A brewery-turned-gallery: The Tetley in Leeds

The Tetley, Leeds

Called into The Tetley for the first time this weekend and was impressed. This is the old headquarters of the Tetley brewery, a building dating back to 1931, and it's great to be able to wander around and take a look inside. The grandness of it all is a real reminder of how successful a big family brewery like Tetley's must've been at the time, and also of how much things change. Tetley's has now all but left Leeds but loads of small breweries have popped up around the city at the same time. It's funny how industries change, social and drinking habits change and buildings, like people, evolve. It reminds me of a job I once had with the civil service in another part of Leeds in a big old mill that had been converted into offices: where once there had been the noisy and dirty click-click-click of industrial machinery years earlier, there was now a quieter flow of immigration casework passing through the building, a conveyor belt of sorts.

The location of The Tetley feels like a historic little patch of Leeds, with the Salem Chapel nearby and a blue plaque marking the formation of Leeds United; the great Adelphi pub is also a stone's throw away.

As a gallery and events space The Tetley has loads of potential, so fingers crossed it's a success. Leeds needs more stuff like this, both from a culture and family-friendly point of view. As a city it seems to have a less obvious culture than places like Manchester and Liverpool. It's debatable why that's the case: Manchester and Liverpool have proximity to ports and they also have a bigger Irish influence; Leeds and Yorkshire on the other hand have a more "look after the pennies" tradition that isn't necessarily conducive to a cultural hotbed. Maybe that's something to do with it. Either way, kudos to those behind The Tetley to get this up and running, as it'd be excellent if this could become something like a Leeds Salt's Mill. Also not forgetting this is primarily a drink and food blog, the cafe (set up with consultation from Anthony Flinn's company) looked and smelled good too.

Our kids really enjoyed the Springboard Saturdays session - basically a relaxed crafty area for them to draw, stick and create stuff to their hearts' content to a theme that changes each week, with friendly volunteer artists on hand.

And we enjoyed having a look in the grand boardroom, wondering about the people and conversations that have lived in there over the years.

I hope The Tetley is a success.

Why does wine on TV make geeks angry?

The BBC showed a programme last night called The 12 Drinks of Christmas, presented by brothers-in-law Giles Coren and Alexander Armstrong. I thought it was quite good.

This is a rare thing, a TV programme about alcohol. Surprisingly so, given how much time and money Brits devote to booze.

But one thing's for certain: every single time wine or beer is in the mainstream media, a backlash from experts and enthusiasts will follow.

Keeping an eye on Twitter as the programme went out, many (but not all) wine people were critical of the show.

Exactly the same thing happens with beer whenever it appears in papers or on TV.

They're talking about Blue Moon and craft beer! the beer people laugh. He said Bollinger is the best you'll get for £35! the coloured trouser wearers scoff. And so on.

(I even saw one comment last night bemoaning the fact beer wasn't covered on 12 Drinks, so you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. Though it was a fair comment actually. And interestingly it was suggested beer may've been excluded to avoid conflict with Armstrong's Shepherd Neame advertising deal.)

Why do these shows come in for such criticism? Does it come from a genuine desire for the information to be accurate? Maybe. Or is it a kneejerk response by geeks to separate themselves from the rest; to say I know more than this mainstream show.

I thought The 12 Drinks of Christmas did its job pretty well - it was entertaining enough and there was enough info to get people thinking more about what they taste. Surely this is the important thing for a non-specialist audience: as long as the basic info is accurate, the main point is to entertain, get people into good drinks to begin with, trigger something, and the bigger story can come later if they want it.

As has been said before, you don't have to be serious about something to be serious about something. Maybe sometimes, experts feel threatened by the masses discovering their niche interest, much like an indier-than-thou music geek realising their undiscovered band has gone mainstream.

Some tasty beer: Sunbeam Ales

These very impressive beers were brewed by Nigel Poustie, a man who lives near us here in Leeds. Having sampled these and several of my brother's ales, I'm fortunate to have tasted some top-notch homebrew lately.

The Honey & Lavender Beer poured with very little head and gave off really fresh and enticing orange and marmalade aromas; the flavour also showed a great fragrance, tasting a touch sweet at first but with a more bitter, crisp finish. Your preconception of a honey and lavender beer might be that it'll be a bit rich, too sweet perhaps or a touch cloying - not the case here at all. Great balance.

