Wednesday beer — Saison Dupont (with a little nod to Orval)

Dupont’s bottling line when I visited
the brewery in the autumn of 2009

I had an Orval at the weekend and as soon as I smelt it in the glass, the words ‘This is Belgium’ crash-landed amongst my thoughts; for me the aromatics of orange peel and that rusticity you often find out in the country on approaching a farm were Belgium. You can get that with quite a few key beers, which immediately remind you of their home country; Pilsner Urquell and Schneider Weisse. 

Last weekend, I also had a bottle of Saison Dupont and the same crash bang wallop of word association trampled through the undergrowth of my mind. I just loved the austereness on the palate, the flintiness, the herbal-like spice, the restraint on sweetness, the champagne-like effervescence and the quick dry and spicy finish. This was Belgium (or Wallonia if you want be pedantic and someone undoubtedly will be) and even though I was in Exeter I knew one of the first places I will be visiting when I travel again will be Flanders and Wallonia. 

I visited the brewery as well as Cazeau for an article on saison that was my first ever commissioned article from All About Beer — if you are so inclined you can read it here.  

Expectation

I fancied a little romp of writing fun and so flicked through the ancient pages of the copy of Roget’s Thesaurus I always have next to my desk with the aim of picking a word and then writing something on it— and so as if by the kind of magic we once used to enjoy as part of our lives, expectation jumped out, a choice as easy and decisive as a lion immediately deciding that the biped in front of him was just right for supper. 

So here is expectation — and what I thought of was a trip to The Bridge Inn in Topsham before Christmas, where a brewer friend and I would be subjecting several pints to our benevolent gaze. This is one of my favourite pubs, a place where I feel at home, a place where I’ve never had a bad glass of cask and a place where I feel comfortable whether I’m sitting with a book or chatting away about nothing in particular (usually with other people, I don’t think I’d feel happy holding a noisy conversation with myself). 

So where does expectation fit in? Here goes: I was early, 10 minutes before the opening time of 6pm (the pub keeps old school hours). I stood in the darkened car park, looking out northwards, watching the light of an approaching plane to Exeter airport and then turned to the pub, which was still dark. 

Then, happily, lights began to appear, a figure moved behind the window, and all of a sudden I felt this sudden expectation of opening time, of how much I looked forward to the first pint of the evening, and of the comfort and wood-fire warmth of the parlour where I would drink my pint. What beers would be on? Let there be a beer as strong as the hammer arm of a blacksmith, as bitter as Vermouth and as dark as the reed beds and river that lay just beyond the pub. My expectations went into overdrive and my mood (it was midwinter and I was very much in a cocooning mood) suddenly changed — I was looking forward to the evening.

I always feel an expectation and anticipation of the first pint in a pub, especially in one such as the Bridge Inn. There is familiarity but there is also a sense of wonder in what the evening will bring, beyond the beers that you will drink. Who will you talk with, what stories will you hear, what feeling of warmth and belonging with be engendered? And how many pints will be sufficient unto the day thereof? That’s the meaning of expectation. 

Travel stories — the senses

So there I was thinking about how we use all our senses in evaluating beer and thinking about the taste, the aromatics and the finish when I suddenly thought that perhaps to get the full sensory nature of beer I would have to deconstruct it, take it to bits and put those bits on an imaginary worktop and evaluate everything. 

So what did I mean by this? Let me take SIGHT — for a start there are the various tones and hues of the beers we drink, the palette of colours with which each beer style represents itself, such as the TV show host gleam of golden ale, the brooding, bad-tempered poetics of an imperial stout, the hazy-sunset-end-of-a-day-with-the-weather-about-to-turn of a juicy DDH and all the shades and circumstances and turns of phrase and collaborations of colour in between. So that’s sight sorted, or is it? I then thought about what we see when we drink our beers in various bars and pubs, the various colour moods of these homes from homes, including the sombre browns that sit unbidden in the memory of an ancient aunt’s parlour from a visit during childhood, or the verdant greens and blue skies of a beer garden on a perfect day, which we always remember and wish to recreate (oh if only we could). The ground and the earth and the green and the gold of the fields of barley and hops; the shimmer and shiver of water before it takes hold of the mash and transfigures the boil and turns our dreams into a presence in the glass (and let us not forget the pale jaundiced yellow of the transformative yeast). 

So then I thought about SMELL — starting with the aromatics of the raw materials at the base of beer production, the perfume of hop-picking, the dusty throat catch of the harvest in a field of barley, the silence of barley as it sits in a bag (some suggestion of dust), then the chiming fruitiness of crushed hop pellets, dust to dust, beer to beer, the echo of a vibrancy and floral energy from whole flower hops. Then I thought about the aromatics of the production process — the smell of Weetabix or any other grainy breakfast cereal during the mash, decoction or otherwise, and the warm infusion of cereal and spice during the boil. The aromatics of the beer, whatever the style, in the glass and the aromatics of the aftermath (split beer, the pub in the morning, the leftovers in the glass, the breath of the newly awoken); but on a more positive note let us finish with the aromatics of a freshly poured glass of beer, whatever the style — this is the hook that draws us into the glass.  

