Tucked away in a corner of Huddersfield lies The Grove Inn. It was only recently that I first experienced The Grove - I had heard good things and had high expectations, but even these were exceeded. Inside the pub is quite big, very easy to find a seat. The walls are decorated with some very interesting art that you would not find in a standard pub. The list of craft beer available was through the roof and everything was very reasonably priced. The first visit was an event for the York Real Ale Society that I chair, so about a dozen of us went. Before too long our table was a sea of craft beer. Port Brewing Older Viscosity, Goose Island 2010 Bourbon County Vanilla Stout and Moylans’s Hopsickle to name just a few. So, obviously, I had to visit again.
Fast forward to the 25th of May and myself and a few friends, including fellow blogger Alex Hurst (www.emptypint.co.uk), are on our way to The Grove again. This time it was for the release of BrewDog’s AB:06, a triple dry hopped imperial black IPA. I was very excited. We arrived in time to have a drink before the event started. The first beer I went for was a half of BrewDog’s Bramling X. This single hopped IPA poured orange amber and had plenty of berry and plum aromas on the nose. I was met with initial citrus flavours followed by some earthy woody tones and hints of caramel malt and then a strong bitter finish. Great beer to start the evening.
I finished the drink just in time for the start of the event. First we were given some information on the drink we were about to receive (for free, may I add). The AB:06 is sixth beer from BrewDog’s Abstrakt range. The Abstrakt beers are the beers that the people at BrewDog like to experiment and take a risk with, sometimes using ingredients that are not often found in beer, such as chilli and coconut. The AB:06 ‘boasts more bitterness and more hops then any BrewDog creation to date’- seems right up my street, I was looking forward to this! It was bottled the previous Thursday, so the beer was only 6 days old. They say you should drink hoppy beers at their most fresh. Perfect! The beer arrived. It was a dark, almost inky black. On the nose I got some of the typical floral aromas you find in well dry hopped beers, along with some hints of orange; however it was not as strong as expected. Initially I was met with some very intense citrus bitterness followed by a well rounded finish with touches of treacle malt, a very good beer.
The next beer we were given was a sample of Bitch Please. This is a barleywine style beer made by BrewDog in collaboration with Three Floyds Brewery from the States. This 11.5% beer was brewed in August 2010. It is made with three varieties of New Zealand hops, which you would not expect to find in a typical barleywine beer, as well as seven different types of malt including one whisky malt and one peated malt. Highland toffee and shortbread were also added into the mix. Apparently the people and BrewDog did not want to add the toffee and shortbread to the beer but the brewers from Three Floyds insisted the beer had a ‘strong Scottish influence’. The beer was then aged in whisky casks – most of it in Jura, but a small batch in Laphroaig casks. All in all this is quite an experimental beer. To be honest I think this beer would be more fitting in the Abstrakt range. In my opinion it is a lot more experimental then the AB:06. The beer was mahogany in colour with a light tan coloured head. On the nose the whisky is overwhelming with some obvious peat smokiness. There was also a little bit of a sweet smell coming through at the end, a sort of a mix between fudge and biscuit. The first tastes I got from this beer were some cutting hops but these flavours were quickly overwhelmed by strong malt and big peat flavours. In the aftertaste I got a lot of smoke and ash. This beer made me consider barleywine as a style of beer. This style of beer does not seem to be consistent. If you have an IPA, imperial stout or a Belgian quad you know more or less what to expect however with barleywine beers they all seem to be very different from each other. For example, Sierra Nevada’s Big Foot is packed full of very strong hop flavours, completely different from Bitch Please. And then there’s Anchors Old Foghorn which again is completely different from the other two. Does anyone know what defines a barleywine style beer?
After this we then dived into The Groves huge craft beer menu. Beers such as Tactical Nuclear Penguin, Thornbridge Bracia, Thornbridge St. Petersburg 2006 Speyside Whisky Reserve where sampled with a Mikkeller barrel aged 1000 IBU for the train home. As this post is quite big as it is I will post these tasting notes at a future date. All in all this was a great night and I don’t think it will be too long till I return to The Grove again. Cheers!
