Old friends, new breweries, cool beers, hot curries... is Leicester Beer Festival a marriage made in heaven?
Let's make it clear from the off; I lurrrve the Leicester festival. Great array of beers in good condition. One large room for the stillage and vertical drinkers, one large room for the tables. Stacks of good food. Great atmosphere. It's one of the very few fests that I'm willing to give up a day's annual leave to attend.
The day was set up in Derby with an excellent freshly-cooked breakfast at On A Roll and my usual large, strong cappuchino at Caruso's. Into Leicester, one sharp haircut obtained and I was ready for a day of lush imbibition.
There's really only one sensible way to start a fest like this - order a pint of Thornbridge Jaipur and go for a wander all along the stillage to see what's on. Mental notes made of replacements and substitutions, greetings swapped with familiar faces, all in the company of an IPA as good today as it's always been. Catchy line, that.... somebody ought to use it in an advert.
Comrade Brian and Cycling John had already secured a table and were doing unspeakable things to a Blue Monkey. More about that later. I was ready to take a few snaps, having charged the camera battery the night before. Perplexed therefore that the camera wouldn't turn on. Embarrassed to find that the battery wasn't actually in the camera. Relieved that I'd decided to lump the larger camera along as well. Still, not as bad as Brian and the time he took thirty-eight snaps of a stripper. On a camera that should only have taken thirty-six pictures. If it had actually had a film in it....
And then, from deepest darkest Northamptonshire, Mark arrived. Blogger, Ratebeerian and looking a bit like Brian O'Driscoll's long-lost cousin, we suffer each other's company a few times each year. And rather than talking about page views, bounce rates and all other such blogging guff (as tends to happen in our scene that celebrates itself a little too much), we do the decent thing and double up.
Now then, matron. I know what you're thinking. We're not like *that*. OK, I caught him ogling my moobs once, but they do get pert when clad in Lycra. Doubling up simply means sharing beers - two halves bought, drink half of one then swap over with your oppo. Result: you get to drink quarter pints (just enough to get a fair impression of the beer) and so a wider number/range of beers can be sampled in one day.
We're keen to experiment (stop that sniggering! I won't tell you again!), so we tend to buy some old favourites alongside output from new brewers.
So, those beers in no more than six words each were...
Malt B Smarties' Night Porter - Washy coffee; where's the richness gone?
Brewdog Devine Rebel - Too much, too young. Needs ageing.
And, as for the pint of Brewdog V2009... Sticky and harsh. Three months more?
All this beer drinking detracted rather from my socialising. So, apologies to Andy Sales for never getting round to catching up with him for a chat and a photo as promised. Apologies too to the Young CAMRA Collective, having promised Brad I'd be over to say hello I never quite made it to the other side of the hall. Except for a curry (hint; vegetable curry at the fest is better value than meat. Still good and spicy and you get plenty of it).
Of course, I still found time for a pork pie; well, two actually, as the first one was cut into quarters and disappeared between the gannets round the table. Cheers, guys! I then ended up buying a third alongside a delectable Stilton cob for the short journey home
Beer of the day? Five Towns Niamh's Nemesis. An assured, refreshing IPA whose light body belied the Cascades of flavour within. Admirable mentions to Old Spot Spot O' Bother and Bollington Oat Tom too.
So, is Leiester beer festival a marriage made in heaven? Well, it offered something old (Jaipur), something new (Five Towns), something borrowed (Bonum being Latin) and something Blue Monkey. I'd say that was close enough. Though with all that beer and lashings of curry at the top table, I'd have to take pity on the poor bride....
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Not been working on the site much recently. So here's a gentle segue back into the swing of things - a twenty-questions-thingy that I picked up over on the beermerchants blog.
my perfect day would begin with…
warm sun flooding through the window, the sound of birdsong and/or breaking waves, the aroma of frying bacon and freshly brewed coffee and the contentment that comes from knowing you have a day where you can do as you please.
the most beautiful beer region I’ve visited is…
Derbyshire. Rolling fields, limestone valleys and misty moors all studded with microbreweries.
if I wasn’t into beer I’d be a…
sadder but thinner person
the last bottle of beer I drank (not just tasted) was…
Lost Abbey Judgment Day
my favourite beer hangouts is/are…
the cellar bar of the Flowerpot, Derby, on a Sunday afternoon (hot beef and mushroom cob, several pints of Headless, the papers and an occasional blast of Pearl Jam)
the garden of the Royal Oak, Ockbrook, after a bracing walk (steaming boots, good Derbyshire beer and a Stilton cob)
anywhere in the Valley of Beer, Sheffield, when I fancy a change of scenery and a bit of banter
my cellar is mostly composed of…
dusty bottles of Rogue, shelves of Thornbridge barrel-aged, assorted Brewdogs and half-empty selection boxes from beermerchants.com
if you were coming for dinner I’d cook…
beef stew in winter, crab salad in summer
and to drink with it I would serve…
Thornbridge Ashford or Westmalle Dubbel / Thornbridge Kipling or Sierra Nevada IPA
and other dinner party guests would be…
whoever wanted to share a drink and a laugh with us
my biggest blind-tasting faux pas was…
almost vomiting my first-ever gueuze over the host
the blind-tasting moment I would prefer to concentrate on was…
the unalloyed joy of Cantillon
one thing that might surprise you about me is…
I used to be a facepainter
if I was a brewer, I’d make my beer in…
small batches, with love
other than beer, I have a secret passion for…
writing on the sole of my slipper with a Biro on a Saturday night instead of going to the pub.
my favourite holiday destination is…
North Norfolk. I drop down through the mental gears on arrival and stay in a state of merry sedation for the duration. Great seafood, great beers, cheerful people.
I think beer is great because…
"the only reason is just because"
the best movie or TV show of all time is…
Quick Change.
in summer in the garden I’d drink…
Thornbridge Kipling. Or Jaipur. And, hopefully, this summer, it'll be bottle conditioned.
my favourite piece of music would have to be…
Mahler's Ninth Symphony
my best bottle of beer ever was probably…
Thornbridge Saint Petersburg Whisky Reserve Islay Cask
I am currently (craving) drinking…
even more Jaipur
And if you fancy twenty really beery questions, give this a go.
Literally *some* people have asked me: just what do you get up to on those Derby rambling Sundays? Well, you wanted it - here you go.
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For the record: Brunswick Inn, Brunswick Valour (damn tasty, BTW). Alexandra Hotel, Castle Rock Screech Owl. Smithfield, Whim Flower Power. And the sound of Midland Road, the A52 and the River Derwent. But not necessarily in that order.
