British Beer And Real Ale

Bath’s best pub beer gardens

2009-05-01T14:30:00.007+01:00

It is an official sanctioned bank holiday, the Met Office has promised a sunny summer and we live in a nation where the ‘retail experience’ passes for high culture and our national pastime is panicking about the forthcoming aporkalypse. So what is there left to do for those of us whose spare time hangs heavily like a whore’s guilt? Get drunk, obviously, but with the twist of getting drunk outside.

But where to can you go to enjoy the cool breeze against your skin and the cold sting of real ale against your liver? Because while Bath is a beautiful city with its narrow cobbled streets, widescreen Georgian vistas and even wider tourists, the choice of beer gardens is still distinctly small.

Most of Bath’s great pubs are what could euphemistically be called ‘winter pubs’. From the dark wood dominated Star and the gloomy Salamander to the almost windowless Old Green Tree, they only make sense as a retreat from the outside world, not a place to embrace it.

Instead to find a good pint and a beer garden in Bath you need to do something the tourist never do and most of the locals will rarely attempt – to leave the city centre.

The Hop Pole
Hidden between the greenery of Victoria park and the equally green River Avon, this Bath Ale pub’s secluded beer garden is far and away the best in the city. The problem is that most of the other residents know that too.

Instead of being a converted car park or adjunct to a busy junction, it is a designed and planted blend of greenery and gravel. Pergolas and flowering climbers contort with patio heaters and wrought iron furniture to persuade that it you are in the formal garden of a country house, and that a jelly in Laura Ashley is about to approach you about the wellbeing of her Tricky Woo.

Except that your peace and quiet has as much chance of remaining unbroken as a hymen at a Swindon Catholic school because its swing and slide proximity means that The Hop Pole is where parents drag their beloved for their Nutrasweet re-ups.

And what a delight it is to see Jocaster and Lexmark, kids whose free-spirited nature sorely needs a few boundaries imposing primarily through the medium of a clenched fist. However, you can mostly ignore them since the beer is good, if predictable, and the food is decent, if pricey.

The Royal Oak
It might only be the other side of the bridge from The Hop Pole but The Royal Oak is a world away from its sedate seclusion. For this is a pub for drinking in, not really using the toilet in or eating in. But while it’s rougher around the edges, with bench seating and the odd weed poking between the paving stones; it’s also far more innovative and interesting.

Here the ten beers on offer are all from SIBA breweries, ensuring a selection of some of the most exciting and strange ales from around Britain, along with Budvar light and dark and four local ciders. It’s also home to the fledgling Art Brew of North Chideock in Devon.

Despite the garden being only a fence’s thickness from a busy road where Novas with neons drown in seismic bass, it still manages to be quiet - primarily because the pub remains mostly child-free. That isn’t because this slightly scruffy freehouse isn’t nipper-friendly, more because it is a less pretentious pub created, for and by, people who love beer.

The White Hart
Instead of a thousand words, here is a picture and they are meant to be interchangeable after all - unless you attempt that substitution during an A-Level English exam. It is one of the pub's own pictures too, with all their rights reserved and such.

Like the rest of Widcombe this former locals’ pub has been scrubbed and bleached to fit into a street newly filled with Aga shops, piano merchants and an organic-coffee house. And it is solid and pleasant, much like the Butcombe they serve.

The Bell
If The Royal Oak is worn, The Bell has spent most of its harrowing life stuffing purloined cans of White Ace into its string-supported trousers. Favoured by multi-coloured bowler mad-hatter drinking Westons Organic, its narrow collection of benches attracts all social classes from street drinkers to upper-middle class trustafarians playing at being street drinkers.

The beer is as varied as the conditions it is kept it. Otter, Gem and Pitchfork are among the seven regulars but everything from the green Sign Of Spring to Spingo have appeared alongside a good selection of very strong Belgian bottles.

Everything about this pub is bohemian, so if you are looking to get served quickly the best way is to strike up a decade long friendship with the staff before attempting to order.

Coeur De Lion
With no greenery, no space and no actual garden, the Coeur De Lion’s strip of pavement probably doesn’t tick many of the boxes you might look for in outdoor drinking. But if you can get one of the eight or so seats on offer it can be a wonderful place to spend an evening.

For with this tiny pub, concealed just metres from both the Guildhall and the Abbey, you get all the benefit of the glorious architecture of the city centre - and views of the stained glass front window - all in a location that many residents still struggle to find. And if all the seats are taken, try the almost as diminutive Volunteer Rifleman’s Arms for a similar effect.

Anyway it is probably better to spend your time outside as this one-room pub, as it is far too small to actually go in, except to order from one of the well kept Abbey ales.

The Rest
With its position beneath the historic Pultney Bridge and next to their weir, The Boater almost has one of the best locations in Bath. However neither are actually visible from its endless rows of tree-shaded tables populated either by rugby thugs or the underage. Like The Boater, The Crystal Palace uses its tourist-trap position and walled garden to entice but its over-priced and often ‘creamy’ beers should repel. For a much better pint try the The Pig And Fiddle but be prepared to drink it sat in the warm backdraft of traffic and the splash-range of warm vomit.

Breast Bitter: Pumpclip Idiocy from Cottage

2009-04-29T13:03:00.005+01:00

Boobies, tits, melons, bazongas, headlamps and midgets’ crashmats: These are all words that I can write here without cringing. That is provided they are delivered with my tongue wedged so far into my cheek that it looks likes I’m pleasuring a blue whale. However, they are not crudities that I should be forced to speak, in conversation, in a pub, with a person, on a Jesus’s own Sunday.

After all I’m English and so sexually repressed that this talk of jiggling meat-pillows only causes stiffening in my upper lip. So why do Cottage Brewery want to turn us all into an infantilised Sid James by naming their beer Breast Bitter?

Perhaps the news has taken longer to reach Castle Cary - probably because it is a town that still drowns those who use flush toilets - but the 70s are over. Reg Varney is dead, accept it and move on. In our modern world giggling over lactoids, breasticles and silicon-zeppelins is as funny as remaking The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin with all the human warmth of Threads.

But it isn’t just the misogynist moniker of this beer that bitchslaps your decency. Nor the sheer ineptitude of the crayonjockey they hired to Parkinsons out the pumpclip pictured above. Granted it is actually both of those things, but it is also the gawping uselessness of the pun.

Breast Bitter doesn’t work. The name fails to conjure up thoughts of what is actually a nice, slightly hoppy mostly malty 4.6% beer. Instead it creates visions of mummy milking rooms where distended upper-udders are ‘expressed’ 24/7. Or worse it fills your dreampipes with Oedipal fear. And if they really, really like this pitiful pun, it should have at least been attached to a Milk Stout.

But Breast Bitter isn’t alone there are plenty of others out there too. So what names or pumpclips have caused you to ignore an ale? When have you been too ashamed to order a Top Totty? Have you preferred pointing to uttering the words Rite Flanker? Or is the only word that has ever put you off a pint been Stella?

Pub Review: The Old Green Tree

2009-04-10T20:34:00.014+01:00

The Old Green Tree
Green Street
Bath
They come from the bus tours, they come from the ghost walk, they come straight from central casting. Padded by Taco Bell, clad in velour and as cacophonous as a jet plane, they clog the narrow oak-panelled chambers of The Old Green Tree like chunky cholesterol. Roughly guided by The Lonely Planet and armed only with a lack of self or spatial awareness, these are they are Americans in search of a ‘genuine experience’ of a ‘genuine’ British pub.

It isn’t fair to criticise this Bath institution for the intermittent arrival of these stereotypical irritants, but it would be unfair not to warn you. For this superb pub, situated right in the heart of the centre, isn’t just on the tourist map of the Georgian city– it is one of the annotated highlights.

Part of the problem is that The Tree is small. Not that small though, not compared to the nearby Volunteer Riflemans Arms or the Cour de Lion - a pub whose floor plan is so diminutive that a recent lock-in had to be investigated by The Howard League for Penal Reform. But since The Old Green Tree has just two thin rooms and a bar area between them, you’d generally get more elbow room flying economy on Lilliputian Airways.

It is also quaint. Not that quaint through, because the dark wood panels on the walls and the antique fixtures and fittings are actually faux. In fact the single-roomed original pub was expanded and refitted in 1923 to appear Victorian – making it one of the first theme pubs around.

Despite this ersatz extension the Tree still retains a feeling of times past, not least because of the lack of natural light and the absence of music but also because of the unfailing obsequiousness of the landlord, Tim. In novelty ties and fixed grin, he bows and scrapes to all. And with our overseas guests he displays the kind of studied geniality unseen since P.G’s iconic manservant Jeeves, calmly explaining that drinks need to be ordered at the bar not from a sitting bellow.

Tim’s forelock also receive a extensive tugging behind the bar. For he and his staff are always happy to take you through the six real ales from a varied selection of mainly Somerset beers. The only fixtures being a light lunchtime standard from Blindman’s named Old Green Tree, RCH’s rebelliously zesty Pitchfork and one of Butcombe’s own bitters.

The cider is the flavoursome but bubbly Broadoak and the lagers are standard German and Czech numbers while a number of ineptly coloured posters highlight an extensive list of Belgian beers. Wine and whisky drinkers are also well served with a broad range of bottles and vintages.

The food is also very good. Not the ‘specials’ though, as they are merely nice. So while the blackboard’s offering are mostly experimental, opening the leather-bound menus reveals a range of rehearsed classics: mussels, duck, sandwiches and sausages. It’s all beautifully made in the tiny kitchen above but the rare roast beef salad is the standout option, primarily because these slices of cow-flesh radiate their vibrant pinkness like an autumnal sunset.

All in all The Old Green Tree is a hidden treasure. Not that well hidden though, thanks to Fodors, Footprint, Good Pub Guide, The Rough Guide, The Lonely Planet, The Good Beer Guide…

The Old Green Tree, 12 Green Street, Bath. 01225 448259.
Food served 12 - 3pm Monday to Saturday.

Follow this link for more Bath pub reviews.

Bristol’s Star & Dove shuts. Are more gastros to go?

2009-04-07T17:45:00.008+01:00

Update: The Star & Dove is again open and seemingly under new management. Details to follow...

Totterdown’s gastropub and restaurant Star & Dove has closed, at least in the short-term. But can we judge anything from this experiment in food and beer mismatching?

Despite its prime parkside position, expensive and extensive refurbishment just two years ago and a location on a Yummy-Mummy thoroughfare, the pub seemed to have been in trouble for some time.

At first the new owners tried to do everything: a restaurant upstairs with a pub and bistro below. Then as the gastro element stalled there was a Thai night, a steak night, a quiz night and a jazz night. There was everything, except a reliable supply of real ale, lager or cider.

Of late the top-floor top-price restaurant remained firmly shut and the pub itself kept its doors shut in daylight, opening only in the evenings and weekends. And while the current owners Eamon and Christiane have lined up someone to take over, it is clear that this vast landmark is going to be shut for sometime.

But is this just one business dream that went wrong or an early example of tougher times for the gastro?

A few years ago the received wisdom was that the ‘wet trade’ was dead. We were told that those pubs that traded on drink sales alone were as definitely doomed as Damocles’ beenie.

It was handed down as gospel that only those establishments who ran a 24 hour hot and cold all-offal buffet of potted oxen and lark’s spleen catapulted it directly into the ballpool and family fun area could survive.

But sometimes the world doesn’t just turn on its axis. Sometimes it sashays, it shimmies, it grinds its bits in your face like a lap dancer who needs the extras to pay her orthodontist.

Now it looks like the world has once again turned and the only pubs that seem to be able to thrive in this new climate of enforced austerity are the beer-only paradises whose culinary range extends no further than the holy trinity of the British tapas: crisp, pickled eggs and nuts.

The gastros’ other rivals also seem to have better equipped to deal with the downturn: Takeaways takings are up, fast food is selling more swiftly and the chain restaurants are thriving in a flurry of vouchers. Even the top end restaurants are discounting with lunch deals and lowered prices.

