Middling midlands

Tomorrow, all going well, will see me back at the Great British Beer Festival for the first time in a decade. I am bemused at the thought that I won't be stepping outdoors at any point between arriving at Dublin airport in the morning and leaving it again in the evening. GBBF has moved to the UK's National Exhibition Centre, which is physically connected to Birmingham airport. It'll be my second return trip through that airport this summer, as a few weeks ago, work sent me to Great Malvern in Worcestershire. It's a quite pleasantly sedate spa town, catering mostly for walkers in the surrounding hills. It has a handful of pubs, and I did my best to explore the ones nearest me.

There were two very charming traditional pubs nearby, The Red Lion and The Unicorn, the former owned by Marston's while the latter may as well be. Each had minimal cask selections, and all beers I'd had before, in medium-to-decent condition -- excusable given the warm weather. Wasps, though. The whole town was overrun with wasps, and the pubs most of all. It's quite hard to enjoy a mediocre pint of Pedigree with one of those bastards hoving into view every few seconds.

The town boasts one microbar, The Weavers, though it's quite an elaborate one, with lounge seating and a terrace, as well as a variety of keg and cask beers. Still, it was comfortable, and it looked like the selection merited exploring. I started with a half of Orbital Abyss, a "breakfast stout" by Fownd Brewing in Kidderminster, served on cask. It's only 4% ABV and very much on the brown side, rather than black. There's lots of chocolate aroma and the requisite creamy oatmeal mouthfeel, so it's not the lightweight it first appeared to be. I guess it has coffee in it, but I didn't get much of that. Chocolate was one side of the main flavour, while the other was a harsh vinegar tang which I don't think was meant to be there. The result is sour chocolate, a flavour combination which is not recommended. I guess the July heatwave was to blame for this as well. And while I really wanted to give the place another chance, I didn't make time to do it, fearing another bad beer and a wasted opportunity.

Up the hill and around the corner, there's a Wetherspoon called The Foley Arms. This is a genuine Georgian coaching inn, though has been thoroughly Wetherspoonised since. From the local cask options, I chose Hop Star, by Silhill Brewery in Birmingham. It's an IPA, supposedly American-style, but at a very English 4.2% ABV. It's a clear golden colour and has an enticing aroma of lemon sherbet. The flavour brings us on a sensory tour which starts with sweet and chewy candy and bubblegum, all perfumed pink with fake fruit. After that, there's an unpleasant sweaty or musty note, and I couldn't work out what might have caused it. And then the surprise finish is aggressively bitter, though in the waxy, vegetal, Germanic way, not the sort you get from citric American hops. I found it a bit disjointed and hard to like. While I respected the cleanness and the bitterness, there's just too much else going on. It really should have occurred to me that this was a deliberate house style...

...before I followed with Blonde Star from the same brewery. This is only a tiny bit lighter than the IPA, at 4.1% ABV, but it's much paler -- an almost silvery white gold. It's much more restrained than the other one, even though the citric sherbet spritz and harder wax bitterness are both present, though to a lesser degree. That makes it altogether more palatable, even if I'm still not keen on how it goes about things. There remains a raw and pithy hop character, and a chalky mineral bite which adds nothing positive. Doubtless the brewery has a fanbase which doesn't mind its specific flavour idiosyncrasies, and is there a nod to Bathams in the hard bitterness? I don't know, but I won't be in a rush to seek out more Silhill beer.

My batting average has been pretty poor so far. Who will save the beer reputation of Great Malvern? Step forward Wye Valley, one of the consistent stars of midlands brewing. My hotel was serving their Pyoneer on cask, another one of those brown bitters that claims to be "amber" for marketing reasons. It goes big on the tannins, which is just how I like these, and is soft-textured and smooth, for perfect sinkability. A fresh lemon counter-melody plays opposite the strong black tea. All this and a tiddling ABV of 3.4% too. I guess it's designed to be basic, but it does it brilliantly, and while it's not up to the standard of the sublime Harvey's Sussex Best, it's in that general mode. There's nothing not to like here.

Before I leave Great Malvern, a shout-out to Faun. This is ostensibly a wine shop, but one of those chi-chi drink-in ones, with posh snacks and charcuterie available. It also has a modest selection of well-chosen beers, with a slight emphasis on Belgian classics, plus a good range of ciders, perries and meads to explore.

