Posted on 25/03/21
Oli Meade
Last week’s best new beers were mostly imports. This week, it’s UK brewers coming up with the goods!
Neon Raptor. Left Handed Giant. Three Hills, Polly’s, Kernel.
They’ve all released genius this week, so let’s get into it, starting with…
Neon. Raptor. Griffin. Tamer. This is the beer we’ve all been waiting for since Centaur Army! And suffice to say Nottingham’s finest have once again delivered via their new 12% Coconut Vanilla Impy Stout.
You’ve got people arguing about whether it’s as good as Centaur Army, but in all honesty, who the hell cares?!
This is an outstanding stout in its own right, and deservedly takes top spot on the dark front this week.
Neon Raptor taking top spot is a fair feat given it’s up against none other than a new dose of Left Handed Giant’s 12.5% King Of The Woodland Pistachio and Honeycomb Imperial Stout.
We all went mad for this first time round, this time it’s just as good and even a shade cheaper too. If you missed the fun last time, get involved while you can!
Elsewhere, Three Hills continued their excellence in their BPAVK series, this time round with new Chocolate Torte Imperial Stout.
Two different varieties of chocolate flavour! WTF?!
Biscuit malts complete the brilliance here, and an 11% ABV makes for an even bigger Russian imperial pastry stout than usual. Great stuff.
With the impy stout game a crowded place it takes something seriously special to break through to the top, and that’s exactly what Beer Ink have come up with in Starbeer Imperial Stout.
A massive helping of peanut butter and a big old dollop of caramel lurk in this chocolatey number, which has a body so thick it could make a hip-hop lyric. Try it out!
Frankly, it’s criminal Kernel’s new Mosaic & Sabro India Double Porter is only getting a mention at spot 5.
The sabro hops here make for an interesting, fruity dark while the world swings sweet.
Refuses to copy. Cannot be copied. Kernel, with their understated bottles absent of screaming colour cartoons, are a brewery that deserve so much respect.
This week, one swig of the new Polly’s Deep Fake TIPA sent me momentarily loopy, to the point where, lost for words, all I could manage was to call this thing ‘fabulous’.
With more time to think about it, I’d say this is an orange hop-murkbomb filled with pineapple and papaya Polly’s Brew’s trademark hefty helping of hop-hop-hops!
But take a big old glug of this and see if you can manage that. My guess is you’ll be as bowled over as me.
By the time you read this, Thieves In The Temple TIPA will most likely be sold out. It’s a seriously limited beer with just 5 in stock at the time of writing. Filled with mango, papaya & candied orange, you can see why it’s so popular.
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Those of you into your fruity IPAs are going to want to get in on Beak vs Northern Monk’s Wool DIPA.
This rum berry punch’s thick, fluffy and smooth body earn it the title of a beery pavlova.
Talking of smooth, Wylam’s Lush Pale Ale has finally been canned!
After however many requests, the brewery caved and squeezed their unbelievably popular cask beer into canned format, which means we can all now enjoy their zesty, zingy grapefruit-lemon cocktail from the comfort of our own armchairs.
(Which, after a year at home, are of course no longer that comfortable at all).
When you first cast your eyes on Dig’s 84 Gold + Grill Wonderland Special Marshmallow, Pineapple & Guava sour, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was something other than a sour. But that’s exactly what you’re getting here – albeit a sweet and chewy number.
Die hards will shun it. Others will love it.
A good bit of fun from the Birmingham brewsters.
Brick once again delivered the goods on the sour front this week, with their 5.8% 330ml Berry Sour.
An experiment with growing-in-popularity Kveik yeast and Brick’s own house Lactobacillus, a generous smattering of hedgerow berries make for notes of blackcurrant jam and blackberry coulis. Top stuff.
And finally on the sour front, Kernel once again make the cut with their latest Biére De Saison Sour Cherry.
Fermented as per usual with Kernel’s unique blend of house mixed yeast, wild yeast and bacteria culture, you get a dry, effervescent, tart beer fruited with a seasonal sour cherry punch.
Turning Point’s new Dark Matter trio really should get more attention than I’m giving them, and the only reason I’ve made it this far without shouting about them is they span the darks and hoppy sections I’ve used to segment the new beers this week. So take a long, hard look at Yellow Matter Custard and Pink Matter Custard. The first is a yellow custard wheat pale while the second is a raspberry custard dessert pale. And when you don’t see too many sweet pales on the go it’s awesome to see Turning Point nudging boundaries.
Dark beer fans, don’t fret! For you and I have Turning Point’s Dark Matter Custard to get their teeth into. Literally! This is a fun, chocolatey sweet dessert stout with a massive vanilla addition that’s thick enough to gobble with a spoon. Still standing post? Then Laguna Sunrise Salted Caramel Glazed Donut Stout awaits!
Back over on the hop-front, Verdant’s Track & Field hit our shelves for the very first time, Drop Project got jiggy with sabro hops, BBNo were only too happy to break convention and brew up a complex, premium lager with Vienna malt and spelt, and Box Car hit us up with new Holographic IPA and the creamy and sweet Dream Softly DIPA.
It was Box Car also that kept the mild train chugging with another helping of their hit Dark Mild, which gives you all the rich, dark and full-bodied chocolate, coffee and caramel notes you’d want but at just 3.6%.
You’ve got Pomona’s Blackcurrant Gose, you’ve got an orange, apricot and vanilla weisse from Neon Raptor, there’s Northern Monk’s Sticky Toffee Pudding Porter, there’s Brew York’s (limited!) Extra Brownie Pints, there’s also a treat in Black Iris’s Embers Remain Cinder Toffee Campfire Stout.
Finally, as an Easter treat, we’re doing a bargain Choccy Box and a bargain Hoppy box. We’ll be shouting about these next week, but as both are limited if you want one, you can get in early.
Either way, I really hope you get to try some of these epic, epic brews from magician brewers closer to home this week. Dive on in, the fun awaits!
Cheers as ever & happy drinking!
Oli
(The founder)
Step 1
We trawl the globe tasting great beer
