A large part of Christmas is meeting up with friends for a couple of drinks. As I have gotten older, and now more so with Piglet, the amount of opportunities I have for nights out has diminished but it is the season and so I headed out to meet Pig-Wig. We headed out to The Bierhaus which is to my mind the best pub in the city in terms of its range of craft beers and whiskeys. I think what I like best about the Bierhaus is the fact that they have the details and price of all the beer they sell. They have a laminated menu on all their tables but this only covers their regular beers and cannot keep up to date with all the new and guest beers. Behind the bar they have blackboards which have even more beers and spirits but due to the large selection this is a bit of an information over load. Thankfully they have a much smaller blackboard just as you walk in the door which has a small list of the new and guest beers on offer. One of the big problems when ordering craft beer in pubs is not knowing how much something is going to cost and I have heard of some outrageous prices.

Anyway, between chatting I had some beers. I started with O Brother’s ‘The Sinner’. This was a really good beer. I could get very little aroma from it which was unusual for an IPA. It has a great mouth feel with a solid malt base balanced with nice bitterness but the only real flavour I could place was grassy. It might sound like I didn’t enjoy this beer but I really did. This was a really solid and drinkable beer. I could have kept drinking this all night. A really solid, albeit nondescript, beer. 4/5

Next up was the Intergalactic Ale from Barrel Head. This is a new brew which comes in at 6.8% pours a rusty ruby red. It was fruity with a slightly sour and liquorice flavour. Tasty but not something I would seek out. 3/5

One of the other great things about The Bierhaus is that they have a 4e fridge where there are bottles of short dated beers. I grabbed a bottle of Brew by Number 01/01 Saison Citra. The Brew by Number shtick is pretty interesting and this beer did not disappoint. It poured straw yellow with loads of carbonation. It was light bubbly and full of flavour. Again really nice but I wouldn’t drink more than one. 3/5

Last but not least was White Hag’s ‘Bran & Sceolan’ IPA. This was really great loads of pine, orange and peach. obviously by drink number 4 I stopped paying attention! 4/5

fuller and more considered reviews of some of these beers might appear in the future.