Leffe Blond

This is my earliest memory of beer. I was in the shop with my dad, round about 8, and he grabbed this huge brown bottle. It was a 75cl bottle of Leffe and I was shocked to think he was having it all to himself. 13 years later I got my chance to try this ancient Belgium drink.

According to the marketing the Leffe brewery has been round since 1240 and if that is true of the recipe it must have been perfected by now? The beer does have the taste of the old, or at least the different, it is the most complex tasting lager I've had to date. It tastes of spices, almost liked mulled wine and does have a whiff of Christmas about it. 

It is a lovely drink but it is not a beer you could chug one after the other as the taste can get a little boring after your second pint. This is not a summer beer but I will be buying it again when the weather gets frosty.

6/10

Tsingtao lager

When it comes to lagers I love the East Asian rice beers and Tsingtao must be the everyday Chinese beer. 

This beer is the number one Chinese beer in the United States and you can see why. The taste is not strong or overpowering so you can mix it easily with the complex taste of Chinese food. It can leave a little bit of a bitter taste in your mouth but it's not off putting. I often see 660ml bottles of this beer but four packs of 330ml are becoming more common. This is good as I found the larger bottle lost carbonation quickly. 

Asian rice beer has really surprised me since writing this blog and I'll be on the look out for more obscure ones soon. 

6/10

Cave Creek chili Beer

Mexican culture is something I'm interesting in, the food is delicious and their attitudes are friendly and lively. The only thing I don't like is their drink. 

Tequila is something I really can't drink and the beer is no better. Corona and Sol have an almost off taste and people must know it as they stick a lime in the top. Cave Creek decided to forgo the lime and stick a chilli in it.

When I say a chilli, I mean a whole chilli is floating around the bottle. The beer is a mexican style and looks and fizzes like Corona. There is a very spicy taste to this beer and it works. I can imagine this being very nice with Mexican food or even as a cooking beer. 

It's a novel idea and it somewhat works. I can't say I'd be drinking this everyday but it's fun if you can find it. 

4/10

Becks Vier

Becks isn’t a beer I particularly like, I probably won’t even review it, however the less alcohol equivalent is something I occasional order. 

The pub I used to get this from is the Proverbial in Harborne but it has now closed down. The beer choice used to be very good with the likes of Peroni and Estrella but they used to cost over £4 a pint and rather than settling for the Carling I went for this. 

Becks Vier beer isn’t anything special, and why should it, it’s not branded as premium but neither is the price. The taste is fairly generic lager, nothing complex, slightly ruined as I know they’re better lagers out there. Not too fizzy and only 4% alcohol so you can spend a night drinking a few of these. The real thing that makes this beer stand out to me is that it’s the same price as Carling but slightly better in every way, even the glass.

5/10

Buddha Beer

Lucky Buddha is an Australian rice beer brewed in China and is advertised as Enlightened. 

Like Asahi I found this beer in Wagamama and was enticed by the interesting bottle.

I had the beer with food and it worked well with my ramen. However it only worked well as the taste wasn't strong. The taste that was there was pleasant making it very drinkable and the 4.8% will get you tipsy. I will be ordering this lager again but compared to some other lagers there wasn't anything amazing to write about. 

6/10

Shirley Beer Festival

Last weekend I spent some time at the Shirley Beer Festival. The large crowd drank the place dry, but I was able to sample three of the ales. They were all good so look out for them in the future.

Gravekeeper's Ale

This was a dark ale, the tasting notes states it used two types of hops to create a complex flavour. However there was nothing complex about it. It tasted like chocolate. The texture was smooth and went down easy, I could have happily sat in a pub and drank it all day. With an alcohol percentage of 3.8 you could get through a lot.

The only compliant I have with it is that it isn't a 'summer' beer. It was too chocolatey and not crisp enough to cool me down in the middle of a warm field.

7/10

                                         
Red

The tasting notes for this beer describe it as, spicy, fruity and robust. I don't agree with the spicy, it was no where near as complex as that. It was on the fruiter side of ale, the best out of the three for the warm weather. I can also attest to the robustness, I could happily drink this over a Sunday roast or in a beer garden mid July.

6/10

Mischief 

This was the last out of the beers I wanted to try, things were getting busy at this point and the good stuff was running out. I was left a little disappointed. Although very nice, it tasted a little too close to the commercial ales like Abbot or Ubu. At 5% it will get you tipsy and the taste is refreshing, just a little boring to write about.

5/10

Mongoose Lager

We’ve all had a Cobra with our chicken Balti and we all know it tastes pretty good.

Mongoose lager, like it's animal namesake is challenging the curry house snake head on. The brand isn't even shy to admit it with the label depicting a Mongoose with a Cobra in it's mouth. 

Like Cobra this beer is very smooth but it has slightly more of a hoppy taste to it. This can be seen two ways, firstly it’s a better stand alone drink. I struggle to drink a Cobra without a curry in front of me. But saying that I do like the way Cobra doesn't interfere with my curry. For this reason I won’t be changing my curry house staple. So unfortunately for Mongoose I won't be buying it again, as there are better stand-alone lagers out there.

4/10