Wheat beer isn't always my first choice as a general rule, but this was also brilliant. White pepper and perhaps grapefruit in the aroma, and there's a hint of hoppy grapefruit flavour in the mouth along with a definite spice, reminiscent of chilli or paprika, and a very clean finish. Delicious.

The Special Ale was also very good, again the clean flavours were impressive. As more of a traditional nutty brown ale, the Session Bitter was bound to stand out less than the others - but the exciting thing in this selection is the real flair in creating delicious, clean and balanced flavours in the more experimental brews.

The War of Terroir: Beer vs Wine

Wine writer Tim Atkin triggered a debate on Twitter yesterday about beer and wine. Although he loves both drinks, he believes wine is more complex, is better suited to food and has a greater sense of place. Some beer fans said they disagreed – and so far I've seen one blogpost in response arguing that terroir does exist in beer.

I'll leave the complexity and food matching arguments (which I touched on here) for another day, but for now I have to say I agree with Atkin on his point about sense of place, or terroir.

What is terroir? Put simply it's the impact that the physical conditions of a specific location have on the grapes that are grown there. So the character of the wine in the bottle will reflect the character of the terroir (to some extent – many other factors such as grape varieties, the use of oak and other winemaker interventions play a big part too). There are so many different aspects specific to a vineyard's location that are said to affect the grape: the minerals in the soil; wind; rainfall; levels of sunlight; altitude; differences in day and night time temperatures. This is partly why wine, old world wine in particular, is often referred to by location rather than by grape type; the location is synonymous with the wine. Bordeaux, Burgundy, Rioja and so on. Just a mention of the words Bordeaux and Burgundy immediately conjure up images of certain types of wines. (For a further exploration of terroir, try here or here.)

Is the same true of beer? I don't think so. Not to the same extent. There are exceptions, but as a general rule a much more useful way of categorising beer is by style rather than by origin. Beer people tend to talk about porters, stouts, pale ales, lagers, bitters; less so London, California, Buxton, New South Wales or wherever. Yes, certain types of beer have traditionally tended to predominate in certain places, but overall with beer it's more a case of anything goes, hence less of a link to the physical locality.

Also, terroir in wine is said to be a very localised thing. You can get two vineyards within metres of each other that produce wines of different character when all else is equal. I'm no expert on either winemaking or brewing, but by its nature, brewing beer doesn't appear to be so intrinsically tied to the specifics of the land.

That's not to say it's a good or a bad thing, or even how significant it is. A lot of drinkers probably don't really care where the drink was made or if the local environment affected what it tastes like, they just know what they like. It's also debatable how much the concept of terroir is exaggerated, like a kind of placebo effect, a desire on the part of the wine lover to feel the soul of a place as they drink its wine. This is a powerful inclination when you really love wine.

It's also worth pointing out that terroir is not the sole reason for wines being very identifiable by region: in order to qualify for local denomination status, winemakers often have to adhere to strict rules that govern things like the types of grape varieties they are allowed to use. This is where human activity impinges on pure terroir. But nevertheless, in new world areas where there are no such rules, winemaking areas still show their distinct characters in the wine.

But beer fans shouldn't feel wholly negative about all this. Firstly, it shows that the beer world enjoys the freedom of the new world. Brewers can make what they like, where they like, and this leads to radical levels of experimentation, pushing at the boundaries of beer. Loads of new British breweries seem to be using exotic hops lately – which might not express much in the way of the terroir of the brewery, but it can produce some very tasty and interesting beer. Secondly, this isn't to say that beer can't ever have terroir. Perhaps if breweries really started to think local in every sense, a growing sense of terroir could develop further. The idea of vintages is already part of some beers, so why not take it one step further? More use of local or wild yeasts and local hops and of telling us how the local water plays its part. From a marketer's point of view as well as a drinker's, it could be a savvy move.

Also, all of this isn't to say that beer isn't hugely important to local communities. It is. But more in a social and cultural sense than a physical one. Like wine, beer brings people together; it melds communities; it smoothes out the rougher edges of life. And it can taste great. But for true terroir, it doesn't yet come close to wine.

Craft Beer Labels

I bought these bottles at Beer Ritz in Leeds. It's noticeable how a lot of good beers have really nicely designed labels now.

The Italia, in the centre of the picture, is the result of a collaboration between English brewery Thornbridge (based in Bakewell) and Italian brewery Birrificio Italiano (based in Marinone, just east of Turin). A lovely fresh pilsner style beer with a slight zesty hoppiness, chilled right down it made for a very nice early evening drink back at home after a warm day out. Invigorating stuff, well made, tasty.

