Norfolk enchants

In my previous post, I went meandering around the city of Norwich drinking cask beer aplenty. There was more to my weekend in East Anglia than that, so here's more of what came my way beerwise on the trip.

Following a long day of hard strategising in an extremely Dad's Army village hall in Great Ryburgh, next to the vast Crisp Malt factory, we EBCU delegates were bussed deeper into the countryside, to the smartly-kept walled farmyard (very Pajottenland) which is home to the Barsham Brewery. What they make here is mostly quite traditional and English, with a couple of nods to more modern beer types. At the neat taproom, I began on cask.

Norfolk Topper is a pale bitter: your standard 3.8% ABV, and claiming citric qualities in its flavour. I didn't get much of that, finding it primarily dry, with a honeyed sweet side and a hint of beeswax bitterness. Still, it's far from bland, and all the flavours are bold, if not exactly brashly American. It still retains lots of traditional charm, and while it's not something I would go very far out of my way for, I understand the attraction of having it as a commonplace local beer and would love to be able to boast of such.

It all went a bit brown after that. Next out was Oaks, an everyday bitter at 3.6% ABV, and possibly due a reduction to 3.4% as that's where several established bitters have gone, to save on tax. Again I picked up a dryness, which appears to be the brewery's signature quality, and here it's quite bitter too, like a very strong mug of tea. There's a little toffee from the crystal malt and a mild green apple complexity. This beer isn't about complexity, however. It's a simple and unchallenging pinter. Even I felt a bit young to be drinking it.

For a bit of welly there's Bitter Old Bustard, abbreviated to "B.O.B." on the elaborate pumpclip. Arguably, this is just another brown bitter, but I was very impressed by the beautiful limpid garnet colouring. The heft goes all the way up to 4.3% ABV, and it feels far stronger, its density accentuated by a flavour of treacle and raspberry jam. Again the dryness and tannins feature, though they're not as pronounced as in the previous two. This is all about the malt, and showcases it beautifully. It's not a coincidence that Barsham is a regular patron of Crisp's manual floor-malted product line: Maris Otter the old way.

They also had a keg stout on the bar, and it would have been wrong to pass that up. Dark Hour is 4.6% ABV with a flavour loaded up with chocolate. Actually, more cocoa, of the drinking variety: I immediately thought of scarlet tubs of Cadbury's Bourneville. There's a slightly zinc-ish bitterness from some subtle hopping and a little burnt toast emerging as it warms. It's a very good effort, simply done, but with enough going on to be interesting. I like when a brewer doesn't simply try and ape a mainstream brand, but gives some thought as to what the style is good for.

There were a couple of Barsham beers at lunch earlier in the day, and my introduction was Stackyard Hazy Pale, a kegged pale ale trying to be as down with the kids as one can on a farm in the Norfolk countryside. It doesn't really work. It's not especially hazy, for one thing; it's only 4% ABV and is astringently bitter, with sharp lemon peel as the principal flavour. Apart from that, yeah: a bang-on juicebomb m8. As an English bitter, it does pass muster, and they shouldn't really be trying to present it as anything else.

Via a bag-in-a-box there was also Stout Robin. Looking back, it seems a little odd that they have separate stouts for cask and keg. This one, too, is 4.6% ABV, and I found it a lot roastier than the other one, giving the house dryness a strong showing. Coffee dominates over chocolate, and there's a slight oiliness to it. That contributes to a long finish, with all the main elements continuing to do their respective things on the palate for some time after swallowing. I couldn't say whether this was a better recipe than Dark Hour, or simply that stouts work better on cask (even in a bag) than nitrokegged. There's a wholesome warmth to this one that left me wanting more.

Lunch the next day, back in Norwich, came with a selection of local bottled ales. The catering didn't run to glassware and everything was consumed from paper cups, so excuse the lack of my usual poor-quality beer photography.

I mentioned Mr Winters as one of the most interesting breweries I encountered on the cask quest, and there were two more from them here. Curveball is a quite straightforward American-style pale ale, orange-amber coloured and hitting the proper style points of grapefruit and resin. A touch of papery oxidation lets it down, and I blame the bottle format for that.

We also had Vanilla Latte from the same brewery, a stout where the name says it all. The aroma is very milk chocolate indeed, and then it tastes mostly sweet, unsurprisingly, with just enough balancing roast to keep it on an even keel. It's difficult to wow me with a milk stout, and I wasn't wowed by this, but I fully respect it as a beer which delivers everything it promises to.

