Beers for New Year's Eve

Suggestions from Cask Marque BEERS FOR NEW YEAR'S EVE!

The Christmas decorations are starting to wilt, the turkey carcass is finally in the bin, and you’re ready for one last hurrah before returning to normality: it’s New Year’s Eve. Even if you’ve sworn you can’t eat any more festive food, there’s always room for New Year’s Eve nibbles. I love canapes with a passion, these miniature, condensed versions of my favourite foods. I am the vol-au-vent queen and I would have a plateful of them for my last meal on earth. So this is our guide to which beers to drink with the most popular end-of-the-year party food.

Pork canapes, such as Scotch eggs, pigs in blankets, pork pies and pork belly bites are fantastic with traditional pale and blonde ales. The malty sweetness of these beers balanced with assertively dry hops quench the saltiness of the meat. My top recommendations are the ubiquitous Timothy Taylor’s Landlord (I truly believe this beer was invented to go with pork pie), Butcombe Gold Bitter and Castle Rock Harvest Pale.

Oily fish canapes, liked smoked salmon blinis and sushi, love a delicately flavoured, effervescent beer with citrus notes to cut through the fat. Try these with a Belgian Wit Bier such as Vedett Extra White, or a sharp, crisp lager: Asahi Super Dry is perfect. The zestiness of Thwaite’s Wainwright pairs perfectly with mini cod goujons. Try Magic Rock Salty Kiss with scallops, the beer really brings out the brininess of fish. Oriental inspired appetizers – spring rolls, chicken satay, wontons and coriander prawns – will find no better match than Oakham Citra with its pungent grapefruit, lychee and gooseberry flavours or Adnam’s Ghost Ship which has stunning lemon and lime aromas. Indian influenced spicy bites – think onion bhajis, samosas, pakora and tandoori chicken - work surprisingly well with dark, roasty beers like stouts and milds. The chocolatey sweetness of the beer acts as a foil to the intense heat of the spice and top of the leader board for me is Hook Norton Double Stout, closely followed by Moorhouse’s Black Cat Mild. (These beers also work well with mini Yorkshire Puddings filled with rare roast beef and a dash of horseradish).

Cheesy morsels lend themselves to most beers and you can’t go far wrong with any ale imbibed with mini mac’n’cheese, mozzarella bites and mature cheddar tartlets. My favourite style though is a big hefty Belgian dark ale, such as Chimay Blue or Kasteel Donker (which weighs in at a hefty 11% ABV). If you’re after a British beer, try and get your hands on JW Lees Harvest Ale, a very special barley wine style ale. Finally, if you just want an amazing beer to toast the chimes in at midnight, pour yourself a glass of Worthington White Shield. This India Pale Ale has won the CAMRA Champion Bottled Beer of Britain contest more times than any other beer and deserves to be drunk on special occasions.

Cask Marque - Christmas Cheeseboard ideas

Cask Marque BEERS FOR YOUR FESTIVE CHEESEBOARD!

Put away the port, retire the red wine, and bring out the beer with the Christmas cheeseboard this year. Why beer, instead of the traditional fortified wines? For a few very good reasons. All beer has fizz, carbonation, sparkle: little bubbles of CO2 which act like a scrubbing brush on your tongue after you’ve had a mouthful of cheese. Beer is a great palate cleanser, scouring away at the fat residue left by cheese Beer making and cheese making are very similar processes: take good quality ingredients, plenty of patience and cleanliness, and you get a myriad of styles, flavours and colours from a few simple tweaks to the process Cheese is salty. Beer is hydrating. Need I go on? So here are my recommendations for the best beers to try with your cheeseboard this Christmas.

Brie and Camembert Creamy, sweet, and pungent, these cheeses need a strong bodied beer, but one which doesn’t overpower the flavour. Belgian blonde ales such as Duvel or Leffe Blond have the right level of sweetness to match Brie and Camembert, lots of sparkle to cut through the fat, and a potent alcoholic kick. Combined, this beer and cheese match is like a Swiss fondue!

Gruyere and Emmenthal Beautifully nutty, these Alpine-style cheeses have got a natural affinity with malty, sweet beers. Step forward dark lagers and bocks which bring out the toffee caramel flavours in the cheese. Samuel Adams Boston Lager is widely available and is an excellent companion to this style of cheese, or try and track down a bottle of Thornbridge Kill Your Darlings, a Vienna style lager

Extra Mature Cheddar I am SO spoilt for choice here because strong cheddar goes with virtually every beer I’ve ever tasted. But if I had to choose a ‘Desert Island Beer’ with cheddar it would be big and bold: St Austell Big Job, a powerful 7.2% IPA, or Crafty Dan 13 Guns. All the juicy tropical flavours in these beers – mango, passionfruit, satsuma – bring out the fruitiness of the cheese. The intense bitterness also cuts through the fat Goats Cheese Crumbly, salty and a little bit acidic, goats cheese loves a ‘contrasting’ beer like a sour tart fruit beer. A cherry beer such as Boon Kriek acts like a fruity vinaigrette. Wild Beer Co Modus Operandi is a sour red oak aged beer which is amazing with a Chevre log.

