Warming to the Americans

I mentioned recently that I'd put away my Belgian winter ale stash for the season, but I also have a couple of Americans that have been hanging around since the colder days and I'm nowhere near as confident about their ability to see the summer through and stay any way fresh, so I guess I'd better drink them.

Brooklyn's Winter Ale came my way via Stephen of The Beer Club. Much as I'm a huge fan of Brooklyn Lager, I've not been all that enamoured by anything (much) else they've produced. This one pours thickly, a chestnut red, topped by a reluctant head. Oddly, despite, the heavy texture, there's quite a lot of fizz. The taste is pleasant, however: predominantly sweet, I get lots of chewy toffee livened just slightly by top notes of milk chocolate, brown sugar and raisins. At 6.1% ABV I think it meets its specification as a warming winter ale quite well.

I'm immediately reminded of the discussion over on Boak & Bailey a while back about Burton Ale, and the thesis that this once-popular style of dark, strong sweet beer is not in fact extinct but merely travelling incognito, under names such as "winter warmer" and "strong ale". I think we may have a contender here, or at least an easy reference point for Statesiders looking for a Burton Ale example.

Flying Dog's K-9 Cruiser is a notch up the alcohol scale at 7.5% ABV. Colourwise it's in a similar vein, perhaps a little browner than the Brooklyn. The nose is sweeter, suggesting treacle or golden syrup, though there's much more of a hop presence. The first hit on tasting is a tangy bitterness followed quickly by a candy fruitiness of the sort found in lurid sweets whose ingredients are little more than sugar and a string of e-numbers. It's pleasant for all that, if a little uncomplicated. I think it lacks the malt richness of its northern counterpart and despite the bigger ABV its warming properties suffer as a result. But I enjoyed it overall and I think we can probably file it as another American cryptoBurton.

Funny what you notice when you start to look for something.

Lout of the free

By way of hómage to the beer bloggers' beer blogger, Mr C. Lager of Oop North, I am eschewing my overpriced pongy ale for this post and going for yellow fizzy lout of the very cheapest variety I could lay my mitts on.

First up: Victory Prima Pils. I wasn't expecting much from this as the bottle was well past its best-before by the time I opened it, and expected even less when it came out pale pale yellow with high levels of carbonation. But tasting was a pleasant surprise: it's loaded with the grapefruit and peach notes of a charming, if bitter, hop character. The finish is a bit sudden and the expected staleness leaks through, but all in all I thought it works rather well as an American hoppy lager (but not as a pilsner, I hasten to add, before Velky Al sends the goons round). It lacks the balance and charm of Brooklyn Lager, but if you like your lout bitter, it's ideal. And the price? Well, it was past date, as I said, so the offy gave it me buckshee. Can't say fairer than.

Most recently, Al has turned his wrath upon Samuel Adams Noble Pils, and I just happened to pick one up recently. This is a much more attractive gold colour than the Prima, but it's hard work getting any kind of flavour out of it. It's dry, and as it warmed I got a brief sensation of white grapes, but bugger-all else. I suppose a fair bit of that has to do with the hop-laden lout I drank before it, but if you want more by way of tasting notes, try Al's post linked to above. As to its claimed credentials as a pilsner-style lager, it's got the full body but it's definitely too fizzy and lacks a solid malt backbone. I think this experiment has failed and I'd choose plain old Boston Lager ahead of it any day. If I were paying, that is: this bottle came courtesy of regular commenter Derek who brought it back from the US a couple of weeks ago. Cost including delivery: €0.00. And worth every cent.

You don't have to neck crap from cans to get your lout cheap, you know.

Sahti'll do

Mr Dredge has requested an awardy round-up thingy from the beer blogosphere, and I went looking in my stash for a suitable beer to drink while I performed my deliberations. The one that's been nagging me to drink it for a while now is Nøgne Ø-Dugges Sahti. I recall Knut Albert telling me it's not a true sahti, presumably because of the malt and hops. But such intricacies concern me not. All I'm worried about is how it tastes.

