Abbeydale Brewing Company, Sheffield, South Yorkshire:
When I first tasted this beer years ago on cask, I remember being disappointed, because I was fully expecting something as heavenly as Abbeydale Deception was back then. And as this had a higher ABV than Deception, I never chose it again. But here in a can in the safety of my own home, it’s pleasant enough, especially on this bitterly cold night.Absolution (5.3% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
This is a collaboration with Yakima Chief hops, with the main aroma hops being Dynaboost Simcoe. It’s also hopped with YCH701 Citra and Centennial Cryo hops. What an appropriate beer to have after this particular day, considering I was late to work because I was busy experiencing an amazing exhibit at the Sheffield Festival of the Mind. It was my first experience with a VR headset, and I was wandering through the Milky Way galaxy, feeling like a privileged astronaut, my hands looking as if they were wearing laser-lit hi-tech astronaut gloves; and I was surrounded by large Solar System planets circling around me, and a massive black hole suddenly crashed into the side of my head, my mind enveloped in the event horizon. It was such an amazing experience that I was fifteen minutes late to work and grinning inanely for a good half hour, as if I were on LSD. After that high, this pale beer wasn’t quite as amazing as I was hoping, but it was still really good and hoppy, with a wonderful aroma bouncing out of the can as soon as I opened it.Astronaut Experimental Pale Ale (5.2% ABV -- reviewed 21 September 2024)
Brewed for Sheffield Beer Week, this is described as a “Mountain-style pale ale, a hybrid West Coast IPA and NEIPA with Citra, Cascade, and Mosaic hops.” it does offer quite a powerful hops presence for a less-than-5% beer. It was a great end to a day that started with a surprise rainbow, followed by some gorgeously delicious coffee. Oh, and an ordinary day at work, of course--so this was a reward as well as a celebration.Cloud Peak Cryo Session IPA (4.8% ABV -- reviewed 30 April 2023)
This is a double IPA with ESB yeast, Ekuanot and Mosaic cryo hops, and it’s gold in colour but tastes much darker. Good god, it’s very intense. I feel that it’s bit too adventurous for my tender soul the early May night that I drank it, worried sick about my mother in California who was not well, after searching for green walks through the woods to calm my trembling soul. This beer needs fortitude to drink. Call to Adventure (8.2% ABV -- a collaboration with Beatnikz Republic, Manchester -- reviewed 6 June 2020)
It was a tough week, tough days, with lots of rain, Andrew’s injured back, and my work getting suddenly busy, with 98% of the university students walking around unmasked. So I was looking forward to trying this. I do like Heathen, on cask or draft or in the can, and I do love cryo hops. So I had high hopes for this. And oh yes, yes! It was a welcome reward: gorgeous! Each sip massaged my shoulders and kissed my face all over. This is a truly loving beer, a most happy marriage of Cryo and Mosaic hops . Apparently it was brewed in celebration of Abbeydale Brewery’s 25th anniversary, which is definitely something to celebrate. Earlier I was reading about the distinction between the words inverse and converse. The inverse of a statement is achieved by negating both its hypothesis and its conclusion. For instance, the inverse of “if JC is drinking Cryo Heathen, then she’s drinking a good beer” would be “If JC isn’t drinking Cryo Heathen, then she’s not drinking a good beer.” This would be a logically defective, or false, statement, as would be the converse: “If JC is drinking good beer, then she’s drinking Cryo Heathen.”Cryo Heathen (5.0% ABV -- reviewed 14 December 2021)
This New Zealand pale ale was first brewed by Abbeydale in 2008, and I remember it with fondness. Brewed with Nelson Sauvin hops, this is my first experience with it as a craft beer. Fortunately it’s quite pleasant, even though it doesn’t have the wow! factor of the original recipe of cask ale way back then. But hey, it’s been 13 years, so everybody changes and grows, even beers. It was pleasant and undemanding for the afternoon’s locals birthday Zoom quiz, this time featuring a screenful of friends with fake white beards and mouths full of plastic hair fibres. Once the birthday surprise is over, I think I may remove my deception of a beard in order to properly drink my liquid Deception.Deception (4.1% ABV -- reviewed 20 July 2021)
This version of Deliverance is double dry hopped and very strong. The skull’s head on the label made me think of Halloween, which was the day before I drank this, and even more so of the next day, El Dia De Los Muertos. But that high ABV made me very glad that I didn't have to walk anywhere. I have to admit this was definitely high-alcohol tasty, and oh so hoppy, with plenty of Cryo and T90 hops as well as oats and lactose. Yeah, this is a complicated beer. It had been raining steadily outside and very cold, and I’d given up on going outside at all. So this, my deliverance, seemed like a most appropriate beer.Deliverance DDH Mosaic IPA (8.5 ABV -- reviewed 14 December 2021)
There are currently two different Abbeydale Deliverances out right now, and this is definitely the stronger one. Brewed with Galaxy and Vic Secret hops, it’s a nice familiar hops combination. But I must say it’s pretty, wow, Stronge. And yes, I mean to spell that with an E. And probably an X as well, as in Strongxe. I will definitely feel this can when I’m finished with it.Deliverance DIPA (8.5% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
As the pubs have all closed for the duration of the coronavirus lockdown, my future pub updates for the next few months will be strictly of bottles and cans enjoyed at home. This was my first can during this period of confinement. Brewed with barley, oats, wheat, and Yakima Chief hops, the wild experimental hops that originates from a wild Neomexicanus subspecies, this is described on the can, quite correctly, as juicy citrus, coconut, and bourbon. Wow! It’s a wild, completely unique ride, sort of like the other side of this whole Covid-19 nightmare that everyone in the world is experiencing. Deliverance promises to me that we will get through all of this -- there is a light at the end of this tunnel, however long it may be. Thank you, Abbeydale: I’ve been delivered!Deliverance DIPA Sabro HBC 4720 HBC 692 (7.0% ABV -- reviewed 29 March 2020)
