Baladin started out as a pub back in the ’80s, with Birreria Le Baladin opening in Piozzo near Turin in February 1986. Owner Teo Musso was born in the area and after a decade of selling other people’s beer converted the bar into a brewpub and started producing his own in 1996. They kicked off with a Blond and Amber, but by half way through 1997 had a few more beers on regular rotation, including Isaac. They’ve since expanded a number of times, now running a number of bars as well as a much larger brewery than the original brewpub, producing a large number of beers and exporting them around the world. They’ve even got a 3 year old, oak aged, distilled beer spirit…

Teo Musso is a name that I’d heard before and a little bit of poking online reminded me where – other than being one of the most influential Italian brewers and just generally a pioneer of craft beer making, he is the Te- part of Teku, a glass designed to be the ISO wine glass equivalent for the analysis of craft beer. The -ku is Kuaska (aka Lorenzo Dabove), the Italian beer expert who, as one of the Bières sans Frontières organisers, is probably behind the excellent selection of beers from his homeland appearing at the GBBF. In classic sods law fashion I didn’t use one of my Tekus to try the beer. Fail.

Not a Teku

Named in honour of Teo’s son, Isaac was the first in their line of Birra Speziate – spiced beer. The spice in question is coriander, with the addition of Sicilian Oranges also listed on the label. They even have an ‘explanatory’ video up on YouTube for the beer – expect gratuitous Teku, the chopping of mozzarella with an axe, chickens and the substitution of beer for a steering wheel. I think the message is ‘Isaac pairs well with mozzarella’. Maybe.

It poured quite flat, and on the nose I got the coriander, along with some buttered toast and nutmeg-led ground spice. To taste it was very soft and sweet, with the buttered toast and coriander from the nose joined by milky Cinnamon Grahams and some dried orange peel. On the finish there was a light touch of green hop and bitter citrus peel, balancing lingering coriander and butter, with a touch of sweet orange.

All in all a light and refreshing white beer which I suspect could be drunk in quantity on a warm afternoon without realising it. (Un)fortunately I only had a 25cl bottle, so it’s back to hoovering…

Birrificio Le Baladin Isaac
Spiced white beer, 5%. ~£3 for a 25cl bottle at the GBBF

I don’t do much travelling through airports these days, but a recent jaunt up to Scotland for work started with an early morning flight to Edinburgh and a brief stop in World of Whiskies in Heathrow netted me a bottle of the Laphroaig QA Cask. It’s a very recent release, having been introduced at the beginning of April, and I wasn’t sure if it would have arrived yet. Fortunately it had, although recently enough that the guy behind the till in the airport asked me if I’d tried it, as they’d not received any tasting stock yet and hadn’t been able to taste it themselves.

It’s a break from the last few releases, as the Quarter Cask, Triple Wood and PX have all had a common thread – maturation in bourbon casks, followed by a finish in quarter casks and then, in the case of the last two, a further finish in sherry casks. I’ve always assumed that based on the description of ‘a quarter the size of a normal cask’ a quarter cask would be ~50 litres, 1/4 of a bourbon barrel, or ~60 litres, 1/4 of a hogshead, but according to Whisky Science and an eyewitness report from Oliver Klimek, who last year visited the Speyside Cooperage where they make them, these would be 125 litre casks, a quarter of a butt. I’ve asked the Laphroaig Twitter accounts for clarification…

The QA Cask is instead matured in ex-bourbon casks and then finished in new, uncharred American oak casks – the QA being an abbreviation of Quercus Alba, the latin name for American oak and the, rather generic, term used to referred to wood from North America. How long the finishing period is unstated, but they use the term ‘double matured’ on the label, which suggests a decent amount of time. Although as there is no age statement on the bottle exactly what that means is difficult to say in terms of months or years.

That lack of information about time is another thread running through all of the recent Laphroaig releases, with Quarter Cask, Triple Wood and PX all being No Age Statement releases, and all of them matured in ways to allow greater wood influence with a smaller amount of time in the cask. The smaller quarter casks used as the second stage of maturation in those three give a greater spirit/wood ratio (a 30% increase according their website), allowing the oak to do some of its magic quicker. The maturation process is a bit more complicated than that, with m’colleague Tim happy to talk about tertiary maturation and the effects of greater time in wood with little prompting, but it does give some more ‘mature’ flavours that would take longer to develop without the smaller casks.

