CALLED TO THE BAR

How to do Norwich in a weekend

2012-01-30T16:04:00.000Z

The beautiful Adam & Eve

First of all, The Vine, part of the medieval patchwork of streets, Lilliputian in character, we are the smallest pub in town I’m told, within one room just capacious enough to swing a Manx cat within. The Friday night swell of custom heaves against the bar, in search of winter ales, of which there is a festival. A strong mild, from a local brewery, soothing, a calming hand on the fevered brow induced by the crowd. And it’s on to the…

…White Lion, run by Ben and Becky, young, beer-centric, alternative. Milton Brewery own the joint and so Pegasus is crème brulee on the nose with a green apple snappiness on the palate. Favourite is Marcus Aurelius, strong and potent, balsamic vinegar and dark soy sauce notes, with treacle, coffee, and a plum richness filling the mouth. A superb foil to pan fried duck with crushed potatoes and red cabbage — I could be in the Czech lands, but I’m really in the White Lion, comfy, cosy, collected and quite a treat.

There’s a swirl of people in the Plough and who says pubs are dying. Grain Brewery own the place and their beers are dispensed into beautifully stemmed half-pint glasses. I’ll have the Blackwood Stout, a big mouthful of vanilla, chocolate and creamy oats. Are you in tomorrow asks a woman to a man at the bar, I should be comes the answer. And I would be if I lived in Norwich, but I don’t.

Rockabilly hillbilly dudes stand on the small stage at the Walnut Tree Shades. I see DAs, quiffs and the singer’s arms sleeved with a multitude of tattoos as his reverb-heavy hiccupping voice belts out a Jim Reeves song. Around me, Ted-types, Friday night pub-goers, scowlers, Fred Wests, all nursing their pints of Wherry stand about and experience the music. Meanwhile a couple — she in a big skirt that spreads out like a well-manicured hedge, he in motorcycle boots and a red plaid jacket, hair combed back, push to the front. Are they going to jive? I never find out as we go to…

…The Gardeners Arms, or maybe it’s the Murderers? In the town centre it stands. Phil the landlord has nine beers on, one of which is a porter from a local brewery, whose name I forget to note, but nice and chocolaty it is. Ah I see the Gardeners is the pubby bit, while the Murderers has more of a café bar feel. As Friday night takes hold, the out of tune voices in the bar area generate several levels of sound, while the son et lumière of fruit machines attract the eye and two drinking friends mimic a boxing move beers to hand. There are nooks and crannies, regular beer festivals and as I enjoy my beer I espie a man with a short gait sloping off home — to an empty room or a lonely sleeping wife or a raucous party where he will be greeted with whoops and hollers? Maybe not the latter, but he will be back I guarantee.

For Saturday for sure, there are a dozen pubs to be seen, starting with the fabulous Adam & Eve, sitting in the shadow of the Cathedral, for whose builders the pub was built a long time ago. Southwold Bitter cracks the code that I have been trying to solve since getting the bug of asking the question — why am I on this earth? And I will write about the Adam more, it’s a gorgeous place that I would have put in Great British Pubs if I’d visited.

The Wig & Pen is close by and from its name you would be right about its legal provenance; it was once called something else (the King’s Head below is the only Norwich pub that has kept the same name apparently) but the nearness of the Law Courts offers a clue to its nomenclature. Inside a couple of TVs show the football, the Southwold Bitter once more says good morning to me and a couple of mates enjoy their late breakfast or early lunch with a pint.

Take 5 is a curious amalgam of slightly bo-ho eaterie, coffee house and bar. We enjoy a beer in the vaulted undercroft and wonder what a band would sound like down here. Meanwhile the landlord at the Ribs of Beef has been at the helm for donkeys’ years and runs a well-measured ship that sits alongside the river in a scene oddly reminiscent of Bruges (the Belgian connection continues with the pub’s luscious beef in ale). In the King’s Head, Green Jack brewer Tim is taking his time to enjoy a beer or two out of Lowestoft. His smoked Red Herring is on and I enjoy it. Then it’s across the road to the Plasterers Arms, a backstreet pub, recently reopened, refurbished and renewed in its place in the world Ten beers on, Oakham’s Preacher pleases and I spot that the pub is next to what was once a Victorian era Sunday school. The righteous shall inherit the earth.

More pubs more pubs more pubs, all rammed with folk, Adnams’ Rumsey Wells has Sole Star on — fine and fabulous. The Trafford Arms has couples and friends out for a night, though I enjoyed their vintage beer bottle collection with a Southwold Bitter to hand. Ketts Tavern is the tap for the Norwich Bear brewery, their Norwich Pale Ale is smooth and spicy and peppery — bet this looks good on the chilli-influenced dance-floor. The Pawter is chocolate and more smoothness. I like this gaff. And over at the Fat Cat it is jumping and jiving as hearties and their girls play noisy games, while young guys tweet about the beer they’ve just tried for the first time. In the Duke of Wellington men are eating a brought in curry and the Whalebone is crusted with folk, all sorts of pub goers, a heartening sight, with a landlord who has been there for a long time (seemingly a fact of life in Norwich as many of the licensees I met over this weekend all had long roots in their pubs).

And so what was this odyssey all for — think of the Norwich City of Ale festival that runs from May 31 to June 10. I used to think little of Norwich but after this weekend, I think it’s become part of me.

Picture this

2012-01-27T10:35:00.001Z

Here we are in our pubs, safe and secure, fastened in from the storms outside, coming and going, talking to each other, talking to dogs, giving them a pat on the head, all of us with a drink to hand. Here we are in this place, the pub, where we return tomorrow night, the night after or next week, our laughter and words raising to the rafters like smoke from a fire — does this laughter and do these words linger on the ether so that future generations might perhaps hear a whisper that might or might not have come from the person who stands against the bar, laughter and glass in hand. I like the idea of pubs as repositories of experience and feeling — after all people have had such a great time in them (and continue to do so) over the centuries and war and riot and chaos and the smoking ban will not stop these scenes from continuing. These are taken both on a Sunday lunchtime and on a Friday evening when people descend on this pub (as they do most days) and use it as a social club, which is no bad thing. Those that want pubs where fights and football and bad form are the norm should look elsewhere.

So why do you go to a beer festival?

2012-01-24T08:35:00.000Z

Do you go for the beer or the companionship or the architecture or the place where people go for beer? Or do you go with a piece of paper on which you bring to life words that will remind you in later years that you went to this beer festival and wrote down words that would remind you in later years about this beer festival? Or do you go to look at the people about you and thank heavens that you are not like the people around you or you have a higher more nobler intent in going to the beer festival even though you might think you could lose some weight and stop talking in such an excited voice when you have had too much beer? Or do you go to a beer festival to meet friends you see once in a blue moon, who are friends even if you rarely see them except at beer festivals but you have been seeing them at beer festivals for a few years now and you regard them as friends? Do you go to a beer festival at the local rugby club that has been organised to raise money and features the usual round of beers that you see in your local pubs, but you go because it’s a good cause and anyhow you weren’t doing anything that day? Do you go to the beer festival because it has been organised by the local CAMRA branch and you know that there will be some interesting beers there, well you hope there will be? Do you go to the beer festival to meet that special someone who will share your love of beer and with whom you might be able to set up home with one of these days? Do you go to a beer festival to drink beer and sit in a quiet corner, getting socially sloshed with a smile on your face and spend time flapping through the book you don’t have the time to read at home because of work/child/DIY pressures? I went to the Exeter Beer Festival on Saturday to sign copies of Great British Pubs, to see some old friends, to drink a couple of beers and swap Exmoor for a bit of time out in Exeter. Why do you go to a beer festival?

This beer is not IKEA and thank the lord for that

2012-01-23T08:30:00.002Z

There’s a harshness, a deep dark Marmite mash up of sweetness and peppery bite that gives the beer somewhat of a coffee like jolt to the senses when first tasted; it’s also got Bournville dark chocolate in the mix though after some time in the glass flurries of orange circle about, as circular in their routine as trained circus dogs who think nothing about sitting up and begging for their supper. There’s an amateurishness perhaps about the beer, an artisanal feel, something rough edged and hued, a piece of wood carved by instinct rather than instruction, and therefore much more pleasing than the sort of wood you see planed and perfumed and plumed in a place like IKEA. There’s an honesty about the beer, something that says take me as I am, and as I continue to drink it, I keep finding nuances and moods and tones of colour that weren’t there in the first place. The beer keeps changing in the glass, the sweetness edging up to the bitter peppery character (high alpha hop I think) and asking for a dance, a merging of differences as if they were two folk on the dancefloor dissolving into a smooch. It’s a barley wine of sorts, unpolished, a rough diamond, a bit of rough, but also interesting and intriguing, growing in confidence as it grows in the glass. I think I like it.

Stuff the detox — here’s some grub with beer

2012-01-13T08:41:00.001Z

Here’s something different: venison with Kriek sauce and Trappist mushrooms

I live on Exmoor where the red deer roam and provide sustenance for the table. Beer and food is slow to take off here but one of my locals offers beer choices on its menu, while I’m going to be working with a couple of other chefs in the area on developing a beer dinner (as well as a beer vs wine event). Who knows this particular favourite might end up on the table — the Chimay-marinated meat is flash fried and then served with a robust sauce based on Liefman’s Cuvee-Brut Kriek alongside mushrooms that have been cooked in the reduced marinade. I usually accompany this dish with Abbey de Roc’s rich and bittersweet brune or with my old standby Orval, a beer that brings so much to the table. Here goes then, if you do decide to do the menu and it works, call me Delia.

Four venison haunch steaks, 6-8 oz each

330ml bottle of Chimay Red

Juniper berries

8oz of mushrooms (if you can get wild mushrooms all the better)

Several fat cloves of garlic

Seasoning

330ml bottle of Liefman’s Cuvee-Brut

3 oz of brown sugar

7 fl oz of chicken stock

One shallot

Butter/olive oil

Seasoning

Marinate haunches in Chimay Red for up to eight hours, along with two/three crushed juniper berries. Keep marinade and pat meat dry with kitchen towel, put to one side. Sprinkle potatoes and parsnips with sea salt and roll in extra virgin olive oil before putting into oven to roast. Give mushrooms a quick fry in butter (or olive oil) with chopped up garlic cloves and add Chimay marinade; boil until reduced. Check for seasoning.

Meanwhile make sauce. Chop shallot and fry in small pan until soft and translucent. Add rest of ingredients in small pan and boil until it thickens. Check for seasoning. This should take four/five minutes.

When everything feels close to readiness flash fry the venison on both sides (use either butter or olive oil depending on your predilection, butter adds a nice sense of unctuousness though the reward for such extravagance is 40 extra crunches in the gym). I like my venison near raw and tender, but you might like it as charred as Joan of Arc at the stake. Sprinkle with the tiniest amount of sea salt. Place on plate with potatoes, parsnips and mushrooms, spoon sauce on the meat, pour beer and eat and drink to your heart’s content.

PS Another good dish to aid digestion during this dark and dank month would be cassoulet with Toulouse sausages, duck confit, pork and haricot beans topped with breadcrumbs — with this dainty feast I think I would pair several bottles of Hardcore IPA.

This is nothing to do with the recipe, being a nice display of meat
in a Prague shop windo, especially relevant given the news from Ceske Budejovice yesterday

The loneliness of the non whisky drinking beer lover

2012-01-11T08:41:00.003Z

I think I might be a solitary soul amongst beer writers and bloggers in that I don’t like whisky (or whiskey even). Too fiery for me (but I love chillies), too woody for me as well (though I also used to swim joyfully through the tannic wines of southwest France when I drank the stuff) and then there are those who have enough iodine to make me return Proustian-like to some swab on a broken knee of childhood (they don’t make me drink them though). Maybe whisky is just too… whisky like. But on the other hand I have always liked whisky as an ingredient — out here on Exmoor, I remember a local bakery coming up with an Exmoor Beast cake with whisky icing — I had to stop after the second helping, it was unctuous, a dark deep coal-fired red-eyed devil of a cake tamed by a sweet but delicately fiery whisky tasting icing; beauty and the beast indeed. I used to like whisky in my tea as a teenager cause I felt it gave it a blas (one of the few Welsh words from my childhood that I still continue to use). The BrewDog Paradox set feature some of the most illuminating beers I have ever had shine on my life. So no whisky no cry, but given all that it’s no surprise that I like beers that have had some sort of congress, illicit or not, with whisky.

I recall being introduced to Fischer’s Adelscott Malt Whisky Beer back in 1996 by stalwarts of the local Somerset CAMRA branch; it is brewed with peat-smoked whisky malt and comes across as a whisky soft drink. I haven’t had it for some years and it probably tastes like some devilish concoction made by a perverted Willy Wonka out to ensnare ‘our kids’ (hold on, we’ve already got alcopops), but you get my drift: whisky as a flavour rather than the primary source to Nirvana. Sorry.

There’s a reason for this preamble: I have been sent a bottle of Innis & Gunn’s Highland Cask — it’s presumably their blonde beer that has spent a holiday in the wood of a 18-year-old single malt whisky barrel (69 days according to the bottle). I remember when Innis & Gunn was launched (2004 perhaps?) with a great fanfare — it was an easy drinking beer with a whisky overtone. The launch was at the White Horse and the clear bottle aroused the ire of several British Guild of Beer Members. I was given a bottle over Christmas (a present so I wasn’t going to turn it down) and I didn’t enjoy the sweet butterscotch buttery soft woodiness — it went over my head. But I don’t think it’s a beer that is designed to appeal to me (though I am told it does well with scallops). I much prefer barrel aged beers that remind me of Benjamin Britten — complex, uneasy looking chaps like Peter Grimes or Albert Herring that I have to listen to a few times before I got them. Then when it comes to his Noh-influenced Curlew River it’s a bit like the old joke about Mao Tse-Tung being asked about the influence of the French Revolution: it is too early to say.

So back to the beer. Having enjoyed various ‘expressions’ of Innis & Gunn, the rum one for instance, I am very happy with the shapes thrown by this little chap. It comes across as an alcoholic smoothie (and what’s wrong with that?), flashing out notes of vanilla, buttery toffee, unctuous smoothiness worthy of the great Lesley Phillips though with enough bite to stop the smoothiness going over the top, Somme-like, into a bitter grave of Pintersque like bile. It’s a friendly beer, not too challenging, but reminiscent to me of my reading patterns. I labour for weeks over a difficult book and sometimes have the urge to throw it across the room but after finishing it and completely spent I then pick up something that is easy and undemanding but still enjoyable. At the moment I’m flitting through a biography of Guy Gibson (the ‘Dambusters guy’) and the beer goes just fine with it.

Brewers are not rock stars

2012-01-06T19:46:00.001Z

I always relish the tale told by Pete Brown about the time at the White Horse when Michael Jackson asked the then Thornbridge brewers Stefano ~~Rossi~~ Cossi and Martin Dickie what went through their minds when they brewed a certain beer (Jaipur I think it was, but am prepared to be corrected on that one, I wasn’t there). According to Brown, the two guys had been pretty monosyllabic up until then (some brewers can be like that), but this question from Jackson just opened them up and their passion shone through. And that’s what I often think about when I thoroughly enjoy a beer, what went through the brewer’s mind at the moment of creation? Ask the question though and you don’t always get the answer you would like: there was a gap in our portfolio between 4 and 4.5% and this fitted…we didn’t have a dark or fruit beer…we needed a celebrity endorsement. Even though some would paint them (or paint themselves) as rock stars, they are human, all too human, doing a job that they love (mostly), working in an industrial environment (even the smallest brewery is an industry) and mainly doing the same thing day after day — so is it any wonder that the answers can verge on the prosaic? I mean, when I used to write and edit TV listings years in the mid-1990s no one asked me what went through my mind when I wrote a particular TV Movie (the futility of life would have been a correct answer), while during my time writing about rock I got some stultifyingly dull answers when questioning rock stars about the meaning of life (what’s the album about? Well, I noticed that we didn’t have an album between 4 and 4.5%). On the other hand, maybe it’s the glorious beer that sparkles in the glass, as sunny and smiling as a wedding ring made from Welsh gold, or as dark and brooding as George Mallory en route to die on Everest, maybe this is what answers the question and the brewer is just the adjunct (though brewers should always be asked, brewing is a perfect meeting of art and science after all and even the most monosyllabic will come up with the odd polished word or two). All this is leading up to the fact at the moment I am drinking a ferociously robust glass of Dark Star’s Smoked Porter that has blackberry, creamy toffee and the smoke from a bonfire in the next field on the nose, before it rasps and rock’n’rolls in the mouth with notes of smoked peat, toffee apple and hedgerow jelly with a dusty, straw-like dryness at the finish. It’s a magnificent beer and I wished I had tried it before I met Dark Star’s brewer Mark Tranter (below) on a Czech beer and brewery weekend back in September (Mark meet Josef Tolar, Josef meet Mark Tranter, it was that sort of trip). Doubtlessly, based on my brief experience of his gloriously enjoyable company studded through with bone-dry humour, he would have come up with something witty and concise. Or would he?

Here’s Dark Star’s Mark with some chap

The elliptical nature of beer

2012-01-04T09:00:00.005Z

Elliptically the beer spreads itself out on my palate, a series of wide spaced dots of darkness-influenced flavours — a coal tar sweetness, a honey roast hazelnut hint of toffee and an iron hand of English hop (perhaps Fuggles) that acts like a whip to bring these meandering flavours to attention. I like it and it’s an English, West Country, bottle conditioned beer that has the gumption (or should that be audacity?) to call itself a porter. Oh who cares, it’s a beer whose soul has a depth I would willingly plunge into if it were a pool where a fast flowing river took its rest on the journey to the sea. Oh it’s Cheddar Ales Totty Pot.

And who is this that walks amongst us, a dark framed figure whose shape changes as often as the sand in the Sahara? Black IPA, Cascadian Dark Ale, black bitter, or just a mere mortal of a beer? Who cares? What I have had in my glass this Christmas has been a magnificent beast of ringing singing hop diligence and dark tarry eroticism, a beer that once again comes out of the West Country, via West Point and the West Coast. Oh it is Moor’s Illusion, with which I have spent some time with and hope to explore more of. Black IPA — I kind of like it, its detractors remind me of the accounts I have read of some unnamed person who shouted ‘Judas’ at Bob Dylam when he started rocking up his folk (and did you know that the Stasi allowed their informers to choose any name apart from Judas — the power of names indeed). Elliptically yours…

Beer and cheese, cheese and beer

2011-12-29T10:27:00.000Z

I often write for Sabotage Times, usually about beer (no surprises there), and now I’ve come up with a personal pick of some of my beer and cheese favourites — having ~~stuffed myself~~ eaten some spectacular cheeses over Xmas this list is particularly pertinent. It’s a personal choice and I don’t expect anyone to agree with it but you can see it here.

Are you afraid of Lager?

2011-12-22T17:14:00.000Z

Are you afraid of lager? If not then you should be. It’s the beer that the ravening hordes of British louts are said to consume en route to football matches, congregating in herds, howling and hooting, gathering in the crepuscular gloom of their own failings outside the White Star or the Dog and Duck or whatever mock rural name where they gather goes by, allowing their ravenous jaws to wrap around gobfuls of dubious flesh inserted into anal fissures of damp cotton-wool cheeks of near-bread, tooling themselves up like modern Visigoths ready to attack the mightiness of the Roman Empire (and then they discover that they only have to kick the door in and the whole rotten edifice comes crashing down).

Are you afraid of lager? It’s the beer that your mother (provided you have a mother) warned you against when you starting hanging out with your mates, passing the cans around at the building site that also doubles up as a municipal playground and keeping an eye out for the occasional passage of police cars; it is the beer that was once blamed for British youths growing an extra horn and starting to miss school and sign on for the benefits that allegedly come from spending a life on benefits (once it was cider that took the bullet and then it was alco-pops and then it was skunk and then it was cider once again); it’s the beer that the majority of the population drinks and has drunk since the late 1980s when lager overtook ale as the beer of the British; it’s the beer that you can ask for wherever you are in the world and you will get something roughly the same colour (the colour of wealth, the colour of fidelity, the colour that did for Midas), it is something that roughly tastes the same beside an Italian swimming pool or in a Mexican airport or in an English curry house. It is Satan drenched in urine, a failed comedian with a red nose, the barrack room buggery from another age — it is lager.