The trek back to Birmingham airport was a slog in 33° heat and the rail system buckling under the stress. Its airside Wetherspoon was a welcome relief, with good air conditioning and Redemption Urban Dusk on cask. This is a proper amber ale, not a bitter, and is 4.6% ABV. The flavour offers an odd mix of crystal-malt caramel and almost acrid tannins. That makes for an unsteady balance of sweet and dry, to which is added some herbal liquorice bitterness and a fine dusting of chocolate. I was confused at first, but settled into it, enjoying the complexity. The disparate elements coalesce as it goes, and by the time I was finished, I was ready for a second pint.

Two out of five ain't great. I'm hoping for a much better hit rate at tomorrow's festival, and fewer wasps.

Red, white and new

The randomness is part of what I enjoy about the churn of British cask beer at The Silver Penny, the Wetherspoon on Dublin's Abbey Street and current unlikely champion of decent ale. On a recent visit, however, there was a pattern: two new ticks, both with a colour in the name.

Oakham's presence in the regular roster of breweries is a blessing, and I hadn't seen White Dwarf before. It's a golden ale of 4.3% ABV, made mostly with English hops, plus some bonus American Cascade. Beer quality is rarely an issue at the 'Penny but this one was served uncharacteristically warm on the sunny June afternoon. Perhaps the cellar cooler has gone the way of the wifi and the gents' hand drier. It's a pale gold and perfectly clear, giving off a gentle aroma of pear and apple. The pear ester is more pronounced on tasting, allied with some sweet banana: ripe fruit, or even artificial candy. The finish is clean, though there's no real malt character, whereas a little biscuit or cracker would have improved it. As well as the slightly high temperature, it was on the flat side too, which was another factor in preventing this from being everything it could be. This beer should really be crisp. Warm and flabby isn't going to suit any beer, but I think this one suffers especially. Oh well.

The other was Red Kite from Vale Brewery: a bitter at the same strength. "Chestnut" says the badge, and indeed it is: a lovely clear auburn with a cream-coloured head. The aroma presents that most unhelpful of descriptors: "beery", like a carpeted pub just after the doors have opened for the day. It's heavy, almost chewy, and here the warmth is really helping it out, lending what may normally be a so-so brown bitter the character of a wholesome porter. There's milk chocolate, dark toast, a coating of caramel and a slightly fruity finish, giving raisins and red apples. A tannic dryness prevents any of this making the overall effect busy or difficult. Well-made brown bitter is a rarity and, for me, Harvey's Sussex Best is unassailable. This different take, leaning into the roast and residual sugar, impressed me too, however.

That's your lot. Nothing amazing here, but at the same time, both beers were exotic and noteworthy pints for Dublin. If there was anything like this available from local breweries in locally-owned pubs, I'd be all over it, though would probably have the place to myself. Until then, rack 'em up, JD.

Roger says

A warm bright summer's day lay ahead and Hertfordshire was my oyster. I picked St Albans as my destination on the grounds that, as CAMRA is headquartered there, it must have some very nice pubs with very good beer. I had little idea what any of them were, so I asked Twitter. Among the replies was one from Roger Protz naming seven establishments, and I took that to be as close to authoritative as I was going to get. Two had to be knocked off for not being open while I was there, but five is still a decent afternoon's crawling.

The cathedral bells behind me were striking noon as I strolled down through the park to stop one: Þe Olde Fighting Cocks. It's a rambling multiroom establishment, so proud of its wooden ceiling beams that it placed them at face height. Taller punters beware. There was a modest selection of beers to choose from and I went for Black Listed from local brewery Farr. It's a black IPA brewed especially for the house. The day's disappointments began with my half being served in a tall highball glass of the sort I haven't seen since several visits to London ago, and which I deem unsuitable for beer.

Still, it looked black when poured, only revealed as slightly red when placed in direct summer sunlight. It's 4.5% ABV and claims to be smoky and heavily hopped. It's not either. I found it mostly rather plain; dry and roasty, like a very basic Irish stout. There's a little fruit in the finish, some blackberry and blueberry, perhaps, but no hop punch. Should I give the place a second chance and order something else? No, it was too early to halt this pilgrim's progress, and so I moved on.