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A quick flit over to Leicester for the first night of their CAMRA festival. Just time enough for a couple of brews, so let's make them all from Fraserburgh's finest - six of the best by Brewdog.
The One Drank With The Curry: Trashy Blonde, 4.1
Is this Peroxide Punk as was or something different? Clean, pale hops, kept the curry in check.
The One That Is Out To Impress: Zeitgeist, 4.9
Tastes more like a quenching mild every time I try it. Decent mild roasts are fairly refreshing. Need to get a bottle into the fridge and put it to the post-lawnmower test. The One Where Silver Splits The Blue: Riptide, 8.0
This just rolls... say it softly; Paradox is fine and dandy but the silky unmuckedaboutness of the smooth chocolateyness here stamps Epic Win every time
The One With A Hung Jury: V2009, 9.0
There's a floral cream akin to herbal sorbet before the hops exercise their full cones down your throat. Sticky as if hop-needy insects are genetically programmed to sniff you out and suck on your gums. Yet no over-alcohol; damn if this isn't closer to hopped wort, a body beaten back by puckering citric. It's either genius on a maturing horizon or a big fat fecking mess. Will try again tomorrow, natch. The One That Wasn't Paradox Smokehead: Paradox Isle of Arran, 10.0
Has a thick edge of sweetness on the turn that doesn't butter my parsnips. Does the Paradox yada-yada without the va-va-voom of Smokehead or Islay. The One I Forgot: Devine Rebel, 12.5
Shit. Here's a barley wine brewed with Mikkeller and I forgot to go back for it. But I can't remember seeing a cask label for it?!? The One I Bought From The Offie Table: Brewdog Storm, 8.0
Islay Casked IPA? OMGWTFBBQ elevnty-one. Will now have to have a 'nothing but Brewdog' weekend and drink this alongside all the other stuff I've collected in the last six months.
Time for bed. Serious curry eating, er, I mean drinking to do back in Leicester tomorrow.
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So many things to see and do. Planned an article on this yonks ago. Now all I have is a fridge full of supermarket pale fizz, a few dirty secrets to spill and the insatiable desire to throw my hands in the air and chant "let your feelings slip boy/but never your mask, boy". Confused? Good. Open this in a new window and read more where it tells you to...
Let's be honest: lager is shit. It's a pitiful excuse for alcohol. Drunk from tins, drank by neds, sold in slabs, made in labs. It may have a rich history but it's been forcibly abducted by the English and had up the chuffer. There are amoeboids avoiding osmosis with passing cells just in case it involves this fizzy pizz of stuff.
But - you'll never guess. I love it. I fooking love it. There's my first big dirty secret smeared all over t'internet. I will happily cock my pinkie in the air and sample an oak-aged imperial stout with the best beer wankers of the world. But - sometimes - nothing compares with a pint of larger and a bunch of mates down the golf club.
Are you still reading? I'm serious. I love beer. If you've been around the site, you'll know that. I love artisinal brews, I love festivals with rare cask ales, I love bottles from far flung continents in outrageous styles.
Yet there's something ingrained in my beer history. Lager is the beer that was my first love, my reluctant partner and my wayward mistress. Ayingerbrau as a child turned me to cider. Whatever ended up in the snakebite as a student brought me half way back. Stella gave me an opportunity to piss my hard earned wages up a porcelain wall.
I've never been to Plzen. For me, lager is a big chemically mess. And I love it for that.
For me, this Session is about accessible lager. So I popped round to the three supermarkets within a mile of home and picked up a bottle from the shelf. Here, my dear topers, is the result:
#1: Czech Lager, Co-Op. "Premium lager brewed in Bohemia". An InBev clone. Worringly, "cleared using polyvinylpolypyrrolidone". This may make it suitable for vegans, but this "most interesting derivatives of acetylene chemistry" is somehow scarier to me than using bits of fish to clear a beer. But you know what? This gets the job done. Sweet bready nose, just a bit cardboardy, it still has a hop and a crunch in the end. Like the lingering granny who never left you alone in the lounge when you were trying to finger your first girlfriend, I hate this beer right now yet respect it for what it teaches me.
(Some would say it teaches you to drape a pillow over your granny's mouth and then Apply Some Pressure. I couldn't possibly comment.)
#2: Czech Premium Lager, Adsa. Looks like the last one except this has more floaty mould on top. I have to be honest - cats have left better odours behind in litter trays. It's unearthly sweet. Sweet, sweet cardboard. Perhaps I under-geared the aroma - it's cardboard with a diabetic urinary issue. The only good thing about this beer is my vicinity to a drain into which I can swill this effluent down. It's THE most unpleasant beer I've had in recent memory, And that includes Greene King IPA. Da truff, dog.
#3: Ostravar, Somerfield. Ah, the joys of non-supermarket-branded lager. No cheating, mind (what's all that noise, we'll have no cheating round here), Somerfield can't afford own brand and FFS THANKS because Ostravar is, ladeez en gintelmen.....
Lawnmower Lager.
BTW - as Katie White keeps suggesting to me, I do imagine all the girls, the boys, the strings and the drums, the drums, the drums, the drums.
Sweetbready yet still hoppy. Creamy and hoppy. Dry and hoppy. This does the job. Just like lager #1, here's 5% shit that makes you fuzzy whilst giving your taste buds something to toss off to.
And now we get to the real dirty shit. I love lager - that much is true. When I go to one of my favourite bars, a bar with three handpulled ales, including the sublime St Austell Tribute, I drink... Stella Artois. Now served in a vase with a stem. Want to know why I have it? Well, the cask beers are good, and I mean GOOD; well kept by someone who knows what they're doing and turns over enough to keep it fresh. But Stella... I've been drinking it here for years and it just... works! I arrive, go to the bar, don't have to order it coz it's being poured for me, sit back, relax, enjoy. I've had days on the ale (only miles away to brewery taps offering 16 beers) and then ended up here for one of their killer burgers and lashings of Stella.
Ostravar is - to be honest - the poor cousin of Stella. But, to be blunt, it's still a fuckign tasty bottle; I'd give my left testicle for something this good at the clubs I've been to recently for gigs.
So, there you go. Lager. Shit yet lovely. And I didn't even get around to trying Derbyshire's finest (er, only) county-brewed lager, Moravka. But that's what weekend rambles are for, eh, peeps?
Last words go to Underworld (although we all know that no words are necessary: NUXX is over-rated but still ingrained into our psyche):
"I just come out of the Ship/Talking to the most blonde I ever met Shouting lager, lager, lager, lager/ Mega mega white thing"
It's British Pie Week- apparently - so what better way of celebrating this thinly-veiled marketing campaign for JusRol pastry by ignoring their product and having a proper pie instead? And beer, of course. After all, pie without beer is like, er, any other food without beer. Pointless. With the possible exception of cinnamon yoghurt. But that's not realy food, that's just milk that's gone off in the vicinity of spices. Anyoldhow, back to pies. Mmmmmm, pies.....