Lager: it is Princip firing a pistol at the Archduke Ferdinand and starting a war, it is the beer that makes the most mild mannered of ale men angry at what they would call ‘fizzy yellow piss’; lager: it is, just, lager. Lager, you might sigh and think and say to yourself that I only drink the classy stuff, that the glass of golden sparkle in your hand is an aspirational drink, something that reminds you of foreign holidays, days in the sun, the missus in a bikini. Are you afraid of lager?

A pub fantasy for Christmas week

2011-12-20T08:30:00.001Z

And it’s now when I get to thinking that cause it’s Christmas, the brakes go on, the pace loses pace and I grab more time to meander along the byways and pathways of pub and beer fantasy…and so there I am thinking about some of the places I would like to sit down and study my beer in during these few days before Christmas…and for some reason I’m first at Bateman’s Visitor Centre, not a pub as such but a place for me that takes me to the heart of Bateman’s beers, which I rather enjoy…for a start I love getting off the train and seeing the windmill poking up above the village, George Bateman’s bottle collection, the smell of the brewery during brewing time and — when I was last there at least and I hope this hasn’t changed — the chance of having a glass of Salem Porter…and while I am in the east, I will travel down to Essex, first of all dropping into Walberswick to enjoy a glass and a meal at the redoubtable Anchor, before continuing to the Thatchers Arms in Mount Bures. On the border between Essex and Suffolk it sits and here I would savour the company of Dylan the dog whilst feeling the sashay of flavour that is Crouch Vale’s Brewers Gold…then to London where I would leave the craft beer bars for another day and embed myself in the Royal Oak in Borough…an afternoon in this marvel of pub life in search of the secrets behind Harvey’s Porter is time well spent…I would sit there with the Buddha of contemplation on my shoulder, in search of a sense of enlightenment until it be time to take the journey westwards and home…so I’m on my way home and it’s the Red Lion in Cricklade that will prove to be my next stop (actually I tell a lie, I fancy a quick visit to Oxford where my recent plunge into re-watching Inspector Morse can be emboldened by a glass in the Turf Tavern – it should be a bit quieter now that the students have famished themselves off to families far and wide)…ah the Red Lion, the pub where the locals gather to discuss the world and the price of beer, where the ales on show include old school bitters, new school goldies and grinning, palate-grabbing hop devils, all of which are the ideal accompaniment to time at a table catching a glimpse of a clock taking its time to circle the dial…and I would also enjoy the fried pea fritters with a bowl of the Red Lion’s robust, country-style chips (oh and to finish, two of three times, there would be a bottle of Odell, or maybe a Le Baladin beer)…home nearly so I would stop off in Bath and go to the Old Green Tree, deep in its womb of pubbery, a place where I went to immediately after the rugby world cup in 2003 and where recently engaged in a conversation with a woman as if we were old friends (which we were not)…and if there is time a jar of Bellringer at the Star higher up in the town, a warren of rooms that for me engage my senses with the box of delights that is the pub…but this being a fantasy I’m back home though with my much beloved local pubs and for that I give much thanks…

Christmas beers

2011-12-18T10:15:00.000Z

Commonly said amongst beer writers at this time of the year is the wash of wine-and-Christmas articles that flood the pages of our newspapers. Of course they are there but it’s not as bad as it might be. I noted that the Guardian had something and I bet Will Hawkes at the Independent will put a few thoughts out there later this week (though in the mean time you should read his piece on Scottish beer). Meanwhile Gavin Aitchison at the York Press has added his voice here. As for myself, I’ve got 10 suggestions over at the Telegraph, which can be read here.

BrewDog Camden

2011-12-16T14:00:00.000Z

BrewDog Camden. From somewhere in the bar laughter crackles with the timbre of Vincent Price in an Edgar Allen Poe movie, spits into flame, crackles and cackles, the laughter of enjoyment. A man checks his phone, serious, twitters perhaps, socially mediating with those of a like disposition? The floor has a concrete effect, hard, unyielding, there are board games in alcoves, minimally designed furniture, ascetic almost, a hermit’s idea of furnishings. At the bar eight miniature silos stand, branded with the Miró like logo of the brewery, and from these all manner of beers are dispensed. Punk IPA for me thank you, fresh, zesty, grapefruit, a glass of sunlight in opposition to the gloomy winter’s day unfolding outside. I knew this pub in its previous lives — rundown old boozer, corner street, quiet I seem to recall once, and then an attempt to go gastro with Hoegaarden and perhaps Stella and lord knows what else brought in, so hardly stellar. The makeover is on the American/European model, post-industrial warehouse chic, but it’s a warm place, and staff that offer friendliness just as good as any well-run traditional bar. And because I’ve just had lunch I cannot make space for anything off the menu developed by Masterchef beer and food guru Tim Anderson but that will be for next time. So for now with Punk IPA gone to meet its maker, a glass of Port Brewing Wipeout (the recall of it tickles and tingles my tastebuds now) followed by Hardcore. I’ll be back.

Cheddar? Cheddar.

2011-12-16T08:30:00.001Z

Like anyone else who communicates about beer I get sent some. If it is something that I don’t particularly like then I just don’t think about it, I move on, the world doesn’t need me to go head to head with either some corporate brewer or a small brewer whose enthusiasm and tax break doesn’t always equal hygiene, skill, imagination of whatever else makes for a good beer.

So I got sent these beers by Cheddar Ales and said that I couldn’t promise to be happy clappy about everything, which was fine. ‘I hear you don’t like bottle-conditioned beers,’ said Cheddar’s founder Jem in an email. Partially true, it’d be correct that I don’t regard b-c beers with the same altar-kneeling succulent relish that others do. I’ve had some stinkers in my time and the sticker ‘real ale in a bottle’ is more likely to drive me away rather than have me howling at the moon of beery joyfulness (mind you having said that I’ve had some filthy filtered beers as well). So here are my thoughts on the Cheddar’s beers I have drunk so far.

Gorge Best — What on earth is a best bitter? Is it this? Copper coloured; sweetness on tongue, toffee sweetness, conjoined with peppery hop character, I think white pepper, plus a whisper of orange marmalade — all coming together like a diabolic dance. Bitter, chewy, dusty (as in a hay barn in the summer when the rain hasn’t fell for a while), dryness. Hey it’s a best bitter and I rather enjoy it.

Potholer — this is a golden ale with a tightly laced, well corsetted sweetness, a fullness on the palate and a sweetshop lemon and banana note (I can almost hear the rustle of the paper bag and feel the grains of sugar being tipped into my hand for immediate consumption), plus some bitterness, but not enough to frighten the horses with. The finish has a ghost of banana sweetness (again that drawing in of the laces) before it fades away. I am not sure if it is the beer or if it is me that is not bothered by this style of beer anymore but I found myself drinking a glass of what has been a favourite beer for several years the other night and thinking: I’ve had enough of dipping into the fruit bowl.

Festive Totty — this is a very dark chestnut brown, no spices though ruby port is added, or anything that Santa might like when he comes down the chimney. On the palate there is sarsaparilla, milky mocha-ish coffee, a dusting of chocolate (milk I would say), a tingle of dark plum in the background; even a creamy character that adds a luscious note. There’s also a soury smoky edge that makes the whole beer very appetising. The finish is bitter, some roastiness and a spiritual om of chocolate dusting. Lovely espresso foam head on top. So nice to drink that I will have another if you don’t mind.

Of time and the river — and Broadside

2011-12-14T09:00:00.001Z

So I there I am in the new century, survivor of the Millennium Bug, in the company of my two-year-old son beside the Red Lion in Southwold; the unsung Adnams pub, the one that doesn’t seem too full of types whenever I go in (then and now). Wife and friend are looking around what passes for shops in Southwold in 2000 (only three I have noticed on our fortnight there: butcher, second-hand bookshop and off-licence, what more does a man need?). Child in pushchair is asleep and we are outside on a bench that belongs to the Red Lion. Lunchtime and perhaps a Broadside, a pint of, a glass of, might help me belong. Notebook in pocket. Pen out. Child asleep. Beer ravishes palate. Words flow as beer steers itself across the tongue and down the throat. One of those moments that I always remember: the study of a beer. What did I write? Couldn’t find the notebook tonight but I know it formed the basis of a long piece I wrote on Adnams for the CAMRA Somerset newsletter I was editing at the time (and which is somewhere online I think). But then I found the kernel of what I wrote hidden away in a file on an old bloated iMac, which as an aside it is amazing that in 2000 we thought this pot-bellied Caribbean sea blue creature was state of the art: ‘It was outside the Red Lion one Saturday lunchtime that I spent a happy half-hour exploring the complexities of Broadside — an ale which takes the drinker to the heart of Adnams. If you've ever crunched Maris Otter Malt or Crystal Malt; or crushed Fuggles or Goldings in your hands and inhaled the result, or walked through a hop store, then a sip of Broadside takes you through its birthplace — the brewery.’

Many different beers have crossed over the drawbridge and passed down my gullet since, both at home and abroad, but I still retain my affection for Broadside even if I haven’t always had it in good condition. However, I had a glass of it the other Friday lunchtime at the Bishop & Bear in Paddington, a Fuller’s fabulous pub at Paddington that has been the ruin of many of my journeys home — usually ESB, which is what we started off our lunchtime session with. All Cointreau-like orange notes, marmalade Dadaism perhaps? Then my mate on a brief furlough from a national newspaper where he works brought along a Broadside to the table. Christ it was fresher than a fresh nappy put on a fresh baby’s bottom, absolutely delicious (unlike the baby’s bottom), a fabulous beer of deep dark-in-the-forest malt notes, a Bartok-like sway (think the first movement of his Concerto for Orchestra) of flavours, that brought in the chocolate, coffee and sarsaparilla that I have always associated with a good Broadside. It was gorgeous and connected me back to that day 11 years when the child in the pushchair was fast asleep. And that ability to link and connect with time is to me the enchantment that good beer can weave and keep you suspended in its spell.

My mate had a ‘hilarious’ malfunction with the loo here back in the mid 1990s

Prague: A Pisshead’s Pub Guide

2011-12-07T08:30:00.002Z

Yep this gem of a pub is in the book

I’ve been over to the Czech Republic twice in the last couple of months, both times on assignment, one of which was totally beer and brewing related — the other not. Even though the second visit was more about the general ambience of Prague, I was able to visit a good quota of bars and brewpubs in the evening. And that’s where this guide might have been useful if I had stayed any longer on my second trip after having done my job — it’s Prague: A Pisshead’s Pub Guide, written by Maximiliano Bahnson (he calls it the best ever guide to Prague written by an Argentinean), who also writes the rather entertaining Pivni Filosof blog. I met him during my visit in September where I ended up at the Purkmistr beer festival trying home-brews from both Czech and expat beer guys. Maximiliano has now sent me a PDF of this self-published guide (I think he uses the same company as the indefatigable Ron Pattinson). The title says it all, this is a guide to beer crawls, an enthusiastic and rollicking ride through some of his favourite Prague hostelries, and you know there’s nothing here about drinking within limits. It’s a good home-brew beer transplanted into writing, rough around the edges, definitely not smooth, occasionally jagged, but possessed of an honesty and an interesting perspective that will keep you reading. As he says in part of the introduction:

‘I didn't write this book with the goal of pleasing beer geeks, tickers, raters or advocates, this book was written for people who enjoy drinking beer, people who sometimes will drink a beer just because they fancy drinking a beer, regardless of who brews and how, and the best place to do that, at least when it comes to Czech beers, is the pub, or hospoda as we call it here. Which brings me to this other thing.

‘This book is not a manifesto in defence of “craft beer” (whatever that might mean to you), this is a book about pubs, and a pub is actually more than the beer, it is about the place and how you feel there. I'd much rather drink Pilsner Urquell, or even Gambrinus, at a hospoda where I feel comfortable, than Kout na Šumavě at a cocktail bar. There is a limit, no matter how nice the place might be, I won't go if they don't have a beer that I can at least tolerate, and that's why you won't see any Staropramen pubs.’

So if Prague is on the agenda soon this little gem (which you can get here) should be stowed away in your duffel bag or on your iPad — and when you get there be ready to soak in its beery bath tub of Rabelaisian wit and wisdom.

And so is this

And this is why I love beer

2011-12-01T15:08:00.000Z

There it is in the glass, brisk and busy, but not too busy, with bubbles drifting to the top, ease in their ascension, an escalator upwards of carbonation and friskiness (a young pup perhaps, eager to play and gain approval); and above them, the place into which they merge and morph, the snow white collar of foam, a Table Mountain of ultimate achievement (can I be Reinhold Messner?).

And the colour of the beer in the glass (let us not forget the colour of the glass, or the non colour of the glass, a displacement of air, a physical presence that is not there but is)? Some would say the pale gold of a ring forged in an ancient mine high in the mysterious mountains of a long disappeared people’s legends. Or maybe it’s the sum of the egg yolk sun that inches itself, fingers tensed on the ledge of morning, gaining strength and confidence as it emerges into the day. Others will think of an heirloom — an old sideboard willed by a wilful great aunt, the burnish of dark chestnut on its surface, a gleam, but also the dream of childhood’s end. Then there is a beer that is stygian, the knife of night cutting into the soft underbelly of the day, pray please pay the ferryman for his work in transporting us into the dark where no stars fall and no moon rises. And let us in our reverie not forget the beer in the glass that is the colour of a piece of amber that emerged into the light of the world after spending millennia with an insect in its craw, and then by man’s hand was polished and perfected like some jewel in the crown.

So there is the beer, the beer in the glass, a sparkling ring of confidence surrounding and circling, an orbit of sensation, the bite of flavour on the palate, on the tongue and in the mouth; there it is, the thirst quenching draught of beer that covers all the sensory nodes that sit on the tongue, serious scholars in judgment, the Academy in congress about this work of art. The wash of sweetness, but not too sweet, a sweetness restrained, belt buckled in; the splash of fruit — tropical, citrus, soft, you decide, you judge — the crisp crunch of the malted barley’s influence, a ghost from the field where thousands of stalks swelled beneath the summer sun or shivered and sold themselves dearly when the fret rolled in from the north. The hop? There it is, the essence of fruit, as recalled above, but also the rasp of bitterness at the end of the throat, sometimes a stick rattling on a tin roof, other times, as pithy as a Wildean quote recovered, dusted down and thrown out into the sunlight. Then the beer is finished, Sahara dry perhaps, the return of a bounty of fruit, windfalls in the orchard, just brief, a glimpse, a flash (the green ray perhaps, glimpsed over the still ocean), before the beer vanishes into legend.

And if we really think about it; if we really let ourselves think about the beer that we have just drunk, the beer that we have fallen in love with, this is the beer that brings the chimes of midnight closer with every sip (or slurp if you must), and every beer we devour and fall in love with must bring us closer to heaven.

Beer on Monday

2011-11-28T09:00:00.001Z

Sometimes it’s just about the beer

What on earth is an Abbey Ale?

2011-11-24T09:17:00.000Z

The Val De Sambre Brewery in Wallonia, whose tripel
on the sunny morning I visited in 2005 was rather gorgeous

What on God’s fairly decent earth is an Abbey Ale? I only ask as I am currently involved in revising the style guidelines for a major beer competition. And given the flux in which beer styles are involved — or maybe the stasis that they are fixed in — I think it’s a fairly decent question to be asked.

Abbey Ale? Leffe obviously, in the same way as we think of Guinness as an Irish Dry Stout or maybe Stella Artois as a, er, um, I don’t know…continental lager, macro lager, generic lager? Leffe is a beer, an Abbey Ale, sorry, that I was introduced to in the late 1980s and I rather enjoyed. Probably lapped up the candi sugar sweetness and the fat and flabby character of the alcohol (rather like a gut hanging above the belt as anything over 6% in those days was seen as rather risqué), and possibly the herbal flintiness and a sense that this beer might rather enjoy canoodling up to the pork steak and cream sauce that my mate reckoned was the bees knees in Brussels at the time. I also always enjoyed the Leffe Tripel whenever on holiday down in the southwest of France; there was a sense of the sweetness being held back, almost a very enjoyable dry chalkiness on the palate that made it a wow with fried chicken.

But then I have tried Leffe in the past couple of years and it’s reminded me of a childhood sweet that we used to call a Spangle — sweet, sweetingly sweet, yes the fatness of the alcohol is there, but there is a medicinal tang that I associate with the smell of one of the sprays that my rugby-playing teenage son dons before a match. It’s also a brittle sugar candy, seaside rock sort of nose, herbal I suppose, but not that pleasant. A default beer perhaps, like Staropramen (of which I had a half last night that reminded me of cider) or Guinness (here’s an interesting question — would I ever consider John Smith smoothflow as a default beer, of course not, I like beer but there are limits, it’s a bit like meat, I avoid McDonalds like the plague).

So I get back to the original question: what is an Abbey Ale? Is there such a thing? Trappist is an appellation — it covers dubbel and tripel and very strong dark beer. Abbey? It seems to be 5-6% (but then looking back at my notes I find Silly Brewery making a 9.5% one), sweetish, gold in colour with reddish hints, but then it could be a brighter gold or a darker gold. In one French brewery I was given one with rice in the mix, which gave it an almost ethereal lightness of touch, which didn’t work for me. So is it a marketing device? On the label the picture of a fat cheery monk or a sombre looking abbey and the promise of heaven in a bottle seems to be a popular device. Marketing then. That’s the way my thoughts are going. Which means that a lot of other beer styles could be seen as mere marketing devices. On the other hand, the story behind a beer is important. If you get too fundamentalist in an anti-styles fashion then we might all just live in the Repo Man universe where cans are entitled meat, fish, whatever: minimal and monochrome.

Maybe the idea of beer styles is a sort of poetical development — a need to categorise, like the need to paint or write in different ways and then codify it. And yet having said all this, I’m still not sure what an Abbey Ale is. Is there such a creature?

A pub is a pub is a pub

2011-11-17T09:15:00.000Z

A pub is a pub is a pub. In the cellar bar I go, in the area around Prague Castle where tourists refugee themselves about during the day, but when the light went on Monday night and the mist came down like the proverbial wolf on a flock of sheep, it became quiet and mysterious. Magical Prague, footsteps on the cobbles, a shadow hurrying by on the other side of the street, the watery yellow light of a bar or a hotel. And so I came to U Hrocha — in English the Hippo. A cellar bar, or if you want a man cave with honorary women, smoke everywhere, the robust cuisine of Czech food (six men stabbing away at a big platter of pork in the centre of their table). Beer? PU on tap. Décor? Nicotine yellow paint, arched ceiling, stone. This is the pub as a hideaway or if you want a concert hall with the noise of people (men with the honorary women) enjoying themselves. Walk in, there are looks and then people carry on with the business of the very opposite of sensory deprivation: chew, slap, slash, eat, the men are eating, the women are eating, Svejk is eating. Beer in the glass, a glass full of beer, snow white soft foam on the top of the glass. Drink. A pub is a pub is a pub.

Camden Town Brewery

2011-11-08T19:33:00.000Z

A scrap of paper in my hand is all I have as a memento of my visit to the Camden Town Brewery — and the significance of this scrap of paper is? I haven’t returned from somewhere promising peace in our time or waved it at the crowds waiting for me in Croydon airport (as was). On the other hand it has a small quorum of words that I jotted down as I went round Camden Town Brewery today, where the British Guild of Beer Writers held their committee meeting (committee man Mark Dredge also works here hence the invitation). A brief collection of scribbles, blue Biro ink, seasick in their rhythm. RAILWAY ARCHES (though I don’t normally write in capitals, this is just for effect) — the first two words stretch themselves languorously like cats getting ready to move to another side of the sofa. Railway arches. There are five railway arches in which the brewery is located — glass, protractor shaped, a mirror image of the brick arch, stretches over the front of the brewery, while above in the station (Kentish Town West and overground, the idea of which seemed to bamboozle at least one committee member) the sounds from the trains are gentler and more restrained than you would expect if the brewery was further along the line. Light is let in rather than expelled, all the better to appreciate the gathering of stainless steel equipment in the space beneath the arches. The lager — halfway house between Helles and Pilsner we are told — has the clarity of gin, though is obviously of a different colour. Ooh look there’s a bitter lemon note on the nose, while the palate sways sexily beneath its bittersweet character. I like the characteristically Munchen bitter finish. Gorgeous and this is a beer that emerges into the world, heavy lidded and sultry with sleep after 28 days in the tank. As the meeting progresses, Mark tops up our glasses. The Wheat Beer is a sensation — banana custard, softness, friendliness, fatness from 5% alcohol, no cloves, but it’s definitely bring your dirndl time. Next up the stout, nitrogen giving it an espresso coloured head of foam; mellow roastiness, toast in the afternoon perhaps, milky mocha coffee, while there’s a controlled hint of herbal inspired sourness that emboldens the taste buds to bow down before this grand design. Finally, try the Pale Ale, which is immeasurably miles better than I have had before — almost carrying an erotic charge that only a whiff of the hopsack can give. Oh and we tasted a wit straight from the tank, which had been infused with lemons baked with bergamot oil. I’m in Bruges I sang, much to the consternation of other committee members, but they know what I meant. And you will do when it gets released.

