Categories
czech republic News

News, Nuggets & Longreads 17 February 2018: Koduõlu, Tmavé Pivo, Buck’s Fizz

Here’s everything that grabbed us in the world of beer and pubs in the past week, from inclusion to IKEA.

Before we start, though, here’s a reminder that other links round-ups are available: Stan Hieronymus posts every Monday (latest) and Alan McLeod has nabbed Thursday. Do take a look if our list below leaves you hungry for more.

Illustration: "Odd One Out".

First up, for Gal-Dem magazine Alexandra Sewell (@wehavelalex) has written about her experience of the British beer scene as a black woman, and explored the possible reasons more black women might not be involved:

Alcohol was never a feature in our family household. My British-born Jamaican mum never kept lowly bottles of brandy hidden in the kitchen cupboards and we weren’t accustomed to anything more than a non-alcoholic “Buck’s Fizz” at Christmas time. As a small kid, Sundays were for church. As a bigger kid, I was too preoccupied with school. And as far as I was concerned, alcohol was something that was out of sight, and therefore entirely out of mind. I knew of it; I knew other people that liked it and drank it, but the only education I had about such a big part of the culture I was born into was from those borderline hilarious Channel 4 documentaries about people binge-drinking and puking up onto the street.

Categories
20th Century Pub pubs

Notable Pubs: The White Knight, Crawley

We recently acquired a copy of The House of Whitbread for Spring 1958 — a magazine we had previously only seen bits of, in the form of photocopies, at the London Metropolitan Archive — with a short feature on a famous post-war pub.

The White Knight in Crawley, West Sussex, wasn’t by any means the first new pub built after World War II but nonetheless seems to have been considered something of a landmark when it was opened in October 1957. Indeed, the HoW article cites a BBC Home Service feature called Town and Country which apparently described it as ‘revolutionary in character and embodying many new ideas’. Architectural critic Ian Nairn loved it, too.

Exterior of the White Knight

There’s are photos of the exterior of the pub in almost every article about modern pubs from the 1950s and 60s but interior photos are less common so it’s good to see these:

Pub interior in mid-century modern style.
The Knight’s Taproom.
Pub with carpets and flowers.
The Knight’s Saloon

The inset fireplace! The atomic-age wall clock! Those striped curtains! The flying saucer light-fittings! We’ve never seen colour photographs and no indication of the colour scheme is recorded anywhere we can find but we have to assume there are some pastel shades in there.

Here’s the HoW account of what made the pub special:

There are two bars, the Knight’s Saloon and the Knight’s Taproom, and walls made almost entirely of glass divide them from the terrace which has wooden benches and tables screened by pergolas. The Knight’s Saloon also leads, again through glass walls, to a small paved garden at the side of the house. On weekdays from ten in the morning till half past ten at night a coffee room serves light refreshments, lunches, teas and soft drinks. It is linked by an open terrace where beer drinkers and coffee drinkers can freely mix. The design completely disregards the idea that drinking is a secret occupation to be screened from view by solid walls and obscured glass.

That all sounds, it must be said, thoroughly modern — very Hungry Horse or Flaming Grill.

Thought we didn’t make it to Crawley during research for 20th Century Pub we were pleased to find that it is still trading under the name The Knight. It has lost most of its mid-century charm, made over with cod-Victorian details, but that’s so often the way.

Categories
beer reviews

Magical Mystery Pour #32: Gun Brewery Zamzama IPA

This is the last of the mini-series of Sussex beers from a selection suggested by Rach Smith of Look at Brew (@lookatbrew) and it’s a 6.5% IPA.

We bought our can of Zamzama online from South Down Cellars for £2.70 plus delivery and it has been sat in our fridge since arriving a couple of months ago. Rach says:

Gun beers have become some of my favourites over the past couple of years, not just among Sussex beers, but overall. I think the Sussex spring water that’s used may help with that! The modern and often creative beers are flying the flag for contemporary Sussex brews and breaking out of the region. This is the boldest beer in the core range, and drinks with a huge profile of pineapple, mango and lychee, with a spicy kick and toffee to round it all off.

Zamzama IPA in the glass.

It came out of the can a slightly hazy gold, throwing up a lot of enticing orange peel aroma, and with plenty of carbonation. (See photo above.) Pouring what was left in the can nudged it from hazy to cloudy but didn’t seem to much change the flavour.

Rach mentioned pineapple, mango and lychee; our first gulps suggested passion fruit. But in the world of tasting notes, same difference, really. Sweet, vibrant, sticky tropical fruit is the point.

We were delighted by how clean it tasted — no staleness, no cardboard, not a wheelbarrow full of muddy onions, just a lot of Jaffa Cake jelly and jam, balanced by a rye bread bitterness in the background. Cans can be a lottery but this time it worked.

