Archive for the ‘pubs’ Category

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Bricklayers

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

On the same day we visited the Dove, we also made it to another legendary west London pub, the  Bricklayers in Putney. It’s beautifully done out, being neither trendy nor grotty, although it was bloody cold.

It was the week after their beer festival and the garden was full of spent casks — “Beer Fail!” Nothing was going to waste, though and anything left in the garden was going at a pound a pint.

We were excited to see a huge range of Timothy Taylor’s beers and didn’t even bother trying anything from the guest pumps or the garden. We’ve heard a lot about the legendary Dark Mild, and it is indeed fabulous: chocolate and vanilla and at only 3.5%. Ram Tam is a wonderfully fruity dark beer, also very special, with blackcurrant and clove notes. Why aren’t Tim Taylor’s other beers as well known as Landlord?

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Go West

Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

You may have noticed we’ve been out and about a lot recently. Although we were in London for the first full weekend for ages, there was still a nagging wanderlust, and so we headed out to west London. After a nice amble along the river we made our first ever visit to the legendary Dove.

As this was the first sunny Sunday for several months, most of London had descended on this fairly small riverside pub for lunch and it was in meltdown. The staff were stressed, the food was a long time coming and there was a long queue of people who had apparently never been to a pub before and so didn’t really understand how it worked.

We escaped straight for the tiny public bar (the smallest in the world, according to Norris McWhirter) and observed the chaos. We overheard some good dialogue: “What’s your thickest beer? The creamiest?” (Quick, Fullers,  time to bring out that smoothflow!); “When will my food be ready? Only I really am tremendously hungry.”

They were doing a roaring trade in Aspell’s cider and White wine, and the biggest selling ale seemed to be Discovery. So, Fuller’s know their market after all. We enjoyed someone bringing a pint of it back and kicking up a right fuss because it was ‘flat’. We think the word she was looking for is crap.

Despite the punters’ lack of interest in it, the ale is, on the whole, great. We drank the best London Pride we’ve had for ages and also got to try Bengal Lancer, their new 5% IPA. We enjoyed it immensely. It looks like Pride, has characteristic Fullers’ marmalade flavour, but with a much more pronounced, tangy, spicy hop flavour. We’re excited at the prospect of this becoming a regular.

Here’s a trivia question: how many genuine riverside pubs are there on the north side of the river between the Dove in Hammersmith and the Town of Ramsgate in Wapping? The rules are that the pub genuinely has to be directly on the riverside, with no road inbetween.

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The best pub in Britain?

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

A couple of weeks back, we heard that the Kelham Island Tavern had been named CAMRA’s pub of the year for the second year running and, at a loose end on a wintry Sunday afternoon, we popped up to Sheffield to give it a go.

There were friendly staff and a mixed crowd. The pub is definitely characterful — not sterile, but not grotty either.

We hadn’t tried any of the beers on offer, and weren’t overly familiar with any of the breweries, so chose more-0r-less at random. Midnight Stout from (we think) ‘the Brew Company’) was had those vanilla and chocolate flavours of which we’re so fond; white rose Bucking Blonde (eugh — what an awful pump clip!) was a delicious pale and hoppy beer with a pleasingly sulphurous aroma.

Finally, the best of the bunch. We’d had heard of Pictish Brewing, of course, because Tandleman mentions them in glowing terms from time to time. Brewers Gold was truly excellent, hard not to down in one, it was so crisp. One of those beers which both creates and quenches thirst. It had zing up the wazoo.

We liked this pub a lot and it’s certainly convinced us that we need to check out the runners up for pub of the year.

Our views on the nearby Fat Cat and some thoughts on Thornbridge to follow in later posts.

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A really soulless pub

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Rain Bar is J W Lees flagship Manchester pub. It’s on the canalside in a former umbrella factory, hence the name. (Or is it a reference to Liam Gallagher’s first band?)