This is like an intercontinental ballistic missile of Nelson Sauvin, Galaxy, and Idaho 7 Cryo hops. I was looking forward to this. It hasn’t reached 105 degrees F in Sheffield like it was supposed to, and when I walked down the road just now on the shady side of the street, it felt pretty much like any other hot day to me. But then I spent the first half of my life in Southern California, and I just spent three weeks in Bakersfield. I know what hot is, and this 97-degree heat pales compared to the KILLER HEAT DON’T GO OUT OF YOUR HOUSE OR YOU’LL DIE! that the weather agencies had predicted. Anyway, as I sit on my sofa inside the house, with bare feet and dry, sweatless skin, I am appreciating this atomic bomb of intense hops. Yep, life is pretty good this afternoon.Deliverance Intercontinental DIPA (8.5% ABV -- reviewed 20 August 2022)
This was a typical rye ale, showing a darker copper colour, of course, as rye ales usually do. And it was very hoppy as well. Brewed with Amarillo and Citra hops, then dry hopped with Summit and Columbus, it was described on the can as having notes of pepper, pink grapefruit, and pine. Yep, that described the taste perfectly, and I can’t really add anything to that description. It was another completely satisfying can of beer to sip on a freezing cold spring day. It was quite a weird spring day, actually, with bits of snow and sleet alternating with completely clear skies. I guess the winter wasn’t quite finished yet.Deliverance Rye Double Ale (8.5% ABV -- reviewed 15 November 2022)
This was a most wonderfully satisfying reward for my earlier impression of Scott Traversing the Antarctic in the constantly rising snow. This is a collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops, with a trio of hops from the Wild Neomexicanus species. The can suggests citrus, coconut, and bourbon, which perfectly describes this really exciting and uniquely versatile combination of hops. Yow! I can also detect a frosty window nearby with a welcoming roaring fire in my soul. Nice!Deliverance Sabro, Talus, & HBC 472 IPA (7.0% ABV -- reviewed 20 March 2023)
Brewed with Citra hops, this is just a nice drinkable pale ale. I was happy to see the ol’ Doc in cans, as it’s been quite awhile since I’ve enjoyed one of this range in a pint in a pub. So it’s possible I may have had Duck Baffler before, on cask. I do have a fond attachment to ducks these days. The highlight of my long walk into my job three days a week is a stop for some avian meditation at the Weston Park duck pond, where all the mallards descended from two original pairs, and there are also lots of pigeons, crows, coots, and moorhens, as well as larger ducks. (I’m fascinated by the large black duck with white chest who is always with two large white ducks.) On the can of this beer it says the following: "For all your wildfowl acquisition needs. Preferred by 9 out of 10 mallards tested. The other has been donated to a local takeaway to teach him a lesson about loyalty." As I drank this on the first of ten days off work, I realised I would probably not visit my duck friends during my break. So this beer helped me remember them.Doctor Morton's Duck Baffler (4.1% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
According to the warnings on the can, aside from causing idiocy, blindness, sunstroke and lycanthropy, this may cause double visiondouble vision. At that reasonable ABV, and with all those lovely New World hops, I don’t think it’s a danger. The day is already surprisingly scorchio for Sheffield, so I don’t think I can cause any more damage as far as killer heat waves, flooding, and attacks by urban nuisance wolves. So I’m just sitting back and enjoying this very nice drop and wishing we were sitting in somebody’s garden having a barbecue.Doctor Morton's Demon Drink (4.2% ABV -- reviewed 2 November 2021)
How exciting to see the ol’ Doc in cans in my local Bargain Booze! I’m quite sure I’ve had this beer in a pub on cask, and now I can drink it at home. On the can, along with lots of other things that Doctor Morton beers also espouse, it says it’s Shameless, and also “By Jingo It Sure Is Tasty”. And indeedie so, it sure the heck is! What a lovely hoppy pale this is, yessireebob!Doctor Morton's Proper Gander (4.1% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
Brewed with Vic Secret and Galaxy hops, this is glorious. Surprisingly glorious. On a day off, I could have walked to the pub and sat in the garden, and the sun is shining brightly. But it’s been a very changeable day, sudden clouds and heavy thundershowers, so I think I’ll do an un-JC thing and sit inside my house all day and admire the gorgeous day from the dry safety of Inside. This is a lovely beer, and I can read my Saul Bellow book, so I’m happy.Emergence (4.5% ABV -- reviewed 20 July 2021)
Dry hopped pale ale with Galaxy and Sabro hops, this beer is a collaboration with I Monster, otherwise known as Sheffield-based record producers Dean Honer and Jarrod Gosling, who also form the electronic music duo I Monster. This ale was brewed in celebration of the 20th anniversary reissue of their album Neveroddoreven, as well as their 2024 tour. Considering I'd flown home from America only four days earlier, this seemed like an appropriate can to try. It's quite tropical, fruity and coconutty, like a piña colada consumed out on the deck at my cousin's house in Bastrop, Texas -- only without the sweetness. It's not only very drinkable, but it's only 4.7%, so one could easily drink a few of these at a summer barbecue.Fly P.A. (4.7% ABV -- reviewed 15 July 2024)
This is an American pale ale brewed with frozen fresh "green" Mosaic hops that have been harvested in the US. Oh yes, ooh-ah! I sense the fresh, bright, green hops, fresh and bright! I see jade green! I see a pint sitting in front of me, somewhere in California. Have my dreams come true yet? Am I visiting my home country, my friends, and my family yet? No, not quite. This is just a preview of what's to come, here in my Yorkshire living room.Fresh Hop Heathen (4.1% ABV -- reviewed 24 March 2022)