Are the gastro pubs caught in between them? After all they are the very middle of the middle market: too informal for big birthday or anniversary meal but too expensive for a casual dinner or a working lunch.

So is this the start of a trend? Are the gastros starting to suffer? Are drinkers’ pubs near you busier than those that went gourmet? Is dinner money being spent on drink and then a takeaway at home?

The evidence here might be anecdotal but for the gastro Star & Dove in Totterdown it must seem real enough for Eamon and Christiane at the Star & Dove.

Read our pub review of The Star & Dove here.

Liberal Democrat MP's second home is revealed as the local pub.

2009-03-30T18:01:00.013+01:00

One MP is making allowances in the battle to save the pubs of Britain from over-taxation and over-moralisation. At great personal expense one member of the otherwise apparently corrupt and venal House of Commons, is doing his bit to make sure that the frothy intoxicant we call beer is still available across Great Britain. And at a price that ordinary hard-working families can afford.

You won’t have heard of him though, he’s a Liberal Democrat. But his name is Greg Mulholland MP and he’s the Lib Dem’s shadow Health Minister. That’s right, he’s Ben Bradshaw’s shadow-shadow.

Now you might call him a friend of the people but don’t call him a friend of the pub, that just sounds like a euphemism for the human litter you see hammering on the door of a warehouse-sized ‘Spoons at 8.58 am. And he’s not that, he’s the people’s chosen representative for the sober hard working families of Leeds North West.

But this MP has made the pub his second home, but not literally - we are sure his expenses are completely in order - more figuratively because proof of Greg’s heroism can clearly be seen in the current roster of Early Day Motions. Yes, when it comes to EDM, Greg is first among unequals, a man with a plan, and a pen.

For not only has this brave middle-of-the-roader decided to support the CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE GREAT BRITISH PUB and the COMMUNITY PUB INQUIRY, he has also added his support to the four strong Parliamentary call to support NATIONAL PUB DAY.

By there is more. Brave Greg his scrawled his spidery signature on PUBCOS AND THE SUPPLY TIE and even got his minions to typed out the following EDMs: CLOSURE OF LEEDS TETLEY'S BREWERY, TESCO AND THE CONVERSION OF PUBLIC HOUSE SITES and the ALL PARTY PARLIAMENTARY SAVE THE PUB GROUP.

But the fight goes on. Now he is fronting a solo campaign to get the House to support NATIONAL CASK ALE WEEK. Which as you all know by now runs from 6 to 13 April 2009 in support of lovely brown booze.

So thegoodbeerblog proposes that we should all join the mighty Liberal Democrat Greg Mulholland MP in his heroic campaign, and hoist a drink with him to saving the British pub*.

Cheers to Greg Mulholland, MP for Leeds North West, friend to drinking types nationwide and all-round good egg.

*Although obviously we can’t actually drink with him as the bars of the House of Commons (despte being heavily subsidised) are members only.

Brewdog and The Independent: Extreme Beer and Extremely Poor Journalism

2009-03-30T09:29:00.004+01:00

Feisty beer-makers Brewdog have made themselves another enemy, blandsheet newspaper The Independent. Now perhaps sharing an office with The Daily Mail has unaligned the chakras of this previously mild bunch of hacks but it does seem that someone has micturated in their skinny lattes.

So in this article under the attention grabbing, Google-snagging, and largely unsupported by quotes headline of Health fears over 'extreme beer' craze, they set their soy-milk fed attack dog (answering to the name of Martin Hickman) on those scamps at Brewdog, Otley, Thornbridge Hall and Dark Star.

However what remains of their poor old subs desk don’t seem to have been quite on message with this crusade against slightly strong(er) beer for slightly young(er) people and so have left the piece riddled with errors, from the misspelling of Adam Withrington’s name to failing to correct Alcohol Concern's miscalculating of the alcohol content of a 10% beer in units.

Strangely the loudly bugled health fears never actually materialise in the copy and especially not in the form of a quote from anyone within the medical establishment. As for the craze element of that headline, only one of the ales listed in available in supermarkets while the rest are mostly sold in pubs or via the dusty shelves of a few specialist retailers, where they are ‘boldly marketing’ apparently, through labels, on their bottles. However some credit must go to the gluten-free Martin Hickman though, as both of the other elements of the headline - ‘over’ and the reported speech ‘extreme beers’ are 100% correct.

As usual proper beer writer Pete Brown makes sense of it all with a clarity and purity that shames the words that tumble out of here, so please go read this walking wall of common sense’s rebuke to the Indy here.

Go on, there is nothing else here.

Honest.

Golden Goodbyes: Swindon’s Archers The Brewers Gets Credit Crunched

2009-03-24T15:29:00.007Z

Archers brewery has gone into compulsory liquidation, making it one of the first of the real ale producers to go under in this recession.

Pub paper the Morning Advertiser tweeted the news yesterday that the Swindon-based brewer, which was created in 1979, was to be liquidated just over a year after a takeover saved it from administration. Now, with an insolvency practitioner appointed, Archers are hoping to find a buyer to keep their beers in production.

When it was just estate agents and bankers, it was funny. Then the Credit Crunch started to chewing up ordinary ‘hard working families’. And me. Now, somehow, watching society slough away like putrefying flesh isn’t the endless source of chuckles it once seemed. Especially after news like this.

Because while the loss of any brewer of ale moistens the ducts, Archers feels closer to home, mainly because it was, a Google Map close. For as someone who pretty much started their ale-drinking career with pints of Golden in an Archers pub only a few hundred metres from the brewery, today my mucus membranes have become almost desiccated.

To guess why and how this 10,000 barrels-a-year plant and its 20 staff have ended up surplus to requirements would be to indulge in wild, pointless speculation based on no inside information whatsoever...

But this is a blog, it’s what we do.

Part of the problem must have been the sheer range of beer, produced in addition to the core four of: Golden, Village, Best and Crystal Clear. Back in 2007, then administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP quoted Archers’ beer range as 190 brews strong. The stupidly comprehensive Beermad also list 274 ales produced, although they have 194 of those down as dead or deleted.

And if you could ever identify an Archers’ beer you liked from this ever-changing range, finding them in the South West seemed to increasingly be a problem.

Despite living in Bath for a decade the amount of times an Archers ale turned up in any pub could be counted on the webbed fingers of one hand. The same goes for that former Archers pub in Swindon in which I did so much of my formative drinking. Never again has a beer from 400 metres away made it across the tracks to former freehouse The Gluepot. Instead various Golden-like pints were spotted and sunk on days out in Stoke, Huddersfield or Oldham, but never seen again in Swindon.

So was it a case of aiming too far and too wide? Who knows but one landlord I spoke too even said that he found the brewery difficult to deal with, with them preferring answerphones to answering calls or answering his questions.

For most beer drinkers Archers were probably a producer of some pleasant but samey straw coloured ales but for some of us, Swindonians mostly, it will be missed. Even if we haven’t so much as seen a beers of theirs in ten years.

Pubs, Politics, Parliament and Half Measures From Planet Pod

2009-03-19T18:59:00.009Z

The last working class man in Britain, Doris Karloff and a Liberal Democrat go into a pub… What a perfect example of political harmony.

It might be a joke refashioned from an old Bernard Righton routine, but it also happens to be true. But only if you take a look a look at the names of the MPs who have slapped their monikers on an Early Day Motion designed to protect the British pub.

It’s a trio that naturally go together like oil and water, or the Pope and the 21st century: Parliamentary furniture Dennis Skinner, reactionary-turned-national-treasure Ann Widdecombe and Werther's Originals frontman Ming Campbell.

Under the title of CAMPAIGN TO SAVE THE GREAT BRITISH PUB (The all-caps policy must reflect the Parliamentary tendency to bellow), these MPs call “on the Government to adopt the campaign's Last Orders, a five-point plan to save the British pub, as a way forward in safeguarding the future of Britain's traditional public houses.”

But the glittering list of names doesn’t end there (Actually it ends 191 later with Dundee West’s Jim McGovern, but that is just a quirk of chronology) because Kate Hoey, Lembit Opik, Nick Winterton, Derek Conway, Michael Ancram, Frank Field, Bob Marshall-Andrews and Vince Cable are all signed up pub-lovers too.

So hurrah for one and all! Yes, well done chaps. That will teach Darling, Brown and everyone who seeks to ruin this sceptred isle. That will show them that Britain is still a land as pure and chaste and unchanged since a sort of hazy-imaginary-time when King Arthur roamed the hills in an Austin Allegro listening to The Kinks on a mobile gramophone and sending the occasional gunboat to deal with those swarthy foreign types.

Except that Early Day Motion motions are the Parliamentary equivalent of internet polls. If they sound like something that the heavily cushioned Nick Soames gets after his butler wakes him for a hearty breakfast before noon, that is because that is exactly what they are worth. They are a sop, a way for MPs to appear active while actually remaining inactive for longer than Mount Vesuvius. They are never voted on and they rarely reach the floor of the house, but most importantly they can be signed from a chaise longue, bath chair or deck chair.

However with 191 signatures, this EDM does kick some Parliamentary arse easily toping Graham Brady’s EDM supporting Lacrosse and even Martin Caton’s EDM recognising the Year 10 football team from Penyrheol Comprehensive School in Gorseinon. And this mighty pub campaign has even collected 60 more signatures than last year’s calls for an independent Ombudsman for grocers.

So well done to Mr Pinty and the Axe The Tax types for all their hard work but if we are relying on cranks, oddballs, former non-Cabinet ministers and the Liberal Democrats to save the British pub, we might have to find another way.

If you are wondering about the Planet Pod thing, see The Guardian's Simon Hattenstone, after all it was he who said "Ann Widdecombe is from Planet Pod".

IPA v GTA, Punk v Portman, Hype v Indifference

2009-03-12T09:57:00.011Z

Roger Protz smells faintly of dill, all Fuller’s beers contain string and the Portman Group don’t wash their hands properly after flushing. These words are lies, utterly transparent lies that I won’t standby in court and apologise for right now. Sorry.

But these blatant falsehoods also prove how easy it is to kick against the Aunt Sally that is ‘Establishment’, especially when the ‘Establishment’ is as orthodox and conservative as the world of real ale can seem. After all, this is a world in which apparently you can seem to stand out in simply by being under 30 or having a vagina. Or both.

Which is a roundabout way of bringing us to Scottish brewers Brewdog and their self-styled rebellion against all that is traditional, all that is dull, all that is predictable about British beer. Yeah, they’re rebels, they’re renegades and they’re punks – just like Johnny Lydon and Iggy Pop are.

They also remind me of professional controversialists, fellow residents of Scotland and part-time video game developer Rockstar. So much of their infamy has been built on poking and twizzling a Grand Theft Auto-shaped stick up the censor’s nose and then surfing the resulting streams of condemnation straight into the hearts and wallets of the spotty-serial killer market.

It’s a model that Brewdog seem keen to follow in their recent well publicised scuffling with the Portman Group. Lots of sound and fury and lots of publicity. With a sneer Brewdog are manning the barricades in a war against the conventional and the bland. Well that’s only true if you replace the word ‘barricades’ with the words ‘shelves of Tesco’ and the word ‘sneer’ with ‘carefully considered marketing strategy’.

Because it was through that retail giant and Brewdog’s carefully considered marketing strategy that a bottle of Punk IPA appeared in my cupboard. That and the messy spurtings of praise lavished by so many bloggers, tenting their trousers in delight at this beer.

“On my first tasting my tongue exploded, followed by most of my skull and three of my four young children. As my liver was immolated in pure delight, I tasted hops and the kind of joy only experienced when all your Easters, Christmases and Bar Mitvahs come together at once” wrote Liverabuser.com.

