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.

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.