Day 159, Beer 159 - Salopian's "Vertigo"

Today's Beer

Name – Vertigo

Brewer – Salopian

Classification – Black IPA

Strength – 7.2% ABV

Verdict - At A Glance

On the eye – The very deepest, darkest brown currently known to humankind. Monumentally appealing.

On the nose – Sweet, razor sharp citrus. Impossible. Delightful.

On the tongue – Off the scale. Every scale, and in every sense.

On the subject – Salopian sent Vertigo over to me with a bonus bottle of their Darwin's Origin, one of the more established beers on their roster but one which I'd also never tried before. Needless to say I have tried it now, and it ranks among the greatest bitters I've tried in a very long time. I figured that was worth mentioning.

On the market – Vertigo is hideously rare at this early stage in its existence  If you live near a specialist beer shop you might be in luck – providing you can dodge the long range missiles launched at you almost constantly by jealous folk like me who don't live anywhere near a specialist beer shop. Alternatively, you could avoid harm by going online.

On the whole – 9.5/10

Full Review

I've never sniffed a fluid so much.

There was a peculiar moment early on in this review session when I wondered if it might be better if I didn't transfer any of this beer into my mouth – as the only possible outcome was sure to be a relative reduction in the amount of pleasure the substance was already bringing into my sorry little life. After all, handing over responsibility from one sense organ to the next can so often result in a joy-sapping anti-climax – especially in these days of ever more fevered hop-centric experimentation wherein pungent 'whiffs' can often be followed by oddly lacklustre tastes. (I still don't really understand how high fragrance and low flavour can so easily coincide.)

Anyway, having eventually reminded myself that beer reviews traditionally require at least a rudimentary flavour assessment, I took the plunge and had a sip.

Well, I'm happy to report that the nose-to-mouth progression in Vertigo's case was not at all anti-climactic. Indeed, by some miraculous means, what rapidly became one of the best smelling beers I've ever encountered also turned out to be one of the best tasting. Who'd have thunk!

As you can imagine then, what we're dealing with here is a drink of exemplary all-round quality, but oddly enough that's not the best thing about it.

It's not just a good beer – it's also a useful one.

I think this could be the perfect beverage to bridge the gap between those who are keen to remain within the hallowed walls of Traditional Beersville, and those who have flown that particular nest and feel determined never to return.

Ingeniously, Vertigo sums-up in one delicious glass the last half decade or so of creativity which has all but transformed the beer industry, whilst also being a beer imbued with a super clear sense of tradition. It's unquestionably a 'funky modern', but it's also one of those ever-familiar fine ales we've all grown to love at some point in our beer-supping lives. In effect, this is a brew that drinks like a concise appraisal of beer's entire story, starting right back from ale's humble beginnings, and zooming right the way through to the current outer margins of contemporary ingenuity and innovation.

Very often I find myself thinking how glad I am that I'm a beer drinker at this particular point in time. Lovers of the brewer's art today have such a wealth of options available to them, there are almost no limits to the variety of flavours, textures and aromas, notwithstanding the boundless range of colours, strengths and even recommended serving temperatures to constantly leave us with exciting new territory to explore. And for those not wishing to leap too far from tradition, there are obviously still an abundance of well known, 'classic style' beers being produced and enjoyed. But just to have the option of switching back and forth from our old favourites to the new breed of flavour-forward concoctions makes us a very lucky bunch in my estimation.

And what beers like Vertigo give us – is the chance to do both all at once.

Beers like Vertigo shrink the gap between old and new beer styles with effortless grace, and they are pretty much guaranteed to leave members of all three camps (the trads, the mods and the go-betweens) with nothing but smiles on their satisfied faces.

When I say beers 'like' Vertigo, I don't mean Black IPA's, necessarily. Some of these beers can feel distinctly 'edgy' and contemporary (which is fine by me),whilst others can feel like someone has simply applied 'new funky jargon' onto the label of a watery stout.

Vertigo is an excellent drink in its own right, which happens to wear the Black IPA name (with strong justification), but which takes the concept of 'style fusion' back to its essential roots. Consequently, you have a beer which feels fresh, modern and dynamic, but which is also appropriately aware of the back-story to its own existence.

