BEER BOX SET CLUB SUBSCRIPTION NOTES
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Ponderings:
July... For those of you local to Worthing it's Pride weekend in Worthing. Here's to being part of an inclusive community where Love is Love.
This month's box has two lovely beers made for Pride month with proceeds going towards LGBTQ+ charities. You also have a style compare and contrast - a super West Coast IPA and a wonderful New England IPA. There is also a new (to us) brewery; a birthday celebration and a couple of other absolute stonkers!
Enjoy!
Electric Bear Brewing | I See Pride, I See Power | Pale Ale | 4%
"Brewed for Pride Month, I See Pride, I See Power is a celebration of bringing people together.
This one tastes like pure summertime in a glass. Loaded with BRU-1 and Citra hops alongside Pineapple Passion yeast, expect bright bursts of orange, pineapple and grapefruit, all wrapped up in a super sessionable Pale Ale that’s made for sunny days.
10p from every can and pint sold will be donated to Off The Record, supporting LGBTQ+ young people working or studying in Bath and North East Somerset."
Celebrating Pride Month. With beer. Of course!
And first up we have this from the wonderful folk at Electric Bear in Bath. Using a new yeast called Pineapple passion yeast. It’s a fast fermenting yeast and can tolerate temperatures of up to 26 degrees. We can’t find much more information on it. Originally Gareth thought it was a Norweigan Kveik yeast, which often give huge fruity esters. But we now think perhaps it’s a hybrid of London Fog or another Old style ale yeast preferred in hazy beers and another.
The beer, well on the nose we got the big Pineapple wallop. And with the combination of Bru-1 and Citra means it does exactly what the description says. It’s a cool beer. With a cool can. For a good cause. Goes well with Horse Meat Disco and a kitchen dance, or maybe even a dance in the garden!
Otherworld Brewing x Closet Brewing | Sappho | Pale Ale | 4%
"Brewed with our friends at Closet Brewery for Pride, this hazy pale takes inspiration from their beer Lost in the Sauce. Idaho 7, Mosaic, and Sabro hops bring notes of guava, passionfruit, mango, pine, and citrus, layered over a smooth, easy-drinking pale base. Light, juicy and refreshing. Across two batches, we aim/we’re aiming to donate £1,000 from sales of this beer to LGBT Health and Wellbeing, supporting their work with LGBTQ+ people and communities across Scotland."
Here’s our second Pride beer brewed by the excellent Otherworld brewing up in Dalkieth in Scotland and Closet Brewing just up the road in Edinburgh. We love Otherworld and have poured their beers for a while. They have collaborated with the likes of Sunken Knave from Worthing and make both modern and old style beers with a twist. Daniel, owner and head brewer actually came to one of our events as a guest of Mark Tranter from Burning Sky. He’s very highly regarded.
Closet Brewing is an Edinburgh-based nano-brewery run by two queer women (and their tiny dog). In their words “Our emphasis is on quality vegan beers, queer community and keeping a local-minded, outgoing approach at the centre of our mission. We use unique flavours and innovative techniques to create beers that are, at their heart, a lot of fun.”
This is a delicious beer with the Sabro adding a truly tropical tinge to the beer. We haven’t tried the Lost in Sauce beer from Closet Brewing. The description pretty much nails it and as you drink it you know you’re helping to do good too. Goes well with Gossip and more kitchen discos.
Pretty Decent Beer Co. | HB PD (9th Birthday Pale) | Pale Ale | 5.3%
"Facebook told me it was your birthday.
Hops: Idaho 7 Cryo, Mosaic T90, Mosaic Cryo, Simcoe T90, Simcoe Cryo"
Pretty Decent are actually Pretty Decent. Based on the Blackhorse Estate in London's fashionable East End, East 17 to be exact, we have been really enjoying their beers a lot of late and when we saw this 9th Birthday release we knew you had to have it. They were founded by husband and wife duo James and Sarah Casey. They donate a proportion of all beer sold to Pump Aid, a charity which works to provide reliable access to safe water in sub-Saharan Africa.
They started on basically a big homebrew kit from an arch in London's Forest Gate. Using the Productive Valley fund they were able to get a grant to massively upscale their brewkit and become what they are today.
This beer is a deliciously hazy but balanced DDH Pale ale with big hops thrown at it. With T90 being pellets made from the whole hop flower giving more rounded herbaceous flavours and Cryo hops being the pure essential oils of the hops which give a massive aroma boost. Goes well with Cloud 9 by the Temptations and Party Snacks, the Jalepeno ones, if you know what we’re on about.
The Three Legs Brewing Co. | Mosaic + Riwaka NEIPA | 5.6%
"A NEIPA with Mosaic and Riwaka. A piney and hebral bitterness with aromas of mango, passionfruit, stone fruit and lime drops. A soft body and juicy and unctuous mouthfeel."
