Clear Head Alcohol-free IPA

Alcohol-free beer is booming and not only among teetotallers. Many of us who take a break from drinking during the week or when driving appreciate them too.

This 0.5% IPA style beer from Bristol Beer Factory has another benefit though in that it also raises money for a charity called Talk Club, a ‘male mental fitness movement’ which creates a save and supportive environment for men to talk about mental health issues. 5% of Clear Head profits go directly to Talk Club so it’s the perfect beer to be drinking during Mental Health Awareness week.

Clear Head is a classic modern IPA, combining fresh, citrussy citra and mosaic hops, which you'd be hard pushed to tell from a full-strength beer. I’d be happy to drink it with almost anything from fish and chips to a mild(ish) veggie curry.

It’s very much part of the current trend for ‘brands with purpose’ which I wrote about in my Guardian column this week. As they put it ‘this is a beer for good’.

You can buy it direct from the Bristol Beer Factory website for £22 for 12 bottles and from specialist NoLo (no and low alcohol) retailers.

See also 5 great pairings for an IPA

Mutiny on the Beagle IPA

With its own university brewing department (at Heriot Watt) Edinburgh is very much a beer-drinking city so it seems appropriate after spending a few days there this week that my drink of the week should be a beer

It’s actually made by 5 MSc students who collaborate each year with Stewart brewing to design, create, market, and launch a new beer. You can read about the project here.

This year’s brew is an IPA called Mutiny on the Beagle brewed with three British hops - Pilgrim, First Gold and Admiral including whole leaf hops from last year’s harvest.

It has a slightly different flavour profile from many modern craft beers - more restrained, more herbal, less citrussy. The label talks of marmalade and lime but I don’t get either strongly - maybe a whiff of Rose’s lime marmalade. It’s a very British - or rather Scottish - beer with a crisp, clean bitter finish and despite its 5.8% ABV, a refreshing session beer.

And the name? It apparently refers to Charles Darwin’s home voyage on the Beagle where he bemoans Fitroy’s obsession with hops. “I abhor the sea and all the ships which sail on it. The only thing which provokes a deeper loathing is Captain Fitzroy and his incessant quest for hops.”

At the launch the beer was apparently served with pulled pork sandwiches and mac’n’cheese which seem a couple of good pairings.

You can buy it for £3.40 from Edinburgh wine merchants like the Bon Vivant’s Companion, a really excellent bottle shop (pictured above) or £3.29 online from the Scottish Beer Shop. It also seems to be available in Edinburgh branches of Oddbins.

Sixpoint Bengali Tiger - in a can!

This week’s post on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth section about Wetherspoon reminded me that I hadn’t yet tasted the three cans from Brooklyn’s Sixpoint Brewery they’re now stocking.

I confess I’d made up my mind they weren’t going to be much cop - after all beer in a can was almost uniformly rubbish back in the day when I was first drinking beer. But technology has moved on and canning has apparently become all the rage among craft brewers in the US.

They also have practical advantages as set out in this article on the Wetherspoon site by beer writer Jeff Evans. Cans are lighter, easier to stack, quicker to chill and effective at excluding both light and oxygen.

But is it any good? I must say I wasn’t overwhelmed by The Crisp, a 5.2% Pilsner that did seem to me to have a bit of a tinny taste despite being told that new canning technology avoids this. (The cans are lined with plastic which I’m not totally convinced is a good thing though it obviously avoids metallic taint.)

I quite liked the rich hoppy Sweet Action (5.4%), described as ‘part pale ale, part wheat, part cream ale’ though, as the name suggests, it is on the cloying side.

But the 6.4% Bengali Tiger IPA was a very decent drink indeed with a nice note of bitterness to counterbalance the big wallop of hops. You could, as they suggest, easily drink it with a steak.

There’s a lot of over-the-top blurb on the cans including, in the case of Bengali Tiger, a quote from Blake “What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?” (wonder what they had to pay to use that?) as well as wittering on about how the beer ‘strides forward with a malty cadence then leaps with a wave of bitterness ....slashed with a giant paw of citrus, pine and resin.” But they’re not designed to appeal to cynical hacks like me.

Anyway sounds like we’ll be seeing a fair few more upmarket beers in cans over the coming year. Brewdog (natch) and Camden are both reported to be investing in the technnology, according to Evans. And I have to admit these new beers will be terrific for beer-can chicken (recipe here).

The beers are available exclusively at Wetherspoon pubs at £2.89 a 355ml can or £5 for two (except in Scotland which doesn't allow multibuy deals) though prices may vary from pub to pub.