Canterbury Jack

I have not tried this beer, but was drawn to make comment on it by an advertisement on the back of a recent CAMRA publication. Who is this beer marketed at?
Taking the ad at face value it could be assumed that it is being marketed as a chav beer. Two old geezers dressed up in very chav hoodie get up with two (chav) dogs that would not be out of place on any estate. So by placing this ad on the back of a CAMRA publication which is 'very' middle class are they inadvertently saying 'drink this beer and you can be a chav too?' Sounds very appealing to my middle class sensibilities - NOT

I really just don't get it. To further make the beer appear to be more chav like (my observations over the last few years have noted that cheap lager and cider are the beverages of choice for chavs), they describe the beer as "Lighter in Alcohol and colour, with a dry citrus flavour. It's ale that's like well wicked, innit". They could be describing cheap lager (like Fosters Citrus Twist).

Why don't they just advertise how the beer tastes: "Shepherd Neame - common as muck"

Bank Holiday

I am back at work now after spending the bank holiday weekend in a lazy fashion. Luckily it is ticker Tuesday and I can fill you in on what I have been up too. On Friday evening I managed to get down the Roebuck in Chiswick for pint of Adnam's bitter (which was a little plain) and a pint of Erdinger. I decided to go for the proper real keg as I have yet to have a decent pint of ale there on cask. After this I enjoyed an awesome ribeye steak down the road at The High Street Brasserie. I am going to rave about this steak for a bit as it was pretty awesome. Probably over 400 grams worth with the marrowed bone still attached. I enjoyed it rare as all good steak must be enjoyed! (BTW I washed this down with two pints of Staropramen) I am a little bit ashamed with the after dinner activities which saw me drinking pints of Foster's lager in Belushi's at Hammersmith - a circus of a venue with maybe just a smidge more class than a Walkabout, but not much more. The Fosters was cold and refreshing though and certainly suited to the warm evening.

Saturday evening I nicked down the Parr's Head for a Thai feed and had an excellent pint of Hancocks HB, which tastes pretty similar to Fuller's London Pride (I had the two back to back and I couldn't discern between the two). After dinner I managed to crack open a bottle of T.E.A from the Hog's Back brewery. It was a little disappointing, but it did have a nice solid yeast cake which fell into my glass during pouring. The positive of the solidarity was that I could remove it easily with a spoon!

Sunday was another lazy day and I managed to read a whole book from cover to cover. I didn't end up drinking any beer at all, but did enjoy half of a very nice bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc at Gordon Ramsey's Boxwood Cafe. I highly recommend the Veal and Fois Gras burger which really is something special. The crispy pigs trotter entree I had was a little bit too oily and the gingerbread cheesecake I had for desert were a little bit disappointing but overall it's a good place to go for a meal if you are interested in eating in overpriced restaurants (as I am!).

I managed to get one beer in yesterday (Monday) which was freebie sent to me by Nicky who does PR for Marston's. This was Wychwood Beewyched (5% abv) which is a honey laced ale that has a soft honey aroma and avoids the excessive dryness that most braggot (beer brewed with honey) suffers from. I actually enjoyed this beer and would probably drink it again if I was forced to!

So maybe I didn't really get the most drinking out of the long weekendas I could have, but I needed a break and there is more to life than beer - OK well not much more.

Chk Chk BOOM!

Australian followers will all be familiar with the Internet phenomenon that is Clare Werbeloff. I'll fill in for everyone else.........

Basically there was a disagreement between two gentlemen in King's Cross, Sydney last week which escalated to a public shooting. Witness Clare Werbeloff was interviewed by a news crew on location and has become an Internet celebrity due to her racist remarks (well the racism is debatable as the term 'Wog' is not widely considered racist in Australia any more), animated description and bogan (Aussie for chav) manner. You can watch the news report in the embedded video below.


The video has inspired many parodies including a dance remix and T-shirt's which are available by order online. My favourite though are the following series of cartoon images describing the events. Enjoy!

Fuller's Vinatage Ale 2008

I had two bottles of Fuller's Vintage Ale kicking around my flat, enticing me to drink them. Last Sunday I could hold out no longer and drank the younger of the two bottles. The 2008 Vintage is still a little rough around the edges, but there is a beautiful barley wine starting to shine through. Upon tasting the elixir, my wife exclaimed "It doesn't taste like beer, it's more like Hennessy, XO or a sweet dessert wine". I tend to agree with her. The beer is very grape like in character with a strong alcohol warmth/sweetness that is hot, but not cloying. I assume that the longer the beer ages, the more mellow and smooth the overall flavour becomes. Anyhow to test this theory I have a bottle of Fuller's 1999 Vintage Ale sitting at the top of my staircase. I plan to drink it when I have something to celebrate (like when I can finally confirm that I am moving back to Australia). Let's hope that day comes soon!

ARL or NRL?

In light of current events in the Australian media, I have a question, do the following statistics describe the AFL or NRL?

36 Have been accused of spousal abuse
7 Have been arrested for fraud
19 Have been accused of writing bad cheques
117 Have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
3 Have done time for assault
71, Repeat 71 Cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
14 Have been arrested on drug-related charges
8 Have been arrested for shoplifting
21 Currently Are defendants in lawsuits and
84 Have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year


Can you guess which organization this is? AFL? NRL? Give up yet? . . ....


