Note that these aren’t necessarily things that were opened/launched/published/forged from lava in 2011. Just things I experienced for the first time, or really came to appreciate last year.

Favorite beers!

Bristol Beer Factory Acer: There have been a lot of really delectable 4%-ish, hella hoppy golden ales released by British brewers in the past year, but this is my favorite, brewed with copious amounts of Sorachi Ace hops. Because of the weirdly complex nature of this Japanese varietal, and inevitable inconsistencies related to cask-conditioned beer, Acer is always a little bit different each time I have it – but it’s always bitingly bitter and thoroughly refreshing.

Mikkeller Nelson Sauvignon: I do hope we don’t see the last of this already rare brew, because it’s a jaw-dropper. Playing on the fruity aromatics of the Nelson Sauvin hop – so named because of its similarities to Sauvignon Blanc wines – Mikkeller has used champagne yeast and the wild fungus brettanomyces to produce even more vinous notes, then aged it in Austrian white wine barrels to drive the point home. The result is a real WTF of a beer that gleefully blurs the line between wine and beer. A few other beer geeks and I were left without words when we sampled it on a whim at BrewDog Camden.

BrewDog/Stone Bashah Highland Park and Black Raspberry Reserve: On paper, this collaboration between two of the most rambunctious breweries on the planet sounds like a train wreck, or at the very least, a “throw everything at the wall” type of ill-conceived experiment: a black IPA aged in whisky casks with copious amounts of berries. In actuality, it’s something far more than the sum of its parts, and unlike any other beer I’ve tasted, with fruity hops  and delicate tartness harmonizing beautifully with the richer, more mellow flavors of dark malts and whisky.

BrewDog Mr. Squirrel: I love this beer – and not just because I helped brew it. The game boys at BrewDog helped me put together this completely bonkers strong dark lager, made with 100% Sorachi Ace hops, four varieties of miso, and toasted walnuts. It turned out pretty much exactly how I’d hoped: lushly pork-friendly and multilayered with a full-on proteinaceous body, intense nuttiness, and a jab of salt and fragrant hops.

De Struise Pannepot: In November I went to Belgium, and it rekindled my love for Belgian beer. Pilgrimages to the Cantillon brewery and Delirium Cafe were almost too awesome for words, and completely by chance I found Westvleteren XII on the menu of a cafe. But none of the beer experiences I had were quite as marvelous as Pannepot, an offering as close to the Platonic ideal of a quadrupel as I think I’m ever going to find. It made Westvleteren taste like Leffe by comparison. This is one serious Belgian beer from a serious Belgian brewery.

Honorable mention goes to my collaborative smoked chilli weizenbock with Black Isle, Highland Smog; De Struise’s massively, dangerously complex imperial stout, Black Albert; Camden‘s Inner City Green and Summer Wine‘s Elbow, both hugely hoppy quaffers at under 4%; and just about anything from The Kernel and Marble.

Favorite restaurants!

The food at Racine never ceases to amaze me. I first visited three years ago, by chance – Laura and I wandered in because we were in the area and it has the same name as my hometown. But as soon as the first course arrived, I was enraptured by their deceptively complex French cooking – I say deceptively because dishes like their rabbit with mustard sauce, grouse with Armagnac, and chocolate terrine are presented in a straightforward, unassuming manner, but now that I know a bit more about classical French cookery, it’s obvious that these are really difficult, consummately skillful feats of cookery. I had the pleasure of meeting chef patron Henry Harris on my last visit there, and I couldn’t resist asking him how he makes one of his signature dishes: warm garlic and saffron mousse with mussels. I asked not only because that dish is one of the most magnificent things I’ve ever tasted (and easily one of my top five London dishes of all time), but because its intricacies seemed almost impossible to unravel. He answered with a justifiably annoyed shake of the head, followed by a coy smile and an explanation that was disconcertingly simple: the fundamentals of the dish aren’t hard to follow, but they are very hard to execute. And that’s what makes Racine special: every dish takes talent and practice, and it shows. And what’s more, they’ve got the service and the ambiance nailed, too – it’s one of the rare places you can go for both a romantic date or a pre-museum lunch with your hollering baby nephew and still have a lovely time.

