Norwich by pub

It was CAMRA's turn to host the autumn meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union this year, and the powers that be in that august institution picked Norfolk as the destination. It's famous for its barley, you know. The county town of Norwich also has plenty of beery attractions, including lots of very pleasant pubs. Why, you'd nearly think you were up north.

Reuben and I didn't have to stray too far from our Premier Inn to find our first one: The Rumsey Wells, owned by the Adnams brewery. I'm a longtime fan, and this was my first time drinking on their home turf. On cask, unusually, was a Landbier that Adnams has brewed in collaboration with Londoners Five Points, called Distant Fields. It's copper coloured and has what is for me the signature Adnams taste: dry tannins with immense thirst-quenching power. There's a little noble-hop character alongside this; some dried grass and aromatic herbs, but it didn't do much else to convince me it's a German-style beer. The flavour, a full body, and low-level cask carbonation made seem far more like a high quality bitter to me. That's fine. It's what I'd want in an Adnams pub.

In the opposite direction from the hotel on Duke Street is The Golden Star, a charming little corner pub which I never would have guessed is part of the Greene King estate. Here I had a first encounter with the Moon Gazer brewery from rural Norfolk. On tap was Pintail, a 3.9% ABV pale ale with Pacific hops. It poured a perfectly clear gold and had a marvellously floral aroma, reminding me of summer gardens awash with lavender and honeysuckle. The texture is a little sticky and the flavour syrupy sweet, but not excessively so. The hops don't stand up too well to this, but provide satisfactory amounts of tropical fruit, coconut and a balancing rasp of leafy green veg. It all works very well together, in a classically English way: packed with complexity but in a very drinkable format.

Reuben opted for a house beer: Greene King's Watch Room. They call this a golden ale but it looked quite amber next to the Pintail. It's a plain affair, which I more or less expected from the brewery, not that I ever pre-judge. It's medium sweet, offering a quick shot of fruit candy before a rapid fade-out to nothingness. Inoffensive seems to have been the goal here, and it has achieved it.

With a note to look out for more Moon Gazers, along we went. Approaching the city centre from the north, one comes to St Andrew's Brewhouse. This looks like quite an upmarket pub and restaurant, of the sort that would fake having its own in-house brewery. It's legit, however, offering tours and open brewdays, as any good urban brewpub should.

They brew a porter named after part of the city: Tombland. Brewpub beers aren't always perfect in quality but this one very much was. The flavour is based around delicious milk chocolate with a lacing of delicious coffee roast. That's the fundamentals covered early on, and then there's a flourish in the finish of black cherry and plump raisin. I don't know if this is a permanent part of their line-up but it should be. 4.8% ABV puts it in the Goldilocks zone of having sufficient heft but also being moreish and sessionable. I would be in regularly for it if I lived locally.

Regardless, we moved on again after one pint, having been summoned by colleagues to The Murderers. It's a weird choice for a pub theme, with its portraits of Lizzie Borden and Burke & Hare. I hoped the beer would be more tasteful. They were pouring, perhaps appropriately, Darkness Falls, a "black beer" by Oakham. I wonder why they didn't give this a more normal style designation. Fear of mild, perhaps. Anyway, it's 5.2% ABV and roaring with tarry bitterness, overlaid with medicinal herbs and old-world spices, like a Fisherman's Friend lozenge. I got liquorice too, helped by it being sticky and black. It's not mild, then, but is gorgeous. Someone at the table called it a "session Baltic porter" and I pass that assessment along to you by way of recommendation.

On the Saturday, the local CAMRA branch offered us a tour of historic Norwich pubs (they're not allowed call them "crawls"), and that began with more porter, at The White Lion. I'm a sucker for cherry in these, and went straight for Mr Winters Cherry Porter, Mr Winters being a brewery on the northern edge of the city. This is 5.8% ABV and lays the sweetness on thick, with plenty of jam and sticky chocolate sauce. While it's not awful, you do need a high tolerance for sweet beers to appreciate it, and I fully respect any drinker who has no time at all for this sort of thing. I had no trouble getting through a pint, though wasn't rushing to repeat the feat.

Reuben went for something rather tamer: Three Acres's Ruby Porter: arguably a better crawl tour-starter at 4.2% ABV. Strangely, this poured completely black, so not ruby in the least. A highly roasted aroma goes with that, and there's a similar sort of herbal effect as we found earlier in the Oakham beer: aniseed and freshly cooked spinach, though not at the same intensity. Two kinds of bitterness make it very grown-up tasting, but all the better for that.

The second pub was The King's Head. We had actually ducked in here slightly earlier and grabbed a swift pint of Shortts 2 Tone mild in the sparsely decorated front public bar. This put in a pretty good performance, being 3.8% ABV and another chocolate-centred beer with a more serious herbal hop complexity. There's was a very slightly earthy, funky quality to it, and also some lighter nutmeg spicing. I found lots to explore, and the finish lasts impressively long for such a low-strength beer. It could be accused of being too complex for a proper mild, but certainly not by me.

