Royal progress

No sooner was I back from Manchester than it was off again to England, this time for a work gig in Bristol. I was staying around the corner from pub-centric King Street so was well able to nip over there for such swift halves as time allowed. And it's grown! Since I was last there, in 2014, it has acquired several new premises. These were high on my list to check out.

Down at the river end sits King Street Brewhouse. It seems to have been cut from the same cloth as Dublin's Porterhouses, particularly Central, in that it's a voluminous space pitched strongly towards stand-up drinking and big-screen sports. But there is a pretty onsite brewery and it looks like it fairly turns over the cask and keg beers, judging by the prevalence of topical names.

I started with Hand of God, a session IPA on cask. This is 4.1% ABV and arrived worryingly murky looking but smelling great, with bags of juicy tangerine pouring out. The flavour was a little more muted, coupled with a slightly sad watery texture -- ever the bane of this style. An excellent finish pulled it back into my good books, with a long orangey aftertaste contrasting with a biscuit sweetness. For a World Cup one-off, on balance, it's better than most.

To balance my account I went for a keg beer next: Sqornshellous Zeta IPA; 6.2% ABV and brewed with Galaxy hops, as if that wasn't obvious. The hazy orange-beige presentation didn't bother me but the strong vanilla cream and yeast flavours did. This was simultaneously too strong and too sweet. I should have stuck with the cask as that's where they seem to have got IPA hopping right.

The array of types of pubs you get on King Street impressed me last time, and it seems it keeps up with fashion because it now has one of them arcade-bars: Kong. I didn't see it as intended, being the only customer in the dim grey space early one afternoon. The beer range was impressive and included the one at the top of my one-item West Country hit-list: Lost and Grounded Keller Pils. One whole imperial pint please.

It looked the part, being a gently hazy yellow. The texture is beautifully soft too, and the flavour... well... it has plenty. I'm on record as having frequent problems with noble hops, and the more heavily hopped a beer the worse I get it. This beer gave me that in spades: a powerfully pungent mustiness, like rotten wood, and then the harshly bitter green stalks of rocket and dandelion. I'm sure it's perfectly constructed, and everything everyone else says it is, but it really didn't suit me. I feel gypped by my own tastebuds.

I paid a very quick return visit to The Beer Emporium, for just one half of Twisted Oak's Sheriff Fatman (marketing hint: name more beers after Carter USM songs and I will buy them). It's described as an American amber ale but is gold rather than amber. A very English honey sweetness is followed by a slightly German peppery sharpness, and neither is even slightly American-tasting. The texture is thick and stodgy making me very glad I only had a small measure, one over which I didn't linger. Overall, a bit R.U.B.B.I.S.H.

The constant centre of attention on King Street tends to be Small Bar, which has come up in the world since 2014, spawning its own brewery, which eventually grew up and moved out. That brewery is Left Handed Giant and it was one of theirs I ordered when I first stepped in this time. River of Darkness was actually brewed, collaboratively, at Wild Beer. The spec promises smoke, maple and chilli but the beer doesn't really deliver this. Instead it's a simple creamy and chocolatey stout, packing in flavour at 3.9% ABV. I didn't miss any of the bells or whistles.

A second and final visit happened as I was on my way to the airport. I decided I would take advantage of the intriguing range of sour beers, and also their £8 five-beer flights.

One lager made it into the mix: Summer '18 No. 1, collaborated on by Lost & Grounded, Cloudwater and Jopen. I shouldn't have been surprised to find it's another musty one, all nettles and old straw. I will lay one technical fault on it -- it's very thin, and unbalanced in bitterness as a result. Mostly, however, it was my palate's problem with noble hops at fault. Bring on the sour!

L-R: Disco, Action, Insetto, Summer, Reuben

A Left Handed Giant offering first, called Reuben Picks Raspberries. This is 3.7% ABV and is a thick pink emulsion. It looks like yoghurt and absolutely tastes like yoghurt, with real raspberry bits and a velvet texture. Like in a yoghurt the sourness is mild and understated, and not the main feature. I would definitely have liked more of an edge and less of the sugary summer fruit.

Staying pink, next up was Disco Fizz from local brewers Good Chemistry. 4.2% ABV and this time flavoured with blackcurrant. It was the best looking of the set: a rich vermilion topped by pink foam. The watery aroma didn't help, with a grainy hint of breadcrust the only thing going on. Then the flavour proved an unpleasant mix of sweat, rubber and tannins: nothing that suggests actual fruit, and no pinch of sourness either. A beer to just look at, then. Shame.

The last two on the board came from US-based gypsy brewer Stillwater Artisanal. The first went by the unlikely name of Action Bronson's 7000 which is a sour ale of 5% ABV and brewed with Muscat grapes. It's a hazy gold colour and offers a fun but scary aroma of lemon-scented gunpowder. Strap in! Oily and lush Muscat grapes are present from the start of the flavour, finishing a little quickly, but cleanly too, making it very refreshing. There's just enough of a sour edge to balance the sweetness while still allowing all of the luxurious flavour through. The aroma is still the best feature but it's an all-round class act, really.