NB I love the fact that there is a brewery in Camden Town. It is a special place for me. I worked there through the 1990s, drank there through the 1980s, saw the Clash for the fourth and final time at the Electric Ballroom, interviewed Alex Cox in an office above the cinema that used to be opposite the tube, drank with Shane McGowan in the Goth pub at the back of Sainsbury’s and tried to prise some quotes from him (without much success) and most importantly of all had my first date with the woman who became my wife in Bar Gansa just off the High Street.

The Liverpool Arms Conwy

2011-11-04T08:39:00.000Z

You know when you’ve ignored a pub for years and then on a whim decide to go in and then you think: what have I been missing? That’s what happened to me recently on a visit to the Liverpool Arms in Conwy. It stands on the quay, several houses down from the Smallest House in Wales, compact, next to the town walls, a fixture of Conwy that I last went in with friends on a summer’s evening some 25 years ago. I’ve just ignored it. And then I was in Conwy on the occasion of the food festival the Conwy Feast (after buying lots of food I made a beeline for the beer tent run by local breweries Purple Moose, Great Orme, Nant and Conwy Brewery, whose California was truly excellent) and I remember that the former Bass head brewer Arthur Seddon told me the Draught Bass in the Arms was pretty good. So I went in. Inside: bare stone, dark black beams, red tiled floor and a small bar in a corner. Two cask beers: Draught Bass and Brains SA. There was a weather beaten sense to the interior and naturally there was plenty of nautical memorabilia. It was dark and comfortable and the sort of place where you could imagine coal fires in the winter when the tourists no longer come. The Draught Bass had a formidable Burton Snatch on the nose and danced its way down my throat. Even though the quay was heaving with people who didn’t seem to have a very good idea of navigation, this felt very much like a locals pub. I felt a sense of settling into the landscape, of slipping into the shadows of pub life, watching people come and go (some woman from Lancashire — or was it Cheshire? — moaning about something or other, a Jackdaw perusing his paper) and enjoying my beer before it was time to go out amongst the people once more. And then later on in the beer tent I meet up with an old mate with whom I used to work on the deckchairs on Llandudno prom — ‘the Liverpool? Great pub, I go there with my dad at least once a week.’ What have I been missing?

Beers I have been recently sent

2011-11-03T09:00:00.000Z

Beer, I get sent to me, for consideration, or sometimes if I can’t get to try the beer for a feature, I ask the brewery if they could send me a sample. I trust the brewery; the beer, 90% of the time, is delightful — I’m certainly not a guy who likes every beer. But the result of this is that I have a swathe of tasting notes that I feel I should share, they’re not all in features or books and sometimes they’re so good or intriguing that I would like to share them, hence this post. So bear with me on this.

Sharp’s Honey Spiced IPA, 7.5%

Dark gold in colour; on the nose a ripe peach skin that has been sitting in the sun for too long; it reminds me of some of the erotic charge that the hop sack brings; there’s also a hint of the snappiness of green apple plus the soft sensual felt-like texture of honey. On the palate there’s honeyed peach skin, a softness of fruitiness (papaya, some lychee and orange skin where the thumb has made the spray come out) and a floral honeyed note that makes me think of honey slathered on fresh white bread — a breakfast beer then. It’s a ripe and voluptuous beer, expressive, yearning, a minor key in a chorus, but then the finish adds a sense of bitter betrayal, crisp, dry, chewy before the fruit and honey returns to take a more mellow bow.

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge, 7.5%

Scrounged a couple of bottles of this from Zak Avery. The nose was sherbet–like (it reminds me of a fascination I have always had with the Arabian sherbet, a soft drink I suspect I would enjoy) with a spray of grapefruit pith; sweet lemon without sweetness. It’s a big beer when taken from the glass — dry lemon, dusty grapefruit, a lack in sweetness, almost medicinal, an expression of the Saaz — it also made me wonder about imperial Pilsner, whether they are experiments or gimmicks or an organic expansion of the genre (see a comment from Doug Odell about his sour Pilsner here). There’s a big lemon sourness that is different from the flinty lemon sourness you would get in a saison. I was not entirely sure about the beer — I don’t know that the use of shedloads of Saaz works. Maybe an imperial Pilsner is an angel with a dirty face.

Fordham Copperhead. 5.2%

Don’t know much about these guys, they’re trying to establish themselves in the UK, and in my limited knowledge of where they are — Delaware — I assume that the Alt style of this beer is quite a common thing (vague memories of 1001 Beers’ beers from this part of the world intrude). Unlike Cyrano the nose is not big but there is a spicy pepperiness on the palate, plus a hint of green apple, some crisp ryebread, and the feel of an oily texture. For me this is a typical American interpretation of an Altbier though I think Otter Creek’s is one of the best (that is called Copper Ale, who got there first I wonder?). There is a dry, crisp, cereal-like chewy finish. It’s both chewy and refreshing, sweetish but also with a hint of white pepper; fruit pastilles perhaps in the background; digestive biscuit with a dusting of chocolate. There is also a traditional American hop — which delivers some grapefruit notes. I like this one a lot. Toffee notes came along cap in hand as it warmed up.

Windsor & Eton Republika, 4.8%

First thoughts: this beer owes more to Bavaria than Bohemia, with its snappy bitterness and lacking that voluptuousness that I would expect from a 12˚ Svetly Lezak — a crisp bitter lemon-tinged carbonation but again that high bitter note. It tingles away on the palate, rings away, like a tram clanging its way through some central European city. The carbonation offers a delightful bite of refreshment, a gorgeously crisp and appetizingly bitter mouthfeel that I want to experience more of — I had mine with freshly made spring rolls where the carbonation briefly swabbed the decks of the palate clean allowing the refreshment of the beer to emerge, five spice powder and chilli and all, before the spring rolls asserted their spiciness. It cut through the grease, faced up to the spice, but allowed the spice to have its own moment in the spotlight (I don’t want the chilli to vanish, I wanted chilli to have its own identity, but I didn’t want my mouth to become a gastronomic battle of Stalingrad). On its own, a superb riff on a Bavarian but also a cool fit with a vegetable spring and chilli.

Beer vs wine at the Thatchers Arms last Friday

2011-10-31T11:31:00.000Z

So there we were on Friday night, wine in the ring with beer. An affray at the dining table perhaps: five courses, each one striding to the table like a wanna-be champ, a glass of wine and a glass of beer on each side, trainers of gastronomic ability, jabbing the air, feeling the mood, supremely confident. In the wine corner Tim Atkin, Master of Wine, author and journalist and the wine guy on Saturday Kitchen; I’m in the beer corner. The venue: the wonderful Thatchers Arms, in the middle of the north Essex countryside, a delightful centre of good food and drink (especially beer), whose young landlord Mitch had organised the bout (and let’s not forget the Don King of beer evangelicalism, Hardknott Dave Bailey, the man who set up the whole Twitter campaign that led to this evening). Fresh from winning an award at SIBA, Dave was there with Hardknott Ann, along with a glove puppet who used to be big on British TV until his star waned and he was replaced by Bob the Builder and a myriad other fantasies of the middle aged.

Enough of conflict metaphors. It’s wasn’t a battle, it wasn’t a war, it wasn’t even a fight. It was an attempt to celebrate good food, good wine and — above all from my point of view, good beer. I’ve not met Tim before and I thought him a great guy — he drinks beer as well as wine and there was none of the closed mind syndrome that I have occasionally come across with wine drinkers (admittedly of the more elderly, snobbish variety).

First up was a carpaccio of venison loin with beetroot and port and mustard vinaigrette — I chose Duchesse de Bourgogne, banking on the sour-sweet character of the beer to lift the flavour of the venison, the sourness interact with the vinaigrette and the earthiness of the beetroot. Tim chose a 2008 Casa Riva Carmenere Gran Reserva from Chile, a good red wine I seem to recall. The winner, as voted by the audience, was beer. Phew, at least I would win one round. Then we had home smoked mackerel fillet with pickled samphire and lemon dressing. I choose Adnams Explorer, though I had toyed with Pilsner Urquell — I wanted a higher level of carbonation to cut through the oiliness of the fish, but also a firm tropical fruit sweetness to counteract with what I thought would be both the salt on the fish and the brininess of the samphire. I wasn’t sure about this match, the mackerel was more smoky than I had imagined, it was delicious but I felt that the Explorer got a bit lost. Then things perked up in my mouth and the beer seemed to act like a complement to the dish, an extra ingredient. Tim chose a 2010 Telmo Rodriguez Gaba do Xil from Spain, honeyed and apple-like — the two of us had chosen similarly fruity drinks. Again beer won, though there was a sting in the tale to come.

Third course was a Sri Lankan red chicken curry with cardamon rice — IPA you might think, but I went for Schneider Weiss, thinking of carbonation cutting through the heat, and the banana and clovey notes adding their own spiciness to the dish. Tim chose a 2008 Cape Barren Estate Grenache/Shiraz/Mourvedre from south Australia. Beer won again and it felt like half time during an Arsenal match with the game in the bag and as a Gooner I know what that means… Mitch announced a recount of the votes for the second course, there had been a mistake and wine had actually won. So now it was 2-1.

The four course was a lemon tart with raspberry coulis and sadly Adnams’ Sole Bay was trumped by the Moscato d’Asti from Italy that just added another dimension to the dessert (even the Hardknotters agreed on this) Sole Bay is a lovely beer and we were very lucky to have some as I don’t think there is much left in the country. So that was 2-2 and the chocolates were brought on. I had originally thought of Leifmans Cuvee Brut for this finale, but for some reason, disregarding all my normal doubts about matching dark beer with chocolate, I went for Ola Dubh in a 12 year old Highland Park cask. Lovely beer but the chocolate effectively overwhelmed the notes of tobacco box, coffee, vanilla and oak that the beer has, leaving only the bitterness to stand there as naked as the Emperor with no clothes. Tim chose a Lustau San Emilion PX sherry from the Jerez region — I found it too oily and sweet, a torrent of sweetness bursting through the banks of perception and drowning the chocolate. The result, after a show of hands, was a draw for this dish, which I reckon was a good result for the dinner all round. I do believe that that the Cuvee Brut would have stormed away but on the other hand there was a conviviality about the dinner that was light ages away from the recent storms that have beset the world of beer communications. As wine writer Fiona Beckett noted on her twitter feed after the result went out, ‘good result which reflects the truth that neither beer or wine is better, just different ;-)’

Neither Tim nor myself were paid for the evening, and the drinks were provided by Adnams and Slurp, while local food producers also helped. The night raised £550 for Amnesty (Tim’s chosen charity) and Help for Heroes (my chosen one).

World Beer Awards 2011 results

2011-10-30T08:38:00.000Z

Like most beer writers and beer bloggers I do my stint as a judge — the first time being at the White Horse in 2000 for the Beauty of Hops competition (or was it the fish and chips and beer one?). Bit overawed at the time to be in the company of the likes of Mark Dorber, Roger Protz and Oz Clarke and then sitting next to Michael Jackson and discussing beers with him (I recall him saying something along the lines of that he’d never correctly identified a beer when blind judging — suspect that was to put me at my ease, especially as I’d held up a beer and mused on whether it was Landlord). Since then, many competitions later (but never the GBBF, not sure I would like it, too early a start and the same goes for GABF though I was tempted to apply after 1001 Beers), I get a paid gig as the chief European judge for the World Beer Awards (Roger Protz is overall chief judge, while Stan Hieronymus is the US boss and Bryan Harrell does the same over in Japan). The judging panel includes the likes of Jeff Evans (himself consiglieri for the IBC awards and the only judge who drank his whole measure of Utopias, which made for an entertaining journey back to London from Norwich), Ron Pattinson, Melissa Cole and a variety of brewers. We had three rounds, two of which covered just European beers, while the final one also featured the American and Asian/Australasian beers picked elsewhere around the globe.

So what happens? The beers are submitted in bottle and yes breweries pay to enter and they are sifted into a variety of style categories, which I gladly admit do need clarifying (which we will be sorting out in December). A lot of good breweries enter and there are some surprising results (the Mongolian Pilsner Borgio was truly good), so if you want to look at the awards in their full entirety then go here. Best beers in the world? Why not? There’s a pretty experienced judging panel blending brewing professionals, experienced writers who’ve been around the block several times and new kids on the blog (like I was all those years ago). There was debate, questions, clarifications and some brilliant beers — the winners are a snapshot of what we tried at the time and I can honestly say that Weihenstephaner’s Vitus is a glorious drop of beer.

The Three Tuns in Bristol

2011-10-28T09:00:00.000+01:00

Three Tuns Bristol. Good little pub this, belongs to Arbor Ales, good brewery, coming up with some excellent beers, one of which I had last week in the Red Lion in Cricklade, good pub that as well, frontage festooned with hanging baskets, that’s what you get for being in a town that wins Britain in Bloom. Back to Bristol though, great city for drinking at the moment, good breweries in the shape of Arbor, BBF and Bath Ales (confusing that they are called Bath but based in Bristol, think there might be a case for pedants to raise merry hell). Back to the Three Tuns though, you can read what I think about it in Saturday’s DT or just go straight to the link here. Cheers.

Beer vs wine at the Thatchers Arms this Friday

2011-10-26T07:43:00.000+01:00

Good grub but it’ll be a bit more sophisticated this Friday

For me beer and food matching is about the occasion when beer intensifies the flavour of the food, adds something to it or alternatively when the ingredients in the dish lift the beer skywards and reveal an hitherto unknown dimension. Or it could be when the two of them collide and come up with something totally new — a gastronomic particle accelerator.

Harmony: it’s akin to the moment when the woodwind, the strings and the brass all come together in one grand symphonic hug, perhaps during Schubert’s ninth symphony or a great shambling moment in Elgar’s Bach Fantasia when all seems lost, when all seems chaos, but as the instruments all seemingly topple over order asserts itself and all is harmony — or maybe I could point you in the direction of Sonic Youth and the Jesus and Mary Chain who were good at that sort of beer and food matching, as was the sound I once heard when crossing Waterloo bridge and the sound of a helicopter flying over dovetailed beautifully with the rat-a-tat bludgeoning of jack hammers on the South Bank.

For me then it’s about bringing flavours together and getting on with each other — and it doesn’t always happen in beer and food. I made moules marinières once with Pedigree and the long boil gave a harsh bitter note to the broth; cheese — artisanal Cheshire — as I found out the other night, with a Czech Svetly Lezak does not work, the dairy fats seem to separate and become hideous individuals — or Dairylea at the very least.

It’s not rocket science, it’s not the black arts — it’s trial and experiment, punk rock, Sebastian Junger hitting the dirt in a hole in Afghanistan, your favourite jeans, frayed and frowning at the damage that time has done. It’s beer and food.

All this is just a preamble to the food vs beer event I am co-hosting with Saturday Kitchen’s Tim Atkin on Friday night at the Thatchers Arms in Mount Bures, Essex. There are a few tickets left so if you want come along then call landlord Mitch on 01787 227460 — it’s also all for charity, we’re all giving our services free, while the beers and wine are being donated by Slurp Beer and Adnams. And as something to whet your appetite here’s the menu with the chosen beers.

Carpaccio of Venison Loin & Beetroot with a Port & Mustard Vinaigrette

Duchesse de Bourgogne

Home Smoked Mackerel Fillet with Pickled Samphire & Lemon Dressing

Adnams Explorer (though I did toy with Pilsner Urquell)

Delicate Sri Lankan Red Chicken Curry with Cumin, Chilli, Ginger, Tomato, Black Mustard Seeds Cardamom Rice & Poppadums (medium hot)

Schneider Weisse

Lemon Tart with Raspberry Coulis

Adnams Sole Bay

Homemade Dark Chocolate Petit Fours

Harviestoun Ola Dubh 12 Year Reserve

Great British Pubs — I awake up and realise I have a book to promote

2011-10-21T12:08:00.000+01:00

I write for a living, sometimes edit, have produced magazines, but these days it’s mainly writing and researching for articles that fill my days (though I still enjoy sub-editing, there’s nothing like roasting an inept writer’s words Flashman-like in front of a roaring coal fire as I rediscovered during the editing of 1001 Beers To Rule The World With Before You Die — no names I’m afraid). Writing books is part of the job.

The latest one is out at the end of the month — it’s called Great British Pubs and is published by CAMRA Books. Coffee table book for the recession perhaps, nice paper, not glossy though, colour pics, a chance to write, my take on pubs, mine alone, no other writers, an echo of George VI in the summer of 1940, something along the lines of thank heavens for no allies to pamper (I wonder if Garrett Oliver felt the same after a while?). Over 200 pubs get a page each and I’ve written 500 word profiles of each one, trying to see the pubs from a totally different angle than a guide book (yes the opening hours are there and the phone numbers but it’s a bit like a lot of my DT columns — I’ve tried to paint the colours of the pub).

For instance, the Dolphin in Plymouth name checks both TS Eliot (the women come and go…) and Beryl Cook (and would usually end up in a painting by her) — and in a marvellous piece of serendipity a group of Cookesque women bustled into her old local whilst I was sitting there one blustery Saturday afternoon. Is the Rake a fop or a garden implement? Cask is a room, but a room filled with many earthly delights. In Laxfield you can set your watch by the sight of the Kings Head’s locals emerging from their homes when the church clock opposite strikes six. The Bunch of Grapes has good grub, whilst the jalapeno omelette at the Anchor in Walberswick is an ideal breakfast start up. The Red Lion in Cricklade (where I thoroughly enjoyed a glass of Stroud Brewery’s Brewers Garden with a pea fritter and chips yesterday), the Pub in Leicester (Beckett-like in its minimalistic name), the Black Boy (see the stuffed baboon in his kilt), the Three Tuns (both in Bishops Castle and Bristol) all appear within these pages. You might not like every pub here but it’s an honest attempt to write about pubs in a way that tries to bring them to life and makes the reader want to wend their way there (and god knows they need the support, the pubs that is not the readers), whether it’s in search of a session at the Babbity Browser, an I-do-like-to-be-beside-the-seaside moment at the Lord Nelson or the Turf or just a canoodle with Sarah Hughes at the Beacon. It’s about beer and people, for as I have written in the introduction:

‘Beer is the currency with which we spend our time in these pubs, the rich seam of gold that makes British pubs such a valuable part of our national heritage. We are a beer nation, a beer country and we are part of the beer belt of northern Europe (the German speaking lands, the Czech lands, the Nordic countries, the Low Countries, even the northern part of France where beer always takes its rightful place on the table); we are the sons of John Barleycorn, who according to the old poem must die every harvest before being reborn in the following spring — the golden promise of resurrection.

‘People. Then there are the people as well, the people who tell stories (for what is the pub but a place where stories are told), the people that define the local neighbourhood, the people who make the jokes that lighten up the pub and lest we forget the people who serve behind the bar and keep the whole show on the road. The pub is a public house where people gather. Yes they gather to drink beer but they also gather to pass the time of day, to celebrate their good fortune, their marriages, their birthdays, a winning steak on the horses, to meet their friends, to remember their friends. I go to the pub to meet people and drink beer.’

It’s out on November 1 —so don’t forget: we are a beer nation.