Let's take a look at the ingredients. Pukka Pies are the choice of chip shop drunkards and canteen diners across the land. I was tempted to buy some taste-the-finest-special supermarket jobbo, but I can't resist a Pukka portion. Especially the black-tray all-steak version; after all, last year's Publican Food Report named steak pie as the best selling pub food dish, so it seems fitting to have one today. I'd have made some lazy mash (bake potatoes, mash them with butter) but I plumped for an even lazier version - Asda readymade with just enough cheese mixed in. And you can't have pie and mash without mushy peas, although at 47p a tin I'm assuming they were mushed by choirs of seraphim and cherubim wearing raw silk slippers stained with saffron.
Now the hard part, which beers to choose. Pints, definately. Something robust enough. I don't fancy anything stoutish, though. There were some bottles knocking around the back of the cellar from last year's trip to Norfolk... they looked as if they'd do the job. Fox Branthill Best seeemed big and bittery; Elveden Ale looked, er.... like a stone flagon, so I was assuming it would have big bittery insides too.
The Branthil Best was cracked open first whilst the pie was baking. I bought this at The Real Ale Shop last year, the malts in the beer being grown at the farm where the shop is based. It poured with a good, rough brown body and gave huge carbonation on opening. There was certainly a tasty malty wash to it with some nuttiness and fleeting oats eeking out. And only 3.8%; it carried a fuller body than I'd expect at this ABV. I was thinking about how those rich malts would work with the deep steak gravy in the pie. Sadly, I was drinking more that I was thinking and managed to down the pint five minutes before the meal was ready.
So I was forced to open the Elveden Ale. To be honest, I only bought this because of the stone bottle - when I'd put together a box of beer at The Real Ale Shop, this looked too good to leave on the shelf. It was advertised as "strong ale with a fruity aroma and hoppy finish" but - WOW! - it was so much more than that. A literally brilliant body, marmalade gold iridescence, a wispy white head. Then the most sublime melon liquour nose, sweet fruit salad edges, hints of strawberries near nettles, hop prickles in the finish. Only one problem with this beer - it was too good to enjoy with steak pie.
The beer was left to one side, then, as I tucked into a plate of pie-mungous lovliness. The Pukka pie had decent chunks of meat slavvered in a sticky gloop that may have been gravy.. but as it was tasty enough, it's best not to enquire. The cheesy mash was cheesy enough without being overpowering. The mushies were... OK, but probably needed a bit of vinegar in there to give them an edge. But it's great to have a Pukka pie that's not been sat in a chipshop hotbox for three hours, slowly steaming itself to death. The pastry had plenty of bite and the filling hadn't been skimped on.
To make things even better, once the nosh was out of the way I got to spend twenty minutes savouring the Elveden Ale. Tons of gentle melonish flavours, undercut with sweet citrics. Herbal notes too - couldn't nail which one, but it gave the whole beer a lift up. More Pukka's are needed with more beers. And I've just thought of pairing a fish pie with the Nelson-Sauvin-like Thornbridge Kipling. Can every week be pie week, please?
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I was almost ready for another Derbyshire ramble. Except that the weather wasn't great, I was knackered and my boots were still caked in sheep shit from the last yomp. Although I'm off to Leicester soon for my first major CAMRA fest of the year, I fancied the change of scenery so I thought I'd go and roll around a few pubs there.
All of my good city-beery days start with a Spoons breakfast. At 0915 I'm the first food customer in the Babington Arms, Derby, but the baked beans are still lukewarm; seems that Spoons specialise in barley baked beans. Hey ho. With nosh, tea and toast dispatched, I needed a beer to get the blackberry jam pips out of my teeth. I was tempted by the regular 99p pint - no, not Greene King IPA, that seems to have been 'coming soon' for quite some time. Here in the Bab it's quality; Wyre Piddle's Marco King of the Watusi is a reasonably robust bitter that was a favourite of the old soaks here even before the price drop.
Instead I ended up with a Reluctant Scoop. I was up in Lincoln late last year but saw no sign of brews from the city's first microbrewery, Cathedral. Here at the Bab they had Red Imp on offer, so I thought I'd chance a half. A deep brown body with a tight cream collar, it started sweet with an initially indifferent finish. As it started to warm, there was a hint of an odd fruit lurking; strawberry, perhaps? Plenty of inherent creamy bitterness made for a half-decent first beer of the day.
Turning 10am, the Bab was starting to get busier, mainly with old men hacking pleghm whilst ordering cooking lager and being bullish about the Rams' win over the 'red dogs'... so it was time for this Tricky Tree to leave. Derby railway station is in the middle of a rebuild, perished fifties concrete canopies being ripped out and replaced. In today's half-light the utilitarian greyness of the platforms makes the place seem emptier still, as if expecting the passengers and trains to provide all the colour.
At least I get to ride a HST to Leicester. A train that lives; the throb of the engine at rest, springs squeal as it wallows over the points. No fear, dear reader, I'm not turning into a 'rail enthusiast'. It's just that there's something about the roar of a HST compared to the nothingness of Meridians....
Into Leicester on time and a slow walk taken into the centre. Ten minutes along the mainly pedestrianised roads shows off a rich variety of architecture - Baroque blocks now split into offices and shops, the Venician Gothic of the old Leicestershire Banking Company, Victorian Gothic of the clock tower and Queen Anne influences into Silver Street.
Which brought me to The Globe. Quiet in here early doors apart from a couple of regulars. I love the feel of this L-shaped street-corner pub, nooks with odd benches and upholstered chairs, lino and flagstoned flooring, a wide bar for vertical drinkers and a couple of stools for barflys. I secured a broad table next to the bar where the beer choice offered no reluctancy for me; this is an Everards house so a foaming pint of Tiger was called for. I drink it rarely as the only Everards pub I frequent on a regular basis is Derby's Brunswick where they happen to have a beer of five of their own on offer...
This Tiger looked bright indeed in its branded glass complete with the beer's Cyclops profile. Sparking orange with a tight, uniform white head there was a sweet nutty aroma (perhaps just a little Thorntons toffee-ish?) with a first gulp countering with a dry malt and hop itch. In fact, the hoppiness surprises me. Having left the beer alone for five minutes whilst taking some photos, the hops almost leaping out of the glass on my return, an assertive rather than aggressive aroma. I liked the sweet creamy feel too, a great session bitter with balance rather than blandness.