“The experience of drinking Brewdog IPA was akin to draining 330ml of The Lord’s own tears, distilled in the mouth of an angel and carbonated by mafipulation through all seven stomachs of the holy cow. My second bottle also gave me eternal life”. Tastingnotesfromasmallisland@wordpress,com

Again these are lies but the truth isn’t so distance this time. Ahead of even last year’s favourite, Thornbridge Hall, Brewdog seem to be the chosen ones. Beer writers and forumites seem to love their chutzpah, their beer and some even seem to like the design of their bottles. Which is strange because moderation must be the new anarchy if these unsatisfyingly small 330ml bottles with their dated ‘stamp’ design are impressive.

After all the bluster and all the blogging, hopes were high for the beer, but this yellowy brew isn’t exciting enough to justify this much alcohol. The citrus and grapefruit bitterness bludgeon while the aroma and oiliness of pine needles and alcohol gives it a bleachy, clean toilet aroma. Sure it’s smooth, hoppy and grassy but it is also rather average compared to the American bitterbomb which have inspired it.

Obviously we could put this indifference down to personal taste - that I like beers with balance, with perhaps just a tiny smidge of malty flavour, with depth - but as their own bottle sneers “We don’t care if you don’t like it.” Except they do care, deeply.

Pub closures, beer, ties, tax and ITV

2009-03-05T10:53:00.004Z

As the pubs keep closing, the mouths keep flapping open and the numbers keep climbing. So six pubs are closing per day but what is there to add? Publicans, politicians and pressure groups are tumbling throughout in the hourly news cycle like the rogue red sock in a white wash. Endless oars are being inserted as each side forklifts all the blame into the lap of the opposition: It’s the tax, it’s the tie, it’s the smoking ban, it's the economy, it is the fact that British people have become soulless anti-matter that would rather chug a litre of something with all the charm of a bus’s backdraft in their over-mortgaged hovel than risk conversation over a civil ale.

So what it there to add? Only a hollow laugh at the troubles of ITV and a picture by a Mr hYpe of B3ta.com. That, and the sound of gentle sobbing.

CAMRA’s Roger Protz strops over Oz and James

2009-02-20T10:32:00.005Z

Oh dear. King CAMRA and former Swoppie Roger Protz, has gone a bit Daily Mail.

For in his latest blog post all the toys have departed the CAMRA pram. And the reason? Oz Clarke and James May’s continued failure to talk about his organisation on their contrived, hideously overstretched and somehow one-dimensional exploration tour of Britain’s booze culture.

Yes, the programme is frustrating with its endless edit-suite padding and caricatured voice-overs from the all-knowing smugster versus the hairest dolt in town. It has also lasted longer than the Hundred Year’s War and yet has somehow surfed along the details like an un-briefed minister unwittingly rolled into Paxman’s thousand-yard stare.

The tone of the piece is grating but to write “I repeat, Camra is the story” is as blinkered as it is clumsy. Oz and James Drink Britain reached around 3 million possibly Non-Discerning Drinkers for its first and second episodes, only two million less than the inauguration of than the 44th president of the old colonies did. Surely that does the drink and the organisation some good? Especially since as Rog's opening paragraph admits most people have heard of CAMRA, then surely the problem isn't awareness but presentation? Wouldn't it be better to look like professional inclusive organisation that can take a ribbing, not a petulant prissy and fragile interest group?

Could we not think in widescreen for a moment, and not 4:3?

Yes the programme is two buffoons buffering and bickering around Blightly in a big car, it’s not the Ascent Of Man with Doctor Jacob Bronowski, and the music is considerably more jaunty. But people watch it. Millions of people watch it – although a good number of those will be beer bloggers. But never mind the quality, feel the coverage – for real ale and ultimately for CAMRA and all of us.

Three reasons to drink to the recession

2009-02-19T12:40:00.004Z

Stop jabbing at your jugular and put down that jagged strip of bean tin. Choke up that gut load of aspirin, Relentless and shame. Clamber carefully off that rickety chair and take you neck out of the shoelace noose. Come on, stop all that and listen here instead:

The recession isn’t that bad.

Go on admit it. Just because our economy has reached parity with Zimbabwe’s is no reason for mass panic.

And anyway your Ikea light fitting wouldn’t have stood up to having your trans-fat bloated corpse dangling from it. When they did find your body, rendered unidentifiable by the nibbling of local cats, it’s likely to be covered by a plasterboard shroud and a small pile of the wrong screws for the job.

Because there are really are three reasons why the recession will actually be good for drinking and drinkers – and not just because everyone who gets sacked immediately heads to the pub to get so mind bendingly skullfudged that they are halfway to work the next morning before they’ve sobered up enough to remember that the faceless corporation to which they’ve dedicated two-thirds of their life considered them to have less worth than a urinal cake - and a slightly worse pension.

Look at the entirely fabricated evidence…

Bankers + Bonuses = Brewers
Now you might find it hard to squeeze any sadwater out of your eyes when you see pinstripe parasites being locked out of their Norman Foster Associates tower of glass and idolatry, however once these shills drift off into the shires they’ll need something else to do. And what do men with money do in the sticks? Exactly right, they pour their vast state-subsidised bonuses into opening new breweries. There they can make exciting beers with exciting pump clips and exciting names such as Libor Pains, The Alan Stanford Prison Experiment, New-Facile Brown Ale and Darling Black Label.

Saloon With A View
With bricks and mortar now offering the same rigidity and reliability as chocolate teapots and marzipan dildos, surely pubs will be safe from developers? Since mortgages are now confined to the history books along with permanent jobs and the joyless smiles of ITV regional presenters, no longer will anyone want to turn your humble local into sixty self-contained rat-holes.

Bad Mad Men
The greatest disparity between real ale and the test tube swill so beloved by the bovine herds wasn’t always in taste – it was in advertising. So while Stella spent millions attempting to bridge the canyon of cognitive dissonance between Jean de Florette and a Saturday in casualty, real ale’s ad budget stretched to a XL T-shirt made skin-tight over a XXXL stomach. Now with ad spend collapsing like a Windies bowling crease, the difference is down to a few billion. Okay so the playing field might not be levelled but it is slightly less vertical.

Now, how much damage can a desk fan do to your face?

Bristol Pub Review: The Star & Dove

2009-02-03T20:26:00.003Z

The Star & Dove
Totterdown
Bristol
www.thestaranddove.co.uk

It has to be the easiest bit of selling ever performed - that second pint. You are already through the pub door, you’re already warm, and you’re already made yourself comfortable. More importantly you’ve already got foam on your lip and there is no anecdote and no tale worth the telling that can ever be fully explained in the time it takes to sink a solitary pint.

No act of silver-tongued salesmanship is required. You are a large, mildly intoxicated fish in a particularly beery barrel. Except at the Star & Dove in Bristol has never managed to sell me that second beer - despite two separate visits.

Because twice we’ve visited this recently re-fitted festival of artfully-rickety furniture and pre-scuffed paintwork. We’ve even eaten well there too. And from real plates too, not just licking the cheesy and oniony shards from the shiny side of a packet of Golden Wonder. And twice we have left without having a second pint.

We’ve tried though. Both times we’ve been denied because they’ve run out of beer – all beers. No, it was neither too late nor too early, both times were around eight o’clock on a Monday and a Wednesday respectively.

All Gastro, No Pub

But it isn’t just the three handpumps that seem to regularly run dry in this sizeable but eternally empty gastropub. On our first visit as we finished our well looked after pints of Bath Ale’s Spa, we watched another customer attempt to buy a pint of ale in a scene distressingly reminiscent of Month Python’s Cheese Shop routine.

First he ordered a Tribute, then a BOB and then a Spa. ‘All off’ muttered the starched halibut of a waiter drafted in from the upstairs restaurant. So the customer glanced along the bar and opted for an Amstel. ‘Nope’. Foster's? He asked more in desperation than desire but again an answer was shrugged in his direction – ‘only the Extra Cold’.

It was a moment of pure genius. Well, it would have been except that the Guinness had a glass over the handle too. And it wasn’t even a one off because on the previous visit all three ales, two lagers, both ciders and black stuff had been unavailable.

No beer, not much lager and an intermittent cider? You might wonder what kind of pub this is? The answer can only be that it is a very confused one because seemingly this otherwise promising large local is having a bit of a crisis.

The problem seems to be that as gastro element of the pub has drawn the attention and most of the funds, and so the pub part has suffered. But while running a pub on beer alone must be difficult - except in a few wonderful cases - but running a pub solely on food? Well there is a word for that - it’s a restaurant.

Scrapping The Barrel

The resulting establishment seems to be a bit of a basketcase, attempting to appeal to any demographic that might be wandering past. So on Monday there is Thai food, Tuesday is jazz night and on Wednesday the menu changes again to steaks. Add in the quiz evening, cinema night, and the Sunday roast and it is no wonder that the staff forget about the day to day items such as drink.

So perhaps it is no surprise that the barman seemed confused and twitchy, too distracted to remember any of the items on our three-item-long order. And that ten pounds plus ten pounds does not equal thirty pounds.

The Right Staff

As were waited sipping our sole beer, orders were lost, plates of food were taken from room to room in search of customers in a barely quarter full pub. No one knew if the restaurant upstairs was open or closed leaving the waiters ignoring the customers as they faffed with rotas.

But it doesn’t need to be like this. Beer and food can be fused successfully as The King William in Bath proves both wonderfully. There the drinkers and diners sit happily alongside each other, even though space is far smaller. The outward simplicity of the menu is complimented by the bold choice of local beers. There is no safe selection of goldens there, instead of the five handpumps, one or two are often dedicated to darks or tastebud testers instead of frothy non-entities.

It is a balance that the owners, who have clearly invested a great deal of time and money in the place, need to also understand. Unless that happens the Star And Dove seems little more than a Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmare’s waiting to happen. At least until it is taken over, and hopefully that is at least one sale that they can manage to make.

Oz And Gluck: A Pint Of Bitterness

2009-01-15T08:16:00.010Z

Thanks to the iPlayer making the previously eminently missable now fast forwardable I’ve finally caught up with BBC 2’s Oz And James’ Great Free Booze Up. And well, yes, it is mild enough to be inoffensive, mildly education and mildly dull.

The priggish Oz Clarke, and part-time Stirling Moss look-alike, clearly knows rather a lot about booze while James May’s blitherings can amuse. In fact with their clashing voice-overs it is a little bit like a sedate version of Peep Show – but only if Jez and Mark had enjoyed a good private education, and had less disturbing sexual habits. Or at least nothing that can be tried in a caravan.

It’s a light, gentle, warming piece of work - unlike this pitiful cockery from Malcolm Gluck, a man with so steeped in print that he probably squirts ink if accidentally surprised.

But now Gluck has hit the web and he is angry. No tell a lie for rhetorical effect - (why not he does) he’s actually desperate, servicing-the-needs-of-dockers-for-food desperate.

Otherwise why would a once respected copy-monkey even type such wrist-tossed drivel as: “Well, beer is only drunk by losers and sadsacks, unsexy people who care nothing for their minds or their bodies.”

It’s obviously lazy, horribly lazy work. The kind of drivel that would shame a Tourette sufferer's Twitter feed. It is also stupidly short-term hit-garnering of the worst kind, as pathetic as me writing NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE.

The Guardian should really know better, and so should I. NUDE KITTEN BRITNEY LESBIAN KAKA SEX OBAMA MYSPACE should be at the top of the page and include today's celeb stiff-fest RICARDO MONTALBAN and PATRICK PRISONER MCGOOHAN.

Of course rising to his petty bait would be silly, especially if it gets added to his Comments list. Responding would be dignifying his unwarranted poking of the beery beast. Instead it is far better just to leave him to his gutter-dwelling without mentioning that his reference are out of date, his prose is leaden and that is face looks eerily like the weird curly-haired boy who once valued antiques on Wogan and is now a woman.

Just because one wine critic is doing well from himself eh Malcolm?

Beer Review: Born In A Barn

2009-01-08T20:28:00.006Z

Draught
Art Brew
6.0%
www.artbrew.co.uk

The decorations are down, the nation is back at work (until their P45s arrive) and the BBC have stopped repeating the festive Doctor Who on a daily basis. Yes, Christmas is finally over.

