Beer Viking

This weeks the beer of pits Anchor Small Beer vs. Ballard’s Old Bounder, 21 Birthday Boy.

The main reason to choose these two was driven by the story behind the Small Beer, which is that it’s created by running a second load of water through the mash of the Anchor Old Foghorn. So as I had the Small and didn’t have the foresight to have an Old Foghorn, I went for the Birthday Boy, which is Ballards 21st edition of Old Bounder, their barley wine.

On the Old Bounder, the brewery launches the latest version with a Charity Beer walk in early December, hope to make it for 2009.

Here’s my notes:

Anchor Small Beer, California, 3.2%. Refreshing taste, quite sour with grapefruit upnote. An interesting beer and would be keen to try more.

Ballard’s Old Bounder (21st, Birthday Boy) 9.5%. Barley Wine, UK.  Christmas Pudding in a beer? Port-like in flavour. Strangely enjoyable.

It wasn’t really close for me on this one as the Anchor Small took with a knock-out in the first.  For me, the Old Bounder was quite complex but didn’t quite get there for me on this tasting.  I enjoyed the Anchor Small a lot and do look forward to trying it again, though this time pitting it against the Old Foghorn to enjoy looking for the lineage.

A final note on the Small is that the bottle I had cost me 5 quid and though I enjoyed this beer greatly and like what Anchor is trying to do here at that price I would say there’s a lot of beer ahead of it in the queue.