No visit to London would have been complete without at least a cursory look at its growing brewing renaissance. I had expected to see more from the likes of Brodie's, London Fields, Redemption, Sambrooks and so on, but I don't think I encountered any. Maybe I was just in the wrong sorts of pubs. Camden Town I saw plenty of, and most of the beer specialists had Kernel bottles.
It was to the latter that we headed on the morning of Day 3.
Kernel, in a railway arch near Bermondsey Tube station, is normally only open to the public on Saturday mornings but Evin very kindly allowed us to drop in on them during the week. Forklift training was in progress when we arrived, and the guys took it in turns to show us the shiny new kit and taste a couple of beers with us. It's an impressive set-up, and even though only two beers had made it into the new fermenters so far the potential is enormous. Hopefully we'll be seeing more taps, and bottles further afield, in due course.
Having imposed long enough we headed for the day's second brewery, to the north east in Stratford. The gargantuan Westfield Stratford City shopping centre was heaving with Easter Tuesday shoppers, though only a handful had made it as far as the distant end of the ground floor, opposite the international railway station, where Tap East nestles in its alcove.
Though the brewkit was puffing away merrily, only one house beer was available:
John Edwin Bitter. It's a clear orange-amber colour with a sharp and waxy bitterness at the front plus some of the grainy flavour I've come to associate with brewpub lager on the tail. It's decent as it goes, but not a great example of small-scale brewing. Not to someone who's just come from The Kernel, anyway.
The keg selection included Brewster's
Chocolate Cyn and I just had a wary taste of this. I didn't order a full pint, however. Just not enough going on in it. Instead I opted for Thornbridge's
Chiron, a Lucozade-coloured pale ale of 5% ABV, simple yet very drinkable, with some lovely chewy fruit candy flavours. Last tick of the session was Brooklyn Brewery's
Dry Irish Stout, a title which manages one out of three. It's very sweet, giving off rich toffee aromas and with a flavour packed full of molasses plus a matching unctuous texture. There's atin' and drinkin' in it, it's lovely, but it's pretty far from tasting like an Irish stout.
We stayed in the east for the third and final brewery of the day, taking the Docklands Light Railway down to Greenwich to visit Meantime's new facility The Old Brewery. This place really acts as the cafeteria of the Naval College Museum, with all the atmosphere and charm of modern museum catering facilities everywhere. It's brightly lit, brightly decorated and has a continuous flow of patrons in and out between the adjoining museum. I sat opposite the gleaming three-tier brewkit, and even
that began to annoy. Why would you put the mashtun and kettle at the bottom and then have to force wort up into the fermenters above? I understand from James's article
here that the fermenters feed serving tanks in the basement, but it still makes no sense to me.
The room next door housed a slightly more atmospheric bar, though one totally lacking in customers. From here I procured a
Bohemian Amber and a
Yakima Red. As usual, Meantime get full marks for their gorgeous glassware.
The Amber was made on-site and was a very hazy red-brown lager. It tastes... wholesome: lots of sweet and porridgey grain, plus some almost Belgian dark candy sugar and more than a hint of butterscotch. All seeming a bit thrown-together for something produced on such a slick and shiny brewkit.
The Yakima Red was a much better proposition: clear as a bell, crisp, light and thirst-quenching. The hops add some gentle orange overtones, the bitterness building gradually to a slightly catty peak.
The early version of our schedule had us eating here, but we weren't inspired by the menu. With some time still left to play with, we had the opportunity for a bonus round.
The Parcel Yard is a brand-new Fuller's bar in King's Cross station, just above platform 9¾ (no, really). Not so much a yard, it's more a winding series of dimly-lit rooms laid out with sparse antiqueish furniture and railway bric-a-brac. Somewhere on the twittersphere I'd been promised the full range of Fuller's beer so marched excitedly to the bar to order a Black Cab Stout and a Past Masters XX, the former being new; the latter around for a while but not sold at home. And neither were sold here, either, unfortunately. No Mighty Atom either. I could have had my pick of the Vintages, or some Past Masters Double Stout, but that's not what I wanted. I glumly opted for a protest pint of
Gales HSB. It's a fairly dry brown bitter, with some raisins and a kind of salty toffee flavour. Or maybe that was just the tang of disappointment.
What wasn't a disappointment was the food -- classic English pub fare done incredibly well. It's very unusual for us to order a two-course meal in the pub, but from this menu it had to be done. One scotch duck egg with pork crackling, warm beef salad, steak and ale pie and rump steak cheese burger later we were pleasantly replete and ready to roll back to Gatwick.
I broke my new-pubs-only rule with a pint of Rooster's
Cogburn (geddit?) in the airside Wetherspoon: a bitingly refreshing blonde bitter. And then the plane home.
I had really hoped to delve into the heart of London's beer scene, new and old. Yet I feel I've barely skimmed the surface. There's so much more to explore.
It's a different story in the UK, however, where the same rate has applied only since late last year yet breweries -- reputable and otherwise -- have been falling over themselves to create product that fits. I offer no comment on the reputation of Manchester's JW Lees brewery, but their Brewer's Dark is one from their back catalogue that has been adapted to dodge the exciseman, knocked down to 2.8 from the former lofty heights of 3.5% ABV, whence I tasted it a couple of years ago. I don't know how much of the difference is down to the carbonation method, but I'm getting none of the rich chocolate creaminess of the cask version from this new bottle. There's still a lovely roast bite, however, making it a deliciously refreshing dark quaffing beer. Light, without being watery, thin or dull. Yes, we could do with something in this style over here.
We're not stuck for 4.x% stouts, however, though I was still interested to see Fuller's of London launched a new one last year. This was followed by disappointment when I couldn't get any on a trip to their home turf in April. But, resilient as ever, I tracked down a bottle in Dublin and here it is. 4.5% ABV, so a teeny bit stronger than the draught version they had out as a seasonal last November.
