You travel on the kind of train where stitching recalcitrant children into their seats ought to be mandatory.

You drink in a studenty bar, Font. You're twenty years older and five stone fatter than anyone else but nobody's bothered. You down Brodie's Citra at a rate that suggests imminent Armageddon can only be avoided by your capacity and voracity for drinking. You pair a salt beef bagel with a bottle of Brooklyn East India Pale Ale and find the combination of gherkins and Centennial to be mildy erotic.

You sit in the Marble Arch with a pint of, um, Pint. You take your glasses off, ignore your phone and spend several hours blundering through a crossword with occasional interruptions for Dark Star Saison and Marble Ginger. You are surprised to see Dave Bailey from Hardknott. You check Twitter and find that he messaged you three hours ago. Asking you to look out for an American brewer he was meeting. Said brewer has been sat opposite you for several hours. You buy a bottle of Old Manchester, the Fuller's / Marble collaboration beer. You promise to yourself not to drink it on the train.

You walk into the Unicorn Hotel and meet the Honourable Order of Bass Drinkers. What happens upstairs in the Unicorn stays upstairs in the Unicorn. Suffice to say you laugh hard, eat excellent pork pie and drink far too much delectable, nutty, spritzy-bitterish Bass.

You forget to check the time. You break your cardinal rule about not catching a train later than the 2020 off Picadilly. You try not to fall asleep on the train. You're glad that the Derby-bound train terminates at Derby so you don't miss your stop. You feel like an arse for making your wife come pick you up from the station at gone midnight.


You wake up the next day and think: Manchester. Bloody hell! >

Perhaps it's a Manchester thing. What you see is what you get. No airs, graces, pretentions. Marble take the guesswork out of buying beer: Manchester Bitter. Stouter Stout. Chocolate. Ginger. Pint.

Brewing began in a back room of the Grade-2 listed Marble Arch pub in 1998; increased demand led to a second plant opening up underneath the nearby railway arches in 2009. Along the way, successive brewers have found inspiration to brew beyond the ordinary English fayre. Chocolate Dubbel, Decandence Kriek and Special Barley Wine are all indicators of Marble's experimental edge.

Why try? They don't re-invent beer; they strip it down to its bare bones and rebuild it. When some styles have all too often gone awry with malt changes and odd hopping, Marble get back to basics and brew assertive beer really well.

What to look for? Either the eminantly sessionable 3.9 or Pint. If you're in Marble Arch and they are serving Dobber, try it without the sparkler. You won't get punched in the face for suggesting it. Honest.

Where to buy? Marble Arch, 73 Rochdale Road - possibly the finest brewery tap I've ever visited. Marble's bar at 57 Thomas Street also stocks cask. Bottles can be bought online from myBrewerytap.

>

It's Thornbridge Jaipur.

And Marble Dobber.

And Brewdog Punk.

And that's it.

"IPA & fish & chips /

Are all my brain and body need"

Today's Obviously Made Up Fact About IPA:

IPA first arrived in the USA in 1899 when, following the shipwreck of the HMS Chlamydia, Petty Officer Dick Fitztightly rowed on top of a partially-full hogshead and made landfall at Montmorency Creek, New Hampshire >

It's just gone 3pm. Nine Lessons & Carols is playing on the radio. My wife is at church; I'm wrapping her presents. And typing at the same time. Who said men can't multi-task?

Today's beer is Marble Utility Special 2010. Yes, it's well hopped. But there's a liquid quality to the malt, a light caramel that licks and sticks. The hops weave around it. It's fascinatingly balanced, practically gyroscopic in the way that flavours counterpoint and swing around each other.

Today's picture: my Christmas reading pile:


Today's gift: a little more Marble Madness.

I'm off now for some long-awaited downtime. The Scoopies will put in an appearance on New Year's Eve. Have a peaceful Christmas. >

Christmas. Tis the season to be jolly. And buy beer. Here's a round-up of the choicest beery offerings from my favourite online sellers.

Beermerchants have a panoply of mixed cases on offer. Their Belgian Beer Lover's case features solid stuff such as Palm, Chimay Rouge and Brugse Zot. A luxury case offers delights such as Boon Marriage Parfait, La Chouffe and Orval. And the Berry Christmas case has fruit-forward beers including Boon Framboise, Fruli Strawberry and Rodenbach Grand Cru.

