Categories
london pubs Uncategorized

Go West

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.

Categories
beer reviews real ale

The rough with the smooth

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.

Categories
pubs real ale

The best pub in Britain?

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.

Categories
Belgium

Has Gouden Boom gone… boom?

While in Bruges, we found ourselves near what we think ought to have been the the Gouden Boom brewery, responsible for Brugse Tripel and Brugse Tarwe amongst other beers. What we found instead was a demolition site. The gleaming copper in the picture above was atop the one remaining tower and exposed to the elements.

Does anyone know what’s going on…? The beers were certainly still available all over town.

Categories
beer reviews Belgium

De Garre, Bruges

De Garre, a stone’s-throw from the market square in Bruges, comes across nonetheless as being aimed more at locals than tourists. The menu is in ‘Nederlandse’ only, for one thing. That’s not to say it’s unwelcoming for English speakers or tourists, though.

De Garre tripel is the house brew. It’s a very spicy, alcohol-fuming beer which was almost too boozy and raw, but very welcome on a stormy night.

We also took the opportunity to complete the Struise cannon with Rosse which was, sadly, a bit of a dud — sweet rather than spicy and with a vaguely cardboard-y off flavour.

Round three included Deugniet, which tasted like lemon barley, and Hopus from Lefebvre. Hopus is advertised widely and comes with a very elaborate presentation — the beer is in a tall stem glass, the dregs in a shot glass, with a stern warning from the waiter that the yeast is ‘powerful’ and might ‘mess you up’.  It tasted a lot like a cask ale, maybe because of the bottle-conditioning and the earthy yeast flavours. From something at 7.5%, however, you expect more than to be reminded of a 4% British session ale.