Got to love being a uni student sometimes, midweek tastings are awesome.
From yesterday,
Hop Back Summer Lightning 5%abv, A delicious zesty beer from the UK, I've been looking for it for years over here and finally got some. It is wonderful on draught but the bottle conditioned variety is still very good. Smooth with a grapefruit aroma and bitter finish, lovely stuff.
Beijing Yanjing Brewery Co. Yanjing 4.5%abv, another mediocre Chinese offering. There seem to be a great deal of these cheap and insipid brews around at the moment. Nothing really good to say about it, okay with food but on its own it is rotten.
Batemans Combined Harvest 4.7%abv, Bronzy gold with a large crumbling head, grainy and fruity aromatics, complex and delicate flavour and quite smooth. Brewed from Barley, Wheat, Oats and Rye and two hops, Phoenix and Target.
Matilda Bay Barking Flamingo 4.5%abv, Raspberry wheat beer, apparently made from their Barking Duck saison with raspberries added. Clear crimson with a pink head, beautiful raspberry aroma with hints of citrus and coriander. Effervescent and dry with lingering raspberry flavours, quite a refreshing brew but packaged for the ladies. Not bad on draught either.
Titanic Stout 4.5%abv. An old school stout, loads of toasted malt aromas with hints of fruit, spice and ginger. Smooth and delicious but not overly heavy and very lightly carbonated. Very well balanced and easy drinking English stout.
St Bernardus Abt12 10%abv. One of the best beers in the world, no arguments will be entered into because you would be just making a fool of yourself. I'm afraid I ran out of superlatives describing this to a friend, so he joined me for the tasting yesterday and was blown away.
I'll try and describe it, buttery smooth and very full bodied, incredibly complex and spicy, very rich with warming alcohol but not overly heavy. Malt whisky characteristics and hints of sweetness, it just seems to have so many different qualities. I could drink this stuff for the rest of my days and not get bored. Accompanied with very dark chocolate and blue cheese it just goes to another level. I've tried other quadruples but this is truly the finest I've sampled.