They also have a rather nifty Chimay presentation tin that crams in a bottle each of red, white and blue plus a glass. And because it's in a tin, it's easy to wrap. Result!

If you're looking to treat yourself, the Connoisseurs case offers some of the finest rare UK brews like Moor Fusion, Kernel Imperial Stout and Hardknott Infra Red alongside "best of the best" of world beers such as Lost Abbey's Gift of the Magi. And there's always their ever-impressive range of rare beers from Denmark and the United States - bear in mind that some of those American brews can't even be bought in some states over there so to have them on sale in the UK is a real coup.

The guys at myBrewerytap have a great mixed case with plenty of dark beers for these cold days. Highlights for me include Dark Star Espresso (one of my favourites), Fyne Ales Highlander and a brace of dark lagers from Freedom and Brewdog. You can 'supersize' the case and add a myBrewerytap T-shirt for a fiver extra. Or why not treat someone to the full enchilada and treat them to the "52-week Beer Club" subscription?

There's also plenty of beery goodness from Manchester brewers Marble. Alongside a mixed case of their regular beers, myBrewerytap have also secured limited stocks of two specials, a US-styled IPA and a stout, both in 75cl bottles with cork closures.

Beers Of Europe have their usual range of specially selected cases, along with a Christmas mix including the likes of Hoggleys Frosty Ferret, Batemans Rosey Nosey and Shepherd Neame Christmas Ale. They have lots of other goodies on their gargantuan shelves - some that caught my eye include the Adnams Handcrafted Ales range and some superb De Molen beers such as Rasputin.

And there's a couple of great-looking gift packs over at Ales By Mail. One's from Meantime including what for me are two of the best large bottled beers on sale in the UK right now - London Porter and IPA - along with two stemmed Meantime glasses. A great way to drink in the New Year!

The other is from Moor, featuring a branded glass, T-shirt and a 660ml bottle of beer - and you get to choose which colour t-shirt and which bottle of beer from the impressive Moor range..

And Ales By Mail are obviously full of Christmas spirit already as they've offered up one of those Moor packs as a festive prize. Just head over to their Facebook page, 'like' it and let them know which beers you'd like to be drinking this Christmas. I'm sure they'll find some way of choosing a worthy winner!


Obvious disclaimer - I'm a grateful recipient of occasional free beer from beermerchants and myBrewerytap. I also like to buy beer from them - yes, Blogger Actually Buys Beer Shocker. >

Marble. Oakham. Thornbridge. Brewdog.

Four of my favourite breweries. If a pub is serving one of their beers, that's probably what I'll end up drinking. Sometimes, there may be two of those breweries on offer. Very occasionally (like Derby's Flowerpot on a good weekend) there may be three to choose from. Rarely do I see all four together.

So the beer boards I saw yesterday had me salivating. A pub with six casks on handpull and another seven served on gravity straight from the cellar, offering a stellar lineup of some of Britain's best beers. The effortlessly-drinkable Marble Pint. A bundle of bitter fruits in Oakham Citra. Some lush, copper-hoppy goodness of Thornbridge Lumford. And the grassy-edged, toffee-middled, floral-riven experience that is Brewdog Punk IPA.

Drank in that order, with another sneaky Pint at the end, it was quite possibly the finest afternoon's cask beer drinking that I've ever had. In a pub that was comfy, clean, buzzing with friendly locals. And a ladies netball team. And a bunch of raspberry-cider drinkers wearing the shortest skirts and highest heels known to man.

So, that's a pub offering top-quality beers from my favourite brewers on a regular basis. With comfy chairs. And engaging customers. With a bus stop right outside. Three guesses where I'm going to be on a regular basis from now on...

The Queen's Head, Marlpool. And they have a Facebook page too. I'll see you at the bar...

>

Barrow Hill in a nutshell; a beer festival held in a working locomotive shed. Sounds like madness? Well, there’s a fair few reasons why it works so well:

Only a queue or two – Well, the forty-minute queue for the free bus wasn’t too bad- it was a sunny day after all – although the bus-bores in front of me and the train-bores behind me left me wish I’d brought my mp3 player with me. What I now don’t know about exhaust parameters and the finer points of timetabling of 1970s West Midlands routes isn’t worth remembering. But at the fest, the queues for tokens were short and bar service was swift. Yes, even when it was Dom from Marble who was serving.