The picture on the wall opposite was intriguing, framed labels of Everards bottled beers (Pale Ale, Nut Brown, Meadowsweet Stout, Amberlite Ale) as well as soft drinks. One of the labels was for 'Kiddiette', no idea what this is/was. If anyone does, please let me know.
Onwards to the Criterion where, for 1245pm, it seemed unearthly quiet. This two-roomed pub, current Leicester CAMRA pub of the year, has always been bustling when I've been there before. To be honest, on recent visits I haven't found the cask offerings that inspiring. I don't know if this is to do with Rugby Brewing taking over, although the award-winning staff remained the same. My temptation was to try a continental bottle from their reasonable range though they didn't seem to have any bottle menus out today. Their newly-imported Belarus beers were advertised on the blackboard (Krinitsa, Syabor, Bobrey) but instead I stuck to a pint of tried and trusted Oakham Oblivion. Certainly a beer in fine form, clean tasting with generous citric hops. I finished off my crossword, licked the last hop juice from my lips and kept moving.
The Swan and Rushes is only five minutes or so down the road - it's great to have a city beer crawl where the pubs are close together. A little busier in here, a bunch of old buggers around the bar, though the beer selection seemed to be suffering from the post-Tigers blues. It looked like the Leicester rugby faithful had hit the ale hard on the day before, leaving just four or five beers on today. Thankfully, one was a welcome scoop for me - let's face it, any new Oakham beer is a welcome scoop for me. The Heckler was worth breaking my rules for, a pint just seemed right. It was standard Oakham fayre but when standard is golden body, perfumed hops and soapy/itchy mouthfeel , then so what?
A few faces from earlier in the day came in, with the bar looking more like a middle-aged men's Sunday luncheon escape committee meeting. Beers were sunk slowly and rumours swapped as Dylan warbled in the background, something from his vaguely in-tune and not-too-sentimental era.
On then to Out Of The Vaults. I mean Vin IV. Which henceforth I'm going to call Out Of The Van. Busiest pub of the day, even though they were hardly hanging from the rafters. There were some quality scooping options here with goodies from the likes of Kelham Island, Belvoir and Elland but I was Reluctant to go without my usual pinta here, Beowulf Dragon Smoke Stout.
With the late afternoon sun slashing off the city council office windows opposite, it was a pleasure to revel in a dark beer as the sun began to fail. Twos and threes of studenty types and tickers came and went; I was happy to sit back, chill out and enjoy the beer. Dragon Smoke has that full on coffee/chocolate vibe in abundance and I gave in totally to its lure - another pint of Brownhill's finest was ordered on the basis that the railway station was only a ten minute stroll up New Walk and the trains were fairly regular. I stuck around long enough to listen to the two blokes next to me deconstruct an intimate relationship in an honest and blameless way. And so I had another pint whilst I was earwigging.
Eventually I had to pack in and drag myself back to Derby. The train was chocked full of students and day trippers returning from Laaaaaandan but I was more than happy to stand by the coach door with an open window and enjoy the fresh dieselly breeze. When you're almost leaning out of the window (don't try that one at home, kids), your lips take on a life of their own as they're buffeted at 100mph.
A final pint of White Feather at the Brunswick rounded out another beery day. It was certainly a change of scenery, though it's worrying to see such great pubs so quiet. I imagine things will be a little busier when I return to the city next week for the CAMRA festival - look forward to live reports and obscene photos!
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It's the last of the Brock. Four days down, the last of the nine pints tasting as fine as the first. There's a latent choccie note lurking that spurs me into another pairing, so the chocolate bag is raided for something suitably dark.
I picked up a bar last week in Sainsbury's made by Seeds of Change. They produce a range of organic foods, including chocolate, and invest a percentage of their revenue into research and promotion of bio-diverse agriculture. Their dark chocolate with hazelnut and walnut sounded ripe for pairing with a dark beer.
The Thornbridge Brock is a smooth stout that seems to only have an annual outing. Shame, really, as it's impressively dry and lightweight drink. The drop from my makeshift stillage gave it a decent fluffy head and a waft of roasty chocolate. Kelly at the brewery had told be to ignore the 'best before' date, saying that a month beyond it would make for a tastier beer. And, he was right - the chocolate notes are deeper than I remember, seems to be a fuller body too... though of course that could be down to recipe-tinkering this time around?
A nibble of chocolate next. Fairly thin bar, the crunchy nut bits making for a good gritty, brittle feel. The chocolate reveals itself late on the palate, decent depth with just a hint of sweetness from the hazelnut. It's one of the most moreish bars I've tried recently, not so bitter that a row or two will suffice. I had to slow myself up, otherwise it would have disappeared swiftly.
These work well together, the cream edge to Brock starts dragging the vanilla out of the chocolate. The smooth silk palate of the beer complements that shard-driven dryness in the chocolate and coaxes out a sweetness that seemed to be subdued before.
Here's a first for me - still got half a pint left but all the chocolate's gone. I'm almost tempted to go open the bar I bought for my wife (milk with apricot and cashew) to see how that pairs up.... but I've got my eye on a tripel to go with that ;-)
And because one of you will ask... yes, the chocolate balanced on top of the glass *did* fall in, I *did* use my fingers to recover it and it *did* taste a little of beer. Mmmmm. Beer chocolate....
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What can you do with nitro-lager drinkers? Give them better lager to try, perhaps? When beermerchants.com wanted to know what I thought of Moritz, a Spanish lager, I thought it was only fair to round up a few willing swillers and ask them if they thought it could be a Stella-beater.
The Moritz brand has a proud history in Catalonia. Formed in 1856 by an Alsatian brewer, Louis Moritz Trautman, it enjoyed over a hundred years of success before financial problems brought about the brewery's closure in 1978. But old beers never die - they live on in fond memories. "The brand has stayed in people's brains," says Albert Castellón, general manager at Moritz. "This has helped us communicate our message."
That message seems to be that Moritz is a quality Barcelonean beer, compared to mass-market national brands such as San Miguel and Estrella. Back in production again since 2004, the beer wants to become synonymous with the city. Their iconic logo seems to get everywhere; on the side of classic Seat cars, on canary-yellow parasols and on promotional signage that's so coveted that it's stolen from bars if not nailed down.
So, Moritz has established heritage, impressive marketing... but does it taste any good? I gave away a dozen bottles to long-time lager drinkers and here's what they said:
"it reminded me of Molson Dry...I like my lager to be a bit more remarkable"
"better than Fosters, Kronenburg etc but I wouldn't buy it if a large bottle of Stella costs less"
"a nice brew, not what I'd expected, not flabby"
"a bit bland compared to ale but better than the likes of Black Label"
"it had a different taste to what I'd expect from a continental lager"
"I can see myself sitting on my patio in the summer enjoying a few bottles"
"quite dry and crisp"
"not as distinctive as Bud, Carslberg, but in a good way"
"not as much of an edge as other lagers"
"quite flavoursome and not too lagery "
Good to see that a fair few people found it surprising. If you're used to the torpor of common continental bottled lager brands, then Moritz will indeed taste different enough. It's a different beastie to Stella, reassuringly refreshing rather than unneccesarily expensive.
