– ‘Old & Dark Festival’ / Tuesday 22nd November until 6th December 2011 *
Darkness is descending on Port Street from the 22nd November. Over the past few months we have been secreting some of the best old & dark ales we could get our hands on away in our cellar. As the nights draw in we’ll be offering you warming and sumptuous beers that warm you from the inside out.
Expect porters, stouts, old ales, aged stouts, black IPA’s & imperial stouts. We also have a couple of events that coincide with this celebration, firstly the launch of Hardknott’s ‘Vitesse Noir’, a powerful dark ale with cocoa, vanilla and coffee on Wednesday 23rd Nov. Secondly our final Meet The Brewer of the year with Magic Rock on Monday 28th Nov, where they will be launching their brand new imperial stout, ‘Bearded Lady’.
So, put down the pale & pick up a porter. Drink for the season.
Beers Include:
Great Divide Yeti
Magic Rock Bearded Lady
Magic Rock Dark Arts
Hard Knott Vitesse Noir
Thornbridge Raven
Thornbridge x Kernel Burton Ale
Kernel Export India Porter(Cask)
Summerwine Cossack
Summerwine Cohort
Marble Little Jim
Moor Old Freddy Walker
Brodies Superior London Porter
Left hand Wake Up dead
Red Willow Fathomless
Gadds Black Pearl
& more.
* or until the beers runs out.
– Beer Review – Left Handed Brewing Co: Milk Stout / By DJ Adams
Sometimes you’re not in the mood for what everyone else is having. That’s the tagline of this Longmount, Colorado brewer Left Hand Brewing Co’s Twitter presence. As I approach the bar at Port Street Beer House and observe the orders for a seemingly endless collection of beers, one bottle calls out to me from the fridge. Milk Stout. Exactly what I’m looking for. This beer’s reputation precedes it; awards galore already won, most recently Gold in the European Beer Star Competition.
Sunlight streams through the windows on this cold, crisp autumn day as I reverently carry the bottle and a stemmed glass to the table. This is not your father’s stout. No sense of vast volumes of heavy blackness tinged with bitterness here, thank you very much. This is a full-bodied sweet stout, an English style beer from the late 19th century. Espresso coloured, with coffee traces and slight vanilla notes, this is an incredibly velvety smooth experience from start to finish. Any hints of bitterness are more than balanced from the inclusion of milk sugar, which is defined as “a sugar comprising one glucose molecule linked to a galactose molecule”. Galactose? Space milk? All I know is that the inclusion of milk sugar into the brew has had a fabulous effect. Sweetness and chocolate overtones make this a very enjoyable experience. Normally at this stage in the review I have some beer left in the glass, but the glass and bottle are both empty already.
Left Hand Brewing Co’s philosophy is about balance. It’s fair to say that they’ve achieved a great balance between traditional style and modern interpretation, between the Magnum and US Golding Hops, the myriad malts (from Crystal to Flaked Barley and Chocolate) and the milk sugar sweetness, and between the relatively high ABV content and inherent drinkability. Next time you’re stuck or spoiled for choice, go for something different. Take a chance on this Milk Stout, and you’ll be far from disappointed.
Brewer: Left Hand Brewing Co
Brew: Milk Stout
Style: Sweet Stout
ABV: 6.0%
http://www.lefthandbrewing.com/
Words by: DJ Adams – http://www.pipetree.com/qmacro/
– Moor Moor Moor!
Well, we finally managed to organise getting some beer from one of the UK’s most highly regarded breweries, so here are a few words to give you an idea of what the fuss is all about. I had better write this pretty quick as the beer is practically walking out the door.
Tucked away, down a picturesque Somerset lane is the recently expanded Moor brewery, the brewer is one Justin Hawke, an American brewing there since taking over in 2007. Justin’s beers are multi award winning and it’s a struggle to get them out of the county, so we feel very privileged that he sent some up for us. His Californian roots and west coast brewing attitude are evidenced in these beers, particularly in his liberal use of hops. However, these are far from US clone beers, these are some of the finest contemporary English ales you are likely to find, packed with flavour, a perfect blend of innovation and tradition. That, I suppose is what has lead to such huge demand, accolades, awards and general all round kudos.
Justin, it strikes me, is a man of strongly held beliefs, which, admittedly is prevalent among brewers. One of these beliefs is about finings and the use thereof, Justin speaks at length about this here. We’re happy to be showcasing some of his unfined beers over the next week or so, all his dark beers are unfined and we have waiting in our cellar a couple of firkins of unfined Revival. So how important is a clear pint of beer to you? Finings inevitably strip out a lot of flavour giving funk from the beer and it could be said this is purely for aesthetic reasons. Why go to all the trouble of making a full flavoured beer only to fine it clear and lose some of the character, I suppose it’s the same argument brewers have about filtration, pasturisation, etc but taken one stage further. Please let us know what you think on the subject and what you think of the unfined beers we have from Moor, and whether you want to see more unfined beers on the bar.
Finally before you ask we weren’t able to get any of the famous JJJ IPA as there isn’t any, potentially until next year. Maybe we’ll try and get some Moor beers next year, if he’ll let us! Boom boom.
– Port Street’s new website is live!
Welcome one and all to our brand spanking new website, we hope you like it. We’ll still be running the blog as previously but we’ve just tarted it up a bit, we now have a separate section for events and we have undertaken the mammoth task of trying to get our bottle list online. Latest cask and draft will still be via twitter but it will also be brought straight through on to the website, I’m sure you can appreciate this changes so fast it’s impossible to keep them up date even with this posh new site. As for the beer list feel free to browse our bottles at your leisure and comment and share the beers you’ve enjoyed or even plan your next visit. If you have any comments on the site, good or bad, then don’t hesitate to let us know, we know you’re a very discerning bunch!
Ps. Keep your eye’s peeled as in the next couple of weeks we’ll be launching a mobile version.