More towards my end of the Piccadilly line, I’ve finally found a Korean restaurant that serves tteokbokki, pajeon, and bibimbap that taste just how I remember them from my trips to Seoul and Busan: Dotori. And it isn’t just the flavors that are authentic – it’s the prices, too. For some reason, Korean food in London has always struck me as unusually expensive; I don’t mind paying good money for good food, and I appreciate the economics of running an east Asian restaurant in London are a teensy bit different from running one in east Asia. But when it comes to to Korean, I just couldn’t shake memories of amazing meals eaten from anonymous street stalls for less than a fifth of what I typically have to pay here for a lower quality product. Dotori’s barbecue and banchan are excellent, and excellent value, and it’s nice knowing they’re only four tube stops away – actually, it’s nice knowing they exist at all.

In a similar vein, I’m a huge fan of Asakusa, which shines like a lighthouse in a sea of overly stylized, sexed-up, overblown and overpriced Japanese restaurants. Asakusa is an izakaya, and a proper one – the carpets are a weird red color, the walls plastered with handwritten menus and faded Japanese beer posters, and the food fantastic. Fancy it ain’t – you won’t find a foie gras roll here. But what you will find are Japanese pub classics cooked perfectly, things like karaage, soft shell crab tempura, dengaku nasu and grilled chicken skin. Healthy? Who cares? This is a place to relax and enjoy yourself with friends and family and a big bottle of Asahi.

If I love Racine, Dotori, and Asakusa for their straightforward authenticity, I love Spuntino because it’s the complete antithesis of it. Spuntino is neither here nor there; on the surface, it’s a meticulous pastiche of a Lower East Side cafe/diner, but the menu reads more like a mashup of arty American and northern Italian with flashes of modern British. Chilli popcorn and a remixed PBJ dessert bookend meals that may consist of chickpeas with squid and ink alongside sliders made with spiced mackerel or bone marrow-studded beef, all washed down with black filter coffee or classic cocktails – or are they classic? Maybe not, but they feel like it. It goes without saying that the food is delicious, but more importantly, it’s joyful and creative, made with an obvious love for its sources of inspiration, but also a willful irreverence that few restaurants have the confidence to pull off.

The Sweet Fanboy Vindication Award goes to The Fat Duck.

The Best Budget Cheeseburger in London Award goes to BrewDog Camden. (Burger Anarchy‘s words, not mine!)

The Style Over Substance (But the Substance is Pretty Damn Good) Award goes to Bob Bob Ricard.

The It’s Not Really a Restaurant, But It’s Still the Best Restaurant In Scotland Award goes to Yatai.

And the Better Than Tayyabs Award goes to Mirch Masala (try the fried fish – it’s the new lamb chop).

Favorite things to read!

I’ve written enough words now. Go read someone else’s!

Ideas in Food: Inspirational modernist cuisine from two of America’s most adventurous cooks.

The Fat Duck Cookbook: Dense, uncompromising, and endlessly useful.

Jonathan Gold: Still the best restaurant critic in the world. Don’t believe me? Just ask the Pulitzer Prize committee.

Cooking Issues: Advanced yet accessible experiments in food science.

Harold McGee on Food and Cooking: If you’ve ever asked yourself “why?” in the kitchen, this book probably has the answer.

I have to mention my new place of work, because it’s such an awesome place I’d probably blog about it even if I weren’t working there. It’s called the Euston Tap, and it is the London pub I’ve long been waiting for. Modeled on an American craft beer bar, it features a solid copper wall decked out with 27 different taps, with nineteen kegged beers on the upper deck and eight cask ales below. The selection rotates constantly, offering a wide, international selection of ales and lagers, with regular appearances by world-class breweries such as Thornbridge, Dark Star, BrewDog, Stone, Anchor, Great Divide, Matuska, Bernard, Marble, Westmalle, Odell, Sierra Nevada, Weihenstephaner, and Purity. Plus, we have eight fridges stocked with over 200 bottled beers, focused on American regional breweries, Bavarian lagers, and Danish oddities.

As the beer menu changes daily, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook for updates. Hope to see you there sometime!

The Euston Tap
190 Euston Road
West Lodge
London NW1 2EF
020 3137 8837

It was two days ago when I finally returned to Belgo, and this time the only thing I truly enjoyed was the Rochefort 8 and the Delirium Nocturnum (served in proper glassware – nice). Maybe it’s because I went to a different branch. Maybe it was a mistake to order anything but the mussels. Maybe my tastes have changed. Or maybe the restaurant has simply gone downhill (I’ve read this is the case). It’s probably some combination of all of these factors. But it was an unjustifiably terrible meal, the kind that filled me with remorse as I looked back on it the morning after.

