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.

Chester draws

Samuel Smith's pubs, eh? Always worth a laugh. I've never been able to spot one from the outside (is there a way?) but I always end up crossing the threshold, clocking the distinctive illuminated keg fonts, grinning, and girding my metaphorical loins for the hilarity about to ensue. For instance: has anyone ever tried their own-brand spirits and soft drinks, and are they any good? While waiting for my pint at a Samuel Smith's bar, I've started to feel the tug of my inner ticker saying "go on, order a Scotch as well, it'll only cost you about 50p". Next time I'll probably give in. This time I didn't.

We'd only just arrived in Chester, having hopped on the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead and taken the train across north Wales (just €36 all in; can't say fairer), and met up with my sister who lives not far away in Shropshire. After a cursory wander through the town and a gawk at the fascinating local architecture (no really, they decided to put street level above the ground floor) we called in to The Falcon for refreshments. I was on the cask Old Brewery, the missus had a keg Dark Mild and the sister wanted a coffee. In a Smith's pub! How we laughed. Well no, we didn't. I marvelled that a twenty-first century pub chain can seemingly thrive without providing some of the basic stuff that twenty-first century people like to drink. Yes, yes, I know: it's a pub not a bleedin' Starbucks but isn't it interesting that they're making their money by being the no-frills, booze-only pure cheap pub, while JD Wetherspoon are raking it in by providing everything at low prices and packing the punters in? It's like they're opposite sides of the same pub coin. The Falcon certainly had a Wetherspoon-level of loud and scary drunks that afternoon. We moved on.

(So much for my opinion of Samuel Smith. For Samuel Smith's opinion of me, see this photo, courtesy of Bailey.)

After a quick spin around part of the walls it was time for pies and more beer. We'd had a recommendation of The Brewery Tap, flagship pub of the Spitting Feathers Brewery. It's a gorgeous pub with Tudor banqueting hall pretensions, though on a far smaller, cosier basis: olde worlde without being twee. From the range of house and guest beers I went for a Thirst Quencher, what with being thirsty and all. Alas, it was a case of false advertising. While there's a pleasant bubblegum front to this, it's all a bit grainy and musty behind. Far too difficult drinking for something of that name. Mrs Beer Nut faired much better with Anglo-Dutch Jasper's Ale, a sweet and full-bodied blonde.

The next round included Conwy Rampart -- the first boring brown bitter of the trip: a nasty phenol tang and loads of slimy, buttery diacetyl: not good. There was also the lightly creamy Black Swan mild from Buckinghamshire's Vale brewery. I ordered a pint of Spitting Feathers Old Wavertonian and was warned by the barmaid that it's a stout: "Is that OK?". I have to wonder how many people go "Arrgh! Stout! Are you trying to kill me?" and run away. I didn't. Just as well too: it's a beautiful light session stout with big dry roast flavours. One of those why-aren't-they-all-like-this stouts.

Off eastwards, then, to Shrewsbury. Marston's rules supreme in this part of the world and runs the local around the corner from where we stayed. We wandered in on the first evening, fingers crossed for something better than Pedigree or Banks's. I'd have settled for Hobgoblin but did much better: Shipyard Independence Pale Ale originated at Shipyard in Portland, Maine. Their brewer made a batch at Marston's for their summer season this year. And by 'eck it's good. Piquant citric hops wake up the palate, then sing it a sweet song of peaches and honey. At 4.2% ABV it's a beer to relax into over a few pints. Which is pretty much what happened.

More from Shrewsbury tomorrow.

Under Napoleon's Nose

It was the draw of the Wetherspoon Beer Festival that led me, against wise council (cheers Ed!), to set foot in The Bridge House on my few free hours in Belfast last Friday. It was not yet 4pm so of course the place was buzzing. I felt a bit out of place among the other customers, what with my ability to walk upright and use tools. Had I shown them that I understood the gift of fire I don't know what would have happened. Perhaps I would have been made god of their loud and sticky hell. Anyway, there was nothing from the top flight of the festival listings available, and I settled for 3 Bees Oatmeal Stout. It's a solid, workmanlike performance, very dry for the most part, with a pleasant chocolate complication and a tiny bitter hop bite, shading towards metallic, at the finish, There's a certain charm to it, and it's inoffensive. Quite the contrast to Belfast's JD Wetherspoon and its clientele, in fact. I moved on.

