Cruel Britannia

So I'm a pretty big fan of Britain. I spent two years of my life in the UK, and I enjoy a good pint of English bitter on a hot day. Or a cold day. Or really any day. Personal favorite favourite: Morland's Old Speckled Hen. Delicious stuff, and brewed not far from the dreaming spires I called home. But that's another beer for another post.

Which was why I was so excited about two British beers I was able to find in my local beer establishment, and why I was ultimately so let down by them.

First up, Wells' Bombardier. This poured a very promising ruddy amber, with a creamy off-white head with a decent staying power. From the looks of it, a good start.

Given the gorgeous look of this beer in the glass, I really expected better.

However, there was really no aroma to speak of. Granted, I poured the beer all the way to the top of the pint, so the glass was unable to trap any of the aromas. Clearly, I had to empty some space at the top of the glass by imbibing some of the liquid therein. Sadly, even the first sip was weak, a little bready and yeasty, but without the characteristic burnt caramel bite that I expect from a traditional English bitter. Additional attempts to coax an aroma out of the glass were roundly unsuccessful, and the mouthfeel got thinner and thinner as I continued to drink. It even developed, by the end of the bottle, a faint sourness, which was very out of place, and overall, the beer felt and tasted exceptionally watery.

Incidentally, I've provided the link to the Bombardier website, in case you are so interested. I cannot, however, in good conscience recommend clicking on it, however, as the site itself is designed very poorly, and the user experience assaults the sensibilities. Blah.

I also held out some promise for the Fuller's Vintage Ale 2009. Fuller's is the brewery of one of my favorite beers: London Pride, which is a wonderfully well-balanced session beer, as well as the previously and very well-reviewed London Porter, so I had very high hopes for the Vintage 2009. Sadly, this was also not to be.

Unlike the aforementioned watery mess of the Bombardier, the Vintage 2009 was awash in heavy flavors and aromas. The aroma was of sweet fruit, toffee, and candy, and the flavor was about the same, but with a kick of alcohol spiciness.

A spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.

Unless the medicine is already as sweet as this stuff.

The pour was a deep amber, with a beautiful fluffy head that concentrated the aromas of cherries and, perhaps, cotton candy (or at least, severe amounts of sugar). The carbonation was pleasant and kept the sip interesting, but the flavor was severely disappointing. Instead of a molasses (treacle?) complexity that combines both bitter and sweet, this smacked of pure cane sugar. There were some banana esters that managed to escape being drowned out by the heavy sugar content. Instead of hops, the flavor of raw alcohol punctuated each sip, making for a truly bizarre counterpoint between cloying sweet and harsh spice. In the end, however, the syrupy sweetness of the beer won out and became very unpleasant, making the bottle a chore to finish.

It's almost enough to make me take up arms in revolution.

Barrington Brewery, aka Berkshire Mountain Brewery

I'm in Western Massachusetts for the July 4th holiday, and have had the great pleasure of sampling (read: drinking) quite a wide variety of excellent beers. Now, yesterday was a bit rainy and gross outside, though I highly recommend the Berkshire Botanical Garden, even on a rainy day. As my girlfriend put it, "rain is really nice; it's just too bad it's so wet."

This is a small portion of the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. Well worth the admission fee and the time.

Of course, after an afternoon of traipsing around the botanical gardens, and other "aggressively quaint" towns in Western MA, it was a delight to come across the Barrington Brewery & Restaurant, just outside Great Barrington, MA. I've seen their beers in stores here before, but I have to say, I'm really confused by their branding. The label on the ESB I bought clearly says Berkshire Mountain Brewery. And they seem totally OK with this discrepancy - both appear on the aforementioned website. Weird.

Berkshire Mountain Brewers. Or is it?

The label, if I may, also shows a beer and a sun behind it - a clear advertisement of their status as the first brewery on the east coast to go 100% solar to heat the water for their beer. It's an admirable step, and I commend them for it. If only their beers weren't quite so unbalanced.

I purchased an ESB and had it with dinner two nights ago. It had a nice copper color with a fluffy head that stuck around a lot. It didn't, however, have much of an aroma at all. Flavor was nice and refreshing at first, with a great breadiness on the front of each sip. On the back end, though, it was very bitter, and the bitter and sour notes obliterated all else on the palate. After a glass of it, though (a nice 22 oz. bottle has a little under two glasses), the beer got more beery tasting, and I started to pick up a lot more pine hops and some (still quite muted) citrus. As a result, I kind of thought maybe it was just me, or just that particular beer.

So when we drove by the Barrington Brewery & Restaurant, I wanted to go in to try out their beers on tap - maybe the beers just open up better when they haven't been stuffed into a bottle? I ordered the Ice Glen IPA, and found it very refreshing, but similarly one-note to the ESB. It was aggressively bitter and very floral. While I might have detected some malt sweetness that might have come from their roasting of the grain (the beer was a very attractive copper color), the bitterness really got in the way.

Barrington Brewery & Restaurant. Ice Glen IPA, straight from the tap. I wish my phone took better photos.

The head did leave a really nice lacing on the glass that I found very attractive. Unfortunately, the IPA didn't end up opening up like the ESB, which became a little more piney toward the end.

I always like to see a little bit of lacing on the glass. That's purty.

My girlfriend, on the other hand, had a try of the Blackbear [sic.] Stout, which poured jet black and obscured the black lettering on her pint glass. It had some wonderful dark-roast coffee aromas, which was promising. The first thing that hits is that roasted malt and bitter chocolate flavor - it's all of the complexity of deep chocolate and coffee and really burnt caramel, which is pretty amazing given that they were able to tamp down a lot of the traditional malt sweetness that usually makes beers of this color very syrupy and cloying. Unfortunately, what I didn't like about this beer was a very thin mouthfeel - usually something like this just feels a little more substantial in the mouth, maybe a little creamier, and I wasn't getting it.

Is it Barrington Bresery or Berkshire Mountain Brewery?

Is it Black Bear Stout or Blackbear Stout?

Of the three, I would drink the stout again, and I'm still eager to go back and try their other beers. I will say this: they both went really well with the mozzarella sticks we ordered, and the bar itself is very rustic. The bartendrix was smiley and efficient, and commanded authority in the room. And when a passer-through asked if she had any wheat beers, she smiled and said "no, but I can put a slice of lemon in yours, if that'll make you feel better." Now that's someone I want pouring my beer.