This week we have some lovely stuff hitting the taps, and even more hitting the cellar!

On the cask front, we’ve got some excellent hoppy stuff from the “Never-knowingly-underhopped” Kevin at Golden Triangle Brewery, Citropolis (3.9%) is racked up ready for the weekend and Bonny’s Gold (4%) waiting in the wings to tickle those hoppy tastebuds. Don’t see either of those lasting long! Also from Norfolk, Blimey! – the only brewery with an exclamation mark in their name that I’ve heard of – Son of Paleface, is a fantastic pale ale with plenty of citrus yet still managing to come across as a smooth flavour. Certainly exceeds the 7/10 IMDB gives the Bob Hope film of the same name. The brewers are showing their age a bit, but that’s fine because their beer is awesome! Continuing the Norfolk theme, Grain have a NZ-hopped pale called Taiheke, which we’re very excited about.

A curio from the West Midlands, Weatheroak Brewery’s Keystone Hops (again, I think you have to be of a certain age to get that one), has a solid biscuity-malt base with a gently warming hoppy finish. If you are quick, we’ve got a lovely session pale from 3 Piers (from ‘oop north’ somewhere, probably using sparklers… tsk… Be the first to review it on RateBeer!) called – wait for it – Hop Cross Bunny! How eloquently jovial; that has certainly sparked some linguistic bonhomie on the bar this evening, I can tell you, friends! In fact, it’s so funny we’ve had to pass up the opportunity of purchasing a similarly-named beer from a slightly more local brewery, simply for the fear that our sides would split, being unable to cope with two beers with the same hilarious name! Anyway, further down the line, we have had a good selection of ales from the fine Shrewsbury-based people at Salopian Brewery; these will hopefully start hitting the pumps from next week.

KEG ALERT, CASKOPHILES, EVIL KEG FILTH BELOW! 

Our friends at Nene Valley have a new beer out, it’s a German-style Kellerbier which boasts and ABV of 4.6%, golden hue and uses classic Pilsner and Vienna malts as well as a bit of wheat. Should be a great quaffer for the week ahead. We’ve also got a Mid-week Bender on order for this week as their tweaked recipe went down so well last time. That’ll hit the tap on Wednseday. Brewboard‘s latest beer CardinalRed takes it’s place in the lineup as well this week, again, probably Wednesday, and we’re hoping it will last until the weekend. Secret awesomeness from Three Blind Mice, Magic Rock and Anarchy coming in if you can imbibe your way through all that lot and more!

COME DRINK BEER!

The post 26/3/18 appeared first on Cambridge Pubs.

Quick beery update for the weekend:

Now on cask:

Dark Star Hophead – 3.8%
Dark Star APA – 4.7%
Woodforde’s Wherry – 3.8%

Nene Valley Simple Pleasures – 3.6%
Nene Valley Bitter – 4.1%
Hop Kettle Lode Star – English-hopped pale ale – 4.3%
Grain Slate – Smoked Porter – 6%
Blimey! Night Porter – Chocolate Orange Porter – 4.8%
Brecon Brewery Gold Beacons – Subtly bitter golden ale – 4.2%
Brecon Brewery Blonde Beacons – Unfined citrussy pale – 5.2%
Ilkley Tribus Lupulus – Juicy NE-style pale, not too bitter – 4.4%

Now on keg:

Bitburger Pils – 4.8%
Adnams Moasic – 4.1%
Benediktiner Weissbier – 5.4%
Pilsner Urquell – 4.4%
Velkopopovicy Kozel – 4.0%
Köstritzer Schwartzbier – 4.8%
Aspall Harry Sparrow – Medium-Sweet Cider – 4.6%

Dark Star American Pale Ale – 4.7%
NVB x London Fields Banoff With Your Head – Banofee wheat beer (believe it baby!) – 5.6%
Marble Pilsner – 4.2%
Dark Star x Harbour – Wee Heavy – 7.0%
Kernel IPA Centennial HBC 431 – 7.4%

Chillin’ in the cellar…

Cask
Durham White Amarillo – 4.1%
3 Piers Hop Cross Bunny – 4.0%
Tiny Rebel Dutty – 4.2%
Dark Star Hophead Loral – 3.8%
Weatheroak Keystone Hops – 5.0%

Keg
Brewboard Cardinal Red – 4.6%
Nene Valley Pulping on Your Stereo – 4.5%
Nene Valley Heisenberg – 4.4%

Come Drink Beer!