The QA Cask takes a slightly different approach, swapping the small cask for one made of new oak, rather than ‘used at least once’ wood of the quarter casks. With no whisky having touched the wood before it contains a lot more flavour compounds and thus transfers them to the whisky much more readily than in a cask which has already had many of them extracted by a previous fill. However, they are also uncharred casks and the charring process helps to ‘activate’ the wood, as well as creating a layer of char that acts a bit like a Brita filter as the spirit passes back and forth into the staves. This lack of activation should mean that the casks don’t give up their flavour compounds quite as readily as a charred equivalent, so things should be more restrained than in many other virgin oak matured whiskies.

So, the QA casks should give more woody flavours more quickly, although they will be different flavours to that found in whisky not matured in virgin oak, and will have less of the ‘purification’ that you get with a charred stave. In short – lots of variables. But what does it taste like?

Nose: Icing sugar sweetness backed up by iodine and brine. Some black rubber, warm leather and gravelly minerality hide underneath the sweetness.

Palate: Sweet and syrupy, with candied ginger, hints of black rubber, light coal smoke, bitter charcoal, sweet apple and salted caramel.

Finish: Coal stoves and floral syrup. Lingering sweetness slowly develops into soft woodiness.

It’s a bit softer and both less medicinal and punchy than the regular 10 year old. When I first tried it I found it a little too focused on new wood, but after a second taste it’s much more balanced and restrained than other whiskies aged in virgin oak that I’ve tried. It’s a thick and sweet Laphroaig, toned down from what you might expect but still a nice dram – I’d put this under the heading of ‘quaffing whisky’ rather than anything more complex.

…and for those who are a bit geeky about such things, it looks like they’re in the middle of a packaging update: the stopper (as seen above) now shows a still rather than the founding date, and both the tube and label differ from the design of the Triple Wood and PX, taking on the simpler design of the 10 year old. The next new addition to the Travel Retail line-up, An Cuan Mor (The Great Harbour, from my searching of Scots dictionaries online), will be appearing later in the year, which should show us how the design will evolve.

Update: The packaging is changing. From the pre-Feis Ile Friends of Laphroaig newsletter:

Over the years each expression has had a slightly different packaging design so it has all got a little messy. We have now reworked them back into one family design. It is not a huge change- as you would expect. But the whole family looks a lot smarter now I think. Of course we researched these changes thoroughly with many Friends of Laphroaig first to make sure you liked it. So a big thanks to all of you who participated. If you cannot wait, you can see the new 10 year old design here. I hope you like it.

Laphroaig QA Cask
Islay Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 40%. ~£45/€55 in Travel Retail.

It seems that more people are realising that interesting Italian beer isn’t a myth and the fridge on the Bières san Frontiéres stand was pillaged early. I have a vague memory of the friendly Italian guy who talked me through the remaining beers saying something about the AMA Bionda being a collaboration, but I may have been slightly tipsy at the time. However, there was a slight strumming of recognition as I read more about the beer.

AMA Bionda is brewed by Birra Amarcord at their brewery in Apecchio, a small town about halfway up the calf of the boot of Italy and not too far to the south of the tiny country of San Marino. They moved to Apecchio in 2008 having started out in the 1990s in Rimini, a town on the coast to the north on the other side of San Marino. They named the business after Fellini’s film of the same name, which is based in Rimini.

I’ve not seen any of their other beers in the UK but it seems that a few of them have got as far as the USA thanks to the Brooklyn Brewery, who are partly responsible for the AMA Bionda. Amarcord got to know Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver and worked with him to produce the AMA range, three bottle conditioned beers to compliment Italian food – Bionda, Bruna and Mora. Bruna is a medium dark 6.5% beer intended for main courses and Mora is a dark 9% beast designed to pair with desserts. This leaves Bionda as the lightest beer of the bunch, paired with seafood, starters and light pasta dishes.

My comment about it being pretty is backed up by actual experts. The AMA logo was designed by Milton Glaser, better known for creating the I ♥ NY logo that you can find adorning almost every tourist bought t-shirt, hat, bag, scarf and pair of underpants that comes out of New York City. While I should dislike him for that, and the fact that a local variant is now plastered on every tat selling cart in central London, I will forgive him thanks to the AMA logo. That and a secret desire to wear a I ♥ NY hat.