While the Cocks feels almost rural in its parkland surrounds, the next stop was the most urban of them. The Boot is located in the heart of the city's shopping zone, and even before lunchtime was attracting custom. It's a fairly small one-room job, on a street corner, showing the telltale sign of having been there a long time by being out of line with nearby buildings. Although ceiling beams do feature, the place is bright and sparsely decorated, adding a touch of Scandi minimalism to the traditional English pub look. This was first on Roger's list, and one of three he suggested prioritising. It's no exhibition pub, though, with only two unfamiliar cask beers for me. I picked Possum Holler, a west coast pale ale by Pomona Island at 4.6% ABV.

At least I got a proper glass this time, and the beer inside was a mucky orange colour, but that's hardly unusual for British cask beer here in The Haze Age. By "west coast" they mean powerfully bitter, which it is, packed with grapefruit pith and a rawer, less pleasant, hop leaf effect. There's a tang of oily resin in the finish.

Shortly after I was served, another customer came up to the bar and ordered a pint of it.
"Is this supposed to be cloudy?" he asked.
"Not really," said the young man behind the bar, turning the clip around and replacing the withdrawn pint with one of Beavertown Gamma Ray.
It felt quite disconcerting to be left with most of a half pint of a beer which the pub had decided wasn't actually fit for sale. Not what I would expect from a top-end cask venue. Whatever merits I had been finding in the beer had since evaporated, and the bad taste in my mouth wasn't only the dry-hop dregs. Time to move on again.

My fortunes began to improve when I reached pub three: The Mermaid. This place I had heard of, what with it winning a slew of awards from local CAMRA. It's a freestanding, block-built, double-fronted establishment, exuding stolid trustworthiness. Inside it's the same square deal, the L-shaped barroom covered in antique breweriana; mostly English but with nods here and there to classic German and Belgian brands to show it's a serious place for quality beer, or a quality place for serious beer. To round out the Moon Under Water picture, there was a porter on cask: Limehouse from Lister's in West Sussex. That's my first pint of the day sorted.

Given that I needed a thirst-quencher it was a bit of a gamble but it paid off beautifully. It's only 4.1% ABV and is very straightforward in its construction, based around dry dark-toasted grain with flinty spices and a little blackcurrant and crab apple tartness around the edges. No chocolate, but I didn't miss it: everything present was perfectly harmonious in its understated complexity. I made short work of the pint and, reluctant to leave just yet, had an additional sneaky half from the cider menu. The Mermaid is the sort of pub I came in search of.

Next was The Robin Hood, close by my eventual exit point of St Albans City station. It's a welcoming and roomy pub with a bright and sunny aspect. Cider is the specialty, with a bank of bags-in-boxes stacked at one end of the bar counter. The cask beers are confined to three handpumps and, since one of them was Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter, I don't have a new tick to report for you. I thoroughly enjoyed my pint of this old favourite but time was beginning to run short and I still had distance to cover before the finish line. I'm glad I stopped here, though. It's a very nice place.

The next one wasn't from Roger's list: two other Twitter participants suggested The White Hart Tap. I can only guess ('cos I ain't looking it up) that the name is a throwback to a now-decommissioned brewery, because it doesn't appear to be the tap of anywhere specific and serves beer from a variety of producers. Inside it's another bright pale wood job and this afternoon had lots of cheery locals popping in and out. I got the impression it's a neighbourhood hub though not really a destination.

I had seen a few clips for Two By Two brewery, a long way from their home at the eastern end of Hadrian's Wall on Tyneside. This was the only one I tried: Leap Frog, a pale ale. It's hazy, but this time I think that's deliberate. The flavour certainly didn't suffer, showing a clean and pristine blend of lime, melon and coconut. It's all very modern and new-world, and down-with-tha-kidz, but quality is quality and I liked it a lot. Assisting the taste was the fact it was the coldest cask beer I got all day, something very much appreciated when I had spent so much of the afternoon walking.

