Beer Posts

Farsons Brewery

As well as brewing the ever-present Cisk, Farsons - Malta's oldest and largest brewery -produces a fair variety of other, less lager-y beers for thirsty islanders. Despite their flagship Cisk being a fairly standard European lager, the rest of their range has a lot more in common with the British beer tradition. This is perhaps ...

Cisk

Virtually everywhere I've travelled, there's a national - or at least regional - beer brand that you see everywhere; in every bar and restaurant, on every pub sign and every awning edge. It fascinates me that the UK seems to be almost unique in lacking that national brew. That national brew isn't always a ...

Antur Brew Co Tour-At-Home

It's fair to say that beer-wise, I was spoiled for the last few decades by living in London - a city that even now is knee-deep in new and exciting beers and breweries. Our new home in Wales may not have the sheer density of breweries, but it has a decent spread of ...

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, ...