A really good foreign bottle bar – With the notable exception of GBBF, foreign bottles beers are often treated with disinterest or disdain at many British festivals. Here, the list was small but perfectly formed, with delights such as Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA for a hopshock, the De Molen-Mikkeller collaboration ‘Mikkel & Menno’ for a peachy perfume fix and Emelisse Stout for a roast explosion.

Liver and onions - Yes, there was real ale sausage. Yes, there was hog roast. But there’s something special about a cob stuffed full of just-cooked-enough liver and slippery fried onion. The sort of nom that ought to be available at more fests.

Local beer for local people – Plenty of beer from around the country was on offer, but with over two dozen breweries in the county they were right to showcase some of Derbyshire’s finest. Old favourites such as Thornbridge Jaipur vied for attention alongside new brews from the likes of Barlow, with all of the Derbyshire Brewers Collective represented. And there were some real gems; imagine a beer as complex as Mikkeller Jackie Brown but with less alcohol, so it’s more quaffable. That’s Ashover Mrs Brown, that it.

Smoke, steam and diesel – of course, the combination of heritage buses, working locomotives and real ale can bring out the worst kind of corduroy-clad saddo. But there’s something other-worldy about sitting on a wall in the blistering sun as two locos hiss and cough and chuff and splutter past you. And to sit in the compartment of a corridor coach, drinking beer with strangers as the train is pushed/pulled to the end of a non-descript cutting and back again, is surely one of the most esoteric pleasures at a British beer festival.

A brewer or two. Or three. Or more – It’s not unusual to find a brewer or two at a beer festival; professional networking, quality assurance and all that… So it’s always a pleasure to meet up with a few, chew the fat, put the world to rights and have semi-cogent conversations about flocculation. Perhaps. Janine, Matt, Kelly, Dom, here’s to you; it’s always a pleasure to share a beer with guys and gals who are passionate about what they brew.

Eclecticism – Sandal wearers who didn’t all have beards. Transport ‘enthusiasts’ and stag parties. Brass bands, R&B, impromptu a capella. Small brewers (Leila Cottage), large brewers (Fullers). Few festivals have this broad attraction. Barrow Hill had it in spades.

Ice cream on a bus – simple as that. An ice cream van is parked next to the bus stop. Result; me and Matt Clarke from Thornbridge, the last ones on, end up standing up, eating ice cream, not falling over, not depositing our cornets into the driver’s lap. The perfect end to a beery, sunny day.


If you were there, you don’t need me to tell you how good Barrow Hill Rail Ale festival is. If you weren’t there, why not? You’ve just missed one of the best events on Britain’s ale calendar. Just don’t miss out in May 2011! >

I love beers and brewers who seek to challenge expectations. Marble turn out a solid range of keenly-hopped organic beers from two breweries, one in the back of a Grade 2 listed pub and another underneath nearby railway arches. Their beers are always forward with flavour and style; sometimes, they take brewing to another level. Decadence is proof positive that world-class beer is alive and well and living in Manchester.

As with many great beers, Decadence has a history. First brewed in 2007 as a small batch to celebrate the breweries tenth anniversary and one-thousandth brew, Marble decided to rework the recipe in 2009 and bring the beer to a wider audience. Lashings of chocolate malt in the double-brew mash vie with berryish Willamette and stacks of the New Zealand hop Rakau to produce a complex imperial stout.

Bitter chocolate is undercut by something fruity - it starts off hedgerow-like and ends up more exotic, more plump and fulsome and passion-fruity perhaps. A coffee-wash banters with just a smidgen of salt, soy and liqorice before juicy hops turn the lactic tang into an ever-dryer finish.

The beer's presentation is as stunning as the flavour. Marble's in-house designer, John Macklin, wanted Decadence to look as good as it tastes and it doesn't disappoint. The intricate silk screen design caresses the bottle as it it were lace. Renowned Dutch brewers De Molen supplied the corks, which have been caged before sealing with wax to optimise the beer's cellar life.

The beer went down well with a steak pie when I drank it a few weeks ago. Dominic from Marble says it's a perfect accompaniment to gamey meats and rich stews. I think it will go with anything it damn well wants to. Let's be honest, any beer borne of a brewday where Metallica's 'Death Magnetic' was playing constantly is going to be chock-full of attitude. It's assertive without being cocky. It knows it truely deserves a place at the top table.  Decadence has escaped from Marble's arches and is now taking on the world - and about time. >

Surprisingly, I'm not much of a Sunday luncher. My wife, her mother, grandmother and god-mother get together to talk about the week's hatched, matched and dispatched over a slab of something roasted. I'm usually in the pub, at the races or not quite on the footpath that I intended to.