In regular Italian craft beer fashion there is a list of details on the bottle:

• 14 degrees Plato
• Bitterness: 18 IBU
• Malt: Pale Ale, Pilsner and Special Aromatic
• Hops: Perle and Mittelfrüher
• Flavouring: Orange blossom honey
• High Fermentation (ale style rather than lager style, from what I can find – either top fermented or high temperature…)

So, AMA Bionda is a honied ale with a mix of lighter and full bodied malts, and some lightly spicy, medium alpha acid hops. Sounds interesting:

Nose: Dry and grainy with a touch of crystallised honey sweetness

Palate: Thick and sweet, with lots of malty grain, nutmeg spiciness, a touch of sweet butter, syrup and floral honey, with some green hop bitterness coming in towards the end.

Finish: Sweetcorn and sweet oil, with a pleasant green bitterness that lessens as the beer warms

When I first started drinking it, just out of the fridge, I wasn’t too keen – the nose was quite dead and had more than a hint of boring tinned lager to it. The taste was better, but as it warmed up it picked up more complexity, with the floral tones of the honey coming through. However as the beer sat in the glass and got a bit warmer it lost a lot of its bitterness while getting a bit cloying. So, it’s worth following the ‘serve at 6-8ºC’ instructions and not a good idea to get distracted reading about San Marino when you’re meant to be drinking a beer…

Amarcord AMA Bionda
Belgian Style Ale (according to the internet), 6%. ~£4 for a 355ml bottle if my drunken memory is not failing me too badly

Glen Garioch 1995 Batch 10 – 1995 is quite a special year for Glen Garioch, as it was the year they closed for 18 months, shortly after MBD was acquired by Suntory. Before the closure they peated barley to 8-10ppm in their own onsite maltings (with a history of higher peating levels in the 1970s and 1980s) but after reopening in 1997 they switched to the current choice of unpeated barley. As such, this is their youngest whisky to have a potential for a whisp of smokiness…

It’s oily and sharp on the nose to start, with a touch of sweetness and an edge of board marker ‘fruity’ acetone behind. That burns off quite quickly to reveal sweet fudge, poached apple, cinnamon, vanilla cream and digestive biscuits. To taste it has a slab of sour wood with a light smokiness at the back, with buttery oil, cinnamon heat, sour apple, gummi fruit chews and more biscuity grain up front. It finishes fruity, with lots of freshly cut apple skin, more fruity gummi, damp wood and a touch of coal bitterness. Twitter host and MBD Brand Ambassador Gordon Dundas said:

If you have not added water, add a couple of drops and watch this change #Lovefirstfill

April 2, 2013 7:19 pm via Twitter for iPadReplyRetweetFavorite

@gdundas

Gordon Dundas

…and I dutifully followed the instructions. The nose goes much more vanilla heavy with water, going towards vanilla and caramel ice cream, with a touch of cinder toffee burniness underneath. To taste, the bitter wood comes much more to the front, along with the apple and gummi fruit. It wasn’t really for me – it’s got a bit more fake fruitiness than I like, and the smoke and wood at the end makes it all a bit dry for me.

Auchentoshan Valinch 2012 – The second release of this cask strength whisky from Auchentoshan. I’ve been sceptical about the Valinch in the past, but I’ve been coming around to it more recently. I’m still not a fan of the rest of the regular Auchentoshan range, with a recent dram of Three Wood at the Birmingham Whisky Festival reminding me why I didn’t like it, but the previous edition stuck out as a decent youthful whisky that could take a good splash of water.

On the nose there’s a lot of peppery spirit, with butter, ground spice, cox’s apples, liquorice syrup, oil, wax and a floral note at the back. To taste neat it’s still quite young with sharp apple, underdeveloped spirit, citrus oil, cinnamon spiciness and some sour wood, finishing with dusty wood and a touch of dessicated apple skin – dry but lightly fruity. Water helps, bringing out cream on the nose, and cream, apple, grain and hazelnuts (with their shells) on the palate – it still tastes young, but without the heat from the alcohol you can taste that it’s clean spirit. I’m going off this again, I think my sherry-head is coming back, but it’s a good whisky for dosing with a slug of water – I see it as a mizuwari favourite in the summer.

