Categories
london pubs

The beer geek God is listening

What we’ve been after for a long time is a pub near work with a good range of cask ale, interesting beer in bottles and has enough room to move without bumping into a sweaty bloke in a suit.

Enter “Cask“, which we spotted from afar this evening, and detoured to investigate. It’s a cosy but modern refurbishment of a grotty estate pub in Pimlico (a bit of London which hasn’t really posh since the early 19th century, despite appearances).

It only opened recently, but is already busy. The big draw: Dark Star Hophead, in perfect condition, with the promise of the full range of Dark Star beers to follow as guests. A secondary draw: more than 20 bottled regional German beers, some of which we’ve never seen before.

And the enthusiastic, friendly landlord and landlady buzzing around looking after their customers aren’t harming business either.

All in all, it’s a bit of a find. This is one Credit Crunch business venture that ought to do well, if there’s any justice in the world. We’ll certainly be back.

The Cask is on the corner of Charlwood Street and Tachbrook Street, about three minutes walk from Pimlico underground station. It’s open at weekends and serves decent looking food.

Categories
london pubs

Posh Boozers in South London

florence_beer

We planned the route for our long walk from Liverpool Street (in the City of London) to Herne Hill (way down south) so that we would pass a couple of pubs we’d been meaning to visit for a while.

Walking through Camberwell, we both had a flashback to a birthday party we’d attended there in around 2003, in a pub called the Grove, and detoured to find it. Just as we remembered, it was nicely set up and absolutely huge. Of particular note: you can hire the lounge style back room, complete with beer fridge, dart board and Nintendo Wii for private parties. The Young’s Bitter was spot on, if you like that sort of thing (we do).

Our next stop was Hooper’s Bar, which took us a while to find. From the outside, it looks great, being beautifully maintained and covered in antique brewery signs. Through the window, we spotted a tantalising range of beers on offer. Sadly, it doesn’t open until four on Sundays. We should have checked. Recovering from momentary despair, we carried on towards Herne Hill and the Florence.

The Florence is one of London’s few brewpubs and we are by no means the first to offer an opinion. We were expecting great things of a pub which both Jeff and Tyson liked — could this be the Promised Pub? After a couple of pints and a bit of food, however, we were left unable to agree a corporate line.

Boak liked the atmosphere and thought it was the kind of place she could settle in for the afternoon.

Bailey was confused by the weird mix of waiter and bar service and had yet another flashback, this time to the would-be trendy bar-lounge-concept drinking holes of 2003.

We both thought the food was fabulous, albeit with the caveat that, given everyone wants chips with battered fish, why not just include them as standard and charge a tenner outright? We also both agreed, after a stale Meantime Pale Ale and a pint of own-brewed bitter that compared poorly to the pint of Young’s we’d had an hour before, that the beer was nothing special.

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Generalisations about beer culture opinion

In a perfect world

Jay Rayner writes restaurant reviews in the Observer, the Sunday version of the UK’s Guardian newspaper. In a review today he comes up with a valuable insight which applies just as much to pubs as it does to restaurants:

And the final bill for this lesson in crass mediocrity? A shameful £105. The point of the exercise? The simple realisation that restaurants in this country will only genuinely have improved when it’s possible to choose a place like this at random and eat well at a cost that will not make your eyes water with tears of either pain or misery.

So, to paraphrase for the beer-minded, we should be able to walk into any pub and find (as a bare minimum) a decent standard of service, one or two good quality beers in reasonable condition, all at a price we consider fair.

It’s all well and good having a handful of astounding pubs scattered across the country but, at the moment, choosing a pub at random is hit and miss.

Categories
American beers beer reviews

Burnt Offerings

barbecuebeers

In recent months, we’ve really been enjoying American brewery Flying Dog’s Amber Ale, which has those characteristic US hops, but is mellow and balanced enough to drink with any kind of meal, or even to chug from the bottle at a party. At an umbrella-assisted barbecue this weekend, we decided to try out a couple of other sessionable beers from their range.

First up, Doggie Style Classic Pale Ale, which shows that it’s not only English brewers who have a knack for coming up with puerile names for their products. The beer itself (5.5%) is excellent, and not unlike Fuller’s ESB, with marmalade being the common flavour. It went well with grilled meat and, yes, was good to drink from the bottle.

Tire Bite Golden Ale is brewed with German hops. On the whole, we found it less exciting, although the bottles that came from the ice bucket later in the evening were much better. Is it an attempt at a Koelsch? Other people at the party who aren’t as fussy as us loved it.

Categories
london

The Land that Time Forgot

We like to explore London when the weather’s nice — there’s always something interesting to see, even in place we’ve been a million times. Recently, we took a trip to South London (of which more pub-related specifics in a later post). For now, though, here are a couple of photos.

londonbrewedmild
The Red Lion on the Walworth Road doesn't look to have changed since the late 1970s. It was like a location from Minder.
magyar_kor
This old sign was stuck to the side of a private house near Burgess Park. It's for a Hungarian... something.