Top of my Belfast hitlist was The John Hewitt, across town. Reputed as one of the city's best beer venues it's run as a non-profit co-operative apparently. The beer selection was not as good as I was led to believe: beer of the week was Cruzcampo, unfortunately. Two cask offerings from Hilden and Belfast Black on keg were the sum total of craft beer. I settled for a pint of Köstritzer and one of Hilden Ale before hitting the streets again, a little disappointed.

Round the corner is well-reputed gastropub The Northern Whig: a cavernous venue which serves nothing at all worth drinking, while nearby is the Duke of York where, with the Hoegaarden tap removed, the selection has got worse since my last visit in 2005. This trip to the beer mecca of Belfast was not working out as well as I'd hoped. A shortcut through the generic-UK-shopping-centre Victoria Square brought us out at Bittles, a quite charming narrow pub where whiskey is the dominant theme. The bottled beer selection is quite decent, between local and Scottish micros, but I plumped for a pint of keg Samuel Smith's Old Brewery Bitter, just for the novelty. It's sweet and Tizery, probably pairing well with a dram or two of the decent. The beer lover, meanwhile, moved on again.

Just across the alley, in fact, to The Kitchen. This pub was demolished and rebuilt as part of the Victoria Square redevelopment. While there's no doubt that a lot of the original charm was carried off in skips years ago, it holds a reputation as a proper beer pub and I reckoned it was well worth investigating. I probably should have known when I met a woman at the door dressed head-to-foot as a Magners pear that my visit wouldn't end well. In fact, it ended some thirty seconds later when I observed that the clips on the two handpumps on the bar were turned around, and everything else on sale was muck. Another blow for my perception of the Belfast beer scene.

I don't remember why I'd earmarked The Garrick as worth stopping in, but I did. A decent selection of Hilden and Whitewater bottles languished at the bottom of the fridge, but I was in the mood for ticking and opted for a couple of Italian lagers. Theresianer Premium Lager is from Trieste and is brewed for a definite Austro-Hungarian feel. It has a soft yet dry character which is unchallenging but decent, as a helles should be. Theresianer Vienna is a lot like the Samuel Adams Boston Lager with which it shares a shelf in the Garrick's fridge: properly Malteser-malty, shading towards Ovaltine, with only a slight tail-end staleness spoiling the fun. For unfussy boozing outside on a warm Friday afternoon, one could do an awful lot worse.

By this stage it was coming close to the train time, yet I was desperate to find some Whitewater beer on cask. My list was exhausted, but there was one sure bet a few blocks away: I headed for The Crown. It's been a while since I last set foot in this Belfast institution: a lavish Victorian "Liquor Saloon", owned and maintained by the National Trust. Trade was brisk, though it wasn't full exactly, and best of all there were three handpumps for Whitewater beer, including my first encounter with Belfast Black on cask. It's not quite as good as Fuller's London Porter, but it's really not far off. It has that sour plums-and-damsons complexity next to the chocolate and liquorice. Perhaps it was just as well there was only time for one: having it in a busy bar full of Guinness drinkers started to induce money-changers-in-the-temple feelings in me. There could have been spillage.

And then it was back aboard the Enterprise and home to Dublin at warp factor 0.0000001. In a way I'm a little let down by what I found. Belfast isn't quite the quality drinking city I was expecting it to be. There are no pubs with extensive world-beers selections like I've seen in CAMRA-award-winners in Great Britain, and local cask ale seems relatively hard come by. The Crown is deserving of a visit all by itself, but beyond that: caveat crawlor.

Cittie of Stagge and Henne

We hit York early on Saturday evening, wandering through the chocolate-box streets of one of the prettiest British cities I've ever visited. Dinner was in Nineteen on Grape Street (formerly Grope Street, the medieval red light district) where the food and service were both superb. The night was drawing in as we left, and that's when we noticed that York has probably the highest concentration of stag and hen parties of anywhere we've been. I mean, I live in Dublin -- I've been through Temple Bar on a Saturday night on more than one occasion (though never inhaled) -- but nowhere have I seen quite so many, and so elaborately coordinated, prenuptial piss-ups as were being conducted on the streets of York last weekend. It was, quite literally, as though everyone inside the city walls was absolutely hammered.