So then I thought about TASTE — the sweetness of pale malt when chewed prior to its great dive into the mash, the remnants hiding away like partisans in the forest that has become your teeth, the no-you-don’t-put hops-in-your-mouth taboo learnt from the first brewery visit, the acrid nature and the coffee bean just ground world of black and chocolate malt and the ghostly nothingness of soft water (I tried Budvar’s once straight from the source and thought it so) verses the liver salts nature of hard water, and once brewed the spice and the floral petting of the hops, the fruitiness, whatever part of the world it originates from, the effect of fermentation, soft fruits, raspberry, apricot, strawberry perhaps. And, of course, we cannot forget when thinking about taste that we should forget the effect of the beer and its base metals on the palate — the fullness, the thinness, the intermediate space, the dryness, the bitterness like a suitor abandoned at the altar or an memory of a hurt once done. All of this we must think of. Oh, and all the various faults that we can find in a beer, from the popcorn Saturday-night-at-the-cinema butterscotch of diacetyl to the I’ve-got-a-little-bit-of-sick-in-my-mouth effect of a taste of butyric-infected beer.

Then there is SOUND — the machinery that drives the collection of barley and hops, the tractor all on its ownsome in a field of barley where sea frets visit when the temperature is much cooler than this afternoon in the late summer or the early autumn; the hiss and the clang and the drive belts of progress that mark out the brewing process, the silence, reminiscent of a church in between services, of fermentation, whether short or long; the clang and tinkle of the racking and bottling rooms, before the lorry or van takes the beer away to the pub or bar from where it is dispensed amid the sounds of voices, the bark of TVs and — then, reverently — the soft, pliant groan of appreciation. 

And finally, let us consider TOUCH — the rub of hops between hands, whether it’s the crumpled green powder of pellets or the leafy crackle of whole flowers; then there is the bullet-hardness of barley grains, both between fingers and crunched (or attempted to be crunched) in the mouth, the inherent danger of the hot water during the boil, the stickiness of spilt beer, the dimpled surface of a handled glass, the upright smoothness of a sleeve the bulbous shoulder of a nonic a crime against aesthetics, the simplicity and delicacy of a stemmed glass, the smooth surface of a polished table top or brass railing, the shake of hands or the hug of welcome when friends meet each other. 

Remember when we used to do that? We will again. 

  

Wednesday beer — Cheshire Brewhouse Gibraltar Porter, 8.1%

Here is a porter from Cheshire Brewhouse, based on a 1889 recipe from Mew Langton Brewery, which plied its trade in Newport on the Isle of Wight and was eventually acquired by Strong in 1965 and shuttered four years later. It’s a muscular, robust kind of porter with plenty of toffee, dark fruits (currants, raisins) and coffee on the nose, while it has more coffee, chocolate, a charred dark fruitiness (maybe dark plums in a crumble?), a slight roastiness and berry notes on the palate before finishing sweetish, dry and bitter. It is also soft and silky in its mouth feel —I see it as a reclining kind of beer, which is what you would be doing on your comfortable divan after several of these. 

As I drank and thought about this beer, another strand of thinking emerged, on porter, about how modern porter represents heritage, resurrection, revivalism, survival, sleekness and elegance, creaminess, soothing hands on the brow, sullenness, versatility, generosity, history, bats flitting through the twilight, the hug of remembrance and comfort and solitude and fortitude that darkness brings and then I came to the word changeling, the old idea of a newly born baby being replaced in its cot by a wily, rough and corrupted substitute.

I then moved onto thinking about how our modern tastes might not have liked porter in the 19th century and that its contemporary re-imagining is almost like a changeling in reverse, the wily, rough and corrupted porter variants of the Victorian age being replaced by a more pleasing and sweeter-smiling child. And then further along the thought process I ask myself the question — are all the traditional and historic beers that today’s breweries are playing with resurrected changelings?

Changeling or not, this delicious porter is available from www.cheshirebrewhouse.co.uk

By way of Southend Pier

Time is an essential ingredient of this pub, which first started receiving travellers sometime in the 16^th century (though not before a local landowner was burnt at the stake for heresy at the back of the inn in 1553). As the village was on the main coaching road between a busy county town and a fording place over the river that goods, animals and people upstream, we can imagine the rumble of wheels, the call of the driver, the sound of the horses, steam rising off their flanks on an early morning, plus the promise of a warming drink and something nourishing to eat. 

The licensee’s parents came to the pub in 1938, when it lacked electricity and running water. There was snug at the back of the bar, were women used to sit as was the fashion then, in order, it is told, to avoid  the prying eyes of village men, especially one who was noted as a bit of a rake. ‘You had to watch him,’ recalls the licensee, ‘one story I recall about him was when he was old and I asked him where he went to for his honeymoon. He looked at me and said, “to bed, of course”.’ 

This has always been an agricultural area, though time once more has changed the surrounding countryside, but it is still a place of stories about the farmers and the men who worked their fields and the head cowman who would come in during calving. ‘He would ask for two bitters, one would be the expensive one and the other the cheaper. I think my mother once asked why he bought two bottles and he said one was for him and the other was for the cow, which was supposed to help with the calving. Of course the farmer paid for it.’ 