Fly-fishing, beer and it

2011-10-20T08:00:00.002+01:00

Perhaps one of the hardest things to talk about is cancer, or as I might prefer to call it — it. Currently, I know of at least two people who are living with it and also a couple who have had it. Ceri Keene is one of those who had it and one of the ways she dealt with it was going fly-fishing with a charity called South West Fishing for Life — this helped her a lot. I don’t fish, but I love fish and I love trout, and Ceri put out a cookbook called Fishing for Life, whose proceeds go to the charity. It’s a cracking little collection of recipes, from local chefs, the British Trout Association, friends of Keene, Keene herself and Tom Aitkens. It’s a good cause but the reason I wanted to write about the book (rather than it) was matching a beer with one of recipes — in this case potted spiced trout (one of Ceri’s recipes), which is wonderful with fresh bread from our local bakers in Dulverton — but when I made it on Sunday I thought of a couple of matches. First up: Kindl Berliner Weisse. Not the best of ideas. The beer was sweet and sour and worty and kept the chilli spice back for a while but then allowed it to rampage across my palate with the ferocity of a bad-tempered honey badger. The beer in general was a pale and pallid imitation of what I remembered, apricot ripeness hints, sweet fruit juice of the sort my son used to drink in the pub before he graduated to cola, and those damnable sweets called fruit sours. The best Berliner Weiss I have had recently is the one made by Bayerischer Bahnhof in Leipzig (it was also Bretted) so I won’t be bothering with Kindl again. Next, I tried it with the more amenable Cantillon Iris, dry hopped, a fusion of grapefruit and orange — the beer seemed to add even more spice to the dish, though without losing its own indelible character. It was a good accompaniment to something that might be a bit tricky (mayo and trout oiliness, chilli spice, clarified butter on the top) — both the beer and dish seemed to have something to add to each other, which for me is what beer and food matching is about, whether it’s a juicy plate of sausages or a spoonful of caviar (Leipizger Gose I think). As for the book if it is something that interests you please do buy it and help a wonderful charity and get some great trout recipes. BTW did you know that there is a fishing fly called Summer Lightning? Just thought I would say.

Easy peaty, Suffolk Smoky

2011-10-18T20:14:00.000+01:00

Oh look what the postman has brought today, a couple of bottles from St Peter’s, unasked for, unexpected, how nice of them. Haven’t had their beers for ages — went there in 2005 (or was it 06?), but was driving some members of the British Guild of Beer Writers around on a Suffolk visit, which was a pain as I really wanted to tuck into their Cream Stout. So let’s have a look: first opened there’s this appalling nose of lint, TCP, bandages; the Islay effect I suppose (never been fond of it myself, but then I don’t drink whisky). And then I think it’s like the sort of old canvas tent I used to sleep in when out on Snowdonia with mates (not that sharing tents with mates lasted that long after 10 pints and a curry). It’s got that whiff of the outdoors, the tent, the climbing boots, the age but also a sweetness that saves it from being too savage. On the palate it’s bready, smoky, peaty, phenolic, and seems to marry well with the cashew nuts I have been cooking for a curry. It then sits in the glass and gets as mellow as some Forties crooner on the pull, but still retaining its semi-edgy peaty, medicinal edge (a member of the nascent Rat Pack perhaps?); there’s a sweetness in the palate that I rather like. There’s also a this-side-of-good harsh bitter note in the background — on first tasting I did think that it might need more alcohol to give it a fatness and maybe some darker malt (it poured into the glass with a very light and translucent chestnut brown), but it’s improved. It’s got that right balance of a challenging start which is then followed by a more appealing sweet smokiness — the TCP is still here but for me it’s an easy, peaty kind of beer. Make of that what you will.

I ♥ beer

2011-10-14T15:56:00.000+01:00

Monday afternoon in the pub. Sun shines on the passage of people in the street, rays reach me at the table at the end of the bar. Two men next to me, old friends I think, meeting up again after a while. Sharing a bottle of something from Mikkeller, ‘this is beer, beer without all the bullshit,’ says one. ‘The other declares, ‘it’s as strong as a glass of wine but it’s not rough and not Special Brew.’ They purr and pour praise on the beer from a great height. Treacle says one, port says the other. Another? And as I tune in and out, contemplating a glass of Hofbrau’s Munchen Oktoberfest (delighted with its strong bitter finish), I once again realise how much I love sitting quietly and studying beer, in Craft Beer Co, far away from all concerns about what beer is, who it is for, what round or square hole it falls into. I simply adore beer and all that comes with it — and Craft Beer Co is one of those great bars that I drink beer in, as you can read in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph here.

Degradation at Fuller’s

2011-10-12T06:58:00.000+01:00

Degrade. What a fascinating word. The enemy’s forces are degraded, in other words blown up and slaughtered. We degrade ourselves or we degrade others. Degradation. But then when I’m underground at Fuller’s, in the Hock Cellar, air raid shelter chic with brick ceiling and a sense of subterranean safeness, the word is used much more positively. Beer degrades and becomes something higher in its sensibility.

The purpose of going to Fuller’s is to join in with head brewer John Keeling on a tasting of all the Vintages produced since Reg Drury kicked off the series in 1997 (Keeling’s first one designed solely by him was in 1999). This will be the last one that features them all as stocks of some (especially 1998) are being degraded.

‘When the Vintage was first produced we never expect that people would be as interested in it as they are,’ says Keeling to the assembled, ‘we certainly never thought that interest in the beer would last this long.’ But it has — time being the common theme that all the Vintages share. Time is also an ingredient in Vintage, the passing of which sees the beer degrade from the moment it goes into the bottle. Yet this is a good thing. The degradation adds something to the character of the beer — fresh is good, but degradation is also good.

The starting line was Fuller’s latest release, 2011, featuring a boozy orange nose and almost Cointreau-like in its citrusy brightness; hints of petrol (as in Riesling) also rocked up and decided to take a bow. On the palate it was flighty and then creamy and fat, showing off some pepperiness and then a dry finish. I rather enjoyed it. 2010 had a nose that reminded me of orange glaze for roast duck, while in comparison to 2011 it was much sweeter while the oranginess was more pronounced. On the palate Bakewell tart notes chattered away alongside hints of white pepper, perhaps it might work with Chicken Korma.

The tasting continued: here a hint of Drambuie and there a cherry brandy fieriness and sweetness and over in the corner some calvados — the 2007 made me think of saison with its spicy notes. 2005 was all orange marmalade on toast with raisins and Muscat as a starter. Oh look here’s dandelion and burdock on the nose of 2004, Marmite and marmalade when 2002 came along and the millennium’s expression was honey glazed almonds, ripe apricots, a creamy, peppery, fruity, zesty beer with a strict corrective finish (‘I’d pair this with woodcock,’ said former White Horse doyen Mark Dorber to my right; I thought Lancashire cheese). The final one — 1997 — had a beefy, marmalade character though the orange notes had become muted and the alcohol not as expressive. Last year I tasted the same beer and this is what I wrote: ‘Nose: malty (butter toffee), aromatic, spicy, slight hint of chocolate. Taste: delicate, spicy. Finish: silky smooth, seductive bitterness.’ I reckon this beer has a few more years in it.

And as a coda to this fascinating tasting, Keeling then went and admitted: ‘Brewers still don’t thoroughly understand the aging of beer.’ Which means that having tasting all these Vintages and found them fabulous, ringing endorsements of the desirability of aging beer, I can only surmise that brewers like Keeling are magicians and magnificent intellects, alchemists, bridging the gap between art and science. Specialists in the art of degradation.

Is stainless steel sexy?

2011-10-10T12:07:00.000+01:00

Is stainless steel sexy? Of course it isn’t, unless your bag is getting off on a collection of stainless steel knives and forks (don’t do it, they’ll outlive you and as far as I know no coupling between man and cutlery has yet to produce even a silver spoon). And yet the word sexy is all too often used to describe a brewery that is basically glass and stainless steel (and I have been as guilty of it as much as the next man).

Take it another way: would you spend an evening with (and a fair bit of money on) a piece of stainless steel? Of course you wouldn’t, though there is probably a word to describe people who want to frot themselves silly with stainless steel (plus a helpline and a celebrity Vanessa Redgrave on standby for emergency appeals to the media). But then on the other hand there’s a certain sense of beauty about the aesthetic appeal of this photo of stainless steel brewing kit. There is something about it that catches the eye, even if you haven’t got an GCSE in metal media work.

What is it I wonder? Is it the shininess — does it work on the same principle that drives a magpie to make away with some shiny bit of tat it might see in the hedgerow? Or is it the fact that it is light and reflective in the sunlight streaming in from the cool Lancashire countryside outside? Maybe it creates a sense of homeliness in the same way lifestyle ads encourage people with no money to believe that the perfect house can be theirs? Is it aspirational perhaps? I feel that there is almost a hint of Vorticism art about the striped light reflective nature and the way the light plays on this ‘sexy’ slice of aluminium. It’s like camouflague, but there is also a natural sense of life (the yellows might be alive) — but then there is also the reality that this is taken in a brewery.

Breweries certainly can be places of beauty, but I would say that we are talking a certain sort of beauty (certainly not the sort of beauty one would associate with Scarlett Johansson). Is it the beauty that the trainspotter sees in a big hunk of metal blowing steam all over the place, or the gorgeousness that a petrolhead discerns in some old Aston Martin? In other words, a specialist beauty. Does anyone feel the same as I do — that these brewery shots show that stainless steel can have a certain aesthetic quality. But why, for me that is the big question — why do I, a confirmed sceptic about the values of science and making things in school and college, now find myself stirred by these assemblies of stainless steel? Is it something to do with what they are used to make perhaps? That could be it. If they were used to make milk or petrol then I would be utterly uninterested. On the other hand the fact that they are part of the Moorhouse’s new £4 million plus brewery means something. And I like Moorhouse’s beers and so I like their kit, which I visited at the end of last week.

It’s a bit like going to a gorgeous looking pub where there is nothing decent to drink (nothing to drink here, move along). Would I feel the same about the kit at Budweiser, John Smith, Carling whatever? Of course not. i think it’s a case of the sexy stainless steel being made even more sexy by the thought of what goes through the kit every day. So then does that make stainless steel erotic rather than sexy? Answers on a postcard please.

Beer talks

2011-10-07T08:00:00.001+01:00

Beer for men?

Back into the fray I go, tonight a corporate beer and food tasting somewhere in the northwest of the English regions. Looking forward to it, a chance to spout off, hang around, drink beer and tell people about it, talk like I’m in the pub. But on the other hand, in a quiet moment, when all is still, it does make me wonder why those of us that communicate about beer feel that that we have to talk about it in front of crowds (and then there’s an easy answer: it’s a living and it can pay well and like most others in the confined world of beer writing it’s something to do with ego masquerading as education — but then I never understand why beer writing has to be about education as well; rather than educate, I have no intention of making people disown what they drink, they can find their own way to it, which they will — and surely education is what breweries pay their marketing people for; in fact that is a beef of mine at times, beer writing can sometimes come across like being beaded by the drunk guy in the pub who knows a little more than you do, and what do you do but nod your head, cut out the white noise and get back to what you enjoy doing, a drunk teacher perhaps). People will come to good beer without people prodding them on the chest and saying you must drink this.

For over a decade I have been doing beer talks, a variety of ups and downs, sometimes all of it coming together at the last minute, a bit nervy at times, I remember some occasions when I used to take a deep breath, pretend I was doing something worse like parachuting into D-Day before pushing the door open into the pub where 10 strangers were waiting for me to tell them about beer — and then I remembered (only a couple of years ago — doh) that I used to stand up in front of people and sing, albeit hiding behind a microphone and in company with three other guys (including DJ Harvey on drums) — and that made all the difference. Being in the band, I eventually had fun, though my first gig (as just the guitarist) was a bit nerve-wracking. There was nothing like the adrenalin you get when a song is going good and people (all three of them) are starting to dance (you have to talk with Zak Avery about making money through music). So after all this I still wonder: why do beer writers decide that they need this extra curricular work?

Pete Brown was on the radio the other day, while Marverine Cole was tittering along with Alan Titchmarsh on some show from the Midlands, though all C4 could find for their otherwise excellent piece on craft keg was a ‘drinks writer’ who writes a lot about wine and who then got his dispensation confused with his production (on the subject of craft keg, or whatever you want to call it as I refuse to call it a revolution, it won’t overturn the order of things in the rather confined space of beer but it will offer another choice — the revolution will be a matter of consumer choice as well as being televised). Maybe the people they wanted were in Denver (and before anyone asks, it’s not something I would like to do, I have no desire in being on the telly). Maybe it’s the nature of the beast with any specialist writing: Michael Jackson had his beer hunting committed to film, while Roger Protz was a regular face on some food show a few years back. Maybe it’s just the case that is such a specialised subject the media need experts.

I like doing tastings because I like meeting people and because — it’s a major reason I go to the pub — I like spending time talking with people, whether it’s about beer, sport or whoever has been sleeping with whom. Beer makes for good conversation except when it becomes didactic and it’s not just the CAMRA souls who get that way — I have seen a messianic gleam in the eye of those most indifferent to CAMRA when they have got going on beer.

And so all this leads me to mention that come October 28, myself and Melissa Cole will be taking part in a wine vs beer dinner at the Thatchers Arms in deepest Essex, thanks to the kind invitation of landland Mitch. For the wine side, Tim Atkin will be pitching for the grape (and who knows who else will pull their cork out) and Melissa and I will be bigging up barley. The menu is done and we’re now thinking about the beers. It’s for charity as well so that’s another plus. Tickets are £35 and it will be a well worth doing do. So why not come along and see beer and wine writers do battle royal in the most hospitable way (in a pub) — and to think I was just going to write about the Pretty Things’ Jack D’Or. Funny thing beer, you never know where you go with it.

Go into a Czech brewery and you will get tradition

2011-09-29T08:30:00.002+01:00

Honest he looked like Martin Johnson

So there I am at the other brewery in České Budějovice — you know Budweiser Bier Bürgerbräu though others might know them as Samson or even 1795 Boehme (the cheap lager in Tesco with Pilsen all over it). It’s a fortress like place on a busy road south of the old city and its outside is a dead ringer for an old Austro-Hungarian barracks (I was later shown the one where Jaroslav Hašek had spent some time). Past the security barrier and into the open yard where the forklift trucks buzz and then I go and meet my hosts: brew master Lubos, who reminds me of Martin Johnson, finance guy Daniel and Vilem, who has been advising the company on their branding; the last two are my translators. Come and see our maltings — 13 floors dedicated to the arcane art of making barley fit for purpose; there’s no barley there when I go round, just a couple of guys trying to get the place ready for the shipment to arrive the following week. I imagine an ocean of malt, wavy, undulating, curvaceous and then over the next few months shrinking like the Arals Sea.

In the cellars, cold and bracing, straight from the lager tanks a metal jug of dark beer is handed round — it’s only 3.9% but one of the best Czech dark beers I have had: sweet mocha coffee, chocolate, great body and utterly drinkable, even though it’s only 10am. Yum. I’ll have some more if you don’t mind — we stand there in the cold, the four of us, talking and handing the metal jug around like some holy benediction. And then in the brew house I start asking the inevitable questions. Double decoction? Check (or Czech even). Why I ask. ‘Because it’s tradition and we can.’ And as I sit here remembering my travels I think on how the theme of the week was tradition.

On the Monday I had been in U Medvidku in Prague, a hotel, bar, restaurant and microbrewery rolled into one, formerly a favoured Budvar tap in the city that seems to think that Staropramen is a decent beer (unrefined, inelegant, rough, but trying to be something else — Joey Barton in a glass perhaps). It’s a small brewery. The brew master bottles by hand and the wort is initially cooled in an open cool ship (small though). ‘The idea behind the brewery was not to produce small amounts of beer, but to show how beer could be produced the traditional way.’ Again that word: traditional.

During a week spent travelling through the lagerlands of southern Bohemia by bus and train, on my own, hoping that hand gestures, bad German and — as a last resort — diagrams would get me through, the words traditional or tradition were ones I kept encountering. ‘Tradition is important,’ said Budvar brew master Adam Brok (where I finally got to try the water from deep down below the city — it was clean and limpid in the glass, the ghost of water, a blank sheet on which the colours of malt, hops and to a lesser extent yeast, could be expressed as if up on the catwalk). And then at Pivovar Poutnik in the town of Pelhrimov (a delightful little place) I was told that the production process was — you guessed it — ‘traditional’. Proper lagering. Though one of my hosts’ traditionalism stretched to him musing on his nostalgia for the communists. And then on the Saturday when I went to the Purkmistr festival, it seemed that tradition was put on a big bonfire and burnt — or was it?

Brewhouse at Pivovar Kacov — they’ve got a good cleaner

I might have only visited about a dozen Czech breweries but there’s a feeling that they are punctilious in their brewing regime, possibly slightly hemmed in by the tradition but on the other hand freed by the traditions to produce some of the best beer in the world (whether it be a 12˚ svetly lezak, rauchbier or IPA). A glass of Hubertus from Pivovar Kacov, at the brewery tap overlooking the river was a stunning delight: the glass was topped with a gorgeous dollop of foam, while the Saaz lemony expressiveness on the palate was sexy and suggestive. A grainy biscuity firmness added order to the licentiousness and the finish was crisp, dry and bittersweet. I could have sat on that terrace listening to the music of the river in the company of many more glasses of this beer, but I had to catch a bus in what felt like the Czech version of a Norfolk village (the ghostly sound of someone practising heavy metal riffs on an electric guitar had rumpled itself from one house as I walked down the main street earlier on).

Tradition can be decried as the dead hand holding the brake of progress, or it can be a partner in finding new ways in which one hopes to express ideas through whatever medium counts. And in this case the medium is brewing to which tradition still has a lot to give. Or in the words of TS Eliot: Tradition is not a dead load which we drag along with us... it is the soil in which the seeds of coming harvest are to be sown, and from which future harvests will be garnered.

Purkmistr Sex Pistols and IPA

2011-09-17T19:19:00.001+01:00

Hotel Purkmistr — a beer festival. Beyond Plzen. A courtyard in the sun. The smell of roasting meat. Would you like a beer? Of course I would. Hold on though, this is the Czech Republic: 10˚ or 12˚ or even more but what about an India Pale Ale? What about Samurai IPA or the IPA from Klasterni Pivovar in Prague? I don’t mind if I do. Ferocious bittering rates bite but there is still a softness that mitigates the surge — am I in the UK or the US? And then I think of the lyrics that ran like wild horses through my youth from the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK: Is this the MPLA/Or is this the UDA/Or is the IRA/I thought it was the IPA… Punk IPA

U Fleku

2011-09-13T19:14:00.000+01:00

And so before checking in to my hotel at U Medvidku I know I have to get to U Fleku as it’s just a couple of streets away. Oh there it is, a creamy yellow coat of paint covering a building that wouldn’t be out of place in Bavaria. In through the door, a heavy thing with jowls (where are the antlers I wonder when I go in), and a functionary in a suit welcomes me, I blurt out Pivo and get directed into a side room where Que Sera Sera is being played by an accordionist in check trousers, the sort that I remember being called Rupert the Bear when I was a kid. To make things more comical he has the look of a Corsican bandit from some 19th century print. The room itself has a beer hall ambience — long tables, plenty of dark wood, big metal chandeliers, coloured windows, a tiled floor that must be easy to clean. The waiters, unlike the guys I remember from Dusseldorf and Köln, don’t swarm as much as decide it’s time to come in with a tray of beer. I’ll have one thank you. So here it is, the famous dark beer of U Fleku, a beer I have always wanted to try. It has a roasty, sweet, caramel character and there is a beautiful drinkability. As I take a gulp and look at the ornate pattern of wood frames on the ceiling I’m struck by its sparkling condition. Look at it, it is truly dark in colour and I think that the nose is stern and corseted with not much escaping but on the palate a spectrum of flavour is unleashed, as the straps are unloosened: sweet and dark and roasted coffee and light milkiness with a bitterness in the finish: all in perfect balance. And while I drink the beer the Corsican bandit sings and a couple from Belgium on the table next to me are asked to buy the liqueur (don’t). And I am keen to have my empty glass filled again. But it isn’t and I am going to be late for a meeting so I cover the glass with a beer mat and go. As I leave the Corsican bandit with the accordion is rooting through his pocket for change. It’s going to be a long night.

A warehouse is where you will find Brasserie de la Senne

2011-09-11T14:49:00.000+01:00

A warehouse. Said with a slower sense of occasion than you would normally say the word. A warehouse. And oh it was once an industrial bakery.

This warehouse is the home of Brasserie de la Senne. It’s on the south side of Brussels, an anonymous area — anonymity the brewery’s stock in trade as well. Nothing that says: here is a brewery.

Inside there’s a massive space, dotted with brewing equipment. Over there a double-headed hydra of brewing kettle and lauter tun (German made, second hand); in another ‘room’ the fermenting vessels (especially made to replicate open fermentation) simmer, while a further ‘room’ is expressed by a silent family of maturing tanks — ‘we are convinced that maturing makes our beer’ I’m told. And as a great advocate of beers being ripened who am I to disagree. Back in the big space a bottling line awaits.

