Broadside

About the beer

Source: Adnams Brewery, Southwold, Suffolk
Style: Strong Bitter
Colour: Dark ruby red
Strength: 6.3% ABV
Ingredient: Pale Ale malt, First Gold hops

Story: Brewed to commemorate the fierce Battle of Sole Bay fought against the Dutch Republic in 1672 off the Southwold coast

Awards: Broadside is a multi-award winner, including ‘Best Strong Bitter’ in the country, and awarded a gold medal at the Great British Beer Festival. Voted ‘Best Strong Bitter’ in the country, it was duly awarded a bronze medal at GBBF in 2011 and Gold award in the International Beer Challenge in 2009.


Tasting at The United
           500ml bottle

Rating (out of 10): 7

Notes: I treasure strong beer, generally, but not this one, unfortunately.  The dark ruby red colour seems a bit misleading to me, as it reminds me of impression of "refined" and "elegant" tastes of Belgium trappist beers.  Disappointingly, taste of Broadside is quite pale (I mean not complex enough), and not hoppy enough.

However, it seems that Southwold is a nice town as seen from the internet photos.  Should be a nice place to visit.

By the way, it is also interesting to see so many breweries naming their beers as those "numerous" British military victories (Admiral's Ale, Spitfire, etc).

Scarecrow & Oxford Gold - Golden Ales

Scarescrow

About the beer

Source: Wychwood Brewery, Witney, Oxfordshire, UK
Style: Organic pale ale
Strength: 4.7%ABV
Malt: Plumage Archer
Hop: Target

Tasting at Lamma
500ml bottle

Rating: 7.5 (out of 10)

Oxford Gold

About the beer

Source: Brakspear Brewery, Witney, Oxfordshire, UK
Style: Organic golden ale
Strength: 4.6%ABV
Malt: English Pale, Crystal
Hop: Fuggles, Goldings, Styrian


Tasting at Lamma
500ml bottle

Rating: 8 (out of 10)

Notes:

Spring is already here and summer is just outside the door, so I tried something more appealing to the eye - the golden colour of beer.

When you think about drinking beer, it makes more sense to emphasise its taste rather than its outlook.  But the advertising and branding people try everything to grasp consumers' attention and hence the aspect of colour comes to the forefront.  Roger Protz said, in his book "300 beers to try before you die", that golden ales were created (mainly) to counter the growth of mass-advertised global lager brands.  I don't know whether the advertising strategy or not, the creation offer some more choices for beer drinkers anyhow.

Scarecrow and Oxford Gold both have a very pleasant appeal to your palate, meaning a bit sweet, very refreshing, and smooth at the same time.  It does somehow strike a good balance between refreshing crispy taste (like lager) and offering a feeling of "bodiness" as expected by ale-drinkers.  In comparison, Oxford Gold is more aromatic, while Scarecrow offers a more citric fruity taste.

It was exciting that I found these two ales in an organic food shop on Lamma Island.  The only pity was that I had my dinner already.  I guess these two ales should go very well with seafood.

Chinese watery beers and others

Just visited Ningbo (寧波) and Zhoushan for a short trip.  As always you cannot expect much to see, eat or drink in the PRC nowadays, as it is an absurd country.  I tried to look for and drink some beers along my way.  It is only for the record purpose:

Watery beers

If possible, I tried to find out some local beers to try, and what I found in Ningbo is a beer called 大梁山.  It was interesting to see the label 大梁山 7度 and guessed it was of 7%ABV.  But we should not be that naive when we came across those products from this neighbouring country.  It said that "原麥汁濃度" is 7 while the alcohol content is actually around 2.5%ABV.  Simply speaking, it tasted like water.

I tried another bottle and I ordered 雪花純生.  Interestingly, it was also of 2.5%ABV, and it also tasted like water.

Good choices in supermarket: Chimay Red and St Feuillien

I gave up drinking beer in restaurant the next day and changed my tactics to visiting a supermarket.  Luckily there was quite a large selection and we picked up Chimay Red and St Feuillien.

We drank them fastly and there should not be much adjective on what they tasted like.  It was simply that: beers should taste like this, and it should be doubtful whether those watery stuff be called the same name.

Munich Brewery

When wandering in a very "high-class" mall (in which you cannot come across more than five people in any direction you looked at), I found this Munich Brewery and walked in.

It was advertised that the beer sold are brewed at its own micro-brewery, and the waiter emphasised that the micro-brewery is simply located on-site inside the bar and restaurant (as taught by my own intuition and experiences, I was very doubtful that those tanks inside the air-conditioned restaurant really supply all the beer sold in the premises).

Anyway, I tried the wheat (yellow) beer and pilsner. Yes, they tasted fresh and nice. I should find myself excited when I walked into a micro-brewery (!!).

Wheat beer

Pilsner

But unluckily, the micro-brewery was situated in a strange country of PRC. 

Anyway, it was my holiday trip after all, and should be remembered nicely.