You get the impression from online reviews that this is supposed to be a trendy place but it reminded us a bit of a slightly posh Wetherspoon’s. With it’s big glossy printed menus, plasticky polished wood and evident compliance with some kind of corporate service standard manual, it’s a good example of pub with no real character.

It did give us a good opportunity to compare J W Lees Bitter and Best Bitter  The former was was extremely refreshing with a crisp, slightly tart finish; the latter, as you might expect, had more hop character and a bigger, rounder brown malt flavour. Both are good solid brews that we’d happily drink loads of if we lived here.

We’d just drink them somewhere else.

On the subject of character, and while we’re in the area, does anyone know anything about this amazing looking pub building across the road from Rain Bar?


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The alchemy of pub atmosphere

Monday, February 15th, 2010

For us, the  pubs with the best atmosphere sit in a sweet spot between characterful and grotty.

Some pubs are so clean, so perfumed, varnished, polished and ‘on-brand’ that they start to feel they’re made of plastic. Others (often, sadly, some of those with the greatest commitment to decent beer) have torn carpets, ripped seats, grimy walls and smell like stables.

The pubs we’ve enjoyed most in the last year or so have been clean without being buffed to a shine. They’ve been lived-in but not soiled. They’ve shown evidence of being run by a human being — hand-written signs, personal mementoes– rather than by a Regional Quality and Brand Manager.

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Pump creep

Saturday, February 13th, 2010

The owners of Cask, our current favourite London pub, have obviously decided to pull out all the stops on the beer front. They’ve just expanded from five cask ale pumps to eight, including two from Dark Star and three from Thornbridge.  Moravka Lager has also appeared.

The keg beer has got better too — out go Guinness and Fosters to be replaced by Keesman Herren Pils, Brugse Zot (blonde and brown), Rothaus Pils and Weizen, Mort Subite Kriek, and Kuepper’s Koelsch. The range of bottles from small german breweries continues to impress with some real obscurities sitting in the fridges.

A great pub just got even better.

We’re also delighted to see that our local has added an extra pump for cask ale.

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I should be on that train

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

The Sheffield Tap, the newish Thornbridge-affiliated pub on platform 1 at Sheffield’s central station, is a very, very dangerous development.

It’s very easy to find yourself standing at the bar with a half-empty glass of delicious, crisp Thornbridge White Wild Swan watching your train leave without you. And the worst thing is, you don’t even care. Trains are ten a penny, but beer this good is hard to come by.

Seriously, this pub is excellent. It has a beautiful interior, incredible cask beer and (although we didn’t count) what might be the best range of bottled beer in the country, all available to take away.

Now let’s have one of these at every station in London, please.

With thanks to Pete Brown for the tip off. Pretty much all the other bloggers went together a few weeks back and seem to have enjoyed it too.

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Back to Oxford

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

It looks like we’ll be in Oxford at around this time most years now as a friend of ours who lives there has decided to make his anti-January-blues party a fixture in the calendar.

Between the station and his house last night, we took in a few pubs we missed last time round.

The King’s Arms on Holywell Street is a cosy, crowded boozer decorated with brewery memorabilia. It’s a Young’s pub but with three guest ales. Bailey went for Winter Warmer and thought it was good this year. Boak went for Bath Gem, an old favourite that we haven’t come across for a while, which was just about OK if perhaps a little tired. The pub is so full of character, though, that the beer’s almost irrelevant.

The White Horse on Broad Street is really a long, cluttered corridor, but is also very cosy. We were drawn in by the Brakspear sign but the lack of that beer was more than made up for by two excellent microbrews. Prospect by the Shotover Brewing Co. (who are new on the scene, apparently) was a beautiful hoppy, flowery beer, powerful enough to overpower a bag of particularly lethal, hairy pork scratchings. Can anyone tells us which particular variety of hops give that wonderful elderflower flavour? In contrast, Winter Solstice by Vale Brewing was all about the malt: caramel with a hint of chocolate. It was also excellent, but it was Prospect that really knocked us for six.