Yvan de Baets, one half of the brewery (or maybe one third if you include the guy who does their artwork), waves his hand at a largish empty space to the back: barrels with all types of beer undergoing the big sleep will be stored here within the next 12 months (one of the superstars of West Coast craft brewing who also has a penchant for barrels is coming over to collaborate). Old wine barrels are part of the plan.

By a makeshift bar (‘we are building a pub’), at tables, a group of raucous beer drinkers carouse and I know by their faces that bear (and bare) a sense of joy that they are well versed in this sort of occasion. Later on, they reveal themselves to be members of a Flemish beer club who we’d seen earlier in the day at Cantillon.

Do you like the beers someone asked? Of course came the reply, guttural and spat out with a good-natured undertone of ‘who wouldn’t’. We try them. Taras Boulba. Zinnebir. Jambe de Bois. All superb with the latter having a full sweetish body and the mouth feel asserting a flinty aromatic peppery quality. These are beers that like a high bitterness but there is also something else about them, which is why I ask de Baets an innocuous question.

So looking at the stylish bottle labels with their nods towards 30s propaganda posters and Soviet constructivism I ask: are you a political brewery? I had wanted to say are you a left wing brewery, but that seemed rather trite. He in his turn gathered around him the children of the tribe called nonplussed and said something like ‘I make beer for defending values’.

Then he moved onto riff on bitterness.

‘We like bitterness. I have always try to understand the enjoyment of bitterness. Bitterness differs between humans and animals.’ He then started talking about animal instincts, and how humans liked various flavours. It was one of the most intellectual approaches to beer and brewing that I have ever come across and I (along with the rest of the group) was fascinated.

‘People who like bitterness get more pleasure that people who don’t like it,’ he continued. In this way he unleashed a whole theory on why animals and humans are different in their approach to bitterness — and the beery corollary of this was that de la Senne’s beers are bitter, much more bitter than most Belgian beers. I love that — my disillusion with the sugary nature of some Belgian beers kicked in a few years back. De Baets talks with measured calmness, with a certainty and belief that marks out great brewers (of course it helps he can make great beer as well).

And as the Flemish party started to disperse for pastures wide with the odd song, our taxis arrived bringing one of the most magical conversations I’ve ever witnessed with a brewer come to an end. For now.

Seven Stars Falmouth

2011-09-10T10:45:00.000+01:00

The Seven Stars in Falmouth is one of the most dishevelled pubs I have ever come across and I love it — you can read about it here in today’s Daily Telegraph. Here are a couple of pictures to whet the appetite — and while you’re at it in Falmouth have a look at Hand and the Front Bar.

San Devizes

2011-09-07T14:12:00.000+01:00

I don’t really do news on this blog and I certainly don’t do exclusives, so apologies if you the reader (all three of you) have already seen this one: Mitch Steele from Stone has flown into the UK to brew a beer at Wadworth’s for the forthcoming Wetherspoon beer festival. Are these things collaborations or is it more of a case of an American brewer trying his hand at a cask beer at a traditional Brit brewery? Whatever the answer I like the idea of a hybrid love child of Arrogant Bastard meets Old Henry (or whatever emerges from San Devizes, as it is now to be called) and look forward to trying it in the autumn. You’ve got to hand it to Spoons, they do come up with the goods.

Wadworth’s Beer Kitchen

2011-09-05T07:54:00.000+01:00

A Saturday afternoon in Devizes many years ago and a mate stood outside the closed gates of Wadworth’s brewery and shouted. He was outside and wanted to get inside. Drink had been taken that day and my mate was notorious for his inability to withstand the rigours of a Saturday afternoon session (once when we decided that an afternoon in Wetherspoons was preferable to standing in the rain at Highbury I went to the toilet leaving a perfectly sensible if inebriated man and came out a few minutes later to find him arms and head on the table snoring soundly). There were three of us and we moved on as you do. A flitter of remembrance from that Withnail-like afternoon briefly disturbed the otherwise smooth concourse of my thoughts the other week as I sat in attendance at the Bath Priory Hotel, this time in the company of several journalists and folk from Wadworth’s, plus the hotel’s head chef Sam Moody coming and going with each course. The occasion was the launch of Wadworth’s new range of bottled beers that have been specifically brewed to be drunk at the table, hence the Beer Kitchen name.

When I think of Wadworth it’s always 6X that springs to mind — out there always, riding the highways of free house and pub company, on the bar counter, ubiquitous, like Pedigree or London Pride. I’ve always enjoyed it, but I also enjoyed Henry’s IPA in and around Devizes and Old Timer when I could find it (back in 2005 the then head brewer Trevor Holmes told me that they occasionally put this beer into whisky barrels). I presume that 6X for those elite drinkers who rarely drink the same thing twice is a sort of OXO cube of suburban sterility that is to be avoided at all costs (or drank surreptitiously just in case their mates find out). Beer Kitchen is something different, being a selection of bottled beers (filtered and lightly pasteurized) produced on the brewery’s micro-plant, kit that originally came from a brewpub called the Farmers Arms.

Here are the five beers we were presented with: Wheat Beer, IPA, Orange Peel, Barrel Aged Strong Bitter and Espresso Stout.

The wheat beer was first, served as an aperitif alongside a goat’s cheese canape. The nose had a light ripe banana note that immediately anchored it into the Bavarian tradition. On the palate it was sprightly, go lightly, offering a hint of apple and an element of Riesling like fruitiness. With the canape it was marvellous, wrapping its arms around it — friendly, engaging — and lifting the flavour to a higher plane. We also had it with the first course, a crab mayonnaise with tomato jelly. Again this worked with the beer lifting up the accompanying tomato jelly and emphasising a pesto note in the mayo I’d not felt at first, a terrier rooting around in the undergrowth having caught a sniff of a downed pheasant that everyone else had missed. Scoffed fast, it was.

Then it’s Moody again, young and bounding in, and telling the ensemble that one of his favourite matches is IPA and chilli crisps. And that’s what we had, an IPA that is — is this Wadworth’s first attempt? No crisps, but on the plate tempura chilli squid. Taken on its own, cheerfully and considerate, I found that the beer had an earthy, orangey, mandarin nose, plus a grassiness that took me back to an early memory of primary school when the grass was cut prior to a football match and we all had grass fights and I got in trouble cause I grabbed a lad and put it down his back. Bitterness took a bow on the palate along with a decent mash up of generic spiciness, which helped to scoop up the chill; the sweetness of the seafood along with the spices were lifted by the beer, which didn’t douse the chilli but kept it within a gorgeous parabola of flavour: orange/satsuma/fieriness/bittersweetness and even a hint of macadamia nuts made this a very satisfying match.

So far so good, as it continued with the Orange Peel Beer, which yes has orange peel in it. It easily slipped into character with roast duck and orange puree, and while I thought the idea of orange and orange might turn everyone tango it did seem to work. Maybe it was the beer’s earthy marmalade oranginess providing a contrast with a more delicate orange, a bit like Laurel and Hardy — both humans but different shapes.

It didn’t all work, the Whisky Barrel Aged Bitter I thought was a work that still continued to be in progress — it was served with Montgomery Cheddar and Barkham Blue. The latter has a complexion and texture with an accompanying saltiness that was sensational on its own. Maybe given some time ripening away in a cool store the beer will be able to weave its magic in a more accomplished way (for time solves all problems).

Finally there was the pudding, Dark Chocolate Mousse and cherry compote. Served on a piece of slate — wish I’d known this was going to happen as we’ve got loads of slates down in the garden and I could have bought a few. This was a creamy mocha espresso brood of a beer, embracing and heartily slapping the creamy chocolate notes of the pudding on the back with the sweet cherry contrasting with the bitterness of the coffee beans and the earthiness of hop notes. It was a mouthful of darkness and I wasn’t frightened. There were also blackcurrant notes and a reminder of toffee infused with blackcurrant juice, chewy, luscious, kirsch like mixture at times; toast like even with blackcurrant and toffee and jam. A great match. You might like to try it sometime.

Chef Sam Moody

Guess

2011-09-03T09:02:00.001+01:00

And so I get bottles from Magic Rock Brewery, one or two of which I have already dissected here — but here I am again sitting at the kitchen table and this time enjoying a glass of their High Wire. American Pale Ale with a nod to the West Coast it seems like to me. And I sit there drinking it and thinking that it reminds me of something else. The nose has a flourish of passion fruit cheesecake, scented, slightly risqué in its creaminess, as well as a musty dustiness that reminds me of the smell when my son’s wet suit is hanging up to dry (ozone perhaps, brininess); or maybe — a thought strikes me — it’s more like a stable (formerly stacked with dry hay) through which a wet dog has passed through. Don’t blink: it’s a pleasant aroma, providing a thought-provoking contrast between the kids’ tea party giggle-fest of the passion fruit and its friend the cheesecake with the more grown up seriousness of the space in which something wet is placed (or has passed through). The passion fruit cheesecake note is also on the palate along with a sensuous oily character; this makes for a full beer, a big body of flavour, though then there are sherberty, sweet notes that help to keep any inclinations towards obesity in the mouth under control. As well: orange marmalade, oh, lightly toasted white bread with a thin skin of marmalade, oh again, not orange but pink grapefruit. Breakfast anyone? The finish is dry and appetising with passion fruit notes making a welcome return. It’s a deeply satisfying beer, robust in its flavour. This is what I would call artisanal — I am deeply satisfied by the flavour — it’s why I drink and keep company with beer.

And so then I try the beer that High Wire reminds me of. The passion fruit is on the nose again, but then it feels like this passion fruit fancies slumming it as a mango and then loses its dignity completely by turning into a scented tropical fruit salad. Ripe fruits, I’m reminded of, ripe fruits sitting in the fruit bowl brushed and caressed by the sun of a late summer’s day. This other beer that I thought High Wire reminded me of is brighter on the nose than High Wire, but not as sultry perhaps; brasher, noisier, a celebrity with pretensions to intellectualism perhaps (Joey Barton?). There’s a spritzy tingle on the palate, a feel that has the light covering of pink grapefruit and again that ripeness from the nose. But hark, what is this, some vegetal notes Barton their way into the background (broccoli water perhaps?) and then it fades away too quickly. It’s inoffensive, has a quick finish, acceptable but I like High Wire for its robustness, its swagger and general sense of style.

And when I mention the closeness of High Wire to Stuart at the brewery he confirms what I thought and says that it was based on this beer, but as it was not as it is. I suspect you can guess what the beer is.

Rescuing collaboration from its dark history

2011-08-31T21:14:00.000+01:00

Negative connotations contain to cling to the word collaboration. In my mind it’s Marshal Pétain, geriatric, stiff, a mask of authority beneath his French army kepi, a symbol of collaborationism with the Nazis. Or it’s the bluff, vulgar features of Vidkun Quisling, the quisling of quislings. And yet the idea of collaboration is so damned magnificent, likeminded people working together, to create music, art, buildings and of course beer. If there’s any one movement of collaboration that’s rescued the word in the last decade in my mind it’s the collaboration that’s existed between brewers. Some might see collaboration as a commercial gimmick (brewers sell beer and the business of beer is selling beer), something irritating between flashy hop-driven big cheeses, the craft beer world looking in the mirror, preening itself like Bowie in his Thin White Duke period and liking what they see. On the other hand, it’s the sign of an alliance (ooh a positive word, an ally) between likeminded (ok occasional big cheeses) souls who are interested in seeing what happens when they brew with someone else. Preamble over, I move onto the collaboration in hand, a bottle of Epic Thornbridge Stout, brewed between the guys at Thornbridge and the Kiwis at Epic (where Thornbridge’s Kelly Ryan went — wouldn’t it be funny if brewing had a final day transfer deadline…). I picked this up at GBBF as I rushed off to get a train, cursing as ever my inclination to never have enough time. And even though I wanted to keep the beer for much longer I gave into temptation and boy was I glad that I bit that apple. In the glass it is as dark as the shade on one of these dismal days we have had this summer. Saturnine even though the espresso tan-coloured head adds a sense of jauntiness to the beer in the glass. The nose was creamy, condensed milkiness, mocha-like and even oily. A swig and the texture was velvety, juxtaposed with a brisk and bitter feel; on the palate, mocha, roast coffee beans, an earthiness and woodiness that reminded me of the effect I used to get from burgundies, slightly farmyard-like even (the way you can smell a farmyard sometimes, not the sharp note of cow crap, but a more pleasing and pungent note, damp leaves maybe, woodsmoke, newly ploughed soil); some butter toffee notes took me back to childhood briefly; stew fruits added a sweetness, while the dry bitter finish was appetising, chewy, grainy and crunchy, bitter notes clanging along (and then there was also a restrained fruitiness, ripe plums perhaps, restrained like a shy child peeping from behind the corner when a ferocious aunt is in the room). Oh and further sips brought forth treacle, leather and a tobacco box ripeness that I remembered from my father’s when I was 11. This was a wonderful beer and a complex matrix of flavours and aromas that were more metaphysical than something you can write down. It was a beer that had a dark taste — and at that moment in my notes I write ‘can dark be tasted?’ Can it?

Light and dark

2011-08-28T13:36:00.001+01:00

BeerandfoodBeerandfood BeerandfoodBeerandfood…Say it enough times and it becomes the most natural thing in the world — as natural as wineandfoodwineandfood even. So here we are on Saturday evening in the marvellous Kilverts in Hay on Wye and a woman who has come to the ‘beer vs beer’ dinner at which Mark Dredge and I are sparring partners tells us that she had bought a glass of wine into the dining room with her but after tasting some of the beers on show she will be staying with beer (the glass of Chardonnay, well I presume it’s Chardonnay, it’s honeyed yellow, limpid in the glass, stays untouched for the rest of the dinner). Another woman says that she has to find a way of getting her friends back home to taste beer and the debate that follows as Mark and I discuss why we matched a variety of light and dark beers with dishes such as a creamy Stilton-soaked risotto, fresh succulent sardines and a rumbustious beef Wellington is like a gust of fresh air and the sound of heavenly trumpets to Mark and I as we sit back stuffed and replete with some of the best grub I’ve yet to have in a pub. The evidence? The Stilton and roast shallot risotto is served with Orval and Rochefort 6 — a battle of the Trappist beers. In my opinion Rochefort 6 adds sweetness to the dish, while Orval (my choice) lets the sunshine and showers of leathery Brett and bright orange citrus embrace the dish; the bitterness also helped to cut through the creaminess. Second round: sardines with a deconstructed ratatouille. Crumbs this was a tough one, the oiliness of the sardines and the acidity of the ratatouille; I choose Otley’s black IPA Oxymoron, while Mark went for Jever Pilsener. I wasn’t convinced by the Jever and thought it accentuated the oiliness, though I wasn’t too convinced by the Oxymoron and its dalliance with the food either. The dark notes might have been too much. The conversation ebbed and flowed across the table, beer its current — said time and time again, these are good beers in their own right. Goose Island IPA (me) and Aventinus went forward to the match with the beef Wellington, both of which fitted gorgeously — the choice of the IPA was seen as slightly dubious by some, but the generous orangy, Muscat notes and the generous bitterness more than stood up to the fabulously cooked beef. Aventinus, however, shaded this contest and I suspect if it had been my choice for dark beer then that is what I would have picked. Finally pudding, a chocolate fondant with bucks fizz ice cream (a revelation in itself) — me: Waen’s Porter House Blue which is made with fresh blueberries — some added in the mash, others added at the end of the boil, a porter/stout hybrid that has a slight sweetness at the end. Meanwhile Mark went for a Boon Kriek, which went down a storm with the audience though Porter House Blue also had its fans. We asked everyone to mark the matches out of ten and for each dish until the pudding you could have put the proverbial cigarette paper through the results, for instance 35 against 36 for dish one. But the pudding saw the Boon Kriek saw Mark really pull away, though I was impressed with the first Waen beer I have tried (they’re a brewery whose beers I want to research more). And the result? Mark won, but beer and Kilverts were the real winners on the night — if you are anywhere near Hay do get down today or tomorrow for the end of their beer festival. And I’d welcome all comments on the matches.

Steak Wine Kilverts Beer

2011-08-26T08:30:00.002+01:00

What does steak taste of? What does the king of meats taste of? King? Well it’s the meat that brings out the macho in men, the men who want it rose, rare or as crisp as Joan of Arc at the stake. I don’t really do steak, I prefer duck or mackerel or salade niçoise, but in the interests of work I have steak tonight. And as I sit here at a table in a hotel overlooking the Atlantic on the Lizard, I wonder about the taste of steak: there’s a sweetness, a meatiness (whatever that means), a saltiness and then there’s the texture — I had mine rare and it yielded in my mouth, supple, flexible, eager to crumble; mastication: a thoughtful few moments as I chew, break down the flesh and think about what I am tasting. It brings forth gastric juices, so maybe a steak is juicy perhaps? But then it’s nowhere as juicy as a ripe mango when the juices are as ubiquitous as a bucket of mini Stephen Frys exhorting all and sundry to do something they would rather not. And then what to drink with it? In the interest of research, I have an Australian Shiraz, plummy, spicy, tobacco box-like, cigars, it says on the wine list. Oh and berries as well. A mouthful before the food arrives — the tannins leap out, whack my mouth around its metaphorical head and then sit there squatting, evil grins on their faces. But then drunk with the steak, the flavours come forth, like a coach encouraging a runner/footballer/cricketer to do their best, a motivator, the voice in the head that says you can go faster, hit harder, never give in. And when the steak is gone the wine becomes tannic once more, oaky, woody, not so complex or as full of flavour. So what does a steak taste like? The reason I ask this question is that on Saturday night myself and Mark Dredge will be hosting a beer vs beer dinner at Kilverts in Hay on Wye, part of the beer and literature festival that Ed Davies has put on for bank holiday weekend. Pete Brown is there on Friday night hosting a beer dinner, while Mark and I are doing talks on Saturday afternoon (myself on the upcoming book Great British Pubs and Mark on hops, while Pete’s also there on Saturday as well). Mark and I have made things difficult by limiting ourselves to either light or dark beers for each course, so for instance I have chosen Orval for a stilton and shallot risotto, while Mark has chosen Rochefort 8. The second course is a tough one: sardines and ratatouille with which I have struggled but am trying Otley’s O Roger (and I am not entering any debates about whether it is a Burton, IPA or fruit beer); Mark will be going for a Jever. But the main reason I have written about steak is that the third course is beef welling with which I have decided to drop from a great height either a Sierra Nevada Torpedo or a Goose Island IPA (Mark: Aventinus). Finally Waen’s Porter House Blue with fresh blueberries from the Anglo Welsh border added in the mash and at the end of the boil will be taking its time with the chocolate influenced pudding (Mark: Boon Kriek). It will be fun so if you are in the vicinity why not drop in, Kilverts is a great pub and if books are in your blood then Hay will soothe and flow through your views with the softest of touches. See you on Saturday.

Pub observations in Bath

2011-08-19T09:27:00.000+01:00

Heat. A smudgy reflection of the ceiling’s revolving fan in the polished wood of the table at which I sit — there are some old 60s/70s hits playing with an intervening solo from the seagull outside, an ear-piercing screech that only a seagull can do. One room, a small bar counter, coat hooks at waist level; leaded colour glass in the window; down a narrow lane; back inside a red patterned carpet across which walks a man with a mandolin to play outside. Furniture: red stools, round pub tables with metal claws for feet. Four cask beers: RCH Pitchfork and Double Header, Abbey Bellringer and St George’s Friar Tuck. Bellringer is a grainy, crisp, dry bittersweet citrusy drop in the glass, old school but accomplished. Yanks come in and one asks if she can have a pale ale, gets Bellringer while her mates order Amstel. I got wasted last night says the attractive one, a hint of Goth in her hair. A woman, 64ish, looked after, regular, looks at the beers and orders a pint of RCH’s Double Header — orange citrus, hint of almond, amber gold in colour. Friendly barman, who was the man with the mandolin, tells me that the man who owns Abbey Ales who run the pub did a session with Apple Records in the 60s and still gets a cheque twice a year. Oh and where am I? The Coeur de Lion in Bath — the smallest pub in the city. You should visit it.

