Beer Review: Criffel

What can I say, it's Thursday and it's the evening and it's been a day. Neither good nor bad, but easily identifiable as a day, and that is good enough sometimes. This calls for a bout of oddly disjointed prose, words thrown at a page in a close enough approximation of a description to warrant reading if not following. Yes, it's a beer review and I have chosen the carefully hoarded and husbanded Criffel from the presentation pack of Sulwath ales that my mother got me for Christmas. It's been rather a while since the last one (link) and it's time to break them out again methinks.

Also, it's been sitting in my kitchen looking at me and disapproving generally of my not drinking it for long enough that the guilt alone would have forced me into drinking it without the fact that I am so locked into my routine that it is time to review an ale.

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Beer Review: Tri-Ball Tribrute

Another day and another ale. I have found and procured more of the lovely Batemans Mocha (here) for 79p a pop, which has made me immodestly happy, and I have decided to celebrate by trying another of the Christmas ales from my mother - the Sulwath gift box set. Third of these offerings then is a nice little blonde number that goes by the name of Tri-Ball Tribute, a reference to raquet sports in Scotland apparently, and with the thistle and St. Andrew's Cross very visible on the bottle.

It was that sort of day you see, when you think that the weather is very much like what you'd expect in Scotland. Having lived as close as I did to the country for as long as I did and as young as I did I suspect that this may just be a me sort of thing to think. In the meantime it's late evening, I've had a lovely (if ad hoc) meal of home-cooked spring rolls, pork pie and grapes and I fancy me a decent bottle of ale - hence the decision to go for this.

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Beer Review: The Grace

So much to do and so little time. So many ales in the kitchen to get through, it's a hard life! Tonight it is the turn of another of the ales from Christmas, Sulwath, and after some brief debate with myself I plumbed for what I thought would be a golden ale. I was wrong, it's amber. It is The Grace, being named after the Selkirk Grace, believed to be written at the Selkirk Arms in Kirkcudbright (pronounced "Kid-cuddie"). So, there you go.

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Beer Review: Galloway Gold

This is the first, and much-anticipated on my part, ale from my Christmas present from my mother and her husband. Brewed locally to them, near Carlisle (Castle Douglas as it happens), by Sulwath. I started with this one for a Sunday lunch review simply because it bills itself as a lager rather than an ale, which I thought was something different. Mind you, there are no hops that I can find, so perhaps that's not unexpected. In that, however, I am struck by the fact that this is less, well, boring than the last one I had (Red Stripe click here) or the Steven's Point Lager that I've had, but elected not to review.

Maybe it's because it is from the Scottish Borders (in a historical and poetic sense, not Galashiels!) that it seems to do more than these, or maybe I have a soft-spot for all the wrong reasons, but I thought that Galloway Gold would go well with my meal of last night's takeaway. Oh, we know how to live here in the Towers!

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