Beer Compurgation

The other day I had a long chat with a late 50’s, huge CAMRA supporter who, rather tragically, is one who has not embraced anything brewed since 1987. I didn’t shout or judge, I was just interested in his opinions to see if we shared any common thoughts. On the whole, we did not. But one eminence did strike a chord with me and has led me to this post. Whilst discussing a decent pint of Hook Norton’s Old Hooky, a beer he professed to have first drank in 1978, he made the following statement, “Hook Norton has made a small number of beers consistently well for over 40 years. These new breweries are too prolific and don’t focus on maintaining a stellar range.” It got me thinking about some of the experimental “one-off” beers I’ve had recently, the new breweries I like that seem to have a new beer out every day and the fact that all beer lovers seem to have had a disappointing pint of Punk IPA at some point in the last 6 months. Which leads me on to a taste test with a range of, wha

I’ve written briefly about my localist of local micro-breweries before – the Millstone Brewery, Mossley. I have ranked them in my top 3 favourite breweries for nearly 7 years and have enjoyed their great beers, mainly locally, without deeper thought in all this time. But, something changed the other day. I was in Stalybridge Buffet Bar and had a pint of Millstone’s famed Tiger Rut and it was, as they say, on terrific form. Light but full of flavour, a fresh melon-like aroma, a great hoppy hit with a satisfyingly bitter aftertaste, everything I’ve grown accustomed to in the years past. The only difference was my natural reaction to this delicious beer was to reach for my phone. Why? Well any users of Twitter probably know. There’s nothing wrong with Twitter. I love Twitter. I love having a little beery community to share my thoughts/rants with about beer, rather than drilling into the brain cells of my lager obsessed Gump friends. And I’ve certainly no problem with breweries usi