In praise of the pastiche pub

2011-08-15T08:16:00.000+01:00

Don't fret, calm down, carry on - surrealism abounds in gigantic leaps and bounds when watching the anarchy in the UK unfold with a glass of Efes to hand. Nihilism more like it but then that's another argument in another counter-factual universe. Here in Paddy's Irish Bar by the wine-dark Aegean I ask for a bottle of Efes' Dark as the cricket comes on and then Arsenal drag out a tedious draw (the previous evening an hour of golf on the TV confirmed my lifelong dislike of this 'game'). The pub/bar is both on the street and deep and dark within - inside the walls are dotted with dozens of photos: Irish ephemera, beer brands, football teams, all manner of bottles, teapots, figurines, soft toys, a rugby ball and a framed black and white photo of Ataturk, the guy who dragged Turkey into the modern age in the 1920s (he seems everywhere here, in shops, barbers and even the internet cafe in which I write). Oh and there's a Hull City FC pennant. It's a pastiche pub, the sort of place I would never ever consider entering back home (why when there is the real thing), but here - in a town that seems sorely lacking in the sort of backstreet bars that often offer up a country's soul for consideration - I feel a sort of homeliness. I am made welcome, there is a sense of comfort, and I relax. The Efes Dark is chocolaty, mocha-ish, creamy but firm, brisk in its carbonation, and reminscent of Voll Damm (it's also chewy and has hints of vanilla). Again the same question: would this be drunk at home? Probably not, it's also too stern, too synthetic in its approximation of a dunkel. Yet...I'm on holiday, free from care, just being and also enjoying the Efes Pilsen - sharp, prickly, quick-silvered, gone. And I enjoy my drink in a pastiche of a pub, run by an expat Irishwoman, chat with the bar guys about their attitudes to Greece, the Turkish army's role in politics, the euro, Orhan Pamuk and various other flim-flam and I forget where I am - for the now I am just in a pub, a pastiche perhaps, but a pub. I am king of a small part of this universe, a noisy multi-layered universe as well; the next door bar features a bombast of metal and the bar on the other side lets out a banshee shriek of discord. And while I contemplate another Efes Dark the call to prayers from the mosque on the other side of the street floats on the air. The beers might not be the most exciting in the world (and I find my dreams drifting towards the calm carbonation of Augustiner Helles, the flutter and flurry of pine, citrus and ripe peach skin of an IPA or the yeomanry splendour of a best bitter), but in this here and now I can only write in praise of the pastiche pub.

Bermondsey saison country

2011-08-08T08:14:00.000+01:00

Bermondsey is hardly saison country, and by that I mean the province of Hainault in Wallonia: a landscape of flat fields upon which cattle graze and stalks of ripening corn and sheaves of wheat wave in the gentle breeze. Farmhouses dot this sylvan landscape, places where farm-workers once gathered in the hay, working up a thirst, which a bottle or two of home-brewed saison would quench. I’m in Bermondsey, Druid’s Road. Railway arches, which upon one there’s a plaque to the victims of a direct hit from a Blitz bomb, the rumble and tumble of noise that marks the passage of a train, the waspish buzz of traffic from the Tower Bridge Road; patches of builders in high-vis vests banging and clanging as the city’s landscape continues on its never-ending cycle of change. Saison country? But within the brick-built cave of an arch I try one of the best saisons I have ever had. At Kernel brewery I am, a brief visit, my curiosity piqued by what drives one of the best breweries about and also in connection with a feature I’m writing. Inside and under the arch, a jumble of equipment: the brewing kit here, the open fermenters there, bottles, kegs, brewing schedules hanging on the wall, the whole paraphernalia of making beer. Brewery founder Evin O’Riordin is not about so Nate shows me around, a brief tour and then ‘would you like to try a couple of beers?’. Yes please. First up the Export Stout, kegged, a magnificent wraparound taste sensation of espresso, roast coffee beans, milk chocolate, juicy fruit and dry cereal graininess. Then would I like to try the saison? Yes please. I love saison, I love the fact that it’s a moveable feast, a beer that changes with breweries; it has its sense of place but this, like its flavour and character, is also a movable feast. I have enjoyed saisons from Pennsylvania, New York State, Vermont, Flanders, the south coast and South Wales (as well as Wallonia) and now I hope I will enjoy one from south London. Kernel Saison is 7.2% and dark coral in colour, orange with gold highlights. Its nose is austere and flinty with tightly laced bitter lemon notes. The palate is dry and tart, sprinkled with orange, peach and tangerine notes with an undertone of pepperiness that discourages the fruitiness from toppling over into a blowsy old caricature. Amarillo is the hop at the start with Mount Hood at the finish. No sugar or spices either, though that’s not something that’s discounted for further expressions says Nate. It’s a beautiful beer and I can close my eyes and be in saison country for a moment before the rhythms of the city reel me back in. Bermondsey: saison country.

IPA Day with Wadworth’s India Pale Ale

2011-08-04T16:18:00.001+01:00

Even though it’s International IPA Day all over the known world I’m giving beer a break today but here’s my own contribution to this most beloved of beer styles (types?) — a week ago I went over to the Bath Priory Hotel to sample some new beers from Wadworths (the Beer Kitchen range). I will report on the evening in full in several days when I get the time (it was a fascinating night of beer and food matching from a brewery often dismissed with the word 6X), but for the moment in the spirit of IPA day here’s a few words on one of the Waddies’ beers, their 6.2% India Pale Ale. It was introduced by the hotel chef Sam Moody who started off by saying that IPA and chilli crisps was one of his most favourite food and beer matches. Crisps weren’t on the menu though, but tempura chilli squid with roast lobster compressed melon and coriander salad (Moody had gone away and thought about the beers and came up with a great menu). The beer itself had a gorgeously earthy, orange blossom and ripe satsuma nose plus a dustiness that made me think about a hay barn during a spell of dry weather. The palate was orange-satsuma-fiery-dry-bittersweet all in one big mouthful with a hint of macadamia nuts also somewhere in the mix. It was gratifyingly bitter with a good mash-up of spice and the sweetness of the seafood and the spices were both lifted to greater heights of sensuality by this luscious beer, both the beer and food offering uplifting hymns of praise to each other’s gustatory strengths. And in the finish the spice and bitterness were still clanging away with all the fury of Quasimodo going off on one of his bell-ringing jags. Great stuff.

Great British Beer Festival

2011-08-03T20:01:00.002+01:00

į sveikatą!

2011-07-31T21:35:00.001+01:00

And as the clock ticks down towards a pretty decent celebration of beer in London this week (there’s a beer festival going on I hear plus various meet the brewer events and a general sense of beer celebration whatever the dispense), I think this majestic fellow might be interested in what’s going on. He’s actually a King Gambrinus I snapped whilst in the Avilys brewpub in Lithuania back in 2007 — though he’ll probably have to put some clothes on before venturing out. Not bad beer in the place either. į sveikatą!

Pub fantasia

2011-07-30T18:27:00.000+01:00

On a trip to Dublin, I once had a jar of stout in Davy Byrne’s, though I should have plumped for a glass of Burgundy with a Gorgonzola sandwich just like Leopold Bloom. At least the pub exists, which is more than be said for the Sailors Arms, the Bull or the Rovers Return. If they did exist, in the Sailors you would be drinking in a village of Llareggub. At the Bull you would be reminded of its late landlord Sid Perks, while the Rovers Return would see creamy ersatz pints of Newton & Ridley served. Pubs abound in the pages of literature and popular dramas, being the places where people meet and dramas occur. The Shakespearian clown Falstaff caroused with his drinking cronies in the Boar’s Head, while Mr Pickwick went to the Magpie and Stump (for a nice glass of porter perhaps?). GK Chesterton went on the move with The Flying Inn and Graham Swift’s characters met at the Coach & Horses in Last Orders. Imaginary pubs aside, you might want to create your own just as George Orwell did in his famous essay on the perfect pub, The Moon under the Water.

Or why not come to Hay-on-Wye over August bank holiday weekend where Kilvert’s Hotel will be hosting a Hay Ale and Literature Festival, at which myself and Mark Dredge will be talking — more details here. The picture is of myself, Pete Brown and Tim Hampson laying our collective egos aside and doing a collaboration tasting last year (it was cold).

In this Wetherspoons…

2011-07-26T22:17:00.000+01:00

This is a Wetherspoons in Llandudno in North Wales. It is the Wetherspoons which was once a cinema. At the age of 14 I sat in the first tier of seats, possibly to the right, and watched Clockwork Orange (along with most of the 4th and 5th and 6th form). I also sat there and watched the Exorcist (twice in a week) and had a crafty bottled Guinness in the cinema bar, that was when I was in the lower 6th. I think my parents saw films here in the 1950s — certainly not Bergman but I would like to think they queued up for Wilder (that’s the director by the way). The last film I saw here was an Austin Powers one, possibly the first. Nowadays when I return to Llandudno (as one must, but it’s hardly we’ll always have Paris), I go there to get the free WiFi and remember the movies I saw over the years (I have a pint as well, it’s got better over the last couple of years). The other cinema I used to go to (I saw a lot of Bond and Carry On movies there) was pulled down and is now a fortress of warden controlled flats. Cinemas, like pubs, have their own memories and like the Proms audience currently acclaiming a rather excellent performance of Listz’s Faust I acclaim Wetherspoons for their sensitivity in adapting somewhere that was so important to me when I was growing up.

You can do Magic

2011-07-14T15:02:00.000+01:00

Magic #1

I had spent my whole life avoiding the music of the Grateful Dead but a year ago during a visit to Magic Hat in Burlington, VT it caught up with me. Not very impressed, sounded like I expected it to sound: hippy trippy guitars, self-indulgent hippy nonsense, going-on-far-too long and utterly concrete-dull in its ability to attract. On the other hand the visit to Magic Hat went down a treat even if I found their blend of hippy vibe and carny extravaganza a bit too much at times. The whole place was a mixture of Dr Seuss and Willy Wonka plus a bit of 1950s B-movie horror — the aforementioned Grateful Dead eternally jamming on the speakers and incredibly inventive tap handles inducing a zany swirling cacophonic vibe. Lots of stuff to buy, including frisbees, bottles, t-shirts and some books (though not 1001 Beers sadly) and massive papier mache figures hanging over the brewing area (the brewery sponsors the local Mardi Gras). It was honest and open in the great American way, treating brewing as showmanship and I think some Brit breweries could learn from it (no Grateful Dead please). The beers? The night before in a bar in Rutland VT I had #9: I wasn’t blown away — blackcurrant plus vanilla, and some apricot tart notes. Shrug of shoulders. This time at the brewery I got it — rich apricot skin on the nose, a luscious apricot character and gorgeous flowery elegance (a tired keg the night before?). Amongst the others I tried were Circus Boy, an unfiltered Hefe-Weiss with cloves and a slightness of banana on the nose; in the mouth it was chewy, elegant, peppery and refreshing, leading to a dryish finish; Single Chair, whose tap featured a Lilliputian ski chair, was fragrant and flowery with a dry finish; Hex had a fresh bath salts style nose and was sprightly on the palate, bearing forth a sweet caramel/toffee character with hints of smoke and wood; the finish was dry grainy and bittersweet. Blinking back out in the sun I felt rather discombobulated.

Magic #2

Stuart Ross at Crown

In 2008 I was in Sheffield for pub research and booked into the Hillsborough Hotel. After a day going round pubs I got back at about 9.30pm looking forward to an early night. Stuart Ross of the in-house Crown Brewery had a different idea and invited me to the cellar to try his beers. We both bonded over Randy Mosher’s Radical Brewing, one of the best beer books ever, and drank beer. I remember a red IPA though wasn’t taking notes, but I did think that he was going places. A couple of years ago I was at the Crown again and he gave me a bottle of a smoked Oktoberfest, which I thought brilliant. Now Stuart is over at Magic Rock Brewery and I was sent several of his beers. They’re all excellent though the one that really impressed was Cannonball, an imperial IPA. The aroma alone was to die for — it was like sticking your nose into a freshly opened pack of New World hops. If you’re going to be drinker friendly there were passion fruit, grapefruit and pineapple notes, but on the other hand: the aroma was primeval and erotic in its abandonment; Isadora Duncan dancing Diaghilev; Ur-hop; sweaty almost but not in an unpleasant manner; alcoholic; a muted Cointreau with some caramel sprinkles (only a few); and the earthy smell of cow skin minus all those intervening aromas of shit and whatever else. The palate was velvety, like licking and perhaps biting into ripe orange skin, then there was grapefruit juice, alcohol, a sweetness that was soon kept in its place by a slap of dryness; some soapiness in the mouth feel (Saaz?) as well plus a slight woodiness in the background. The finish was grainy, toasty and lime-like with more bitterness. Rather excellent and I wish I’d tried it on tap at the Craft Beer Co last week, but I suspect I will see it around a lot more.

Pabst Blue Ribbon

2011-07-12T09:55:00.001+01:00

Don Russell (aka Joe Sixpack) is one of my favourite beer writers, passionate, no nonsense, both gravely and grave in tone and a proselytiser for Philadelphia, which he claims is the best beer place in the US (having not been there I will leave it for others to debate). After reading his piece on retro beers in All About Beer in 2008 (see here) I just knew he had to do Pabst Blue Ribbon for 1001 Beers, the favourite beer of Frank in Blue Velvet. And then last year I was in a bar in Rutland VT and amongst the hordes of taps was one for PBR. I was tempted but instead plumped for Magic Hat’s #9 and then Otter Creek’s Summer Ale. I bottled it. So when I got send a couple of bottles the other week I thought it was about time I tried this blue collar brew. First thoughts were its paleness, as if the lightest malt you could kiln had been used (or was that just the adjuncts?). In the glass it’s limpid, rather like the surface of a slow moving, sluggish river, with a few bubbles rising to the top, fish hanging around below; perhaps the Waverley in Suffolk, where Roger Deakin was wont to swim, or a mill pond or mere. Bubbles rising steadily to this limpid, still surface; does it make you want to dive in, be enveloped in a blanket like embrace? Not really. A clean nose and then some bitter lemon notes. The sharp carbonic bite on the back of the throat is reminiscent of coke or lemonade, though nowhere as sweet (do the success of such beers appeal to those with an infantile taste, who crave a return to the innocent pleasures of childhood — I only ask having watched with amusement the reactions of an eight-year-old boy to tortilla yesterday). After time spent in the fridge I guess that the attraction of PBR is that it is a beer to be drunk at a certain occasion — perhaps after a run or a few games of squash when you want something to spike up your palate, though I have found Fuller’s Discovery one of the best thirst-quenching beers about. Or maybe you want to wind up your craft beer buddies, in the same way a copy of Hustler will wind up others — again the inner infant to the fore. The boiled lemon notes swell as the beer warms. It doesn’t as much float my boat of beer as sink it — in that sluggish, slow-moving river in the depths of which lord knows what waits.

#Oh and I know I use a pic of a can but it’s available in glass bottles in the UK.

Beer and terroir: a retrospective view

2011-07-05T08:45:00.001+01:00

Was interested to catch a glimpse of some of the tweets between Tim Atkin and various beer bloggers yesterday; one thing stuck in my mind: something said about wine having a sense of place but beer not so much. Terroir in other words. It led me back to my 2005 book The Big Book of Beer, in which I wrote a page about the terroir of beer, where I argued you could have a sense of terroir for beer. I thought I would reproduce it here with one caveat: it was written in 2005 and was very much of its time, if I were writing now I would come at it from a different angle, but I do like the idea of the effect of salt-laden north-easterly winds of East Kent Goldings.

‘Terroir is the term used to describe the effect of the local environment, history, farming practices and climate on the product. In the world of wine, the very concept of terroir adds value, prestige and romance to certain vintages. Winemakers can tell stories about steep south-facing slopes, granite soils, low rainfall and all-year sunlight that have oenophiles turning claret with excitement. Can beer be said to have a similar terroir? Most certainly. The ingredients of beer have a terroir, that magical attachment to place. Here’s Kentish hop grower Tony Redsell on the effects of the local temperature on his hops: ‘The exposure to the salt-laden north-easterly winds in March, as the character of the hop is being developed, gives an East Kent hop that unique aroma, which is just that little bit different from common or garden (yard) Goldings or Goldings types.’ Taste and savour Shepherd Neame’s Master Brew or Spitfire to experience this uniqueness. For richer hop aromas we have to travel further west to Herefordshire and Worcestershire, where breweries such as Teme Valley, Hobsons and Wye Valley make use of the hops grown on their doorsteps. The rich clay soils in the area help to produce these lush hoppy scents. Here the Fuggle hop is king (though other hops are also grown). This is a magnificent bittering hop, which adds a sensuous earthiness to beer, but also contributes a tropical, grassy aroma. In East Anglia, both large and small brewers use locally grown barley that is also malted in the region. Beers such as Adnams Best Bitter and St Peter’s Suffolk Gold possess a richness and maturity in their malt flavours, which could be ascribed to the rich low nitrogen soils of the region. Then there is the water of Burton, gypsum-rich and hard as iron, which was ideal for sparkling pale ales in the 19th century, making this Staffordshire town the centre of brewing. Until Burton’s water could be replicated chemically, beers brewed in the town had an identity that could be ascribed to terroir. Brewers might not be able to ascribe the qualities of their beers to the angle of the sun on the mash tun or whether it was raining when the fermentation took place, but the raw materials of our favourite beers all have a story waiting to be told, whether it’s hardy hop bines struggling in the cold winds of East Kent during March and April, when the flavour and aroma of the hop begins to form, or sturdy stalks of grain taking their time to mature as another summer sea fog rolls in along the north Norfolk coast.’

Thornbridge — variety is the Weiss of life

2011-06-30T08:00:00.001+01:00

I first drank Weiss in a bar in Eindhoven in 1986. My mate was working out there then and it was his stag night (cor that was a night and a half) — I also drank Duvel for the first time and the hangover was a ferocious beast locked in a large cage aiming to get out and have a go at the first human it saw. At the time, my mate was putting a slice of lemon on the side of his glass, which I briefly followed as it seemed like the height of beer sophistication (hold on a moment is this sort of gimcrack gimmickery suggested for Blue Moon?). I don’t know which Weiss it was, but I enjoyed it, enjoyed the creamy, banana-like fullness and thus a love affair began. Later on in the 1980s I bought a selection of Weiss on offer in the Independent in conjunction with Michael Jackson’s beer column (to this day still the best ever regular beer reading in the printed press — that would be the first thing I turned to when Saturday came). I drunk Weiss throughout the 1990s and was shown the trick of turning a bottle upside down into your glass without it overflowing by a Peruvian barman in Aachen. I remember about 10 years ago when British breweries were making wheat beers, rather than Weiss, though Pilgrim did a pretty good approximation of one; can’t remember the name though (Springbok perhaps?). I even judged at a wheat beer festival in the White Horse sometime in the early noughties. This incredibly long preamble is not merely about stating how much I like Weiss, but as a way of getting to Thornbridge’s Versa Weisse, a couple of bottles of which appeared in the post this morning as if by magic (thanks guys). If you want to read more about the technical side of things (the yeast is Weihenstephaner WLP 300), then go here, but I’m pretty impressed with what Thornbridge have done — they’ve kept to a low IBU, so no big hoppiness, no passion fruit or lychees or grapefruit, just bananas and bugglegum. It pours golden caramel in colour, has banana, vanilla, bubblegum and some clove on the nose, though not as clove-like as sticking your nose in a jar of cloves. There’s a crisp carbonation in the mouthfeel and it’s superbly appetising (I suggest juicy Old Spot pork sausages); there’s a refreshing bite on the palate, more of that banana custard, a hint of clove-like phenols, some lemon — it’s 5% so you don’t get too much of the alcoholic fatness you might get from 5.5% or thereabouts, yet it’s impeccably refreshing (a cool linen suit in the hot sun), and the dryness in the finish with the reappearance of banana custard makes for a pretty impressive stab at a Bavarian Weiss. Give me this over the thin gruel of Erdinger any day.

Oh and I got it in bottle but I think it is going out in keg as well and launched tonight at the Sheffield Tap. I think I would go if I was in the vicinity.

White Shield — some personal thoughts and a mention of Holsten

2011-06-27T08:00:00.003+01:00

Holsten for me mate! I can remember when I first came across White Shield. Third year of college. Several of us in a pub — for some reason I always think the Free Press, but am not sure; it could have been the Blue Ball or some god-forsaken hole en route to one of the climbing club’s weekends away. But all I remember is my mate Simon ordering this bottle of ale and the barman pouring it out very carefully — did he say so as not to disturb the yeast? I don’t recall. I do remember tasting the beer, pulling a face and going back to my Holsten (a popular choice in those days — 10 bottles on a Friday night and I’d come up smiling on a Saturday morning ready for a cooked breakfast, the Guardian and lusting after Sally James on Tiswas). Was it this one-sip stand the reason that I’ve always had a rocky relationship with the beer (I call it a beer rather than a brand, hope that’s ok…) — looking at my notes for the King & Barnes-brewed one in 1998 I felt it too ‘fizzy’ (email me if you want whole chapter and verse, the learning curve was yet to come). I was pleased when it returned to Burton (history and all that) and Steve Wellington became its curator — he was my first ever beer interview and I remember being nervous about what I would ask him, I mean I’d been interviewing pop stars for years, but brewers… Anyway, over the years I kept being disappointed with White Shield, it was ok, but… I didn’t get it. Fast forward to the end of last year and a chat during a Burton beer dinner saw some White Shield coming my way for ageing — my theory was that the beer is released too young, too frisky, too coltish, too prone to dancing the light fantastic on the palate and making you think: so what… So I have left my White Shield for six months and this is what I thought. Am I right?