My take? It's clean, dry, a little butteryness up front, a little bitter finish. It's a lager that gets the job done in a soft Saazish way and does wonders to reclaim the style away from the usual metallic eurofizz. Goes well with sausage and chips on a cool February evening but probably goes down better in Barca with tapas at a pavement cafe watching microskirts and mopeds scuttle down boulevards as the evening heat wears away.
Thanks to my intrepid lager tasters for their input and to beermerchants for the samples.
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It's Ash Wednesday, I'm ready for a beer and I need to give up something for Lent. After due consideration, I've decided to give up pancakes, so I better enjoy the batter while I can. And splash some ale into the pan at the same time.
My darling mother-in-law fed me a bellyfull of pancakes yesterday so I'm ready again for a plate of crepe-related goodness: you can't have enough of it in your life, can you? A quick trawl of the tinternet for beery pancake recipes brought up a couple of possibilities; the Black Sheep batter looked interesting though I wasn't too sure about the Greene King version.
But as luck would have it, that rock n rolla beer n food blogger Mark Dredge had some great pancake ideas over on his site, Pencil & Spoon. So I hatched a plan; make up a batch of batter using Mark's recipe, try them with a couple of beers and then make another batch using the beers themselves.
Mark recommended several beers to try and, by sheer luck, I had a couple of them to hand; a Great Divide Yeti Imperial Stout that I picked up a few weeks ago and a bottle of Innis & Gunn Oak Aged that a PR agency had just mailed to me. First off, a batch of pancakes.
I can't remember the last time I made pancakes, so this was going to end with either a tasty batch of goodness or a fiery pan of death. So I was more than surprised when the first one ended up all crispy and moist and tasty. Superb with a squeeze of lemon and a hefty pinch of sugar. And with the Innis & Gunn?
Better than I expected, to be honest. I'm sceptical about beers that hint at sweet complexity but insist on being served 'well chilled'. In this case, it worked; the honey, toffee notes of the beer worked well with the sharpness of lemon and the palate-softening pancake.
How would the pancakes fair with the Great Divide Yeti? I was unsure; the dirty tan head and matt black body belied an unseemly hoppy feel. Yes, there was freshly cracked dark chocolate and cold coffee in there, but the hops kept bouncing back. Against the pancake, mind, it worked surprisingly well. At first. Liked the initial coffeeness - if you've ever gorged yourself at breakfast on a stack of pancakes and as many coffee refills as the waitress will serve before she lamps you, you know how the inside of your mouth feels just wonderful - but that creeping bitterness needed a gum-wincing sugar sprinkle to even begin the balancing act.
Then there was the pancake-beer batter. I never convinced myself that the Yeti batter would work. In fact, it wasn't bad - better around the crispy edges than the rather blobby middle, coffee flavours came to the fore, but the beer unbalanced the dish.
The Innis & Gunn batter, though, was a revelation. That nutty/honey sweetness shone through with just enough alcohol still lurking. Even Mrs Reluctant preferred this pancake to the all-milk version.
So: Yeti is a great beer to drink after pancakes, Innis & Gunn is a great beer to put into pancakes. And pancakes at home are lovely but not as good as when a top-heavy blonde brings you a full stack with blueberries and as much steaming Java as your lower colon can take.
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Happened across Wordle tonight and it tickled me. Wordle takes whatever text you input and creates a word cloud out of it - I'm surprised that chocolate is so prominent given that I haven't written as much about it as I want to.
I like how 'perhaps' seems to crop up a fair bit. Though I suspect Wordle's only looking at recent posts; I'll have to keep playing with it. If I can ensure it's representative, I may replace the current word cloud with a Wordle snapshot each week.
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A hearty welcome to all you Twitterers from Twitter Taste Live! I wouldn't normally volunteer to stay up after midnight drinking Sam Smiths but, hey, I've nothing better to do. Like drink all the Thornbridge beers I've just picked up... ah. OK. Sam Smiths. Let's do it...
So; the basics. Sam Smith, probably the oldest brewery in Yorkshire, renowned for their own cheap drinks in their own fiercely independent pubs and an export trade built on filtered, pasturised bottles.
You could find out more about them on their website. But they don't have one. In fact, Sam Smiths are known more for what they don't do. No website, no ostentatious branding, no TVs or music in their pubs.
And they only brew one cask beer, which pees off many English ale fans . Offer some beardy beer boys a filtered & pasturised bottle of Sams and, by their reaction, you might think you'd just offered to bugger their dog.
Anyoldhow - here's some random Sam Smiths facts for you:
1 - They've removed their famous white rose logo from staff t-shirts, delivery vans and pub signs. They say it's because they want to preserve the individuality of their pubs. Some suggest it's a cost-cutting measure...
2 - They've removed TVs from pubs and didn't renew their music performance licenses. Some say it's to ensure a convivial atmosphere in their pubs. Some say it's a cost-cuttting measure...
3 - They're based in Tadcaster, Yorkshire, where brewing has been going on since the fourteenth century. And they're the only independent brewers left there, the others being the industrial torpor that it Coors and John Smiths.
4 - The current owners of this family firm are Humphrey Richard Woollcombe Smith and Oliver Geoffrey Woollcombe Smith. Could their names *be* any more English?
5 - Brewing liqour is still drawn from the original well sunk in 1785. The hard water contributes to the bright nature of the beer.
6 - They are one of the few brewers who still use a Yorkshire Square fermenter. Albeit made of slate, not stone. You can see it here courtesy of Zak Avery on Flickr.
8 - Awards for their beers include the Gold Medal at the International Brewers Exhibition 1896 (Imperial Stout), Gold Medal at the Brewing Industry International Awards 1996 (Oatmeal Stout) and Best Vegetarian Beverage, The Vegetarian Society 2001 (Organic Beer). They are in no way responsible for the Samuel Smith Award.
9 - They (I do believe) still operate a cooperage.
10 - You can no longer have a pint of Sam Smiths Pure Brewed Lager in a Pure Brewed Lager glass at the Sam Smiths pub The Abbey near Derby. Because they were all stolen.