Searching, foolishly, in the old town for a quiet postprandial beer we ended up by the banks of the Ouse at the King's Head, one of those delightful novelty Samuel Smith's pubs where cask ale is unknown and if you don't want own-brand drinks you can naff off. We got the last available table so were spared the worst of the crush from the victims of drive-by fake-tannings and the men-behaving-stupidly. I recommended the Old Brewery Bitter for herself, having enjoyed the bottle I picked up in Switzerland earlier this year. Meanwhile I scoured the fridges for something interesting and came away with a bottle of Organic Cherry Ale. It's 5.1% ABV but tastes much heavier, with big boozy cherry flavours, somewhere between kirsch liqueur and cough syrup. The body was as big as this suggests, but there was just enough sparkle to keep it light enough to drink. My impression is that this beer is best served very cold, and the hefty flavour will stand up well in such conditions.

We left through the throng towards the south gate of the old city, almost passing by a civilised-looking pub, mistaking it for a restaurant, since every other licensed establishment seemed jammed with raucous bingers. But a peep in the door revealed it to be a pub and only when I sat down did I discover it was one I had marked on my map as a must-visit: Brigantes is York's current top CAMRA boozer, and I could see why. Rather like The Wellington it's modern, clean and open. In addition to the half-dozen or so cask ales from breweries both in Yorkshire and further afield, there was a small but solid collection of Belgian, German and American beers on offer, and staff who plainly knew their way around them and were enthusiastic about serving them.

To keep things local, my first pint was York Brewery's Yorkshire Terrier, but I found this bitter straw-coloured ale just a bit too heavy, waxy and tough going, so I swapped it for what the missus was having: the unalloyed joy of Timothy Taylor Best Bitter. This limpid amber beer starts off with a beautiful honey-sweet flavour and finishes on a bitter bite of the sort I've never met before. I would go so far as to say that Taylor's Best operates beyond the malt-hop axis in a delicious flavour world all of its own.

As we sailed towards last orders I got another round in and this time I picked Wentworth's Black Zac for me, a gorgeous dry roasty mild with lots of lovely charcoal flavours. Mrs Beer Nut had a Samba, from the Leeds Brewery, a company I've been well impressed with in the past. It's a very pale summer ale packed full of lemons and bubblegum, which we both rather liked. That took us through the bells (English pubs, eh? Bless) to the end of the drinking day, well for us at least: I'm sure the party which is York was only getting warmed up.

There weren't so many of the stag-and-hen crowd out and about bright and early last Sunday morning. The streets were rather quiet as we made our way back to the city centre. After some general meanderings of a touristic nature we found ourselves at the Three-Legged Mare opposite the Minster. It's another CAMRA award winner and another with helpful and friendly staff -- I sense a theme here. The York Brewery owns it, so obviously their beers are to the fore. And again obviously, I started with a pint of their well-renowned Centurion's Ghost. Colour me philistine (as usual) but I wasn't keen. This dark dark ruby ale had a slight haze to it, I think, but there wasn't a whole lot of flavour. Concentrating hard, there are bitter dark fruits -- plums and damsons -- buried deep in here, but I just couldn't get excited about it. Mrs Beer Nut was on another black tan-headed pint: Banks & Taylor's SOD. This was a definite cut above, displaying tasty plum pudding and blackberry notes. In the sunny beer garden, under the pub gallows, it made for slow, considered drinking. I might have garnered a pint of it myself, but we wanted to make the first tour of the day down at the York Brewery itself.

In an odd reversal of the old order, York Brewery is owned by a chain of pubs. It was set up in the mid-1990s as the first brewery in the city since the '50s but last year passed into the hands of Mitchell's Hotels & Inns. It's still a charming micro, though, with a ramshackle tasting lounge in the attic, which operates as a private members' club for anyone willing to stump up the princely annual subscription of £12. A half of Yorkshire Terrier was handed out on arrival, and I found this much lighter and more palateable than the previous evening's pint. After the short tour (the place really isn't that big) it was back to the bar to work through the collection.

