(Update Jan 17 2009. They have stopped sending beers as they no longer have any left from the samples they had. The beer blog is not active anymore. A pity as I enjoyed their free beers, and the beer book was nice quality as well.) This is not actually a paid article!!! Unusual for me some sarcastic beggars might say).
Just finished my second post for
The Beer Blog.
Every week I get a beer(so far, 2 weeks, perhaps one day they will run out of new beers to test and not need us any more).
The condition is,we have to write about what we think on the new beer that week.
Not a hardship I can assure you. I write this post with the warm feeling of their latest beer flowing through my veins, at almost 5% proof. Nice.
Here is the post over at The Beer Blog, run by DK (Dorlings Kindersley).
I tidied up some typos, must get this space bar fixed and ban the kids from using any new laptops that I buy in the future!!! Ruddy silly Internet games are a menace to space bars and the mouse!
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FourtyNiner beer.
As lynette and Markc noted, when you open this do it over the sink or in my case the kitchen worktop, easier to mop up when the beer fizzes out in a small fountain. And that was after leaving it to stand for 2 days from when the delivery man arrived!
The reason is the yeast sediment act as nucleation sites for the gas bubbles to grow rapidly around, so when the pressure is reduced when taking off the bottle top, it releases the gas as a froth rapidly. The froth being down to the plant matter used in brewing, I guess.
The beer is "conditioned in the bottle", that means it has live yeast (as it also says on the label) that continues to ferment and grow.
Hence the cloudy look to the beer, and the slight sediment on the inside of the bottle top when I removed it (from being stored on its side in transit for a while I guess). The bottle says to store UPRIGHT.
It says to pour carefully, that is because it is like wine, you do not want a gob full of yeast sediment while glugging down this amber nectar.
Apparently, having to pour this carefully to avoid the sediment, puts some people off this beer, all I can say is it was worth pouring carefully.
It is another deep amber beer, similar colour to the honey based witchywood beer I wrote about last week.
Similar strength, 4.9% as opposed to the 5.0% last week.
Nice flavour, IF you do not mind the yeast flavour in addition, that comes with the bitter hops basic tang. It has a "home made beer" taste because of this, this is not a criticism, nice to have "old fashioned" flavours instead of the chemical-vat stuff we used to (and still do) get fobbed off with by other brewers. Any one old enough to remember the ubiquitous and somewhat ridiculed Watneys Red Barrel? I rest my case M'lud.
In fact, it carries a "CAMRA" label stating it is "real beer" which I agree with.
Any road up.
Sweeter than many beers I have drunk, which I prefer myself.
Not a drink to quench your thirst when trying to rehydrate (is any beer really, but that is another matter). Unless you want to get paralytic, this should be savoured almost a sip at a time.
Almost a sacrilege to add lemonade to it, so this time I avoided making a shandy, although I expect it would be a nice sweet one, which again I like.
I like it, and when I am out and about and HBOS is paying expenses (while it still can!!!) I will order this if it is available.
Nice gold ink decorated labels front and back, gives it a feeling of an expensive beer (which I guess at nearly 5% proof,it will be, but worth every penny).
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Some feedback for the marketers and designers to think about.
Ringwood Brewery is something to be proud of, yet the back label uses a black label with gold and white letters except for these 2 words which are in a dark
green (possibly a hint of dark blue in it) the result being that it looks like the label has not been printed properly, and the area was missed by the printers.
Only in the right light could I read the words.
Possibly the designer or printer is colour blind, being male would increase that chance 10 fold approximately. If so, perhaps dark green looks like a
contrasting colour (light grey perhaps), get some of us to product test the labels if you want for future products. I pass the Ischira colour test 100% so I am available. You might want to include colour blind members as well to see what trouble they have with labels.
Not a major thing to worry about, except the Disability Act does get invoked sometimes to fine businesses for blatant discrimination, colour blindness being one condition that is covered.
