Beer Posts

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 ...

Badger Ales Brewery Tour-At-Home

Badger Ales or, as they're more properly known Hall & Woodhouse, is one of the oldest breweries in the UK. Founded in 1777, they're certainly in the top five preceded only by the likes of Shepherd Neame (officially 1698 but likely much earlier), Samuel Smith (1758) and Young's (whose Ram Brewery probably dates as far ...

Gweilo Beer Tour At Home

Whenever I'm travelling, I always eager to hunt out local beers. It seems odd to fly across oceans to foreign parts, only to seek out something familiar to drink. Not, of course, that other countries' local beers are always unfamiliar; Japan's national beers - Asahi and, to a lesser extent, Kirin & Sapporo - ...

Palmers Brewery Tour-At-Home

Today's Tour is another Dorset brewery, but at the other end of the brewing spectrum from our previous brewery in the county, 8 Arch. Beer has been brewed on the Palmers Bridport site since 1794, although it didn't take on the Palmer name until the 19th Century. Today it is run by the 4th generation ...

8 Arch Brewing Company Brewery Tour-At-Home

It's always good when a long weekend in the country involves enough spare time to hit a few local breweries. After our visit to Dorset earlier this year courtesy of holidaycottages.co.uk I returned with a decent haul of beers from the county, including a set from a new (to me) brewery, 8 Arch Brewing. 8 Arch ...

Aldi's Great British Brewing Company

A few years ago, there was rumbling in the world of whisky that perhaps something should be done about some bottlers - especially supermarkets - constantly inventing fictional Glens to use on their own-brand whisky. Earlier this year, the problem re-surfaced when it emerged that Tesco had invented a bunch of farms for some ...

Minoh Brewery Mini Tour-At-Home

Although I usually try to sample the whole of a brewery's range in these things, sometimes that's not possible. I've picked up these bottles on the road a little way from Minoh's home in Osaka, so I've only been able to get hold of what appears to be about half of their beers. I ...