Fest of fun: Smithfield

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!