J W Lees Manchester Star Ale (7.3%)

I should be excited by this beer.  Although the bottle doesn't say "porter" this beer is in the porter style.  Its "recipe comes from an 1884 Lees brewing notebook, a hoppy strong porter," on their website.  I wonder why "porter" hasn't been used on the bottle?  It says "ALE" on the bottle.  I'm confused before I've started...

Its very dark (not black) with a short tan head. Its aroma is standard roasted malts. It looks thinner than 7.3%.  Its body is thinner than 7.3%  Its sweet.  Perhaps the sweetness will reduce with maturity. Its close to something like McEwans Champion Ale, also 7.3%  Is that comparison harsh?  I think the Manchester ale, sorry porter, is better. Its smooter and the dark chocolate taste is stronger.

One way to look at this is on current price.  You can get 3 of these for £4.  That's a bargain. In fact if you like sweet porters I'd go to your local Sainsbury's and grab the lot NOW.  If this beer wins the competition it'll be £1 more expensive.

Back to my tasting test.  This beer is up against the Double Espresso from Scottish Traditional Ales. This was a nice smooth coffee beer.  Which one should be the winner? HELP!

Round 1 Beers Summary

Here's my Round 1 beers summary from Sainsbury's Beer Hunt 2012.  Beer details at Sainsbury's
Join in any time you want!

Beers 1and2. White Lady v. Prodigal Sun <- WINNER

Beers3,4and5  Double Espresso Premio Caffe Bira v. Batemans Mocha v. JWLees Manchester Star Ale
The Espresso beat Bateman's.  Now its up against the Manchester Star Ale.

Beers6,7and8 will be the battle of the clear-bottled-beers, this taste test being prompted by Bailey's comments in his blog at http://boakandbailey.com/2012/09/sainsburys-beer-hunt-2012/
The beers are Elgood's Indian Summer, Cotleigh Snowy and Wadworth's Horizon.

Beers9,10and11 will be ruby and brown  beers Brain's Willy Nilly, Dot Goodbody's Blissful Brown Ale (Wye Valley) and Ridgeway Brewing Co. Ivanhoe.

The IPAs et al tasting will then follow.

Chocolate and Coffee Beers

Round 1. Beers 3and4 will be Double Espresso Premio Caffe Bira v. Batemans Mocha

If I was really into coffee and/or chocolate beers I'd be looking forward to this.  But I'm not a massive fan.  The Double Espresso from Traditional Scottish Ales gives off a massive coffee aroma and had me salavating.  Poured very dark with a low carbonation, this is a great coffee beer. Smooth and sweet with vanilla hints, this beer scores a well deserved 7/10.

Bateman's Mocha next.  Not looking forward to this. Bateman's beers tend to be over sweet for my palate but I do like my chocolate!

The other question is whether I should also test the Manchester Star Ale as I see its also got "chocolate flavours".  This will be a 7.3% beer. The previous 2 were both 6%.

The Bateman's. It had a very strange aroma. Not nice like the Espresso. Not as dark and more fiz too. And not as smooth. There is chocolate there but there's the Bateman's characteristic sweet background which makes me think this beer doesn't know what it is.  Consequently its not half as good as the Espresso. 4/10

Manchester Star Ale next (some time tonight anyway).

Sainsbury's Beer Hunt 2012 - Battle of the Beers

So I (eventually) found a Sainsbury's with this year's beer hunt selection. Its a shame Sainsbury's haven't put a little bit more effect into this year's hunt. For example, their websites www.sainsburysbeerhunt.co.uk  (and www.sainsburysbeerhunt.com) at time of writing point to the 2011 beer selection. I've suggested that the easiest way to fix this is to point these URLs to  this sainsburys link which, I guess, is at least fairly recent.

Visiting my 2 local Sainsbury's today also dissappointed. One didn't even have the hunt beer shelf up yet! Apparently the current refurb has got in the way. Up the road I found the beer but, embarrassingly, I had to ask where it was. It certainly wasn't next to the usual beer. It was at the front of the store hidden behind a rack of house plants! Pic:-

On to the tastings!  I'm pairing beers up, a little unfair, but adds a bit of fun.

Round 1.  Beers 1and2.

