Tag: esb

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beer reviews

Two decades in pursuit of perfect pints of ESB

Two glasses of dark red brown beer on a pub table with a packet of bacon fries.

At a Fuller’s pub in West London on Friday night we drank perfect ESB – one of life’s greatest pleasures.

Despite takeovers (Fuller’s is part of Asahi these days) there’s a definite romance about its beers.

When we first started to take a serious interest in beer, back in the mid noughties, ESB had a reputation as a big, important beer.

It was strong and expensive.

And it was served, most of the time, in a chunky chalice that said: “This is a pint that demands your full attention.”

It was drunk by old boys in big coats – men who knew what was what, and who was who, and could handle the booze.

We drank it in The Jugged Hare on Vauxhall Bridge Road or The Sanctuary in Westminster, both of which were handy for our respective offices.

We drank it at The Plough in Walthamstow, East London – a pub that no longer exists.

And we drank it in beautiful pubs like The Red Lion in Piccadilly, where ornate mirrors echoed the jewel-like details of its elaborate drinking vessel.

With practice, we learned to know what good ESB tastes like – and bad.

At its worst, ESB can be like chewy, vegetal pond water. In pubs where nobody drinks it, neglected and unloved, it loses its sparkle.

And unfortunately, because it’s strong, and old fashioned, it is often neglected.

It’s neither session beer nor the kind of ‘craft beer’ that people expect at that ABV these days.

Frankly, we’re surprised it’s still being brewed, 50-odd years being a good run for any particular British ale.

As it is, the chalice has gone, as has the handled mug that replaced it for a decade or so. Now, pints come in standard straight glasses – nice enough, but a sign of ESB’s loss of dignity.

Our perfect pints on Friday were served this way, as towers of autumnal mahogany topped with loose but steady foam.The aroma was of marzipan and fresh woodland sap.

And it tasted like the inevitability of one pint too many, like the Holy Grail, like the White Whale, like a miracle in progress, like being 25 again learning for the first time what beer could really be.

It was so good that it made Jess switch from Titanic Plum Porter. It was so good that she didn’t even resent the inevitable day after headache. It was so good that, even with the headache, she co-wrote a blog post about it.

The pub was nothing special. Fuller’s pubs are run by a an entirely separate company these days and, even in the West London heartlands, can feel a bit plastic. We’re not naming it because, frankly, there’s no guarantee the ESB will be this good on your visit.

Other breweries are making ESB these days.

We had a good one from Tiley’s recently, for example, and a really interesting version at the West London micropub/microbrewery The Owl and the Pussycat. The latter felt like a tribute to, and text about, the real thing.

Because, of course, Fuller’s remains the temperamental reference model.

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beer reviews Beer styles

In search of ESB – bitter and fruity

Extra Special Bitter from Severn.
The latest coronavirus restrictions now prevent pubs from selling takeaway alcohol, subject to clarifications or U-turns like those that came along under pressure from lobbyists last time, so that looks like an end to our Drapers Arms takeaways for the foreseeable. But at least our final pint was a fantastic ESB.

Severn Brewing Extra Special Bitter just straight-up delighted us: it was dark, fruity and, above all, bitter.

Discussing it, we decided that often when we have a beer describing itself as ESB, it just isn’t bitter enough and it ends up tasting like mild or porter.

Just based on the name, ESB really should be a turbo-charged version of bitter, with some of the dials turned up. In practice, we suppose that means the hopping has to go up to balance the increase in maltiness.

Of course, having had that conversation we looked up our notes from last time we tried Severn’s take – a helpful side effect of maintaining a record of our favourite beers for Patreon round-ups – and found that on that occasion, we did describe it as like a sweet, fruity best mild.

We enjoyed it, but definitely noticed an absence of bitterness.

And, in fact, there were some even earlier notes, from right at the start of 2020, which can probably be summarised as “How DARE they bestow upon this merely adequate brown soup the mighty name of ESB!?”

This made us wonder if freshness might be a factor – that if the beer is a few days or weeks older, it might have dried out and matured.

We thought about the differences in Fullers’ ESB, the template for them all, and perhaps we’ve observed the same thing. Sometimes there’s noticeably more depth of flavour and a richer mouthfeel and, at its worst, it can taste distinctly muddy.

Is ESB fundamentally more of a diva than ordinary bitter? Or maybe the fact that it’s strong (Severn’s is 5.2%) means it tends to hang around a little longer and is more likely to change and evolve at point of sale? 

If only we could test this theory out in some pubs across the country over the next couple of months. We’d be well up for seeing out winter with a focus on this barely-a-style.

In fact, we can still do that: if anyone has got any good suggestions for ESBs that we can order online, do please let us know.

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beer reviews

BWOASA: What’s the point of ‘strong ale’?

Strong ales and ESB.

Let’s be honest, strong ale, the SA in BWOASA, is the least exciting part. We only included it, really, to give ourselves a fighting chance, suspecting that we’d find more strong ale than barley wine out in the field.

As it is, we’ve hardly encountered much at all – again, it is the wrong time of year – but even with only a few points of reference, a view of this niche is becoming clear.

Strong ale, AKA extra special bitter, tends to sit above best bitter in a given brewery’s range, in terms of both richness and ABV. Of course there are no hard rules but it seems reasonable to take 5% as the lower cut-off. Other words you might see on the packaging or at point of sale include ‘premium’ and ‘malty’.

Having checked in with Fuller’s ESB and 1845 at the start of the month, the next strong ale we encountered was Good Chemistry Extra Special, at 5.6%. Jess found it at Small Bar, and Ray had it a week later at the Drapers; when we compared notes, we found similar observations: juicy malt (but not juicy hops), roundness, brownness, liquorice, treacle and a hint of smoke. If you mixed Fuller’s ESB with Theakston Old Peculier, 50-50, this might be what you’d end up with. We both like it quite a bit, but it’s resolutely old-fashioned, and really demands snow and open fires, rather than blossom and lengthening days.

* * *

We had a bit of a debate over Goff’s Black Knight, 5.3%, at the Bank Tavern in Bristol city centre. Ray took against it – ‘Dusty, unfinished homebrew, an absolute crystal malt nightmare.’ – while Jess rather liked it, and didn’t detect whatever got his hackles up. It certainly is a beer with crystal malt to the fore, though, having that assertive toffee taste we used to encounter constantly a decade ago but which seems to have all but disappeared from commercial beers. It reminded us of when hardcore geeks used to moan about beers being ‘twiggy’. Really, Black Knight is all about body: mouth-filling, nourishing, almost enough to creosote a fence.

* * *

Palmer’s 200 at the Oxford in Totterdown is another blast from the past, a reminded of holidays in and around Lyme Regis in our twenties, when we’d groan at yet another line-up of brown beers in one damp old pub or another, and long for even the faintest whisper of hops. At 5%, it only just pushes its head out of best bitter territory, but looks, feels and tastes the part: red-brown, dense, sugary… one-dimensional. Boiled sweets and caramel. Sticky. We didn’t  mind it (the faintest of praise) but perhaps we’re developing Stockholm Syndrome, because our drinking companion ordered a pint on our advice and looked almost hurt, as if we’d played a cruel prank.

* * *

What is the point of strong ale? Who really knows. To generalise, based on a combination of this recent experience and fading memories, it gets you drunk, and makes you feel full, but without offering much in the way of flavour, unless you really like 50 shades of sugar and something from the woodshed.

Of course the best examples have a certain magic about them but this style, perhaps more than any other, demands interesting yeast (Fuller’s) or some other sleight of hand to give it life.