It pours a cloudy, murky orange-yellow giving off some interesting herbal and sticky sugar aromas. The body is very heavy and the first sensation I got was sweetness, leading me to believe that this is somewhat under-attenuated -- perhaps made with bread yeast as I understand is traditional for sahti. So that's the first bit I got wrong: the yeast is a blend of German, Belgian and British strains and is efficient enough to whack the finished product up to 11% ABV. Funny how it's only when I know that that I start to feel the warming sensation.

I didn't even begin to try and identify the flavours: it's sweet like the aroma with a sharp berry undercurrent and a spicy Belgian-yeast finish. The berries are juniper and I'm guessing that at least some of the bitterness -- the grassy sort -- comes from the use of rye, while more is from an exciting-sounding Nordic herb called "sea wormwood". As for the sweetness, part of it must be the big boozy body, but at the very front, and in the aroma, the herbal sweetness is from heather honey. It's great to find another beer like BrewDog Speed Ball/Dogma where honey works harmoniously with the other flavours: just adding that little bit of extra complexity when lots of other things are going on. And Dogma's a heather honey beer too. I think honey quality might have a lot to do with how well it works as a beer adjunct.

I like this. It's a lovely winter sipper and I could write about it all day. But I've got gongs to hand out. So here goes:

Best Irish Draught Beer: Goods Store IPA
The best thing to happen to Irish beer in 2009: a cask IPA with whackloads of dry Cascades. Access is strictly controlled by the Bull & Castle management, but I hope this will continue being brewed in 2010, even though it owes its name to being the last ever batch made at the old Carlow Brewing Company plant in the railway station's former goods store. "Muine Bheag Business Park IPA" doesn't have the same ring, unfortunately, but I'll still drink it. A big hand for its creator Liam Hanlon (right), please.

Best Irish Bottled Beer: Clotworthy Dobbin
Yeah, an obvious choice, beating stiff competition from newcomers such as Porterhouse Hop Head and Plain, and Whitewater's own first-rate Belfast Black. But this chocolatey ruby porter is the one to beat. The recipe includes a late Cascade addition: I think a pattern may be emerging here.

Best Overseas Draught Beer: Affumicator
Beck Bräu's utterly batshit dreidoppelrauchbock gave me pause when I encountered it in Amsterdam back in September. There's just not enough smoked lagers in the 9.4% ABV category around.

Best Overseas Bottled Beer: Wädenswiler Hanf
I very nearly made another obvious choice here, and Three Floyds's Dark Lord is very very good indeed. But this award goes to the little Swiss beer that could: Wädenswiler Hanf. So drinkable; so peppery; and a big inspiration to me to get off my arse and start assembling my own hemp beer recipe.

Best Overall Beer: Goods Store IPA
And out of the lot, I'm going for Goods Store, not just because of what it is, but also what it means: hoppy Irish ale was unknown just a couple of years back; cask was something you got up North, at festivals, or from a token handpump in selected Porterhouses. Goods Store -- which flies out of the cask -- gives me such hope for the future of beer in this country. Excuse me, I have something in my eye...

Best Bottle Label or Pump Clip: Zeitgeist
This was the hardest one to pick. I learned to brew this year, and also learned that the best bit of the whole process is designing the labels. Nothing that I'd seen during the year really struck me, as especially brilliant, though the sparse monochrome De Molen branding immediately jumped to mind. But I think I'll give this one to Heather Brennan -- designer of BrewDog's Zeitgeist label. Even I look cool holding one of these.

Best Irish Brewery: White Gypsy
Goods Store isn't the only cask IPA knocking about Ireland, you know. White Gypsy's, though not as full-on, is damn good. However, it's a bit harder to find, what with the brewery's dogged determination to carve out a niche in rural Ireland where the stranglehold of Diageo, Heineken and C&C is strongest. The courage to draw a line in the Tipperary sand, to make and distribute top-notch beer from behind it, is where this nomination comes from.
(Photo courtesy of Laura. Who's currently in Jamaica, so the least we can do is nick her stuff.)

Best Overseas Brewery: De Molen
For consistent wows. Beer after beer of brilliance, to the point where a white label with plain black text turns me into Pavlov's beer drinker. Though I'd like to add an honourable mention for Cantillon of Brussels, whose public brewday in March was one of the best days out I had all year.