That, or my growing tiredness, was enough to make me stay for a second here, and another brewery I had seen around: Tring, and Side Pocket For a Toad golden ale. To me it tasted very much like a traditional bitter, and a very very good one at that. Tannins hit the throat first, then a light hop-derived floral summer fruitiness, leading to a mineral finish and scene. I picked out raspberry, strawberry and zinc, which isn't an obvious winning combination but by golly it works. I would love to have this as a regular go-to in my local pubs, just as I would Sussex Best, Landlord or Tribute. I'd probably want it to have a shorter name, though.

And now comes the real commitment to the bit. Pub number two was supposed to be The Lower Red Lion. It's just around the corner from Þe Olde Fighting Cocks and I, assuming Google was correct in saying that it opened early in the afternoon, had circumnavigated the premises, peered in the windows and tried all the doors, but it was definitely closed. Later, WhatPub suggested that opening was actually 4pm on a Monday, which had just passed. Here I was on the east side of town, not far from the station. Was it worth hoofing all the way over there and then all the way back to try and make it onto the train after the one I had intended to be on? What kind of pilgrim would I be if I didn't?

On arrival I found the Lower Red Lion had indeed opened for the day and I was the only customer so far. It's set in a terrace of houses so is wide and shallow, its two rooms bisected by a bar offering five cask beers. I decided to stick with Tring and picked Pale Four. Why the name, I don't know, but this is amber coloured, not pale, and 4.6% ABV. There's the same signature dryness as in Side Pocket, and similar fruit, but brighter and more tart, the strawberry blended with redcurrant here. I wasn't quite as wowed, but it's still a very good bitter. I'm glad I made the effort.

All that was left was the final sprint back to the station and on to salubrious Luton Airport and home. After a bit of a false start, St Albans proved to be just the charmer I had hoped it would be. If you're in the neighbourhood it's worth stopping by for a crawl. And if you plan it better than I did, you might get to visit The Farrier's Arms and The Great Northern as well.

One night in Drumcondra

I decided, a few years ago, that bottle shares aren't for me. It's not a format in which I really enjoy drinking beer so I mostly leave it to other people. Occasionally, very occasionally, however, an invitation lands that I can't resist. Simon waved a can of Focal Banger at me and off I went, through the January drizzle, to the northside.

It was a bigger occasion than I was expecting: ten beers and four punters to drink them. We began with Weird Weather Lactose, an achingly hip double IPA from Mikkeller. The aroma is promising, all fresh and zesty, but it falls apart on tasting. A horribly thick soupy texture is the first transgression, followed by cloying, juddering sweetness. Lemon curd is the only flavour I picked up, and that's not enough for any beer at 8.3% ABV. I'm sure it's just how the kids like their DIPA these days, and that it's exactly as the brewer intended, but it just didn't hit the proper flavour beats to get a pass from me.

Headline act Alchemist Focal Banger came next, an IPA of 7% ABV. An ugly beast, there were huge bits floating around in it; the otherwise clear yellow beer visible between the clumps. While not as sickly as the previous beer, there is a major gumminess. Clinging on to that I found a harsh onion flavour and a stern pine bitterness. The green onion lasts long into the finish, and neither it nor anything that came before it, suggested to me that this beer deserves its high standing. Maybe it originated IPA that tastes like onion, but there's loads of them now. It's really nothing special; let the hype train move along.

Switching continents, dropping the alcohol further, but keeping it savoury, The Kernel was next, with Pale Ale Nelson Sauvin. There was surprisingly little aroma, and while the caraway occupied the middle ground of the flavour, some much more pleasant peach and melon notes gradually emerged later. I think I'm too used to treating Kernel beers reverentially, because it took me a while to twig that this 5%-er is meant as easy-going refreshment, and I'm sure it performs that role masterfully. It's easy to miss these associations when sharing tiny measures.

My contribution to the line-up came from the late lamented Commons Brewery, and was the last of the bottles I brought home from the US in 2016. Petit Classique is (was) a 4.1% ABV saison with added pink peppercorns. I was seriously worried about what might have happened after two winters and a summer in my uninsulated attic. I needn't have been: it was gorgeous, and tasted as fresh as the day it was bottled. There was a massive peach aroma to begin, and that carried through into the flavour: juicy and fleshy, accompanied by a white-tea dryness and a little plummy tartness. The pepper is barely noticeable, and the base is a lightly-browned toast malt, similar to champagne. It's a fantastically elegant beer, complex and flavourful without anything out of place or unpleasantly loud. That its makers couldn't survive in business merely indicates that the beer market is the wrong shape.