Working on a new drinks menu at Dough Bistro, Leeds

At the weekend I was lucky enough to get a sneak taster of some of the new dishes from the June menu at Dough Bistro here in Leeds. Every single dish I tried hit the mark: perfectly fresh, local ingredients, skillfully cooked.

I was discussing the subject of wine and beer matching with chef/owner Luke Downing, who's looking to revamp his drinks menu. We made one or two interesting findings, and I'm in the process of thinking about some more potentially interesting matches for his food.


A light blonde ale with a subtle hoppiness worked very nicely with a lovely dish of hake and samphire, while a brown ale proved to be an unexpected top performer with various different dishes, perhaps showing the great versatility of that classic type of beer. As I ponder some more matches, I've got plenty of food for thought.

Beer and drama: Breaking Bad and some homebrewed Amarillo ale

There have been some outstanding US television dramas over recent years. Breaking Bad is the latest we've discovered. A really brilliant show, in the classic thriller style but a very human drama at its heart. The main character Walt has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and he decides to produce and sell crystal meth so that his family aren't left bankrupt when he dies. Like all the great recent US dramas, it intelligently travels through the hazy shades of grey in the human condition, leaving the viewer to make up his or her own mind. Highly recommended.

Given that the Breaking Bad DVDs were a present from my brother Matthew and his wife Angela, it was nice to accompany the conclusion of Season 2 with one of their latest homebrews: Amarillo Easy (4.1% abv). It was appropriately brewed with an American hop, Amarillo (like the O'Hanlon's Stormstay ale I enjoyed recently - which incidentally also contained crystal malt... not crystal meth).

And the Amarillo Easy was a great match for the drama, showing the verve of a New World pale ale but with a welcome lightness of touch, plus just a hint of that faint horse blanket aroma reminiscent of a good Belgian ale, all balanced out with the sweetness of caramelised brown sugar and a satisfyingly long finish.

Beer and drama.

Balance – is it as important in beer as it is in wine?

I've had a few beers lately that I've really enjoyed and that, when I thought about it, shared a common characteristic: balance. Or drinkability, for want of a better word. Tasty, refreshing and with sufficient interest, but not hitting you over the head like a lunatic and saying how manly they are.

With beer, you could draw a straight line and write the word 'challenging' at one end and 'drinkable' at the other. Now I might be totally wrong, but I suspect there's a fashion at the moment in the craft beer world for stuff that errs more towards the challenging or extreme. Some of these beers can be really interesting to drink - but personally I sometimes find the first sip is the one I enjoy the most. And that's not ideal. After three or four gulps of a more extreme beer my palate can feel like someone's been at it with a steam-powered wallpaper remover. Interesting flavours, challenging, but not something I'd necessarily want to drink regularly. Perhaps this kind of beer is playing to a macho I-can-eat-a-hotter-vindaloo-than-you mentality. You can't imagine many women being daft enough to bother with some of these drinks beyond the first sip.

Of course it depends on the occasion; there's a time and place for a more extreme beer. And it's worth noting the caveat that more extreme beers can still be in balance; choc-full of flavour but with all notes singing in harmony.

But the beers I tend to enjoy most are the ones where everything is nicely in balance and that I don't tire of after a few gulps. And by that I don't mean boring; it's easy to confuse the idea of balance with lack of flavour. It's not that at all - sometimes it might even be the addition of more flavours, sometimes it might be fewer, to strike the balance. A food analogy would be using a pinch or two less of chilli powder to tone down the spice, or perhaps adding a squeeze or two of lemon to freshen it up.

Like anything sensual, it's of course subjective to some extent - one drinker's idea of balance won't be the same as another drinker's. Some of us prefer more bitter flavours, for example. It's all about personal taste, as well as mood, context, what you're eating (if anything) - the time of year, even. Which are some of the things that make food and drink so interesting.

So what were the finely balanced beers I've had recently that slipped down so easily? The first was the acclaimed El Bulli chef Ferran Adria's beer, Inedit, brewed by Estrella Damm – nothing exceptional you might think on trying it, but an intriguingly light mouthfeel, and just so damn tasty and refreshing. Perhaps a touch sweeter than I'd regularly go for and it may not be earth shattering but, as was intended with this brew, it's very food-friendly.

