The advent of craft

I caught some flack a few years ago by complaining that the town of Shrewsbury lacks craft beer, and while it's well supplied with the traditional stuff in cask and bottle, it's useless as a destination to find out about trendy, murky, contemporary British brewing. I visited again over Christmas and discovered that, perhaps inevitably, craft has reached Shrewsbury. It's in the form of Tap and Can, a pub beside the station in the familiar hardwood-furnished pseudo-dive craft vernacular. Still, there's a decent cask offering among the kegs and cans, and that's what interested me.

I opened on Mini Milk, a milk stout from Arbor Ales of Bristol. The aroma is surprisingly roasty here, packed with coffee grounds and almost smelling burnt. Still, as hoped, it's lovely and smooth with a flavour which piles in the milk chocolate and complements it with a salt/sweet caramel complexity. The burnt bite returns in the finish, adding a little balance. Overall, this is exactly what I think milk stout ought to be, tasting wholesome and nourishing, the whole picture enhanced by the cask serve.

Morbid curiosity got me to order a half of Terra Firma from Birmingham's GlassHouse. From the modern art pumpclip this is very much craft, and came in a stemless wine glass, murky as you like. The vital statistics are that it's a pale ale of 4% ABV and utilises Simcoe and Idaho 7, and presumably has been absolutely saturated in them. The aroma is massively dank, which is quite discombobulating for an English cask ale, while the flavour has the same caraway crispness as many a canned hazy IPA, along with fresh lime rind and a hint of vanilla. I wasn't mad about it but did find it fascinating: a great effort at bringing the high-end hop fireworks of American haze to the cask drinker. I wonder what they make of it?

Meanwhile, out in the country, the local had reduced its hours of operation though still kept three beers on cask and as usual there was something new for me to try. This time it was Butcombe's Chris Moose seasonal beer, a long way from its West Country home turf. I wasn't expecting much, given the cartoonish pumpclip, but this turned out to be quite thoughtfully put together. Though very brown, it's not twiggy or cloyingly sweet, presenting predominantly dry. The flavour does suggest Christmas without going gimmicky, showing currants and chocolate on a base of black tea. It was much more drinkable than I thought it would be: 4.1% ABV is a modest strength, but English winter beers can still be horribly sticky at this level. This one, however, is clean and quenching, and would work perfectly well for a session.

Not for me though. I switched next to the house lager, 1985 from the usually-reliable Wye Valley brewery. I think they're going for a niche with this guy, however: a classic interpretation of continental lager it is not. Good enough for mainstream English lager drinkers it seems to be. Crispness is the principal feature, and I'm sure that's deliberate. It came served in a Carling glass with a head keeper, and as usual with smaller-batch beers that meant a very busy fizz. Under the dry carbonic bite there's a wonky fruity side, the sort of thing that adds character to an ale but just tastes wrong here. This just about fills the intended niche but Augustiner and Budvar needn't be worried about Wye Valley stealing their thunder.

Snowdonia Ale is from the generally reliable Purple Moose. It's intended as a thirst quencher, being a golden ale of just 3.6% ABV. Served cold from the garage on Christmas Eve it was perfect rehydration fare after a few hours of drying out by the fire. It's crystalline lager gold and very lemony, seemingly making great use of American hops without losing sight of traditional British drinkability. I'm sure, like many a bottled ale of this sort, it's meant to be a second-rate substitute for a cask version, but I can't imagine this being more effective at a higher temperature with less fizz. For my part I quaffed through it in short order and felt all the better for it. It seems that 2008 me didn't enjoy it, but what would that guy know?

Ridgeway Brewing is one of those English breweries I never see much of in England, and I suspect a lot of their output gets sent straight to export. So it was a surprise when a family member sourced this bottle of Reindeer's Revolt as a gift. The label suggests its intended destination was Finland. "English Christmas Ale" it proclaims, and the only other beer of that sort I can think of is the one Shepherd Neame does. Like it, this is a deep golden colour and quite strong at 6% ABV. With that comes a lot of winter warmth and a candy sugar sweetness, suggesting the base for something seasonal which hasn't had the fruit and spices added yet. A tiny tang of orange peel is the only nod towards complexity. It's a little sticky and cloying, and I would suggest taking time over it, if it tasted better. For my part it was a race to get through a half litre while it was still cold, because I reckon it would be undrinkable at cellar temperature or above. I was not expecting said reindeer's revolt to be against me. What else lurked under the tree?

Next out was Santa's Stout by Broughton, a brewery which featured large in my early years of beer exploring but has been thoroughly eclipsed since. This 4%-er calls itself a chocolate and oatmeal stout, though there's no actual chocolate, only chocolate malt. The lightness of strength comes through as an understated drinkability, making it quite thirst-quenching. It avoids being thin, however, and I'm guessing that's the oatmeal's doing. It's dry, of course, meaning the chocolate is more like cocoa powder than bar form. It works rather well, though: maintaining a nice richness without turning sweet. There's nothing especially Christmassy about it and it would be just as enjoyable during the rest of the year. Hopefully they have the good sense to rebadge it.

On a similar theme, we have Glad Tidings, a 4.6% ABV "winter stout" from Chiltern Brewery. It's a bit lifeless in the glass and very much spiced up, unsubtly suggesting nutmeg, star anise and cinnamon. Less obvious, but flagged on the label, are orange zest and lactose. The latter contributes to a sweet milk chocolate effect, though it's slightly out of place with the thin body. I guess it's supposed to be jolly and festive but it's more of a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, I think, lacking a warmth that no amount of fruit or spices can give a beer.

Hampshire brewery Longdog claims that their Lamplight is an authentic London porter brewed to a 19th century recipe but adds no more detail than that. Hit 'em for the royalties, Ron. It's 5% ABV and fizzes busily when poured so I was properly thirsty by the time I got to take a drink. Dark fruit and darker chocolate greet the nostrils. The flavour is along similar lines but the carbonation really gets in the way and makes it hard to drink more than a mouthful or two at a time. I let it flatten out for a few minutes, which was worthwhile. A smoky dryness is the reward, balancing the plum and raisin nicely. The end result is a decent drinking porter, though nothing fancy. Any Victorian member of London's lower classes should be quite content with it.

I wasn't aware that there was such a thing as Titanic Plum Porter Grand Reserve, but when a bottle came my way I did the appropriate preparatory research: I found a bottle of ordinary Plum Porter in the garage and drank that first. I've had it several times before and liked it, though the perfumey fruit syrup is more pronounced in the fizzy bottled version than on cask where it all smooths together. The big lad is up at 6.5% ABV from the basic 4.9% and it certainly appears denser, pouring more slowly and less fizzily from the 75cl bottle. The alleged big difference is that it has added port, although that's listed below yeast on the ingredients so I'm assuming not much. And to be honest I didn't think this was much different to the regular stuff. The same jamminess is present, and the same chocolate, with everything turned up a little but not a whole lot more. Is it a better beer than the basic? Yes, and if you like what it does then here's more of it. But is it worth paying a substantial premium for? I think I would just buy two bottles of the regular instead.

More beers from my brief seasonal soujourn in the English midlands to come later this week.