Brewhouse Beer Blog
by Richard Salsbury
A Little About Richard
I try to write on a broad variety of topics, but I have a particular interest in technology, society, and personal philosophy, which all sounds very grand, but I’m also deeply concerned with writing stuff that entertains. An element of humour and/or irony often creeps in.
Some of my favourite writers include David Mitchell, Scarlett Thomas, Jonathan Coe, Kurt Vonnegut, Graham Greene, Dickens, Shakespeare … I could go on.
All of my novels are based in the fictional town of Strathurst, on the border between Hampshire and Surrey.
In my previous jobs I have worked as a civil engineer, software engineer, training instructor and technical writer.
XT 13 Pacific Red Ale
XT 13 Pacific Red Ale (500ml, 4.5% ABV) Sounding more like a 1920s numberplate than a beer, it’s another bottle from the enigmatic XT brewery, this time from their ‘special’ (rather than ‘core’) range. One thing I didn’t realise about their labels: the background is colour-coded, so you can tell what the beer will look…
Read More Staggeringly Good Dawn Stealer
Staggeringly Good Dawn Stealer (500ml, 5.2% ABV) Some breweries trade on their sense of history, proud of their heritage and respectful of tradition. Some breweries plaster their bottles with dinosaurs wearing top hats and monocles. Staggeringly Good of Portsmouth are one of the latter. They’ve made a big commitment not to use finings such as…
Read More 
Vibrant Forest Black Forest Piquant Porter
Vibrant Forest Black Forest Piquant Porter (500ml, 4.9% ABV) Porter was invented in London some time in the early 1700s, along with its cousin, stout. Telling porter and stout apart these days is not an easy thing. Porter used to be either smoky or slightly sour from ageing in wooden barrels, and stout used to…
Read More Itchen Valley Fagins 4.1%
Itchen Valley Fagins (500ml, 4.1% ABV) On the bottle and pump clip it’s Fagins, accompanied by an illustration of an appropriately evil looking crime boss, resting his pint on the head of a hapless orphan. On the web site it’s listed as QED, or Quality English Draft. Is it in the throes of a…
Read More Driftwood Spars Bolster’s Blood
Driftwood Spars Bolster’s Blood (500ml, 5.0% ABV) Parental advisory: contains scenes of dismemberment and terrible attempts at Cornish dialect. Bolster the giant had terrorised the town of St Agnes too long. On his last rampage he had destroyed the town’s only pub. The Tregellas brothers – Gerren, the fisherman; and Perran, the bottlemaker –…
Read More 
Gyle 59 ‘Low alcohol beer’
Gyle 59 – Take It Easy (500ml, 2.5% ABV) ‘Low alcohol beer’ – now there’s a phrase to prompt all true beer lovers into curling their lip with disdain. Not without justification, either. My memories of low alcohol beer are sullied by two particularly egregious examples: Víking Maltöl (0.9%), a sickly sweet Icelandic ‘malt beer’…
Read More 
Padstow Brewing Co. May Day
Padstow Brewing Co. May Day (568ml, 5.0% ABV) Fancy a pint? You’ll have to go the pub, then – bottles are half a litre, aren’t they? Not necessarily … Samuel Smith’s Brewery in Yorkshire flies in the face of convention by offering their beers in 550ml bottles. And now the Padstow Brewing Company has…
Read More 
Gluten Free Ridgeway IPA (500ml, 5.5% ABV)
Gluten Free – Ridgeway IPA (500ml, 5.5% ABV) Coeliac disease affects around 1% of the UK population. It’s a reaction to gluten that can prove serious if not managed correctly. A friend of ours (whose novel I will now shamelessly plug here) is coeliac, and it’s clear when out and about with her that ordering…
Read More 
XT 9- more like a Star Wars droid than a beer
XT 9 (500ml, 5.5% ABV) Sounding more like a Star Wars droid than a beer, XT 9 is something of an enigma. The bottle describes it as ‘Black’. So, is it a stout, a porter, a strong mild, a black IPA, or none of the above? Brewed with no fewer than nine malts (I wonder…
Read More 
Curious IPA – The taste is a surprise
Curious IPA (330ml, 5.6% ABV) A winemaker brewing beer? Has the world gone mad? It’s like cats and dogs living together. But that’s exactly what Chapel Down Winery has done. Not content with that, they make cider and brandy too. What’s next – a gin distillery, an absinthe laboratory? All of their beers come under…
Read More 
Southwick Brewhouse, Southwick, PO176DX
Tel: 02392 201133 Email: [email protected]