And to fully embrace the ending of over-eating, over-heating and endless relatives staying over, you need fresh zesty beer that pulls you into the New Year with vim, vigour and a hoppy smack in the chops. Except that it is minus ten outside and even the once predictable pavement is as treacherous as any of Bond's bedfellows.

So actually what you need is a beer that warms, that comforts, that contains enough booze to make every flat slab of un-impeding tarmac feel like an ice-rink. You need a Born In A Barn.

This beer tastes of Christmas, with all the trimmings. There seems to be a bit of everything in this drink, almost as if the brewer brushed out his luxuriant beard after Christmas dinner straight into the mash tun.

The nose is distinctly acidic, not the pickled onion aroma of an off-pint, but a pungent hint towards what lies beneath the loose, pale head. The taste though is warming, the perfect simulacra of port and brandy together. It fuses the soft fruit and raisin flavours of the fortified wine but the alcoholic kick of the spirit. It’s a heady, giddy, heart-warming combination and one of the best of the new brews from this fledgling brewer.

It's just a shame that we are probably going to have to wait another year for another pint.

Clutching At Straw

2009-01-02T18:52:00.013Z

Welcome to a whole new year, the same as the old year. Welcome to another 364 days when the humble pint of beer can be demonised as the greatest threat to our civilisation since Adolf left the army, little Osama decided against joining dad’s construction business and women/blacks/the poor were allowed the vote.

So two days of 2009 have gone and already J.D. Wetherspoon’s decision to cut beer prices is being hailed as a Licence To Binge by those indignation-hawkers at The Daily Mail. Now I’m not getting involved in the politics behind beer. That isn’t why I periodically mash my face into this keyboard and let the spellchecker pick the bones out. Others can fire-hose opprobrium around, but I just like beer. Anyway I’m sure that you have your own opinions and they are no doubt less fabricated from ill-conceived mouthguff than mine.

But we need to look to the future for beer. We must - primarily so we can get there before a junior minister sees fit to flop his swollen credentials onto the dispatch box in an attempt to sate an imagined demographic that only really consists of Melanie Phillips and her bubonic afterbirth.

But I have a nifty plan. If we create our own headline-grabbing programme of anti-booze measures we can discredit any future governments plans. After all anything and anyone that appears on this blog is instantly discredited.

So we must create a raft of measures and thus render them all laughable. They must also be radical, they must be draconian too because any Speakers’ Corner driveller can call for curfews or increasing the minimum drinking age to 21.

In fact, someone somewhere on a forum is probably right now advocating the return of National Service for anyone who has ever consumed more than a small gin in a 24-hour period. It might be fun though. After all watching the CAMRA membership run over an assault course would at least be a cheap laugh and somehow more dignfied than some TV programmes.

Go Guantanmo On Their Arses
The Government have already nabbed these high-visibility orange jumpsuits for their Community Payback idiocy but that shouldn’t stop us. Originality is no bar is it Jack?

To further distance the deviants who like the odd glass of ginger wine from the rest of decent, honest, puritan, white society, anyone planning a night out or even a swift pint on the walk home should be forced to wear one of these orange jumpsuit. Not only will it have safety benefits as drivers will know to expect their toddleresque lurching on the way home but now all you need to do is pop granddad into his day-glow romper outfit before he has a Harvey’s Bristol Cream and the rest of humanity will know not to listen to his deranged and racist ‘reckonings’ anymore.

Pedestrian Breathalyser
Roads are a dangerous place to be boozed-up, sure, but what about pavements? Have you ever had to walk too near a crumpled prole or a gutter-hobbit because of their unreasoned foot-stumbling? All we need to do is equip every copper - and borderline authority figure such as teachers/masons/T.A. members- with cuffs, a breathalyser and some weapons-grade sarcasm. Combined with some comprehensive SUS laws, we could even dress it up as part of the fight against knife crime, and the GWAT. Or just introduce it into infant schools from Monday.

Warnings On Booze
Printed cigarette warnings have clearly proven a vast success; there isn’t any evidence to prove this – except that it is a fact. So logically beer warnings must use the same technique of stark slogans and big print. No, in fact the font must be bigger, bolder and the words somehow less nuanced - because remember these people might be drunk. Surely the simple sloganeering of: “No!”, “Bad” and the Alice in Wonderland-themed “Don’t Drink Me” would suffice?

To truly save the youth from the demonic drink perhaps we must take this whole principle further and attempt to shatter the traditional link between alcohol and fun. So from now on all booze should be advertised under the slogan "Party with Shami Chakrabarti”. All we need to do is let Liberty's misery in mascara glower her way through any advert for alcohol and even the delightful Old Purple Tin won’t taste so sweet.

Failing that one in every twenty bottles of Budweiser contains a surprise. Instead of ricey-goodness, each special bottle would fire steel bolts from high-pressure rams up into the roof of the mouth piercing the brain and performing an instant Budotomoy.

Alcoholic-proof bottle caps
Clearly a major problem with these unruly booze-hounds isn't just the quantity of hooch consumed, it is the timing. So by simply adding alcoholic-proof bottle caps to the top of any bottle of spirits, the hours that the grog can be consumed can be cut. Much like the childproof caps on pills, these simple devices would click annoyingly until the next Centrally Mandated Drinking Hour sounds when they would be able to unleash their intoxicating contents.

Start Your Two Minutes Of Hate
Can you do better? Of course you can, you aren’t Jacqui Smith. But why not pretend to take a hammer to the Statue Of Lady Justice yourself with your own short-term idiocy designed to appeal to Simon Heffer and his hellspawn. Type them here. Go on, it’s that or talk to your co-workers.

January - Time To Retox

2008-12-31T12:32:00.002Z

Welcome to the wagging finger season. It is that time of year when the nation’s journalists, feeling tired and insecure on every level, decide that that rest of the country must be suffering similar internal ructions. And so it is their moral duty to shake a judgemental finger at them - before knocking off early.

So they find the most tedious paper-skinned living-forever-through-denial freelancer to write a happy-clappy health piece about detoxing. It’s pure Googlefiction of course, but still every part of it is backed up by ersatz quacks who at least managed to fill in their Response Source form and so is clearly an expert in something.

Of course they advocate taking charcoal/dried cat anuses/rose-flavoured magical spring-water to cleanse your blood/colon/soul. It doesn’t matter what is in these potions and lotions though because it’s all-natural and nothing natural ever hurt anyone, ever. And that is a fact.

Along with keeping Ben Goldacre in columns for another year, they also always want you to stop drinking, at all, for a whole month, regardless of such inconvenient truths as the Reinheitsgebot and the general purity of most alcohol. But they can be very insistent, very repetitive and use a very big font. So here are five reasons why you should carry on drinking right throughout January and beyond:

January Is The Coolest Month
January is the best time of the year to go to the pub. Those lovely sweet/smoky dark beers are in, the fire is lit and since the sun never actually comes up there is nothing to see outside the window – except the inexorable decline of capitalism.

Silence With Golden
January is the quietest time of the year to go to the pub. Since the rest of humanity is wracked with Sunday supplement-driven self-flagellation, they aren’t spoiling your drinking time with their voices/faces/jostling. You’ve got a pint of Entire Stout, they’ve got a litre of something gloopy sculpted from wheatgrass, and a hollow feeling.

Also the amateur drinkers who ruined the whole of December with their tottering, bragging and eruptive vomiting have also gone back to their PCs and padded work cells for another twelve months - or three months in the case of most of the financial institutions who think that they can dodge the world’s ire simply by delaying their parties till March.

Brevity Is Best
February is only 28 days long. If you really want to punish yourself, you know it makes sense.

Fiends Like These
If it is your friends who say you drink too much, where else could it be easy to make new friends than a pub?

Who's Got A Problem?
Who actually needs a month off alcohol? Alcoholics is who. So if you need a month off booze, it’s because you’ve got a problem and if you don’t, you don’t. Simple, so long as you don’t question the logic and just get your round in.

Four Organic Ales To Try, And One To Avoid

2008-12-23T14:05:00.007Z

I know. No festival has been milked this mercilessly since Vince Power’s Mean Fiddler took over at Reading, but The Royal Oak’s organic beer festival is worthy of more of my words.

You see it is a wonderful thing and it has grown during its three years. So the first surprise to my post-work-spazzed head about this year’s event was how many SIBA members seem to be treading the mulchy path to organic brewing. Because there were more beers on offer than last year with ABC, Bath Ales, Celt, North Curry, Matthews and Bridge Of Allan joining Butts, Spectrum, Marble and the Organic Brewery.

What also chaffed in my limited brain was the range of styles and shades of offer. The increased cost and restricted availability of organic materials doesn’t seem to have dented the diversity or depth of the brewer’s range and reach. So there were hop-powered beers, dark ales, pale beers and just one punchy ginger number. And I tried most of them, except the Bath Ales, which felt like a charity addition.

One Beer To Try
It is tricky to pick which one of Butts’ many lovely beers to select – the darkly rich chocolate Blackguard porter is superb – but Barbus Barbus is one of those beers that I have to have every time it appears. It’s a gently sweet golden with hints of malt and orange marmalade amid the hops. It isn’t a big gaudy whore of a beer but a well balanced one that also packs in plenty of flavour for a 4.6% ale.

Another Beer To Try
The annual appearance of Marble’s Ginger, meant that at least I had to try some, even though starting a drinking session with it would be as likely to invite disaster as playing the 1812 Overture at an outdoor Afghan wedding. For this 5.0% beer delights and punishes in equal measure and I’ve already sung the praises of this fiery pint. Anyway the zest, zingy, utterly fresh 3.9% Pint was my favourite from the Manchester brewery this time.

Two Beers To Try
First in a double header of stouts came the Bridge Of Allan Glencoe Wild Oat Stout, 4.5%, with the Marble ‘Stouter’ Stout, 4.7%, as pudding. Now while the 0.1 megapixel picture above might make you think that this pair of ales are similar in shade, there is actually quite a contrast in flavour.

The Glencoe is actually the more traditional of the two. Beneath its gently beige-shaded head, it has a smooth, almost milky sweetness that probably comes from the oats. Cutting against this is the carbonation – not fizziness - but the burnt, smoky flavours. So there is a little bit of ash, burnt toast and perhaps even liquorice that all combine with a bit of malt to provide a lovely finish. It’s really rather lovely affair.

Obviously the Marble Stout is different, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned that fact earlier, but it is very different. For a start it is hoppy and for a palate that has just attuned itself to the mellifluous malt and soft fruit of the Glencoe, that is a shock. So imagine the oily washing-up liquid bite of hops and those hefty citrus flavours fused with roasted malt and chocolate. Does it work? I don’t know, it is pretty interesting though. I understand that blogging is all about rabid, utterly certain opinion over considered thought but this time, opinion fails me.

One Beer To Avoid
Being a West Country lad and keen to embrace almost everything from this corner of the world - bar slave trading, losing the tops of your fingers in a threshing machine and Bristol City - I had to try a pint of ABC’s Gurt Lush. Even though the staff warned me against it, even though the regulars warned me against it, I tried it.

Now I’m told that they are really nice chaps and that their beer is getting better all the time but I really wish I hadn’t. Sorry ABC.

Oh well ‘tis the season for regret. Merry Christmas!

A Soiled Association?

2008-12-16T15:05:00.006Z

With their preference for taste over branding, flavour in place of price and microbreweries over macroeconomics, you might think that ale drinkers’ desires would mesh neatly with many of the objectives of the organic movement. And let’s be honest, the demographics probably aren’t that divergent either.

But in all the quickly cobbled together, mildly slurred pub-polls I’ve ever conducted, the origin and nature of the ingredients in a beer hardly ever get a mention, even amongst ardent label-searching vegetarians. Beer seems to exist outside the normal rules.

