Redemption, Big Chief IPA 5.5%

The weekend just gone, we had a stunning beer on sale. So stunning that Tom my minion and underling literally forced me to drink it out of a glass boot. And I mean literal in a literally literal sense*. The beer was Big Chief IPA from the Redemption Brewery.

It was another dangerous brew, being 5.5%, but perhaps it was more dangerous than the MOOR Sloe Walker. This is because you intrinsically knew that the Sloe Walker at 7.4% was likely, almost certain to badly mess you up if you quaffed it as you would a normal ale, whereas a 5.5% ale seems so much more reasonable and less daunting, so you think that you can treat it as a normal ale. This lead to painful hangovers on both Friday and Saturday  mornings, which didn’t regress much throughout the day, in fact on Saturday I had to drink more of the Big Chief just to mask the self-inflicted ‘pain’. We all know how this was always going to end.

I don’t know much about the Redemption Brewery apart from the facts that they are in Tottenham, (which is in London somewhere, North of the river,) they have only been brewing since 2010, so are very much new kids on the block, and are making a name for themselves in the brewing circle, pretty quickly.

This is Tom, serving our very first customer back in December.
We should have given him a free pint. But we didn't.

The beer itself was jam-packed full of flavour. The first tastes that I sensed were both sweet and bitter. Being a modern IPA, it was very well hopped, but alongside this were tastes of nectar or honey. After this there was a spiciness that emerged, but I could never work out what individual tastes emerged, because the drink is an absolute cornucopia of flavours. The whole experience was so complete yet so more-ish, that I stopped trying to analyse it properly and just decided to drink in earnest, as much as I could while still technically working. (It was quiet enough, and Tom was energetic enough.)

What I do know is that this is a drink I would highly recommend to everybody, and I am going to seek out much more of their beer. I still have a barrel of Urban Dusk by the same brewery (4.6) in the cellar and eagerly looking forward to it.

This is a much better photo of Tom, and it shows the pub on our first busy night, again sometime before Christmas.
I don't know why we let those Christmas hats in. They are clearly against the rules.

Incidentally we have a twitter feed for the pub, and this is mostly to inform our customers of which beers are currently on sale, and which ones are settling and venting and will be on sale in the coming week. If people want to keep track of the cask ales that we shall be selling, especially the more special ones, I do suggest that they sign up I promise not to rant to much about how buggered up the world is, and how you all annoy me, too much in one day J.


My twitter @LukeBagofNails

* I don’t literally mean that.