This interesting beer is brewed with Mosaic hops. It's part of Abbeydale's Hop Bretta series, produced as a result of their nano-batch barrel ageing and souring project which uses their house brett culture. This beer, as I poured it from the can, bubbled out, scenting the room intoxicatingly. The sudden explosion caused me to check the use-by date on the can, but it was still in date, so it was just an impressive entrance out of the can and into the glass. As no one was harmed in the decanting process, what a rewarding pleasure this amazingly fragrant beer turned out to be.Funk Dungeon (4.6% ABV -- reviewed 28 November 2019)
The can describes this beer as a bretted lager which has been aged in a combination of former wine and neutral American Oak casks for 14 months. Apparently it’s brewed in what’s called the Funk Dungeon as Funk Chapter 4. It’s a classic orange-golden sour beer with lagered hops, brett yeast, and skeletons all over the label. So what’s not to like? My sleepless super-stressed soul definitely enjoyed this brew. And while I was drinking it I received the phone call I had been waiting months and months for, that would finally relieve most of my sleeplessness and stress of the past few months. So this beer seemed soooo perfect for this experience. Thank you, my sweet -- sorry, I mean my sour kittykittykitty...Funk Dungeon Heavy Nettle Saison (6.66% ABV -- reviewed 4 May 2020)
I love Abbeydale’s Funk Dungeon series of interesting beers. This one is single hopped with Tradition hops and bretted with Brett yeast culture and promises the tastes of grass and herbs “ with a funky nature." After our weekly Saturday-with-pub-friends quiz was cancelled, I took a pleasantly dry afternoon walk up the hill -- pleasant except for the sudden scary gale-force Arctic wind that necessitated my weatherproof hood on my French down hiking jacket, which froze solid my fingers when I had to remove them from my warm pockets to carry my shopping home. When I finally managed to thaw out my hands and bring the feeling back to my glass-wielding fingers, I was happy to be drinking a wowily interesting FUNKY beer as the frostbite slowly eased off. This was a pleasantly easy touch of brett and funk, actually, a good beginner’s machine in the Funk Dungeon.Funk Dungeon Hop Bretta - Tradition (4.9% ABV -- reviewed 20 July 2021)
This is a good strong nettled sour for a dark day in Lockdown April, after a long spell of sunshine. It's brewed with locally foraged nettles and then aged six months in American oak barrels, with a secondary fermentation of a Brett blend. This brew is good for cutting through the darkness. It’s very sour with lots of wow taste. No wonder I like it. I wish I could WhatsApp a can to my friend Mistah Rick, because I know he'd like it, too.Funk In Drublic Barrel Aged Sour Lager (5.2% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Temple of Fun, Sheffield -- reviewed 23 November 2020)
This interesting brew, which is part of the brewery’s Funk Dungeon series, has been brewed with heritage grain Plumage Archer, then aged in red wine casks and neutral American oak, and finally dry-hopped with Amarillo. Wow! It’s really interesting and different! My Bay Area brewery-tour companion Rick would really enjoy this. It has just the right amount of sour, with a rustic background (yes, grass!), with a gentle funk, peppery and tart orange. The can features a drawing of the American Gothic couple as Funk Dungeon skeletons. This beer is a really nice reward for my exhausting day. The aged wine barrel really comes through, adding a deep oaky dryness to the bottom of the palate. I’d love to be sitting in a big sunny rattan chair on a porch on the plains, with Plumage Archer fields rippling for miles in the distance. And Lassie is waiting next to me, her little suitcase packed, ready to go to the moon. I can smell a gorgeous barbecue in the vicinity, featuring langoustine, roasted corn cobs, tossed salad, and freshly baked Country French bread, all being prepared by the chef who lives next door. Mmm. I can dream, can’t I?Gothic Country Heritage Saison (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 20 August 2022)
Since I love Galaxy hops, that’s what made me decide to try this dry-hopped lager which contains them. For a lager it’s not bad at all. It would be a nice cold drink to sip while sitting outside on a warm sunny day, which might be...hmm, when? Oh promises, promises...I realise that I’m sitting here drinking lager, but some of the hoppy craft lagers are all right now and then. So there.Heretic Dry-Hopped Lager (4.2% ABV -- reviewed 6 June 2020)
It’s been a dark, nonstop wet day, a depressing “No Future” sort of day. Due to the fact that I couldn’t sleep past 4:00am, I spent the day thrashing to the Sex Pistols and Dead Kennedys between collapsing and snoozing. But I’m now contentedly drinking my 5pm can of beer, early at 4:15pm, while reading my current book My Year of Meat by Ruth L Ozeki. So I can accurately say I’ve been hibernating today. This Hibernation is dry hopped, with a good balance of citrus, stone fruit, and pine resin, the way I like it at the moment. Yep. I may buy more cans of this, and then I won’t come out until Groundhog Day...2022.Hibernation (4.2% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
Brewed with Ekuanot, Mosaic, and Idaho 7 hops, this beer perfectly matches the can’s flavour suggestion of fruit and spicy pine. Yes, of course! It was perfect for the suddenly pleasant warmish day which I was most happily enjoying, while all of my British friends were already complaining about it before it was even half over. This beer sent me right back to a breezy California patio. On my second tasting of this beer, I noticed the graphic of a beaver holding what looks like a maple leaf on the can. Once again I found it a surprisingly pleasant and very hoppy beer. It starts with a nice tropical fruit followed by pepper and pine resin, which to me is a perfect recipe. I wonder if Canadian beavers would like it, though...Homestead Hazy Pale Ale (4.3% ABV -- reviewed 20 August 2022, and again on 3 October 2022)
What a day, nearly a month into Lockdown. I’m struggling with writing a currently irrelevant appraisal when I get a phone call from California that my elderly mom has fallen and broken her hip. And in this Covid-19 world, my brother and sister and unofficial brother can’t go visit her in the hospital, and I can’t fly over there. Talk about emotion...so I log off computers, take the necessary shopping walk, and settle down with my grief-stricken emotions and a can of this beer. Why not? It’s a really great strong hops-powerful brew. As everything seems like different forms of Armagedden today, it’s also very appropriate. Oats, wheat, Amarillo, El Dorado, and Ekuanot hops. Hops are fermented with an Ebbegarden strain of Kveik yeast.Hop Cult Armageddon (6.66% ABV -- reviewed 4 May 2020)
