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.
Beer in Granada
Beer in Granada I’ve written about beer in Spain before, but not from Granada in southern Spain, home to flamenco and the Alhambra – a palace and fortress containing some of the world’s most ornate decoration. It would be rude not to visit our local craft beer bar Colagallo (literally: rooster’s tail). It has a long bar…
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Beartown Brewery Bear Skinful
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…
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Beer in Málaga
Beer in Málaga There are a number of craft beer bars in the centre of Málaga, but in the interest of avoiding the crowds, we’re holidaying a couple of miles away in Pedregalejo. We could make the trip in, but … oh, look – there’s a bar just half a mile down the road from us.…
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Rock Leopard Brewing – Distant Cousin of a Mu Mu Cat
Rock Leopard Brewing – Distant Cousin of a Mu Mu Cat (440ml can, 6.2% ABV) What do Illuminati pyramids with teeth, scorpions, bees, robots, tentacles, hieroglyphs and sphinx-like cats with laser beam eyes have in common? They all feature on a ruthlessly pink can of beer by Rock Leopard, which also features a name to…
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Snow Owl
Animal Brewing Co Snow Owl (500ml bottle, 4.6%ABV) There’s a school of thought that you drink pale beers in the summer and dark beers in the winter, and that anything defined as a ‘winter beer’ must therefore be dark. Animal Brewing (an offshoot of the XT Brewing Co) have taken a different approach with Snow Owl.…
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Vibrant Forest / Dark Revolution Baloo
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…
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Winter Ale
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…
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Russian Winter
Russian Winter Itchen Valley (500ml bottle, 5.3% ABV) ‘Malt is the soul of beer,’ said someone who had probably had a little too much before putting pen to paper. But it’s true that malt is critical in the brewing process. Without malt there are is no complex soup of sugars, and without sugar there is nothing…
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Emsworth Brewhouse Starboard
Emsworth Brewhouse Starboard (500ml bottle, 4.0% ABV, vegan) Sometimes beer doesn’t have to be spectacular. Cheese on toast doesn’t sound like a particularly amazing meal, but if it’s made with fresh bread and a really good tangy cheddar, it can be a mighty satisfying thing. Starboard by the Emsworth Brewhouse (not to be confused with…
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Treen’s Resolve
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…
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Tel: 02392 201133 Email: [email protected]