Dark golden caramel in colour; on the nose notes of nuttiness, wood, a bittersweetness (almond hints), some marzipan, a brief flurry of sherry-like notes with a Cointreau like orange character though without the fullness; the palate is bittersweet with a dry finish if you want to be basic, but there are hints of orange (orange blossom even), that nutty woodiness, and a fatness from the alcohol. It’s a library of beer with a babel of accents and voices, but there’s also a subtlety of taste; I’m not interested in raising the ghosts of IPA but it is a pretty noble beer at this age; in the finish there is a hint of roast hazelnut — talking of which the finish keeps reverberating away like the last notes of a finished symphony moments in a concert hall (if you’ve experienced this, you sit there and have a struggle in reconciling the reality of the end of the concert with the almost physical sensation of the music still extent in the air — I think Mahler’s 2nd is best for this). The beer is refined, restrained but yet cleavage-like in its tantalisation (this is the article that inspired me here) — rounded, luxurious, voluptuous. I rather think I like it these days but I would always leave it for several months. As for Holsten? Whatever happened there?

Barrels Hereford Men telling pub tales

2011-06-23T17:34:00.001+01:00

First there was one man with his pint in front of him, then another before the two became a group of six roistering, bantering, wise-cracking elderly pub friends who presumably meet like this now and again — every day, once a week, who knows, I’m not moving to Hereford to find out. But it was fun sitting with my glass of HPA at Barrels, in the bar where the counter rests on seven varnished wooden barrels. Big buggers they are, the barrels that is, cider or ale I’m not sure. I would say an 18 or maybe a 36 or maybe it’s cider. Someone will know. The friendly barman drops some ice cubs on the floor. ‘Sack the juggler’ shouts the man who was there first, taking a deep draught of his Wye Valley Bitter. Then the tales come forward, the stories (for what is a pub but a place where stories are told). The staccato bursts from the older drinkers, as opposed to the more leisurely drawl of the two younger guys who sit in another space at the back of the bar. ‘He had put his trousers on inside out and was trying to put his hands in his pocket,’ laughed another man, who a moment ago had been ridiculing someone else’s choice of horse for the day’s races. They all laughed, even I smirked and lifted my pint of HPA (light dusting of lemony sugar on the nose; on the palate appetising with a dry grapefruit/lemon sweetness, a crisp cracker-like mouth-watering balance and a grainy dry finish) to hide the fact that I was listening, but then I thought it didn’t matter as I’m sure that they knew I was listening. The pub is the repository of tales and a place where drinkers act out their lives, upon these wooden floorboards the thespians of the glass do tread. And the Barrels? Old hotel opened up with the bar as a hub around which all the activities act. I leave the stage after Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout (voluptuous and vinous, raisins, currants, slightly peaty, I could still taste it on the train back, perhaps the fact that Wye Valley founder Peter Amor worked for Guinness leaves a clue here), and the men are still talking and laughing and they bid me goodbye. I like this place.

Cooper’s Brewery — Vintage wizards of Oz

2011-06-22T08:00:00.001+01:00

Sometimes I sit at home and drink old beers and marvel at the complexities on display — and that’s all I do. And so it has been in the last few days as my collection of Thomas Hardy’s Ale has diminished; a Fuller’s Brewers Reserve tucked into (I blame sitting next to John Keeling whilst judging at Cardiff last Friday, he just made me want to drink all my Fuller’s beers) — and then there were the two Cooper’s Vintages I perused at the weekend, one from 2002 and the other 2006. It’s not that I’ve been to Oz, but about five years ago the Covent Garden Porterhouse hosted a vertical tasting of all the Vintage Ales produced by Cooper’s. Present was the brewery’s Executive Director Glenn Cooper who told the assembled that the first Vintage was brewed in 1999. ‘I wanted to do something special, so the brewers made a quickie which proved to be a massive success in Australia and Vintage was born. The brewers then took ownership of it and they come up with variations on a theme every year — brewing this involves a lot of passion. We were the first in Australia to have a Vintage, the others just copied us.’ Cooper’s are best known for a Sparkling Ale, a brash and breezy, hopped and happy in the glass Australian ale, but I’m also over fond of their roasty-toasty stout that used to be in the UK.

Anyway, there I was on Sunday, back from walking the dog and a pint or two of Tribute (us country folk have such benign pleasures) and I thought why not go vintage? Funnily enough first up was the 2006 (I thought I would only have one). This was tan/chestnut brown in the glass and offered up a clovey, medicinal, dandelion and burdock character on the palate, appetising, chewy, contemplative; there was brisk carbonation, not too frisky, a young dog who has learnt the rudiments of obedience but still carries within the spirit of puppydom; it was very refreshing for 7.5%. Then, wanting more, I tried the 2002 — this was still and limpid in the glass, had a darker chestnut brown colour. There was fruitcake, raisin, marzipan plus a hint of berry (raspberry?) on the palate; again this was very refreshing, while its finish was dry with hints of the raspberry fruitiness coming back again. These were great beers, though I do think that the 2002 was starting to lose its edge. And just for the sake of it, because it was Sunday evening, I opened the bottle of Turbo Yeast Utter Abhorrence from Beyond the Ninth Level of Hades II that Stuart Howe in his Christian kindness had sent me — in a brief nutshell of madness I drank deeply. It was dark plum in colour, whisky-like, medicinal on the nose; thick and tarry on the palate, with a hint of woodruff, long lasting in the finish like a big bell clanging away. An imperious beer that I rather liked though at 23% I don’t think I could drink many of these.

Out of interest, here are my tasting notes from the 2006 tasting

Cooper’s Vintage Ale 1999, 7.1%

Reddish-copper in colour, it is cloudy in the glass. The nose is rich fruitcake, raisins, orange marmalade, warming alcohol and boiled sweets; a complex palate includes rich Bakewell tart, almonds, a dessert wine such as an orange Muscat. The finish is bittersweet and fruity. This is a rich and stately ale, which could be started to show its age.

Cooper’s Vintage Ale 2000, 7.4%

Saaz joins Pride of Ringwood in the copper. The colour is caramel brown; it is not as deep a reddish tint as the first beer. The nose is cherry, peachy and slightly peppery. There’s a big mouth feel, more sprightly conditioning on the palate and an almost gueuze-like orange fruitiness. Once again it’s a bittersweet fruity finish.

Cooper’s Vintage 2002, 7.4/7.5%

Pride of Ringwood plus Hersbrucker. The colour is orange-brown, deeper in colour than the last. The nose is perfumy, and joined by boiled sweets and a slight hint of woodiness. Toffee, caramel, flowery hints and sweet Muscat dessert wine all vie for attention on the palate, while the finish is dry and slightly sweet.

Cooper’s Vintage Ale 2004, 7.5%

Pride of Ringwood plus Hersbrucker, Saaz and Cascade. This light-chestnut red coloured ale is the most bitterest we have had. The nose is cherry, hop resins and the faint call of citrus orange. The palate stings with its bitterness, though balance is restored with fruit, hop resins and rich fruit jelly. The finish is dry and hoppy bitter.

Cooper’s Vintage Ale, 2006, 7.6%

Pride of Ringwood and Saaz, while the yeast strain they use for Sparkling Ale is used. They should give banana hints to the flavour. According the Glenn Cooper, the yeast they used before was in the ‘reserves’. The beer is dark gold in colour, and is blessed with a very perfumey aroma that has hop resins, orange fruit and banana in its trail. The palate is a luscious little swine with banana and bitter orange, while the bitterness count seems higher than before. It is very rich and fruity with a stinging bitter finish.

Cooper’s Vintage Ale, 2007, 7.8%

Pride of Ringwood and Saaz. This is reddish-brown in colour with a muted bubblegum, bananas, and strawberry ice cream character on the nose. The palate features hop resins, a tingly fruitiness and excellent zingy condition. The finish is bittersweet. This felt very young and would improve with age.

Beer or wine? Come to Hay-on-Wye to find out

2011-06-18T12:29:00.000+01:00

Cheese and beer at Marble — yum

Once upon a time I used to treat wine with the reverence that we treat beer with. In 1993 I went to several wine classes and tastings conducted by Serena Sutcliffe and David Peppercorn, bought wine magazines and laid down a few bottles. However, that time has long passed and I rarely have a glass these days — maybe the odd Rioja or a Cahors, but that’s it. It’s not that I despise wine, but I don’t have any room for it in my drinking life. Which is why I am looking forward to this coming Wednesday where I will be doing a wine vs beer tasting at Kilvert’s in Hay-on-Wye. We have a six-course dinner and I have chosen a beer for each course, while Julian Risby from Marston’s has chosen the same amount of wines. I’ve got Otley’s Saison Obscura, Anchor Steam, Aventinus, Orval, Boon Kriek and Hardknott Granite, while Julian has put up Riesling, Tempranillo, Semillon-Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Rose and Port. It should be fun and if you fancy coming along for an evening of good food, beer and wine then the details and the menu can be found here.

Euston Tap eulogy again

2011-06-14T17:18:00.000+01:00

Why is it that every time I visit the Euston Tap I am in a rush? First time I went I was desperate to catch a train westwards; the next time I visited was rather late in the evening but I managed to grab a couple of convivial drinks with former manager Yan. This afternoon I was heading out east but still managed to hoist 20 minutes — and I still think it’s a remarkable and aesthetically pleasing re-imagining of what constitutes a beer bar/pub. This time, as I was on my own, I managed to have a better look at the copper bar back with its taps sticking out and the narrow copper sink at the bottom (it all looks as if it were from the same piece of metal). It’s the sort of thing I reckon is inspired by what I have seen been used for run-offs of the wort during the mash at breweries such as Budvar and St Austell (I remember going to SA in 2006 to brew a Kōlsch style beer with Roger Ryman; it was also a normal brewing day and I was handed a glass of fresh wort — it was unbearably sweet, but some of the brewing staff loved it; at least I didn’t have the brewer’s breakfast: fresh wort with a raw egg in it). I also never fail to be amused by the tap handles poking out of the sheet of copper either. Very craft beer US brewpub meets comic book — and why not?

I had time for a pint of Camden Pale Ale, which I have had before and been beguiled by the delicate floral aromatics and its general joie de vivre. This time I was disappointed by its limpid Sargasso Sea character while the boiled sweet (lemon) note at the back of the throat distracted me. On the other hand, the Thornbridge Colorado Red Odell collaboration was a magnificent rich old master of aromatic malts, plum fruitiness, grapefruit and alcohol all strapped onto a fulsome Christina Hendricks of a body. So last word: I do love the way that the likes of the Rake, the various Taps, the Port Street Beer House, Southampton Arms, Falmouth’s Hand and North Bar have all widened and evolved the beer drinking experience — having written features over the years about innovation in the brewing industry (which seems to look to the Simon Cowell crowd-pleasing mode of thinking, apart from the exception of Innis & Gunn, whom I still rate apart from their recent fruit beer expressions), these guys have come up with a truer sense of innovation that no one saw coming.

One night in Moscow

2011-06-07T23:35:00.001+01:00

‘Beer please. I mean, Pivo…Piva? Pilsner? Pivo.’ Ah the international language of beer. I speak three words of Russian and the waitress probably does the same with English. Not to worry. Into the dining room at a Durdin beer restaurant (the one near Polyanka Metro) I go — great steampunk website by the way. There’s a small bar but I carried on through into the restaurant. Here, napkins on tables, long windows looking out into the heavy traffic that never seemed to stop in Moscow; a bit of post-industrial metal work tracing across the ceiling, there’s another space upstairs; in another city this could have done time as an atelier; brassiere-like, smoking allowed. Ah, here she comes, menu in hand. When she returns to take my order, sweet smile, no doubt a mask hiding irritation at having to deal with such a schmuck. Toothy grin, ingratiating, slightly embarrassed, horsy, from me. Point at the beer tester of five. Pilsner, Bohemian Dark, North Star, Cabinet Red and Weiss (and for a moment I think it how remarkable that Weiss went from being an old folks beer in the 1960s to one of the universal ‘speciality’ beers of the world these days — in a counter-factual universe imagine the same have happened to mild? Blue Mild? Mild Blue?). пиво it will be then. Sounds like a cliché but a long-legged blonde settles in the corner, lights up a cigarette and orders a Weiss. A few minutes later an older man, with a face like a more genial Putin comes in and they both move to a table in the middle of the room. Elsewhere, young blokes, suits and haircuts you’d see on bank lads and web designers in English cities come in and fill themselves with Pilsner. Talking of which: the filtered Pilsner is clean and crisp and has a slight hint of caramel in the body; the North Star is non-filtered and has a strange sarsaparilla character (you want style, but you’re not having style); the Weiss is thin, flat, calm and limpid with regulation bananas and custard. So far and the Pilsner is the only beer that really calls to me, only in the same way though as some bloke across the road waving cause I’ve dropped my paper. Bohemian Dark is filtered but has caramel, treacle and cough mixture on the palate — I rather like it. I don’t like the Cabinet Red — all sweetness and caramel and nothing in between its ears. I plump for a half litre of the Pilsner, which is served in a dimpled pot bellied mug (hold on this ain’t the Jolly Butchers is it?). Beef Stroganoff follows — an assault of cream on the arteries that decides that I will walk back to the hotel via Red Square and the Arbat. And on the way back I duck into a bar in the Arbat that promises draft Schneider. Pivo.

Taste

2011-05-31T22:01:00.000+01:00

‘I like tastes that know their own minds, The reason that people who detest fish often tolerate sole is that sole doesn’t taste very much like fish, and even this degree of resemblance disappears when it is submerged in the kind of sauce that patrons of Piedmontese restaurants in London and New York think characteristically French. People with the same apathy toward decided flavour relish ‘South African lobster’ tails — frozen as long as the Siberian mammoth — because they don’t taste lobstery… They prefer processed cheese because it isn’t cheesy, and synthetic vanilla extract because it isn’t vanillary. They have made a triumph of the Delicious apple because it doesn’t taste like an apple, and of the Golden Delicious because it doesn’t taste like anything. In a related field, ‘dry’ (non-beery) beer and ‘light’ (non-Scotchlike) Scotch are more of the same. The standard of perfection for vodka (no colour, no taste, no smell) was expounded to me long ago by the then Estonian consul-general in New York, and it accounts perfectly for the drink’s rising popularity with those who like their alcohol in conjunction with the reassuring tastes of infancy — tomato juice, orange juice, chicken broth. It is the ideal intoxicant for the drinker who wants no reminder of how hurt Mother would be if she knew what he was doing.’

AJ Liebling, Between Meals, 1959

A visit to Hook Norton

2011-05-26T22:02:00.000+01:00

Arcadia itself. Birdsong, cows lowing in the distance, a tall late-Victorian tower brewery lifting itself to heaven in front of me, pagoda like, greenness all around, the sour-sweet smell of brewing like spindrift in the air, I could only be at Hook Norton. This has to be one of my favourite breweries in England — hidden away in a beautiful village, down Brewery Lane, past the old maltings where now a Visitor Centre dispenses packs of beer that include Double Stout, Flagship and Haymaker, as well as being home to a compact but highly effective museum about Hook Norton, both the brewery and the village. I’ve been to the National Brewery Centre thrice in the past few months and nothing has given me as much a tingle about our national drink as the one long room at Hook Norton. The cheesy, Gorgonzola like smell of old hop sacks, a shelf of books from the early decades of the 20th century, guides to the breweries of England, old photos and artefacts, a pride in family, an old wort cooler, wooden barrels — there was something about it that inspired Proustian, Madeleine cake moments reaching back into my past, bringing up the innocence that accompanied my first discoveries of beer (it wasn’t campaigning that got me into cask beer but the flavour, the pubs, the Joycean-like evocation of community, the feeling of coming home, just like the first time I cooked from Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking, a time when the earth was young).

I stand there chatting with Hook Norton’s avuncular MD James Clarke, with whom I have shared several pints in the last couple of years, a great guy, a beer man who has a tremendous pride in his family’s brewing heritage (we’re due to visit some pubs later). His great-grandfather built the brewery that stands so solidly in a dip in the village. Six stories high, a place of steps, whitewashed walls, wooden floor, banisters, and brewing equipment, a landscape of puzzles and conundrums and surprises — what’s behind this door? Oh, it’s the fermenting room, with open vessels. Rare these days. I remember the smell and sight of them at Young’s in Wandsworth and — conversely — Zywiec Porter in Cieszyn on the Czech Polish border. Why open? Does it help the flavour or the production? The answer — it’s always been done this way and why not continue this way? It works for Hook Norton and why shouldn’t it continue this way? There is a sort of Constructivist/Brutualist beauty about brand new stainless steel, but I also enjoy the air of a brewery that seems to have grown organically over the years, like a city that was once a settlement beside a river. Rus in urbe.

And then the beer: I have always loved Old Hooky, a hint of mocha coffee, bossed about by bold citrus fruitiness and ending with a biscuity, cracker-like dryness; Double Stout, chocolate-coated coffee beans and a sensuous, luscious, creamy character. For those long hot sunny days, when it hasn’t rained for a while and the smell of dried hay in a barn is a tonic of its own, there’s Haymaker: bruised gold in colour while the palate is reminiscent of the tang of tangerine kept in line with a thrusting bitter note. The brewery used to produce a beer called Haymaker towards the end of the 19th century, just for the agricultural community — a saison perhaps? Then I had Flagship, lemon, sherbert, pungent and a plunge into the hopsack. An IPA? I asked James. He nodded. It’s not new (2006/07 I think?), but this one had passed me by. I dither and take a detour when offered a lot of bottle conditioned beers but Flagship was and is a glorious exception to the rule (I drink one now and think it on a par with White Shield). And as I sit here in another glorious part of the countryside I think of how far beer is from its rural roots — even though beer starts in a field its link to the countryside is broken as soon as those precious seeds of barley leave for the malting — and take myself back to the birdsong, the lowing of the cows and above all the spindrift of brewing in the air. Et in Arcadia ego.

A beer festival in Exmoor

2011-05-24T10:16:00.000+01:00

If you’re out and about on Exmoor this weekend why not come down to Dulverton where the Bridge is having its annual beer festival to coincide with an equally annual folk festival. Landlord Kenny has got together a small but perfectly formed beer list that I shall be making inroads into as soon as I return from a school meeting on Friday afternoon (cue asking teachers if they can hurry up as I need to get on the beer). If you’re a habitual user of the new craft beer scene in London, Manchester or Leeds then you might say so what, but this is the west country, where as Boak and Bailey noted this week here, brown beer is very much in the ascendency — anyway, if you do decide to pop over here’s what you might see: Otley 05; Moor Illusion, Merlin’s Magic, Northern Star; Bristol Beer Factory’s Bristol Stout; Thornbridge Kipling, Jaipur (last year a cask was drained in two hours); Castle Rock Harvest Ale; Skinners Porthleven along with the usual regulars. No BrewDog this year sadly — we were hoping for Hardcore, but it’s not to be. Oh and there’s Orval, Flying Dog, Brooklyn and Westmalle in the fridge. I shall be the man with the broken guitar and sawn off bongos.

Kvass-conditioned beer?

