Yes, it’s odd isn’t it? Quite how a film company goes in the direction of beer brewing I’m not sure, but who cares as long as it looks good and tastes good eh?

Unfortunately, it’s still a little early to comment on either of those things at the moment, as by the looks of their web-site, the Hammer House of Beer isn’t really fully running yet.

However, they do have a lable for their ‘Curse of Frankenstein’ beer  which looks great for two reasons. First off, the label has a creepy Frankenstein’s monster on it and secondly the beer is a Pale ale which is 7% or so alcohol! Pretty strong!
If it tastes good, they could actually be onto a winner. Shame they missed Halloween this year though, I definitely would have tried some…

You can find out more by visiting: The Hammer House of Beer

And it’s a bold claim. No doubt other beer producers will soon be vying for this Halloween Beer accolade. Perhaps we’ll soon get Fosters Pumpkin beer, Stella Satan or other creative incarnations of our daily beers to celebrate this wonderful time of year.
We have been a fan of Wychwood’s for some time, and although their beers are popular all year round, I would imagine that their brews, named things like Black Wych and Wychcraft sell amazingly well around Halloween. This year, Wychwood are even producing a beer called King Goblin which is brewed only on a full lunar moon (WOW) and has more kick to it than the conventional beer (6.6%).

They are also offering a bunch of prizes with promotional bottles that should be on the shelves of your local supermarket or off licence now, so you’re in with a chance to get more than just a nice drinking experience if you buy a bottle. You can read more about that here: The Hobgoblin Halloween competition

Curiously I am yet to include Hobgoblin beer in one of my ‘Halloween beer hitlist‘ posts, so will have to make sure that I put them on the list this year.

Don’t ask me who the official Halloween beer is. Is there an official Halloween anything? Could we become the official Halloween site for the UK?

You can find more information on Hobgoblin and Wychwoods other Halloween beers by visiting: www.wychwood.co.uk

There are a lot of spooky, horror themed beers out there that would be perfect. It’s just a matter of choosing the right ones.

Here’s a list of possible contenders for Halloween 2009 (so far).

Halloween Beers

Centurions Ghost Ale (York Brewery).

Brewed in the North of England, this beer not only sounds good and has a cool label, but it also won a gold medal for strong bitter in 2006 and 2007.
It’s pretty strong at 5.4% and I have checked a couple of sites to see what sort of flavour it has:
Poured a dark brown with a glint of red at the edges. Bubbly head that poofed up above the rim, and magically it kept it’s head for the duration of the glass. Aroma was fairly nondescript, earthy, tea-like, tobacco.

Okay, so earth and tobacco might not sound delicious, but I have a feeling that this one will definitely be worth investigating.

Fantôme Strange Ghost and Fantôme Black Ghost (Brasserie Fantôme)

As you may already know, I’m a bit partial to Belgian beer. Most real Belgian beers taste smooth and are usually a bit stronger than other European beers. Best of all, they always have crazy names and great labels.
These two, from the same brewery are delicious (from what I have read). They are also 8% alcohol,  so need to be drunk very slowly to avoid an early bed-time.
I know a good little beer stall in Borough Market that usually stocks seasonal beer. I’m hoping that they get some of this in very soon.

Black Death (Fallen Angel brewery)

This is from a little known British brewery which has a wealth of weird and wonderful beers. Most of them have saucy labels, but this one is more evil than anything else.
I have already tried a sip of this as they stock it in my local off licence. All that I can say is that one tiny sip was enough to send my mouth to a firey hell. Pretty much the hottest thing that I have ever tasted. For this reason, you’ve either got to be a lover of hot food to appreciate this, or you just want to have a laugh and see just how bad it is.
Either way, according to the man that owns my off licence,  it’s still a big seller!
Those of you wanting something a little more subtle, but spooky all the same might prefer the ‘Howlin Red ale’

Black Wych (Wychwood brewery) – Dark stout

Wychwood pride themselves on being Halloween-aware. They always make an occasion of it, and ensure that their list of creepy, dark brews are nicely ready for October 31st.
I have been impressed with them in the past, but as yet, haven’t tried the Black Wych stout. I’m not a big stout fan, but with a drink that looks as dark and ominous as this, I think I’m going to have to try it.

It’s reasonable strength (5%) and is ‘silky smooth, soft and seductive’.

My hunt for Halloween beers will continue right up until All Hallow’s Eve itself. I’ll keep you posted on my findings.

I have found one place in the US that actually produces these stickers. The price isn’t bad and they do look excellent. Problem is that it doesn’t do you much good if you live in Europe (getting anything shipped accross always ends up costing more than you think).
The other option of course is to come up with some yourself – which could actually be more fun anyway.
Also, you would be able to personalise the beer for your own needs (intergrate friends names etc).

The idea is so good, that I have been thinking of having a go myself. I’ll post them here if I do.
I will also be looking for genuine spooky beers in the meantime.

Although I do love my Halloween cocktails, I think it’s important to start with beer to ease yourself in to the alcohol and prevent yourself from having to go to bed before midnight because the room is spinning.

This year, I managed to find a couple of nice Belgian beers, one decent English one, and I even had the pleasure of tasting some Canadian beer, brought over especially.

The Halloween beers contenders

Now, I’ll start with the bad news. The two Begian Halloween beers had some funky writing, and try as I could, I wasn’t able to find out what they were actually called.
Therefore, if you’re interested in trying them, you’ll have to go on the above picture (the middle and far right bottles).

The blue/purple one was almost a wheat beer (and could have been, but it was too dark in the room to tell). It was average in strength (about 5%) and was very smooth. Almost fruity.
It was a good place to start.

Next, we moved onto Rogue Brewery’s Dead Guy ale, a Canadian beverage which was pretty crisp, again average strength, and had a pretty cool corpse looking creature on the bottle.

The red Belgian beer, with a which stirring a cauldron was strong. Around 8% alcohol I believe. However, in true Belgian style you could hardly tell.
It had a slight tang to it, which was the only give away.

We also had the pleasure of tasting two pumpkin ales, two perfectly themed halloween beers. One of which was from the English Badger brewery, and the other from Canada.
I have to say that the Canadian ale won hands down. It was very fuity, without being too sweet. It also really retained its ‘pumpkin’ flavour, which you would expect, however the Badger ale was pretty disappointing where that was concerned.

The best of the Halloween beers

To conclude, the Great Lakes Pumpkin ale was almost good enough to move to Cananda for. I just hope that I can find somewhere in England that sells this and the other fine foreign Halloween beers next year!