So Sunday sustenance for me is usually late in the afternoon, often comprises of sliced pig and is always accompanied by beer. Today it was smoked gammon, splinter-thin fries to poke into runny yolks and a couple of decent British bottles. Marble Tawny 3 had grass and hay glossed over pineapples on a biscuity base; Fyne Avalanche was all soft and citric and floral and just... wow!

As the last of the Avalanche left my lips, it started to rain. And so I needed no excuse to not mow the lawn. And open another beer instead. Hard knock life, eh? >

I'm still not sure how I came to find out about the Dancing England Rapper Tournament (DERT for short). There must have been one of my slow synaptic shuffles along the lines of 'sword dancers.. in pubs.. in Derby... must go'. As I'm rather partial to an ale or four in the company of Border morris teams and the like, a day of sword-dance spectating seemed an ideal way to avoid the gardening. But first, breakfast.

Which means Wetherspoons. Having savaged a cob full of fried pigbits earlier on, I could skip the mild disappointment that is a Spoons 'cooked' breakfast and concentrate on the beer. Two festival specials hit the spot; Goose Island Honkers Ale was a tad sticky sweet to start with but had a palatable biscuity tinge to it. Maui Coconut Porter was magnificent, all roasty nuts and creamy chocolate. Looking around the bar, there seemed to be an inordinate number of men who'd chosen to wear knee-length socks on the warmest day of the year. No, not tickers... rappers.

As in sword-dancers. Originating from the North East of England, rapper dancing involves five people holding two-handled flexible swords - rappers - to form a chain and dance/jump/somersault along to music without letting go. At the end, a pentacle of swords appears before the team beat their retreat. The music is provided by the fiddle or accordion and the rhythm driven by the crack (rap?) of boots on the floor - wooden floors therefore preferable. And where better to find wooden floors and a readymade audience than a pub?

For the competition, several teams danced at each pub before they all moved round to the next one on the circuit. I toyed with the idea of a rapper/pub crawl but ended up spending the afternoon at the Flowerpot. Being fundamentally lazy played a part in that decision making; the availability of Marble Pint and Hopshackle Resination even moreso. Pint is possibly the finest session beer in the country with bags of grassy, citric, spicy splashes over a light toffee crumble and an ever-drying finish. Resination may hail from sleepy Lincolnshire but it's a shit-kicking IPA; 7% of peppered pine, hot bubblegum and an obvious alcohol hit.

The rappers were great, too. At times they were genuinely scary (particularly when reeling themselves in circles only inches away from the walls), always entertaining, willing to have a chat (and try to recruit me as a Betty) and clearly having a damn good time.

If you get the chance, I highly recommend you watch a rapper team in action. And if you're not close enough to risk your pint being spilled, you're not close enough...

Here's some (slightly shaky) video of Black Swan Rapper in action at the Flowerpot. It's like morris dancing on crack:



and no apologies for the awful Goldie Looking Chain pun. Word. >

I went to Manchester and I saw this brewery:


Where this coat-losing brewer does his stuff:


And brews beers like these:


And then went to this festival:


Where I chatted to Des De Moor:


Enjoyed Moor JJJ IPA with Dave and Ann from The Woolpack Inn, Boot, Cumbria:


And watched Jeff Pickthall spread his nuts on the table


I'll be back to Manc more. It's enthralled me each time I've visited.

"By no stretch of the imagination is Manchester a picturesque city. In common with all things beautiful...it is fundamentally flawed. It has a compulsion to preen and show off. It is narcissistic, contrary and wayward, and yet you cannot help but love it. It is both admirable and maddening."

Chris Lethbridge >

This should have been a pairing of Manchester's finest with some ginger and coriander chicken at the weekend, but a rather, ahem, accessible bottle of chenin blanc forced its way down my gullet instead. For reasons best described as desperate, I'd also got some cajun-ish chicken pieces knocking around and was hoping that gingery beer would work well with the spicy-ish food.

From the off, let's be quite clear on one thing - I love Marble Ginger. This is the full-fat no-nonsense gingery beer of the Marble stable; they have a 4.5 percenter called, er, Ginger Marble as well but Marble Ginger is 6% and chock full of Zingiber officinale.

