August's Beer Club, featuring the brilliant Bevog

Hooray, it's Beer Club time again! We've got a great set of beers for you this month (as always!), with a selection spanning from Austria to Maryland with a stop off in Manchester thrown in for good measure...

Hooray, it's Beer Club time again! We've got a great set of beers for you this month (as always!), with a selection spanning from Austria to Maryland with a stop off in Manchester thrown in for good measure...

I'd like, if I may, to introduce you to Brauhaus Bevog from Bad Radkersburg in Austria. I must admit, I'm pretty excited about Bevog at the moment! For the Normal case we've chosen a couple of appropriately summery beers: Deetz Hoppy Kolsch and Tak Pale Ale. Deetz is clean and refreshing with a good whack of fresh, grassy hops and a hint of zesty lemon, while Tak is beautifully balanced and aromatic with a resinous, earthy character. Those of you who subscribe to the Strong case will find Rudeen Black IPA and Who Cares Milk Stout. They're both robust and roasty, but that's where the similarity ends. Rudeen is bursting with pithy orange and sharp grapefruit, while Milk Stout has a smooth, creamy lactose tang balanced by dark chocolate bitterness.

Now to one of the most widely talked about breweries in the UK at the moment: Cloudwater! Based in Manchester, they eschew a permanent beer list in favour of a range which changes with the seasons. An unusual approach, but one which promises to produce plenty of interesting seasonal offerings. Both Normal and Strong cases contain beers from Cloudwater's summer range: Grisette, Cream Ale, and US Hopfen Weisse. Grisette is a spritzy and refreshing farmhouse ale with herbal notes and zingy citrus, while Cream Ale is brewed as an ale before being finished with lager yeast for an extra crisp, clean character, and US Hopfen Weisse combines the refreshing nature of a wheat beer with juicy mandarin and sharp lemon notes for a thirst quenching result.

A few minutes down the road from Cloudwater, and we're back with our old friends Chorlton Brewing Company. Members of both the Normal and Strong Beer Club will find a bottle of Farmhouse IPA in their case, which is the result of a rather interesting brewing process. It's the combination of two IPAs: one brewed using a saison yeast before being dry hopped with Nugget and Brewers Gold, and one which was aged for four months with wild yeast and oak chips. Farmhouse IPA is dry, funky and spicy with an extremely lively carbonation, so be sure to chill it down well before opening and have a large glass to hand to accommodate the oversized head! The Strong case also contains Amarillo Sour, a sour pale ale with prominent notes of grapefruit and pineapple.

The last stop on our mini tour of August's Beer Club is Flying Dog in Maryland. Both cases include the fascinating Earl Grey Black Wheat and Single Hop Warrior. At Flying Dog it's become a tradition that once a year, staff from every part of the company are invited to suggest odd beer ideas for the Brewhouse Rarities range. This year, one of the ideas chosen became Earl Grey Black Wheat, an earl grey infused dunkelweizen with bergamot and lemon notes layered over a smooth, roasty coffee base. Single Hop Warrior is also a bit of an unusual one, as it's part of Flying Dog's series of single hopped imperial IPAs brewed to showcase four different hop varieties. Warrior is generally used for bittering rather than aroma, so this beer is a great way to get acquainted with Warrior's inherent flavours without the characteristics of any other hop getting in the way.

That's it for our mini tour of August's Beer Club. There's more to discover in the case, so I'll leave you to it! Enjoy the rest of the summer, such as it is... Cheers!

- Rowan