It’s perhaps more of a 2010 beer than a 2017 one — the kind of thing we remember drinking at The Rake in Borough Market in the form of expensive American imports — but that’s fine by us.

It is sweet and Ribena-like, though, and we’d perhaps like a touch more bitterness, but that’s not a fault, just a preference.

If you like juicy, fruity, Technicolor beers but find too many of the most feted examples excessively dirty and savoury, as we do, then consider giving this one a go.

We’d like to thank Rach again for choosing beers and providing notes, and apologise for having made a bit of mess of the buying process. We’re going to think about who to invite next but have a few ideas bubbling away already.

Categories
beer reviews bottled beer

Magical Mystery Pour #31: High Weald Charcoal Burner

The second Sussex beer chosen for us by Rachael Smith (@lookatbrew) is a 4.3% ABV oatmeal stout from the High Weald brewery of East Grinstead.

We bought our 500ml bottle for £2.75 by mail order from South Down Cellars.

Rach says:

High Weald has been on the scene since 2012 and recently underwent a massive re-brand, which seems to have thrust the core beers forth and more into the local spotlight than ever before. This oatmeal stout is a favourite of mine on cask where it takes on a creamy character. It’s a great session strength brew, smooth, with all the classic characteristics of chocolate, coffee, a touch of smoke and balanced sweetness.

We don’t advocate judging books by their covers but that doesn’t mean you can’t take a moment to appreciate a nice bit of graphic design.

The label for High Weald Charcoal Burner: farmer chased by Dragon.
SOURCE: High Weald website.

High Weald’s labels look like cover designs for Nonsuch-era XTC singles and (we’d guess) were inspired by those for US brewery Odell’s. Printed on textured paper, they look even nicer.

When we opened this work of art there was only a faint air-kiss of carbonation and it looked flat as it poured. Then one of our favourite things happened: a just off-white head magically materialised out of the black body of the beer.

The beer smelled smoky, autumnal and enticing.

High Weald Charcoal Burner.

The flavour was less immediately impressive — that stale note we so often get in packaged beers from small breweries dominated for the first mouthful or two, muting the other flavours so that the beer seemed almost bland. Throughout the middle stretch, things improved and we started to throw about words like rum and chocolate. At the very end there was another dip — it began to seem merely sugary, like the dregs of a cup of sweet, creamy coffee.

 

Overall, we felt fairly warm towards it. It’s a stout, of which there aren’t enough, and a decent one at that. A few tweaks would improve it, though — more body to hold the sweetness, or more bitterness to match the body. As it is, it reminded us a bit of a watered down imperial stout. But remember, we are fussy devils. At any rate, we’ll certainly try more beers from High Weald if we get the chance and (that now familiar catchprase) look forward to trying this on cask one day, perhaps near an open fire.

Categories
beer reviews bottled beer

Magical Mystery Pour #30: Long Man Best Bitter

This new season of Magical Mystery Pour, with Sussex beers chosen by Rachael Smith of Look at Brew, is one of those trendy but annoying short ones like Game of Thrones does these days.

That’s because with us moving house there was a bit of a delay in ordering the beers, and because the online store Rachael suggested — the only one with a comprehensive range of beers from Sussex — turned out to be a bit flaky. She picked five beers of which we ended up with three. (A fourth, from Burning Sky, was delivered past its best before date.)

The label for Long Man Best Bitter.

Anyway, crapness aside, the first beer we tasted was Long Man Best Bitter, a 4% ABV ale which cost us £2.80 for one 500ml bottle from South Down Cellars. Rach says:

I’ve picked this as it has become a staple in many a Sussex pub (on cask of course) as the core Long Man range is becoming synonymous with good quality beers at the traditional end of the Sussex brewing spectrum. It’s a classic session bitter with well balanced malts and bitterness, with some nuttiness coming through. It’s well worth seeking out on cask, but the bottled version is handy to have around. Not quite Harvey’s but a fine alternative.

The beer isn’t bottle-conditioned and was therefore no trouble to pour, giving us a thick, stable head above a body that it feels harsh to describe as brown such was its glow. (This is why marketing people so often resort to ‘amber’.)

Best Bitter in the glass.

The aroma was muted but suggested toffee and hot jam to Bailey, and a purely beery, woodland earthiness to Boak.

It seemed to be missing something on first tasting — a fizz, more toffee, and then a watery hole. As it went down and hung around, though, a warming orange marmalade note emerged.

It’s hard to find much more to say than that. It reminded us of any number of other traditional bitters you might find in the supermarket from breweries such as Badger or Butcombe, although with perhaps just a bit more oomph. Which is to say, it was a clean, bright, mainstream beer that with the right marketing could easily become a national brand.

We can’t imagine going out of our way to acquire another bottle but we’d certainly recommend it to friends who like normal beer and, as per Rach’s suggestion, suspect we’d get much more of a kick out of it on cask.