Drinks of the Month
Northern Monk Ronseal Medium Oak best bitter
I have to say it was pure genius for Leeds brewer Northern Monk to come up with this collaboration* with Ronseal which of course carries the catchy slogan ‘does exactly what it says on the tin’.
The two beers have Ronseal-style branding, and have been colour matched with Ronseal Fence Life colours - ‘Medium Oak’ is a 4.5% Best Bitter and actually does do the job perfectly - it’s a good rich malty bitter of the type of which you feel John Major would approve though being in a can it definitely benefits from being chilled
There’s also a Saison which Saison lovers might not feel reflects the style quite so accurately but who could resist the pun "does exactly what it saison the tin". Not me for one. It’s more like a deliciously citrussy pale ale.
What would I pair them with? The Medium Oak with a good pork pie or a ploughman’s, the Saison with fish & chips (fried in beef dripping obvs)
You can buy them from the Northern Monk website at £4.00 for the Best Bitter and £4.60 for the Saison –- both in 440ml cans
*I presume this was the inspiration of Northern Monk’s ‘Creative Lead’ Thom Archer, which sounds a bit of a dream job. Nice work, Thom.
I was sent the beers as a press sample.
Big Drop Brewing 0.5% Pale Ale
I’ve been focussing quite a lot on alcohol-free drinks recently so I headed along to the Mindful Drinking festival in Spitalfields yesterday where I discovered this brilliant range of low alcohol (0.5%) beers.
They were all impressive - and beautifully packaged with colourful labels that depict rural Suffolk scenes - but I think the award winning pale ale is the most successful. It’s heavy on hops which makes up for the lack of alcohol and has an added dash of lime which makes it a good partner, they say, for a Thai chicken curry.
There’s also a convincing lager, a coffee-laden milk stout and - for Christmas - a spiced ale flavoured with cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves that I think might benefit from being served warm or at least at centrally heated room temperature rather than chilled.
You can buy them from the low alcohol website drydrinker.com in cases of 6 to 24 bottles (6 bottles cost £16.99) or in a mixed case of 12 bottles for £30.99 if you want to try them all. They're also available at The Draft House pubs.
Toast Ale
Sometimes a good story is all it takes to make you buy a bottle and who could resist a beer that makes use of food waste - unused bread in the case of Toast?
It’s brewed by Hackney Brewery and made to a Belgian recipe from bread crusts that would otherwise be discarded, along with malted barley, hops and yeast. All profits go to the charity Feedback which campaigns against global food waste. (According to the website 44% of all bread produced in the UK is thrown away.)
I wouldn’t say the taste was toasty, more emphatically malty - slightly more bitter than a lot of the craft beers out there (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing). When I tasted it I felt it needed food - maybe a cheese toastie or cheese on toast which would enable you to use yet more surplus bread and leftover bits of cheese.
You can buy it from the end of this week from the Toast Ale website at £18 a 6 bottle case (+ £6.99 delivery). Look out for it too at River Cottage, E5 Bakehouse, Poco, Fifteen and Tiny Leaf.
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