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.

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.

Priorities

It feels odd even writing it, but it's true: on my last visit to England, a two-day trip in mid-June, I didn't visit a single pub. My friends Sarah and David were getting married in a remote corner of east Cornwall and the most straightforward way of getting there was flying into Bristol and driving down. We opted to stay in a precariously positioned clifftop cottage near the venue, which meant nipping out to a nearby licensed hostelry wouldn't really have been an option, had we had the time to do it. But none of that matters: the wedding was wonderful and there was decent beer aplenty.

In fact, beer was the theme of the wedding, each table named after a hop variety and decorated with tasting glasses and a beer which demonstrated the specific hop in action. I don't know who I pissed off to get seated at Fuggles, but there you have it. Mercifully the showcase beer was a last-minute substitution and instead of Bombardier it was a local(ish) Devon brew called Otter Bright. I'm happy to report it's a largely malt-driven beer, a golden ale of 4.3% ABV. The nose is a little off-putting, being slightly musty and oxidised, but the beer underneath is sound. There's lots of golden syrup and pale sugary biscuits. The hops are mostly present in a final bitterness that balances it nicely. Even at room temperature, this was a success.

While I didn't get to go to a pub, I did drop into a brewery briefly. There was a concern that the beer supplies laid in might not have been enough, so on the morning of the wedding I was dispatched on a 120-mile mission along most of the length of the county to Redruth and the Keltek Brewery, sited in an unglamourous industrial estate outside the town. I wasn't even tempted to swing off the A38 at the signs for St Austell and fill the car with Tribute and Proper Job instead of what was ordered.

What was ordered was two 10L polypins of Keltek beer: Golden Lance is another slightly musty golden ale, though dry and very drinkable. Magik is a smooth brown bitter with lots of puddingy caramel, great for dessert. It was my first experience with beer-in-a-bag-in-a-box and I felt the carbonation could have done with being upped a bit more, though I don't know if this is a gripe with the dispense method or the brewery.

And so it was back on the road again on the day after the ceremony. Obviously, I called in at Buckfast Abbey on the way back to Bristol: as an Armaghman one simply does not pass up the opportunity to see such an important part of one's heritage. At Bristol airport, with the car (a ghastly Vauxhall Meriva: don't ever buy one) back in the lot I checked in and was able to, for the first and only time all trip, walk up to a bar and order a pint of beer. Butcombe Bitter was on the one and only handpump. There'd be times when I'd dismiss this as a boring brown bitter, but at the end of a long trip it was a delicious cool copper pint of pure refreshment. On the whole it's quite dry and rather tannic in a marvellously thirst-quenching way. There's a touch of eggs in the aroma and a hint of soap on the flavour: stereotypical faults of English beer, but they compromised my enjoyment not a jot. If my flight hadn't been called madly early, I'd have launched into another no problem.

I returned home eager for more travelling in England. O to have time for those interesting excursions off the motorway, to stop in those villages and drink in those pubs. And to fill the car with cases of cider from those farms. Some day.

Just another winter's ale

I only barely escaped snowy Dublin last week to spend the holiday in frozen Hertfordshire, so my Christmas drinking was mostly along English lines, with just a couple of exceptions. One sister gifted me a bottle of Saint Landelin Spéciale Noël, a seasonal from Gayant, the Douai brewery perhaps better known for Goudale. It's a yulified Belgian-style blonde -- 6.8% ABV and quite sticky with it, piling in the honey on top of gentle pot pourri spices. While warming, it's light enough to stay drinkable and sharing the 75cl bottle is entirely optional, fully subject to one's personal levels of seasonal goodwill.

The other non-English Christmas ale came from another sister (they know me so well): Merry X-Moose by Porthmadog's avant garde Purple Moose brewery. This poured shockingly flat but redeemed itself with lovely big chocolate flavours, finishing on some intriguing lavender high notes. Similar-but-different was Three Tuns Old Scrooge. A bit more condition to this, though not much. It's a dense black beer with lots of treacle spiced up by cinnamon and liquorice: an excellent warmer.

On to less seasonal fare, and Dorothy Goodbody's Imperial Stout: a boxed-up limited run of 6,000 bottles. Advice was that this is best left a few years to mature, but the air travel liquids ban left me with no choice but to pop the cap almost immediately after taking it out from under the Christmas tree. Immature imperial stout can be an unpleasant experience, often spiked with harsh metal-and-cabbage hop tones. None of that here, though. At 7% ABV it's perhaps on the light side of the genre and the flavours are quite gentle: lots of sweet and slightly sticky dark malts, a touch of roasted grain and a balanced grassiness from the hops. It could well be that it gets more interesting with age, but really there's absolutely nothing wrong with this beer right now.

A bottle of McMullen AK XXX fell across my path at one point during my stay. A fairly plain brown bitter, this. Crisp with a touch of toffee, it immediately called to mind Bailey's observations on the substituting of London Pride for altbier. This hits a lot of the same places as alt, finishing with a dry hop bite and being a little over-fizzy for English bitter. Close your eyes and think of Düsseldorf. (For more on the historical brewers' code "AK", including McMullen's use of it, see Zythophile's analysis here.)

