Refreshing

My weekend in London wasn't a beer trip, and it's possible I enjoyed it all the more for that. Planning was rudimentary as regards what to drink and precisely where, and knowing it was going to be London in August, and therefore horrifically hot, I set myself a rule of staying within the neighbourhood of broadly the West End: no transport and no long walks.

Pub one was The Lamb, lasted visited in the summer of 2008. It made its name as a Young's house, and while the Ordinary was in very good shape, the Special was on the turn, tangy and a bit vinegary. It was fun to see Sambrooks on the handles as well, now that they've occupied the site where Young's Ram Brewery used to be. The pint of Wandle was in excellent condition.

Since Þe Olde Mitre doesn't open on weekends we popped in there next. It wasn't especially busy, with most punters preferring the warmth of the alley outside to the delicious, refreshing air conditioning. Although this is still a Fuller's pub, the selection of beers was nicely diverse and I opted for Mallinsons Nelson Sauvin as the first tick of the trip. This is a flawless golden colour with a persistent slim head and a lovely aroma of dry grape and diesel. Nelson, then. The flavour was rather harsher, lacking the hop's squishy-grape lusciousness and piling in dry biscuit instead, which is no kind of substitute. While recognisably Nelson Sauvin, it's not the happy kind, unfortunately.

Heading back west for a late pint in Holborn, I happened across Star at The Ship, the first of a number of Portobello Brewing beers of the weekend. This is a bitter, and a tightly astringent one, like a mug of extremely strong, stewed, black tea. I have a reasonable tolerance for this sort of thing but this was beyond it, the intense bitterness almost reaching the point of sourness. Not that it was off; I'm sure it was as the brewer intended and perfectly well kept. It just didn't suit me.

An inevitable Wetherspoon nightcap brought me to Shakespeare's Head where they were serving another Portobello beer, Market Porter. This was dry again, with lots of cocoa, but softened by elements of cherry and raisin, plus blackberry for an extra complexity and a little bitterness. There was an odd sort of grittiness to the texture which I didn't care for but which didn't spoil it. I'm willing to accept that cask porter is so rare that my standards aren't especially high. But here was one, and I drank a pint of it, and enjoyed doing so.

If it had been a long time since I was last at The Lamb, it's even longer since I visited The Harp (March 2008) so that was a must-do early on Saturday. The crowd thronging Covent Garden hadn't quite made it as far as Chandos Place yet, so there were seats. This is where I first fell in love with Harvey's Best Bitter and that's where I started and it was of course divine. A second was tempting, but the strange taps even moreso.

Now here's a Fuller's bar making use of its unconjoined brewing sibling. Among the beers from the House of Fuller, Smith, Turner & Asahi was The Summer Mild, a collaboration between Dark Star and Anspach & Hobday. It's only 3.5% ABV and golden, with a little bit of haze as a nod to fashion. Aroma and flavour: not much. There's a touch of citric zest in both, but otherwise it's extremely plain. I guess the idea is for it to be unchallenging, and it's certainly that, but shading too much towards boring. Another perfectly-kept but extremely mediocre beer. Just as well I was interspersing these with classics.

Knowing this trip was on the cards, I read with interest Boak & Bailey's post in July about Central London Pubs That Feel Like Locals, and hey: there was one on the doorstep here. The Nell Gwynne is a tiny one-roomer up an alleyway off the bustle of The Strand. It really is an oasis of calm, and we had the place to ourselves while the streets of theatreland were mobbed.

Beerwise, I started on Golden Close from a new brewery to me, Barsham in Norfolk. This is an IPA, brewed to a substantial 5% ABV and clear golden, like they do them up north. The Landlord parallels didn't end there as it has both a waxy bitterness and a lightening touch of honey: maybe not as pronounced as in Keighley's finest, but close enough to keep me happy. The finish is quick, which speaks to how clean and well-kept it was, though I think the strength justified a longer aftertaste than was on offer. I enjoyed it, but was ready to switch for the second pint.

The second pint was Portobello's London Pilsner, with the feeling I was building some kind of set of the brewery's beers. This one seems like a bit of a commodity job, designed to fill a niche, though was one of three lagers on tap. It's 4.6% ABV and fizzy. That has its place but isn't much of a step up from industrial lager, nor from what I remember of Camden Hells, which was another option. A mild fruity banana taste passes for character while also being a sign of not getting the fermentation exactly right. Above all, to be a pilsner, this needs more hops.

We'd passed the swarming Nag's Head on the way through Covent Garden earlier. I don't have a link for the last time I drank here because it was in November 2000 -- when we came over to visit the Millennium exhibition in Greenwich. I completely irrationally wanted to revisit, so that happened before lunch on Sunday when trade was brisk but not yet unreasonable.

It's owned by the McMullen Brewery, a Victorian institution in Hertfordshire, and the pub is heavily vertically integrated, making it a bit like a non-evil Samuel Smith. An exceptionally dull pint of AK (it's better bottled) was followed by a pint of "Nag's Head Bitter", which I take to be the urban rebadge of their 4.2% ABV Country Bitter. I fared little better with it, finding it largely flavourless with the same soapy twang that haunts flagship AK. Maybe it's charming that there's still a market for beers like this, but I don't know who's drinking them, or why.

It was a big surprise, then, to find Riverside IPA a delight. "Riverside" is their craft-styled keg range and this 5.6% ABV job is brewed with Mosaic and Rakau. The result is a bright and fresh tropical aroma, settling on tasting to pineapple primarily, with a few zesty citrus features and some stonefruit for good measure. If the aim was to make something palate-tingling and modern, then mission accomplished. Let that brewer have a go with the cask stuff.