, this beer is made with Citra, Centennial, and Amarillo hops which have been added throughout the brewing process. It also features lots of grapefruit. Grapefruit itself has given me a terrible stomach for years, but fortunately the brewing process tends to denature everything bad about it. This is quite majestically great and reminds me a bit of Ballast Point’s Grapefruit Sculpin’ IPA. Hang ten, the sun has finally come out!Hopsmash Grapefruit IPA (7.4% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Kuhnhenn Brewing Company, Warren, Michigan -- reviewed 27 August 2020)
This was my first can of beer for my birthday Zoom session with Mike, our fellow beer-loving Sheffield friend. Featuring an interesting hops mixture of Ekuanot, Eureka, Sorachi Ace, Galaxy, Vic Secret, Citra, and Ekuanot Cryo, and also Windsor Ale and London ESB yeasts, this was definitely a good hazy hop-bitter accompaniment to our always interesting sessions, and it’s quickly become one of my current favourites.Huckster Cryo NEIPA (6.0% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Peddler's Market, Sheffield -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
This is a Peach Iced Tea beer with El Dorado hops, peaches, and organic sencha tea from Sheffield’s Birdhouse Tea Company, and also hibiscus flowers. I was a bit scared to taste this unusual combination of flavours, but this is actually a really nice beer with a dry peach-friendly hops boing! I’d describe it as having a boingy dry peachiness with a cup-of-tea background. Not only is this a successful beer, but it’s the best name for a beer I’ve seen in awhile.Iced Tea Dead People (4.6% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
Abbeydale created this beer as a collaboration with Indie Beer Hop Day 2021. Using Idaho 7 hops, it's very light in colour but bitterly hoppy. It had been a frustrating day of no help from IT online chats, as well as no one socially to see or chat with. As sad as it might sound, a good beer can always cheer a person up.Independence Dry Hopped Pale Ale (4.0% ABV -- reviewed 14 December 2021)
Brewed with Enigma, Ekuanot, and Idaho 7 hops, this is Abbeydale’s first beer intended for cans only, to “embrace the concept of staying at home”. It’s nice and drinkable and very comforting after a frustrating day spent in long queues outside shops only to find what you came for is out of stock. And it’s a soothing reward for trying to get used to yet another new reality, with a mother who has just died in a country that I’m not allowed to visit at the moment, combined with the horrid lockdown situation where all of us but the hermits who are used to this lifestyle are reaching saturation point with their mental health. Mine is certainly disappearing quickly. And if I hear the phrase “for the foreseeable future” once again I’m going to explode. (...while isolated inside my house, of course.)Isolation Session IPA (4.4% ABV -- reviewed 6 June 2020)
This beer is dry hopped with Sabro, Talus, and El Dorado, with notes of pink grapefruit and coconut. I had a half pint of this recently at Two Sheds, and it was gorgeous. Drinking this out of the can was quite enjoyable, and of course quite exciting with those hops, and it was also a just reward for a stupidly physical day at work. I do love a piña colada every now and then, and I also love a coconut pineapple smoothie. So I’m pretty damn happy with this.King Piña DH Pineapple Pale Ale (5.0% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Good Chemistry Brewing -- reviewed 30 December 2023)
This collaboration features UK grown Harlequin and Cascade hops, and it's dry hopped with Galaxy and Loral Cryo. So the hops are from all over the place, creating a cosmopolitan, interesting, and totally cool beer. In fact, it's too cool for school, as we used to say. According to Homer's Iliad, Menelaus was a central figure in the Trojan War who led the Spartan contingent of the Greek armyBut apparently Menelaus is also the name of one of the lions that flank the steps of the Council House in Nottingham, so that's where this beer's name comes from.Menelaus New School IPA (5.5% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Castle Rock, Nottingham -- reviewed 25 July 2023)
Another brew in Abbeydale’s Wanderer series, this is single hopped with Mosaic leaf, T90, pellets, and Cryo hops. The beer brings out the Mosaic in all of its characters--perhaps tiles of characters? I used to love to make mosaics when I was young, specifically those tile-by-number kits. So yep, here I am, creating a mosaic of different forms of the same hops on my tongue.Mosaic NEIPA (6.2% ABV -- reviewed 19 August 2024)
After a short after-work pub walk was cancelled due to my friend’s sudden migraine, I came home to enjoy this can. Singled hopped with, for me, a newly revisited hops from my Seattle days, this is also brewed with a New England yeast strain. It’s a really nice hoppy-hoppy beer, light with interesting hints of pineapple and citrus. Yum! It’s like a very yummy palate massage. No debris here.Obsession Amarillo NEIPA (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 20 March 2023)
When I popped open this can, a heavenly scent filled the room. Oh, heaven on the first taste. Glorious, glorious galactic heaven! I'm in heaven!Obsession Galaxy IPA (5.9% ABV -- reviewed reviewed 25 July 2023)
I drank the first half of this beer at home unconsciously while I was reading the autobiography of an old friend of my brother’s, after a very lonely day at work where I communicated with not one single human being, followed by a very long wait for a bus. But when I finally stopped to pay attention, I discovered this beer was really good! I never gave Simcoe much thought, but it’s really sort of like dry pinewood smoke. Yum!Obsession Simcoe IPA (5.8% ABV -- reviewed 20 August 2022)
Hopped with Rakau and Motueka hops and lupulin liquid SubZero Hop Kief (from Freestyle Hops), all grown in the Nelson Sunrise Valley region of New Zealand, this is described as tasting of plum, fig, apricot, and lemon-lime. Yep, it was just my type of beer. I love that lupulin!Okarito New Zealand Pale Ale (4.5% ABV -- reviewed 18 March 2024)