But not in a fiery, itchy, who-the-feck-polluted-my-beer-with-this-root-muck kind of way. It's.... refreshing. It tingles and leaves a mild heat behind. It's baby spice rather than overblown Ginger. On a hot day, this puts a smile on my face without making my tabs laugh, a balance of warmth and alcohol that counter-intuitively make it a proper quencher.

Having just spent an hour carving into a hedgerow with the Loudest Trimmer In The World Ever, my neighbours were ready to concrete my garden over and I was ready for a relaxing drink. Marble Ginger sated a thirst in sips, the natural spice warmth ensuring I didn't bolt it down.

How did it fare with the meal? OK - to be honest, the pre-prepared 'cajun' chicken wasn't going to win any authenticity awards but the mild spices of both dish and drink complemented each other pretty well. The slightly dusty tang of the chicken coating took the freshly-grated ginger feel from the beer, too much spice would perhaps have been confusing on the palate.

I reckon Marble Ginger would work with marinated lamb dishes as well. In fact, I'll be buying a few more bottles to try that pairing out sometime this summer. I buy mine from Derby's organic store Sound Bites - Marble beers being one of their popular organic beer offerings alongside the likes of Pitfield and Amber Ales. Why not ask your local organic store if they stock Marble beers - you can't beat a ginger beer that really is a beer and really does taste of ginger! >

Time for another Pete Slosberg-inspired tasting. Take a caramel centered chocolate and pair with a chocolate stout. Is the result double the fun or twice as nasty?


Let's start with the beer - Young's Double Chocolate Stout . It certainly had good carbonation with an audible effervescence, its rocky head soon settling to an off-cream band.

There's obvious chocolate on the nose, but it's a curious dusty drinking chocolate. No, scrub that - it's liker a creamy hot chocolate gone cold. There's a lick of sweet chocolate too, like a syrup shot. Unsurprising, perhaps, given that it uses chocolate essence as a flavouring.

With little roast up front, the sweet chocolate taste is slightly cloying on the palate. Perhaps a chunk of chocolate would change things? I'd struggled to find anything vaguely artisanal so I'd settled for Cadbury's Dairy Milk with Caramel. It was surprisingly good - bit on the cold side but the caramel filling was soft and deep flavoured. The next slurp of beer was bitterer - the darker dry chocolate flavour now placed in sharp relief to the sustained sweetness of the caramel.

Then it all went a bit strange.... the chocolate got tastier, the beer weaker. The washy dark chocolate from the beer enhanced the caramel filling of the Dairy Milk, but with each sip the beer became thinner in flavour and higher in bitterness, any roasted notes having deserted.

I expected more from the beer; instead of interesting chocolate bolstered by coffee and roasted malts, I got flavours that started heavy-handed and ended up bitter and washy. I found it disconcerting to read the label's assertion that the beer was 'best served chilled'. To me, for a dark beer, that's tantamount to an admission that there's little flavour in there to be savoured in the first place.

Perhaps another beer would make a different impression. I had a bottle of Marble Chocolate knocking around; not strictly speaking a stout but it seemed robust enough for this tasting. And it looked good from the off, a nearly black body with a dappled cream head, clear roast on the nose alongside a clean creamy chocolate flavour. A far better beer than Youngs, so I'd high hopes for the pairing effect.

Well, the chocolate tasted fantastic, that first merging of the beer's roasty notes with this surprisingly tasty caramel. And then... the next mouthful of beer was quite bitter, as if my taste buds had given up on sensing sweetness. More chocolate was fine, more beer was gross - far too bitter, no sense of roasted malt, harsh bittering off-coffee flavours.

Overall, not a very successful pairing. Perhaps the thick milk chocolate swamped the beers, perhaps the beers just didn't have strong enough roast characteristics to cope. If anyone knows how I can get hold of Cocoa Pete's Caramel Knowledge in the UK (or, indeed, any of the Cocoa Pete range) then do let me know as I'd love to try the pairing again with what is obviously a far more robust chocolate. In the meantime, I may have to find a full-blooded stout and a darker caramel bar (??) and try this again sometime soon.
>

It's hard to resist a good pub festival, particularly when it's at one of my favourite pubs on my regular Thursday night ramble. With a host of unusual beers on offer, the question was not how reluctantly I'd be scooping at the Smithfield in Derby but where to start?.