Pub/Bar of the Year: The Bull & Castle
A no-brainer. A consistently good selection; the introduction of regular cask beer; the continued tolerance of homebrewers treating the place as a club house. I'm proud to call it my local, even though I have to pass at least half a dozen pubs to get there.

Beer Festival of the Year: Hilden
For proper festival atmosphere it has to be Hilden -- the last weekend in August. This year was better than ever, with an extra bar, more shelter, and a bigger crowd of my beery friends. The Franciscan Well at Easter is the AGM of Irish brewing, but Hilden is the after-party.

Supermarket of the Year: Tesco
I've probably bought more beer in Superquinn than any other supermarket this year. Their commitment to diversity and changing the palate of the Irish beer drinker deserves enormous applause. But Tesco's occasional discounting of Brooklyn Lager has made it the bigger influence on my day-to-day drinking in 2009. Mmm... Brooklyn Lager.

Independent Retailer of the Year: Deveney's Dundrum
A blog; a monthly beer tasting; a forthcoming festival; a consistently wide range of beers. Deveney's has become a regular supplier for me this year, and Ruth's commitment to beervangelism is highly commendable.

Online Retailer of the Year: DrinkStore
Another easy one. Ken and Richard were pushing an open door when they set-up a website through which buyers nationwide can assemble a case of whatever quality beers they want and have it delivered at a reasonable rate. The days when decent beer was limited to Ireland's big cities only are over.

Best Beer Book: Hops & Glory
A daft category, Mark. One beer book has been head and shoulders above the rest. You'll laugh; you'll cry; you'll get very very thirsty. Actually, you've probably already read Hops & Glory. Why am I even bothering? Honourable mention to Ben McFarland's World's Best Beers -- a lavish coffee table job, but well assembled with virtually no filler beers (you know the ones I mean -- the national icons that are really worthless macrocrap) and a great section on beer and food.

Best Beer Blog: Zythophile
I've ticked so many beer bloggers (yeah, I ticked you when you weren't looking; feel dirty now?) that it's hard to separate the blog from the person, so I'm limiting this to beer bloggers I've not actually met, and despite a too-long hiatus, Martyn Cornell is still top of the pile for style and content.

Best Beer Twitterer: @beerinator
The wittiest of the beer Twitterers. Pointing out "Goose Island cask stout is better than you. No offense" is what got me into Twitter in the first place.

Best Online Interactive Brewery:
I'm not awarding this one. Sure, there are loads of breweries doing some great interactive stuff at the moment. But of the ones that make a difference in my normal drinking life: nada. Most have poorly maintained websites; some have Facebook and Twitter accounts where nothing happens for months. Irish breweries are terrible at the Internet, and until that changes I can't think why anyone should be commended here. Must try harder.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: Bull & Castle Fisherman's Pie with Galway Hooker
Reuben put me on to this one, and I've never looked back. The hot, cheesey, fishy, spuddy, rib-sticking goodness of the pie meeting the chilled, sparkly, bitter bite of the pale ale is classic.

Open Category: Best Beer Town: Amsterdam
I've hit lots of great beer cities this year. York was a fantastic discovery and highly recommended. But it's always going to be Amsterdam for me, for Wildeman and Arendsnest (right) alone. Throw in Bierkoning (whence my sahti) and Cracked Kettle; Gollem and Belgique; 't IJ and BeerTemple; and Amsterdam is my beer heaven. Plus, you meet a better class of drunk in the pubs there.

Next Year I’d Most Like To...: Go to Copenhagen
At the moment my one ambition for 2010 is the Danske Ølentusiaster festival in Copenhagen on 6-8 May. The last one, back in 2008, was unutterably brilliant (and by "unutterably" I mean I went on about it at considerable length last September). I'm well up for that again, and hope that by writing it down here I'll be more likely to do something about organising myself to go.

Which brings us neatly back to Scandinavia. It's possible that my foreign bottled beer judgement might have been different if I'd opened the gorgeous looking Norwegian winter ales Knut gave me a few weeks ago, but I haven't yet. Perhaps they'll feature next year.