As I started writing this, I felt that listing the many flavours at work within this beer was much less important than stressing just how enjoyable and how downright 'important' I believe this brew is, as well as how the assembly of Vertigo's flavours is every bit as key as the nature of them. But as I know that such an omission would (rightfully) annoy most of you, I'll now pull out just a few of the major flavour players -

Tropical tree fruit, hedgerow berries, rich molasses, dark roast coffee, star anise, kiwi, gooseberry, burnt toast, licorice, traditional 'fruit salad' chews, black forest gateaux, wild grass, giant lorry loads more.... are you getting the picture?

Let me re-emphasise, though, that this beer is about so much more than taste. It's an education. A comprehensive lesson in beer's history, starting at the very beginning, and showing us all just how far we have come.

A modern beer with a classic soul.

It is simply magnificent.

Find it, buy it, drink it.

Whatever beers you love, you will love this beer.

Day 149, Beer 149 - Blue Monkey's "Black Howler"

Today's Beer

Name – Black Howler

Brewer – Blue Monkey

Classification – Black IPA

Strength – 5.9% ABV

Verdict - At A Glance

On the eye – Satan's blood. In a good way.

On the nose – Citrus infused licorice, Tabasco-heavy Bloody Mary, and raw fear.

On the tongue – A toasty, spicy, juicy instant classic.

On the subject – Just like me, Blue Monkey Brewery was born in Nottingham in 2008. (Yes, I am in fact a four year old, as my ex-wife will be more than happy to confirm.) This 'local connection' filled me a certain amount of trepidation as I was very keen not to have to find fault with a company of such extraordinarily noble birth. Turns out I needn't have worried...

On the market – Considering the number of awards this company have collected over recent years, I expect national coverage to rise rapidly, but some searching may be needed for now. This one came from TheReal Ale Store.

On the whole – 8.5/10

Full Review

I love Black IPA's.

Now, obviously, there's every chance that such a dangerously generalised claim will come back to haunt me some day soon, perhaps when some of the less gifted breweries start 'having a go' at them and failing catastrophically – but the happy fact is that every company that's produced a Black IPA thus far has done so with tremendous success, and the delicious result of all this fevered experimentation is that the benchmark definition of this young beer style is transforming all the time.

It's a kind of supersonic evolution we're witnessing, with new interpretations on the essential 'theme' of this style (rich complex dark beer meets ultra-hopped light-bodied beer) hitting the shelves like dark matter bullets shot from some extra-dimensional realm.

To be clear about it – within the world that might be called 'cutting edge craft beer' Black IPA's have gone from non-existence to near domination in little over a year, and no serious contender for the (dubious) prize of 'coolest brewery' can afford to be without at least one of these beers in their portfolio.

And this brings us neatly to Blue Monkey Brewery. Already a certain contender for Kings of Cool with their standard range alone, these guys have made their claim even stronger by releasing a smaller selection of more experimental 'rare and one-off' brews under a totally separate label which they've named 'Endangered Species'. Black Howler is one of these.

So damn cool are these beers – that you won't even find them on the brewery's official website! Not even a mention. When a company starts denying the very existence of one of its own products, you just know you are stepping into the higher realms of serious bloody cool.

But of course none of this necessarily means that today's beer will actually be any good. As many of us who follow 'beer' learn more and more each day – any company's insistence on 'being cool' tells us nothing whatsoever about the quality of the products which lie behind the branding. In fact these days, a well trained beer-buying eye can detect the tell-tale signs of enforced cool and use it as a handy warning. 'Contains Toxic Self Awareness. Avoid Contact With Lips.'

Let's face it, brewery's can fail embarrassingly badly when they try to combine serious attempts at brewing beer with serious attempts at looking cool. Anyone can tell you that any serious attempt at looking cool is self defeating because the whole point of cool is that it's achieved without effort. There's obviously no better example of the self-defeating effects of coolness overkill than that of Brew Dog, a company whose genuinely excellent beers now have to enjoyed in secret by most serious minded drinkers.

So are Blue Monkey about to join Brew Dog in that murky territory where exemplary brewing talent inexplicably gives way to unrestrained vanity?

Well, not on this evidence, and that's not because Black Howler isn't a good enough beer in the first place – because believe me it is – it's simply because there are very clear signs that any vanity is being kept firmly at bay here. Firstly, the marketing of this range seems to be based on a genuine curiosity about the 'possibilities' of beer creation (they simply don't brew enough of these to be secretly fleecing us) and secondly because this great beer has been brewed and brought to market entirely without my knowledge. Brew Dog would never – ever – allow that to happen!

