SMASH & Go

Well what a few weeks we’ve had so lets catch up before a few reviews:

Firstly BeerClubBelfast announced their beer dinner night in association with The Barking Dog on the 9th July, £50 for four courses including their fantastic shin burger! This is also part of the BrewBot tour, if anyone is interested get in touch with the guys here. If that wasn’t good enough, the Lighthouse are running their second beer night on the 10th July and have some cracking beers on offer so don’t miss out and be sure to check out the off sales when you are up there 😉 You’ll need a taxi home!

Secondly, we were fortunate enough to sample a pale ale form Northbound brewery in Derry a few weeks back; it was a great solid offering from the new outfit and I look forward to further encounters and products from them! Seriously keep an eye out for these guys.

Have a few blogs on draft at the minute, but we are looking for more questions to ask breweries about the NI market etc so to have your questions answered get in touch and we will add them to the list.

I’ve been busy working on a re-brand and updating a lot of things behind the scenes before I head off to pastures new, so technically this is my last piece granted its a catch up piece before a review but shh! Well anyway, thanks for reading my thoughts over the last year and I wish the rest of the guys all the best!

S

So you may have seen over the last few weeks Farmageddons Ltd edition releases of S.M.A.S.H Tomahawk and Cascadian Dark Ale so I nominated myself to try & review them, I did the original review on the core range here… since then I’ve tried the second batch & have noticed improvements across the range in particular with the GPA so hopefully this continues and now lets see what else they have to offer.

First up is the S.M.A.S.H Tomahawk 6.8% 500ml bottle, pours almost sunburnt orange with a decent white head that lasts throughout the beer. On the nose you get a lot of malts and hints of what I can only describe as Iodine and following the initial aroma the Iodine becomes more potent as it warms. On the palette unfortunately all I seemed to get was Iodine/TCP/Chlorine feel to the beer and personally I had expected more from it. This has split the judgment on many according to various Twitter discussions and Facebook posts but this just isn’t for me. But give it a bash and let me know how you get on with it.

Secondly we have the Cascadian Dark Ale 6.7% 500ml bottle. Quick whiff of the beer before pouring and you get malts and hints of hop & fruits. On pouring you get a liquorice black liquid with a beige frothy head; the aroma is a lot fuller when poured as you get so much more of the fruit – a very enticing start. On tasting you get a lovely light roast feel which accompanies the fruit from the hops, little bitterness at the end creating a nice fresh & balanced beer. There are subtle hints of spices in the beer which I just can’t put my finger on. Genuinely impressed by this, have hidden a few more to age a little as I expect, with a little age, this beer can get better and better. Looking forward to more offerings from Eoin & the rest of the Farmageddon team.

What did you think of these? Let us know, we are always interested in hearing others opinions. If there are any left check out the usual suspects here.

D