Auchentoshan 1979 Olosoro Sherry – This one has sat on the side since the end of last year, waiting for a bottle to arrive at work to give me an excuse to write some tasting notes. However, I just had a check assuming that I’d missed it, and it seems we didn’t get any. Sadface. I found a few retailers with bottles, but it doesn’t seem to like appearing in Google searches and there aren’t many around – it was s a limited release of 1000. Anyways, according to the generally reliable CLASS Magazine it was distilled on October 22nd 1979 and matured in first fill sherry butts.

On the nose it has young ferns, rich sweet port, Luxardo cherries, cherry jam, squirty Mr Sheen, old tables polished with the aforementioned cleaning spray, buttery-pastried eccles cakes, chopped mixed nuts and Chinese five spice. After leaving it a while in the glass a hint of more savoury celery salt appears behind the fruitiness. To taste it is slightly soapy, with more of the celery savouriness, Good Old Wood, spiced custard, lots of stewed raisins and a sour woody edge. It finishes spicily, with dark wood, sweet nutmeg and some green apple sourness. A drop of water softens the nose into sweet spiced cream and sweetens up the palate to almost syrupy levels, although the sour wood still lingers in the background. An annoying dram this – I love the nose, but am not a fan of the palate. It’s the oldest Auchentoshan that I’ve tried and the combination of triple distilled spirit and first fill casks has imparted a lot of flavour to the whisky, without making it too heavy, which is rather impressive. That said, it’s on the edge of ‘too woody’ for me and it might be a tad too far for some.

Glen Garioch 1995
Highland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 55.4%. ~£50

Auchentoshan Valinch 2012
Lowland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 57.2%. ~£40

Auchentoshan 1979 Oloroso
Lowland Single Malt Scotch Whisky, 50.5%. RRP £350

Joel and Neil are enterprising chaps and along with the various bits of consultancy and writing that they do around the whisky industry they’ve been keeping an eye out for interesting whiskies and planning their ongoing project – bottling whiskies from A to Z. A was for Arran, B for Benriach and C has now been revealed - Cutty Sark.

The Cutty Sark blend was invented back in 1923, in the offices of Berry Brothers and Rudd, with the intention of creating something that was more styled towards being an aperitif. Since then their fortunes have risen and fallen, with the repeal of prohibition in the USA creating a market for them to expand into (not that they were entirely unknown even during those years…), while home sales have declined, leading them to be less known in the UK than abroad.

However, the official birthday of Cutty is marked as March 23rd 1923, making last Saturday the 90th birthday of the whisky. As the brand owners weren’t making a big thing of it at the time Joel and Neil decided to grab hold of the idea. Their whisky is bottled, unusually for Cutty Sark, at quite a high strength – 51.4% abv, 90 proof in old money. There are only 500 bottles of it as well, which while a larger outturn than their previous bottlings is still a tiny release for Cutty, who produce about 5.5 million bottles per year, with Neil commenting that 500 bottles is probably the breakage allowance for a usual shipment. This drop to a smaller batch meant that it was a bit more of a challenge to create, with part casks being used rather than the regular larger batch method of dumping a large number of casks at the same time to create the flavour profile required.

Neil and Joel worked with Cutty Sark master blender Kirsteen Campbell to put the blend together, focusing on first fill bourbon casks and using the blend’s regular touchstone malts of Macallan, Highland Park and Glenrothes, all owned by Cutty owners Edrington, as well as North British grain and a touch of smoky whisky to add a touch of difference to the usually unpeated Cutty Sark style. After blending it was reracked into a sherry butt to marry for a few weeks ready for bottling earlier this month.

Cutty hasn’t had a lot of love in the UK until recent times, other than the occasional window display in Berry Brothers & Rudd, but with Kirsteen’s appointment as master blender they’ve started putting in a bit more of an effort. Along with their high-end Tam O’Shanter bottling (that I loved) and their alternative to regular yellow label, Storm (which I didn’t), they’ve also got a Prohibition Edition coming out to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the 18th amendment, an unspecified ‘ground breaking PR event’ in the autumn and £20m of investment over the next five years in an effort to relaunch Cutty in the UK. In the meantime, here’s a video of a yellow seaplane. It’s something to do with ‘flying the brand back home’, but I don’t really care – I just love seaplanes:

