Greetings once again, beer fans. Some more field work to report in this second instalment of the blog, with notes from a couple of excellent Exeter craft beer bars. It's a funny place, my home town. A heck of a lot has changed in the space of only two years or so. Exeter is rapidly gaining in population, with new housing threatening to scythe away just about all the patches of green space around the city. Anyway, I'll spare you the rant but one silver lining has been the vast improvement in the central pubs and bars.
For the lover of craft ales, the best of the lot has been the Beer Cellar. Awash with brews from all over the world and an ever changing lineup on tap, it's always a treat, and the perfect antidote to that city bar where you have your work cut out finding a decent drop in a sea of Carling Black Label and other piss. The staff really know their stuff too, and if you prop up the bar semi regularly they will even get a handle on what you like and recommend beers to you. Which takes us to the main event this time: Snake Dog IPA.
A really intriguing, if slightly destructive beer this one. One of the new breed of American IPAs, you see its lighter cousin Flying Dog Pale Ale more often; a nice drop itself, but this is heavier and more interesting. A deep, reddish beer, it has quite a tang out of the bottle. A meatier promise of potency than the oft cited "citrus aromas" quoted on just about every damned bottle of IPA going these days.
It's explosive stuff on the tongue, with a sweet almost fuzzy thickness right from the off. It then has a lovely, intensely malty sort of caramel taste in the middle that also reminds me of ginger biscuits and popping candy. The finish is even better, with a prickly, hoppy dryness that just crackles on the tongue.
You might guess that there's some potency there, but a proof of 7.1% is still surprising and testament to a superbly well balanced beer. It's rich, incredibly flavoursome stuff with a lot going on in every sip. It's also something of a one off, because while even in the craft beer world some beers taste quite alike, you simply couldn't confuse this with much else. It would probably go well with something like a Thai curry, but actually when a beer is as complete as this, nothing else is required. Skip dinner, I'll take a crate please.
RATING: 10/10
IPA MONSTER SUMMARY: Rich, hoppy caramel awesomeness in a bottle. A fantastic depth of flavour from start to finish.
A monster ten you ask?! Yes. Because I intend to use the full range of marks in this blog. If a beer is truly awful it will get zero and if it is truly spectacular it will get ten. Simple as that.
If our first top scoring ale is an American IPA however, I've also been pleasantly surprised by some of the ales and IPAs produced much closer to home. Cornwall is a hotbed at the moment, with the likes of Penpont Brewery and Firebrand Brewery making some dangerously good stuff. But right on my doorstep in Exeter there are also good things going on. It's an especially nice feeling when you get those little pubs and eateries that brew their own beer to be sold for just a handful of places. Exeter gastro-boozer the Fat Pig is just such a place, with smoked grub, good ales and yes, their very own IPA by the bizarre name of Nelson's Fanny (which for some reason, probably beer, was later referred to as Napoleon's Pussy and some other fairly unrepeatable names).
A good drop this. Not an out and supercharged, ultra-bitter IPA, but more like a decent pub ale with an extra smash of flavour and a bit more middle to it. A lot less thick and heady than the Snake Dog, but more subtly hoppy and with not a bad complexity to it either. Little dryness and lots of flavour in the middle of each swig too. Not bad at all, although I was craving a bit more of a kick.
RATING 7/10
IPA MONSTER SUMMARY: A solid pub ale with an extra dose of hops and decent depth of flavour.
Anyway, two ales will do for this update. Do feel free to agree or disagree with reviews or make any suggestions as to which beers I should seek out or review next (free beer gratefully accepted). Or perhaps you could suggest what is making these two holy men laugh their Catholic heads off, in one of those fully random pictures you find on pub walls? Is it a killer joke about the Vatican, or is there something stronger than the tea on that table?
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