Munchner 4.5% Malted barley, malted wheat, hops, yeast 7.5/10
Amber, clear, good conditioning; developed quite a satisfactory fountain of foam from the bottom of the glass. It’s a curious and distinctive-tasting beer; opens with bready malt (toasty, to be precise) and finishes with something similar; no sweetness (and definitely no caramel), but no bitterness either, even by the standards of a brown bitter. And I keep thinking of toast: both the foretaste and the aftertaste are strongly reminiscent of toasted brown bread, maybe toasted granary even. Between the two the flavour opens up into something fresh and citric, a clean taste with a subtle bitter edge that’s strongly reminiscent of German lager. I’m trying to specify that specific bitter edge more precisely, but my mental flavourbank is only coming up with ‘gas pipes’. It’s bitter, but it’s not caramel or burnt toast or charcoal or tobacco or woodsmoke or cloves or bitter herbs; it’s a clean, mineral bitterness, with an almost menthol quality, that tastes a bit like the smell of cooking gas. (So basically, if you’ve ever toasted brown bread over a gas ring, you’ve tasted this beer.)
I have to confess, I don’t entirely like this one, but I still go back to it – I buy a bottle from time to time to see if I’ve changed my mind. It’s certainly distinctive, interesting and well put together – and for all I know it’s true to style (if a Munchner is an unusually malty German lager).
American Hopfen Weisse 5.1% Malted barley, malted wheat, hops, yeast 8/10
Pale gold, clear, good conditioning. A sharp citric foretaste, opening out to big fruit-salad flavours; smoky, herbal and musty overtones give a slight medicinal bitterness, which grows to dominate the aftertaste.
I’m not sure what a ‘hopfen weisse’ is, or what this beer is supposed to taste like. It’s not obviously a wheat beer, and it certainly isn’t a witbier. It does have a family resemblance to Duvel Tripel Hop – both of them taste like a base beer with an absolute ton of smoky American hops piled into it, which I guess is what they are. It’s good, that’s the main thing. In particular, it’s well balanced – the fruit is never bland, nor the bitterness harsh.
East India Porter 5.3% Malted barley, malted wheat, hops, yeast 8/10
Dark brown, clear, slightly excessive conditioning – the (500 ml) bottle was a bit of a gusher. Begins like a stout, with those slightly sour ‘roast’ flavours; develops like a stout as well, on the full-bodied espresso/dark chocolate end of the spectrum, although not excessively heavy. The finish, particularly apparent at the front of the mouth, is an intransigent, tarry bitterness.
Is this a black IPA? I wouldn’t say so. The aromatic dryness that ‘East India’ might seem to promise only really develops in that tongue-scouring aftertaste – and even that wouldn’t be out of place in a stout. You don’t really look to Ticketybrew for hop-led beers, though. Considered as a stout – or as a porter if you’d rather – this works rather well.
Pale 5.5% Malted barley, malted wheat, hops, yeast 9/10
Amber, clear, good conditioning. Sweetish, biscuity malt to begin with, opening out into… well, into more malt, to be honest; even the finish has a malty sweetness with a burnt-sugar bitter edge. But it’s not at all a heavy or cloying beer; the bitter finish builds steeply, drying out the flavour and rounding it off nicely. It’s a really interesting beer, doing something most new-wave beers don’t even attempt; it reminds me of old-school best bitters, but only the really good ones (Harvey’s Sussex Bitter, or Landlord at a pinch).
I go back quite a long way with the Pale; it’s not the first Ticketybrew beer I tasted, but it’s the first I fell in love with. These days it doesn’t have quite the endless depth and complexity it did back then – not in bottle, at any rate – but what’s there is still really good.
Blonde 5.8% Malted barley, malted wheat, hops, yeast 9.5/10
Gold, clear, lively conditioning. Just a touch of citrus on the foretaste, but the main flavour is a smooth, almost creamy cleanness, with a slight herbal edge and a definite touch of that ‘gas pipe’ bitterness (I’ve got to find a better word for this). The finish: still clean, still creamy, just a little bit of bitterness to dry things off. The overall effect is French or even Belgian; if you tasted this blind and somebody told you it was from Huyghe, say, you wouldn’t argue.
Like the Pale, the Blonde has traded a bit of edgy complexity for stability and consistency, but tasting it now it’s hard to find anything to regret. When a beer really impresses me I sometimes catch myself just looking at it, partway down the glass, as if it could give me clues – what’s this, then? how do you do that? I did that with this one just now. It’s not the most complex flavour profile, but it works so well.
Spring IPA 6% Malted barley, malted wheat, hops, yeast 7/10
Dark amber, hazy and over-conditioned – an uncontrollable gusher, frankly. Surprisingly fruity; the citric foretaste opens up into apples and peaches, with a slight medicinal edge. Doesn’t really ‘dry out’ at all; even the finish is more burnt sugar than clove oil or charcoal.
My difficulty getting the beer into the glass – and its unattractive appearance when I did – didn’t do this one any favours. But the actual flavour profile is similar to what I remember tasting when Ticketybrew had a keg IPA available; indeed, given that that one was also 6%, it may well be the same beer. In terms of contemporary style expectations, it’s an odd one: the fruity flavour isn’t tempered by that drying bitterness you tend to expect from an old-school IPA, but neither is it as aromatic and flowery as you’d expect a ‘craft’ pale ale to be. More than anything, it put me more in mind of a ‘fruity’ strong bitter like Wobbly Bob.
Dubbel 6.5% Malted barley, candy syrup, malted wheat, hops, yeast 9.5/10
Dark amber, slight haze, good conditioning. Flavour-wise it’s oddly difficult to describe: begins with heavy sweetness, developing into sweet heaviness before a finish which is, um, not light or lacking in sweetness… The flavour does develop, though, even if it’s basically variations on a theme: the initial sweetness gives way to a full body with some fruitcake complexity, with herbal aromas developing before a burnt-caramel bitterness rounds it off. Heavy but not dense, sweet but never cloying; it’s a really well-balanced beer.
Beers put together as well as this can seem simple and unchallenging, particularly if they’re outside the hop-led mainstream. I’ve underrated this one in the past; I saw the error of my ways when I drank a Westmalle Dubbel and discovered that the Ticketybrew version stood up rather well in comparison. A beautiful beer.
Oh Good Ale 