Then there was the tale about the two locals who during the harvest would work nine miles away. ‘My dad noticed that they did this long walk every day and also noticed that when they set off one would walk ahead of the other. He asked why and the reply was that if they talked during the walk they would have nothing to talk about during the day!’

The pub is an outstanding example of survival and prosperity. The world has changed and the village inn that survives on selling beer and the odd snack is a rare thing; now it has developed an enviable reputation for its food, which you could argue is reflected in it current interior layout. It remains traditional within: flagstones, timber paneling, ceiling beams and a sense of comfort and joy. One part of the main bar is devoted to the contemplation of time with a glass of beer or wine, a chat with friends or a leisurely read of a newspaper. The second has more of the feel of a dining space with tables arranged as neatly as a parade of guardsmen.

Time flows like a river, but it’s easy to sit in the pub’s main bar, a pint of beer (this is about the moment rather than tapping in) to hand and remember the men and women that have passed through its doors over the centuries. And if you listen carefully you might hear a tinkle of laughter as a long-dead regular tells a tale of the day he went to Tilbury by way of Southend Pier. 

Adapted from London Local Pubs, published 2015

Travel stories: rural pubs

We all have our memories of the way we walked, possibly ran, or even cycled, in the search for a rural pub (that someone somewhere told us about). For me, one memory is of a lane, to the left of which the ethereal curves of a field of uncut grass waving in the breeze, can be seen through a self-isolating cordon of bent and twisted trees, planted several generations ago when the people who bore the name that maybe I would one day also bear worked in fields like these. In the blue sky, the sun tick-tocked its way towards the south and ahead of me, roughly in a southeasterly direction, a hippo-like hump of a hill awaited, over which the lane, its track, like the badly hidden bald patch of a low comedian, invited me to follow.

Sometimes the way to a rural pub is the actual pleasure as opposed to the pub that you have chosen finally to visit. It’s the walk through a bucolic landscape, often in a lonely place, a challenge to which you hope your boots will cope (oh how you wished you’d put some dubbin on them), that lays down the anticipation for what you hope will be the cool interior of a rural pub, where the beer is just one bitter, but what a hitter of a bitter it is. Or it might be brewed around the back, somewhere in the village, or it might just be an enticing couple of beers that will hold your attention for a couple of hours (what do you mean you want food, haven’t you brought sandwiches with you?). 

My favourite rural pubs have included the Salutation at Ham, a short walk from Berkeley, but whose views of the distant hills of the Forest of Dean and the knowledge that the River Severn continues on its slow stately progress in between sharpens the appetite for beer brewed onsite; then there was the Locks in Geldeston, down river from Beccles, an out-of-the-way pub that has grown around a lock keeper’s cottage from the 19th century and at which bargees on the River Waveney at the bottom of the garden used to stop for a pint during the time of Queen Victoria; or it could be the London Inn in the Exmoor village of Molland, to which I once walked 10 miles to and back, in July, without taking any water with me. 

I have experienced other trails to rural pubs, forgotten over time, in the company of a walk or a climb through heather or bracken, over rocky tracks or along the coast, where the blue-grey surface of the sea seems like the back of a behemoth, which is mainly hidden from view. But I have forgotten them or they are recorded in a journal that now lies gathering dust in the attic of my soul.

Let’s end on a positive note though — I am already planning my next walk to a rural pub, when freedom of movement is not a stranger — Dartmoor or the South Devon coast perhaps? But until then my memories and imagination will free me for my roaming. Oh and where was that walk to a rural pub that I started off writing about? Like Orwell’s Moon Under Water, it is a fiction, a wish and a exercise in perfection. Or is it?

Wednesday beer — Bitburger X Sierra Nevada Triple Hop’d Lager, 5.8%

Who would have thought it, boring old Bitburger whose beer is easy to drink but can cause a sigh of desperation if it is the only beer on the tap — who would have thought that the brewery would have combined with Sierra Nevada towards the end of 2019 (for the second time), ordered in locally grown Cascade, their unique hop blend Bitburger Siegelhopfen (also locally grown), alongside Chinook and Centennial to come up with this elegant lager, dressed up and pomaded as if ready for a night on the town, but cool enough to have a copy of Kafka in the side pocket. I suppose I’m being unfair to Bitburger by calling them boring, as its signature beer is crisp and refreshing, slightly bitter in the finish but — I suppose here’s the damning word — rather inoffensive, even if it’s one of the best selling draft beers in the German market. But what about this beer, I hear from an echo in the cave that is beer writing these days? Ok then, I detect guava and a suggestion of lavender on the nose, accompanied by a floral headiness, plus some spice in the background. Swig after swig reveals tropical fruit (that guava again) alongside a breadiness (or the aromas of baking you get when standing across the road from a bakery), plus herbal suggestions and a lingering bitter finish. This is a friendly and fulsome beer, which engages itself with the palate reminiscent of the joy of two old friends meeting for the first time in ages — I now have a plate and a knife and fork and on that plate are the words ‘boring old Bitburger’. Anyone got any condiments? 

Available from www.adnams.co.uk/beer/bitburger.htm