Black Howler is then – in marketing terms at least – a quiet beer. It's part of this brewery's exploration of the further reaches of beer experience, which people can chose to explore too if they so happen to come across it. In other words – it's actually pretty cool.

And it tastes pretty cool too. Lots of subtle spices, dark berried fruit, powerful licorice, toasted granary bread, glorious high reaching citrus (the key 'trick' of any good Black), roast chestnuts, char-grilled Cobra venom (I'd put money on it!) – this thing is just packed with all kinds of light-bodied zings, twangs and thwacks that keep you guessing (hence the Cobra venom), smiling, and of course sipping in equal amounts.

There's a fabulously ruthless bitterness in the finish which, to my taste at least, eventually leads to the licorice element lingering too long all by itself when I'd have liked some of the other complementary flavour themes to have stuck around longer with it, but that's me getting very picky considering the wealth of delicious positives.

This brew makes it clear to me that Blue Monkey are a force to be reckoned with. They are striding with impressive confidence across the new world of beer creativity, and finding some seriously impressive recipes along the way.

To my mind, that's exactly what contemporary brewing is all about.

When companies create products as unique and enjoyable as this one, those products need no further assistance to become cool.

When its brewed as expertly as this – beer is born cool. 

Day 133, Beer 133 - Windsor & Eton's "Conqueror 1075"

Today's Beer

Name – Conqueror 1075

Brewer – Windsor & Eton

Classification – Black IPA

Strength – 7.4% ABV

Verdict - At A Glance

On the eye – Dark browns and and dark reds doing their very best not to look like black. And mostly failing.

On the nose – Smoky citrus. A veritable hurricane of licorice and tree fruit. Sort of impossible. Sort of magical.

On the tongue – A brief, sound bite appraisal? Of flavours such as these? Do me a favour!

On the subject – At this point in time, few breweries in Britain are generating so much unbridled excitement within my beer loving soul as Windsor & Eton. Irritatingly, I am by no means alone. Other pesky humanoids have also spotted the specialness, so it won't be very long before the whole world is singing their praises and they're being taking over by BMW or Microsoft. Success can be so wounding!

On the market – Growing rapidly for the brewery as a whole but this newbie bottle might be harder to find, initially at least. But there's little need to exert yourself, just go online at Beer Merchants or Ales By Mail.

On the whole – 9.5/10

Full Review

However the hell it came about, and regardless of whether its very existence is even possible or not – there's one thing I can safely say about the recently arrived beer style known as Black IPA...

It's utterly marvellous.

It really is.

Today's beer – which is merely one of Windsor & Eton's two renditions of this classification – is nothing less than a mind blowing drink experience.

This is the beer that every lover of dark beer in the known universe should be consuming at their very earliest opportunity. But the truly remarkable thing about these Black IPA's is that this very same recommendation can be given to lovers of beers at the absolute opposite end of the colour/flavour spectrum. If you like light, golden, citrus rich, hop heavy ales – this is your essential beer, too.

Crudely put, this is a vividly hopped, citrus rampant, medium bodied and lavishly malted stout. There's so very much more to it, but that's a pretty decent starting point.

Grapefruit, lime, mango and gooseberry (to name but a few of the huge array of dynamic fruits at play here) swirl and collide with deep swathes of cocoa, licorice, smoked bacon and roasted nuts. It's an astonishing sequence of flavour events, and among the most invigorating taste experiences I've ever known from any source – let alone from a beer.

There are so many elements which make you instinctively disbelieve what your mouth is telling you, but at the same time, the whole thing makes so much sense that you can't understand how these kinds of beers weren't dreamed up sooner.

Quite simply, in terms of the open market, beers like this really didn't exist just a few short years ago, and yet these guys are brewing this one like they've been doing it for aeons.

That's a remarkable achievement.

But then, this is a remarkable brewery. And with all of their usual technical prowess, creative ingenuity and sheer class, they are brewing a remarkable example of a remarkable beer style.

Whatever kind of beer you think you prefer – Black IPA will rapidly replace it.

And be sure to drink a bottle of Conqueror 1075 before you shake your head in disagreement with that statement.

I can guarantee you won't be shaking it after.