2011-05-18T16:29:00.000+01:00

Kvass. The Russian cola I am told. And it’s a superb soft drink. Rye dough, slight hint of honey on the nose, refreshing, honeyed, pleasing sweetness and firm breadiness on the palate, quick finish. Refreshing as anything, once you get used to it. Much better than coke or Shandy, doesn’t have that mouth rattling sweetness of stomach poking gassiness. Is it a beer? Not in the way one thinks of beer, but it’s the juice of fermented grain, so you might say it’s the person next door who shares a taste in music but doesn’t play it so loud. The Kvass I drunk was made by a brewery, Ochakovsky, and I had it in a café in GUM, the massive mall on Red Square in Moscow (Lenin looks like a mannequin lying there in his tomb). The brewery says that their Kvass is ‘made by a unique technology of two-level fermentation… special ferment from pure culture of kvass yeast and lactic bacteria.’ No hops of course but honey or herbs are often added and connoisseurs of Kvass eschew brands like the one I had and search for the homemade stuff, one of which I was told was made in some monastery in Moscow and was the very best. It shares a similar malt character to beer and chestnut brown in the glass (with a reddish blossom) it certainly has the look of a beer. It’s low in alcohol (I couldn’t find any information on the bottle), which is why kids and adults both drink it. Not a bad lunchtime drink and possibly a good way of introducing young palates to the complexities of beer. Kvass with hops? Now you’re talking…

An ad for Bombardier featuring Rik Mayall, that’s it really

2011-05-15T12:25:00.000+01:00

Occasionally enjoy Bombardier now and again, if it’s in good nick, I think it was the first pint of ale that I drank when I went to college, though I can’t remember what I thought of it. Cider, lager, bitter, whatever, I wasn’t too choosy what I drank in those days, with the ferocity of the hangover the next morning being more of a yardstick than anything else (for that reason I avoided Abbot). So (along with many others I suspect) I get an email to tell me about a new ad for Bombardier featuring Rik Mayall doing a riff on his Blackadder Captain Flashheart character, except here he’s called Bombardier. It’s vulgar in a seaside postcard sort of way, Young Ones-ish with cobwebs on, Sharpe rather than Sharps, while the shots of Mayall nutting cannonballs brought a smile to my face, but it’s an advert (and you can see it here). I’m not interested in whether it’s good or bad, whether it’s good for beer’s image or not (plenty of others can mount the podium on that score), whether it’s effective in its message. It’s an ad. Others with an interest in such things can disconstruct, declaim and dissent about the meaning. But it’s an ad. Bombardier, like Greene King IPA and London Pride, is one of those beers that you will probably pass if there’s a Thornbridge, BrewDog or whatever is the beer of the week on at the bar, but it’s still a beer and I’ve enjoyed the odd pint, last time about a year ago, a freshly tapped glass in a country pub while out cycling. Delicious. Maybe it’s time for my yearly pint.

Taking a holiday in other people’s happiness

2011-05-07T09:42:00.000+01:00

Halfway House, Pitney, where I engaged in a scintillating
conversation with a local about the filthiness of farmhouse cider

Am currently writing a pub book that has involved visiting loads of them (for instance I’m hoping to get to four today, was at one last night and two on Thursday) — it’s very much brief visits, taking a holiday in other people’s happiness as the Sex Pistols might have said if they’d been happy types. However, what it’s reminding me, as if I really needed to be reminded, is that despite difficult trading, pessimism over pub cos, beer prices etc, the pub stands firm. I don’t subscribe to the notion that we are seeing the last of pubs, but I also don’t feel that there is a need for complacency. Last night I was at the Yarcombe Inn, a rural roadside boozer that was shut for a couple of years and then — with the help of a TV programme — opened up again with the help of the local community. I walked in and the barman immediately engaged me in a conversation about the rain — I felt welcome. At the bar, people came and went, knew each other, there was a real sense of community; the beer — Otter Amber — was light and refreshing and the interior a mish mash of old agricultural inn ambience with various amendments down the years. It was homely, comfortable, uncluttered and organic. I loved it. I’m not surprised that the local CAMRA branch made it their pub of the year. Another pub that I also swooned over was the Crown in Stockport and you can read my review of it in today’s Daily Telegraph here.

What’s an unfashionable brewery?

2011-05-03T06:36:00.000+01:00

What’s an unfashionable brewery? Is it one whose staff don terrible clothes and refuse to look like rock stars? Or is it a brewery whose beers refuse to — as what is commonly known — stretch the boundary of what we know as beer (guilty of using the phrase several times but…shrugs shoulders)? What’s a fashionable brewery then? That’s an easier question to answer. BrewDog, Thornbridge, Kernel, Camden: four names that swim into my consciousness with the sleekness of a torpedo slamming into the steel plates of a rusty old destroyer (the latter a metaphor for unfashionable beers perhaps?). Hops, collaborations (it’s good to see that beer has reclaimed the word collaboration from its taint of Vichy and Quisling), a certain swagger, shout-outs from the fans, expectations, great epoch shattering beers (if beer can shatter an epoch which it palpably cannot but what the hell). What about the unfashionable breweries then? Are they doomed to linger alone and unloved by those who see themselves in the vanguard of beer fashion? To be picked up and preened by the nameless many?

These navel-gazing thoughts come to me after I’d drunk a bottle of The Leveller from Springhead, a defiantly unfashionable brewery in defiantly unfashionable Sutton-on-Trent. Visited them several years back, always enjoyed Roaring Meg, their strongish blond beer whose naming following the brewery’s tradition of using an English Civil War theme for their beers’ names (Roaring Meg was a cannon used during that period — it roared and like ships the guns were given women’s names, perhaps a subconscious male desire to haul pacifistic women onto the militarist bandwagon). At the time the Springhead brewery was an internal landscape of stainless steel, pumps and undeterminable metal instruments. A brick-built, single-storied home that had little romance about it — they had moved there in 1992 and expanded to four units. Now their expansion continues and they’ve recently moved to a converted old mill in a north Notts village and I suspect that the new plant will have a similarly abstract ambience about its interior. They might be unfashionable but they’re doing well.

And The Leveller (I don’t think I have to explain the origins of this name)? It’s a dark chestnut colour with crimson tints. The nose has a dusty, powdery chocolate — milk — character. On the first gulp I’m minded to enjoy its milky, coffee-mocha chocolate feathering with the sweetness kept under reins by a resiny, earthy, almost woody-like sternness; there are also some hints of blackcurrant. The carbonation is a bit brisk but it’s nevertheless a beer that I rather enjoyed. And all this from a brewery that slips below the radar — it’s not going to change the world but it’s rather delicious and a pretty satisfying partner to roast lamb (even use some in the gravy).

Hand it to Falmouth

2011-04-30T10:32:00.001+01:00

Small bar, darkish, in the brewery yard (right location then), in the corner, off the sunny road that flies through the sunny site of Falmouth — I’m doing a beer tasting. A couple of moths ago I was asked if I would like to do a tasting of Otley’s beers at the Hand Bar in Falmouth, a place the mighty titan (or should that be Titian?) of brewing Stuart Howe had told me about. He had been there some time before and so I felt I had a hard road to follow.

I like Falmouth. I like Falmouth, love its maritime museum as well as the feel of its high street that hasn’t been colonised by the sort of shops that the majority of people seem to love (but then that’s their choice — if you like Tesco then you like Tesco and Tesco likes you, why worry about it). Old shops, sweet shops, chips shops, clothes shops, the sort of shops that folk in Bristol apparently take to the street to defend (though whether they’re defending shops or something else is up to debate). I like Falmouth.

There’s a great relic of a pub out there. The Seven Stars is a study in pubs, an Austro Hungarian survivor of a pub that I immediately fell in love with. It’s decrepit; so what does that mean? The Bass comes from the barrel and is magnificent; other beers come from the barrel, from Sharps and Skinners. The interior peels. The bloke to my left burps as I take a pic. Don’t worry about it I say I’m not recording, said with that sort of jocular ‘hey I’m just like you’ middle class voice. I don’t care comes back. There are always moments like this when I feel like a tourist. But then I don’t care either. I love pubs and a windy guy isn’t going to get in my way. The Seven Stars is cracking in the sense that it’s visibly falling to bits but also perhaps one of the most authentically earthy pubs I have ever been to. People on benches outside cackle as I take a photo...

Then onto Hand, magnificent in its compact space in an old brewery yard (W & EC Carne, set up in the second half of the 19th century, where wine, corn and rope would be jostling for space with barrels of beer; if that wasn’t enough they were also shipbrokers; in 1921, JA Devenish swallowed them up). It is reminiscent of the Rake except at the moment there is no cask beer as such, but a platoon of taps plus a battalion of bottles — Brooklyn Lager et al(e) — this is a different space for the beer fans out here who fight fights about the merits of Proper Job vs Cornish Knocker vs Doom Bar. I love this place, it’s new, it’s got the feel of something different. The tasting seemed to go well, people have their likes and dislikes which is what I encourage in a tasting — there’s nothing worse than nodding one’s head like a mechanical donkey. I like the dialogue of beer tasting. The O8 was Riesling with hops while — polishes badge of merit with pride — the Sasion Obscura went down a storm. So If you’re off to Cornwall this summer then Falmouth is a great beery destination as not only is there Hand, there is the Seven Stars (the most decrepit pub in existence, which is a plus) and Front with its excellent selection of ciders and beer. Falmouth: forego the surfing at Newquay and force yourself to Falmouth. You will not be disappointed.

Oh and if you want to read my review of Batham’s Vine in today’s DT it’s here.

#Beer

2011-04-27T08:41:00.001+01:00

It’s the weekend of the folk festival. Held every Whitsun, wedded in association to high hopes that the sun will sling itself high and shine on assorted revellers and beer drinkers. Beer drinkers? This is also the weekend of the town’s annual beer festival, carnivalesque in its devotion to the enjoyment and contemplation of the national drink — an array of ales ranging from the elegant and sprightly to strong, heady draughts. Amarillo, is this the way to? No, I’m afraid it’s not. But it is the name of a hop with which that beer over there is powerfully seasoned. Like a pint of the usual? Yes, but there’s more than the usual on display this weekend.

Here they come, down the street, a rag tag army of Morris men, be-whiskered musicians, guitars slung on their backs bandolier-like, shoulder to shoulder with clog-dancers, clacking and shucking into town. Here they come proceeding over the bridge, tattered banners waving in the wind, flapping and slapping, drunken harlequins and jesters, bent and disarrayed at the front of the column, swaying and gesturing to the townsfolk, while the sound of the drum at the back of the column, solemn, funereal, will signify the start of a weekend of neo-bacchanalian fun. And in company with these lost battalions in the search for fun will be John Barleycorn, whose own music is the splash and dash of a beer in the glass, the slight sparkle of carbonation, the whisper on the wind. A pale glass of sunshine or a more brooding darker slab of something stronger? Beer, beer, beer — the town goes mad for beer.

Beer runs through our society with the sureness and fluency of a river making its way to the sea. It oils the wheels of discourse, provides the currency for the exchange of ideas, and helps like-minded souls link arms and celebrate the sense of being alive. Beer comes with us, an invited guest, on our many journeys through life. The passage of exams: time for a pint; the game won and the team on top: time for a pint; the new child born and a new life begun: time for a pint; return from the battlefield, salute to fallen comrades: time for a pint. Servicemen and woman flying home from Afghanistan see a beer thrust into their hands as soon as they board the flight. Beer: it’s a simple way of saying thank you.

Beer in the pub, the public house, the British pub, with which at 16 I fell in love, he said. Sit in a venerable pub, its age paged on the sheets of history; who was in here on VE night? What were they drinking? I was in a pub in Bath on the day England won the rugby world cup, he continued, eager to please, a pint of Pitchfork in his hand. Voices ebbed and flowed, the excitement of triumph — two Australian women strolled in, rueful smiles. ‘Have a beer with us,’ came the cry. A sense of commiseration and companionship waved throughout the room. Beer as the unifier of nations.

Back in the town, those in the know are told, several times over, memories prodded, just in case they forgot, that Kipling is already on at the bar of the pub nearest the bridge from whence the capering came. Wild Swan and Jaipur are ready and waiting in the wings as well, for their weekend beer festival fun. Then there’s Wherry, Woodforde’s that is, named after the Parson who put on paper every dish and glass that passed and swayed in front of him, both provision and porter. Proper Job, 5AM Saint, O8, Old Hooky. Beer, beer, beer — the town will be going mad for beer.

And early in the evening see the beer fans creep down the high street, seemingly unwilling students of ale, Shakespeare’s reluctant schoolboy, snail-like and yet excited, eager to see what Kipling has in store for them. ‘It’s garbage,’ sneers Robbie, at the end of the bar, a pint of Common or Garden Ale to hand, his usual draught, his daily tipple, all said with somewhat of a large tongue in cheek. ‘It’s not beer,’ he growls, low Devon burr, like the sound of warthog snuffling in the mud, ‘you’re only pretending to like it.’

Behind the bar, up pops Connor, jack in the box, jack o’ the green — ‘cider’s my thing, but I’ll give it a go, smells like lychees, fresh mango’ — agrees that he enjoyed it, while I, the eponymous I, take my glass outside for proper study; like a wraith Robbie suddenly appears on another table, fag in hand, Common or Garden swirling in the glass like one of those fairground attractions that whirl around and around under its devotees spill their guts with visceral loathing.

On another table, a jester sits, resting after jesting, twirling a small baton in his left hand, a grey pewter tankard in the other. Lifts it up, the tankard that is, toasts the two of us. ‘Wrong, you can’t go wrong with Old Hooky. Where I live, where I live, this is on all the time, love it, love it love it love it.’ A man dressed as a jester pretends to go out of control on Old Hooky, foot on sturdy wooden table, face like a walnut, mouth in a tangle.

For me, at last it’s time for Kipling, a beer that pouts and blows kisses at me, crooks its little finger and draws me in. Ah here it is. Luscious and luminescent in the glass, orange-amber, swaying and sashaying across the palate, Carmen Miranda with a bowl of tropical fruit on her head doing a rumba, lychees, melon and passion fruit. South Pacific Pale Ale it said on the pump clip, sums it up in a funny sort of way; there is nothing like a dame transfigured into a glass. But lo, time passes and the beer passes into glasses as the people come and go. Beer, beer, beer.

Beer’s moments echo down the centuries: John Barleycorn journeyed with the blessed martyr Thomas a Beckett, a man of Kent, a man of ale, when he went to the French, barrels of ale in train, good clear ale. Centuries went by and John Barleycorn sat in the Tabard Inn, to the south of the Thames, on the road to Kent, the noise of a crowd, pilgrims all, Canterbury bound. He was the man who sat with fat Jack Falstaff in the taverns of Cheapside, ear cocked to his tales of valour and derring-do, ale in hand, sack to follow. Pot-valiant he was, the victor of many a battle he declared, a man made braver by ale, though some around did talk about beer, a potation flavoured with a noxious weed, the hop. And there he was with Good Queen Bess, strong ale her first love (before Essex perhaps?), ale as strong as the men that broke the Armada.

In peace and war John Barleycorn was there. He saw the muddy sun rise itself with a sense of hesitation over the broken and bloody place of Marston Moor, filled with the tattered debris of the old King’s men, men never to speak again, never to love again, never to drink beer again, awry on the ground. Some say John Barleycorn died in the squares of Waterloo, drowned in the mud of the Somme, was downed in the air over Kent, and is down and out in the mean streets of Nowheretown where the shutters come down on a ghostly host of pubs. But I know he lives yet.

And at the pub, the jester jests, beer in hand — and all about people laugh, talk, sing and dance. Beer the accompaniment to their lives. The japes and jollities that roll along with beer in its passage through our lives. Beer: the wine of the country. Beer: the soul of the country. Beer: the song of the country (‘Or why was Burton built on Trent?’). As long as the tales are told John Barleycorn lives.

This was my entry for the recent Bombardier beer writing competition and I’m merely following in the footsteps of Zak Avery who has posted his entry here — the winner, Milton Crawford, was announced several weeks ago and you can read his excellent work here.

Glass of new wave Brit craft lager please

2011-04-22T09:43:00.000+01:00

The sun is out (well it will be soon out here in cloudy Exmoor) and I fancy a Helles, or do I have a Pilsner? Or a cool Dunkel? Or even an Imperial (or imperious…) Pilsner — definition of which could be: Special Brew that you can show your girlfriend without her thinking that lounging in wet trousers on a park bench is your ultimate aim in life. My guide to 10 Brit craft lagers on the ever-excellent Sabotage Times website can be found here.

Carlsbergensis interruptive

2011-04-20T09:38:00.000+01:00

Notes on a press conference announcing Carlsberg’s recent launch of its new slogan

Auditorium — presentation — 45 minutes — noisy — flashing lights — thumping music — film clips — sport — high adrenalin — anthemic rock — incentive to get drunk? — man at podium — ‘iconisation’ — 55 production lines across the world — all will adapt to the new visual identity — words — heritage — quality — semper ardis — character — the reward of a Carlsberg for doing the right thing — that calls for a Carlsberg — more words — witty — confident — premium — dramatic — in most countries the strap-line will be in English — packaging — comedy in ads — Everest — TV aerial — football — man on moon — interesting to see an ad that shows a pint with a magnifying glass picking out the word hops (I) — more words — aromatic — crisp refreshing taste — back to brandolese — global and local approval — what does that mean? — questions please — Lithuania — ban on alcohol advertising — what will you do — Russia — sex, new cars — eh? (I) — yes, probably the best lager in the world has gone —part of the DNA of the brand — will it overshadow itself — targeting a mind set — do people really buy this guff? (I) — lunch — that calls for a Carlsberg — really?

Tuckers Maltings

2011-04-19T08:54:00.000+01:00

Drink beer, beer drunk. More beer please. Man on his stag do passes by dressed as a cock. A lot of balls that takes, says man to my right, repeats it once more just in case the world and its mum hasn’t digested his bon mot. Drink beer. At the Tuckers Maltings SIBA Festival (winners here) on the afternoon of a Saturday that sees the sun place its broad brimmed sombrero on its delightful little head and bring forth a resounding yell of hip-hip hooray. Folk stream down the street, past the Teighworthy Brewery and into the historic floor-maltings that each year is put aside, swept clean, and filled with row upon row of beers on stillage. Colin, friend of mine, is bar manager and says straightaway what I should be drinking. Arbor Ales, Bristol Beer Factory. Hold on let me try the winner, I reply. Handsome from Forge. Litehouse from the same brewery won top banana last year. You probably won’t have heard of them but you might do so more in the future. Handsome was peachy skin, warmth of the sun hastening ripening; a fattish body that reminded me of Chardonnay without the poncy notes; dry and crisp in the finish, another one please. Arbor Ales. I visited their ace tap in Bristol a couple of months ago and enjoyed their Oyster Stout. Yakima Valley IPA was a love bomb of citrus, deep ripe apricot skin, grapefruit, hop sack and a big swagger of character. Their Breakfast Stout, up next, was creamy, roasty, mocha, alcoholic and delicious. I can still taste it now. Two hours was all I had, hence no mucking about with milds or bitters. I wanted big bold flavours, which I think I discovered — I stayed with four beers (BBF’s Southville Hop was the other delight). So I found beers I liked and stayed with them — when I go to beer festivals I go to discover beers that I enjoy and once I find them I find them compelling company (I had a similar moment with a Löwenbräu Buttenheim beer at the GBBF several years back). The estimable Zak Avery recently asked why go to beer festivals? My yearly quota has slacked off, but after Saturday I know why — I go to beer festivals to drink great beer, in the company of great people (friends and brewers last Saturday) and in a lush environment. Not every beer festival works (the Pig’s Ear at Stratford Town Hall was a case in point — it had all the charm of a station waiting room in somewhere like Lille), but when they do work the memory lasts and lingers and sticks around, hands in pocket, eager face upturned, asking: will you come back? Tuckers Maltings: of course I will.

How time flies when you’re enjoying yourself

2011-04-08T09:28:00.000+01:00

On the walls in the bar of the Duke of York hang several framed collections of black-and-white photos of locals enjoying themselves in the past. Next to the dart board, to the left of the massive fireplace capped with its brace of ancient shotguns, the collage comes from the 1950s perhaps: flat caps and pipes for the seniors, the young with a hint of Brylcreem in the hair, most men in a tie, a handful of women on their own table; meanwhile well polished cups and trophies are handed out, possibly by the licensees of the time. Elsewhere, on another wall, there’s a fading sepia-tinted photo from 1911 that shows a column of men in suits, battered bowlers and starched white collars, some hands in pockets, others with their hands swinging purposefully as they take part in the Iddesleigh Club Walk (something that continues annually to this day) — three years later a line of men like this would be khaki clad and marching off to war (you can’t help but see the dreadful progression). Pubs are for people and these framed photos depict those that enjoyed the Duke of York in the past and in a fanciful moment you imagine that by some miraculous transformation their voices, laughter and songs are ingrained in the very fabric of this old assemblage of four cottages that was originally constructed for the masons who built the neighbouring church in the Middle Ages.

(Oh and the King’s Head in Laxfield gets my vote in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph, but you can read it here)

The men of Iddesleigh marching as if off to war