To Canada next, and Molson Coors-owned Trou Du Diable in Quebéc. La Pitoune claims to be a pilsner, and is indeed yellow. It smells worryingly fruity, however, and there's an annoying amount of fizz. I got a huge malt extract flavour, like it's somehow unfinished, and this makes it cloying and difficult and a long way from what pilsner is supposed to be. A fun incense spicing is the only redeeming feature in what's an otherwise difficult and confusing beer.

Its sibling was Le Sang D'Encre, a stout at 5.5% ABV. This was a marked improvement, though isn't exactly subtle. It roars with milk chocolate and sweet wheaty cereal, and seemed quite raw and homebrew-ish to me. I got a hint of herbal mint at the end, and a smooth warming coffee taste, like Tia Maria. It's not at all bad, once you get used to that kiddies' breakfast sugar rush.

A colourful can next: Prairie Flair from Prairie Artisan Ales in Oklahoma. It self-describes as an orange and coriander gose and is 5.4% ABV. The aroma is very promising, offering a spicy gunpowder minerality. Fruit takes over in the flavour, specifically notes of fresh ripe apricot, followed by a saline rush sweeping it away as quickly as it arrived. A middling sourness is left behind as the finish; clean but not sharp or puckering. The salt wash means it just misses out on being properly refreshing, and I'd have enjoyed it more if that had been dialled back a little, but for a flavoured gose it hits a lot of the classic style points.

It's always a pleasure to catch up with beer from Burning Sky, one of the most interesting English breweries. Last Voyage was in the line-up here, a murky yellow IPA that showed the first two beers how it's supposed to be done. There's a yeast element to the aroma, but spicy, not gritty, and there's a certain vanilla character in the flavour, but not overly sweet. Balancing it is an orange and clove taste that really brings the collaborating brewery to mind, adding as it does a lacing of Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter, one of the world's truly great beers. Like Sussex Best there's a sublime accessible complexity, and it's very easy to forget it's a thumping 6.7% ABV. Deliberately cloudy IPAs have a history (albeit a short one) of using English ale yeasts; I think we may have a winning strain here.

More in the same vein from Wylam next, with The Man Behind The Door. 7.2% ABV this time, and the aroma is a fun mix of alium and spices. I got nutmeg in particular, and in the flavour that's joined by clove as well, plus a sizeable vanilla sweetness. It's very much in that modern style, but is another one that pulls it off neatly, holding my attention after the second mouthful while not pushing any one element of the profile to the extreme.

We finished the session where we started it, on a pale yellow double IPA from a tall can: Wylam's 45:33. There's more spice in the aroma here, but also a more traditional citric buzz, all orange and lemon rinds. Then it's back to business as usual: vanilla flavour, plus concentrated garlic, with a sticky consistency. Nevertheless it manages to do all that well, mostly by going shamelessly all-out on everything, and making full use of its 8.4% ABV. Somehow it manages to avoid turning hot, though I did get a slight plastic buzz, which sometimes clings to the end of intense vanilla. I'm still giving it a nod of approval, before I head for the door.

Cheers to Steph, Simon and Richard for helping fill out another one of these interminable blog posts.

Monkey shines

The newest (I think) addition to the busy brewery scene in Co. Cork is Clonakilty Brewing Company. I hadn't expected to see their beers up here so soon but they landed recently in Drinkstore and the shop was kind enough to donate one of the samples left by the rep to this blog.

Tojo is an American-style pale ale, named in honour of the monkey that US airmen brought to Clonakilty during The Emergency. Its ABV is on the money for the real thing at 5.5% ABV, which is slightly above where Irish examples usually clock in. It's a murky orange colour, aided in no small part by the bottle conditioning and my sloppy pouring. The aroma is promising: a mix of sweet mandarin and bitterer orange pith, a little like the better sort of English bitter. Could this be Ireland's answer to Harvey's Sussex Best? Not quite.

