the same time, when it comes ...

Fuller's & Friends: Matariki

Saisons are very 'on-trend' at the moment - every craft brewery worth its salt seems to brew one, just as last year they all had to brew lager. So it was inevitable, perhaps, that one would show up in this collection. That said, I hadn't expected Marble to be the folk to do it; ...

Fuller's & Friends: Rebirth

Although Fuller's best known beer is probably London Pride, their ESB is arguably the best beer in their standard lineup. That's not just me saying that, as ESB has twice been crowned World Champion Beer. This collaboration with Moor Beer isn't just about rebrewing that stalwart, though. They've taken the original 1971 recipe, and enhanced ...

Fuller's & Friends: New England IPA

Forgive me for saying so, but Cloudwater have always felt a bit.... cult-y to me. Their beers seem to attain legendary status before the yeast has settled, and that (combined, to be fair, with their usually substantial ABV) drives the price into "you have got to be joking" territory. Their DIPAs are the pinnacle of ...

Fuller's & Friends: Galleon

Although the brewer in me knows that 'lager' is, ultimately, nothing more than a technical term I'm also aware that, in mainstream UK terms, 'lager' is a fairly specific thing - it's light and crisp and generally fairly subtly-hopped. It's somewhere that's usually safe to go when a non-beery friend says "oh just ...

Fuller's & Friends: Peat Souper

I've been quite a fan of Fuller's for some years, ever since I worked out that my initial lack of enthusiasm was caused not by the beer itself, but by the lacklustre cellarmanship of our local Fuller's pub which had made me think that Pride was this bland and slightly funky tasting pint. After visiting ...

Empress Ale

I have to admit to being nervous whenever I hear that a beer has been designed for a specific market or niche. Experience has taught me that the resulting drink often bears all the hallmarks of being created by a committee composed of the Marketing Department and the Finance Department resulting in, well, ...

Magic Spells Brewery Tour At Home

Magic Spells Brewery are a new East London brewery, very firmly at the 'craft' end of the beery spectrum. They have a familiar enough backstory, starting with (a rather substantial 1/2 barrel) homebrewing background 3 years ago and finally going commercial at the start of this year. At the moment they're still 'gypsy brewing' ...

Badger - An American Venture

One of the things I noted about Badger back when I did a review of their range was that they'd always managed to resist the lure of the "craft dollar", sticking to solid, traditional beers (albeit with a range twice the size it should be). Obviously they took my comments to heart, because they're definitely ...

Muswell Hillbilly Brewers Tour At Home

The London brewery scene continues to grow at a breathtaking rate - the brewery count recently crossed the 100 mark - and it's nice to see that the full range of brewery types are well represented in every flurry of openings, from wannabe-Brewdogs, through brewpubs, all the way to a couple of men ...