A little while later we were back with the crawlers tour group, in the slightly more plush back room. I picked a stout from the well-chosen cask line-up this time: Dark Horse, from Elmtree Beers. I was very impressed by how creamy they've managed to make this, giving anything nitrokegged and/or lactose infused a run for its money. It's 5% ABV, and the flavour may not be very complex, but that's not an issue when it's as well integrated as this, with a subtle dark chocolate bitterness juxtaposed with high-end praline. Pure class in a glass.

Next to it is Old Brown Mouse, a bitter from Three Blind Mice brewery. Going from the name alone, I had taken this to be a brown ale, and it does meet quite a few of the specs there, being brown for one thing, and caramel-tasting for another. There is a proper English hop bitterness in the finish, however: tangy and mineral-tasting. I probably need more than a taster to assess it properly but it seemed pretty good to me, whatever the style.

Stop three was The Ribs of Beef, a rambling, multifloor establishment with a riverfront terrace which was nice to look at but it was very much not the weather for sitting out. On the bar there was Nene Valley Brewery's Egyptian Cream stout. I had noticed this on keg back at The White Lion and was pleased to find a Real version of it here. The branding turned out to be more interesting than the beer, and it's quite a plain milk stout, managing a baseline level of chocolate flavour, rendered extra sweet by a kick of vanilla. I expect beers like this to put an emphasis somewhere, be it on the sweet candy or sharp roast, but this steers a boringly middle course. It's easy drinking but uninspiring.

That was quite a contrast to the beer two taps over: Encore by Lacons. This is one of those bitters which the brewery has daftly decided to call an "amber ale". It's a long way from caramel-centred American amber ale, however, being sunset gold in the glass and with a clean and spritzy lemon zest flavour. Light carbonation gives it a sherbet character, and there's just enough malt to balance the hops, while also giving them a base to work from. If there's an American style this should be compared to, it's the better sort of pale ale, and that's even allowing for it being only 3.8% ABV. Like Pintail, this was a very welcome sneaky hop bomb.

Our requisite wonky-walled tavern was the unspoilt Adam & Eve -- one of those that would fit the bill perfectly when a film production needs an archetypal traditional English country pub. I did go a bit modern with the beer, however: Mr Winters again, and a Mosaic and Citra pale ale called Twisted Ladder. Even though it was on cask, it has a bit more welly than is traditional, at 5% ABV, and that gives the zesty citric bitterness plenty of elbow room. Even at this late stage in the evening I was describing it as sessionable, enjoying the clean lemonade-like vibes it was giving me. New World hops don't always work well on cask, but however they've treated them here has resulted in something tasting genuinely American, but with cask smoothness thrown in too.

The pace quickened at this point, and it felt like we were only just in and out of the penultimate stop, The Wig & Pen. It's not a tied house, but they seem to keep Woodforde's ales in stock, primarily. I had their Trail Ale, an amber-coloured bitter of 4.3% ABV, created for a promotional event they run each autumn. This is primarily hop forward, though not punchy in the American way, but more sedate and English, with lemon and peach set on cool tannins, for a kind of iced tea effect: comforting and refreshing. Over 200 pubs take part in the Ale Trail event, and I reckon I could drink this in a fair few of them before getting bored. It did strike me as more of a summer beer, but I guess punters need less encouragement then to get out and drink.

We were back in the Wig & Pen the following afternoon for their Sunday lunch. The next Woodforde's beer to try was Bure Gold, another 4.3%-er, and looking quite similar to the previous one as well. But while that was dry, this is softer and fruitier, with lovely fresh notes of grape and gooseberry, suggesting New Zealand hops to me, though they're actually American. This is another beautifully constructed beer, drawing on modern and traditional elements in exactly the right proportions.

Reuben scored another Moon Gazer here: Hare Today. This is only 4% ABV but they've hopped it up much more assertively. I got a distinctive citric bite from the foretaste, and then oily hop resins in the finish. Given the low strength, it's very nicely rounded and satisfying to drink, even in small quantities. Those rabbits really know how to do hops.

But back to the previous evening, to finish our non-crawl at The Leopard, perhaps the most consciously-craft of these very cask-oriented pubs. It's still a proper cask pub, though, and I opted for Black Iris's Ngaru Nui, a full 6% ABV IPA with Nelson Sauvin hops. I thought I knew Nelson quite well, between its tropical moments and the times it tastes like the smell of a refuelling jet. This was different, with spices at the fore: herbal rocket, leading into full-on black pepper. It's odd, but very tasty, and I would like to come back to this at some point when, well, the things outlined above hadn't just happened beforehand. Suffice it to say for now, it's well worth seeking out, especially for the Nelson aficianadoes.

The weekend wasn't all cask, though. In the next post we'll be seeing several of the same breweries again, through alternative dispense methods. Don't tell CAMRA.