In expected fashion, the launch of the whisky was a slightly random affair, with Captains (I assume from their hats and matching striped shirts) Ridley and Harrison meeting us Edgware Road tube station with an iPad full of sea shanties, a tea chest of Cutty Sark bags, a map showing that the Circle Line is the shape of a bottle lying on its side and a Travelcard for each of us. A tube journey of legend was had, with the four stops before we got to Farringdon all shown to have relevance in some way to the whisky industry. Along with the tales of continental brewers and their bread and butter based stills, a distiller whose first name was Euston and the indentured bog baby peat cutters of Kings Cross, there were also more sea shanties and a sou’wester. As is The Law on the tube, we were entirely ignored by everyone else in the carriage. Keep calm and carry on, Londoners.

When we reached our destination (home of the Scotch Malt Whisky Society, extant in the area for hundreds of years, we were told) a small fleet of cabs whisked us around the corner to tiny hole in the wall bar Casita, for some cocktails and a taste or three of their whisky:

Nose: Lemon meringue pie with a buttery (biscuit) base, cold vanilla custard, a tickle of sweet sherry fruit, spiced and soured butter, green apple and a touch of nutmeg.

Taste: A kick of boozy heat up front (you can taste the 51.4%), white pepper spice, young spirit, sweet and sour apples, spicy sponge cake with raisins, and a touch of cream.

Finish: Lemon zest, creamy vanilla and apple skin.

It’s quite easy to say what this is not: it’s not a huge dram, it’s not smoky, it’s not particularly old and it’s not going to change the world. It is light, creamy, lightly sherried and a bit fighty thanks to its cask strength nature. It is definitely a Cutty style whisky, I can see it working well in warmer times with a spot of cold water or an ice cube, and it stands up well in cocktails, with the extra punch of the strength helping it to avoid getting hidden behind other flavours. All in all a decent first blend from the Caskstrength boys, a continuation of the Cutty Sark style and a suitable entry for C in the A-Z. Now the speculation into dram D begins…

Cask Strength and Carry On Cutty Sark
Blended Scotch Whisky, 54.1%. £34.95

Cans slightly beaten up, as is tradition

Using my ‘incredible talent’ with the Polish language I have translated the name - Żubr is the Polish bison that appears on the can, which I guessed from Żubrówka’s bison grass infused vodka. The beer is brewed by SABMiller through their Kompania Piwowarska subsidiary. They picked up the brand when they bought the Białystok based Dojlidy Brewery in 2003 and now brew Żubr there as well as in their other two Polish breweries. It’s the second biggest selling beer in Poland, coming in behind Piwowarska’s Tyskie, and has popped up in the UK despite, I suspect from the lack of English on the cans, not being imported ‘officially’.

As is right and proper, their TV advertising involves animated buffalo. Humming…

I started off with the Classic. It poured initially quite lively, but that quickly disappeared leaving a a flat amber beer with a speckling of head and only a little bit of fizz. On the nose it was pretty good, with a nice bitter hoppiness, but on the palate it quickly fell down – nasty minerality, not a lot of anything else apart from CO2 sourness from the remaining bubbles and a slice of sweet graininess. Fortunately the finish was quick and left nothing but a strangely buttery note that hung around for a little while. While this can doesn’t have any english on it, other than the words ‘Premium Quality’, it does have ingredients lists in a stack of eastern European languages (and, naturally, Japanese) and something about the Czech Republic, which makes me think this is a lower strength export version of Żubr, generally circulated around the former Soviet states. And Japan…

The regular Żubr poured a lot more lively than the Classic, and while the head collapsed quickly it still had enough fizz and left some lacing on the glass. On the nose it was similar to the classic, but had more maltiness and a touch of sweetcorn, as well as a bit of weight from the extra booze – it comes in at 6%. In the mouth it has a bit more body thanks to the higher alcohol, and has a nice balance of hop bitterness and dry malt – oatcakes, green hop and a touch of corn again. It sits around on the finish, with a decent sweet/bitter balance and a touch of corn sweetness. A decent quaffing lager that has definitely replaced Lech as my number two Polish can of choice. As yet the powerhouse that is Żywiec sits happily at the top of the league table, despite my local shops no longer carrying it…