Sunday lunch was around the corner at Hawksmoor who seem to go through a plethora of house beers. There was just one today: Hawksmoor Lager, a 4% ABV Helles(ish) brewed by Harbour in Cornwall. This was much better than Portobello's effort, including the fizz and the little hint of fruit -- more palatable apple and honeydew melon -- while also giving clean dry water biscuit and an aroma of wet grass. It works well as an unfussy conversation beer, but there are features worthy of exploring too.

I hadn't realised that the Covent Garden neighbourhood was home to Lowlander, a Belgian-style grand café that used to get frequent mentions in the early days of London beer blogging, when choice was a fraction of the current offer. Having revisited several noughties venues it seemed appropriate to chalk up a new one.

Although the beer list is long, it's not hugely exciting, indeed representing the Belgian beer scene of 15 years ago rather than today. The house Lowlander Pils is from Huyghe, presumably a rebadge of something. Go on then.

It was served exceedingly cold, but with outside temperatures at 30°C+VAT I wasn't complaining about that. Crispness is the be all and end all here, with a dry brown breadcrust effect and pretty much nothing else. This is another niche-filling beer, for the drinking partner of anyone who has been dragged here by someone desperate for a pint of Westmalle Dubbel, which was also an option. Since I was here to see the bar more than to sample the beer, I didn't mind. Something more interesting was called for next.

Up the other end of Drury Lane and over a bit there's a branch of Craft Beer Co. On the ground floor it's a narrow stand-up bar with stools along the window but there's also a roomy basement with very effective air conditioning. This seemed like an ideal venue to wait out the remains of the afternoon.

The chain has a longstanding relationship with Kent Brewery for the house beers. I had the keg Pale Ale at a different and since-defunct branch in 2012. Here I went for the cask Craft Bitter. They've certainly gone all-out for tradition on this, resulting in an almost still amber beer with a strong green metallic bitterness which says Fuggles to me, though my abilities as regards picking out English hops have never been especially good. A grainy dryness forms the base behind this. It's yet another niche-filler, I guess. They could have done something more interesting with the format.

Of course, most of what's on tap represented the wild and wacky world of British craft brewing. Orbit Dry Hopped Gose, for instance, takes Leipzig's classic sour style, brewed to 4.3% ABV, and bungs in loads of Citra and Godiva hops. It still manages to feel like a proper gose, hazy yellow with nicely assertive levels of salinity and sourness. Then the hops make it taste like a lemonade, all sweetly citrus. It's approachable and refreshing, which I'm sure was the point.

Somebody always has to take things too far, however, and here it's Devon brewery Yonder with their Watermelon Gose. I refuse to believe that if you added real watermelon to a pale beer you would end up with something as luridly pink as this. That it's done with some kind of concentrate is suggested by the way the flavour blares watermelon-flavoured candy rather than anything grown on the ground. Still, credit where it's due: there's still a trace of saline gose lurking at the back of this. The cloying syrupy gunk makes it difficult to enjoy, however.

Back in May I got a bit arsey with the perfectly lovely Craft Beer Channel over their promotion of Anspach & Hobday's London Black stout, and how they insisted on comparing it to Guinness. It's such a cliché in coverage (reporting or advertising) of stout that it exhausts and frustrates me. Anyway, here was an opportunity to at least find out for myself whether any comparison is justified.

Reader, it is not. A&H London Black is a masterpiece of stouty complexity, absolutely packed with flavour. Not way-out or weird flavours, it's still predominantly chocolate and coffee as it should be, but present to an intensity that's almost too much, almost too busy. Yet it pulls back at the last instant, aided by a modest 4.4% ABV. The result is an absolutely perfect balance of porter's sweet and bitter sides, both represented in a big way but not clashing. It is a very different proposition to Draught Guinness and I don't get why you'd mention them in the same breath. Regardless, I would be very pleased to see this beer becoming commonplace around London. It has the potential to live up to the promise that Fuller's London Porter never delivers on.

There was a bit of spare time at Heathrow, enough for a couple of pints at the Fuller's concession in Terminal 2. From Dark Star, Sunquake, described as a "juicy California IPA" and 4.8% ABV. I'll leave you to decide what's wrong with that description. A fruit candy aroma leads on to genuinely juicy mango and pineapple, with a finish of tart grapefruit. None of this is laid on thick, making it subtle and accessible, while still presenting a twist on what English cask ale can be, of the sort that was all but unknown before the wave of haze engulfed us.

Beside it, they were pouring something quite similar from the elder sibling, a Fuller's summer seasonal called Sticky Wicket, described more prosaically as a tropical pale ale. The aroma is brimming with Skittles and Starburst before it calms down on tasting. The hopping is Australian, and is an excellent ambassador for the nation, showing off the rounded and ripe mandarin and strawberry that makes these varieties such a great fit for summer beers. These two made an excellent reminder that it is perfectly possible to deliver hop zing in a cask beer if you do it right.

Other observations from my first post-pandemic visit to Britain and its beer are that St Austell Tribute remains a beauty despite its ubiquity, equally London Pride still doesn't do it for me no matter how well it's kept, and Siren's Broken Dream on cask is a must-drink when you see it. Two different bars were casually serving this 6.5% ABV chocolate stout from their handpumps and I'm delighted to see it move into the mainstream from something only punters at a CAMRA festival would nudge each other and giggle at.

Overall, a few minor missteps aside, I came away with a much better impression of London's cask beer than I did after the sweltering death march of August 2015. Have things improved, or did I make better choices, or simply get luckier? Regardless, it was fun, enlightening, and a reminder that short trips to The Big Smoke are best done over small areas of town at a time.