Aldi Beer Session !

Recently we had a couple of friends over for a bit of a drinking session. The plan was a quick bite to eat followed by a very small pub crawl....two pubs. In Guiseley we have two pubs worth going into, first of all The Station, which is a typical local with a small selection of guest ales and decent prices. Secondly is Cooper's Bar...which is for us beer drinkers, they have the usual selection of local ales but 90% of the selection changes everytime we visit.....perfect for a sample session.

So on the day of the gathering Scott and I were trying to figure out what our pre-drinks with a bite to eat would be, so I ventured out to ALDI to see their selection...as I knew that going to Coopers would be very expensive! Everybody always raves about the wine selection at ALDI, but no-one ever mentions the beer !! As you might already know my 'go to' ale is Black Sheep + Theakstons, and ALDI usually have Black Sheep Ale & Theakston's Old Peculier for £1.25 a bottle (bargain!). I decided that we would have a bit of a tasting session. One of the beer's that we purchased was £1.59, another 99p and the rest £1.25. There were a couple of good ones and a couple of bad ones. Tweet me if you have tried any and let me know what you liked!

First up was the Schofferhofer (5%). Now this is a firm favourite of mine, it is a typical German Wheat beer that would compare with Hoegarrden ... and kind of reminds me of Leffe. Now Scott had never had this type of beer, I know he prefered the IPA but this was certainly up there with the best of the night. On pouring the drink it is typically cloudy for a wheat beer and gave off a smell almost of bananas. It has quite a strong aftertaste, in hindsight we should have probably saved this until last.

Secondly we went (carrying on with the German beers) we tried the Berliner Kindl Pils (4.8%). Not for me !!! It poured fine, kept a good head and generally looked the part. It was really watery, no distinctive taste to it at all...this may have had something to do with our first beer, or even the fact that we were more biased to beer as opposed to lager. But even for price it is not one to recommend, ALDI sell Bavaria Lager for 99p and if you have the choice then pick up the latter.

After tasting Germany we moved back to home turf and went for the Wainwright Golden Ale (4.1&). Brewed across the border in Lancashire this Ale does what it says on the tin. On pouring it the beer had a light golden look to it, with an almost biscuity taste. The after taste had a strong hint of citrus, if we were just having an afternoon in the garden then this would have been the session ale to choose.

Following on from the Golden Ale we moved onto Tower Brewery's Salts Burton Ale (3.5%). This was an amber ale with a slightly darker look to our previous tipple. The less that can be said the better, I would put this as second to last in taste ( Kindl being last!). The beer looked good in the glass, but really had no taste to it at all.

Four down, two to go ! So Scott has a favourite, which I have recently adopted as my current favourite type of beer...we moved onto the Empire IPA (5.7%). In recent months I have really grown fond of Marston's beers, they tend to own and brew everything I like (Ringwood & more famously Wychwood) and best of all they are easy on the wallet (Morrisons are selling Wychwood Golden Ale for 99p!). On pouring this beer it looked more like a red ale, but the instant strong hint of hopps lead to a disctinct IPA taste! As mentioned previously Marston's are usually quite cheap to pick up, so if you get the chance then try this beer!

Last and certainly not least is my 'old faithful'. On messaging Scott about our beer session I learnt something very shocking...he had never tried Black Sheep Ale (4.4%)...I had to fix this! This was the darkest looking ale of the bunch, it has a dark amber look to it and the taste has hints of caramel, and for me raisins? I have been a fan of this beer and this brewery for many years so I am very biased when it comes to Black Sheep Brewery, this is one of the best bottled beers that they have to offer and is very easily drinkable. If you ever see their selection of cask ales then give this brewery a try!

Overall we really found some great beers here, with the winner of the bunch being the IPA (black sheep was joint first for me but Scott went for the IPA so it became the winner). The rest of the evening ended in a bit of a blur in the pubs, but our tasting session was definatley a success. It just comes to show what you can find on a budget....although with anything these things are trial and error, so go to ALDI and try them all...well 4 out of 6 of them.

Is there anywhere you have found that sells decent ale for bargain prices, tweet me and Scott with your suggestions @tonightstipple & @scott_cadmen