Beer Tasting: Brew By Numbers 02 | 05 Golden Ale - Mosaic & Chinook

I picked this bottle up at the brewery. It pours fairly hazy, deep gold with a super tight, creamy off-white head. The aroma holds ripe orange, some bread, melon. The flavor is light to medium sweet with a sturdy, bready malt base, some ripening berries, orange, mango. Light to medium bodied with fine, creamy carbonation. 

Quite clean on the finish with further pronounced bready pale malts along with the juicy hop character of melon, orange and mango, along with secondary notes of berries and pine. A very tasty beer, nicely balanced overall. I could easily knock back a few glasses of this.

Beer Tasting: Brew By Numbers 02 | 08 Golden Ale - Polaris & Cascade

I sourced this  beer the from the brewery. This 'golden ale' is really more of a golden ale/ American pale ale hybrid, in my own opinion. All the beers in this series from BBNo tend to be a bit stronger than what one might consider a typical British golden ale; but at the same time, they are often breadier and not quite as lean as a by-the-book American pale ale. Whatever you want to call it, this is a very nice beer that strikes a good balance, which makes it phenomenally drinkable.

The beer pours a rich, hazy gold with a large, frothy white head. There's a lovely aroma with lots of juicy orange and tangerine, underscored by bready pale malts. The flavor is light to medium sweet with a nicely rounded, bready pale malt backbone, pleasingly dynamic citrusy hop character, just hints of tangy tangerine, mild bitter orange rind, pine and touches of sun-kissed hay. 

It's light bodied with fine, massaging carbonation. This beer finishes juicy, full and rounded, with continuing pale, lightly doughy bread and ripening citrus fruits, along with a slight mineral edge that cleans things up well. This is a very smooth beer and the elements all come together impressively well. 

Beer Tasting: Gipsy Hill Beatnik

I picked this beer up at the London Beer Lab. It pours perfectly clear, lightly effervescent, with a sturdy white froth that lingers. The aroma is bright with grassy and floral hops mixed up with rindy citrus notes, notably tangerine and orange. The flavour is well balanced, with good up-front grassy bitterness that is balanced by a lean biscuity sweetness. There are also additional notes of citrus fruits, some orange rind and grapefruit pith. Light in body with spritely carbonation. 

The finish is pretty clean with only moderate grassy, resinous hop character, further citrus rind, and pleasant balancing pale malt sugars. There’s a slight cleansing minerality in the aftertaste, which I don’t mind at all. The more I drink of this beer, the more I like it. There’s a lot of character packed into its 3.8% ABV frame. 

Low alcohol pale ale is certainly not a flashy style, but when done right it’s a thing of beauty; this one is done right.

Beer Tasting: By the Horns Samba King

The first beer of the evening is By the Horns Samba King. This World Cup-inspired beer is a "rye blonde ale brewed with Brazilian lime and lemongrass". That's a fairly ambitious ingredient list, but I'm happy to say that the brewers pulled off a very nice beer.

The lime and lemongrass really carry the beer from beginning to end. The aroma has a lot of lime zest, a bit of lemon rind and some grassy, citrusy hops. It's not overly sweet but there is a nice doughy, biscuity sweetness that serves as a decent base of operations for the exotic additions. The bitterness is mostly grassy but you also get some juicy citrus aspects as well. The body is light and the carbonation massages. The beer has a grassy finish with oily citrus, light zippy lemon-lime, and some further pale bread sugars.

The lime and lemongrass could perhaps be scaled back slightly so that they are more like accents rather than the main attraction, but that's just a minor qualm. Overall it's a nicely refreshing and well crafted beer. (Score: 3.6/5.0)

Beer Tasting: Fourpure IPA

If I were to give a Most Improved Beer award for the year to date, it would go to Fourpure IPA. When this beer first hit the shelves last November it was fairly pedestrian stuff. The original batches were somewhat jammy and bready, the hop character a bit leafy and piney. It was OK beer but it wasn't exciting.

Last week I got a few freshly-packaged cans and, wow, this beer has improved dramatically. Where the aroma was once muted and simplistic, it's now juicy and vibrant, with a dynamic citrus fruit character. The flavor follows along well with the malts now playing a supporting role (they were more of a lead back in the day) and the hops just singing out. There's lot of juicy grapefruit and tangerine, some bitter pine, light oils, and a clean mineral edge that cuts things off well, leaving you with a grassy, lightly floral finish. It's quite a wonderful beer. I'm blown away by the improvement. (Score: 4.1/5.0)

I really have to hand it to the Fourpure guys. According to them, they haven't changed the recipe dramatically since the first batches came out, but have instead improved their brewing practices and processing to better utilize the hops. I'm happy to say their efforts have paid off tremendously.

A fellow beer geek recently compared Fourpure IPA favourably to Ballast Point Sculpin, which is extremely high praise for an IPA, especially when it comes from a guy like Andy Parker, who's tasted (and brewed) his share of IPAs. (Ballast Point is a San Diego-based brewery and their Sculpin is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of the IPA style.) I would agree with Andy that this beer is well on its way to greatness.

Well played, Fourpure. Keep up the good work.

Beer Tasting: Five Points Pale

In the glass today is Five Points Pale, a 4.4% beer brewed with amarillo, centennial and citra hops. Five Points, based up in Hackney, has a tight core range consisting of this pale ale, a porter, a red ale, and a recently-launched IPA. They have also put out an experimental brett porter, which was quite good.

I've had this beer twice before, once from cask and once from bottle, and each time I enjoyed it. This bottle today, though, doesn't fire on all cylinders. It pours mostly clear gold with a frothy, white head. The nose holds a bit of citric orange, some grainy pale malts, dirty hay, wet leaves. The flavor is lightly sweet with pale bread, bitter grain husks, slight grass, orange rind, more hay. It's light bodied with fine, almost soft carbonation; the condition seems slightly wanting. Further gritty bitterness to finish, some astringency, hints of wood and grass, rindy citrus, some soggy white bread. The astringency lingers on the back of the tongue. There could be a bit of over-extraction in here or something. Overall it's still drinkable stuff, but given previous experience with this beer I expect more. (Score: 2.8/5.0)

Bottle came in a mixed case of beers from London breweries, from new online retailer London Beer.

Beer tasting: The Kernel India Pale Ale Citra Galaxy Mosaic

Each of the three hops featured in this beer on its own makes for a fantastic IPA; indeed, Kernel has made a world-class single-hop IPA using each, with the IPA Citra being arguably the brewery's best known beer. Put these three hops together, though, and the outcome is all but guaranteed to be good.  

This beer pours hazy, rich orange-gold with a frothy, white head that settles into a cream. The nose is rife with dank, citrusy hops, piss, orange and grapefruit; this is vintage Kernel right here. Medium sweet flavor with sturdy pale malt structure that allows the hops to really come out and play. This guy is loaded with juicy citrus, sappy pine, overripe melon and papaya, tangerine, some lightly pithy grapefruit and dry pine needles. It's medium bodied with fine carbonation. Good and resinous to finish with outrageous citrus juice and ripe tropical fruits. Moderately bitter with notes of toasted grass and pine. Glorious stuff. This definitely takes me back to the early days of the Kernel, when they first started splashing on to the scene with their brand of clean yet still super dank IPAs. Ah, lovely. (Score: 4.1/5.0)