Stilton Ah, Stilton. That unique crumbly-yet-creamy texture; that intense saltiness combined with a metallic twang. This cheese is made for the dark chocolate, espresso coffee, smoked flavours of porters and stouts. Meantime Chocolate Porter is a winner in this category, closely followed by Magic Rock Common Grounds, a triple coffee porter. The sweet smokiness in both these beers blends beautifully with the salty cheese. This match is my definite favourite!

Wensleydale A cracking cheese, as Wallace might say. Still crafted by hand in Hawes in North Yorkshire, this should be a staple on any Christmas cheese board. There is a tradition in Yorkshire to have a slab of alcohol laced fruit cake with a sliver of Wensleydale on the side. Sounds weird, but it works. So I want my beer to taste fruit-cakey and this is the time of year to treat yourself to a bottle of Fuller’s Vintage Ale. Full of stewed fruit flavours, dried fruit, marmalade and a powerful alcoholic punch, it’s perfect with this special cheese.

Coming up next ......... beers to match your New Years Eve canapes! MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Cartagena V Al Fayha

10th August 2018

A riveting pre-season friendly at the Pinatar Arena.

The mighty F C Cartagena v Al Fayha (Saudi Arabia)

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Cask Marque - Christmas Beers

https://cask-marque.co.uk WHICH BEER MATCHES MY CHRISTMAS DINNER?

Flicking through all the Christmas food brochures which appear on my door mat around this time of year, I notice very few beers amongst the wine, bubbly and ubiquitous cream liqueurs on offer. In many of the supplements, beer is almost an afterthought, a back page filler, featuring ‘pile it high, sell it cheap’ crates of mainstream lagers. Yet at every beer tasting and training session I’ve done for the past few weeks, the most frequently asked question has been: what beer should I have with my Christmas dinner? So I thought I would share a few of my favourite festive foodie beers to drink over the holiday period with you. As usual, a disclaimer here…some of these beers are not cask, they’re not ale, but they’re still BEER!

If you’re having turkey (or goose) for your main course on Christmas Day, choose a beer which is juicy and fruity (think how well cranberry sauce complements turkey). Titanic Plum Porter is my number one choice, closely followed by Bacchus Kriek, a gorgeous mouth puckering cherry beer. If fruit beers aren’t to your taste, bring out the big guns with a strong, raisiny Belgian Dubbel, such as Westmalle Dubbel. Pork or gammon is best with sweeter beers to cut through the salt. I recommend Wells Youngs Special London Ale with its caramel sweetness or Ringwood Old Thumper which has a wonderful hint of apple.

Venison and pheasant need assertive beers which stand up to strong flavours: Adnam’s Broadside is a fabulous beer which enhances the gaminess of pheasant, (the bottled version is a lot stronger than the cask version so beware!). Venison is brilliant with chocolate-y porters and a favourite of mine is Fuller’s London Porter. This beer will also pair perfectly with Stilton cheese at the end of your meal. Meat free options, such as nut roast or mushrooms need an earthy, herbal beer, and I’ve never found a beer to beat Orval, a Trappist beer, with most vegetarian dishes. It’s stunningly dry but with a fruity centre, and it enhances nutty flavours. If fish is your centrepiece on Christmas Day, I would pick a light, dry sparkling beer and this is where wheat beers come into their own. Erdinger Weisse Bier has a sharp carbonation and a citrus edge which slices through poached or grilled salmon. It beats a glass of Prosecco hands down.

So onto Christmas pudding. Love it or hate it, it’s part of tradition, so I go with a classic British ale. Theakston’s Old Peculier is a strong dark ale with hints of dark fruit, chocolate and liquorice, or how about a glass of Robinson’s Old Tom, a beer which has been described as “Christmas pudding in a glass”. A final word on serving beer at the dinner table: get your best glasses out! Serve beer in wine goblets, champagne flutes, and chalice glasses, make it as special as any fine wine.    Coming up next week ...... I'll talk you through some of my favourite beers to serve with the Christmas cheese board!

DHL - Deceit, Hypocrisy and Lies

Not sure why, but some of the formating in my book doesn't seem to work when it is uploaded live.
The preview version works in Kindle Direct Publishing, but some of the tabs and inserted shapes move or disappear.
I am trying a different format which should hopefully update tonight, but my book lives.

Here's a link to the original version, warts and all

DHL - Deceit, Hypocrisy and Lies

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