Bottle Share 3 - love, laughs & a late night!!

We started at 7pm and some we're still drinking as 2am approached.... this will be forever known as the "Fairly Long Night"!!

Sharers by candlelight

Chris, Kate, Kirk, Simon, Laura, Michael, Kieron and Sean with a very special guest appearance from craft beer legend Derek Foster. Sheffield's very impressive Shakespeare's pub was the venue and beer was the subject, let the festivities begin.  

Twobeergeeks blogger Michael opened up the night with a beer from his past and occasional present. With family ties in Shropshire and the surrounding area (Wales), Michael offered up Monty's Brewery Sunshine, a 4.2% pale which was a fresh, comfortable start to proceedings. Likable, easy to drink but perhaps lacking (as it should) any real bite, Sunshine was received warmly but without screams of delight (5.25/10 was the average score). Kate got to her feet next and proceeded to tell everyone that Buxton Far Skyline is the greatest beer of all time and apparently she has had eight bottles a day for the last six weeks (she bloody loves that beer!!). A 4.9% dry-hopped berliner weisse took Kate back to a wonderful afternoon in Buxton and the beer was received very positively with an average score of 7.34 out of 10 - impressive!!

Laura was up next and blended two beers into a story of love, anguish, passion & despair. The reaction from our group was a mixture of hear-felt sorrow and juvenile giggles (by me), but Laura is a wonderful storyteller and delivered up Nook Oatmeal Stout and RAW Grey Ghost IPA for us to taste. Two contrasting beers served from two pint cartons, Laura had forgotten it was Bottle Share 3 and rescued her evening rather cleverly. Scores of 5.5 and 3.75 respectively meant that the beers went down with reasonable positivity and then disappointment!

New sharer Simon rolled into town next and served us some Californian sunshine.... well not quite.... Simon had famously enjoyed a Gibraltar drinking session on Stone Cali-Belgique but being unable to nail that particular bottle he introduced us to Stone Smoked Porter, a 5.9% bottle of darkness that scored 6.38 out of 10, a good score and an impressive first Bottle Share from Simon. Sean (me) got to his feet next and maintained the Stone theme. At the first two Bottle Shares I'd served up 11% and 12.4% beers and so I wanted to show my subtler side with a single figure ABV. We all tucked into Stone IPA, a modern classic and 6.9%. Well received at 6.63 out of 10, but generally agreed that Stone IPA gets vastly overshadowed by its big brother Ruination, a shame.    

Kieron had a confident look in his eye and as he grabbed his bottle of Beavertown Appleation he was smiling like a man who knew he had a winning lottery ticket. At 10 years old Kieron had been given a taste of Gold Label Barley Wine by his thoughtful neighbor Sue. That early taste of a famous beer had left its mark and so Kieron wanted to pay homage to this iconic style. Beavertown Appleation is a boozy (8.7%) barley wine made with Champagne yeast and bramley apples....yes, I know it sounds gorgeous....it is, and the group agreed. A very impressive 8.13 out of 10 was bagged with minimum fuss. 

Confident Kieron!

Down to the last two, and hang on..... Kirk also had the look of a lottery winning ticket holder as his hands grasped an impressive bottle of Odell Footprint. Perhaps the most ambitious beer ever, Footprint is made up of at least one ingredient from the 11 US States that Odell distribute their beers in. Ingredients included prickly pear, honey, green chilli, corn and grapefruit....all it lacked was balance and an appealing flavour - a score of 3.88 out of 10 tells you everything you need to know, a disappointment, an ambitious disappointment. 

......and finally, here comes Chris, trusted manager of our stunning venue tonight. Chris had scrapped all attempts at Locale and decided to introduce us to an 11% beer that in Norweign tradition had been sent across the globe to benefit from the temperature variations one experiences when crossing the equator.  This beer was brewed at Bridge Road Brewers in Beechworth, Australia. It was then aged in red wine barrels on its journey to Norway, before being blended and bottled by Nogne Brewery. The beer is called Aurora Australis and was acclaimed by some and disputed by others. A tidy score of 7.55 out of 10 took it very close but not quite close enough to displace Beavertown Appleation as beer of the night!! 

I left hurriedly just before 10pm, perhaps this blog represents just the start of the night, more beers were supped, more conversation flowed, more reputations enhanced.... a quite excellent Bottle Share 3!!

You fancy another?

Sean
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