The flavour doesn't unfold in quite the right way, being watery to begin with, and the first thing to loom out of the depths is a savoury yeast note. Behind this there is a pleasant waft of sherbet orange and lemonade, sweetly effervescent with a hint of Burtonish sulphur. But that fades quickly, replaced by more gritty yeast. At the strength I'd expect something of a rounded marmalade-on-toast effect from this hop-malt combination.

The base recipe here is absolutely sound, even excellent, but the execution needs a bit of work. I'm not sure that bottle conditioning really suits a beer with such a delicate hop profile, or at least not the way they've done it here. Well-kept on cask, however, this would be a stunner. But the chances of that showing up anywhere are probably slimmer than a monkey landing in Clonakilty.

Turkey trimmings

The Christmas break was spent with family in Shropshire, just outside Shrewsbury. Castle Pulverbatch may be a one-horse town but fortunately said equine is The White Horse, a charming little country pub with a proud emphasis on local produce. Still, tickers be tickin' and on my first visit I eschewed the Hobsons in favour of St Austell Jolly Holly.

It looks warming: a welcoming dark chestnut red, and perfectly clear, of course. Into just 4.3% ABV it packs a lot of comforting winter flavours -- bready pudding; figs and plums. More than anything it reminds me of the Scandinavian Julebryg style, though obviously at a much lower strength. It's certainly a very clear indication that all those spices that are commonly used in Christmas ales are entirely unnecessary.

There's plenty of local beer around Shropshire and I'll dedicate the next post to them. This one is for the odds and sods from around Britain that passed my way, in pubs or in front of the telly, during the break.

On day two I went to Shrewsbury to collect last-minute shopping and last-minute relatives. I also left a bit of time to drop into The Salopian Bar. Salopian Brewery turns out consistently excellent beers and I had been looking forward to trying a few under their own roof (edit: except it isn't, see comments). The pub, by the banks of the Severn, is an odd one, with a tiled floor and sparse fittings making it seem more like a continental café than an English market town pub. And oddest of all, only one of the eight handpumps had a Salopian Beer on (Oracle, which is lovely, but I wanted something new). Time for a random pick, then.

I opted for Brewski, a 4% ABV American-style pale ale brewed for local distributor Real Ale Direct at (according to RateBeer) Grey Trees brewery in south Wales. And it's a rather good cask interpretation of the style: light and quaffable with lots of lemon spritz on a token malt biscuit background. It gets perhaps a little bit soapy as it warms, but that's nitpicking really. A convincing oily citrus rind note at the end finishes it off nicely. I got through it fast enough to realise I had time for another beer before I needed to leave.

That beer was Rooster's Yankee which I was surprised to find, on checking the old Scoop-O-Meter over there, that I'd never had before. This is a dark gold pale ale with more than a touch of lager about it: the same sort of lightly sweet and husky malt. The hop contribution is a harsh acidity of the sort found in cantankerously old-fashioned brown bitters: nothing fresh or fruity going on at all. I expected better, but them's the breaks, I guess.

Before leaving town I ducked into the lovely low-ceilinged Three Fishes and suppressed the ticking urge long enough to enjoy my first pint of Landlord in about five years. Then popped into posh offy Tanner's for a nosey at their beer selection. It's not up to much, but one bottle on the bottom shelf did catch my eye: the legendary and elusive Black Country ale Bathams Best Bitter. Of course I know that you have to go to a Bathams pub in the West Midlands to have the Bathams as the Bathams is intended to be had, but there was still no way I was passing up this opportunity to put a foot on the bottom rung of the Bathams ladder.

Surprisingly, it's not bottle conditioned and poured a clear gold with a head which fizzed up suddenly then vanished just as fast. It smells of golden syrup and celery, like good lager, while the taste is an odd mix of greasy gunpowder sulphur and bitter brassica with a touch of Landlord-ish honey creeping in as it warms. The texture is thin, but there's a pleasantly soft alkaline minerality too. I'm not at all sure it worked for me: I found the mix of soft, spongy effervescence and hard metallic edge off-puttingly strange. Looking at it objectively, it's quenching and quaffable if you're cabbage-proof but on this showing I would not place it up with Landlord and Harvey's as the way English bitter oughta be done.