Finally the Abbeydale delivery of cans arrived at my local off-license, so this was one of my purchases. Brewed with Citra and Cascade and then dry-hopped, it's very cloudy but a lovely, hoppy comfort on Day 14 of the lockdown in these discomforting times. It cleaned and disinfected my soul after a rather scary excursion to the local shop.Reverie (4.2% ABV -- reviewed 4 May 2020)
This West Coast IPA is a collaboration with Burnt Mill Brewing of Ipswich, Suffolk. A riffle is a reach of stream where shallow fast-moving water is broken by rocks and boulders. Riffles are common in both Derbyshire and Suffolk, so that inspired the name. With my first sip I got a definite Wow! Strong! Bitter! I was swung into a boulder in a torrential rainstorm, which I actually had experienced earlier when I got off the bus to walk the rest of the way to work, and I ended up completely drenched. In fact my clothes were still wet while I was enjoying this beer. Apparently the city of Sheffield has decided that a walking-cycling City Centre is great for everyone, even people who can’t walk, and it completely disregards the typical Sheffield weather. So of course the bus routes make no sense at all for people actually needed to get from Point A to Point B. Oh well, it matches the UK politics of the era...Riffle (4.3% ABV -- reviewed 15 November 2022)
As it was already January, but still winter, I decided it was time to open one of the cans of festive beers I bought for the holidays. And this is pretty decent! It’s definitely a nice stout, with a good malty background but no treacle--nice and dry, like I like it. I do like my wine, beer, and martinis to be dry, not to mention my clothes when I’m out walking in the wintertime. I’m actually enjoying this stout more than I usually enjoy a stout. Is it because it’s from Abbeydale, which is such a great Sheffield brewery? The can says this is from their Brewers’ Emporium range, brewed with coffee from a local supplier. Nice!Salvation Cappuccino Stout (5.5% ABV -- reviewed 6 February 2023)
This is brewed with Lemon Drop, Centennial, and Cascade hops, which are all hops I really like. A cloudy beer, this is nice: hoppy with a dryness on the tongue. Considering the massive downpour of rain I had just managed to avoid on my way home from work, the dryness was welcome.Scorpion Bowl IPA (7.5% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Stone Brewery, Escondido, California -- reviewed 25 November 2018)
This is a light-on-alcohol pleasantly drinkable brew with Citra, Centennial, and Victoria Secret hops. I chose to take this can out into our back garden to sit, for the very first time, as our tiny postage stamp of weedy chaos is finally being tamed into somewhere we can sit and enjoy the sun this summer. A friend of ours stopped over for our very first socially-distancing-but-in-the-flesh visit since early March, so it was quite exciting. As Mike sat in a folding chair at the back of the garden (over two metres away), I perched on the back step, sipping this beer and squinting painfully at the angle at which the sun was piercing my eyes. Still, the easy effect of this beer on my lockdown-claustrophobic mood was lightly optimistic, which is a good thing.Serenity SIPA (3.8% ABV -- reviewed 6 June 2020)
The subtitle of this beer was Chapter 7, so I suppose that meant it was the seventh episode of Abbeydale’s Funk Dungeon series. This beer was a blend of red ales that had been aged for up to three years in a mixture of French red wine and neural American oak barrels. It was really nice for a sour, as they can often be either too neutral or too fruity. This was the way I like a sour: tawny coloured, leaning toward sour cherry and tobacco, like a starter course for mesquite-roasted salmon (or the red meat of your choice), along with some good crusty rustic Italian or French bread and a proper Caesar salad, accompanied by a bottle of fine red wine, and followed by a dessert course of Stilton and port. Yep, I’ll take that any day. It was a nice fantasy just five days before my stressful travel day during Covid times. Thank god I didn’t have to sip this through a face mask.Sheffield Red Barrel Aged Sour (5.8% ABV -- reviewed 15 November 2022)
This splendourous brew is a dry hopped orange-infused pale, and it’s quite pleasant, perky, and shiny. There is a definite orange aura about it, peeking out from behind a satisfyingly and typically Abbeydale wonderfully hoppy experience. A can of this was a nice reward for enduring the constantly rainy day, most of it spent setting up my new phone. Dealing with new smartphone and computer systems is always exhausting work, sometimes very frustrating, but it’s pretty much done, and I’m looking forward to testing the amazing camera on it. But that won't be today as it's way too dark and wet outside. Instead I'll just sit here inside and bask in this orange hoppy sunshine.Splendour (4.4% ABV -- reviewed 23 November 2020)
This is a hazy pale brewed with an exciting partnership of Sabro, Citra, Ekuanot, Chinook, and Centennial hops. Each sip emanates a zingy velvety hops throb with slightly mango-coconut overtones. I’m not really sure where the name has come from, because I know Tupelo as the town in Mississippi where Elvis Presley was born, and also as the source of the excellent Tupelo honey. I suppose I could take a can of this with me to a park and sip it while singing to the bees and gyrating my pelvis. But as it’s raining outside I think I’ll just drink it while lounging on the couch with my book. Probably a wiser decision.Tupelo (5.5% ABV -- brewed in collaboration with Salt Beer Factory, West Yorkshire --reviewed 23 November 2020)
I had been freezing all day, but this warmed me right up. It’s a lovely cold warmer, with a citrus sourness and those lovely hops, and it’s dry hopped with Citra and Columbus. I'd happily pack cans of this for a picnic or a barbecue, not that I can particularly recommend any particular foods with it. But I could see it with a cheese plate featuring some dry crumbly cheeses.Unbeliever Dry-Hopped Sour IPA (5.2% ABV -- reviewed 18 May 2019)