Regular readers known that I'm keen on keeping my figure in shape... and round is a good shape. I'm not one of these uber-thin ticker-types who live on railway station sarnies. So I filled up beforehand on a fantastically tasty Chinese at Yangtze in the Westfield centre; chilli chicken and chicken curry and, er, some other chicken was a clucking good combo to get your ribs sticky enough for severe imbibation. Suitably stuffed, a short walk downriver would land me at the festival. But it would have been downright rude not to stop off at my usual first-drinkie halt on a Thursday. The Royal Standard has made a name for itself with its combination of Derby Brewery Company brews, solid guest beers and cafe chic style. Happy as I am with Trev Harris' solid stuff, the guests are always a draw for me and choosing an Abbeydale beer over the likes of Wychwood was a no-brainer. If I'd engaged said brain, however, I'd have spotted and ordered the York Nelson Sauvin.

So, my plan for only one swift half had gone to cock already. Dear reader, I know you would never have forgiven me if I'd been stubbornly Reluctant and passed this one by. I knew it couldn't be as good as Thornbridge Kipling. Might it be as good as Alehouse's Sauvin So Good? Well, the York had a massive goose-gog aroma with more than a hint of dry nettles nestling in its fruity thicket. Sustained wincing fruit through the flavour, too, before a subtle creaminess calmed the party down. A damn fine beer, all the more so for being an unexpected bonus beer.

Scooping down at the Smithfield was, in truth, unusually un-Reluctant. I'd gone all old skool and compiled a hitlist culled from a Scoopgen post. With the outdoor festival bar not open when I arrived, I pitched up at my usual table in the bar by the jukebox and settled down with half of Oakham's Helter Skelter. It's beers like this that make the Smithy one of my Pubs To Love with plenty of hoppy stuff (the Whim and Headless brews on offer follow suit).

I won't write too much about the Smithfield here- it deserves a proper Pub To Love write-up in the near future - but suffice to say it's a cracking boozer. A recently reupholstered bar and lounge are served by a central bar bristling with handpumps. No festival stillage in either room, though, and the mini-marquees outside had plenty of trestles but nothing in the way of casks. So, where had landlord Roger Myring hidden his festival? Behind one of the downstairs gates, of course - a garage-type room built into the side of the pubs that was deep enough to take a forty-barrel stillage.

There was a fair crowd outside already by seven o'clock as Roger got the show on the road. First beer for me was Thornbridge Karnival, tried before at Peterborough festival bit I wanted a half-pint to savour. The latest beer in their Brewers Challenge, this is newest brewer Matt Clarke's entry. It still has that Thornbridge hop stamp albeit with a crepe sole rather than a steel-toecapped Doc Martin. That makes it a calmer and more contented brew compared to their usual output. Although you expect another hop kick, and in not getting it feel undersold, it's still an
almost assured beer with real self-restraint.

Next up were three beers that I'd eagerly awaited ever since seeing them on the list. Marble produce some darn fine beer; here in Derby, our wholefood shop Sound Bites are stockists of Marble bottles such as Lagonda IPA and their sublime Ginger. Here at the Smithfest, the brewer had three single-hop-varietal beers on offer. Sorachi Ace was very very pale, a wishy-washing-up liquid head with some juicy fruited hop oils prominent in the nose. Really creamy, too; the kind of soft hop that could glide a harsher one across a palate to good effect.

Their Mount Hood was fairly pale by comparison, with soft sherbet edges and a floral blush across the palate. The hops skip across a late aftertaste of lemon balm. But it was Brewers Gold that seized the day. Dark gold body, fresh floral perfume notes, blossoming hop oil on the end of your tongue and a hoppiness that never, ever stopped. This has the capacity to make its Crouch Vale counterpart seem amateurish by comparison.

A run of local beers would now do to see the night through. Headless 5 Gates was.... well, certainly not unpleasant, it just feels like a let-down in the afterwash of a few well-hopped beers. It's not too far removed from their usual output, rounded hops held up in a decent mid-citric body. In fact, it feels just a tad more more bolshy - dry hopped, perhaps? But there's some muddle here with the base beer not being allowed to shine.