It was largely the same at The Royal Oak’s Organic Beer Festival. Because while the vast numbers of organic ales on the bar, and those served straight from the barrels, attracted plenty of attention, most of the pints were bought without the livers owners’ even knowing about the pesticide-free origins of the hops and malt. Let alone caring.

And yet Britain is reputed to be the third largest market for organic produce in the Europe. Over the last few years the Soil Association have charted double-digit growth for the retail sector. And while that may be slumping now there never seems to have had the same effect in beer or booze generally. The word ‘organic’ and ‘local’ appear on menus all the time, but very rarely on pump clips. Instead the brewing industry seems to target its organic beers at supermarket bottle-buyers. Particularly with sweeter or novelty ales.

Instead the received wisdom, both on the web and in the pub, seems to be that all organic beers are lacking something. That higher costs lead to weaker beers. That the price of organic hops prevents brewers from producing certain style - particularly the bitter-bombs that are so in vogue at the moment. That somehow any brewery that worries about such fripperies couldn’t create an ale worthy of serious consideration anyway.

So in the name of a purely unscientific research the question has to be asked: Do you think about organic beer? Do you even notice if your beer is branded as organic, local or even British? Have you ever knowingly tried an organic ale and is there one you like? And more importantly do you care either way?

A Christmas Barrel

2008-12-04T12:12:00.005Z

Men are clearly stupefying dolts. That isn’t a conclusion that you need to spend much time with Andy Townsend to come to either. We are easily pleased. We have to be otherwise we’d be insulted right to the most oblong shaped part of our medulla oblongata by Top Gear. Really most men are happy with bladder integrity and unfetted access to their own penis.

We don’t even ask for much either, except at Christmas. Then we demand presents that reflect the many varied facets of our personalities – those that aren’t represented by power tools or porn. Well you can probably guess what I’m going to advise that you buy for your friends, for family or for yourself - beer.

But I don’t mean you should join some club or order bottles online. I’ve tried it and you feel mean when the beige box is unwrapped. A few bottles seem to cost a lot of money – and some companies seem to stick a lot of less exciting ales in with the good ones. Instead go right to the source – a brewery – and get a box, or a barrel or a mini-cask.

It might seem excessive to buy that much booze and that is because it is. It is also generous and sociable and – this is the good bit – fun. Few people can resist pouring themselves a lovely foaming pint. It might be the sense of agency, it might also be because no one has any idea how much you are drinking.

Yes I know what you are thinking – why don’t you write short, regular posts like other bloggers? Either that or you are guessing that it won’t appeal to non-ale drinkers. But here is a little anecdote:

Last year we had a biggish party with lots of friends and family – and three 10 litre boxes of beer and a 5 litre one too. It was a calculation based on a generous estimate of how much beer all the ale drinkers would get through. Except that the lager drinkers all became beer drinkers that night and even some of the wine drinkers were temporarily converted too.

So we ran out of beer long before the evening was over, simply because no one could resist giving those little taps a twist. And we ended the evening taking requests for the names of the brewers and making promises to buy beer boxes as presents for others to give that Christmas. Convinced yet?

Buying Your Beer Present

Choosing The Right Stuff
Obviously you know what your pals/parent/liver likes but in our experience to make sure it’s all drunk means going for lighter, paler ales, less hoppy ales such as Brassknocker and not the traditional brown, often metallic Bests. So picking something light and bright will make sure your gift is appreciated – and while you are there why not get something darker and dangerous for yourself?

How Long Will It Last?
Most beer for home consumption will be what is known as Bright. This means that all the sediment and yeast has been filtered out at the brewery making sure that the beer is ready to drink immediately. It does mean that the box or pin will only last about five or six days but it does mean that the beer can be moved, poured and enjoyed at a moments notice. We even took a 10 litre box to a festival, keeping it in a tent and somehow it survived just fine.

How Much Beer To Buy?
It’s is tricky to estimate how much beer a person can get through but remember that this beer is going to need to be gone by New Year. Just try to estimate how many pints it will take for you to enjoy the company of an irascible racist grandfather, in the dry semi-tropical heat of the front room, while the Christmas edition of Alan Carr’s Giant Step Backwards perforates every eardrums. And then add a couple of pints. After all the Queen's Speech watched sober is something few people can endure.

What Sizes Are Available?
The smallest most breweries will sell you is a tiny 5 litre mini-cask for as little as £15. At just 8.8 pints they aren’t too big and they do look great, although they can be tricky to recycle.

Almost every brewery will do beers in boxes, varying in size from 10 litres (17.6 pints) to 20 litres (35.2 pints). Again prices vary from brewery to brewery and beer to beer so you can pick up a 20 litre of Cotswold Spring’s Olde English Rose for £50, the same quantity of Hopback’s Summer Lightning will cost you £74.36.

Where Should I Go?
The biggest choice can usually be found by contacting a local brewery directly. Click this scruffy but effective website to find the breweries near you. Or if you are lucky enough to live in the West County, there is a pretty good list to be found here. Just remember to give them a few days warning of when you want to pick up the beer.

Some pubs will also sell you all sorts of ales in containers of varying sizes and many of the brewery-owned houses will offer some good prices too.

Is that simple enough for you man?

Organic Beer Festival

2008-12-01T16:12:00.005Z

The Royal Oak, Bath

I like you. I must do because I’m going to tell you a secret. The Royal Oak in Twerton, Bath is having a week of organic beers from Monday 8^th of December. You can look on their website, their brewery’s website or even the pub's Facebook group and you won’t see any mention of it or the 30 ales that are set to appear over the week. You also won’t know that along with the ten handpumps there will also be a stillage set up inside the pub allowing you to get your organic ale straight from the barrel. Or if you as frog-stupid as I am, you can make Chris get it for you instead.

An Ambition FulPhilled

2008-11-21T15:15:00.007Z

I am shamed. A scrolls-distance ago on this wordstring I vomited up a few elongated paragraphs about my booze obsession. I burbled on that my desire to try different beers had rendered me socially maladaptive – or a ‘ticker’. Well, I lied. I have since discovered that my condition isn’t even worthy of a citation in a footnote, in the appendix, of the diagnosis - I met Phill The Pint, a man who has just notched up 5000 unique ales.

I knew him already, of course I did. He was ‘that bloke’. You know how pub acquaintances work. Names are rarely exchanged despite the various eruptions of whinge, bile and wind that pass for human interaction in pubs. And so even after a year of sitting two stools down from him, I thought of him as the chap who sounds like Dr. Phil Hammond.

In fact, didn’t that always strike you as odd in Cheers? So they made the boast in the title song but if the show had any basis in reality the final scene wouldn’t have been Sam flicking off the lights, but Carla checking Cliff’s grey nametag.

Anyway the above comparison to the pathologically unfunny Dr. Phil is unfair. And not just because of the extra L, this Phill’s material has more of a Les Dawson feel to it. Not the final-honed highly affectionate gags creamed over by the cardigans on Britain’s Best Ever Comedians That We’ve Got Clips Of, it is more the sweepings from Channel 4’s 50 Masters Of Misogyny.

But Phill is a proper ticker. And there are three ways of verifying this fact. One is that he always drinks halves. The second is that he will willingly enter a Wetherspoons. Thirdly and finally, he carries around a list of every single draught real-ale he’s ever had.

But it isn’t some pocket book with copperplate script and ornate illumination on the A in Abbey. It is a print out - a cold and unromantic collection of perforated pages seemingly time-warped straight from the wheels of a daisywheel printer. Not for Phill the now BNP-endorsed delights of Excel, because these perforated pages conceal in their six-inch thick folds and 9-point lettering, the immense number British-only draught beers that he has tasted - A heavy testament to one man’s battle against his liver, the Amstrad PCW8256 and LocoScript.

And I mention this not because it makes me feel better that I keep no such dead-tree record, that at least my computer doesn’t have a green-screen or that I’ve done it with a girl. Instead it is because last Wednesday Phill finally broke through the 5000 beer-barrier with the help of Chris from Twerton's The Royal Oak and five West Country brewers who created one-off beers especially for the man himself.

And for that I applaud Phill, while also coughing up an almost inaudible ‘nerd’.

Think Globally, Drink Locally

2008-10-29T15:49:00.011Z

“Which of these beers is local?” It’s a phrase that you’ve probably never heard before. In public. Delivered without irony. But this is Bath. In this petite city ‘organic, local and ethical’ has become the mumbled mantra for the hordes of trustafarians, tofu-knitters and Liberal Democrats as they bumble around the farmers’ market, flax-bag and HFW book in hand. They then strap their six-year-old ADHD-ridden bag of furious conceit into four-tonnes of reinforced steel and use zebra crossings as shortcuts, all to get home in time to be scandalised by a Food Programme story about air-freighting hummus.

But on this occasion, the ruddy-cheeked drinker wasn’t worried if the ales offered had been created from the salty tears of tiny-tots, harvested by squirting DDT straight into their Bambi-like peepers, he was just concerned about ‘beer miles’.

Luckily pretty much everything in The Royal Oak was ‘local’ that Sunday. A busy weekend had seen a flurry of flustered calls to the nearest brewers. So looking across the bar there were four from Blindmans of Frome, three from Matthews of Timsbury and a couple from the Bristol Beer Factory. There was also a rogue one from the Leeds Brewery but that just goes to prove one thing…

Isn’t the West Country great?

Cumbria might have more breweries per person than anywhere else in Britain but how many of those are tiny outlets giving a few tired, poorly, huddled masses in their free-breathing North Face wasterproofs a pint in just one or two cliff-side pubs? When it comes to variety, diversity and quality it is hard to beat Somerset and south Gloucestershire…

Abbey Ales of Bath do a really lovely mild while the (relatively) new boys Arbour Ales are always trying something different, from their dark lager to an oyster stout (pictured) produced with real shells.

The only problem being is that Arbour’s beers always remind me of early Belle and Sebastian records. Not because they are mimsy, whimsical affairs, more because their willingness to experiment seems to overwhelm their experience. So some of their drinks seem to be a muddy flurry of ambition instead of the clarity and purity of other's slightly duller beers.

If you prefer a sweeter edge to your noir-ish pints Bristol Beer Factory have their sublime Milk Stout while Butcombe produce clean, tasty beers including the light Blond, which uses lager hops to entice those who have recently graduated from the fizz.

Cheddar Ales might not be that near to home but it is worth going the extra mile(s) for the toffee-flavoured Potholer, the darkly dry Totty Pot and the golden-hued Mild Cheddar. Being just off the M4, Cotswold Brewery is much easier to reach than Cheddar and always a favourite in our house. Not just because the Codger is an amber, lightly-hopped delight but because they always have something racked and ready when we roll up at short notice.

Brassknocker from Matthews is also wonderful beer, wonderful enough to be short-listed for the Champion Beer of Britain this year. It is almost too good though, as at our wedding party that barrel was drained long before anything was even opened. And if you are looking from something seasonal, they seem to have a different ale for almost every month of the year.

There is more to RCH of Weston than Pitchfork but I adore the wanton bitterness of this hoppy, sinewy pint. Imagine being a chicken and having lemon stuffed into every cavity. It’s nothing like that. It would probably be worse, because really it has more of a painfully-grapefruit finish.

It might be stretching things even further to including Wickwar but no one should miss out on the CAMRA Champion Winter Beer of 2008 – Station Porter or their beautifully balanced Best known as BOB.

Just think of all those ales, all delicious, all brewed locally. Shame you drove to the pub from Devizes in your Porsche Cayenne Tarquil.

A Boon To Beer?

2008-10-28T16:40:00.011Z

Gastro pork scratchings from the pages of Heston, musical evenings with a skat-jazz outfit from Preston and cider festivals with brews made in Weston. To survive and thrive in the current economic climate – as predicted by Peston - the modern publican has to innovate. Or follow this simple maxim: To get a head, get a celeb.

Using your skill, luck, judgement and Wikipedia can you spot what is the secret behind the success of the Ye Olde Punch Bowl Inn, the pub owned by the lightly comiced actor and voice-over artist Neil Morrissey? Could it be that C4 have allowed him to create a series of hour-long adverts for his own pub, his own beer and his own book?