A “seasonal starter” of butternut squash and cumin soup tasted more of carrots than squash, and not even subtly of cumin, and the pumpkin seeds used as a garnish had been roasted either incompetently or not at all, leaving them chewy instead of crunchy. It had been poorly blended and strained, so there were little bits of tough bay leaf and celery fiber scattered throughout; but then again, these little tidbits of texture were all that prevented the soup from being actual baby food, so maybe they were in there on purpose. A disappointment, but I still had hope for the mains. This proved foolish. The rotisserie chicken with leek and mustard sauce was itself tender and moist, but it looked and tasted like it had been accidentally tipped into a vat of pure heavy cream. The obligatory fries were the highlight of the meal (except for the beer), but even they were a bit sad, inconsistently crispy and marred by staleness. To add insult to injury, even the mayo was gross, unusually gellified and firm.

It’s rare for me not to finish a plate of food at a restaurant. I don’t have a lot of money, so it seems like a waste. But even so, I felt no inclination to finish my bowl of beef carbonade à la flamande, and I gave up halfway through. According to the menu, the beef was stewed in gueuze, a kind of wild Belgian beer with a strong, tart, farmy sourdough character, but none of this flavor came through in the dish. The beef itself was dry and flaky, having lost most of its moisture in a braise that was either too short, too long, or too hot, and the dish was topped with some mushy onions and a trio of brown but essentially uncooked apple slices. The most exciting element of the dish were the whole prunes dotted here and there, which added much-needed elements of acidity and richness.

What’s really vexing about this dish is that it was my first time to try carbonade, and I was excited about it. As I understand it, it is both a classic Belgian dish and a classic beer-based recipe, which are fairly rare among London restaurants. It was disappointing not just because it was bad, but because I was looking forward to tasting something new, unique, and authentic. It failed on all counts to meet my expectations.

Of course, for all I know, the dish was authentic. Maybe those weird apples and that stringy beef are exactly how you’d get it in Brussels (maybe it isn’t even eaten in Brussels). I have always thought that authenticity is overrated, unimportant, and often meaningless, except for in the sense that certain dishes that are made according to the standards of their original form often taste better. For example, I find it endlessly and irrationally irksome to be served a bowl of ramen garnished with snow peas. This seems to be common practice in ramen shops outside Japan, but I hate it, and it’s not because it necessarily tastes bad – it just seems wrong and out of place. It’s like a big green flag announcing that the ramen won’t be as good as what I had back in Kyushu.

But to even discuss the authenticity of ramen, or carbonade, is problematic. Ramen, after all, could be considered an inauthentic spinoff from the noodle soups of Canton or Shanghai, a sort of Japanized Chinese food. Besides, ramen itself is diverse and complex; it has been said that no two bowls of ramen are alike, so who’s to say that snow peas aren’t a legitimate topping? When I was doing research at the Shinyokohama Ramen Museum, the curator told me that one reason ramen has become so popular is because the Japanese have felt free to experiment with it and change it over time; it isn’t made within the confines of a Japanese tradition (as soba and udon are), so variation and creative license are hallmarks of ramen culture rather than exceptions to it.

Flippant riffing on authenticity and tradition can be a wonderful thing. It has given us Hakata ramen, the California roll, the black IPA, and Paco Roncero’s “21st Century Tortilla,” to name a few. But it seems to me that to be successfully inauthentic, there must be good ideas or reasons behind fixing what ain’t broke. Introducing new ingredients to a dish or changing how they’re cooked only works if it’s a purposeful improvement – otherwise it will just seem lazy, inept, or ignorant. Adding snow peas to ramen may seem like a minor fault, but it does nothing to enhance the dish and thereby only seems unfamiliar and intrusive. By contrast, adding tomatoes and garlic bread to ramen may seem bizarre, unnecessary, and certainly inauthentic, but more than one Kyushu ramen shop is doing it, and it’s remarkably delicious. That’s because it’s premeditated and practiced; tossing tomatoes witlessly into any old bowl of noodles would not likely yield such successful results.

The carbonade issue is probably less a question of authenticity and more a question of culinary skill. But what if Belgo’s version is not only “correct” in terms of its ingredients and method, but also tastes just how it does in typical Flemish homes and restaurants? In that case, then I might conclude that I simply don’t like carbonade. But of course this is silly. One could hardly argue that McDonald’s makes “inauthentic” American cheeseburgers – in fact they probably set the standard, if such a thing exists – but I would beg you to reconsider if you told me you didn’t like cheeseburgers, having only tasted McDonald’s perfectly accurate and popular rendition of them. There are great burgers to be had, even though the majority of them are bad or boring; I imagine the same may be true of carbonade. It is certainly true of ramen, pizza, and beer, and you would be a hopeless fool to spurn any of those.

