After last week’s lager love-in, today I’m showing a little affection for the world of ale. No longer just the preserve of the weirdy beardy bunch, it has once again regained its status as the most egalitarian of drinks. Don’t all raise a sceptical eyebrow at once, because there really is the most incredible array of brews now out there. Yes, it can be delivered to your door or picked off a supermarket shelf, but I’d urge you to seek out a local bottle shop or brewery tap room yourself, where you will get great advice and be supporting a local business.
For those of a sweet disposition, this is a golden time of brewing, with increasingly odd things being added to ales: Tiny Rebel’s Stay Puft Marshmallow Porter (£2.75 for 300ml masterofmalt.com, 5.2%), say, is like drinking an Oreo wrapped around a melted marshmallow, while Wild Beer Co’s Millionaire (£2.19 for 330ml Waitrose, 4.7%) is inspired by the combination of coffee and the caramel, chocolate and biscuit in the shortbread of that name.
If fruit is more to your taste, try North End’s Saison de Nectar (£3.05 for 330ml beerhawk.co.uk, 5%), a mango and peach, saison-style beer that has a lovely, tropical pop on the nose, a kind of canned fruit cocktail flavour and a super-dry, refreshing finish (saison, incidentally, means “season”, and harks back to when beer formed part of farm workers’ pay, and was made using most anything fermentable to hand). Or perhaps you’d prefer a whopping whack of berry sourness in the form of Mikkeller’s Hallo Ich Bin Berliner Weisse Raspberry (£4.10 for 500ml beergonzo.co.uk, 3.7%).
One of the UK’s most popular ales is an easy-drinking ale, be that a traditional English style (AKA bitter) such as Fuller’s London Pride (£1.85 for 500ml Sainsbury’s, 4.7%), full of toast and marmalade flavours, or an exotically hopped, pale offering such as the grapefruit-scented Oakham Citra (£1.75 for 500ml Morrisons, 4.6%), with its bitey bitterness and tongue-clacking dryness.
And then there’s the seriously dark side, especially if you’re a spirit lover. Bourbon buffs should look no farther than Goose Island Bourbon County Stout (£20 for 500ml beerhawk.co.uk, 14.7%), a deep, viscous riot of chocolate, coffee, bourbon and oak, all wrapped up in a booming abv. And if you’re of a Scotch persuasion, there’s Orkney Brewery’s Dark Island Reserve (£8.72 for 330ml beersofeurope.co.uk, 10%), with its peaty, smoky edge and sweet pear notes overlaying appley, caramel beer – that’s a real favourite with a hunk of blue cheese.
Four wildly different ale styles to try
Broken Dream
£2.20 (330ml) sirencraftbrew.com, 6.5%.
A breakfast stout to wake up the tastebuds.
Depeach Mode
£4.30 (440ml) brewyork.co.uk, 6%.
Pale ale that’s like peach melba ice-cream in beer form.
Northern Monk Striding Edge
£2.50 (440ml) Waitrose, 2.8%.
Stupendous session beer with soft, lemon and mandarin notes.
Harviestoun Ola Dubh 12yr
£5.35 (330ml) beermerchants.com, 10.5%.
Aged in Highland Park whisky barrels, this chicory and chocolate-laden brew is almost like a chocolate liqueur, perfect with a roaring fire.
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