Always nice to have another drink to explore the nuances of when it’s too late in the day for another coffee. And I’m nowhere near sophisticated enough to get into wine. Would be great to hear of other beer fans here and share what beers you’d recommend! I’m into anything really other than sours/goze but had a few fantastic hazy IPA’s recently: Some of my current favourite breweries: DEYA (great taproom in Cheltenham), Howling Hops (great taproom in Hackney Wick), Verdant (Cornwall) and Pressure Drop (who have a taproom/bar with Verdant in Hackney Central).

Very pleased to see this thread. I have always enjoyed a beer but mostly stuck to the basics and my old local favourite brewery (Batemans). I am just starting to work my way through some of the ‘craft’ type beers in my local supermarkets. So far I have enjoyed Brewdog Jack Hammer, Thornbridge Jaipur and Siren Broken Dream. I appreciate that the supermarket is by no means the best place to buy beer and it is unlikely to have been stored in ideal conditions but nevertheless it is a place to start. I don’t have a good independent bottle shop near by. We do however have a local brewer called Duration that I am going to pop over to shortly and I am very keen on trying Verdant. I hear Beak are rather good too. Hopefully others can make some suggestions, much like coffee, I feel I have a whole world of beer to explore now!

Looking at their website Verdant are too rich for my blood. Nethergate are a great brewery. Old Growler and Red Admiral are favourites. North Cotswold Brewery really good - Hung Drawn and Portered best porter ever. Old Cannon Brewery - Gunners Daughter and their bitter is really nice

It’s an exciting thing to get stuck into! Beak are indeed great and we’re lucky that the supermarkets stock some world class breweries these days; Thornbridge do some really good beers, Green Mountain is a nice Summer beer. Mikkeller are often in Sainsbury’s and M&S. As are To Øl and Polly’s.

PortafilterProcrastinator Agreed on Hung Drawn and Portered, fantastic beer.

I’ve certainly ‘assessed’ many at this stage!! One of the best quality UK ‘new’ breweries I’ve tried is cloudwater, think they’re based in Manchester, certainly worth a try if you see them, anyone else tried it? https://cloudwaterbrew.co/

Bevertown - Neck oil and Gamma Ray Brewdog - most of them. HazyJane is fantastic Camden Hill

I tend to drink “weak” ales, a.b.v around 3.5% to 4.1%. I’m not a fan of the strong stuff, and people thing I’m a bit weird when in New England I look for the weakest possible IPA they have, even at a beer festival! One of my favourite beers is from West Berkshire Brewery, Mr. Chubbs. Unfortunately recently they were in the news as they have been taken over, thankfully not by a bigger brewery, but by the lord of the manor, literally. My next adventure will be to brew my own beer, just unsure when that will be as I need to work out the space and logistics.

Yeah agreed Cloudwater do some good stuff. They used to be hard to get outside of Manchester a few years back and pricey as a result but seems to be slightly more readily available now and more competitively priced. I’m trying to ‘get back’ into lower abv beers. I hopped on the DIPA/TIPA bandwagon when they were everywhere and when chewing through a thick 8-10% beer is the standard, it’s eye-opening how quickly a 4% beer starts to basically taste like sparkling water. I also find it’s easy to get tired of the mega juicy hazy East Coast style ales. Howling Hops are doing a really good 5% West Coast pale (Hang Ten) at the moment that is a really balanced beer with a decent hop content but still malty enough that it tastes like a beer and not a fruit juice.

Ernie1 Which one of those four is favourite?

LMSC Of the four you mentioned I think Gamma Ray, partly because Beavertown were so instrumental in making craft ale so accessible and widely available, and partly because it’s a great clean beer with a good abv. My two favourite beers ever are Pale Fire by Pressure Drop. It’s one of the beers that got me into craft when they had it on tap at my then local (Sebright Arms, Hackney Road) in early 2014. And House IPA by Howling Hops because to me it’s a perfect balance of haze, strength, hops and bitterness. Also one of the few beers that seems enjoyable on a cold Winter evening but also refreshing enough on a Summer’s day. Honorable mention would be Booty Call by Warpigs. I had it at their incredible taproom in Vesterbrø in Copenhagen but their beers are notoriously expensive and tricky to get hold of outside of Denmark.

Beer!

Ernie1

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.

JahLaza

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

Ernie1

JahLaza

So tasty. Definitely would only want one though!

DavecUK

In honour of this thread I treated myself to a bottle of craft beer from Tesco last week.

Ernie1

DavecUK

Which one!!?

DavecUK

Ernie1 Not sure, it was a bottle from the 3 for £5 section a Porter I think…I know, living the dream!

Ernie1

DavecUK

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

Hotmetal

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.

Rob1

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.

-Mac

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.

stef-n

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.

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