Żubr Classic
Polish lager, 4.1%. £1 a can

Żubr
Polish lager, 6%. £1 a can

Last week there was talk in the Whisky Bloggers Facebook group about grain, yeast and their effect on the flavour of whisky, with my opinion being that part of the skill of the brewer is using the tools that they have to create a consistently flavoured wash, so that the new make spirit is similarly consistent and distillery character can continue – ie. barley and grain do make a difference but brewers tweak the process to create an ongoing flavour profile. However, in the beer world there is no distillation and maturation step, with grain and yeast choices being made much closer to the final finished project. And then, as if by magic, a blog post from BrewDog showed up trumpeting that they’d have the latest run of Mikkeller’s Yeast Series in their bars over the weekend – a range of beers only differing in what yeast was being used.

Of course, it’s not quite that easy, different yeasts like to ferment at different at temperatures and speeds, but other than that everything was kept the same to as to produce six pale ales with the same ABV but differing flavours. The six yeasts in question were: Lager, British Ale, American Ale,  Saison, Brettanomyces Bruxellensis and Brettanomyces Lambicus.

First up was the Lager yeast, which as my first beer of the day I used as a baseline for flavour. It was a straight down the line hoppy ale, with spice, sour fruit, a bit of ginger down the middle and a lingering syrupy sweetness. It had quite a lot of green hop sourness and a touch of ginger nut biscuits. A bit too hoppy to be a beer that I’d want to drink much of.

Next was the English Ale, which was slightly hazy. It was softer in flavour than the Lager, with orange peel, ginger and less green hop. The lack of greenness revealed more spice and malt, with a touch of spiced spongecake helping to balance the still high levels of bitterness. The touchstone flavour was orange peel – bitter oranges with a touch of pith. All in all not that much different to the Lager.

Third was the American Ale, the point at which the beers started to rapidly diverge. It was stacked with fruit and also veered towards a more Belgian ale flavour than the traditionally hoppy American IPA side of things. It had a rich yeasty flavour at the back along with pineapple, green mango, some pungent cidery apples and some spiced syrup – cinnamon-ish. Very different from the first two.

Next was the Saison, which poured rather flat and headless in comparison to the others, which all had quite nice lacing. It had spicy vanilla up front, along with sweet apple (almost tarte tatin-like) and lots of malt in the middle. It finished slightly sour with a hit of sweetness that reminded me of R Whites lemonade, back in the days before they used sweetener in it. A progression from the American Ale, with loads more spice.

The last two beers both used Brettanomyces yeasts, aka Brett. They’re often thought of as creators of off-flavours, but are also responsible for the distinctive character of many wines and beers, especially spontaneously fermented ones such as Lambics. Mainly they’re known as wild yeasts, ‘used’ by leaving wort in open vats and waiting for the yeast to appear on its own. From my little bits of reading around they’re also often used as a second yeast, with wort sometimes having other yeast added to start with and then left with a hope of having the local form of brett infect the brew, and homebrewers usually use them in a secondary fermentation, where fermentation has been started with another yeast before the brew is transferred to a new container without sediment and fermentation continues after pitching some new yeast. So, in short, using brett like a normal beer yeast doesn’t seem to be particularly usual.

My penultimate beer was Bruxellensis, named for the Brussels region that it was once native to. Reading around a bit shows that while this yeast is behind a lot of the typical flavours found in Gueuze and other Lambic beers, it’s also a bit of a pain. It has a high tolerance to alcohol, kills other yeasts that might be around and can impart funky flavours to beer that wasn’t meant to be infected with it. However, that all makes great lambic beer, so I’ll forgive it. The beer made using the Bruxellensis was even fruitier than the American Ale, stacked full of Ribena cordial blackcurrants, sweet orange and cidery apples, ones that have been in a bucket too long and have started becoming cider all on their own. There were hints of Gueuze sourness and a touch of balsamic vinegar – the most over the top and different of the series.

