Posts by Matthew Hallett

Piddle Brewery Stocking Filler (500ml bottle, 4.5% ABV) Beer froth is a funny thing. Some beers – like Guinness, most lagers and lots of the Belgian stuff – go for a big thick head. In the North sparklers are fitted to hand-pumps to achieve a similar effect. (I’ve even met a woman who carries around her own sparkler…

Unity Brewing Only the Sea (440ml can, 6.2% ABV, vegan) It’s nice when you buy something from a company that’s not just in it to maximise profits. Unity Brewing are taking this to some pretty impressive levels: they’re fully powered by renewable energy and use recycled packaging. They’re a registered living wage employer and have an extensive…

Staggeringly Good Dino Riders Guide to the Galaxy (440ml can, 6.3% ABV, vegan) Douglas Adams’ much-loved Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has been everything: radio series, novel, TV series, film, stage show, comic book and computer game. Is it now a beer too? Well, not officially, but no fan of Adams could fail to spot the references…

Urban Island Urban Graffiti (440ml can, 6.0% ABV, vegan) Well, it’s taken a while to get round to Urban Island, one of Portsmouth’s new-ish breweries, which served up their first beer back in 2014. You can visit their taproom, a few minutes from Hilsea station, on Fridays and Saturdays. You can drink in, or take away growlers,…

Flower Pots Goodens Gold (500ml bottle, 4.8% ABV) This one tastes of dragonfruit, peppered venison and August evenings in the last rays of the Tuscan sun, with an aroma of crushed Twiglets and a finish reminiscent of Croatia’s entry for the 2004 Eurovision Song Contest. What’s that? Goodens Gold? Oh, I thought you said Goolden’s Gold. Ahem. Providing tasting notes for…

Staggeringly Good Velocirapture (440ml can, 6.5% ABV, vegan) It’s hazy, it’s hoppy, it’s festooned with dinosaurs. It can only be another brew from Staggeringly Good of Pompey – their take on the American IPA. It pours a hazy orange with a rapidly dissolving foam. The aroma and flavour are dominated by the hops, with grapefruit, tangerine and…

Yeovil Kellerbier (500ml bottle, 4.3% ABV, vegan) A kellerbier (‘cellar beer’) is a style of German lager that hasn’t been pasteurised or filtered. Those expecting the usual characteristics of a lager (a clear, golden colour with a thick, foamy head) might be disturbed to see how murky a kellerbier is. This example also has almost no head. This is not…

Vibrant Forest / Affinity Brew Co Grizzly Pear (440ml can, 4.3% ABV, vegan) ‘You’ve got to go outside your comfort zone!’ That’s what people say, isn’t it? But there’s a perverse part of me that wonders how good this sort of advice is. No matter how exciting it might be, I’m still not prepared to…

West Berkshire Brewery You Got This (440ml can, 4.1% ABV, vegan) With the onslaught of beers hopped with American varieties, it’s often easy to forget that there are other parts of the world that grow their own unique hops in abundance. New Zealand is one such country, with many native varieties, some of which have…

Siren Craft Escape Artist (440ml can, 5.9% ABV, vegan) ‘Sometimes you need a last minute recipe that can get you out of trouble’ it says on the can of Escape Artist. What’s this? Evidence of a brew gone wrong? With all the experimental beers that Siren Craft make, I wouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps the powdered…

Summerskills Turkey’s Delight (500ml bottle, 5.1% ABV) With a label that looks like it was designed in the 1970s by someone with red-green colour blindness*, Turkey’s Delight is a Christmas beer by Plymouth’s oldest brewery, Summerskills. They’ve decided to use Phoenix, one of Britain’s most unusual hop varieties. Phoenix is the only hop I know that has a…

Driftwood Spars Pudding Ale (500ml bottle, 7.5% ABV) Pudding is bad for you, they say. Beer is bad for you, they say. Oh well, having decided to be bad, you might as well combine the two and go for a pudding beer. Having said that, there is one group of people for whom Pudding Ale…

South Hams Brewery Santa Monium (500ml bottle, 5.0% ABV) There’s a time-honoured way of making a beer for Christmas: brew up a strong ale, then throw loads of spices at it. Cinnamon? Check. Nutmeg? Check. Cloves? Check. Star anise? Check. That stuff has been in the spice rack for years, so it probably needs replacing.…

Red Rock Hoppy Chrimbo (500ml bottle, 4.0% ABV) Red Rock are a Devon brewery founded in 2006. Like many modern breweries, they divide their range up into categories, in this case: traditional beer, craft beer and ‘slow’ beer (which makes much use of natural, local ingredients, such as elderflowers and blackberries). No prizes, though, for…

Ridgeway Criminally Bad Elf (11.2 fl ozbottle, 10.5% ABV) Ridgeway’s ‘Elf’ series of beers have become something of a Christmas institution. The range now consists of seven brews in various different styles, including this 10.5% kick to the baubles. Criminally Bad Elf is a barley wine, so called because it’s basically a wine strength beverage, but with the…