I suppose that when dealing with foods that are expected to match a sort of culturally recognized Platonic ideal (i.e. “traditional” foods), I would hope that restaurateurs do try to reproduce that ideal to the best of their ability, and only deviate from it in attempts to improve upon it, or to create an entirely new dish based on it. But as diners we should equally understand that good food and authentic food aren’t  the same thing. Regardless of whether or not Belgo’s carbonade is authentic, I wouldn’t say I dislike carbonade based on my experience with that dish, and I probably wouldn’t say I dislike carbonade even if I went to Bruges, ate it there, and once again didn’t like it. We should reserve judgment on any given food not until we’ve had the real deal, but until we’ve had a good version of the real deal. Never give up on food until you absolutely have to.

That I hope to remember for the rest of my life.

1. “sodium alginate“
2. “transglutaminase“
3. “Valsalva maneuver“
4. “black IPA“
5. “beefy meaty peptide“

Chili is quite interesting. Like pizza, ramen, or hot dogs, it is a traditional food in the sense that it has been eaten for generations and can be passed down like folklore, but it is also non-traditional in that it needn’t imitate some pseudohistorical, platonic ideal. And yet everybody seems to have an idea of how chili should be made, in a way that goes beyond personal preference. Kind of like barbecue, people often maintain that there is a correct way to make chili, and all variations are either wrong, alien, or not chili at all. I think the most contentious single ingredient in chili are beans. The mantra of chili purists is “If you know beans about chili, you know chili ain’t got no beans.” But I know beans about chili, and I can hardly imagine chili without them.

I can also hardly imagine chili without beer, which adds a wonderfully deep, rib-sticking barley sweetness and light hop spice to chili as it cooks off. I first made chili with beer a few years ago using a brilliant recipe from Allagash Brewing in Maine. It calls for Allagash Tripel, a strong Belgian pale ale, but actually the recipe works with almost any kind of beer, so long as it isn’t excessively bitter – a smoked beer, I imagine, would probably be delicious.

When I remade the recipe the other night, I had nothing but expensive/rare/special beer in the house, which frankly would have been a waste to use in chili. So I went to the store and bought some Carlsberg. Carlsberg is a fine beer, not great or even particularly good, but it’s perfect for cooking because its hops are fairly restrained while its malts are savory, grainy, and sweet. Plus there aren’t really any nice nuances that would go to waste in something as dense and robust as chili. To use something like, say, Den Udødelige Hest would probably taste quite nice, but all of its subtleties of dates and port and mocha would be muffled under the sandbags of spices that go into any good chili. (My spice blend, by the way, is top secret. So don’t expect a recipe!)

I used about two-thirds of a Carlsberg in the food, which reduced nicely into a thick, malty mortar to bind together all the beans, meat, and spices. I had the rest of the Carlsberg with my meal – and it wasn’t quite right. I was reminded of why I don’t particularly like mass-produced pilsners with Indian curries – while they do act as nice palate-cleansers to help clear all that ghee off the palate, somehow they seem to abrupt, too cutting, and yet so inconsequential. It was the same pitting Carlsberg against Carlsberg chili – it helped to wash down what was a very rich stew, but it didn’t do anything in terms of flavor. I may as well have been drinking club soda.

Next time, I will try it with something just as crisp and effervescent, but with a stronger malt flavor – possibly a dark German lager or an American pale ale.

Though Jørn Utzon isn’t exactly a household name outside of Denmark, you are almost certainly familiar with his work. He is the architect behind one of the twentieth century’s most iconic buildings, the Sydney Opera House.

The late Utzon was born in Copenhagen, but he spent most of his childhood in Ålborg, which is now home to the Utzon Center, a museum of modern architecture and art designed by the man himself, in cooperation with Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Ålborg is also home to the ambitious Søgaards Brewery, whose range encompasses a variety of international styles and includes some unusual experiments. The Søgaards brewmasters have taken inspiration from the places that inspired Utzon’s architecture to brew two beers for the Utzon Center: Blond and Dark. The label on Utzon Blond explains:

This beer follows Utzon’s footsteps from Australia, where we have gathered the herb lemon myrtle; across Asia for the refreshing character of kaffir lime leaves and ginger; to Spain, where we have selected an orange flower honey to round off the beer and add a light floral flavor. The noble conclusion comes from the Middle East’s delicate and luxurious spice saffron.