A third of a century later

I wasn't at all impressed by BrewDog's misnomered Hop Rocker lager so haven't been inclined to run out and try their other lighter offerings. But enough positive comments about 77 Lager have filtered through to me to make me go out and buy a bottle of this one.

Universally described as very much a hops-forward lager, I was expecting something along the lines of Brooklyn's, but it's a much more intense experience. There's little to no restraining malt -- just super-resinous earthy hops. I kept having to remind myself that it's a pilsner rather than a full-on English IPA. The thin texture and light fizz adds to the cask effect.

I'm not at all sure I like it. It's just too unbalanced, and has that metallic flavour I often find from English hops in large quantities, though the earthiness meant it went rather well with some mature and gritty Bellingham Blue cheese. Nevertheless, I think I'll be sticking with good old Brooklyn as my hoppy lager of choice.

Some corner of a foreign field

"World Beer Freehouse" is an epithet to conjure with. I spotted Pivo, a three-storey pub in Tudor pyjamas, from the far end of the street. It was jammed last Saturday night, but we made a return visit on Sunday afternoon before leaving York.

The downstairs barroom is long and narrow with a walk-in bottle fridge at the far end. Casks on stillage behind the bar are marked with what's coming next, and on the counter there are several handpumps plus a range of keg fonts for beers from the Barbarous Lands. Upstairs, a spacious lounge gives drinkers a bit more elbow room so long as they don't mind navigating the narrow stairs down when they need a refill or the narrow stairs up for, er, the reverse.

Mrs Beer Nut passed up the opportunity to travel abroad, going no further than Somerset with Butcombe Blonde. It's a tasty little bittersweet number with a slightly vegetal hops bitterness, though lacking in legs. Unchallenging, but solid, I thought. I had spied the draught Sierra Nevada Blonde through the window the previous day and was itching to try it. It's full of those good old California hops found in the best Sierra Nevada beers, but places them on a tasty bubblegum sort of base. Very refreshing and moreish. I don't know why they bother with Summerfest when they have this up their sleeves.

Moreish or not, it was time to go. We'd allowed ourselves plenty of time to get back to Manchester airport, and I had given solid assurances, based on concrete experience, that there was Brooklyn Lager available airside and that all would be well.

All was not well.

Giraffe was clean out of Brooklyn. Disaster! Of course, any good ticker is capable of turning such crises into pointless opportunities, so while my wife opted for some Rioja, I requested a Cruzcampo. I'd never had it before. Won't be having it again, neither. My notebook says "clear corny mank" and I don't really have anything to add to that. The food in Giraffe was decent, though. And I discovered the joy of Chipotle Tabasco: truly there is not a food or drink on earth that cannot be improved by smoking it.

And next thing, we were home. Thank you for having us, England. See you at Earl's Court on the 4th.

The In-betweeners

A busy conference programme kept a lid on my beer explorations for the first few days of my visit to Manchester last week. I was fortunate, however, to have a nice little Marston's house on my doorstep for those occasions where I had a chance to nip out for a swift one. The Bull's Head is just across from the back door of Piccadilly station and, I'm told, was a Burtonwood property until very recently. It's slightly shabby and lived-in, but nice for all that. Obviously enough the Marston's brand portfolio was well represented at the taps. The first one that caught my eye was Banks's Original: mostly because of a Brummie college friend who I remember telling me years ago that where she was from everyone drank this stuff called Banks's and it was "voy-yil". So that was pint number one, and it took several more before I became accustomed to sparklerisation: the look and feel of the beer is just too close to nitro for comfort. And yes, I know how irrational that is. Back to the Banks's: it's a strikingly sweet dark amber beer with an almost saccharine foretaste. This fades to a graininess full of chewy crystal malt. I don't think I'd go so far as describing it as vile, but it's just a bit too thin and sugary for my liking.

Wychwood is a recent addition to the Marston's range and here they had the excruciatingly-named Wizard's Staff (pumpclip featuring a wizard flashing three shocked witches -- ugh!) on. Despite the branding it's really rather good: full bodied yet crisp and refreshing with a stimulating sparkle to it. The flavour is very hop-driven but has an underlying bubblegum sweetness.

