News and views

Moncada Brewery Notting Hill Red

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on March 8 2014 at 08:01

This week I took part in a fun new way of discovering beer: Beer Bods live Twitter tastings and this was the beer we tried this week.

The ingenious idea is to encourage beer drinkers to experiment more by sending them a case of 12 bottles (not free, obviously - the quarterly subscription is £36). You then drink one of the beers each week at a suggested time (9pm on a Thursday evening) and compare notes on Twitter.

There’s also background on the beer you’re tasting on the site which revealed that Moncara was founded by a young Argentinian, Julio, who fell in love with British beer when he came to the UK as a student.

I must say they couldn’t have started with a better beer than the Notting Hill Red for me. It was deliciously full-flavoured (6%), fruity and refreshing with a good hit of American hops and an appealing herbiness. I could imagine drinking it with ‘asado’, Argentina’s much revered barbecue, especially their spicy garlicky sausages. And, of course, a steak.

Interestingly the beer is also ‘natural’ - i.e. they do not use any cask finings, a process that removes yeast particles but also strips out flavour, giving the beer more of a cloudy appearance than most commercially produced beers. They also recycle the by-products of the brewing process: the spent cereal goes to one of the farmers at the local farmers’ market, the hops are composed at a local wildlife garden and some of the yeast goes to a local baker.

The only downside I can see is that you wouldn’t necessarily be around every Thursday but you can still read the story behind the beer and check out what people have been saying about it on the site. (You hashtag your tweets #beerbods.) Interestingly not everyone liked the beer as much as I did - some found it too strong.

You can buy the beers through BeerBods during the week following their featured slot: Notting Hill Red is on sale until next Thursday - or maybe Wednesday - at 12 bottles for £30.

Incidentally BeerBods is a successful crowd-funded project (through crowdcube.com) which hit its initial £100,000 target in 24 hours. I think it’s a really clever idea and an ideal way of helping people like me discover new brewers. It would make a great gift for any beerlover.

Disclosure: I received a free three month subscription from Beer Bods to try out the scheme

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