Pretty neat. These ingredients may sound weird, but remember that before hops came into favor around the turn of the fifteenth century, bouquets of herbs and flowers called gruits were used to add flavor and bitterness to beer. Dandelion, heather, ginger, burdock, nutmeg, juniper and spruce were common. So while this beer is cosmopolitan and contemporary in its selection of international ingredients, this method of flavoring also recalls ancient brewing traditions. Especially interesting is the inclusion of honey, since the vikings were fond of a sort of mead-beer hybrid that was also flavored with odd spices and herbs.

Utzon Blond is an amber-gold ale with a pillowy white head, and it actually does hit all the notes described on the label: Australian lemon myrtle and kaffir lime leaf provide a pleasantly soapy, citric top note, while the honey gives the beer a sweet foundation. Floral, savory saffron floats by in the background. All around it is very fruity, slightly tangy and rather robust – probably not as arresting as Utzon’s designs, but just as intriguing and unique!

I made a sort of shepherd’s pie tonight. Except the meat didn’t thaw in time, so I made it out of vegetables and some chopped-up Danish sausage. I used red wine and stout for the gravy and I put mature Cheddar in the mash. It was warming, savory, and rich. It was nice.

And it was especially nice with Svaneke Mørk Guld. Mørk Guld means “dark gold,” and that is a fair description of its color, though “Rusten Kobber” may be a slightly more accurate name. As a lager, yeast aromatics are low, so the nose is mostly caramel, rum, and apple turnover, which also provide the keystones to the beer’s flavor. Light and airy carbonation, an odd twang of medicinal alcohol, and a snap of grassy hops balance out the malts to keep things drinkable.

Most Danish craft beers, just like most craft beers from any country, are ales. So it is very vexing to me when I hear somebody say, “I don’t like ales.”

Unfortunately, the actual definitions of “ale” and “lager” are not widely understood in the UK outside of beer geek circles. Come to think of it, they are probably not widely understood in any country, but the problem in the UK is that people think they know what they mean because of a functional familiarity with certain kinds of ales and lagers that have come to dominate pubs and bars throughout the country.

Ale and lager are simply the two main categories of beer based the two main types of yeast used in brewing. (Wild yeasts, like those used to ferment sourdough bread, are also used to brew obscure styles in Belgium and America, but nevermind those for the moment.) To put it simply, ale yeasts are top-fermenting, which means that the yeast rises to the top during fermentation, whereas lager yeasts are bottom-fermenting. Ale yeasts also ferment more quickly and at a warmer temperature than lager yeast; typically ale takes three to four weeks to brew to completion, while lagers can take two months or more.

Broadly speaking, these two types of yeast produce different characteristics in finished beer. Because it ferments longer and more slowly, lager yeast tends to produce drier and lighter-bodied beer because it has time to eat up more sugar. It also leaves a lighter yeast footprint in the beer, allowing malt and hop flavors to stand out. Ale yeast tends to leave beer somewhat sweeter and fuller-bodied, plus it leaves more of its own character behind in the form of esters. Esters are organic compounds that create fruity, spicy, or earthy aromas, including the classic banana-and-clove notes of Bavarian wheat beers.

But beyond these very general characteristics, there is no real way to differentiate between ales and lagers based on flavor alone. This is because brewers can use any ingredients they want in their beer, regardless of what kind of yeast they’re using. Consider the Schwarzbier. Schwarzbiers are a variety of black lager from Germany that use dark-roasted malts to produce flavors of toast, coffee, chocolate, and sometimes smoke. However, if one were to start off making a Schwarzbier, but then pitched in ale yeast instead of lager yeast, what you’d get is something like a porter or stout. And in practice, stouts and Schwarzbiers are actually quite similar – the main difference is that Schwarzbiers tend to be somewhat lighter-bodied.

My point is that both ales and lagers encompass an incredibly broad range of styles and flavors, and ales and lagers really have a lot in common. But in the UK, “ale” has come to denote what is actually “real” ale, or cask-conditioned ale, which is served only slightly chilled and has natural, soft carbonation produced by living yeast in the cask – causing many drinkers to complain that British beer is “warm and flat.” On top of this, the vast majority of cask-conditioned ales found at British pubs are bitters or pale ales; both are fairly hop-forward styles and tend to be unpopular among drinkers unaccustomed to noticeable bitterness in beer. Of course, ales can be quite mild in bitterness, and they can also be cold, sparkly and refreshing – it just depends on the ale in question, and how it is stored and served.