A couple of Jennings beers (Marston's again) came and went over the days of my residence at The Bull's Head. Cumberland Ale is a fairly unexciting dark golden ale. It's mostly malt in here, but with a light hoppy nose and perhaps a touch of white pepper spice. My notes make it sound more interesting than it actually is: one of those beers that makes you dig deep for a description. Hate that. The other one from this brewery was Honey Bole: a bright yellow beer which took ages to clear. Again there's not a whole lot going on with it. It's a bit bitter and a bit dry and possibly more of that pepper, but nondescript otherwise and certainly totally lacking in honey.

Also handy for the conference was the Lass o' Gowrie, an odd little pub with bags of character plus, inexplicably, a fine collection of vintage video games and a wall-mounted tableau displaying the three generations of Sinclair Spectrum. Odd. My first one here on Tuesday night was Mild At Heart by Allgate's. It's surprisingly bitter in a very English, metallic sort of way but with a good dark roasted flavour underneath. I found it a little sharp, to the point of being almost gastric, but I suspect that has more to do with the state of the barrel than the beer itself. It disappeared from the bar soon after.

When I was kicking about on my own on Friday morning, waiting for Mrs Beer Nut's arrival, I followed Tandleman's recommendation to call in to MicroBar in the Arndale Food Hall. It's a lovely little set-up with a variety of cask beers, plus a big bottled range, including several interesting ones from BrewDog. Not wanting to push the boat out too far this early, I opted for some Zeitgeist, a dark lager I'd been curious about since its launch in a blaze of glory last year. I'm struggling to find a better description than spot-on perfect. It's not too fizzy and kicks off with a beautiful charcoal dryness and then follows it up with some sumptuous caramel and chocolate notes which last ages. It's simple yet complex and likely works just as well cold from the bottle as it does savoured from a glass: move over Brooklyn Lager, there's a new super-flexible beer in town.

What happen with Tandleman the evening previous will be recounted next. There was beer involved.

*sigh*

Do I really have to add my own howls of derision to everyone else's comments on Estrella Damm Inedit? I think the world could do without yet another blogger pointing out that the marketing of a beer designed specifically as an accompaniment to fine dining should be received the same way as a hypothetical winery announcing that, at last, they have created a wine that goes with food. The guff surrounding Inedit is the point where ignorant snobbery meets cynical niche marketing, and the less this sort of thing is encouraged the better.

So, ranting aside, what's the beer like? I shared a bottle with Adeptus on his recent visit to Ireland (thanks to him for the photo). It presents as a cloudy yellow witbier, and the tag promises all the usual witbier things -- coriander, orange peel -- plus some extra bonus liquorice. The latter does add an interesting kind of herby flavour, but it adds it to something that is otherwise a really really dull, thin Belgian-style wit. More than any of the interesting ingredients, it's the suspended yeast which stands out as the most notable element in the flavour profile, making the whole experience amount to little more than yeast-infused fizzy water with slight herbal overtones. Maybe the methods of production are supremely artisan and the pinnacle of the gastrozymurgist's art, but it still comes out like diluted Hoegaarden at the end.

If you're serious about choosing beer to go with your food, you could do a lot worse than pick up a book along the lines of The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver, or take a look at some of the many excellent blogs that deal with the subject in an entertaining and mouth-watering way. And if you're running a restaurant and are interested in high-quality beer to go with your food (and you should be), then start with a case each of Duvel and Westmalle Dubbel -- both available in diner-friendly 75cl bottles -- and perhaps some Brooklyn Lager or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale for the spicier dishes. Or, if the wheaty stylings of Inedit appeal, there's always Hoegaarden.

Beer and food: yes. Special food-beer, as I keep saying: no.

Stitch this

The recent spell of hot weather meant that my attic ceased to function as the wonderful cellar it has hitherto been in the seven short months of its existence. So I'm doing a bit of a determined clear-out at the moment, which recently featured two dark American beers I found sweating at the back.