Ridgeway Lump of Coal (500ml bottle, 7.5% ABV) Dark beers, perhaps more than any other, have their fair share of forbidding names: Harvieston’s Old Engine Oil, Hambleton Nightmare, RCH Old Slug. ‘Edible things shouldn’t be black,’ these beers seem to be saying, ‘but we know you love us anyway.’ You can add Ridgeway’s Lump of Coal to that roster – a beer named…

Suthwyk Ales Land of Hop and Glory (500ml bottle, 4.5% ABV) One hundred. The temperature of boiling water. A century in cricket. The age at which you get a telegram from the Queen. Yes, in case you hadn’t guessed, this is my 100th blog post for the Southwick Brewhouse. Blimey. Where has all the time gone? Where has all…

Unity Fresco (400ml can, 5% ABV, vegan) Fresco is a wheat beer in the Belgian style (a ‘witbier’, or white beer) but with a couple of twists. Rather than the usual orange peel and coriander that characterises a wit, this version uses locally foraged lemon balm and spruce tips. Who knew that Southampton was such a bonanza of…

Siren Craft Broken Dream (330ml can, 6.5% ABV, Vegetarian) Welcome, Ladies and Gentlemen, to the fifteenth meeting of the Hampshire Temperance movement in this, the year of our Lord, 1852. Now, I know that many of you have been concentrating your efforts on reducing the consumption of gin – or ‘mother’s ruin’ as we prefer to call it – but you may be…

Yeovil Star Gazer (500ml bottle, 4.0% ABV, Vegan) There’s a long tradition in Britain of naming beers after the effect they might have in the event of overconsumption – Tanglefoot, Old Thumper, even Riggwelter. Star Gazer seems like it might be in this category, but at only 4.0% it’s pretty easy on the constitution. Perhaps Yeovil Ales were more aiming…

There’s nothing quite like a bubble bath at the end of a busy, tiring day. But you wouldn’t drink it, would you? Or would you? It’s fair to say that Farmageddon’s Gorse IPA is going to split opinion. Coming out of the can, it foams like a bubble bath. It tastes of soap, but in…

Experiments are the foundation of modern science, and therefore a wonderful thing. But experiments can go horribly wrong. Just ask my A-Level Physics teacher. Fortunately Brass Castle’s Monsters of the Deep is an unmitigated success. Along with the promised monsters, the can features windmills, lighthouses, runes and Hull. What does it all mean? It’s part…

You would be hard-pressed to find a more unassuming beer than Arundel’s Tarrant Street – a low alcohol brew in a small, largely white can. Can this possibly be as enticing as those bigger bottles and tins, bestowed with bonkers names, and festooned with funky artwork? Like many breweries, Arundel have split their range into…

Graphic design is a funny thing. Something about the label of Hobsons Old Prickly – or perhaps its description as a ‘Snuffly Hedge Grog’ – made me think it was a cider, and I haven’t been a great fan of cider since a certain … ahem … episode at University. But no, it’s definitely beer.…

Padstow Pride pours a dark amber, heading towards a reddish brown. The aroma is unusually rich in malt and has a hint of peppery hops. Down the hatch, and … that’s where my problems begin. Sometimes it’s very hard to describe the taste of a beer without (a) calling it a blend of malt and…

Yeovil Ales YPA (500ml bottle, 7.3% ABV, vegan) Let’s talk about finings. No, I’m not referring to that fixed penalty notice you once got for driving at 47mph in a 40 limit*, I mean the stuff that brewers use to clarify beer. Traditionally, this meant using isinglass, a substance made from the swim bladders of…

Time & Tide Brewing All In Jim (440ml can, 5.4% ABV) Time & Tide are a somewhat mysterious brewery based in Deal, Kent. Their website and Facebook page say little, except for their desire to create beer using the classic styles as guidelines rather than rules. But the product speaks for itself. All In Jim makes…

Beartown Brewery Bear Skinful (500ml bottle, 4.2% ABV) Beartown sounds like the kind of place you’d find in the frozen north of America in some post-apocalyptic TV show on Netflix. In reality it’s the nickname of Congleton, in Cheshire. Legend has it that the town sold its bible to buy a bear, a fact immortalised in…

Baloo by  Vibrant Forest / Dark Revolution Blueberry Coconut Export Stout (330ml can, 8.2% ABV, vegan) For something that appears to be named after Disney’s affable bear from The Jungle Book, this beer looks pretty forbidding: it comes in a jet black can festooned with skulls. It’s a collaboration brew between Vibrant Forest and Dark Revolution. As is often the…

Winter Ale St Peter’s (500ml bottle, 6.5% ABV) The traditional ‘winter warmer’ is an interesting beer style. Rather than warming you up on a winter’s day by being, well … warm, it opts for a different approach: numbing you with a big wodge of alcohol so you don’t care. St Peter’s Winter Ale claims to be…

Treen’s Resolve (500ml bottle, 5.2% ABV) ‘Dangerously drinkable’ is a phrase that crops up a lot in the promotional material for English beers – the same kind of reverse psychology that Shredded Wheat used in the 80s when they bet you couldn’t eat three. Treen’s Brewery use exactly this phrase on their 5.2% Resolve. But…