Archive for the ‘real ale’ Category

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The rough with the smooth

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

There are some breweries whose rise to prominence are a source of irritation (Innis and Gunn, anyone?) but we really wouldn’t mind if every pub in the country was selling Thornbridge. That’s just as well, because it seems to be getting that way.

In recent weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to try a whole lot of Thornbridge’s beers. In this post, though, we’re going to highlight one that works briliantly and one that really doesn’t.

First up, the success story. Exposed is a stout brewed with pink peppercorns and strawberry. It sounds gorgeous even just from the description on the bright red and pink pump clip. For starters, it’s a good solid stout. With nothing else done to it, it would be a winner. The subtle addition of exotic flavours, however, makes it something really special. If we hadn’t known, we wouldn’t have been able to name those additives, but they were certainly there providing beguiling, tantalising hints of their presence in a tingle on the tongue here and a raspberry/cider sourness there. This reminded us of a Belgian beer, only Thornbridge have got the recipe bang on, first try, rather than needing 200 years of experimentation to get the spicing sorted.

Then, sadly, on to a beer which didn’t work as well. Halcyon is a 7.7% strong IPA made with green hops. Sounds exciting, right? It certainly smelled incredible — exactly like sticking your nose into a foil packet of hops when home brewing. Sadly, it tasted like sugar syrup laced with hop tea, astringent and overbearing.

We guess the latter is the price you pay for successful experiments like the former.

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Posted in beer reviews, real ale | 21 Comments »

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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Posted in pubs, real ale | 2 Comments »

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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Posted in pubs, real ale | 11 Comments »

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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Posted in pubs, real ale | 4 Comments »

Control beer

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

noun. A beer so familiar and consistent that it can fairly be used as an indicator of the quality of an unfamiliar pub. For example, Young’s Bitter.

Posted in Generalisations about beer culture, real ale | 5 Comments »

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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Posted in pubs, real ale | 7 Comments »

Beer festivals are growing on us

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

At a loose end, we decided to pop to Manchester for the weekend, taking in the National Winter Ales Festival, of which Tandleman was one of the organisers.

After startling him with our unannounced arrival (he made a very effective bouncer) we made our way upstairs to the main hall. Our first impressions were of a relatively young crowd with the kind of male-female mix you’d expect in the real world. The atmosphere was like that of a large, busy, if rather brightly lit pub. Or, with people sat on the floor in groups, was it reminiscent of a music festival? We felt very comfortable and soon completely forgot we were in a wedding banquet hall on an industrial estate in a city we hardly knew.

We headed straight for the German rarities. Uerige Sticke Alt, which we’d been wanting to try for a long time, had the trademark Uerige bitterness, although after such anticipation, it was a little disappointing. Schlenkerla Urbock (or did the label say Eichbock?) (6.5%) was clear and syrupy and, frankly, balanced too much towards sweetness for our taste.

A brief detour to Bohemia next with Bernard Kvasnicove took the idea of unfiltered beer to the extreme:  there was a bit of wood in it. It was mellow and, again, sweetish. It wasn’t warm, but it could have got away with being two degrees colder.

Lowenbrau Buttenheim Bock didn’t taste as strong as 6.5%. It was very nicely balanced, clearly a well crafted beer, and far from bland, but we wanted a bit more zing.

We went closer to home for the next round. Broughton 80 Shilling was bland; Acorn Gorlovka Stout astounding. What a contrast. We were sceptical as to how a 5% beer could lay claim to the ‘imperial’ moniker but this beauty did it, through hop bitterness, chocolate intensity and a very heavy, chewy body. It was the stand out beer of the evening.

JW Lees Darkside was really interesting — so fruity and sour that if someone said it had plums or maybe even cherries in, we’d believe them.

Red shield, White Shield’s weaker, blonder, cask-conditioned cousin, could have borne a lote more hop aroma and came off as a bit boring in comparison to, say, Dark Star Hophead or Marble Pint.

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Posted in Germany, beer festivals, beer reviews, czech republic, real ale | 10 Comments »

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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Posted in beer reviews, pubs, real ale | 10 Comments »

Beer of the Year

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

This is the kind of thing we usually chicken out of but, in the pub one night this week, we thrashed it out and made a decision.

We’ve been quietly naming a beer of the week almost every week since February and so looked over that list first to see if any of the candidates leapt out. The full list is below, after the jump, if you’re interested.

We decided, on reflection, that there were certain beers we not only enjoyed but kept coming back to. We had multiple pints of St Austell Tribute, Thornbridge Jaipur and Fuller’s ESB.  We drank many bottles of Sam Smith’s Taddy Porter, Brew Dog’s Punk IPA, Anchor Liberty Ale, Pilsner Urquell and Flying Dog Old Scratch (our stand-by beer this summer). We would keep going back for Wuerzburger Hofbrau Pils if we lived anywhere near Wuerzburg.

But one beer that we’d never mentioned as beer of the week, and which always delights us, is Dark Star Hophead. Dark Star might be our favourite UK brewery, if we have to choose, and Hophead is one of the best of their beers. It’s not too strong (several pints won’t kill you) but absolutely bursting with freshness and up-front hop flavour. It’s a corker. We love it. We’re going to drink lots more of it in 2010.

(more…)

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Posted in beer reviews, bottled beer, real ale | 7 Comments »

Half-and-half with the old man

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

pride

Fuller’s London Pride from a cask mixed with Fuller’s bottled London Porter makes a cracking half-and-half.

My Dad has developed a deep affection for Fuller’s beers and, when he’s in London, always finds an excuse to drop into one of their pubs. On his most recent trip, he’d only been off the train five minutes when he had us installed in the Mad Bishop and Bear at Paddington Station. (“Best wait for the rush hour crowds to pass.”)

Another of his favourite things is mixing his beers. At home in Bridgwater, it’s a necessity — every third pint of Butcombe Bitter down there is a bit stale and he relies on Mann’s Brown Ale to rescue them. On this occasion, he insisted on mixing Pride and London Porter, not because the Pride was bad, but because he really wanted a pint of mild and that, in his view, is the next best thing.

Usually, I find mixed beers are less than the sum of their parts, but this really was very drinkable, and offers yet another reason for more pubs to offer a good bottled stout or porter.

Bailey

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Posted in Beer styles, london, real ale | 12 Comments »

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