Another very nice beer I had recently was Stormstay Premium Ale, from O'Hanlon's Brewery in Devon, which is also a beer that I suspect might not satisfy the label drinkers looking to tick off the latest new world hop bomb. It struck that fine balance between hops and malt, with a subtle caramel depth underpinning the fresh green hop flavours. I really enjoyed this beer. If it was a stranger at a party it wouldn't skip quickly from person to person and talk about itself as certain other craft beers might; instead it'd be an understated but likeable presence with a touch of class. I thought it had a nice balance and a slight zip of acidity reminiscent of a good sparkling wine.

Going back to the fashion for extreme beers: it does seem to be specific to beer. Wine writers seem to be more preoccupied with elegance and structure. The reason for this difference, I'm not sure. It could quite simply be that when we drink a glass of beer or a glass of wine, we're looking for different things, and the difference in the tone of coverage reflects that. Perhaps an extreme IPA is only meant to be enjoyed for a few sips - that's the whole point, it's not designed for session drinking.

Or another theory could be that the craft beer revolution - for want of a less tabloidy term - is at an earlier phase than that of wine drinking (if that's the case it's ironic, given the long history of beer brewing and drinking in Britain). Perhaps the over-the-top late-hopped IPAs or quadruple imperial black quadruple chocolated stouts (I exaggerate) are the beer equivalent of the over-oaked chardonnays or the harsh one-dimensional sauvignon blancs wine lovers tired of to some extent in the 1990s and early-2000s, and beer fashions will evolve in much the same way over time. If this is the case, some classy but currently underrated more traditional British and Belgian ales, for instance, might enjoy a resurgence as beer drinkers become weary of yet another new wave British or American brew. When I drank a couple of Rochefort ales recently I was thinking what classy brews they were.

It's all about time and place. Sometimes the grapefruity hit of a New Zealand sauvignon blanc or an American IPA just hits the spot, just as a gin and tonic or a really very hoppy pale ale does, but at other times the moment calls for a deep, mellow porter by the fireside, or a savoury, herby syrah from the Northern Rhone. More often you're going to want the over-the-top hoppy pale ale as an aperitif as you would the G&T; the less extreme ales will more likely do you for a meal or a session.

But if beer wants to catch up with wine as a respected match for food, I think there might just need to be a slight shift in emphasis towards balance. Good Italian wine is often so very food-friendly thanks to its pure fruit flavours and fresh acidity (not to mention its sense of place), and it doesn't need to shout about itself. Over-oaked fruit bomb wines, on the other hand, are less likely to complement food quite so easily. I'm certainly not saying it's impossible to match foods with drinks that have extreme flavours, but it is more tricky.

The key point is that there's a time and a place for any well-made drink. But if beer wants to gain more respect at the dining table, and among drinkers generally, I'd say balance is an important thing to bear in mind in the long run. The craft beer movement will struggle to win over set-in-their-ways Stella drinkers on the one hand or set-in-their-ways Bordeaux drinkers on the other if it tries too hard and veers too far towards the extreme.

*The picture at the top is a pint of Timothy Taylor's Landlord on cask and some mini fish'n'chips. Lovely.

*Anyone in Leeds reading this can buy a 75cl bottle of Inedit from Latitude Wine for just under a fiver, or from Harvey Nichols for just over a fiver.

Beer Ritz Is Back!

Great news for beer fans in Leeds and beyond - Beer Ritz is back from the dead!

Zak Avery announced on twitter today that the store is open once again, having closed its doors last week seemingly for good. Here's hoping this gem in Far Headingley is here to stay.

The Leeds skies are lit up with long-awaited sunshine, Easter is coming, Pulp are headliners at this year's Leeds Music Festival; the season of rebirth. Welcome back Beer Ritz.

A sad week for Leeds drinkers: Beer Ritz and Oddbins close their doors for the last time

It's a sad week for beer and wine drinkers in Leeds. First of all, the news came that two of the city's four Oddbins shops – Albion Street and Headingley – are among the 39 Oddbins stores around the UK being closed down (the Chapel Allerton and Street Lane stores are apparently remaining open). And then came the completely unexpected news today that specialist beer shop Beer Ritz, managed by beer writer Zak Avery, has ceased trading. In fact the term 'ceased trading' doesn't do it justice. Beer Ritz is something of a legend, with an incredible range of beers and truly knowledgeable staff: time has been called at a party no-one wanted to end.