Far from the Madding Crowd had six ales on tap including Oakham JHB, another classic we’ve not had for a while. Wow. What a beer — incredibly drinkable. Easy Rider from Kelham Island was another corker with a slightly (and very pleasantly) sulphurous aroma. The pub itself was lacking in atmosphere, somewhat resembling a community centre. Those of you who are sceptical of our ability to taste anything through the pork scratchings in the last pub will be glad to hear we didn’t indulge in the cockles in offer here…

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Marble Madness

Monday, January 25th, 2010

After reading various people raving about Marble for the last couple of years, a visit to their brewpub was always going to be a top priority for our visit to Manchester.

First up were, pints of, er, Pint and Bitter which we found to be very similar. Both were bitter and grapefruity almost to the point of astringency, but not quite. Differences did emerge after a few more comparative slurps — Bitter was marginally darker in colour and balanced a touch more toward malt than hops. We were very impressed by both.

Lagonda IPA looked similarly yellow at first glance but was sweeter, fuller bodied and noticeably stronger at 5%.

Then something that wasn’t yellow: Stouter Stout, which was profound. Thick, roasty, chocolatey and filling — damn near a perfect specimen.  Trying Chocolate next to it was a little surprising, being silkier but actually less chocolate-like.

We’ve had Ginger before and it was just as good as we remembered. We took the advice of the chaps at Blogobeer and also tried it mixed with Chocolate and it was indeed delicious — not unlike Jamaica Ginger cake. Yum.

The enigmatically named Brew #14 was yet another yellow bitter ale, but this time with a more English hop character, very evident dry-hopping and some pear-drop character.

Dobber, despite being 5.9% and a little heavier and fruitier, was, yes, you’ve guessed it, yellow and hoppy.

As for the pub, it’s a great building and has a real buzz. We ate in the back room and service was a little slow but friendly (had someone failed to turn up for their shift?).

In summary, a good pub, with great beer, but (like Hopback) they could do to make the differences between some of their many yellow beers a little less subtle, or simply ‘consolidate the range’ as a management consultant would say.

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Canterbury

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

Canterbury is on the tourist trail from London and takes less than an hour to get to on a high speed train from St Pancras. It’s a fascinating place with a proper ‘altstadt’, unlike most British cities, and plenty of pubs. A bit of online research before our day trip took us to the following which were reckoned by various sources to be the best.

1. The Parrot, Church Lane, is a Young’s pub with a commitment to guest beers carried over from its days as a free house. On our visit, we were blown away by Hopdaemon Incubus (4%) which is a dark but nonethetheless flowery, hoppy thirst quencher. The pub itself is a 14th century building and full of character with low timber ceilings, nooks and crannies and soft lighting.

2. The Unicorn is also wooden beamed and cosy but (as the euphemism goes) very much a local pub. There was a mixed crowd including skint students (“Shit, I’m 5p short!”) and a group of amusingly grumpy blokes at the bar who the bar staff refered to as “the sad shelf”.  The beer on tap was pretty boring (Shepherd Neame Masterbrew,  Deuchars IPA) but there was more Hopdaemon on tap and in bottles.  A pint of Golden braid was OK and not unlike one of the lesser beers from Hopback. Green Daemon Helles was like one of our homebrews (so, nice enough, but with rough edges). Their famous Skrimshander IPA was malty and biscuity but a bit muted. Maybe bottling doesn’t suit it?

3. The Cherry Tree is a very odd place. It looks like a scuzzy student pub, with a knackered tiled floor, dirty tables, loud metal music and some astounding offers on vodka shots.  Despite that, along with the rock chicks and lads with face piercings, there were a few CAMRA types and couple of pissed blokes in their fifties chaining Kronenbourgs. The ales were mostly forgettable, except one called Harrier which was a deliciously roasty, mellow mild. Shame we didn’t manage to get the name of the brewery.

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