Overtone Brewing Company Kolschella and Vaux Brewery Order 66

The roads of Northumbria shimmer with heat haze, and this reporter has spent much of the day driving them. The region's seaside towns bake under heat that feels unseasonable but exciting, heatwaves looming. 

Summer.

Lager Season.

In Whitley Bay on business, I stopped into the Hazy Daze bottle shop and taproom that looks out to sea from its home in the frontage of the iconic Spanish City, and after a bit of wallet-lightening I emerged blinking into the sunshine with cans of Overtone Brewing Company's Kolschella and Order 66 from the  resurrected Vaux brewery.

First on the drinking block must be Kolschella, an unfiltered Kölsch-style lager, because the can of Order 66, replete with ominous bolts of Force Lightning, doesn't mess about imparting the knowledge that it's a dark and moody one unsuited to a pale follow-up.

The can is opened, the sun descends and the bright white foamy head climbs up to meet it. Unruly and icebergy, I was told by the shopkeep that this was a lively one and he wasn't wrong. There is a scent of banana-ish, gummy sort of esters, almost infringing on the territory of a Weissbier (but don't tell anyone in Köln this or there'll be hell on), and then brightness from the noble hops subdues it.

This is a beer from the reduced basket next to the counter, short-dated and chopped down in price. But damn it, we're taking in water and listing at forty-five degrees so this reporter is getting his bottle shop craft cans on his own damn terms. 

The warning is there writ large on the can: HOPS FADE FAST, DRINK FRESH, STORE COLD, words to live by, but despite the transient nature of hop flavour there's still sharp and bright florality there. Fresh from the tank, canned and cracked open expediently, this would be excellently crisp and flavourful.

This is not a time for complex beers, this is Lager Season, and this simple beer, packaged last August, still stands up on a warm evening as the bees and lazy flies orbit this reporter's garden. The scent is flowery and clean and the taste, now half way down the glass as the thirst is quenched, becomes a little more malty. 

Little in the way of  bitterness is detected, just as it should be with a lager beer. A soft and easy-drinking mouthfeel, and an easy ABV of 4.5%, conspire to make this beer disappear quickly into the writer. "Easy" then is the word of the day for this quick-sipping, if a little close to its date, pale and interesting companion.

No sinister bolts of lightning split the sky as I open the can of Order 66, one of a new range of Star Wars themed beers released by Vaux to celebrate May the Fourth. John Williams and a string quartet don't suddenly materialise in the hollowed out East Hartford Club and play loud minor triads, but we are instead visited by a glass filled with the darkest of dark lagers, the dunkelest of dunkel bier, and a crisp head of the brightest white, with an aroma that crushes noble hop flavours together with dark malt notes of chocolate and coffee. Irresistible.

Half of the beer is gone in moments, the aftertaste sticking in the mouth, caramel notes now hanging around along with the floral taste of the noble hops, urging  your correspondent to have another mouthful. 

This is Lager Season, not a time for complex beers, this reporter told himself and then you, dear reader, but Order 66 is a complex beer for a simple time. It's complicated, both the taste and the fact that such a nuanced beer is perfect for garden drinks after a day of heat haze and dehydration. 

The structure of the beer is that which makes it, the elegant and easily imbibed mouthfeel (using the word "thin" here would feel like a bit of an insult) does its job as intended to make this dark lager easily as, and perhaps even more, swiggable than its paler cohorts. There is caramel, there is malt, there is loud brightness from the Hallertauer hops, brightness indeed like bolts of witch-lightning slicing through a midnight sky. 

And with it all, there is still the refreshing lager quality, that quality that makes lager beer feel like a sports drink at the hottest point of a blistering day, the quality that has made this reporter go overboard many times in high summer.

The aftertaste cloys and sticks just a little, Mars Bar and the slightest bit of coffee. And in the next mouthful the Hallertauer hops return, blooming over the bassy dark notes with their sharp floral trebles.

I find myself taking a while with this beer, almost nursing the last finger and a half of it. But lagers are made to be drank, and Order 66 was made to be executed, and I neck what's left of the beer, only the faintest lacing left in the glass where it once was.

With the communion of two beers both united and divided by Hallertauer hops, the weekend begins. 

Lager Season

If you enjoyed this article, if it make you smile or made you consider buying one of these beers, or if you just want to support a writer who buys his own review material, I'd love it if you checked out my Ko-Fi page and popped a little tip in my jar.