The post 2018/03/16 appeared first on Cambridge Pubs.

In the last two weeks we’ve enjoyed some excellent cask ale from Salopian, Wiper and True, Lost+Found, as well as local heroes Three Blind Mice and Nene Valley, plus our regular ‘send-us-another-can-load’ friends at Dark Star. Some really awesome stuff coming up, plus a few repetitions of special brews as they were so damn popular!

Caskophiles! Look no further than Blackjack Beers, we destroyed a nine of ‘You Bet’ last week, and we’re following up with [#nowpouring] a 4.5% ‘Hop Combat Pale Ale’  featuring Vanguard and Mosaic, an excellent combination with a fruity light flavour and quite a resinous finish. These guys are definitely on the ‘must buy more’ list! Also #nowpouring and noteworthy, plus also Mancunian, is an old ale from Beer Nouveau called Old Ardwick. Unusually chocolatey for an Old, but packs a serious punch at 5.9%, whilst still being smooth, it does lack the bitterness often associated with this style, making it dangerously drinkable.

Tapped today: Box Social‘s West Coast Pale Ale at 5% delivers juice, juice and more juice! Fantastically smooth, more like a NE than a WC but hey ho, that’s just, like, our opinion, don’t let us tell you what to taste, come and try it yourself, drink several pints and tell us what you really think! More beer from Twisted Barrel since the last lot went down so well! This time, the interestingly-titled Sine Qua Non, which hit the ceiling when vented, so potentially a few days until this has settled. Expect big hop flavour off this, it’s got European Hallertau Magnum, and Summer Saaz, as well the fearsome trio of Cascade, Citra and Mosaic! Following on from that we have MORE NEW BEER! This time 3 Piers Brewery, we had to check Companies House for this one, and they’ve only been going since March, so less than a year old, however we have heard on the grapevine that the brewer has worked with a couple of other North-East outfits in recent years, so we’re hoping for good things from West Coast Blonde… oh wait, once we’ve fixed the pump clip… I mean, seriously, you should be able to sell your beer without that sort of branding… please be more imaginative and design-focused with your branding in future. It’s no longer the 1970s. Moving swiftly on to a pump clip we think is well designed, the new bitter from House Brewery (drumroll…..) House Bitter! We see what you did there, but we forgive you because you have the best happy hour poster we’ve ever seen as well as snazzy branding without the need for sleazy pump clips. You’re on our ‘next visit to London’ list!

Luckily, for those who prefer a cooler, fizzier drink, we also have several superb suppers sneaking out of the cellar under the banner of ‘condition without preconditions’ otherwise known by the cumbersome term ‘craft keg’. #NowPouring specialities: Biggest on the big flavours we have at the moment, our favourite IPA of the year so far is a collaboration between Left Handed Giant and as-yet-not-got-their-own-site-up-and-running newbies Duration. This beer is so new that we could only find one person who’d mentioned it on twitter! There’s a few reviews on RateBeer but come and make up your own mind! We like it because its fruity and smooth with a hint of malt biscuit, with only a hint of the alcohol, until you get to the dry finish and get that gradual warming glow. Also hitting the ABVs is the brilliant Mid Week Bender from Nene Valley which is tasting better than ever before! Deep golden, almost amber, a little orangey, plenty of grain and then the late/dry hop finish for that California punch. From the hops to the dark side, a veritable feast of flavour from Odyssey, and their Slated Caramel Latte Export. 7% with a great balance, not too sweet, not too bitter, not too much coffee or ‘milk’, just a full mouth of overwhelming rich smoothness. This won’t last long! Similarly, local dudes BrewBoard have got a keg of Turmoil IPA out to us, we’d been looking forward to this for some while, and it’s truly excellent. Hints of pine and tropical fruit but mainly just a really hoppy full-on bitter IPA; don’t expect this to last very long, we might end up with a line free for a night or two! Also in the not-too-mentally-strong IPA vein, Signature Brew Co‘s  Backstage IPA has been going well, 5.6% delivers an awesome punch of grapefruit with some earthy background giving it real depth for a beer we’d happily drink by the pint. So that’s the current lineup, come down for a midweek bender one day or two before the weekend, it’s definitely worth it. All the above #NowPouring

Then, by the end of the week, going into the next, we’ve got some Marble, a brand new Harbour/Dark Star collaboration and Odyssey, as well as a couple more NVB specialities.