I admit that I slumped my way through Morrissey’s Perfect Pint - along with the tiny fraction of the nation who didn’t turn off during Embarrassing Teen Bodies and go and do something less boring instead – like rate all their stolen songs out of five on iTunes.

And so here is my review of the programme: Meh. Now I understand your objection that I’ve resorted to L33T-speak there but since brevity is still meant to be the soul of wit, I win. LOL.

Anyway I'm hardly likely to start picking on some former sitcom star now am I? Not in the current climate.

However what the show also did was implant the dated 90s laddishness of Neil Morrissey as the acceptable face of ale. Not just in the doe-eyes of the proles but also for the media too. Now when it comes to commissioning editors, producers, researchers and hack-journos fumbling for guests or commentators about beer/pubs/brewing it will be unrelenting mediocrity that is La Moz that pops into their spazzed heads.

Okay so at least it will make a change from the Protz but there must be others? There has to be someone more suited to representing all our hopes and alcoholic dreams? Obviously we have to steer clear of any previous advocates: The ‘Lonesome George’ of The Today Programme- John Humphries, and a man who seems to be attempting to bring back the feudal system through his model villages and pricing of biscuits – Charlie Windsor.

Well who would you like to lead? Who should front the campaign to save our pubs from the wrecking ball or become 'six contemporary living spaces' ? Or even worse, the indifference and slow decline of that pubco ownership brings? Who would you like to see on your bottles of beer?

My suggestion is Peep Show’s Mark Corrigan. With his love of history, Hawksmoor churches and total dislocation from the rest of humanity, he could be the perfect spokesman. After all with his past of historical re-enactments, girl-autism and “weird nuts” he would at least chime with the public's expectations of us ale-drinkers.

And yet he still seems like a relatively decent human primarily because of Jeremy, a man so vapid, vain and morally pinballing through life that you wonder if he’s ever been on a boating holiday in Corfu.

It sounds unlikely doesn’t? After all who would pick a man best know for his lager drinking, his slavering lust for a woman that he can’t have (until the plot jumped the shark anyway) and a pitifully dysfunctional relationships with his distressing flatmate. But after last night that is what we’ve got.

A Mild Winter

2008-10-28T09:39:00.003Z

I’m getting old. No I should correct myself, I got old some time ago but the process seems to be an on-going, annual sort of thing. I won’t tell you how utterly past it I am now but if this world was Logan’s Run I would have spent the last three years of my life being pursued by a sort of art-deco drinks cabinet.

But the greatest signs of my decay has to be that I’ve started to like mild. Yes, it is as surer sign of coffin-dodging as casual racism or sitting in a pool of your own piss while Songs Of Praise plays at volume louder than war. But as I enter my doddering dotage I’ve come to enjoy these weak but interesting beers. And more importantly that all that – I’ve done it at a time of year not dictated by CAMRA and their designated 31 days of drinking mild.

Since milds are as fashionable as buying a shares ISA or having your breakdown in private, breweries seem to have decided to drop the name from their range. And who could blame them because it is hard not to associate mild with customers whose vowels as flat as their caps as they sip drip-tray dregs. Instead these model, modern, microbrewers market these ales as light beers, emphasising the balance of hop and malt instead of mentioning the M word.

Next time you approach the bar wearing your ‘I am 33 badge’, party hat and standard issue scowl and spot the bony hand of the reaper reaching out to pull you a pint, here are a few to sample:

Abbey Ales for one aren’t ashamed to name their Mild but this 4% ale with its light chocolate flavour and stab of coffee bitterness seems to only surface during Spring. Also created as once-a-year-treat is the Mild Cheddar from Cheddar Ales. Golden and pale rather than dark or dense, it is only 3.6% but there is plenty of malt and a little light hoppiness to give it slightly sweeter edge. Darker and so more suited to these gloomier times is the 3.8% On The Rails from Ascot Ales in Camberley. While its biscuity depths hide chocolate and caramel sweetness a little hit of hops give is a touch of citrus that lifts the whole experience from the depths. And finally there is the Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild, but I’ve already mouthed enough words about that classic reborn.

Yes I might be old enough have been alive when Keynesian economics were in last in vogue and AC/DC last topped the charts but then today I got asked for ID. Okay, so I was in Waitrose during the gimmer-shift when the rest of the world is in work but that didn’t stop me having to whip out some documents when buying a bottle of Hook Norton Double Stout and a few turnips to go in a beef stew. So it might be more a testament to the rising cost of eye tests than the lack of lines on my visage but it made me happy. After all wouldn’t the world be wonderful place if the ‘yout’ were out buying bottles of Hook Norton Double Stout?

Tick, Tick, Gloom

2008-10-22T11:42:00.004+01:00

It’s when the glass is half-empty that the problem begins. After each sip my eyes start to REM across the room, scanning the pumps, darting towards the beer board. Conversation collapses as familiar logos and names are sought, identified and ignored. Instead of deploying wryly-observed anecdotes from my day, mental Post-Its are re-read as my Rolodex of recall is ransacked.

Hello. My name is Alex and I’m a ticker. I wasn’t always this way. I used to be happy with one pint of something nice and then another, and perhaps one more after that. Each drink was the same as the last, each sip tasting identical to the one before. The only other flavour allowed to pass my lips was the sting of salt supplied by a bag of peanuts. Or for those truly special occasions: an away win or a date - a packet of Golden Wonder.

But all that has changed. I went here. Now I’m as likely to repeat a real ale as the BBC are to repeat How Do You Want Me? a sweet little sitcom that contrasted the crushing mediocrity of Simon Nye‘s writing with the unkempt wonder that is Dylan Moran in full bemused flow.

But why would you always stick to the same beer? Unless that particular pint is so utterly transcendent that its absence causes your liver to weep chunky tears of blood and iron. Because there is a whole world of drinks out there, and discovering them won’t happen if I stick with the same ale time and again. The perfect pint will always escape me if I get a ‘usual’. And so I need to keep searching, I need to keep sipping, I need to keep scanning. Like The Littlest Hobo of beer, but with slightly less body hair, I’m always moving on.

And now after years of quiet enjoyment, it is starting to become a problem. No longer am I happy in good pubs with good music, good food and good conversation. I keep wanting more. Once I’ve sampled all the regular ales, tried the guest beer and seen what is coming on next, I’m itching to move again. I’ll even trade in a fireside seat on a damp Friday night for the remote chance that the next place will have something different, something darker, something unusual.

There are limits though. I don’t write down all the beers I’ve tried in a little book. I don’t score, rate and rank every pint I’ve ever had using a system as fiendishly rule-bound as the latest New York dating manual. I don’t maintain a database of any kind, well unless this page counts… and it doesn’t. I also don’t drink halves. If I’m going to try a beer I’m going to either enjoy right to the bottom of the glass or make sure that I wince my way through the next half an hour.

Logically I should be happiest at a beer festival, but I’m not. Yes, I enjoy the variety of the ales on offer and yes; I like the chance to taste beer from breweries that I’ve never heard of in distant places. But beer festivals are shit. Nice drinks don’t make up shuffling around drafty and dusty community halls, blinking under harsh sodium lighting and enduring ‘good time’ Zep and Creedence covers bands whose limited talent is only matched by their limited understanding of sacrilege.

So the question has to be asked. Am I alone in this affliction? And are we scoopers just OCD box tickers who’ve grown out of football stickers? Do others out there wonder if there more to beer than just the brown Bests offered in so many pubs? Do you go out of your way to try something different or is good beer about enjoying the familiar, and lots of it? When your pint is half-empty are you happy with the same again?

Review: McChouffe

2008-10-17T12:28:00.010+01:00

Brasserie d'Achouffe
Draught
8.00% ABV

It was destined to be drunk. I’d already seen its gnome logo waving and winking at me from the back of the bar. Lurking beyond all the other hand pumps and beneath a wonky blackboard acclaiming its Ardennes origins, its Scottish influence and its ‘premium’ price. But it was that Sunday night that fate took my hand, pushed into my pocket and pulled out £1.90. For a half.

I was innocently wandering home after an evening visiting parents. Meandering towards an empty house and a re-heated meal for one when my brain remembered that it likes beer. Perhaps a pint and quick peruse of the otherwise un-crumpled paper in my pocket could be the salve for my jaded soul? No, I must go home.

That is when my iPod shuffled me up an American ale podcast. I can’t remember which one, there are so many, and they burble away in the background ranking pints of West Coast IPA by their life-threatening IBUs. But for once the podcasting pair caught my ear as they were talking about my pub-flirtation - the McChouffe.

And they praised, they fawned and they mewed. Superlatives gushed into my ear like Stephen Fry Reads Roget: Chapter 19: Track 244: Sublime. Clearly these two knew rather a lot about beer and the brewing process, but this was bordering on the fulsome. First ‘prunes and strawberry jam’ were mentioned then ‘peat smoke, fruit and flowers’ were added to the mix. Soon it became a cavalcade of ‘heavenly glows’ and ‘maple syrup’. Finally ‘potpourri appeared as a supporting player on the outside of the tongue’ with ‘sweet unroasted barley’.

It seemed to go with everything too. From fried chicken to soy sauce or bread pudding and crème brûlée, you could drink it with anything and anyone. And yet my steely resolve remained unbent as I strode past the open pub door and into the darkness beyond. That was until I saw two long-lost former co-workers coming the other way. Serendipity, chance, design - call it what you want but fate had patted me down for small change and I followed them inside.

And what about this ambrosial ale, the much talked about Mc Chouffe? Well, it was nice. The sweetness was soft and sugary, the malt had a touch of nuttiness to it and there was also a hint of chocolate richness. There might have been a little dried fruit too.

Now obviously it wasn’t worth the hype, nothing could ever be. But it did confirm four fundamental truths:

1. A lot of Belgian beer is crushingly over-rated.
2. Never trust American podcasts on the subject of Belgian beers that are influenced by sweet Scottish ales.
3. Tartan trousers might suit gnomes as much as they suit Johnny Lydon, but gnomes have more dignity.
4. If God exists, he/she is dead from the tastebuds down.

Art For Beer’s Sake

2008-10-03T14:19:00.008+01:00

Unless the impeccably ill-conceived logic of a thousand years of homilies and Wikipedia have lied to us: dogs look like their owners and football teams play like their managers once did. So not only does Roy Keane’s canine Trigg has the far away look of killer in his doe-eyes and Bayern Munich go down as easily as their new master, Jurgen Klinsmann. It also meant that I had some pre-conceived ideas about what to expect from the first beers from the Art Brewery.

For this new Axminster brewery is the creation of John and Becky Winnerah, owners of The Royal Oak in Bath who have now relocated to start the complex process of making drinks to make me giddy – instead of the slightly less complex process of selling drinks to make me giddy.

And so having plenty experience of the kind of booze that John buys and sells, I was expecting the booze that he brews to be different. I though they might be more like the man and his tastes. I was expecting something darker, something smoky and strong, perhaps with a hint of bitterness too. Okay, so I wasn’t expecting it to be wearing a green rugby top and listening to The Specials but these two just beers didn’t fit the profile.

For a start, they are both pale and skulk around the 4% mark. First up was 2 AM, a beer that looked pale and coppery and had a zesty sweetness to it. That was followed with the Art Noveau which weighed in at a full .2% more alcohol and reminded me a little of Cheddar Ale’s fantastic Potholer. Which might not be what I expected but who is going to complain about that? Well knowing him, John. Probably.

Real Ale, Real People

2008-09-12T15:53:00.005+01:00

It is phenomenally easy to mock real ale drinkers. It must be because every halfpenny word-whore who has ever put ham-fist to keyboard has tried it. As deadline looms and they thrash in their paddling pool of inspiration, an accusatory Bic is jabbed in our direction and some apparently withering remarks about brown clothing or a ‘strange goatish smell’ are scratched out. Three minutes later their word limit is reached, the blank space is filled and another part of their soul leaks out. But who cares if each point is relevant as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, as grounded in reality as their last expenses claim or as densely packed with stereotypes as a rolled up copy of the Daily Mail?