White Lady v. Prodigal Sun



The White Lady is described as a wheat beer.  Its not. At least not what I think of as a weissbier. Point deducted there.  But this is a really clean drinkable beer with a caramel malt taste.  No orange peel or coriander for me.  As the first beer hunt beer it gets a 5/10.

Prodigal Sun.  Pear drops! The Sainsbury's website (link above) says this is a blonde beer. No its not. The bottle accurately describes this as a "light amber beer". I am a fan of WilliamsBros. Their March of the Penguins (stout) is great and their Caesar Augustus was a winner of the hunt last year. Their Profanity Stout was also excellent but, alas, not many customers of Sainsbury drink stout.

I think this is a good bottled beer.  The ABV is 4.1% and at that level its quite a challenge to get a bottled beer with a bit of body and flavour. It may be a bit too fizzy (actually a character that Penguin has also picked up).  Its a shame. Point knocked off.  Citrus? No.  Pear drops I sware. 7/10

WINNER PRODIGAL SUN

Is Beer Glassware Important?

ThisIsLeicestershire has an article about women and younger drinkers getting a taste for real ale.

The main picture (above) is of a young lady drinking a pint from a good old-fashioned dimpled jug. My question is whether anybody cares about the glassware that is used today.

There are many designs of beer glassware around and with the increasing popularity of stronger craft kegged and real ales is it not time to provide punters with some attractive alternative glassware?

There are fluted glasses, goblets and chalices, tuplips and all sorts of different designs.

Please enter your poll selections in the main blog window.

Why Mafia II Nearly Killed Me

It was the monitor's fault - a massive 20inch hulking monster that nearly gave me a hernia. Ok, so I could probably buy a decent 22inch flat screen monitor for under £100 (can I? I haven't even looked) but is it worth it if my PC gaming life is coming to an end?

The original Mafia (screenshot left) had a really nice feel about it and the driving especially was great fun and SO much better (IMHO) than the arcadey driving style of the GTA games. And so I thought that Mafia II would be worth a look.

So a demo arrived the other day (screenshot to the left) and I eagerly downloaded it through the very competent Steam. As is fairly typical with PC games, it ran but my TV just displayed a black screen. The game was running (I could hear it in the background). So I guessed the TV (a new Panny) couldn't hack it. It was easier (so I thought) to move my old monitor to where my PC is now. And that's when I nearly got a hernia. But the game worked fine. In fact a very respectable 50fps for a lowly Pentium overclocked to 3GHz and with a 2 year old ATI HD4800 graphics card, all running through the ancient XP. (Note:- framerate was only 40fps through Vista).

So the game played great, with demo-time-hacked et al and with what looks like a great driving engine. But will I buy the full game? Probably not; unless I move my PC back to where it belongs (rather than being next to the TV) OR I shell out some dosh for a decent monitor...

GBBF Friday Competition - Name these 9 Bottled Beers

This competition is for 1 person to win the following 2 tickets for Friday (6th August) at the GBBF. The tickets are 1x FRIDAY NON-MEMBER and 1x FRIDAY 1:30 TASTING NON-MEMBER. Please read ALL of the rules.

Rules:-
1. Accurately name the breweries who make the 9 pictured beers.
2. Accurately name the 9 pictured beers. If the name is preceeded by the brewery name you don't have to include the brewery name. If a beer name is an abbreviation, I want the abbreviation.
3. As a tie breaker you must tell me the total (IE cumulative) ABV of the 9 pictured beers. I know some of these beers will have a varying ABV. The total I want is for the 9 beers that I have in my posession.
4. My decision is final; no correspondence will be entered into; if I die before the competition closes there is no prize...etc...etc...etc
5. Email your entry to musicrabbie@googlemail.com; please include name,address,telephone and/or mobile numbers (these details will be deleted from my computer after the winner has been selected and contacted)
6. One entry per person and no duplicate sender email addresses will be allowed (sorry!); if multiple entries are sent I will keep the first one and bin the rest
7. CLOSING DATE/TIME IS THURSDAY 5th AUGUST 08:59 BST. Any entries received after that time (as displayed by the "date" attribute of the received email) will be binned; no allowance will be made by me for slow email systems etc...etc...
8. Winner to be notified on Thursday when we will arrange prize handover; winner will also be identified in the blog.

Good luck!