Oddbins in general has come in for a lot of flak over recent years, with several wine writers pointing the finger in particular at the chain's previous owner, French company Castel (which bought Oddbins in 2002 and sold it three years ago), for presiding over its downfall. Writing in the Observer back in July 2008, Tim Atkin called Castel's ownership of Oddbins "a disaster". He said: "Most of the good buyers have left, the range has been reduced, prices have increased and many of the famously enthusiastic, over-qualified shop managers have set up on their own or moved to other companies. There are still good people at Oddbins - not least the two remaining English wine buyers - but the business is a mess."

From personal experience, I'd like to reiterate: there are still good people at Oddbins. As a relatively regular shopper at the Albion Street branch, I can say the team there are absolutely superb: full of enthusiasm, taking pride in what they're doing, keen to engage with customers, knowledgeable. But… the range in the store was at times patchy, and pricing has been a problem. Offering 20% off if you buy six wines gives the impression (true or not) that you're paying over the odds for a single bottle, and that's a major problem for city centre stores aiming to attract regular one and two-bottle purchases. And it has to be said the growing empire of supermarkets over the past decade or two must also have been a huge problem for stores like Oddbins. We're all buying everything in supermarkets and online. Why take a detour to a wine shop when you can lob in a couple of buy-one-get-one-frees into your supermarket trolley, along with every other consumer product you might ever need, on your weekly shop? We're giving a bottle of wine the same amount of respect as a ready meal.

With Oddbins, if Atkin and others are right then it's the same old story of mismanagement at the top resulting in pain for those on the shop floor. Those who've been doing a fine job, especially given the difficult circumstances, are the ones who are now losing their jobs. A theme of our times. And it's more than their jobs. You only have to read this account from a member of the team at Beer Ritz to realise that. You only have to speak to a member of staff at Oddbins in Leeds city centre to realise it: they care about what they do.

There seems to be a big appetite for high-quality, interesting and varied drinks in Leeds, and there are several very good independent bars and local breweries. You'd think that a specialist drinks shop should thrive in the city. You just have to hope that independents like Latitude can find a formula for continued success. Because other than them, in the city centre we only really have Gerry's Wines & Spirits, Harvey Nichols and M&S with dedicated alcohol sections offering more than the usual suspects.

In the meantime, the staff from Beer Ritz and Oddbins should get together over a beer at North Bar, form a dream team and open a new wine and beer store of which Leeds can be proud. Because a future of supermarkets and the internet, and little else, is not an appealing one.

Rooster's Pumpkin Beer

This really is what it looks like. It is a massive pumpkin perched on the side of a bar with a tap poking out the bottom. Pumpkin conditioned beer, with a warming, slightly spicy flavour, created by inventive Knaresborough brewery Rooster's: a perfect warming snifter in Leeds' North Bar on the way home from work.

Autumn Food: Morocco Ale with Chicken Thighs, Lentils and Potatoes

The nights are drawing in, it's getting a bit brisk out, and almost without realising, you change what you're eating and drinking. It's the end of the working day and you face a walk into the darkness, a miserable fight with the blustery wind and rain. A chilled pale ale and light salad isn't going to be the comfort blanket you need. Autumn's kicked in; everything you eat and drink is getting darker, meatier, spicier, chunkier, warmer.

A big glug of olive oil and a piece of butter goes into the pan with a load of garlic, a small heap of chilli and a pinch or two of whatever warming spices you have in your cupboard (now's not the time for dainty measurements). When it all sizzles, the chicken thighs (which are great value) go in for a few minutes, then a tin of tomatoes and a can of lentils. Simmer 'til cooked. Roast some potatoes, and bob's your uncle. Well, almost.

He is now. The superb Morocco Ale from Daleside Brewery ambles nonchalantly out of the cupboard and takes off his hat and gloves, proving a pretty good impromptu pairing for the frankly made-up-as-you-go-along chicken and lentil thing. In the mouth the Morocco Ale is a well balanced mix of marmitey goodness and dried fruit, with a little hint of spice that mingles nicely with the meaty sauce.

The warm cocoon of your living room, dark beer in hand, the wind swaying against the windows; all is well.

Italian Craft Beer Evening, The Lounge, Leeds

I recently attended a beer and food evening at the Lounge Bar & Grill in Leeds. The Lounge hosts these nights regularly, with the focus on a different set of beers each month, the chef creating a menu designed to complement the beers. This time it was a selection of Italian beers. I was impressed by the quality of both the food and the drink.