Brooklyn Brown Ale claims to be richer than its English forbears, but at only 5.6% ABV, you have to wonder how it would compare to some of the extinct styles Ron has told us about. Given that Napoleonic-era English breweries were turning out aged brown beers of not dissimilar strength, where could this richness have come from? The underlying flavours of Brooklyn Brown are dry, with roasted coffee notes and sweet hints, shading to metallic at the end. Not what I'd call rich.

It also claims higher levels of hoppiness compared to its antecedents, and that's hard to argue with. The citric bitterness jumps right out at the front in a way very like Brooklyn Lager. In fact, at first sip it's nearly hard to tell one from the other. Only the colour, the minor secondary sugary roasted flavours and the soft carbonation set them apart.

On the one hand it's hard not to like this, but on the other I don't know why you choose it over the mightily tasty Brooklyn Lager.

I don't think there's any historical British basis claimed for Samuel Adams Honey Porter, but it still nails its colours to the mast with Goldings and Scottish heather honey. There's a lot going on in this even-darker ruby ale, at first anyway. It's quite sticky, and smoky, with more than a hint of treacle. A fresh note of honey follows after, but the whole taste sensation ends far too soon, and the drinker is left with nothing very much at all. I enjoyed it, but the lack of legs really lets it down as a purportedly "robust" porter.

All the sweetness in these beers has me hankering after the plain simple dryness found in Ron's 1914 Whitbread porter.

(The title? Answer here.)

And the winner is

With an event the size of the European Beer Festival in Copenhagen last weekend, I had no idea that any of the hundreds of breweries would stand out. According to my notes I sampled 112 different beers -- and over the next while you'll get to hear about every damn one of them, you lucky people -- but reflecting on the whole event I've realised that one brewery in particular really stepped up to the mark beerwise and were offering an especially wide range of superb products.

Granted, Nørrebro Bryghus were on their home turf, being sited just across town from the festival grounds. But I visited the place last time I was in Copenhagen and I've some idea of the size of their operation. That they were able to sustain a constant supply of over two dozen beers for three days is nothing short of amazing.

And there was nary a dud among them, though more than a touch of cheekiness in some cases. Take New York Lager for instance: a pale orange hue with more hops than one might expect if it were anything other than an obvious knock-off of Brooklyn Lager. Ron says that Carlsberg is Brooklyn's import agent in Denmark, so I guess that makes them fair game. Anyway, the end result is an easy drinker with a well-honed toffee/hops balance. Believe it or not, there's a similar sensation with their North Bridge Extreme, a 9.6% IPA which managed to avoid any burning or cloying and remained chewy, hoppy but perfectly balanaced with it.

Their mild, Berufsverbot, was one of the first I went for. It's surprisingly pale red but has a lovely fruit-and-nut chocoloate character to it. I was expecting something darker and coffeeish, but still enjoyed this. Staying sweet but getting darker was the house stout La Granja. This is a creamy, woody affair, tempered with long-lasting roasty notes. Tasty, filling and satisfying. The woodiness goes off the scale with their barrel-aged Imperial Porter. In fact, it introduces a kind of solvent flavour (phenols?) which almost spoiled the experience for me. It's something I encountered in several of the barrel-aged beers I had at the festival, so there's more on that to come. A much more balanced wood experience came from Oak Wise, a sweet/sour lambic-esque "wild-fermented wheat beer". Apparently there's apricots in here too, but all I was getting was the extra tang from the oak chips.

When tanginess goes awry you end up with something like their approach to Oud Bruin. It was brown, anyway, but tasted acetic rather than sweet. I couldn't shake the notion that I was drinking HP Sauce with a head on it. I like HP Sauce, however, so I wouldn't call this a failure; more like an endearing attempt at a style that's silly to begin with. Despite all of these sour delights, my Nørrebro prize for tanginess goes to a very strange aged kriek they were serving, called Stevns CCC. The cherries are quite hard to identify under thick layers of warming cinnamon and tartness. Refreshing, complex and very delicious.

And my favourite out of this lot? Why, the one with basically no hops, of course. Helene Heather is spiced with all manner of botanicals and just a teensy sprinkling of hops in there. It's gorgeous, carrying a rich and warming mince-pie effect in a surprisingly pale blonde ale. There's more than a hint of floral honey flavours as well, and a little bit of tartness in with the cinnamon on the end. A truly sublime beer and one of the best I had all weekend.

