Younger's Brown Ale (1994)

275ml bottle from 1994. Liquid brown bread. Slight carbonation. Slight sweetness. This is like a kvass. Drinkable and attractive, though lacking genuine character. Very soft.

January 2010

Gales Tudor Pale Ale (1987)

Vintage bottle 1987. Soft and attractive. Flavours are restrained, and include toffee, port, rust, bark, boiled beef, Kvass, Irn Bru, and wholemeal bread soaked in cola. Light carbonation. A very drinkable and enjoyable beer. All too quickly consumed!


January 2010

Bathams Best Bitter (1989)

1989 bottle from The Bull and Bladder brewpub in the Black Country. Soft and fruity - very drinkable - slight exotic fruit notes of mango and pineapple, combined with rust. Few hops. This is not a complex beer, but is very easy drinking and enjoyable.


December 2009

Busch (1995)

Very soft aged version - approx 1995. There’s very little flavour here, but some soft watery malt emerges. No awareness of hops. Not much happening. Wet ghost. No off flavours. No carbonation left. Drinkable.

December 2009

Dudley Castle Ale

From the Simpkiss brewery which closed in 1985. This is a beer made for Dudley Council. Original gravity is around 1050, giving a possible strength of 5%. It is a very dark beer. Taste is dark, twiggy, quite dry and very satisfying. There is a well integrated bitterness, suggesting a decent level of hop when made. Some hints of licorice in the finish from the darker malts used. This is a full flavoured beer. Robust, deep and serious.


December 2009

St Andrews Ale (1989)

St Andrews Ale, vintage 1989. Plenty of nuts and some chocolate. A robust ale that has matured with aging. Initially a little woody, this smooths out as the beer is aired. Pleasant tannic notes mix well with the fatty sweetness of the chocolate. A well rounded and satisfying ale.

December 2009

Lees Celebration Ale (1993)

Yummy. A celebration Lees beer from 1993. Sweet and malty with interesting port and walnuts oxidized notes. Very yummy! There's no indication of strength on the bottle, but this is over 7% for sure.

November 2009.

Chiltern Brewery Prince's Preference (1981)

Opens quietly with no fizz, and pours flat. A fair whiff of damp cardboard, so left for a while to settle. Light bodied, but lots of sweet toffee flavour. Watery texture is a little off-putting, and though I like sweet beers, this is a little too sweet for my taste. Plenty of chocolate mixed with damp straw and dark, black tea. OK. An easy drink, quite pleasant.

This was a limited edition of 4,500 bottles. This is bottle 52 (faint red number under the brewery address).

The Chiltern Brewery was established in 1980 by Richard Jenkinson on an old farm in the countryside just south of Aylesbury. It's a family brewery with a beer shop at the brewery, and a bar at the Kings Head pub in Aylesbury. Draught beers are distributed locally, and the brewery makes special bottled beers for CAMRA, the National Trust and the National Gallery.

Meteor (1990)

I don't set out to buy vintage lagers, but I sometimes end up with them when I buy job lots. I can't remember where this one came from, but the best before date is 1990. It opens with a fizz and very good carbonation. Soft, but very lively. I've had fresher beers that had less life. It's a soft, creamy and fruity beer - no off flavours at all. No cardboard notes. Just a soft, fruity, creamy beer. Some gentle metallic notes. Some sweet apple. Very enjoyable, and surprisingly fresh tasting. Thoroughly enjoyed this.

250ml. 4.6%. Says "Biere D'Alsace" and "Biere De Luxe" on the bottom of the label.

Also known as Export, Lager or just Meteor.

The Meteor brewery dates its foundation in Hochfelden, Alsace to 1640, when Jean Klein set up there. The brewery was bought by the Metzger family in 1844 who merged with the Haag Ingwiller family in 1898, naming the brewery Metzger Haag. The name changed to Meteor in 1925, and the Meteor lager was launched in 1927. The company is still family owned, with  approximately 200 employees. Its consolidated sales were € 40 million in 2012. 

Traquair House Ale (1975)

Traquair House is the oldest continuously inhabited house in Scotland. It is a fortified manor with a long and proud history - after the front gates, the Bear Gates, were closed when Bonnie Prince Charlie passed through in 1745, the Earl vowed they would never be opened again until a Stuart king returned. In 1965 Peter Maxwell Stuart, the 20th Laird of Traquair, started what may be considered the first modern microbrewery when he discovered 18th century brewing equipment for the house's domestic brewery (all large houses would have once had their own domestic brewery which fell into disuse when commercial breweries were developed in the 18th century). Traquair House Ale (7.2% abv) was the first beer he produced, and the Stuart family are still making it. I first had the beer in 2003 and quite liked it. Each time I've had it since, I've liked it, though I prefer the brewery's Jacobite Ale, which is slightly stronger at 8% abv.

Traquair House in 1814

I was very pleased and excited to be given this by my son-in-law, Robert, both because of the beer's history and also because I felt that the style and strength of the beer would benefit from long aging. The beer is filtered and was bottled at Belhaven. I've tried to pin down the date, but the brewery appear to have used the same label for a long time - I suspect from the type of bottle (chunky, reusable, with signs that this is not the first label used on the bottle), and the mix of imperial and metric sizes on the label, that it was brewed in the mid 1970s.

The bottle opened with minimal carbonation, as expected from a filtered beer from the mid 70s. There was the usual hit of damp cardboard from the hops (and this has always been a firmly hopped beer - using East Kent Goldings), though when that was allowed to burn off (can take over an hour sometimes) the aroma was oats, straw, port, chocolate and wild woodland mushrooms. Chocolate is in the flavour, along with raw, bloody meat, red wine, and soft raspberries. There's a faint hop bitterness in the finish. It's a smooth and pleasant drink. Not a huge woosh of flavours, and nothing hugely exciting, but very decent, and very enjoyable, leaving pleasant lingering flavours playing around in the mouth.