Incidentally, as well as the great flavours, what's noticeable about these beers is that they're nicely designed. Not just the striking labels, but the occasional use of swing-top closures, which emphasise the craft brewing credentials, and the 75cl bottles - an apparently growing trend in craft beer. What's significant about 75cl? It's wine bottle size. It's a visual cue that this is a drink to be savoured, and to be enjoyed with food - in other words, to be treated like wine. Craft beer companies must be thinking, if people pay £15 for a bottle of house wine with their meal, then they might be willing to pay around that for a bottle of house beer instead.

Anyway, on to the meal. First up some canapes (bruschetta, crisp chicken livers, fish fritters) were paired with a bottle of La Gradisca (4.7% alcohol). A good solid start, the nibbles washed down nicely by the Gradisca. It's an uncomplicated, refreshing and easy-drinking lager, which is no criticism, with lower carbonation and a touch more flavour than the average mainstream lager. It'd go down very nicely as a thirst quencher at a summer barbecue, or with a pizza.

On to the starter, which was a terrine of local rabbit, crisp pancetta and fig chutney, paired with Isaac (5% alcohol), a wheat beer. The Isaac was served in a wine glass, which suited it. Isaac has an almost sparkling wine type character to it, with its lightly fruity, apricoty aroma. It has virtually no carbonation - it looked like apple juice in the glass - and worked well with the starter, much as a crisp white wine probably would have done. I'd imagine it'd also go well with a seafood starter, something like prawns or scallops.

It was a duo of mains: chargrilled halibut steak with aubergine and crispy onion rings; and spiced fillet of mackerel with crab and potato salad, creme fraiche and lemon. The two beers that arrived with the mains were Open (7.5% alcohol) and ReAle Extra (6.4% alcohol). Open again brought to mind a good white wine and it worked very nicely with the halibut, the aromatic US hops lifting the flavours in the dish, the moreish, hoppy bitterness of each sip compelling another soon after. It's a good example of a hoppy beer that remains balanced: it's not hitting you over the head; it's drinkable as well as interesting.

The ReAle Extra is lighter in alcohol but there's even more bitterness. The story goes that the brewers forgot to add the necessary hops to the brew and were faced with a 30-second window of what to do - so they attempted to save it by whacking in three times the usual amount of hops but just in the last ten minutes of brewing. "From a mistake, the ReAle is now a masterpiece," our guide Giulio tells us as we take a sip. You hear these kinds of stories from time to time in the alcohol world, where the line between marketing myth and historical fact is hazy. But it's a nice story and you like to think it really happened. And mistake or not, this fresh, hoppy beer is another impressive brew.

But the dessert course was perhaps most impressive of all... or was I bound to think that after four fairly strong beers? The Keto Reporter (5.2% alcohol) was paired with a dark chocolate tart and hazelnut praline ice cream - both the drink and the food were superb; not only that but they worked a treat together. This porter is a really interesting one, not least because a handful of Kentucky tobacco leaves are thrown in during the brewing process (five leaves per 2,500l, I think), meaning that those dark chocolate, treacley, rounded aromas you'd expect are encircled by a whiff of smoke. It's a drink to treat as a rare luxury: the smokiness might become too much if you drank a lot or often, but in this context, as a little snifter of a nightcap alongside the lovely dark chocolate tart, it was superb. As Giulio put it: "It's the last drink of the night, you have a cigar, a tiramisu, a lovely lady..."

Lagonda IPA (5% alcohol)

Manchester's Marble Brewery have been one of the darlings of beer bloggery over recent months. They're up there with the likes of Thornbridge, if not quite BrewDog, for the amount of reviews and positive comments they've been attracting. As well as knowing how to make good beers, these companies know how to package and promote them - how to engage with the online community - hence the large amount of coverage.

The Lagonda is one of those all-out bitter IPAs, very grapefruity in its aroma and on the palate. In fact the slightly perfumed aroma is so brisk and clean it almost brings to mind the swimming baths, cleaning products even, especially as it has a faint lemony tinge to it. On the palate there are also passion fruit and seville orange notes, with a grapefruity, mouth sappingly bitter finish.

It's a well made beer, with plenty going on in terms of flavour. I wouldn't drink more than one in a sitting though - just half a bottle or so is fine for me before it all starts to get a bit too much, the cleansing bitterness reaching a point where I'm ready for a different flavour - but that's just a personal preference.