Speaking of over-fizzy bitter, I was unable to resist the opportunity to try Whitbread Bitter when I spotted it on keg at a hotel bar near Luton. You have to try the local specialities when you travel, right? It lends further credibility to my grand theory that Irish red ale and English keg bitter are the same ill-starred creation. Whitbread Bitter is monstrously watery, generally sweet, with just a tiny shade more hopping that you might find in the likes of Smithwicks. My other guilty pleasure came on an excursion to the pub near where I was staying. Ignoring my own rule about going for something good rather than ticking off new beers, I couldn't resist a swift pint of Wells & Young's Eagle IPA. Brewed very much to hit the same market segment as Greene King IPA, this is 3.6% ABV and every bit as light, plain, uncomplicated and inoffensive. After one pint it was over to the far superior St Austell Tribute on the next tap.

I got to do very little by way of beer shopping -- just one trip to Sainsbury's, yielding the new IPA from Fuller's: Bengal Lancer. I was really quite careless in how I poured this 5.3% ABV bottle conditioned beer, but it still came out a perfectly limpid shade of dark copper. Despite the gung-ho branding it's quite understated all-in-all: I needed a few nosefuls of the aroma to pick up anything much, eventually identifying jaffa, or possibly mandarin, oranges. The malt drives the taste, leading the hops behind it, creating a not unpleasant effect of marmalade on thick-cut toast. The tail end veers almost tragically towards the metal and puke of Fuller's execrable IPA but just manages to avoid it by finishing quickly. The texture is perhaps the beer's best feature: big and satisfying. It would be nice if there was just a bit more substance to it, but as a straightforward well-constructed English IPA it can't really be faulted and I would buy it again.

And that's where we leave things for 2010. By the time you read this I should be somewhere in central Europe, gathering material for a post or two in 2011. Happy New Year!

My hat comes off

Found myself in London again this week and, for once, not in the distant and hostile reaches of the far west end. Instead I was able to make use of Stonch's London Beer Map, which led me to The Harp on Chandos Place. Past the stained glass exterior it's a bright and clean little boozer, arrayed with rows of high benches back beyond a bar festooned with pump clips of guest ales gone by. The fact that I recognised more than a couple gave me a warm glow from knowing that my education in the beers of Britain is well under way.

There were three guests on, in addition to regulars including Landlord and Black Sheep. I knew I was in the right sort of establishment when the seat in front of me was taken by a specimen from the species Camracus Tickerius, displaying his distinctive anorak colouring, biro clenched in his teeth as he dug in his backpack for The Good Beer Guide, perusing it over a carefully sipped half. I started with a Daleside Old Legover, since I knew and liked the brand of old. The big up-front whack of chocolatey flavours -- rather like Clotworthy Dobbin -- pleased me, but it was followed by an unhopped sort of wortiness that didn't sit so well. Enjoyable to begin with but sadly lacking afterwards, and a beer divided against itself is, er, unfortunate.

On my return to the bar the barmaid asked how I enjoyed my Legover. "I've had better" was my response. It's that kind of pub. I followed with a White Adder from Mauldon's. This is a pale gold ale with a strong fruit profile, almost grapey. Dry like a sauvignon blanc. Where I felt it fell down was the temperature: served cool, this would be a great refresher, as was at 12°C or so, it was heavy going and quite tough to finish.

Utter redemption came before I left, in the shape of Harvey's Best Bitter, a regular. This is a corker of a beer, smacking you up front with tart fruity mandarin notes and a sultry sandalwood spiciness thrown in as well. Best of all it was poured at an invigorating cool temperature. The first sip had me wondering why, with beers like this around, British brewers even bother with summer golden ales. Half way down, the spice made me realise the redundancy of winter warmers as well. A real desert island beer from the East Sussex brewer.

My second glass tip of the trip goes to beer explorer extrodinaire Knut Albert, for pointing out a pub which has been under my nose (while being above my head) for years. Usually on excursions to London I scurry back for a pint of cask dullness at The Skylark in Heathrow Terminal 1 via the Heathrow Express from Paddington. This time I lingered in the station and paid a visit to the Fuller's establishment upstairs, The Mad Bishop and Bear. I kicked off with some Festival: Fuller's mild. This is a very very dark beer with just a skim of cream-coloured head. There's not much to it unfortunately. A little bit of roast; a little bit of bitterness; but altogether mild, too mild. Similarly dull was Fuller's Chiswick Bitter: not bitter at all and really quite a grainy affair, though otherwise rather plain. The best of the bunch was Tribute from the St Austell brewery in Cornwall. This is a pale gold number, surprisingly highly carbonated for a cask ale -- bubbles clung to the side of the glass, though my attempt to photograph them (right) failed due to cameraphone crapness. Tribute doesn't have much of an aroma but it tastes aromatic, if that makes any sense: sort of perfumey. It's very tasty, very refreshing, and one of the good English golden ales.

And that was it for this visit. I'm sure I'll be back in London later in the year for more explorations, and maybe a trip to some of its top-flight beer pubs. In the meantime, just thanks again to Knut Albert (real name Knut Albert) and Stonch (real name Colin Stonch) -- true friends of the beer tourist.