Because as every as columnist, copper and paramedic knows ale drinkers aren’t really the ones that deserve these wrist-tossed of volleys of limp-invective. They are harmless individuals; peaceable, passive and shy to the point of autism. They are the blue whales of the public house. They offend no one because their only desire is a nice pint and a little peace and quiet. They don’t throw punches, they don’t throw bottles, and they don’t get themselves thrown out.

Instead the greatest danger to soul of humanity is clearly the thing that goes bump, crash and bleuurgh in the night. The bullish, the boorish and the oafish - The Non-Discerning Drinker. From Blue WKD to piss-yellow lager to green Toilet Duck, the NDD doesn’t care what they pour down their throat, or if they slash someone else’s. More commonly known as ‘the assailant’, they cause perturbation, despair and moralising politicians to increase the tax on beer.

However, since ASBOs aren’t enforced at the dangerous end of a Dalek’s plunger, these abrasive little pissdrips are still allowed to chaff against normal, decent society. So to help you avoid meeting them, we’ve created a handy Crt-C, Ctr-V guide on how to dodge their kind.

Habitat
Non-Discerning Drinkers consider a good pub to be one from which they aren’t barred, yet. Where atmosphere and alcohol selection matter to the rest of us, the mono-browed, asbestos-livered element doesn’t care what they drink, where they drink or know how much they drink.

Now this could make them very difficult to avoid - except for an unexpected benefit of the smoking ban. Now the puffing line-up outside a pub forms the perfect guide to what goes on inside. So if a row of buttoned-down Ben Sherman shirts has congregated outside, you can happily walk by. Similarly if the overheard flapping of meatholes never ascends beyond which one of Nuts’ Photoshop-smoothed cover-stars they would consider ‘doing’, there is no need to even break your stride.

Susceptibility
As mouth-breathing drones, Non-Discerning Drinkers are the foot soldiers of global capitalism. ‘Brand-loyal’ and easily influenced, they are shock troops of those major corporations who currently produce drinks but who would surely diversify into kitten-buggery - if only the EU subsidies were increased. It even says so on their mission statements too, in very fine print.

In fact NDD’s minds are so easily swayed by flashing lights and loud noises that if placed next to a merry-go-round for long enough they could be convinced to remove their own spleen with an ice-cream scoop. They would also consume it raw, so long a badly stuffed cockney bear in a pork pie hat asked them to do it. Or if they were told that Australians wouldn’t do anything else.

Conversation
Do not mistake those eyes that glisten and flash inside the fleshy, porcine skulls for signs of intelligence. It is actually pure rage. Taunted by the complexities of the modern world - locks, computers and flush toilets - they live in a state of permanent anti-intellectual rage. Any attempt to engage them on conversation beyond the basics of football, Top Gear and ‘that time that they did football with cars on Top Gear’ is akin to sketching out a your own suicide note.

Their language is limited to one simple sound: ‘Dave’. However the length and volume of this sound can communicate many different emotions and situations. From the exuberant greeting of “Dave!” to the plaintive wail of “Daaaaaaaave!” as one of their number is stumbling home with his face clanged open by a bouncer.

Clothing
At any given point during the day or night, there is a 15% chance that the average NDD will be dressed as Spider-man. Anthropologists are yet to discover quite the reason for this behaviour but seems to be connected to the NDD’s ‘pack mentality’. For often once one of these offalheads has donned this costume there is a good chance that a portly Batman in deeleyboppers will follow soon after. Note: while this behaviour is unacceptable on the public highway, when described by ‘Blowers’ during Test Match Special, it somehow becomes quite charming.

Shoes
It’s not so much the actual footwear of a NDD itself that marks this group out (Although there is a good chance that they will bear some similarity to a football boot even though the wearer has all the poise of a bin bag full of gruel.). It is more the splattering of piss, blood and bloody-piss across the toe area that will be a giveaway. This veneer is often made all the more noticeable by the wearer’s tendency to repeatedly attempt to insert them into other citizen’s faces.

Britain, considerer yourself warned.

When The Tied Comes In

2008-09-03T13:30:00.002+01:00

Despite many CAMRA members holding Greene King in the same regard as the rancid fluff that escape from Satan’s bellybutton, here is a scintilla of proof that buying a pint of Green King IPA isn’t actually the same as booking yourself into the bridal suite at the Hades B&B. Or not quite.

The Good Beer Guide listed Woolpack in Mildmay Road, Chelmsford are holding a beer festival on the 4th, 5th and 6th of September. Despite being a tied house, Greene King have allowed publicans Dave and Maggie to include twenty of guest ales, to sit alongside nine of their own beers.

Entry is free and all of you scooper/tickers can see a provisional list of beers here.

Bath Pub Review: The Royal Oak

2008-08-19T13:58:00.007+01:00

The Royal Oak
Twerton
Bath
www.theroyaloak-bath.co.uk/

Toilets that approach Division Two football ground standards, paintwork that would have to be touched up just to qualify as ‘scuffed’ and beer garden divided from the main road by a few flimsy fence panels. To the undiscerning eye Bath’s The Royal Oak probably isn’t the acme of boozers, it probably isn’t even a passable pub.

And yet this frayed but friendly freehouse is actually one of humanity’s finest creations. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration but it definitely snuggles somewhere below the eradication of small pox but just above the moon landings. Because during the three years since this boozer first re-opened its slightly ill fitting doors after decades of decay, The Royal Oak has rapidly become the finest in the city.

Now that might be hard to believe for anyone who knows Bath’s magnificent selection of historic pubs with their wood-panelled snugs, warming fires and respect for fine ale. But it has to be remembered that people were happy buying bread in vast-indigestible wedges - before someone came up with the idea of slicing it.

What really separates The Royal Oak from the superb Old Green Tree and the beautifully preserved Star is the variety and the majesty of the beer. There are ten ales and two ciders on offer at any one time, and with no regular pints and no fixed breweries the brews changes on an almost daily basis. So once a barrel is empty, on comes a different beer, from another microbrewery and probably from another part of the country. And while local producers are heavily supported, if you can keep drinking for long enough, pretty much any SIBA-brewed ale will appear in front of you at some stage. Well, what do you expect from the twice Bath CAMRA pub of the year?

The range of ale of offer is simply immense. From gloriously smoky stouts to fragrant pale ales, there are beers of all styles, colours and percentages. From Hopstar to Brewdog and Marble to Arbour, the only thing that unifies this diversity of booze is that every ale will be from a British microbrewery. They aren’t just impeccably looked after though, these beers have been mollycoddled into a state of perfection. Yes, if the sweet lord firstly existed, and secondly, worked in cellar management, he’d fit at the Oak, and not just because of the beard.

But surely such constantly changing ale can be mystifying to minds dulled by a diet of mundane Bests and poorly kept IPAs? Well it could, except for the cleverly positioned glass in front of each pump. For these are examples not samples, and their colour and condition reveals more about the beer than any educated guess based on percentages or pump-clip information. Generous tastes of each drink are offered though, and without the muttering that others pubs often proffer with each mouthful. And if that isn’t enough information, you can also always ask the bar staff’s opinion, because as the sheer amount of facial hair on show demonstrates, these guys know a lot about beer.

If the ever-evolving ale list isn’t to your taste, the Oak can still draw you in; with local artist’s work on the walls, a real fire in winter, two Czech lagers and a Belgian beer on draft. There is also music too. Played by groups of all sizes, styles and standards, it is performed at seemingly random times and on differing days. The Wednesday night Irish free-for-all is the only real fixture, which at least makes the twee twiddlings of the endless jigs and reels easily dodged.

The best way to avoid the repetitive beat of the bodhran or the busy front bar is to venture into that most rare of things in Bath- a beer garden. Where other pubs in the city scatter plastic chairs on a slab of scorched concrete, this is a child-friendly green space with shaded picnic tables and disabled access (another local rarity). Sure, the main road is only the other side of the fence, but once you have a pint in your hand there is still tranquillity to be found even in town.

Despite this being a pub in which you can make a meal of the beer, culinary options are limited to ‘British tapas’: pork pies, pickled eggs and crisps. That hasn’t always been the case though, because over the last few years as the building has been transformed from shell to successful business, menus have come and gone. From fried pub staples to pizza, and even at one stage a beautifully bold offal-led selection, many chefs and style have been tried and many have departed. And food is probably the only thing that The Royal Oak truly lacks, unless you include pretension and sparklingly clean toilets…

Here For 'Beer'

2008-08-11T11:11:00.006+01:00

Congratulations to CAMRA - Now there are three words that go together as naturally as bacon, lettuce and tomato, or high, blood and pressure. But the newly redesigned membership magazine of the organisation, Beer, is a lovely thing.

The old Beer was as dour as a union newssheet, designed in Pagemaker and written with the pace and sparkle of a last will and testament. Not only did it reinforce the image of ale drinking as tweedy and relevant to ‘the yout’ as The Archers, but it actively reeked of fust.

Now all that has been swept away by the glamour, gloss and gloriously tactile paper stock of a newsstand magazine. But there is more than just full-page photography and cheery illustrations to this redesign because finally, the features have become both engaging and relevant.

The main reason for the change is down to the new contributors. Bloggers Melissa Cole and Stonch have been brought in to debate gastropubs, Guardian noob Ben McFarland chips in with a tidy piece about pubs and Martyn Cornell again demonstrates that having a vast knowledge of beer doesn’t automatically have to mean produce copy that borders on the hypnotically dull.

All the old faces also remain though: Protz, Nowak and Moor. But with their word counts judiciously reduced, their columns no longer meander and shamble. The only truly false note is a beer-science piece that instead of giving us a slice of Heston-like insight into brewing descends into a rant about denying Australians work-permits.

Full credit for this mini-revolution must go to editor Tom Stainer for giving Think Publishing the time, the budget, and the words, to turn the publication from an embarrassment to an asset. Now if only they can do the same for the monthly mortification that is What’s Brewing…

Gordon Browns Everyone Off

2008-08-07T13:59:00.003+01:00

It had to happen eventually: Gordon Ramsey has (temporarily) put his face to a beer. Not because the agro-chef is a noted ale drinker, but because there are few surfaces left on this planet that don’t bear an image of his wrinkled map on them. From a couple of gastropubs and a handful of restaurants to hundreds of off-licenses, his empire spreads unseen like a fungal infection. And his pitted visage menaces passers-by from so many posters that many tourists probably leave Britain convinced that we live under a personality cult, equivalent of Stalin’s at the height of his pin-up powers. It must be only a matter of time before his investment group have the Martian canals re-bored to resemble a telescope-friendly version of the valley-like crinkles on his weatherworn head.

Mercifully the whole venture was mercifully confined to a segment on his F-Word TV show – a programme/brand extension that attempts to bring the Top Gear demographic to the world of cuisine – i.e. there is bellowing, there are celebrities and there are arguments so facile, so malformed and so ill-conceived that they must have stemmed from the slopping lobes of Clarkson himself.

And it was while Ramsay was presenting this tit-a-thon that the diva of dinnertime spat out Timmy Taylor's Landlord, Brooklyn Chocolate Stout and Meantime IPA claiming that only the most bland and flavourless beers could possibly be consumed with his food. So to create his own ale he decided to emulate Innis & Gunn's wonderful oak-aged beer, a brew that draws much of its flavour from Bourbon casks, except that Gordon’s brew was reportedly pale, sweet and about 8%.

So while his drink is mercifully not available in any shops, the question has to be asked. Do superstar chef endorsements enhance or embarrass the real ale movement? Is the publicity good for beer even when what they are saying is negative? Do Michelin stars mean you know anything about ale? Does Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall sneaking a bottle of a Hall & Woodhouse’s Stinger into shot make you want a face full of nettles or just ensure that at least the ITC are watching? And what about Neil Morrissey dabbling in brewing? Has he raised the profile of real ale or raised the unpleasant memory of the pitiful Men Behaving Badly?

