TOPIC:

No, I would say the beer actually cooled down! The bottle was in the warm (/hot) kitchen while I was cooking dinner, but I drank it in the cooler living room. Had another bottle of it (I got a selection of M & S beers) last night. My first impressions of it was correct, a bit watery but after a while I didn't notice it. Probably due to the bitterness of it deadening the taste buds or something like that.

The M & S Cornish IPA is lovely, the Adamns Southern Sea is weird, I'm not too sure of the spicy wheat malt taste. The other (I can't remember the name) was okay, a bit watery as said above.

Funnily enough something about this came up a few weeks ago for us down here whilst sampling a strong stout .

On first pour this ( 7% ish ) stout seemed to have no head to speak of . Which some found a little dissapointing thinking that it marred an otherwise excellent beer in a small way .

However I piped up that a decant would sort that out ....
no-one listened , but then one accidentally poured a little too much in one glass and proceeded to pour the excess into another glass ,

A beautiful creamy off white head popped up on it , and held well down the glass .

Visually appealing as it was it just serves to show .




Whatever works , works .



( I don't think decanting affects flavour , I think it affects appearance , and that can affect taste ....)

I'll sometimes decant when the beer is very old as I've noticed that when a beer is 20+ years old it can initially be very musty after opening. This will always improve after the bottle has been opened a while.

Me and my friend opened a 75cl bottle of Felix Kriek from 1972 the other week which drastically improved after 10 mins. It was one of the best sour ales I've had. It's a shame that they started to sweeten this beer in the mid 1980s as the original reminded me or Rodenbach Grand Cru with Cherries.

I think temp has a bit part to play. The warmer it gets the more of the malt you can taste hence thinking the beer has more body. Take a bottle of stout or porter directly from the fridge and dink and you get most of the flavour, now take that same stout or porter out of the fridge and leave it 30 mins then drink, tastes 10 times better imo <!-- s:D --><img src="{SMILIES_PATH}/icon_biggrin.gif" alt="" title="Very Happy" /><!-- s:D -->

As I said, temperature had nothing to do with it. The bottle was left out in a warm kitchen and drank in a cooler room, it never saw the inside of a fridge. If anything the beer warmed whilst drinking it.