This beer contains barley, wheat, oats, rice, maize, lemongrass, Kaffir lime leaves, lemon, lime, coconut, and hops. The perfect yellow and green striped can is decorated with tall conifers, which primed me for this uniquely non-IPA -- and practically non-beer -- experience. It was a distinctly lime sour of a beer, actually, meaning it wasn’t very beerlike at all. But I do like margaritas and California and travelling, and I loved my late mother’s margaritas, and also the margaritas in wonderful Mexican restaurants, and even the virgin margaritas my friend Daisy and I enjoyed before a long drive from Long Beach up to Big Bear. Ah, margaritas memories of missed travels and experiences made me want to jump on a plane and fly! And I wanted a proper margarita! But I realised that this startlingly nonbeerlike beer would have to do in the meantime.Unbeliever Margarita Sour Beer (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 20 July 2021)
I had a can of this one evening. Brewed with coconut, pineapple, and Sorachi Ace hops along with spices, it sounded great because I love coconut and pineapple. But it was a bit thin for a good sour beer and not, um, special enough. I was disappointed, because I do love a lot of Abbeydale's creations. Perhaps it was the new green and purple in my hair that was making me feel I just wanted more than that in my lifeUnbeliever Piña Colada Sour (4.9% ABV -- reviewed 5 January 2020)
This beer is brewed with a combination of Galaxy, Lemondrop, and Centennial hops. Lemondrop was a new one to me, so I had to find out about this surprisingly appealing hop. Apparently it's an offshoot of Cascade, but it does seem to be distinctly lemony. My bottle of Voyager was lemony, refreshing, and really pleasing, perfect for easing a head cold. In fact, this is an excellent brew! I shall definitely go back to the shop and buy a few more of these for my home enjoyment.Voyager IPA #3 (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 30 December 2017)
This was my second can on Day 1 of the Covid-19 Lockdown. Brewed with Citra, Centennial, and Mosaic hops, this is just a good crisp yacha-yacha-zing! sort of brew. Very drinkable and uplifting, as if I’m voyaging into the future on the other side of this pandemic.Voyager IPA (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 29 March 2020)
I first tried a can of this beer at the end of the first week in lockdown, way, way back in distant March. Yesterday afternoon I took a three-mile walk into new territory for me, into Crookes Cemetery and then on into long country paths I had yet to know existed, and where they went I did not know, armed only with a bottle of Magic Castle water and my trusty GoogleMaps GPS to help me if I should become lost in the wilderness. It was a very fun walk, and once I was home I thought I deserved to reward myself with a Voyager. This is a really good beer, just really satisfying to a hops lover, with a great classic combination of Citra, Centennial, and Mosaic hops. As I sat and sipped back safely at my homestead, I felt like a trail blazer, a pioneer, JC Oakley or perhaps Calamity JC. Yep, this is a rip-roaringly good brew.Voyager IPA #1 (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 6 June 2020)
Brewed with Galaxy and Vic Secret hops from Australia, this beer offers a flavour panoply, pastiche, or palette of pineapple, passion fruit, peach. And it's hazy as well. I really needed the tropical hops massage, because the weather has been way too non-tropical, with constant rain, massive winds, bitter cold, flurries, hailstorms, and flooding. It was actually too constantly wintery all day long that I couldn't even venture out for my walk. That's some serious weather.Wanderer Aussie IPA(6.5% ABV -- reviewed 24 March 2022)
This strong, flavourful, and hoppy beer was obviously so impressive I forgot to write anything about it! Oops...Wanderer Citra & Cascade NEIPA (6.8% ABV -- reviewed 4 May 2020)
This contains Cryo hops in a combination of Cascade, Centennial, and Mosaic. When I popped open the can, another wonderful aroma spewed out into the air. Hops-in-the-box! Pop Goes The Mosaic! It was lovely after a day of small failures in general (including forgetting my lunch and my second bus being so late I couldn't do my essential errand before work). I suppose the Failure of A Day was caused by the Bus/Lunch Rupture.Wanderer Cold IPA (5.8% ABV -- reviewed 4 September)
Brightly hoppy bitter, with a dry berryness, this is much more exciting than the surprisingly boring and vapid Astrid on cask I had just suffered through. (Surprisingly I've enjoyed Astrid on keg and also in the can. I guess the cask version is just a little too tame for me.) This Wanderer is definitely a tonic. I love El Dorado hops anyway. Considering I grew up only three miles from a large park of the same name, I was destined to like them. Of course I also love Galaxy hops, and I suppose I do live right in a galaxy...Wanderer Nelson Sauvin & El Dorado NEIPA (6.8% ABV -- reviewed 24 March 2022)
Brewed with oats, wheat, and lactose, and single hopped with Mosaic leaf, T90 hops, and cryo hops, this slightly unusual IPA offers a typical tropical and stone fruit bitterness with a hint of sweet. When I poured it into my glass, it produced the strangest head I’ve seen in a craft beer poured out of a can: the light frothy cloud towered all over my glass and reminded me of the head on root beer float. This beer offers an interesting tug-of-war in a glass, under a cirrus cloud cover. It makes me want to fly above those clouds again. It’s interesting, like a volcanic caldera bubbling with icy ozone. Sadly there was the matter of the sensuously smooth, perfectly round glass into which I poured most of the can. As I was sipping this manna from heaven, the glass suddenly slipped out of my hand, and the manna splashed out onto the table and floor in a huge two-thirds-of-the-glass cascade of a deluge… Fortunately I remember where I bought this can, so I’ll be off there for more.Wanderer Oat Cream IPA (6.6% ABV -- reviewed 14 December 2021)
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This is a collaboration with Campervan Brewery of Edinburgh Scotland. With Plumage Archer grain and the experimental hops CF161 and CF162, with US HBC 586 and BCC638 at the dry hops stage, this was a completely new taste to me. It's fruity but with a bamboo-geranium suggestion, and makes me think of playing with my best friend Ann, when I was 4 years old, in the front gardens of my botanist dad and of her gardener of a mother. I can almost smell us digging roads through the fallen leaves and succulent fronds of our Southern California jungles. It's definitely a nostalgic aroma! There's also a touch of dark apricot fruit in there. And I'm back to floating across the Atlantic...Wanderer Transatlantic IPA (6.3% ABV -- reviewed 4 September 2023)
