Anyone fancy a beer – something different?

Tags

artisan, Beer, brasserie, brewery, chestnut, France, La Croix du Rat, Mike Brookes, real ale, Sunday Beer

For the purists beer with the addition of chestnuts might seem odd, but this beer surprised me. I would not have bought it by choice, but wanted to taste the whole range from Le Croix du Rat. Surprisingly, it has a nice hoppy flavour, but I was not getting chestnut at all. Would go well with fish and chips or a pork pie (paté en crout).

The female view aka Jean was that it had a pleasant after taste of chestnut, but again would have not known it contained chestnut.  The label is a give away! She imagined herself somewhere in an English pub with a Ploughman’s in an English pub – (a good English cheese, pickle, chunk of bread, butter and some salad).

We both like the plea on the label of all the beers from La Croix de Rat to recycle the bottles by taking them back to the brasserie!

Cleaning out the chickens …….

Tags

Beer, chickens, France, La Croix du Rat, real ale, Sunday Beer

Cleaning out the chickens is not our favourite pastime on a Sunday morning, so today it was well rewarded with another beer from La Croix du Rat. This time we chose the Ambrée, something of the colour of the eggs which our lovely Maran chickens lay, so it seemed appropriate.

So what did we think?

I found it a significantly darker beer and delicious. Jean described it as fizzy and with a big head, but a beer drinker just can’t call beer ‘fizzy’.  This beer is definitely not fizzy and she have a lot more to drink yet to improve my beer vocabulary. So the assessment  is that it is a very round beer, well balanced and even at 6% is not too sweet. A good beer.

La Croix du Rat – Biere Blanche

Tags

artisan, Beer, brasserie, brewery, France, real ale, Sarlat, Sunday Beer

Biere Blanche from La Croix du Rat is the first in the series.  It is made by a Steven Dunn, who is Irish but lives in St. Cyprien and has a stall at the bustling market of Sarlat. The market is held every Saturday morning and well worth a visit.

Mike – the real Yorkshire man who drinks real beer.

‘Light, perfumed flavour, well balanced, rather sweet for my taste, but for a beer at 6 per cent, not bad at all. Does not stay very long in the glass.’

Jean – not a beer drinker at all.

‘Flowery, not acidic, fine bubbles nice colour, I like it!’

We both liked the descriptive label and the plea to return the empty bottle to the brasserie. Good recycling and good business! The label was printed as one piece and wrapped around the bottle – very clever. Each beer has a really good description on the label of what has been used to make that particular beer.

Next Sunday – Biere Blonde

Sunday Beer

Tags

France, Sunday Beer

We live in the Loire Valley, where there is a huge selection of exellent wines which we enjoy sharing with guests who stay in our holiday cottages, or pointing them in the direction of recommended vineyards.

However, we were recently asked about whether it was possible to visit a brasserie (brewery) in our part of France.  This innocent question has started us on a journey of the artisan breweries of France, with the occasional guest beer from elsewhere. We both thought it would be fun to post one beer each Sunday, and hope you will share it with us – virtually of course.

Mike was born and brought up in Yorkshire, where real men drink real beer, and is enjoying the journey, and Jean, who prefers her glass with a long stem, is not used to drinking beer at all so is on a journey of discovery. Each Sunday Beer will have two points of view and those who know us will not be surprised to find they might be different!

We aim to concentrate on one artisan brewery at a time, some sourced from our own travels, such as La Crox du Rat which we found in the Dordogne,  and others from ‘Le Caveau Ludois’ in Le Lude, who specialise in artisan beers and just happen to be not far away from home.