My last beer was the Lambicus, and from its name I assumed that this would be the monster of the lot. However, that wasn’t the case – the beer was probably the most restrained of the whole lot. There was some light fruitiness, a bit of the American Ale tropical fruit as well as the apples and ribena of the Bruxellensis, savoury maltiness in the middle and a light, sweet spice running through. The hop bitterness was back up towards the English Ale end of things and the finish was pleasantly bitter. A weird mix of all of the rest of the beers or a sign of my palate being entirely jaded after five other tasters? I was wondering if it was a sign that using a commercial Lambicus rather than doing a slow secondary fermentation in big open vats led to a reduced impact on the flavour, but from a read around it seems that this is normally described as a high intensity brett. Quite strange, unless I was handed them in the wrong order…

So, as expected the yeast does have a massive impact on the flavour of a beer. I don’t know quite how much of this flavour variation would be passed on to new make spirit if the above beers were distilled, but I’m suspecting it’s a lot. While finding a distilled version of the Mikkeller Yeast Series is currently impossible, the closest we can get is the Four Roses bourbons, with their ten yeast/mashbill combos, and from those alone it seems that there can be a huge differences (although where those differences come from is a matter for debate). One for further study…

Mikkeller Yeast Series 2.0
Pale Ale, 6.4%. £8.40 for a flight of 4×1/3rd pints in selected BrewDog bars, €210 for all 6 in bottles from Mikkeller’s webshop, and similarly scarily priced in BrewDog’s shop soon.

Collingwood - A whisky that picked up a silver medal at the Canadian Whisky Awards in 2012 and a product of the Brown Forman stable, with Jack Daniel’s master distiller Chris Morris behind the production. It’s USP is that at some point during the maturation point it is ‘mellowed’ with maple wood – maple barrels leak rather badly so I expect it won’t have spent too much time in them. We’d sold out of it at work by the time the awards were announced (it’s packaged in a rather nice ‘traveller bottle’ that seems to have a pulled in some interest) and I thought I’d better have a taste.

On the nose it had old skool Wham Bars, the rectangular lollipops I used to get from the chemists in the 1980s, blackcurrant Chewitts and pungent honey. To taste it had rye spice – mint, medicine and lots of root beer. It also had dark chocolate, sweetener and orange juice (from concentrate). It finished quite medicinally with chocolate and orange behind. I hated this, but I don’t like root beer – for those who do, it’s like a chocolate orange root beer. You’re sick people.

Alberta Premium Dark Horse - Another silver medal winner, bottled at 45% and very much focused on rye. It’s a tweak to the usual Alberta Premium recipe, going for a blend of 12 year old rye whisky and 6 year old pot-still rye matured in new and refill oak, as well as (the less trustworthy parts of the internet say) some sherry cask matured spirit and a touch of ‘bourbon’ (quotes as I assume the ‘Canadian Whisky’ on the bottle means that it’s Canadian made corn-whisky rather than actually bourbon).

On the nose it had dry rye spice, cocoa, butterscotch, coffee grounds and some malt. To taste it had a big sweetness up front – brown sugar syrup? – backed up by more rye spice, hints of mint and green leaves, dark chocolate towards the death and a slab of aged agricole rum butteriness in the middle. It finished with cocoa, mint, caramel, green leaves and grass. A nice balance of traditional rye and some softer elements (I assume a mix of corn whisky and refill cask matured rye) that I now wish I’d grabbed a bottle of when I had the chance.

Wild Turkey American Honey – With Jack Daniel’s Honey currently showing the UK market that maybe there should be more honey whisky liqueurs on the market, it wasn’t with much surprise that I received an email from the folks behind Wild Turkey pimping their American Honey liqueur. What I found more surprising was that a) they offered to send me a bottle (ta muchly PR folks) and b) they claimed it was just being launched. We’ve been selling the UK version at work at least since I started 2 years ago and I’m fairly certain it’s been around much longer than that. Anyways, it’s nice to see one of the inspirations for JD Honey getting a bit of exposure…

On the nose it had sugar syrup with lots of floral notes and a hit of honey underneath – a combination of real pungent honey and fake ‘honey flavouring’. Along with that there was some orange and a touch of caramel, the closest it gets to whiskey flavour. However, on the palate it started with sugar but was backed up with a bit of bourbon spice and a kick of booze. That was followed by black tea syrup, caramel and orange oil, which turned bitter as it sat in the mouth, balancing out some of the sweetness. It had a surprisingly long finish, with zesty orange, butter and the expected sugary sweetness. I wasn’t that much of a fan but as it’s recommended to be drunk chilled I stuck an ice cube in to see what happens – I rather liked it. The dilution and chilling didn’t kill the sweetness as I’d hoped, but did bring out a cinnamon fireball zinginess. Not a lot, but enough to add something quite tasty. I suspect I may enjoy drinking this with Coke. I feel dirty but don’t really care.