Now, then. Aggregated ramblings on the beers will follow. Feel free to scatter comments around. And, before you all get too pished, do avail yourselves of the following sites:
- A bit about the Oatmeal Stout from Merchant du Vin
It's great to see one of my favourite pubs gain national recognition. The Kelham Island Tavern, one of the finer pubs in Sheffield's Valley of Beer, has won the Campaign for Real Ale's National Pub of the Year award.
The Kelham Island Tavern (KIT) is a pub that I frequent whenever I make it up to Sheffield and has featured in several Ramblings in the past. Indeed, the ten handpumps (always featuring a couple of dark beers) can sometimes tempt me into a Reluctant Scoop, although it's difficult to resist one of their regular brews, Pictish Brewers Gold.
Great range of beers, cheap and filling food, superb suntrap beer garden... everything comes together at the KIT. On crawls around the Shalesmoor area, it's difficult to prise myself away from here as it's a pub where I could happily spend the thick end of an afternoon.
Julian Hough, CAMRA's Pubs Director, was spot on in describing the KIT as "truly is a pub for everyone". Scoopers flock to the bar, diners fill the conservatory, locals gossip over a pint. Whereas some of my mates are wary about venturing out to some of the more 'basic' drinking holes on the circuit, they like the KIT because "it feels like a proper pub". Which indeed it is.
Starting as a semi-derelict building in 2002, Licensee Trevor Wraith built the KIT into a bustling community local that even the floods of 2007 couldn't keep closed for long. On hearing news of the award, the pub manager, Lewis Gonda, praised "the excellent brewers we deal with, our faithful and supportive pub regulars, and our invaluable staff members".
As I write this, the award ceremony is about to start. Somebody up there, please raise a glass of Brewers Gold for me - all the congratulations that will come the KIT's way are richly deserved.
Because I have nothing better to do this evening than move the assorted flotsam from my laptop off onto a portable drive - a 1Tb drive; now I feel old, I remember the days when you only got 140kb on a disc etc - I thought I might as well have a beer. Never had a Leelanau beer before, so I opened up a Petoskey Pale.
Another of the US imports from beermerchants.com, this classes itself as a pale ale aged in oak casks. Clean, simple beer then, right? Wrong. Petoskey Pale is a darn site more complex than the label lets on. It poured a hazy amber, a strong surge of carbonation leading to an intense head eventually collapsing under its own weight into brilliant white pinpricks.
The aroma belies the simple 'pale ale' tag. There's brett here but it's.... tangential. It's the fruits that are driving me mad... what the hell are they? Is that peach? One that's been steeped in a fragrant white wine? Even strawberry? Just a hint, mind, of those bits of over-ripe ones crushed in the bottom of a punnet when you pick your own.
Those sweeter flavours are carried along with a pleasing sour note and a surprising light citric hop feel. The brett keeps itching away and there's some lovely floral notes towards a pronouncedly sourer finish. Decent dryness throughout leaves a layer of near-herbally vineous flavours to play with around your palate.
I like surprises - that's why I take all the labels off the tin cans in the store cupboard so I never know what's going on my toast - spaghetti, custard... clams. And here's a genuinely surprising beer. A pale ale, Grand Cru, sour yet calm, barrel aged yet spritely and fresh, dry yet fulfilling. Perhaps it's not a surprise that Leelanau beers are brewed over at Jolly Pumpkin; Ron Jeffries has plenty of pixie dust to go around and it's put to great use in Petoskey Pale.
As you can tell from the picture, Ratebeerians seem to like the beer too. I was surprised to find that I was the first UK rater, though. I know it's not widely available, but I would have though a few hardcore raters would have tracked it down by now. My advice - go get some. NOW!
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.
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The Firefly beckons. Sometimes, you have to get around to opening those rarer beers in your collection. Jolly Pumpkin aren't easy to get hold of in the UK, so as much as I'd like to keep just looking at the label, there comes a time to get a beer like Luciernaga uncapped and choked down. I mean, carefully sipped and every subtle nuance of flavour recorded carefully...
Those forward-thinking importers beermerchants.com have secured limited stocks of beers by key US West Coast artisinal brewers. Jolly Pumpkin is one of them and I plumped for this Belgian-style ale highly regarded on the Ratebeer site.
It poured with a huge billowing head, plenty of yeasty notes escaping with a whiff of freshly chopped coriander tip. The deep orange body retained carbonation and kept a feisty mouthfeel all the way to the last drop.
On the first sip, the sourness starts but there's welcome restraint; the balance of brett doesn't take your breath away. It paints a picture on the palate, the underlying fruit as a matt base and the sourness a glossy topcoat.
There's certainly a funky feel to Luciernaga but at least it's fresh funk and not old mould. Tart Granny Smith and split wet wood vie for palate space with some rounded caramel dropping in to keep the balance sweet. And it's a close-run thing - intentional barnyardy is good; unintentional wet Elastoplast and TCP is bad (as I found out with some jaded English bottles last week).
Wow - what a refreshing beer! It never stopped itching, the subtle carbonation keeping the funk together tighter than Clyde Stubblefield. It may be even better when you've the sun on your back and a parched throat but this Firefly certainly lit up a quiet, cold night.
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Better late than never. Inspired by George Orwell and the topic of the Christmas competition, here's my 'Moon Under Water' - an ideal pub henceforth to be known as the Fat Cock Inn.
My favourite public-house, the Fat Cock Inn, is an hour’s stiff walk uphill from where I live. In summer this allows for a brisk ramble to build up a thirst and a casual gambol back downhill to home. There’s no car park or bus stop, but the landlord will happily pick you up and drop you home if the weather (or your constitution) turn inclement.
It has atmosphere and character. The atmosphere is not painted on the walls. The clientele *are* characters and they *have* character.
The architecture and fittings are eclectic and functional. A hard-wearing pewter bar fills one side of the long main room. Etched glass screens surround the adjacent parlour. Old, stained, woodwormy oak panels shroud the snug. Settles and stools topped with hand-sewn sagging cushions are found everywhere. Underfoot, worn red tiles and bare boards tell tales of beer and blood split over generations. A cracked beam, recovered from the wreck of a Spanish galleon, is spliced into the sagging ceiling and has a rusted cutlass thrust into it. Only the Minton tiles in the toilet corridor and stained glass above the potstands exhibit frippery. But both were rescued from a mid-terraced pub long since levelled and built over. A slate mantle stands over a log fire which roars in the winter and fills with fresh flowers from the garden in the summer.
A new dartboard sits flush to the far wall, a steel rule sunk into the floor for an oche. Close inspection of the upturned brewers barrels-turned-tables in the bar reveals the old dartboards are recycled as table-tops. A bar billiard table adorns the opposite corner, although none of the regulars ever seem to play it. Playing cards are behind the bar, but only venture out for the landlord’s rigged poker games after closing.