A kindly relative went on a spree in her local Adnams shop and picked me up a few goodies from one of my favourite English family brewers. First out is Mosaic Pale Ale, a 4.1% ABV hazy pale orange number from the Jack Brand craft-ish range. You know it's craft because it comes in a 33cl bottle. Peach tea is the long and the short of what's going on in this: juicy hop fruit and nicely dry tannins. And like tea, it's rather lacking in body, which makes the hop bite a little more nippy than is completely enjoyable. The flavour elements are all great here but I don't think they quite dovetail together properly.

Wild Hop was the next one out. This one is a perfectly clear dark gold, though advertised, oddly, as being amber. There's a gentler mix of lemon and tea in this, nicely quenching with the slightly higher gravity at 4.8% ABV giving it extra heft, the malt helping bring out lovely palate-coating hop resins. A classic Adnams hop-and-tannin job.

I wasn't expecting either element to feature much in 1659, described as a "smoked ruby ale" but more brown than red. And sure enough smoke looms large in this one in a kippery-but-clean way, calling to mind that thing that Bamberg does so well. A bicarbonate of soda softness helps smooth the experience. It's another watery one but that does help it finish quickly the way good Franconian smoked lagers do, so I'm not complaining.

The last beer before starting the journey home was Sourdough by Somerset's Wild Beer Co. It's a bit of a gimmick: a 3.6% ABV wheat beer made using a vintage sourdough yeast culture from a neighbouring bakery. It's an ugly, pissy, murky yellow colour with no head to speak of. The aroma is powerfully sour, nearly to the level of sour milk rather than deliberately soured beer. I was trepidatious about tasting it. But it's really rather good: cheek-puckering, palate-scrubbing, up-front acidity with just a hint of lime citrus in the background. The modern Berliner weisse can be a bit weak-tea, but this is seriously invigorating stuff, packing a similar punch to Galway Bay's Heathen. Three cheers for gimmickry!

To Birmingham airport, finally, where the JD Wetherspoon landed a pint of Moorhouse's Winter Looms, another medium-strength dark red seasonal ale. It's nearly a boring brown bitter: it has the same dull cereal taste at the centre, but it's nicely dry as well, and light-bodied enough to be pleasingly quenching. While it's certainly not hop forward, nor meant to be, there's a definite background tang of English hops which adds a metallic edge and holds the caramel malt sweetness in check.

The other bar in BHX departures has a selection of casks from local outfit Purity Brewing and I had a go of their Pure Gold, a pale and lagery-looking 3.8%-er. I got a slightly sour hit from my pint which I'm not sure is supposed to be there. Behind it a gentle soft-fruit bitterness -- guava and lychee. The sense of softness carries through to the texture which is beautifully smooth and effervescent. Despite that initial bum note, which I'm pinning on the venue, this is a really good quality quaffing beer with enough to keep your attention if you want it kept, but also very downable when you need to run for your gate.

We're not quite done with England yet, however. Beer from three of the Shropshire breweries will follow on Thursday.

Still got it

The last in my series of posts on the Irish Craft Beer and Cider Festival, which ran at the RDS in Dublin a couple of weeks ago, moves away from the new young and thrusting breweries of the burgeoning independent Irish beer scene to look at the stalwarts: the veterans of the dark 20th century, all established and churning out safe, approachable, mortgage-paying beers, with one eye on the pension fund.

Are they hell.

Franciscan Well Coffee Porter has been knocking around for a while in a limited bottle run but showed up on cask at the festival. It's 7.5% ABV and they've added just the right amount of coffee, which is to say all the coffee they could possibly stuff in. The aroma delivers the invigorating bang of walking into a roastery and the only beery compromise is the chocolate flavour imparted by the dark malt producing a kind of mocha effect. The rich texture and heavy sweetness add cream and brown sugar to the cup and the end result, in Reuben's words, is "more coffee than beer". Not for everyone, but I loved it. After that, the Franciscan Well IPA was a bit of a let down. 7.5% ABV again and with some nice herbal notes in the aroma but the flavour is mostly smooth sweet toffee with no proper bitterness or fruit, just a mild jasmine spicing from the hops.