Brewed with Amarillo, Enigma, and Nelson Sauvin hops, with added Simcoe Cryo, this is just another nice, chewy hoppy brew on a disappointingly sopping-cold-wet-windy day. It's a nice "there, there, let's have some fun!" beer on a disappointingly cabin-fever restless-leg sort of day.Wilderness Northeast Pale Ale (5.5% ABV -- reviewed 24 March 2022)
Abita Brewing Company, Abita Springs, Louisiana:
` This pleasant, quite fruity IPA is double dry hopped with Citra and Apollo hops as well as some experimental hops, and it's just a nice fruity but very drinkable beer. I was having lunch with my adopted brother Kim at the Steampunk Cafe and Grill in Tehachapi, California, xsand this beer accompanied my smoked salmon and cream cheese sandwich in a cheddar and jalapeno bagel perfectly. Apparently Jockamo means "jester" in the Mardi-Gras Indian language. Bon ton roulez!Jockamo Juicy IPA (6.0% ABV -- reviewed 25 July 2023)
Acorn Brewery, Barnsley, South Yorkshire:
` 2011: This beer has a lovely bitterrrrrufffruff bite, perfect for washing away the long exhausting workday and the weather that was attempting to be like summer but failing miserably. For a not-bottle-conditioned ale this has great character. It's like meeting someone with a bubbly personality and instantly taking to them. We're talking charisma! 2012: This bottle had a very interesting and almost shocking first impression of orange honey. There's a map of the Philippines on the surface of my glass, not that it's really relevant. I feel like I'm swinging in a hammock in Mindanao amid orange blossoms buzzing with industrious bees. I suppose I should take off my suit of armour so I don't scare the poor little acorns.Conquest (5.7% ABV -- reviewed 28 June 2011 and 12 February 2012)
Adnams & Company, Southwold, Suffolk:
Allendale Brewing Company, Hexham, Northumberland:
` One evening at home I tried a bottle of this beer otherwise known as Allendale Pale Ale, brewed with Columbus, Brambling Cross, First Gold, and Galaxy hops and Pale Ale, Caramalt, and Vienna malts. With an IBU rating of, it projected a very nice zig to the tastebuds. It was a good chill-at-home brew to go with the cold day outside.APA (5.5% ABV -- reviewed 1 January 2017
` The can features an evil rabbit and owl motif, with the announcement that this is “from England’s Lost Wilderness.” There is no mention on the can of the hops, but there is plenty of hare and rabbit imagery, so I don’t quite know what the can is trying to say. (When I hold it up to my ear I can’t hear anything.) Anyway, it’s a typical NEIPA, bitter and cutting in character.Dirty Deeds New England IPA (6.6% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021
Almanac Brewing Company, Alameda, California:
` This New England IPA is brewed with Pilsner malt and rolled oats and then hopped with Mosaic, Citra and Simcoe. Kim and I both loved this! We were definitely in love with this. It's totally dreamy!Love Hazy IPA (6.1% ABV -- reviewed 15 July 2024)
` This is the brewery's homage to Left Coast Living, a term I've been using for years when Brits ask me where I'm from. Dry hopped with Mosaic and Nelson, the smell of this after pouring it into the glass made me swoon. And when I sipped it, I fell deeper and deeper in love with each sip. This is the second offering my brother Kim and I tried from Almanac, and I'd love to visit the actual brewery next time I'm in the East Bay. The description on the can suggests aromas of blueberry, mango, and peach, “revealing wave after wave of delicious indulgence”, and that's another perfect way to describe it. And Seaside…well, not only is it my mother's home town, as well as the location of one of my parents' two retirement homes, but I had just visited Seaside two and a half weeks earlier with Mistah Rick. So this was a very appropriate beer to drink. I wish I could get it in the UK.Seaside West Coast IPA (6.7% ABV -- reviewed 15 July 2024
Alphabet Brewing Company, Manchester:
` This is really nice and hoppy. It’s brewed with Mosaic hops and also oatmeal, which seems to be a popular craft beer ingredient these days. This is just a nice pleasing beer. That’s all I can really say. All I can find out about the name of the beer is that it may relate to automatic weapons; but I prefer to believe it may stand for something like Aviators to the Kalahari or even Artichokes to the Kangaroos. How about Accolades to the Kazoos? They never get enough credit.A to the K (5.6% ABV -- reviewed 23 November 2020
` One evening at home I tried a bottle of this beer otherwise known as Allendale Pale Ale, brewed with Columbus, Brambling Cross, First Gold, and Galaxy hops and Pale Ale, Caramalt, and Vienna malts. With an IBU rating of, it projected a very nice zig to the tastebuds. It was a good chill-at-home brew to go with the cold day outside.Interstellar Getaway (4.0% ABV -- reviewed 27 August 2020
` On the can of this brew it says “Juicing In The Dark” and ”Born To Juice”. I had just spent a couple of hours in the attic cleaning my collection of old 45 records that I’d accumulated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a mixture of old hits from the 1960s (for my party tapes and my original band’s encore songs) and independent releases from Los Angeles and Paris bands of the early 1980s (including my own band). The records had been stored in a box in our wet cellar, high up on a concrete table that unfortunately had some sort of water leak from the adjacent wall. The records turned out to be in good shape once I cleaned them, but some of the irreplaceable covers have been wrecked (Suburban Lawns, Prairie Fire, early Go-Gos, and Les Teen-Kats). Anyway, there happened to be one Springsteen record, there, also with the cover damaged, so I thought this tropical IPA would be an appropriate reward. It was pleasant but not very hoppy, so the can was actually more colourful than the beer itself.Juice Springsteen (4.5% ABV -- reviewed 27 August 2020