Insetto was the final third, bright scarlet and, although brewed with plums, having the sour cherry aroma of a classic Belgian kriek. Fruit is the main flavour, and it's cherries again, to my mind. The sourness is a mere tang on the end, and there's a seasoning of Brettanomyces funk going on. It avoids being syrupy or candylike. This is subtle and classy. I wonder if it was brewed in Belgium. It feels like it was.

I mentioned I was staying nearby so I'll throw my pint at the hotel bar in here too. That was Independence by Bristol Beer Factory, on keg. This is an intensively hopped American-style pale ale at 4.6% ABV. It mixes a punchy herbal dankness with a more fun lemon candy in a way that's accessible and balanced, yet complex enough for the fussier drinker. Or this one at least. A spicy bitterness lends it a mouthwatering finish.

There's more from Bristol Beer Factory to come in the next post, and plenty of other local beers too, when I do a bit of exploring.

Traditional matters

From my previous post you might get the impression that British beer these days is all new world hops, weird ingredients and unfamiliar styles, but that's far from the case. On my few days in Bristol last month I found the home fires to be very much still burning.

The nearest pub to my hotel was The Shakespeare Tavern, a homely little traditional boozer with big screen sports sports and lager for the regulars down the back, and a cosy front parlour for tourists like me. "Shakespeare Bitter" said one of the pumpclips and I'm reasonably certain this is Greene King's House Ale, known by a number of localised names across the brewery's large estate. It's an absolutely standard twiggy brown bitter, all plums and Ready Brek. Solid if unstimulating stuff; enjoyable for the first pint but I was very happy to switch to Tribute after.

Not far away, in the redeveloped docklands, there's a Lloyd's No. 1 -- a chain which resulted from someone looking at the JD Wetherspoon model and deciding it's insufficiently drinking-barn-like. I was only in during the daytime, when the offer was indistinguishable from any JDW, and that included the beer. Ruddles Best Bitter for £1.85 a pint? Would be crazy not to. 3.7% ABV and an attractive red-gold colour. I feared more of that heavy porridgey effect I found in the Greene King one but this is actually quite thin and tannic: just how I like my old-man bitter to be. There's just enough of a jolt of vegetal bitterness to keep the drinkers' attention, though an unpleasant husky grain creeps in as it warms. At that price and that strength there should be no excuse for letting it warm, however.

Independence Ale caught my eye when I spotted it on the bar -- it's one of those semi-guest beers Wetherspoon regularly brings American brewers to Britain to make: this time it's Devils Backbone at Banks's. 4.7% ABV, a medium gold colour and lovely wafts of sherbet and bubblegum followed by lovely flavours of honeydew and watermelon, turning even sweeter in the finish, towards canned peaches. I liked it, though it may be a bit sweet for most fans of US pale ale. I'd direct them a couple of taps over to Phoenix's West Coast, one of those classic tangy marmalade-ish English IPAs. Or a can of Sixpoint. It's all good.

So we've done Greene King, we've done Wetherspoon, that leaves one more bastion of plain English drinking, the grand-daddy of them all: Samuel Smith. We go back to King Street to find The King William Ale House, almost lost next to the other showy pubs on the stretch. It's surprisingly roomy inside and was rarely in want of customers as I was passing. But I was determined to finally have a go at their legendary Pure Brewed Lager and achieved that on a Sunday afternoon just as I was on my way to the airport. "Pure" is a valid marketing term: it's a limpid crystal gold, albeit with masses of fizz. The flavour is super crisp, all crunchy husky grains with just a handful of fun fruity extras: a bit of peach, perhaps. We're not in Munich here, nor Vienna nor Berlin, but Tadcaster will do just fine.

The range of house beers in the King William is prodigious, the illuminated cubic keg fonts stretching far along the bar. Sovereign Bitter was one I'd never seen before, though I'm sure it's hardly new. "New" isn't really a word in Mr. Smith's vocabulary. It's a rose gold colour and smells toffeeish. Malt-forward  in the flavour, but barely even that. Not a patch on the more usual Old Brewery Bitter, and even that isn't exactly a world beater. Still, the authentic 1970s vibe you only get in a Samuel Smith house is part of the English beer experience not to be missed.

I took one side trip out of Bristol during my stay, to the picturesquee town of Bath. It's not exactly crawling with fine drinking opportunities, especially for those of us who aren't fans of the ubiquitous Bath Ales. But I did have a very pleasant lunch in the upstairs room of The Raven of Bath, a poky little pub entirely in keeping with the town's cutesy vibe. Their two house beers are brewed by Blindman's Brewery. Raven Gold is a straightforward 4%-er, smelling Lucozade-like of fake fruit with a springy sherbet and mandarin zip to the front followed by a sterner bitter finish. Quality sessionable stuff. On the dark side, Raven Ale is a Hobgoblinish chocolate-driven ale, a dark garnet colour rather than raven-black and 4.7% ABV. Unexciting, perhaps, but a great match for my game pie.

We'll stay in the West Country for the next post, but don't expect anything twiggy.