Brunswick's Bellpair Vice was a groaner on two counts - a ruddy awful pun and the dread of another English Wheaty effort from the Brunnie. They do somethinga really well down there; White Feather, Father Mikes, beef & stilton baguettes.... but reet exotee brews laik vice? Most of the wheated oddities of theirs that I've tried have been not so much drain-pours but gutter watter. Remarkably, this stuff managed to keep on the right side of the fine line between wheaty sweetness and cloying yak. For most of the time. Best served cold and drank quickly.

Perhaps Amber could match the Bellpair's intentions and declare trumps with more of an edge to their offering. The brewer, Peter Hounsell, gives his beers straightforward names and likes to experiment with bold styles. This as least looked like a rugged wheat beer, with a murky honey coloured collar, but there was no esteryness nor any real wheaty bite coming through. Perhaps the temperature wasn't allowing these wheaty wonders to flourish?

Time for the night's last beer and an attempt to go out on a high. Well, a high ABV at any rate. The Headless Zymosis was brewed back in April and had maturing its way towards being a winter beer. Well, the weather of late has been decidedly parky, so no time like the present for cracking open a cask. Apart from a dulled deep amber body, nothing up front suggested its strength in depth, a fairly bland nose for a 7.5% warmer. Then thirty seconds later, the heat is on... that higher register warmth of spice followed by the reflux burn of candied Deep Heat. With your middle organs now coated, the palate anticipates the aggressive nature unfolding in the glass and replaces spiced fire with hop ire.

It's a Keyser Soze burn, though - a flickering flame, a darting burn along the damp boards til like that... it's gone. Until the next mouthful. My notes on the night compared the feeling to that of inhaling too deeply whilst changing the water in a fishtank. I still have no idea why I wrote that - especially as I haven't kept fish for over twenty years.

Outside it was dark now, the R&B band were in full funk and ordering beers was best achieved by holding up the requisite number of fingers corresponding to the number of the beer on the board. So, few takers for number 39, unless you roped a few others into helping you order it. Though it probably wasn't worth all that effort for a Church End special. I kept on with #1, Zymosis. Hard knock life, eh?

All in all, a good night with mainly decent beers. And *that* jukebox - The Who, Led Zep, Thin Lizzy, Issac Hayes, Suede, Placebo, Cream, Ian Dury, Madness, The Jam, The Clash... stopping scooping was a Reluctant choice, but there's only so much Zymosis a man can drink on a weekday.

A long day's recovery on Friday in front of a static spreadsheet and a regular supply of bacon cobs set me up for a return on the Saturday. Mrs H was tempted out to enjoy some cider and a few of the old faces were bound to drop by. Indeed, Cycling John dropped by (without the Claude Butler) and my erstwhile drum tutor, Andi 'the drummer in Endorphin Rush' Evans was already installed outside with his wife Julia and their rapidly-growing nipper, Emily.

I was in very Reluctant Scooping mode today - the emphasis was firmly on drinking with friends and taking things easy. There were, of course, several ticker tables - some of which were their usual over-zealous selves with bottling lines in full flow and spittled beards outshouting each other over contentious abv recollections.

The weather stayed fragrant enough to stay sat outside next to the bar. That meant the beers were knocked off in quick succession, with more Marble Brewers Gold being the first order of the day. Mrs H was in her element with a barrel of Three Cats medium sweet cider to yomp through. Away from the Marbles and Zymosis, today's beers were OK but not gobstopping - Great Gable Illgill IPA was fairly anonymous, Black Hole Milky Way not as biting as I remember it. The real standouts were from Hopshackle; although their Amber Smooth was fairly anonymous, the Double Momentum and Historic Ruby Mild was were huge beers. The mild in particular had a real edge to it, lactic smacks with very berry fruits catching your taste buds almost unawares.

Ever impressive was the food here - the Smithfield chip butty is a thing of legend and I was more than happy to reacquaint myself with the full-on dripping-butteryness experience. Mrs H's tuna melt looked disgustingly good, too, and Cycling John's sausage cob with onion rings in it looked - frankly wrong, but he assured me it tasted good ('edible skins.... makes all the difference' he assures me).

It's been a rambling write-up, but that was the nature of this fest. Some superlative beers, some threatening a vague promise and not delivering, top tunes, a smidgen of sunshine, good times all round. Roger and Penny do a top job here, it's an oasis of funtime drinking that brings a little of the laid-back country boozer feel into the city. Oakham, Whim, chip buttys, free jukebox. Pub fun? Done!
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