Three Legs, we think, are an underrated Sussex brewery making excellent beers. Based in Bexhill not far from Hastings they were set up by two pals, one later moved to France to make wine while one continued the brewery. This is the latest in their NEIPA series where they use different hops to great effect. But create balanced, not overly sweet New England Style Beers. Delicious.
Again we see the use of US and Southern hemisphere hops. This time it’s New Zealand’s Riwaka. And this is an old school hop in comparison to the previous Australian hops. Cultivated by crossing noble hop Saaz - commonly used in Czech lagers - and New Zealand hops it was first released in 1997. It has a high oil content which creates the aroma of the beer. With fruity Mosaic it’s a match made in heaven. Goes well with Chaos in the CBD and some good old fashioned spicy snacks.
Your compare and contrast:
Floc. | Passing Clouds | IPA | 6%
"A DDH IPA bursting with tropical intensity, layering Galaxy, Citra and Mosaic hops for juicy mango, citrus zest and berry aromas, balanced by soft bitterness and a pillowy, refreshing finish"
Well, it’s been a while since Floc graced the Beer Box Set and they’re back with a classic hop combo. Mixing up Southern Hemisphere in Galaxy and classic US hop combo Citra and Mosaic. This has their classic juicy malt base giving it that familiar Floc yumminess. We’ve noticed a lot more us of Southern Hemisphere hops over the last year and are looking into why this is.
It’s been an interesting time globally and that swings into beer and flavours too. As far as we can remember Galaxy was the first Australian hop to really hit the UK brewing scene, first commercialised in 2009. The Australian hop supplier Hop Products simply couldn’t put up with demand so have worked to invest in their farms to keep up with demand. It appears this has worked as we see more of it being used across beers at the moment. And it’s a beauty.
Goes well with Amyl and the Sniffers, Courtney Barnett and Mackerel Skies.
Indie Rabble | Magnetic Lobster | West Coast IPA | 6.8%
"Snip snip. Let the Magnetic Lobster attract you to the correct side of the flavour wheel. Cascade and Eclipse bring all the pine, resin and zest flavours you need, backed by an intense bitterness. You can't resist being drawn to it. Snip."
Oooo MASSIVE West Coast IPA fans Indie Rabble are back. Pouring this it has that classic West Coast Caramalt coming through. A rich caramel colour and a viscosity to the pour which to us just screams a quality West Coast IPA. Gareth’s face was pure joy as he poured it for someone in HQ. It’s big, it’s bold it’s brash. It’s a proper West Coast. And again uses a combination of both US and Australian hops. A West Coast Classic in US Cascade and the pithy zesty character of Eclipse to compliment that West Coast Oomph.
Eclipse is a lot younger than Galaxy being commercialised only six years ago in 2020. And it is actually a hybrid of an Australian Variety and a US hop variety. We wonder what? Another C hop that work so well in a ‘trad’ West Coast IPA, or perhaps Simcoe? A hop loved by many West Coast lovers including mutual rabble and BNE friend Andy Elusive. We’ll leave it for you to decide. Goes well with the B52s and another shrimp on the barbie. Or a smokey, grilled spicy alternative
Elusive Brewing | Shadow of the Beast | BIPA | 5%
"Shadow of the Beast is an Elusive classic! It was one of our first ever brews but we haven't brewed it for quite a while. Time to put that right! This Black IPA uses roasted wheat malt to give it a dark appearance and moderately roasty malt profile. We then add Citra and Mosaic hops across six additions to layer in a lovely citrus-forward hop profile. The malts play really nicely with the hops in this one!"
This is a classic Black IPA. Andy first brewed this professionally in 2016, in birth year of Elusive Brewing. It was then Gyle No. 16 - meaning the 16th brew - they are now well above 1000. This is an Andy Classic and very much the style of beer Gareth remembers trying at London Amateur Brewers. It uses classic West Coast and BIPA hop Cascade in ‘hot side’ which adds to bittering and later flavour and aroma, then cold side we have lashings of Citra and Mosaic. It’s an absolute treat to have this beer back. And we hop you enjoy it as much as we do.
And...FLASHBACK to 2020. We actually did a colab with Elusive for a Tap Takeover that never happened because of lockdown. The batch was bottled by hand - Thanks Andy! - and we tried it as part of a very boozy online tasting on Zoom. Oh those were the days. It was really good fun. And it came in at an accidental 6.8%. We called it Altered Beast, taking inspiration from the 1988 Sega game and Chicago House Pioneers Phuture who sampled the game soundtrack in their track Rise from Your Grave. It was Epic. But for now you’ll have to make do with the equally epic original. As according to the Internet, Altered Beast never existed…
Goes well with Old Chicago House and 8-Bit games.