In related news, I’m glad to see that Wild Turkey are pushing forward into the modern society of the 1980s with this part of their American Honey website – the American Honey’s gallery, featuring all-American girls in their pants. Good work there.

La Hechicera – A rum that I wrote a quick description for at work when it appeared, only to have occasional booze pimp Su-Lin Ong force a sample bottle into my hand after the last Berry Brothers Whisky Squad. It’s a Colombian rum named for the Spanish word for ‘enchantress’, and they’re going for the fine line between fantastically packaged premium rum and premium rum that’s worth the money, coming in at £40 a bottle.

On the nose it had honeyed sweetness as well as some sharp fresh sugar cane flavours, some sultanas, butter, salted caramel and fresh coconut. To taste it was quite lightly flavoured, with a bit of sweet butter, woody bitterness and caramel. It finished with some initial sweetness which faded to leave some bitter wood, mustard and a touch of liquorice. A great nose that the body didn’t quite live up to for me, coming in a bit too light for my taste. A decent enough sipper, but I suspect it’d get lost if mixed or diluted.

Collingwood
Canadian Whisky, 40%. ~$30 US.

Alberta Premium Dark Horse
Canadian Whisky, 40%. ~$30 Canadian.

Wild Turkey American Honey
American Whiskey Liqueur, 35.5%. ~£25.

La Hechicera
Colombian Rum, 40%. ~£40.

Three bottles. It was only a small bag.

First up was The Hop Studio Pilsner. They’ve not been around for long, launching in May 2012, and are based in Elvington, a village a little to the southeast of York. Along with the Pilsner they have (as far as I can find online) three other beers – Blonde (a 3.5% hop led blonde ale), Gold (a 4.5% bitter) and XS (a relatively restrained 5.5% strong ale). The Pilsner was designed to be a lager that ale drinkers would like, and as the brewery name suggests, it goes a bit heavy with the hops.

On the nose there’s lots of sweet cereal, with some CO2 sourness and a little bit of fragrant hop. To taste it has freshly crushed grain, sour malt, earthy spice and some very fragrant hops, with a little bit of fruit. It finishes with, predictably, cereal and fragrant hops although tending towards a pleasant bitterness.

They seem to have achieved their goal – it’s a light, crisp pilsner that has a nice whack of flavour and should keep ale drinkers happy.

Next was Redwillow’s Ageless. This one was, shamefully chosen based on the name of a stablemate and the labels (they have very pretty labels) – the shop also had Feckless, their cranked up ‘regular’ bitter, which initially piqued my interest, but it was a big bottle and I was out of space in my bag. Ageless is a double IPA very much in the current style, with silly amounts of hops and an abv of 7.2%.

On the nose it had sweet caramel, sour green hops, resin bitterness, candied orange, vanilla biscuits (the biscuit bit of a custard cream) and some spicy malt – a little bit Christmassy. To taste it had lots of malt backed up with green leafiness and some sour fruit, with citrus zest fruitiness and pith bitterness. It finished with bitter hops, a hint of pine resin and lots of crushed leaf bitterness.

A big and ballsy beer that seems to focus more on bitterness than the tropical fruit you get in many modern IPAs. An interesting and tasty beer, but I don’t think I’d want more than one in a evening.

My last purchase was the obligatory beer from Rudgate, the brewery from the area whose beers I’ve had the most. After looking at their site I’m not entirely sure why I know them better than anyone else as they’ve only been around since 1992. I blame the Great British Beer Festival. Anyways, they do a beer which is sold in the Jorvik Viking centre and I felt I needed a bottle – Jorvik Blonde, described as a ‘Flaxen blonde’.

On the nose it was a bit thin, with butter, caramel and a bit of popcorn, as well as a leafy sourness. The palate was similarly light and buttery, with some sweet grain, bitter caramel and the leafiness from the nose. It finished with more buttery caramel and some lingering bitter hops. All in all it was rather light and not particularly interesting, but got better as it warmed up.

From reading around it seems that there are now over 100 breweries in and around York, although only one inside the city walls, and with at least one decent beer shop it seems that their wares are quite available. Along with the York Tap this is enough to inspire me to go for another wander up there soon.