Tuesday 10 April 2012

Named like something out of Harry Potter

Querkus - 4.5%
In Oxfordshire you can find a relatively new brewery by the name of Ridgeway of Oxfordshire.  You will be hard pressed to find their own webpage, let me know if you do.

This beer was given to me by my sister.  She also gave me the Garlic beer so her track record is pretty poor to say the least.

What I have is Querkus - Smoked Oaked Porter.

It's a surprisingly light coloured beer for a porter, more red then brown.  It also has a smoky taste, as advertised by the name, that lingers on your palate and is delivered by its delicious smell.

There is a slight downside.  The beer has a rather harsh sharpness to it that cut through the smoke rather than a richness.  It's a little disappointing which may in some part be down to the smell being such a hard act to follow.

Thursday 5 April 2012

It's good for the bones

Milk Stout - 4.5%
Bristol has a long tradition of brewing and keeping that tradition alive is the Bristol Beer Factory.  They produce small batches of ales by hand.

What I picked up was a bottle of Milk Stout.  The Milk Stout is so called because it uses a sugar derived from milk, lactose.  Now I have to be careful with the quantities of that I intake lest is lead to me getting rid of it far faster than the human bowel is designed to.

What it actually produces is a nice middle of the road stout that I would be hard pressed to differentiate from another.  Not unpleasant, far from it, merely not as special as others.