Hit the button below to comment or just shout at the screen until the spittle flows…

Magificent Seven #7: Summer Lightning

2008-07-08T10:19:00.006+01:00

Hop Back Brewery
5.0%
www.hopback.co.uk

In 1988 Public Enemy released the seminal hip-hop masterpiece It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back . In exactly the same year, this straw-coloured ale came straight outta Salisbury. And the similarities are still striking: both are strong and bitter, both laid down a template that subsequently inspired hundreds of others, both have since collected numerous awards but neither feels quite as exciting as it once did.

However, this Golden-style beer with its hefty hoppy note is still superbly thirst-quenching on a warm day. And if you’re having a barbecue and your friends won’t try warm ale, it’s robust enough to even survive a short time in the fridge. Or, as Chuck D would have it: Cold Lampin' With Flavor.

Magificent Seven #6: Totty Pot Potter

2008-07-03T10:30:00.002+01:00

Cheddar Ales
4.5%
www.cheddarales.co.uk

It is one of the little quirks of life that displaying any knowledge of beer is viewed by society with the same contempt, and from the same distance, as those who use piss as an eau de toilette, spend weekends dressed as minor characters from Stargate or travel by bus. So as you back away and glance askance at me, here is the difference between porters and stouts: porters get their delicious dusky colour from dark malts while stouts use roasted malted barley for their swirling blue/black hue.

Conveniently, toasted malt – along with a hint of bitterness and some dark fruit – is among the most prominent flavours in this slightly dry pint from Somerset. It’s a lovely example of the style and, don’t worry, the odd name doesn’t stem from some sexist pump-clip porno pic. In fact, it’s the name of a Mesolithic cave near Cheddar Gorge that was first excavated by Wessex Caving Club. Now there’s a bunch of social misfits…

Magificent Seven #5: Dark Ruby Mild

2008-06-30T11:53:00.005+01:00

Sarah Hughes
6%
Sarah Hughes Brewery
Tel: 01902 883380

Mild is a little like Doctor Who pre-2005: despite its long heritage and past popularity, it became mocked, overlooked and finally cancelled as more shiny imports stole its audience. It too suffered its own version of the ‘Sylvester McCoy years’ as the strong but lightly hopped pre-Great War drink slipped from its position as pre-eminent ale to a shadow of its former self when DORA and WW1 saw the alcohol reduced. But this dark and fruity pint is brewed from a Victorian recipe, so its mellow maltiness and port-like richness hides real complexity and longevity that should make the style ripe for a Russell T-type revival. Although, being dark, rich and complex, instead of merely bombastic, it’s more like the superior work of Stephen Moffat.

Magificent Seven #4: Nutty Niki

2008-06-26T16:03:00.004+01:00

Moor Beer Company
4.5%
www.moorbeer.co.uk

If it was ordered from a menu with more pages than an LA drug-dealer during the Oscars; if it came in a slender bottle wrapped in waxed paper and accompanied by a novelty glass; if it wasn’t called Nutty Niki… If it was, did and wasn’t then this beer would be huge. But it isn’t because, instead of being the product of monastic Belgian brothers, this wheat beer was created by a Californian who has relocated to a life on the Somerset levels. So while this hazy wit hints at Hoegarten, its English hops give it a life and a freshness beyond the boldness of the crushed coriander seeds, whole nutmegs and giant cinnamon quills. It would be a wonderful summer pint – if Moor didn’t brew it for winter only.

Magificent Seven #3: Milk Stout

2008-06-25T09:12:00.003+01:00

Bristol Beer Factory
4.5%
www.bristolbeerfactory.co.uk/stout.htm

The name alone has probably already conjured up the mental image of two hair-netted old puffins hunched over a shared bottle of super-sweet Mackeson's. But this recreation of an Ashton Gate brewery original should change the way you think about this unfashionable drink. For a start, at 4.5% it’s strong enough to deter the post-chapel coffin-dodgers, even if the added milk sugars (lactose) do add a surprisingly sweet aroma and aftertaste. But cutting against any sugariness is the warmth and depth of roasted barley, which not only gives the drink a slightly burnt final note but also adds to the glorious opaque colour and dark swirls that corkscrew inside the glass. A pint worth blowing your pension on.

Magificent Seven #2: Jaipur

2008-06-24T09:20:00.003+01:00

5.9%
Thornbridge
www.thornbridgebrewery.co.uk

Describing this beer evidently isn’t easy – famed food, critic Matthew Fort managed 600 words on it for The Guardian without ever actually mentioning what it tastes like. And taste is something it has more than enough of.

First of all, it’s an IPA (Indian Pale Ale) and IPAs tend towards being boozy and hoppy. Well, when I say ‘tend towards’ I mean in the way that Max Mosley ‘tended towards’ those nice German lasses.

And hops dominate these golden-hued beers, not as is often apocryphally claimed to preserve them for the long journey to the subcontinent, but to give them their trademark refreshing citrus edge. But this particular example of the style is the Pan Galactic Gargleblaster of IPAs. Not only do the hops give you the hit of lemon, you also get the gold brick to wrap it around and use to smash your brains out. However, unlike Douglas Adams’ creation, at least there’s no olive balanced on the top.

So whereas other IPAs are mildly invigorating, Jaipur launches a mini D-Day on your tongue, where the hops lead a frontal attack backed by a barrage of alcohol. Some claim to notice pineapple and grapefruit amid this citrus assault, but that could be the alcohol talking, and in a thick, hefty beer like this it does plenty of that. This particular ale also makes a terrible snakebite, but we won’t dwell on that evening for reasons of decency, amnesia and temporary blindness.

Magificent Seven #1: Marble Ginger

2008-06-15T20:23:00.004+01:00

4.5%
Marble Brewery
http://www.marblebeers.co.uk/

With all the bludgeoning subtlety of an online debate and much of the same raw fury, this is a ginger beer that leaves lips tingling and taste buds cauterised. Instead of using the gentle flavour of the root to compliment the beer, Marble have chucked in the whole stem to create a clenched fist of a drink. And it is brilliant. While other gingers are condemned to seem watery and weak, this pint reeks of peppery heat, raw power and tonsillar fisticuffs. But it’s also simplistic, limited and rather boring after a single pint. Now that is brewing genius, and commercial suicide.

The Magnificent Seven

2008-06-15T20:20:00.001+01:00

35 years old. That, according to Greene King’s clipboard-men, is the age that the average British male settles on his ‘usual’. Perhaps the elastic of a birthday party-hat restricts blood flow to the brain or he catches the Reaper’s eye over the punch bowl but, either way, this is the momentous age at which the compound creature settles down to drinking monogamy. From this moment on he forsakes all other beer brands in favour of the familiar, until that one bottle has to be prized from his cold, dead fingers – or cirrhosis of the liver sets in, whichever comes first.

But the depressing part of this news is that this unquestioning commitment to one drink for forty years is apparently based on a sampling of just seven different brands. Seven beers? That hardly seems enough to see you through a heavy Friday or a weekend break in Brussels, let alone the 4.39 stag nights that each average British male endures before his 35th birthday. (Probably. Based on a sample of one average British male, who left stag party number five rather early.)

Take a quick sample of the big sellers in off-licences – or a glance in the hedges, canals and gutters of the nation – and the names form a litany of mediocrity that owes more to the test-tube than the brewer’s art: Stella, Carling, Foster's, Carlsberg, Budweiser, Carlsberg Export, Kronenbourg 1664.

So in the hope of opening a nation’s eyes (even if I have to use the lid-lifting Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange), I will offer over the next few days seven other examples of beer styles that might prove a little more inspiring, exciting or, in one or two cases, mildly terrifying.

Review: St Peter’s Winter Ale

2008-05-26T15:21:00.000+01:00

St Peter’s Brewery
Bottle
6.5%
http://www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk/

If any brewery is attempting to break out of the musty, fusty world of beards and pullovers that dominates real ale in Britain, it has to be St Peter’s. Their beers lurch into Belgian territory nearly as often as the Wehrmacht with elderberry, lemon and ginger brews, while their Clerkenwell pub, The Jerusalem Tavern, mixes oak panels with suited pavement-overspill. And even their bottles, a weighty recreation of a 1770 original, have an aesthetic charm beyond mere function.

They are also experimental brewers, recreating long-forgotten varieties and even attempting some other soon-to-be-forgotten fads such as gluten-free beer. But this Winter Ale isn’t going to be the one to unite the pin-striped City types and the cardigans from CAMRA. At 6.5% it’s strong but insubstantial; winter ales should be warming, but here the booze is just a background note.

Instead, the flavour of this mahogany-shaded ale reminds me of Marmite. That’s right, Marmite – that Berlin Wall of yeast-based taste, dividing brother from sister and father from son. There is something in the thin, sweet, malt flavour that reminds me of the smell of burnt-toast soldiers too. Marmite, toast and alcohol? Unless you’re Shane McGowan most of us avoid beer at breakfast.

Hail to the ale

2008-05-26T15:18:00.001+01:00

I don’t have a beard. In fact, I don’t have any facial hair, bar a scraggy fluff-patch below my lip that even a four-bladed battery-enhanced Nasa-influenced razor with lubrastrip somehow missed this morning. I’m also still young enough to tick the ‘25 to 35’ age-box on surveys, to watch TV online and to know that White Denim is not just a summerwear faux pas. I’ve even done it with a girl. So why do I love real ale?

It’s because, in spite of the image of murky drinks served in half-pint pots to bifocal nerds whose guts protrude over their jeans in a marvel of cantilevered engineering, British beer is joy in liquid form. That’s right, ale - that flat, opaque, old-fashioned, borderline-warm bitter - is a thing of rare beauty.

The reason that I hail the ale is that every taste of a fine beer is like taking a holiday, without leaving the cosy confines of the pub. Every region, every type of pint, every brewery, and even every individual pint, tastes different. From foamy whiffs of lemon to satisfying smokiness and even lip-tingling chilli-heat, their variety is almost infinite. Instead of each and every sip of mechanical fizz being another plodding step on the road towards inebriation, that journey is skipped along with giddy abandon, high on the delight of discovery and brown booze.

What I want to do is bring you along on this path towards pissedness. Not all the way to tongue-lolling traffic-cone-theft, but to have you too discovering the delight, the depth in British beer. To put down those over-chilled chemical lagers, the over-ice faux ciders and the over-rated flowerpots of Belgian foam and to reawaken your tastebuds.

The problem that we face on this shared journey is that most people’s first, and often only, taste of beer will probably have been something as brown, dated and indigestible as their parents’ G-plan sideboard. But these creamflow, nitro-kegged liquids reflect the current microbrew pints as much as dinner at the Little Chef, Heston reflects Heston’s molecular gastronomy.

These are daring drinks, produced in small numbers for the cognoscenti with passion, skill and flair. They are also often green. ‘Local’, ‘ethical’ and even ‘organic’ are as much watchwords for brewers and drinkers as they are for chefs and food critics. Try to think of these bold people as mini-Blumenthals, but with a mash-tun instead of a dry-ice machine.

It’s also a growth industry. New breweries are opening all the time, often supplying just one or two locals in the immediate area, making the drink as much part of the holiday memory as the scenery. And while alcohol sales are down and costs are up, micros continue to show growth.

And that is why the Good Beer Blog is here: to persuade the nation to give our national brew another chance. It’s here to cajole, inspire, advise and even hector everyone into forgetting their previous bitter experience and to again lift a pint of artisan ale. So read on and hopefully you too will soon learn to embrace the ale, cheer the beer, never doubt the stout and, perhaps, even test the best once again.

So amid the myriad of words, alliterative allusions and overwrought metaphors found here, there will also be news on new brews, articles on ales and a place where you can track down the best bottled and draught bitter. So keep reading the Good Beer Blog and we promise to keep it clean (shaven).