` A couple of months ago I took a couple of beers with me to a friend’s back garden in Lower Walkley. Three of us sat on the patio -- socially distanced, of course -- and all amazed by the fact that we used to see each other regularly and actually hadn’t seen each other in three dimensions for over three months. As I was rabbiting wildly on, having obviously been starved for natural physical conversation with full three-dimensional visuals, I happily ploughed through this single-hopped interstellar journey through Galaxy hops, along with a Lallemand New England East Coast Ale yeast strain. After an afternoon of threatening thunder and lightning, the hot steamy pollen-rich day had mellowed out into a pleasantly sunny day with blue sky and friendly clouds, just like the kinds Bob Ross might paint. This was a smooth and easy journey with a happy landing into my next can.Interstellar Getaway (4.% ABV -- reviewed 27 August 2020
Amundsen Brewery, Oslo, Norway:
` This beer’s can is very pretty, red and turquoise and green with a gold dragon design, sort of a marriage of Aztec and Chinese. And it’s a nice beer as well, brewed with Magnum, Citra, Mosaic, and Simcoe hops as well as lupulin. I chose to drink this beer as a prelude to my Boxing Day Special-Edition Cocktail Party Zoom quiz, which had been delayed by a day because of the quizmaster’s massive Christmas day hangover. All of us were supposed to dress up for the quiz, but several people didn’t, and most of the participants were drinking beer and Prosecco instead of cocktails. So this can of beer was a nice prelude to several gin and tonics. And I even dressed up a bit fancy, wearing a skirt for the first time in a year. How strange it is to be sitting at home, all dressed up, in front of one’s laptop. (No one was to know I was wearing bedroom slippers instead of fancy shoes.)Ink & Dagger Modern Day IPA (6.5% ABV -- reviewed 26 April 2021)
` As it’s been two weeks since we’ve had an actual pint of beer, we were delighted to hear that the Fulwood Ale Club, a very new micropub and bottle shop in Sheffield, is offering pickup and delivery of nine-gallon boxed bags of their beers. When I emailed them the other day, the one cask offering wasn’t to our taste, so I went for this keg craft. Brewed with Citra, Mosaic, Amarillo, and Enigma hops with Pilsner malt, this passionfruit pale ale is quite drinkable, very hazy and moderately hoppy. It’s not something I would choose to have more than one pint of in a pub, but we were both quite pleased with it, especially as it’s Norwegian and not British or American. The brewery isn’t very old, and they apparently like to experiment with interesting flavours. So thank you, Ale Club and Norway, for bringing this joy into our home. It’s quite strange to have a bag of beer sitting on your kitchen counter, as the flimsy cardboard box was pretty much destroyed by the time we poured our first pint. So there it is: a big bloblike bag full of pale beer. It just helps add to the surreality of life at the moment.Lorita (4.7% ABV -- reviewed 4 May 2020)
Arbor Ales, Bristol:
` This is yet another pint-sized can from this great brewery. Full of Mosaic and Citra hops, this beer is really very nice. After a week of thick clouds obscuring any possibility of those of us in Sheffield seeing Comet 2020 F3, or NEOWISE, which has been making appearances in the skies for the past two weeks -- and after a pleasant but short afternoon walk, where for some strange reason I kept walking past small groups of young women who were all drawing up plans -- I was looking forward to popping this beer open. This was my plan, with no blueprint or CAD design initially required. Yeah. This is a good beer. It’s very drinkable, satisfies the hops craving, and I’ve slightly chilled it, so it’s actually quite heavenly. I will definitely buy this again. Rocketman (6.0% ABV -- reviewed 27 August 2020)
` This is a session IPA that comes in a one-pint can. With Citra, Columbus, Ekuanot, and Mosaic hops, it is surprisingly satisfying, like a good ol’ traditional hop-choppy ale. It’s unfiltered, but it’s not nearly as cloudy as some of the recent vegan beers I’ve had that look alarmingly like pear nectar. This is quite lovely, which is good because there’s plenty more in the can for me to pour into my glass. I do really like Arbor beers, ever since the first one I ever tasted, which was a gorgeous cask ale at the Sheffield Tap several years ago. Someday I’d really like to go to Bristol and check out the beer scene, as well as the art and history and Banksy aspects. Shangri-La (4.2% ABV -- reviewed 27 August 2020)
Art Brew, Sutcombe, Devon:
` One night at home I tried a bottle of this good, strongly complicated but very drinkably hoppy brew. As I was colouring my hair at the time it seemed an appropriate good quaff while waiting for the chemicals to work. I was reminded of a bottle of Stone IPA from California I drank years ago at my friend Barb's house while she and Daisy were colouring my hair, so it's not so unusual. I did have to take a pause to go wash the colour out, but I had the rest of this to come back to (with freshly coloured hair as well).Art Brew #3 (6.0% ABV -- reviewed 4 April 2016)
Atom Beers, Hull, East Yorkshire:
` This is a West Coast IPA named after the chemical element SI, with Atomic number 14. It’s brewed with Extra Pale Malt and wheat, hopped with Citra and Centennial, and then dry hopped with Citra Cryo, Simcoe Cryo, and Chinook. With that wonderful suggestion of resin and citrus, this suggests a light metal glistening of dry magic. It’s not too overboard, a bit like a lovely resined tabletop, and I do like resined tabletops. Today’s weather featured a very strong, icy wind, but hey, it was late September in Yorkshire, so I figured I’d better get out the snow gear soon. The city was packed full of students and my thighs kept getting wet and freezing in the sleety wind, but this beer was soothing like a pleasant jacuzzi, which I could have really used just then.Silicon (6.0% ABV -- reviewed 3 November 2024)
Azvex Brewing Company, Liverpool, Merseyside:
` Brewed with Strata, Idaho 7, and Cashmere hops, there was a lovely, sensual smell emanating from these three fine hops, ultimately melding into a gentle perfume. It wasn't a pow-bam! hops experience; it was more of a subtle wafting, like a hazy whirl of bellydancing hops swirling intoxicating around my mouth, while bells jingled gently. It was a relaxing yet very pleasant experience, with little hints here and there of va-va-voom!Future Landscapes IPA (7.0% ABV -- reviewed 20 March 2023)
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