Come drink beer!

The post 2018/02/19 appeared first on Cambridge Pubs.

If you’ve been doing Dry January, you’ve really missed out, I hope you feel guilty and unfulfilled. The beer-drinking public have guzzled their way through some awesome beer in the last couple of weeks, NVB/3BM‘s Kongorong Red (with a slightly controversial alternative working-title of ‘Can You Tell What it is Yet?) got absolutely demolished possibly due to the silver lining of the England cricket team’s 4-1 one-day-series victory. Cricket results almost certainly drive beer sales by our measures. Both Nomadic beers went down very well, after all you’re not selling beer if you can’t sell a Citra SV. Northern Whisper’s Chinwag also didn’t last long, so we’ll aim to get some more of their stuff as and when it becomes available.

Coming up this week:

The second collaboration between our good friends at Nene Valley Brewery and Three Blind Mice, Cuprum, a stout-inspired fruity ruby ale, is tasting great at the moment. Simple Pleasures from NVB will also be making an appearance towards the end of the week, it never lasts long though, so we’ve ordered some Manahattan Project (originally a Royal Standard / Cambridge Blue / NVB collaboration which apparently sold so well it’s now a semi-permanent beer… just saying…) in case it runs out, but if not, that will be on in a week or so from now. The always-excellent Dark Star have had to re-brew their annual Hophead tinkerage, this time with Loral hops, due to huge popular demand. There was literally not enough to go around the first time so they’re on their second, if not third brew of this now. Also on the hoppy side, if we’re really busy, we might bring out a couple of ‘new-to-the-Blue’ Salopian beers. We’ll be tapping ours ready for the weekend. Also making a welcome return is Newby Wyke brewery, we’ve got a 100% Citra 5%er called Mighty Mo and a fruity 5.4% stout called The Deep, which must be a reference to the levels of flavour it has. It being winter, we continue in the ways of the dark side with Colchester (another old favourite of ours) Double Brown and the classic St Peter’s Old Style Porter.

Despite the best efforts of ‘The Fun Police’ to curtail drinking habits in January, you’ve all smashed our keg lineup, with emergency backup being required this week. Tragically, we had to hold back on the Wiper and True‘s ‘Autobahn 4’, so that didn’t go on last week, however that’s good because it means we can drink it very soon indeed! Everything else got smashed last week. Totally new lineup featuring the delights of Wild Weather’s Pirate Captain, a Jester-hopped IPA mad with oats and wheat, making it wonderfully reminiscent of our collab with 3BM Juice Loosener. Speaking of 3BM, there’s a Wild  Weather//3BM collab in the pipeline, and guess where you’re going to be able to drink it when it gets released?! Also fresh on today is NVB’s Egyptian Cream on keg, a rarity since it’s usually present in our cask lineup, so definitely worth a try there. MAD RESPECT to Lost+Found brewery for listing us as a stockist on their website, along with a link to this very humble website! Nothing makes a beer-driven pub want to work with a brewery more than when it takes an interest in where their beer is going, it’s this sort of attention to detail and care for their beer that is evident in their beer. We’ve got their A.BL: American Pale Ale R3.5 Fomo – Saic on right now which is great; crisp, yet still smooth and refreshing with a good level of carbonation (but it’s not a pain to pour, yet more bonus points to these guys, I feel like Sandi Toksvig on QI), not too citrussy straight away, thirst-quenching and building to a tart bitter finish, and perfectly *hic* sessionable at 5.2% *hic*. Also ON NOW is Harbour’s Wallonie Blonde, at 6%, a nice Belgian wiggle on a hoppy pale, not quite an IPA but a great beer with a vague sweetness which wouldn’t be out of place in the bars of Bruges or Brussels. And if you drink all of those, we’ll let you in on a couple more 3BM treats, one of which will. blow. your. mind.

Come drink beer.

The post 2018/02/05 appeared first on Cambridge Pubs.

Specials

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