The Porterhouse have suddenly decided to make September their IPA themed month, though oddly eschewed Hop Head in favour of a new 4.6% ABV cask ale called Pale Face. There's a nice kick of marmalade in here, and some mild sandalwood, putting it on the same spectrum as good old Harvey's Best. Simple but flavoursome.

Whitewater's new one is Bullrush, a straightforward clean amber lager, dark gold with a fascinating smoky aroma. It's only 4% ABV and represents very light easy drinking. The corny grain character puts me in mind of the cream ale style. One for quaffing, not sitting over, anyway. And they've returned to the log books to resurrect Bee's Endeavour, a honey ale of years gone by. It's a beautiful liquid gold colour with a bohemian golden syrup quality to the taste. The honey hovers subtly in the background.

For a bigger honey kick the one to go for was Belgian Connection, produced at JW Sweetman in collaboration with Carlow Brewing. It's intended as a dubbel and is appropriately dark brown, though is a little light on its feet at 6.3% ABV. The banana esters loom large in the aroma and though the texture is as thin for a dubbel as the ABV might suggest, there's no lacking of complexity or intensity in the flavour: massive honey, for one thing; some incense spicing and a powerful sweetness that triggered pineapple syrup in my flavour analogy bank. Strange and unique, but quite delicious. Carlow also had O'Hara's Barley Wine on the bar, packing a bit more heft at 7.2% ABV. I guess we're spoiled by American barley wines these days because this is a perfectly good beer which left me asking where the hops are. Wheaty grains are the centre of it with a little bit of roast, but otherwise it's simple, malt-forward and warming. Retro barley wine, if you will.

All of which brings us down to the elder statesman in the house: Hilden Brewing. It was great to see Seamus himself at the pumps for a while. New to the range is a keg session stout, well put together with loads of super sweet chocolate and a very slight sour lactic finish. I suspect this may be the final one of the College Green range to be incorporated into the main Hilden brand: a rebadge of Molly's Chocolate Stout. Still, it would be no harm to see it out and about a bit more. Meanwhile on the cask engines, the newbie offered nothing more of a description than Hilden Number 4. It's a dark amber ale of 4.4% ABV and fantastically smooth. There's a big hit of chocolate and lots of sweet nutty marzipan too, combining into a kind of mozartkugel effect. I loved it, its moreish sweet dark malts reminding me of the first time I met Clotworthy Dobbin. Hilden Number 4 takes the prize for my beer of the festival weekend.

And after that my liver and my feet took a well-earned break, but normal service will resume here on Monday.

Just having the one

For The Session this month, Craig asks us to imagine our theoretically perfect beer. What would it be like? My starting position on this is "Bah: don't be silly, there's no such thing." Much as I love them, I would feel extremely hard done by if sentenced to a lifetime of drinking only Harvey's Best Bitter, or Uerige Alt, or Goose Island IPA. I'm sure I've said this before but what attracts me to beer is its infinite variety: the myriad ingredients that can be be used in it, that it can be any colour, any strength and a whole range of textures, aromas, flavours. I rarely have the attention span to stick to the same beer during an evening, never mind a lifetime.

So there's nothing else for it but to cheat. I would need a beer that could be hacked about, changed as required, given a new spin every now and then to keep things interesting. My decision was inspired by a series of imperial stouts I encountered recently (thanks Adam!) from Emelisse in the Netherlands. I'd already tasted their Laphroaig-aged one at Borefts last year, though it didn't really exhibit the powerful phenols of the whisky, somewhat surprisingly. This time round, however, the Ardbeg edition of Emelisse White Label gives out much more of its inner spirit: major peat in the aroma and enough turf in the flavour to almost hide the fact that it's a beer at all. That's normally a cardinal sin in my book, but since we're striving for variety I'll let it pass.

There's more of a proper stout vibe in White Label: Jack Daniel's, but also lots of that hallmark limey sourness just lacing it. Finally, best of the lot, was White Label: Glen Elgin. I'm not familiar with the whisky and I couldn't really pick out any individual flavour characteristics from it, but it did contribute a wonderful oakiness and a brief scorch in the throat alongside the fantistically smooth chocolate notes.

Limes, chocolate, peat, and plenty more besides, all served in separate proportions. Emelisse White Label is my One Beer To Rule Them All, and whisky is just the beginning of the things I could do to it.