Bristol Beer Week

Bristol Beer Week kicked off last night with a cracking night at one of my favourite pubs, the Hare on the Hill. Jack, the landlord, had organised five special brews for the night, each from local brewers.

 Art Brew had brewed a pretty robust 7% Bock, which had an intriguing nutty flavour, I'm guessing from the munich malt involved. There was a brown porter from the boys at the New Bristol Brewery that was full of roasty, biscuity flavours. The contribution from Arbor Ales was a 6% Bier de Garde, with Nelson Sauvin hops and fermented with Dupont yeast. I'm not sure how well it fitted with the bier de garde style, but it was still an interesting beer.

One of the best beers was from Rocket Science, a really light, clean English pale ale hopped liberally with home-grown Progress hops. I know how good a brewer Rich Poole is from drinking his homebrew, so Rocket Science beers are always worth trying I just wish he would brew more! My other favourite beer of the beer week specials was the Bristol Cream Stout brewed as a collaboration between Beerd and Wiper & True. This was a really satisfying milk stout with Bristol Cream sherry added to the cask. Surprisingly it only came in at just over 4%, so was also the most forgiving beer of the night!

The pub was nicely busy all night, with plenty of people in beer week t-shirts. All the brewers were in attendance, so it was great having a chat to them and generally geeking out on beer! Really looking forward to the rest of the week now and all the beer it will, responsibly, bring!