Samuel Smith's 'India Pale'

I've had a couple of superb summery beer and food meals over the last few days. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was a great match for the asparagus risotto I had the other night, the hops fulfilling the same role as the acidity in a good cool-climate white wine might; cleansing and invigorating the palate without having so much fruit that it overpowers.

Apparently after a couple of years the blue
 veins will appear naturally.
So this isn't a 'blue cheese' as such.

Slightly more appropriate to a few days up in sunny East Yorkshire was Sam Smith's IPA with some cheese that we picked up from Roberts & Speight in Beverley. True to form we went in to buy some tickets for their Spring Wine Tasting (you can have a read about some of the wines here) and came out with cheese, bread, beer, wine and a couple of tickets. Armed with some fresh crusty bread, a small jar of Cheese Maker's Pickle from Cottage Delight, a chunk of very very mature Mull cheddar (see the picture)* and I was ready to go.

The beer pours a deep golden colour and has a fairly restrained orange-pithy hop aroma with a back up of hazelnuts. The gentle toffee malt came forward more on the palate, and there was a lovely sort of old-school bitterness to it - none of your new-world tropical fruit flavours here thank you very much! There's plenty of body, which also shows it can be done without  jaw-dropping levels of alcohol - or any other part of the anatomy for that matter. I realise that this isn't the most revolutionary or exciting beer in the world but I thought it was a good traditional IPA, and it went superbly well with the sweet fruit of the chutney and the tang of the cheddar. An apple for my pudding and I was well set-up for a tough afternoon of relaxing in the sun.

5% abv. £2.29 (55cl) from Roberts & Speight, Beverley - local wine merchants with a decent range of local and imported beers and glassware; well worth a visit if you're in the area. It's always good to see a beer that's seaweed fined and so entirely vegan.

* I know nothing about cheese, maybe Steve will be able to enlighten me as to what's gone on with the cheddar. I can only tell you how good it tastes!

Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout

I couldn't really participate in this weekend's 'Impoff,' a Twitter tasting that seemed a lot of fun when I had the chance to dip my toe in the water. Judging from the comments I've seen today, it also lead to some pretty intensive Sunday morning coffee sessions, this time of the more literal kind rather than a flavour component to last night's rather heady brews!

The Imperial Stout I did get to try was Sam Smith's, it's a brewery I have a long association with since the first pub I started regularly drinking in as a nipper was a Sam Smith's boozer - one that has very much resisted the changes that seem to have happened everywhere else since. The pub on the corner opposite has undergone at least two major refurbishments and name changes, and now seems rather more like a café bar than a pub.

The beer itself is rather more savoury than many Imperial Stouts I've had before, very much a grown up beer. There was lots of coffee and bitter chocolate on the nose and on the palate there was liquorice root and a remorseless bitterness, although I suspect I was drinking it a bit cold since it yielded slightly more mellow cherry and dried fruit flavour as it warmed a bit. Cracking beer though - and good to see it's seaweed rather than isinglass fined.

7% abv. £1.95 (33cl) from York Beer and Wine Shop