Similarly, ale aficionados tend to turn up their noses at “lagers,” meaning the international but virtually interchangeable array of Pilsner-derived fizzy yellow beers that have depressingly come to dominate the beer market. There is such a dearth of variety among lagers that people have come to associate the term with that one, overwhelmingly prevalent lager style. And this is why people generally tend to place themselves in one category of beer drinker or the other – because they just haven’t been exposed to the whole range of ales and lagers. When people say “I don’t like ales” or “I don’t like lagers,” what they ought to be saying is “I don’t like cask-conditioned English bitters” or “I don’t like mass-produced imported Pilsners” – because in general, that’s what they mean. It would be very unusual to find a bona fide beer geek who claims to dislike either ales or lagers – and I wouldn’t take that beer geek’s advice anyway.

Last night my company hosted a Danish beer tasting event at Skandium, a Scandinavian design store in Knightsbridge. The event was a success – eyebrows were raised, beer was enjoyed, people were made slightly tipsy. I tended bar along with two waitresses, who sampled the beer so they could talk about it with the crowd. One of them, who confidently told me she didn’t like ales, was amazed to discover that her favorite beer of the evening, Hvid from Indslev, was an ale and not a lager. Hvid is a Belgian-style wheat beer, unfiltered and cloudy, soft on the palate and very refreshing with restrained hops and a light spicy-citric edge from the addition of lemon zest and coriander. It is crisp and effervescent, low in bitterness but still quite dry – it fits the accepted definition of “lager.”

Both waitresses also thoroughly enjoyed one of the stars of our lineup, Ærø No. 5 from Rise. No. 5 is a brown ale brewed with walnuts, and it has a mellow, maple syrup and raisin flavor. There is no question it is delicious – and the self-professed ale-haters were perhaps more impressed with it than anyone, surprised at how sweet and drinkable ale can be.

Before and while drinking Søgaards Klosterbryg, I thought it was a Belgian abbey-style dark ale. The name means “monastery brew” (a reference to a nearby church) and it has the flavor profile is that of a classic Trappist dubbel. Cocoa powder leads a united front of raisin, tea, toffee, and coffee across the palate, while aromatics of orange, vanilla, and pepper spice things up. It has a lovely latte-colored head atop a thick, garnet-brown body and soft, rolling carbonation just like the Belgian originals. If it looks like a dubbel, smells like a dubbel, and tastes like a dubbel, then it must be… a Munich Dünkel?! Surprise surprise!

It just goes to show that lagers can be just as deep, nuanced, and eccentric as any ale.

At the moment, Mikkeller is the Danish darling of the international craft beer scene. I like Mikkeller very much, but I do think that a great deal of their popularity is due to what beer writer Andy Crouch calls “American craft beer hegemony.” Brewers from nations around the world, notably Japan, Denmark, Italy, and even Belgium and Germany, have taken note of American craft breweries’ successes at home and abroad. And they have been inspired, or perhaps persuaded, to brew similarly creative, anti-traditional, and “extreme” beers – and the global beer literati are drinking it up.

The brewers at Mikkeller are innovative in their own right, but they do borrow a lot of ideas from American beer and have even collaborated with infamously eccentric breweries like Stone. So they’re very zeitgeisty. One of the ideas they’ve taken from American brewers is the single hop beer – a cool idea, but also a gimmicky one if you consider that beers brewed with only one hop varietal aren’t really uncommon. Most pilsners will only use one hop: the classic, noble Saaz.

But still, single-hop beers, especially IPAs, are a great way to showcase hops that are more often used in conjunction with other hops. Like Nuggets. Personally I think Nuggets are an odd choice for a single-hop beer because they are generally used to add bitterness to a brew, rather than aroma or flavor. But the beer is quite nice. Cinnamon-orange with a resilient parchment-colored head, boasting a fruity and very leafy aroma with notes of tangerine, mango, caramel, cucumber, rum, and field greens. Appropriately hoppy and uite bitter on the palate; more peppery than fruity, with nuances of juniper, autumn leaves, and grapefruit. The finish is long and lingering with tangy bitterness.

Gimmicky or not, it’s a good beer – and now I know exactly what Nugget hops taste like! Surprisingly good with Brie, especially with a nice, spicy chutney.