In the Fat Cock Inn, it is the banter (or lack of) that provides the soundtrack. Customers may share gossip and a dirty joke at the bar; settles on the far side are for solitary crossword solvers who do not wish to be disturbed. Music will only be allowed on three occasions – Jimmy Page wishing to play ‘Kashmir’ on acoustic guitar, Steven Isserlis wishing to play Bach cello suites and the whole bar joining in a rousing chorus of ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ in the unlikely event of England winning the William Webb Ellis cup again.
Three kinds of staff are found behind the bar. At lunchtimes, topers are bossed along by a blousy divorcee. She may wear eyeliner of a shade last seen in the 1960’s but she has a heart of gold which is often broken by some rogue. When this happens, regulars will volunteer to pour paint stripper over the offender’s car bonnet. Evenings are often staffed by a succession of doe-eyed students with impossibly pert breasts. Sadly, just as they finally learn to pour a decent pint they leave due to exam failure/charity work in Azerbaijan/contracting chlamydia. Every now and again, a thin man with big hands appears from the cellar and, if he really has to, will pull you a pint. He's ex-military - he really is, because he genuinely doesn't want to talk about it.
The landlady is short, feisty, commands respect yet on darts night she swears like a docker. The landlord is broad shouldered, badger-bearded and always right. He keeps good beer, he keeps good order and never, ever goes round the ‘wrong’ side of the bar. He is grumpy in a curmudgeonly uncle kind of way. He only knows three jokes, all filthy and one positively litigious, but you still laugh like a drain when he tells them. He won't lend you a tenner or let you run up a tab, but he will put a bottle of scotch on the bar when the last-of-the-out-of-towners finish their crisps and dissolve into the midnight air.
Unlike most pubs, the Fat Cock Inn doesn't sell cigarettes (the machine was sent back just after the smoking ban). But you can buy a few useful things; eggs by the half-dozen, strawberries in the summer, fruit cakes in winter.
Three things are banned at the Fat Cock Inn: children, smoking and mobile phones. And woe betide any GPS-misled rep who tries to fire up a laptop in the parlour.
You cannot get dinner at the Fat Cock Inn, but there is always pork pie, cubed cheeses, pork scratchings, Seabrooks crisps, cashew nuts, chutney and pickled beetroot.
If you want a three course meal, staff will gladly point you down the corridor. There you will find a door that leads to a path that runs to a road that twists three miles to the next village where there's a barn-sized pub that's been ruined by diners drinking coffee.
Cask beer is served into pint pots, cider and perry into stoneware mugs. Bottled beers are poured into plain glasses that suit the beer style. Hanging from the ceiling are a wide variety of tankards; none are for show, all are used by regulars. Leather, pewter, porcelain and crystal reflect the tastes and eccentricities of their owners.
The great surprise about the gardens at the Fat Cock are that there are so many. A flagstoned patio by the back door has solid wooden chairs, loveseats and sturdy tables - no toper traps. Flowers and hops cascade down the trellises that line a gentle slope up to a rose garden. Past these shrubs, a lawned walled area offers a suntrap in the summer and respite from the wind in the winter. A pentanque pit can be found via the secret door in the far wall. All around the gardens, pots of herbs are studded about, offering ever-changing aromas through the seasons. No-one - not even the pipe-wielding landlord - is allowed to smoke outside.
A few animals can be found around the Fat Cock Inn. The landlord's dog, a lugubrious chocolate Labrador named Rollo, usually has to be shooed out of the snug in the winter. In the summer, it plays dead on the patio outside. Ever since an unpleasant incident involving a docile daschund and a hyperactive Staffie terrier, customer's dogs are no longer welcome. In a corner of the walled garden, the landlady keeps a few chickens (hence the eggs for sale on the bar). There's a fat cock, of course, but he's stuffed and lives under a bell jar in the parlour.
For those with hangovers or with anti-biotic addictions, bottles of Fentimans soft drinks are available. For everyone else, beer choice is straightforward. All year round, three beers are kept: a house bitter (light in colour and malt), a best bitter (malty yet fruity) and an IPA (properly hoppy and over six percent). As the seasons change, so does the fourth barrel on stillage: a mild in spring, a cask lager in summer, a porter in autumn and a stout in winter. All are sourced from a local microbrewery. Every now and again, a nine of something experimental turns up. All are served on gravity. Bottled German or Czech lagers are available, as are unusual Belgian, Amercian and Scandinavian beers. Cider and perry are available in season and chosen by the landlady, who's a real fan - the landlord says that his other half loves a Fat Cock Inn Cider on a Friday night.
But now is the time to reveal something which you, dear toper, will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as the Fat Cock Inn. But they have a website coming soon...
The journey starts here. My series of Sunday walks where I'll aim to try beers from all twenty-six Derbyshire brewers starts in the snow with a trip up to Horsley Woodhouse for Leadmill and Bottle Brook beer.
It snowed hard earlier in the week, so I thought I'd stay local and walk as far as a pub with an adjacent bus stop back to Derby. Horsley Woodouse is home to the Old Oak Inn, the brewery tap for nearby Leadmill and its sister plant, Bottle Brook. Around about nine miles as the toper wanders, the walk takes in rolling fields and a few copses as the paths and tracks meander north from my front door in Spondon.
Up to Locko Park first, and as the path rose uphill to Stanley a flock of seagulls flapped off only to reappear when I cleared their patch and entered the wood. Up here, the fields had seen only a few hardy dog walkers in the last few days so I was able to tramp through snow deep enough to crumble over the top of my boots. The muffled crump of my footsteps then sounded more like I was cracking corrugated plastic when I got to field corners, frozen cow pats and puddles making the approach to stiles tricky.
Through the village of Stanley, I followed a brook westwards towards bluer skies before turning northwards for Stanley Common. An inquisitive horse arrived at more than a canter in one field; stoic bulls looked cold and bored in another. Large areas of frozen water had gathered in the corners of pastureland, blue-grey slabs warning of the need to edge next to the hawthorn hedges rather than plunge shin-deep into semi-frozen crap & mud.
After some exhausting tussock-hopping, I made it up to the main road at Stanley Common and the White Post Inn. The L-shaped bar was smoky, the wood fire reluctant to draw. Didn't bother me, though: I was ready for whatever heat it could muster. This was very much a bonus beer stop for me, knowing there was a chance of a local brew. Sadly, they had no Funfair beer on (their beers, by all accounts, make a regular guest appearance here) but a surprisingly decent pint of Burton Bridge Hearty Ale sufficed.