While Nørrebro was my top brewery just for beer, one of the other locals really put the effort in to turn drinking-in-a-shed into a proper festive festival, while turning out some amazing beers as well. More anon.

(And yes, if I'd known I was going to start by enthusing about Nørrebro, I probably would have taken a photo of their stall -- the image left is used with kind permission of Knut Albert.)

The Alan Partridge Project

Last year I reported on a visit to a dire pub in what used to be rural England but is now just off the road to somewhere else. This week I went one further and found myself in a generic low-rent business hotel in the English midlands: exactly the sort of Travel Tavern that Alan Partridge used to live in. It was, of course, a real ale desert (how did he survive so far from his beloved Director's Bitter?), with the bar taps dominated by InBev products, including Boddington's. It's a very sweet, light keg bitter: unchallenging but still quite tough drinking. I stopped at one pint.

My trip was far from a total waste, however. With some careful planning I found myself with a couple of hours to spare in central Manchester. I had picked out a handful of pubs worth visiting, but never got past the first: the gloriously appointed Marble Arch. This quirky boozer is kitted out in steel-and-ceramic Victorian bling and boasts a curiously slanting floor throughout. Out back, the house brewery produces a range of cask and bottled beers, the latter available to take away. Everyone in the house was drinking Manchester Bitter, a shockingly pale yellow lager lookalike. The resemblance ends there, however. This has a strong fresh hoppy aroma and greets the palate with a lemony bitterness which would appeal to any witbier fan. It's a wonderfully refreshing classic bitter and, I can only presume, the sort of beer that Boddington's would like to be.

The house range also includes Stouter Stout, a very sharp, bitter, but creamy stout. The abundance of hops is there right from the nose and is carried through in the strong rich bitter flavours. For a stout this is just too tart to my taste: IPA dressed as stout and off-puttingly weird, despite the care and attention that obviously went into making it. The house also makes Ginger Marble, another very yellow ale. The clue's in the title here, but in case of doubt there's a sweet, candied ginger aroma first off. This is followed by a gorgeous back-of-the-mouth raw ginger burn on the first swallow, with a legacy of ginger nut biscuits on the lips. I think this is the best ginger-flavoured beer I've ever tasted and would make a superb aperitif. And every flavoursome beer the Marble Brewery produces is 100% organic: proof that most everyone else is just doing organic wrong.

Of the guest ales, Spitting Feathers caught my attention first. This is a "smoked autumn ale", thick and creamy with little foretaste and almost reminiscent of a nasty keg ale. The smoke comes through afterwards in a vague sort of way, after some unpleasant dry mustiness. My limited experience of smoked beer has led me to expect the full-on bacon flavour experience and you don't get that with this. Two guest taps were displaying clips from Scottish craft brewing's enfant terrible Brew Dog. When I asked the barman whether I should go for Hype or Buzz, he told me he'd sold more Hype that evening, so that's what I ordered. Again, this is a very pale affair but it more than makes up for it in texture and flavour. It's warm and hits the palate with a hefty bitterness. A heavy and filling beer, all-in-all, despite having a mere 4.1% ABV.

With a heavy heart I left the pub and headed to the airport. A little previous research allowed me to stave off the return to keg ale for a few more precious minutes. The online menu of terrifyingly cheery family restaurant Giraffe included, among the Corona and Tiger, Brooklyn Lager. This is an impressively amber beer with a hoppy aroma, smelling for all the world like the lighter sort of American IPA. On first sip there's a full body and a strong malty flavour, carrying through to a dry bitter bite at the very end. Brooklyn is a thinking man's lager, and not just because the brewmaster is now a published philosopher.

A delay to my flight meant the time eventually came to bite the bullet and approach the main bar, where Worthington's Bitter was the house ale. Unlike the Boddington's, this is properly amber coloured. It has a striking burnt corn flavour, liked singed tortilla chips. Flavoursome, but not really in the right way.

I feel Manchester definitely warrants further barstool-based research. It'd just be a question of tearing myself away from the Marble Arch.