Another previous Norfolk highlight, Moon Gazer, also had a beer amongst this lot: a ruby ale named Nibbler. I found it hard to believe that this was only 4% ABV, so warming and wholesome it was. There's a satisfying pudding-like depth to it, with accompanying dark fruit and booze-soaked cake, plus a bonus tangy bitterness providing an unexpected high note. I would have liked to have tried this on cask, where I bet it's even rounder and more luscious.

But for every two good breweries you need a wonky one. Step forward Wagtail. I genuinely didn't know that their beers on the table were from the same producer, as the branding is quite different (inconsistent, one might less charitably say). Both are strong ales in the 6.6% ABV zone.

The Devils [sic] Door Bell had some promising notes of caramel and minerals, but an over-riding off flavour of marker-pen phenols. I'd broadly guess that it was fermented too warm rather than picking up any specific infection but, regardless, it wasn't any way pleasant to drink. Donkey Kisser was even worse: there was nothing promising here, just sharp vomit acidity in the foretaste and then dirty, murky funk in the finish. I have no idea what went wrong here, or even if it was what the brewer meant it to be, but either way, I found it utterly charmless. Maybe Wagtail does better beers, but whoever picked these two sub-homebrew disasters for our lunch dropped the ball badly.

Although cask and tradition dominate in Norwich, there are a couple of pockets of Craftonia, two of them under the same proprietor. The newest is a pub -- possibly a micropub -- called Bier Draak. Continental and continental-style beers are the mainstay, and I opened my account with Ampersand's Camphillsner pilsner, served from a Lukr side-pour tap, Czech style. It's a beautifully constructed example of a pilsner, giving me vibes of Keesmann Herren Pils, with its almost creamy texture and zippy fresh-cut grass meeting spicy rocket hop notes. Even with all that going on, it maintains a pristine cleanness, tasting authentically central-European without so much as a glance at western affectations like haze or ignoble hops. Very impressive stuff from a Norfolk brewery.

So I was pleased when cans of their their west coast IPA, Double Down, were passed around. At 6.4% ABV, this is a little on the light side, and the flavour is strangely sweet and caramelly. One could argue that the extensive use of caramel malts in early US IPAs of the modern era justify the description, but it's not really what counts as west-coast these days. It does have some resins in the flavour, but they're sweetly floral, not bitterly piney. I did like the peppery aroma, and it's not a bad beer per se. It's just not quite what it's meant to be, and not quite anything else either.

Bier Draak is an offshoot of a market stall in Norwich's markets, Sir Toby's. O to live in a country where such a thing can be licensed to serve beer, but here they have a small number of taps and a bench to perch on if you want to hang around. I found Abbeydale's Pilgrim on keg, a long way from its Sheffield home. This is a pumpkin-spiced ale which does about the bare minimum, delivering mild cinnamon and not much else on a broadly sweet base. Definitely one for the pumpkin beer haters to get their money's worth from. I was neither thrilled nor offended by it. A bit of seasonal novelty is no harm.

At Norwich station on the way out, Reuben picked up a can of Brewgooder's Fonio Session IPA. I hadn't heard anything from this charitable contract brewer in an age, and don't know if they're still hosted at BrewDog. Here they are using the latest, trendy, climate-disaster-resistant grain, and have named the beer after it. Fonio, in my limited experience, imparts a distinctive fruity flavour, but here it seems to have been buried under standard American grapefruit-exuding hops, and there's a little metallic aspirin too, an effect I tend to associate with alcohol-free pale ales. Overall it's quite a normal 4.3% ABV IPA: its unorthodox ingredient and the ethical stance of the producer don't change its characteristics in any significant way.

We'll leave the last word for today with the Emperor. Emperor's Brewery is based out of Leicestershire, though the internet tells me the beer I had was brewed in Sweden by Dugges. It's a straightforward 13.1% ABV peanut butter jelly imperial porter, called Kessel Run. I had it at the end of one night, seeking something I would still be able to taste. I could taste it all right. The jelly is unmistakably raspberry, mixed in stickily with a tonne of chocolate from the high-strength base beer. I couldn't taste any peanut through that, but it wasn't lacking in flavour. The intense sweetness was hyped up even further by an incredibly dense texture and lots of boozy heat. It's a beer to have one of, ever, but I can't complain too much as I knew what I was getting when I went in. Never tell me the odds.

That wasn't the only imported beer I had on my visit. I'll cover off the handful of others in my final post from Norwich.