Leaving the diners to their roasts, I hacked my way northwards over icy tracks and fields of almost unbroken snow. Now and again, proto-snowmen appeared in fields, seemingly abandoned like broken neolithic stones en route to a higher place. By now, the sun reflecting off the snow behind me was making the back of my head warm. Still cold hands, though, as I was driven to snowball distant trees and scampering rabbits.
Over the A608 and a few west/north doglegs saw me clumbering over frozen tractor ruts towards a horizon full of Horsley Woodhouse. The last half mile uphill seemed to drag, the snow a little deeper, the mud gloopier, the hill ever just so a little steeper than I know it to be. But I was soon at the road and minutes away from the pub of the day.
The Old Oak Inn will get the full Pubs To Love treatment later on this year - it's been a long time since I last ran that feature. It has that understated character of a proper country pub; no false tackiness bolted to the walls but, instead, the quality you can't buy - people having a good time. The only food here is the selection of cobs & pork pies on the bar so drinkers here are really drinkers; some here for a swift pint whilst dinner is in the oven nearby, others on a leisurely half-gallon post-roast, and always at least one slightly sweaty walker ready for whatever is on offer.
The bar had six or seven Leadmill and Bottle Brook beers on offer. No other guests; when your own beers are of such range and quality, why bother? I took a pint of Leadmill Summer Hop just because of the sheer incongruity considering the weather. It's decent enough, blunted lemon with a creamy hop feel rather than anything aggressively citric. A cheese salad cob and pork pie were dispatched in short order, too.
My choice of Bottle Brook beer was a no-brainer; I enjoyed Louisiana Smoked Porter at the Derby CAMRA Winter Festival a few weeks back and was ready to enjoy a frothing pint of it. Not madly rauchbier and all the better for it - it wasn't as smokey bacon as the guy next to me was making out - plenty of ashen notes with steeped deep fruits.
A great attraction about the Old Oak at the weekend is the conservatory bar. Not that the pub really needs another six beers, but who's complaining? Run by the stalwarts of the excellent local beer freesheet the Rural Real Ale Drinker, the RuRAD bar offers gravity casks from brewers near and far. And here I was, Reluctantly Scooping, eschewing Thornbridge Jaipur for even more Leadmill and Bottle Brook beer. And - my gum -both scoops were excellent. Bottle Brook Red Chinook was crammed full of the aforementioned hop, almost too much of it. Leadmill Made in the USA had pockets of wincing citrics and a keener balance, a dazzling clear lemon looker with sweet drying hops all over the shop. It kept me going right up to when Mrs Reluctant turned up to give me a lift home (ah, the joys of rambles close to home).
So, nine miles into the quest and two brewers ticked off the list. If the weather stays fairer next weekend, I may push out further afield. As long as those fields aren't too full of melting cowcrap.
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With plenty of Belgian dubbel-style ale knocking round the house and the temperature just the right side of freezing, an afternoon by the fire sipping Thornbridge Handel seemed to be an ideal Saturday plan. But I was ready for a good gloopy stew too. What better, then, than a steaming pot of the Belgian beef & beer speciality, Carbonnade Flamande?
I'd picked up a recipe from The Hairy Bikers and set off into Derby to pick up the ingredients. Not much shopping required, to be honest - in essence this is a beef and onion stew with brown beer. I was only halfway through my minicask of Handel, a dubbel-style beer from Thornbridge, so I really only needed to pick up some decent stewing meat. Walter Smiths on the Guildhall Market have chunky stewing beef, so I picked up a pound.
It's one of those recipes that was a doddle for a Saturday; easy preparation and slow cooking. The beef's rolled in seasoned flour then browned off in a casserole on the hob before colouring some roughly chopped onions in the same way. Chucked in some thyme, bay leaves, redcurrent jelly, beef stock and that all-important beer and that's about it. Shoved into an oven for a couple of hours to cook down, I then stuck it back onto the hob on a very low heat to get the juices to go sticky. With the oven full of chunky chips and parsnips, it all made for a filling meal that took care of itself whilst I did more important things. Like drink beer and watch rugby.
And - oh my lordy, it's a rib-sticking melting meaty ale-and-hearty plate of goodness. The beer seeps into the meat and imparts just enough sweetness, leaving sticky fruits behind in the already-redcurrant gravy. It's a close call as to what's tastier - the tender beef chunks or the sweet parsnips sweeping up the gunky juice.
This was a beef & beer recipe and the quality of both was key. Especially the beer - Handel proved to be a robust beer with flavours that stand up to be counted. I've had the minicask (nine pints) on the go for four days now and I swear it's getting better as time goes by. When it's all gone, I'll stock up on something like Westmalle as a worthy cooking substitute.
Perhaps one of the best stews I've cooked. It doesn't taste of beer - not that it would bother me - but the flavour it adds to the meat is sublime. If you're still squeamish about cooking with beer, give this recipe a try - but buy two bottles so you get a decent drink to accompany it!
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There are twenty-six breweries operating in Derbyshire. Just over thirty years ago, there was only one. I'm going to celebrate the microbrewery explosion in the county with a season of Sunday rambles, each one ending up at a pub renowned for serving local beers.
Along the way, I'm hoping to meet up with brewers and topers and get a feel for why microbrewing in Derbyshire has become so successful. It'll take me on walks over nearby fields as well as to parts of the county that I've never visited before.
And it won't be all walk, walk, walk; I'll be shifting malt sacks and pulling pints along the way. I want to appreciate the full flavour of Derbyshire brewing, from producer to consumer. With some great scenery and a few pints, of course.
First walk will be on Sunday 7th February; where I end up depends on the weather. Always have a Plan B, my Dad taught me.... for me, Plan B tends to be a pub near a bus stop. Here's hoping for clear weather and clearer beer tomottow!
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Old friends, new breweries, cool beers, hot curries... is Leicester Beer Festival a marriage made in heaven?
There's really only one sensible way to start a fest like this - order a pint of Thornbridge Jaipur and go for a wander all along the stillage to see what's on. Mental notes made of replacements and substitutions, greetings swapped with familiar faces, all in the company of an IPA as good today as it's always been. Catchy line, that.... somebody ought to use it in an advert.
We're keen to experiment (stop that sniggering! I won't tell you again!), so we tend to buy some old favourites alongside output from new brewers.
Five Towns Niamh's Nemesis - light looking, heavy punching hoppy IPA
And, as for the pint of Brewdog V2009... Sticky and harsh. Three months more?
So, is Leiester beer festival a marriage made in heaven? Well, it offered something old (Jaipur), something new (Five Towns), something borrowed (Bonum being Latin) and something Blue Monkey. I'd say that was close enough. Though with all that beer and lashings of curry at the top table, I'd have to take pity on the poor bride....
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