Venetian Pale Ale (5.2% alcohol)

This Venetian Pale Ale is so-called because it fermented while my brother Matthew and his wife Angela were on holiday in Venice. They've produced a fine range of ales since taking up brewing: everything from lager to Belgian-style Dubbels and Trippels to a warming Bourbon Christmas Stout (which came in at a whopping 11% alcohol).

The Venetian Pale Ale, their latest creation, has a lovely clean aroma of fresh morning dew with a merest hint of hay. On the palate it's slightly floral and has a touch of Belgian-ness - that enticing suggestion of hay in the background - but with a refreshing and brilliantly clean and crisp bitterness to the finish.

Matthew hopped it with a mix of Centennial, Chinook and Pioneer, and fermented it at 20C with Irish ale yeast - which although is traditionally used for darker beers and stouts, can add plenty of interest to a pale ale such as this one, and it may have contributed to the dry, crisp finish. Centennial is a citrussy variety that's widely used in American IPAs; he opted for Chinook to add a nice burnt, herby flavour; and finally the classically English Pioneer is a sister of Herald and brings in some soft, clean aromatics. An excellent, well balanced pale ale.

Hobsons Manor Ale (4.2% alcohol)

This is a strange one. I've had other Hobsons beers in the past and enjoyed them, but this beer has a slightly unexpected aroma of dampness. Damp like an autumn walk – not wholly unpleasant, just not the freshness you'd expect. A dodgy bottle perhaps? (Following on from my previous post on context, I should point out I sampled this beer after the Little Creatures, in case the contrast in flavours had an effect.)

A strong flavour of roasted peanuts then comes through in the aroma and in the taste. It's an almost overpowering satay-type flavour, perhaps with a touch of lemon or orange zest.

Then something else interesting: I nip into the kitchen, top up my glass (from the same bottle) and eat a square or two of Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate. The beer is transformed. More creamy, coffee, caramel-type flavours, generally more rounded in character – and that peculiar dampness is pretty much undetectable.

Little Creatures Pale Ale (5.2% alcohol)

The Little Creatures brewery is based in Fremantle, Western Australia. But interestingly, the Chinook and Cascade hops in this pale ale are sourced from the US as well as from Tasmania. So depending on your level of beer geekery and whether you're a purist when it comes to regionality, you may or may not like the idea of this multinational brew.

Still it'd be a shame if you passed up the chance to try this pale ale, as it's an enjoyable and nicely balanced example. Probably won't satisfy fans of hop bombs: pouring it into the glass you don't get that in-your-face whiff of pine forest; more the clean scent of Christmas tree at the far end of the room. The delicate, faintly floral aroma continues into the flavour, which delivers a fairly light and summery finish.

Little Creatures Pale Ale would be a good choice if you know someone who usually enjoys elegant dry white wines and you want to switch them on to the joys of beer.

Beer and Wine Tasting: Context

You're on holiday in France, feeling more relaxed and content than you have been for months. You sit back and sup the bottle of red you just bought for a couple of euros in the local hypermarche – which seems like the bargain of the century as you taste it alongside some warm freshly baked baguette and tasty local cheeses, taking in the brilliant views. A couple of weeks pass and you reach the end of your holiday, with a couple of cases in the back of your car to take home.

A few days have passed, you're back home, it's a miserable autumn evening, the weather's depressing. It's been a stressful day at work. You excitedly crack open the first of your 24 bottles. You take a sip and… this can't be the same stuff you drank on holiday can it? It tastes… it tastes like it cost a couple of euros. Not such a bargain.

A simplistic way of putting it maybe, but context really does impact on how we experience flavours, even if it's in more subtle ways than in the example above. When you sample a drink, it might be at the end of a bad day; you might have had a great day. You might have tasted the drink alongside 100 other similar drinks at a tasting event; you might have savoured it all on its own in the comfort of your own home. You might have eaten Michelin-starred food with the drink; you might have had it with cheese on toast.

Whenever I see a drink awarded, say, 17.5 marks out of 20, I wonder about the context of the tasting. I wonder about the context of past tastings of similar drinks by the same taster, and how his or her mind recalls them, and how accurately he or she has been able to mentally compare them all. Perhaps on another day that 17.5 could be a 16, or maybe an 18.5?

Such scores can often be a useful guideline of quality, but is it really possible to be so exact? Can we really become so accurate with our palates (and memories) that we can objectively make these comparisons and award such specific scores?