Ernie1 quickly a 4% beer starts to basically taste like sparkling water.

Generally 5% is the sweet spot for most beers, not too strong and it brings out the volatiles etc nicely at that strength plus the abv is at just the right level there. I generally find a lot of the craft beers too much after maybe two, so generally return to the established if I’m going to consume more! I know a few home brewers and it can be done really well with practice. One mate made a chilli lager a couple of years ago and it was beautiful. Unfortunately I only got 2 of them, I need to check him out again!

    My go to beer is this….

    First came across it watching a Gordon Ramsey cookery programme many years ago where he decided to match beer with food instead of wine.

    The beer kitchen by Melissa Cole is a great book for using beer in cooking, good recipes and beer selections to use and to pair with food

    Coffee Roaster. Home: Sage Dual Boiler, Niche Zero, Ode v2 (SSP), 1zpresso ZP6 Work: Eagle One Prima EXP, mahlkonig e80s, Mazzer Philos and lots more

    Fyne Ales in Cairndow and Roosters now in Harrogate also Ossett in well Ossett

    5 litre Casks are my preferred ones

    +1 for Cloudwater and Verdant. Lervig are on a similar theme and great.

    One of my favourite breweries is Westwood Ales, based in Cheshire. Fairly typical bitter / real ale styles.

    If you want to try something a bit crazy and don’t mind spending a bit more then Omnipollo are always fun.

    If anyone is near a Wholefoods they have a surprisingly good selection of craft beers - second only to the wonderful craft beer shops around that drain your wallet even faster than the classifieds section!

    I personally prefer real ale more than IPA / hazy craft beers, and for real ale you really can’t beat draught, so sharing pub recommendations now, my favourite pub in the whole wide world is the King’s Head in Waterloo.

    Last thought on the topic of real ale, if you haven’t tried your favourite real ale as a shandy….do it!

    I’ve only tried a couple of Lervig beers but they’re indeed fantastic.

    Of all places I also bought an Omnipollo beer in Sainbury’s last year. An 11% pecan mud cake stout. Really good but you definitely wouldn’t want more than one.

    The thing I can’t seem to get past with cask ale is that it’s cellar temperature and flat, although I had a good one from Stroud brewery recently.

    Unless it’s a stout, I just really enjoy beer to be cold and somewhat carbonated. Even some porters and brown ales taste better to me from the fridge. Sacrilege possibly!

    The omnipollo pecan pie mud stout is an interesting one, almost a dessert, the same with wild beer co wineybeest, 10.5% stout aged in pinot noir casks.

    I like cask beer, not always my first choice but I have had some really great ones. Takes a lot more work to clean and maintain the lines and once a cask is open it shouldn’t be kept for more than a few days but I think it can be worth the extra effort.

    Anyone got any opinions on sparklers for cask beer?

    Coffee Roaster. Home: Sage Dual Boiler, Niche Zero, Ode v2 (SSP), 1zpresso ZP6 Work: Eagle One Prima EXP, mahlkonig e80s, Mazzer Philos and lots more

    Just tucking into this - 8% DIPA from Howling Hops.

    It’s from Kveik yeast which obviously makes for some really good beers. Purity also do a beer using the same yeast that’s worth a try.

    I’d say that’s tasty? Not too many though…!

      DavecUK

      Ah I know the deal well. That saved us a packet during lockdown!

        Being in Berks I did have the honour of working on the packaging for Siren Craft. I would love to tell you I designed the illustrations on the front of the bottle. Sadly, no, I got to do the back label, barcode, ingredients, ABV and the “don’t drink while pregnant” logo. Living the dream. Very cool design on those front labels. My only involvement with the front was cleaning up the scans of the illustrations.

        I still have not been to their taproom, which needs rectifying.

        Went for a “coffee adventure” to check out the mini sub branch of Electric in Shepherds Bush, had a lovely coffee in there and when I expressed my satisfaction to the barista she was well chuffed. Lovely girls. Then we walked up towards the main shops and only got as far as Brewdog. One deeee-luxe burger and a few pints of beer later I deemed it a successful afternoon. There was one I really liked called Tangerine Dream or Clockwork Orange or something like that, very nice. And Elvis Juice. I know purists and IPA aficionados probably classify Brewdog as ‘entry level’ or ‘mass market’ IPA and I would not disagree with that, but it’s easy to get hold of, and easy to drink.

          Hotmetal you forgot to say cheap too at about £1.20 a can if that. Hazy Jane, Clockwork orange and their christmas beers are easy to drink, tasty and cheap. They do stuff of a higher quality and the price reflects that too. Tough to beat for the money really. I want to try beers from some other the breweries mentioned and probably will but I tend to prefer spirits and shy away from paying £8 a pint.

            Deya is my local craft brewery :)

            I highly recommend Wild Beer Co. Their Modus Operandi and Millionaire brews are outstanding. I never actually liked beer until I tried the latter. They do amazing IPA, saisons, guezes and sours too, if that’s your thing. They even had a tropical fruits one that I called a breakfast beer.

            If I could only drink one thing for the rest of my life it would be…. water, but closely followed by beer and then espresso. :) Anyone else here who is a homebrewer? I started my espresso journey about seven years ago because I felt like getting into some kind of beverage a little deeper and brewing beer felt too complicated and maybe, uh, dangerous? Well, about a year after getting into espresso I had a bunch of empty beer bottles lying around at home and instead of taking them to the trash I decided to fill them with homemade beer so I ordered a kit and now I’m brewing a 20 litre batch every once in a while, mostly from recipe kits (whole grain). I brew almost exclusively IPAs but sometimes a stout or some other kind of ale.