Welcome back to Hutch’s Craft Beer Club for the second part of HCBC 5 brought to you from Crookes micropub Two Sheds! For part one click here and for info on the rating system click here. Read on to find out who came out on top!
Dark Necessities (BAD Co. / Milk Stout / 5.5%)
The second beer of the evening from the North Yorkshire based ‘BAD Co.’ is a milk stout, sampled from a 330ml can. Whilst I am quite partial to a milk stout and like the creamy mouthfeel it brings the lactose brings to the table, Mark is dead set against them!
And true to his word – Mark said “Can is awesome, pours excellent with food head BUT it’s a milk stout :(“
Meanwhile Brett says the taste was ‘smoooooooth’….
Proving that this session had an excellent standard of beers being sampled, this one is our lowest rated despite coming in at a very reasonable 60.3. Quite a difference in scores this time too, with two in the 70s, two in the 50s and one in the 30s! Diversity at a whopping 48 points!
As stouts often do, this one scored well in appearance but not so well in smell. The rest of the categories all posted respectable scores hovering around the 60% average as expected. Milk stouts clearly aren’t for everyone, but this is definitely worth trying!
Andy’s Take – Scored it 79 – I personally loved it, got a strong coffee aroma with a twang of bitterness. Incredibly smooth and to back that up I scored it 9/10 on drinkability! Delicious -quite the pudding beer!
Position on the night – 8th (out of 8)
Liked most by – Me 🙂
Very Berry (Fierce Beer / Sour / 4.5%)
With Part 1 featuring the surprise of a high ranking sour beer, I got brave and decided to test the waters with another one! This time a very fruity sour from Fierce Beer, served in a 330ml can.
Raising a good point here is Mark – “Makes me indecisive – just wonderful but is it actually a beer?!” – I have to agree here, sometimes it almost feels like there needs to be a different category somewhere between beer and cider.
Clearly, the tastebuds at HCBC are slowly changing because this was our beer of the night! An average of 77.3 puts it third in the all-time list, and continues to put some different beer styles into a score zone dominated by dark beers!
Difficult to analyse the ones where everyone scores it so highly, but we do have one big outlier! The lowest score was 54, but three people gave it over 80 with the highest of 89! That puts the diversity at 35, still not too high. It scored particularly strongly in appearance and smell, but every category was pretty good really.
Andy’s Take – Scored it 85 – Incredible beer. The smell promises a lot but it follows it up with a complex punch of berries and tartness. I probably couldn’t drink tons, but what I did drink would be delicious. Buy it if you see it!
Position on the night – 1st
Liked Most By – Liv
Favorite of – Hutch, Mark, Liv, Andrew, Brett (Brett having his favourite beer of the night be a sour is pretty damn impressive!)
Emergency Shift (Fierce Beer x Dugges Bryggeri / Triple IPA / 10%)
These silly >9% beers always seem to pop up towards the end of the HCBC session when we start to think they are a good idea! This one is a triple IPA brewed in collaboration between Fierce and Dugges, served in a 330ml can (thankfully – any bigger would kill you!)
Brett was on fine form at this point – describing the smell as ‘Strong – not too hot’ and the after taste as ‘very schlong’. Make of that what you will…
I really like these beastly IPAs, don’t get me wrong I see how some people can be put off by the high ABV, but I think they go really well towards the end of the night the same as a whisky chaser would. And clearly this was a common opinion, as this one averaged a very nice 64.8.
Not too divisive at all this time either, with just 19 points separating top and bottom scores. It scored low in drinkability (completely unsurprising) but did pretty well in taste. Aftertaste was a tad disappointing, but that’s almost certainly down to it’s big ABV kick.
Andy’s Take – Scored it 63 – It doesn’t taste 10% at all which is a bit scary though it does have that boozy note to it, its quite sweet and it gives you a bitter hoppy kick right at the end.
Position on the night – 4th
Liked most by – Sam R
Favourite of – Sam R (Joint with 01|08)
Wooha IPA (WooHa Brewing Company / IPA / 6.2%)
At this point, we lost two of our team and were down to just the four tasters – but we persevered for one more beer! This time it was a half pint of Wooha IPA (on draft), from Kinloss in Scotland.
You can tell we’ve got to the end of the night when Brett notes down in the smell section ‘Black Bean Sauce’ – I honestly have no idea how he got that haha.
We only have 4 ratings for this beer so take it with a pinch of salt, but it scored a decent 61.5 on average, with a diversity of just 7 between highest and lowest scores. I think to be honest that’s a fair reflection of the beer.
The best category for Wooha was taste, scoring very well in that area, though it was let down by smell (maybe Brett was right??). The lowest score was 58 and highest 65, the general consensus being that it was a nice, standard IPA to close off the night with.
Andy’s Take – Scored it 61 – Doesn’t look like an IPA, feels a bit more like a standard bitter. However, it is nicely drinkable and not overpowering. Very pleasant.
Position on the night – 7th
Most liked by – Brett
Final Word
Right then, lets have a look at the all important round-up of the results from HCBC 5!
Least Liked Beer – A very harsh category this time around seeing as all the beers were above 60, but this time it goes to Dark Necessities, basically because Mark hates milk stouts!
Best Beer – We have a sour beer as our winner for the first time! Whilst 01|08 gave it a decent run, Fierce Beer’s ‘Very Berry’ comes out on top this time.
Strongest Opinion – The person who had the biggest swing in likes and dislikes this week is once again Liv due to her hatred for dark beers but love of sours (I’m pretty sure she’s won this award every time she’s joined us!)
Beer Junkie – A very close run thing between me, Andrew and Sam R but in the end it was once again me who gave out the most scores overall! However, if Mark had rated the last beer I’m pretty sure it would’ve been him, giving out just 46 points less but for one less beer!
‘Beer Isn’t For Me’ – And wholly unsurprisingly it’s Liv who gave out the least! This is what happens when you give out a 31 to poor old Dark Necessities.
Least Divisive – Wooha IPA easily takes this with one of the least divisive beers we have tried (score of 7), though with the full compliment of tasters Emergency Shift is close behind with a score of 19.
Most Divisive – All three dark beers take the top three spots in divisiveness this week, with Dark Necessities the beer which split opinion most!
And finally we have the updated league table, which I’m going to need to compress somehow soon but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it! Two sour beers enter into the ‘Fantastic’ category to start giving a few stouts a taste of their own medicine!
Lastly, take a look below for the full compliment of graphs and stats from HCBC 5, look out for more blogs on all manner of beer and brewing related things very soon, and a big thanks to Mark from Crosspool Ale Makers for joining us, we hope to welcome you back soon! If you are interested in joining us for one of these events then feel free to get in touch via Twitter or Facebook!
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