The summery session ale is called Guzzler, a 3.6% ABV slightly hazy yellow ale. It achieves a wonderful malt-meets-lemons combo, a sort of lemon Horlicks effect that makes it sublimely refreshing and, well, guzzlable. No trip to England would be complete without a sports-related seasonal, and York had Ashes on. Because of the Ashes, see? Clever. It's a pale gold ale with a grainy malt character and definite dry/bitter hop notes. Dry, but not ash-dry. And last up was their malt-bomb, Constantine. Packed with smoky caramel flavours plus a spicy hop finish, I loved this.

Before getting too comfortable in our wing-chairs, with the sun streaming in the velux windows, we moved on. Lunch was in the Punch Bowl (the old-fashioned one in the city centre, not the Wetherspoons of the same name near the station). I was attracted by the Bass sign hanging outside. My disappointment with the lack of cask Bass inside was tempered by the delight of seeing John Smith's Cask instead. With the Tetley's I'd had in Manchester, I was generally quite positive about the whole cask-versions-of-crappy-keg-bitters thing. John Smith's didn't let me down, either: this red bitter is light and sweet with just a hint of sulphurousness keeping it interesting.

Emerging into the daylight from the back room of the pub, it was nearly time for the train to the airport. There was a tiny allowance for one more quick beer each, and the previous evening I'd spotted just the place for them...

Nothing sparkles like a baby Sam

For all its determined old-fashioned non-conformity, Yorkshire's Samuel Smith brewery seems quite happy to package its beers in dinky 355ml bottles, for export to strange farflung places where that's considered an acceptable serving measure. Much as I dislike getting my medium-strength beers in these sorts of sizes, the brewery's reputation combined with never having seen any of its beers in a shop before meant I had no qualms about picking up four of the dinky little blighters when I found them on sale in the excellent beer shop under Zürich railway station (thanks Ron!) last January.

It has taken me a while to get round to drinking them, but mindful of the relatively short date on them, I made a start last weekend with the Old Brewery Pale Ale. I loved the rich amber of the body on this one, and the full head coloured like old ivory. From the colour and rich consistency I was expecting big toffee flavours from this, and the aroma -- subtle and enticing -- coyly suggested I was in for a treat. I got my toffee on the first taste all right, but there was quite a bit more besides. The flavour is balanced with warmer and less sweet malt plus a touch of green, slightly vegetal, English hops. The whole thing is very much what I would expect from a Yorkshire bitter, pleasingly so, and best of all there are no metallic bum notes present at all. At a high strength of 5% ABV, I'd perhaps have expected more flavour, but I'm happy with this and I'd definitely buy it in a bigger bottle, should the opportunity ever present itself.

Next up was the Taddy Porter, again at 5% and again possessed of a wonderfully heavy, creamy body. There are hints of ruby in what's otherwise quite a dense black beer. There's a lightly roasted character to the aroma offering a touch of caramel as well, but it definitely doesn't jump out of the glass. However, there's nothing understated about the flavour. I get big bittersweet molasses notes, shading almost towards saccharine. A dry roasted barley edge cuts through the sugar beautifully and prevents it from becoming difficult. Balance, once again, wins out.

Oatmeal is listed after the hops on the Oatmeal Stout, so I'm guessing it only barely qualifies as one. There is, in fairness, a fair bit of bitterness to it, but I'm still not getting that slightly unpleasant phenolic thing I've come to associate with oatmeal-laden beers. Instead, it's rather understated: bitter at first, and then with a brown-sugar-like sweetness and hints of coffee. Is that a sort of porridgey thing at the end or is it my imagination? Hard to tell. The body isn't quite as heavy as the previous two, and there's a smidge more carbonation as well as an almost nitroesque creamy head. This is the first Samuel Smith beer that I wouldn't be inclined to reach for again. There's nothing wrong with it per se, it's just a bit boring.

And a similar verdict goes for the Imperial Stout as well. Yet again we have that big heavy body, to the point where I thought it was going to pour flat, but the thick beige head formed after a couple of seconds. At 7% ABV it's rather light for an imperial stout, and there's not a whole heap of a lot going on, flavourwise. After a slightly unpleasant marker-like foretaste, liquorice is the dominant character -- a light sort of earthy bitterness -- but there's very little else. One dimensional is how I'd describe it.

I'm quite surprised by what I found with this lot. I'm very glad I went for the full set available, because the Pale Ale would doubtless have been the one I'd left behind. It really pays to be a completeist ticker sometimes. Cures you of prejudices straight off.