Neither, it's the 535 members of the

AUSTRALIAN PARLIAMENT

The same group of publicly elected dignitaries that crank out hundreds of new laws each year, designed to keep the rest of us in line.

Still have faith in the Australian Government and it's financial decisions? The fact that the ALP does not know how to spell "Labour" is enough proof for me. (BTW - they spell it Labor).

Quality Journalism

One thing I love about the UK is the randomness of the print media. I think the term "Media Circus" is a fair and accurate description. I had the fortune of flicking through (well I made it to page 3) a copy of the UK's best selling newspaper "The Sun" while at The Gunmakers last Friday evening.

In a week where the UK had been rocked with; swine flu, fraudulent expense claims, a campaign to unseat the speaker from the House of Commons and the sacking of Tanzanian beauty queen Mona on the Apprentice, "The Sun" decided to run a cover story concerning the separation of Essex slapper come good Katie Price from popstar nobody Peter Andre. In this case a picture is really worth a thousand words.

Tim vs the Goliath

Now, I have not been fantasising about starring in biblical stories - but I have been drinking Wychwoods Goliath (4.2% abv). In typical Wychwood fashion the beer is covered with Dungeons and Dragons/Harry Potter/Lord of the Rings type imagery that gives real ale geeks a negative stereotype and the beer itself is rather bland. But then what would I know? I don't work in marketing and my mates in the trade say that Hobgoblin sells rather well. Goliath is not necessarily a bad beer though, it's more like your boring second cousin who you only see at Christmas - it would never really concern you if you never saw them again. A tall order? The only thing big about the beer is the Goliath sized 660mL bottle! Really if you have had the misfortune of buying a bottle of Goliath, I think it would be honest to say that you won't make the same mistake again....... http://www.wychwood.co.uk/

Friday Night Carnage

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed could probably see this one coming. For those of you don't, I had a rather massive night on Friday and posted a couple of updates via Twitter.

It started at about 5.15 at my regular after work local, The Gunmakers Arms. I started with a pint of Bateman's XB which was a little bit dull, so I followed it up with 5 pints of Timothy Taylor Landlord. At about 6.45pm, starting to feel the effects of rapid ale consumption I headed off to Sheldon Square in Paddington to rendezvous with my lovely Missus. The Union is one of those pub/bar hybrids that doesn't really satisfy on either counts. The beer is limited to standard keg fayre and I took a chance on the Guinness as I didn't fancy the other option of Amstel as the weather was a little cool. I managed to get 5 pints of Guinness in here at The Union before I was told it was time to move on. By this stage I was well and truly on my way to pissedville and a feed at The Chepstow in W11 was in order. At this stage I was lucky that I was not the only person who had consumed a lot of alcohol, and I was holding myself well against my wife's colleagues. At The Chepstow they all moved onto wine but I stayed true to the black stuff and had another pint of Guinness, which I believed in my inebriated state was the superior beer pairing with my posh interpretation of bangers and mash. After dinner we continued to celebrate with two shots of white sambucca before moving onto the "Cherry Jam" nightclub in Notting Hill. This place was my worst nightmare, a place to be seen rather than a place to enjoy yourself it was full of posers and people out to pull. In other words it was utter shit, although I did have a cold bottle of Asahi! At some stage in the early hours (OK it was about 2am) we managed to get a cab back to leafy Brook Green, have an drunken shower and collapse in bed. Saturday morning was a bit of a non event. I simply cannot recall the last time I felt so hungover. It must have been the sambucca.

New Neighbours

I have new celebrity neighbours who I met yesterday morning as I shuffled out of the house on my way to the gym. I'm not one to name drop so I have made this a little cryptic. I have put a circle around a clue which can be found on the side of their car.

Another hint - the travel long distances on motorcycles!

How to tell if a pub is shit or not in 30 seconds

I'm a judgemental bloke. I can easily identify black from white and even push grey towards either side when required. Yesterday, while I was supposed to be tapping away at a trivial document at work I asked myself why I consider some pubs 'good' and some 'bad'. I quickly narrowed it down to one minimalist feature that can sum up the whole atmosphere of a pub. The feature is, the table number. From my experience, pubs that feature numbers pressed into tables on brass disks usually have the atmosphere of a drinking barn rather than a pub. They are generally chain pubs (JDW, LLoyds, All Bar One, Nicholson's or any M&B type place) that serve lousy microwaved food and consider their patrons to be numbers with ££ signs on their foreheads rather than valued customers. If your staff are rubbish, is it really too hard to give out a wooden spoon with a number painted on it? Or a buzzer type arrangement like many pubs in Australia have? Its speaks volumes that these establishments don't trust their customers enough to not steal them. I don't want to drink in places where the lowest common denominator is the petty crim.

In saying all this, I realise that I am a massive pub snob. I pretty much only drink in a handful of pubs these days as I am tired of getting served poorly kept ale.

The Poll is Over

It appears that my Poll has now closed. I am a little disappointed with reader engagement, with only 25 people voting from the 500+ who read my rubbish every day. More concerning is that some of you want me to go back to hardcore ticking, while others just want me to take the piss!
Anyhow it seems that a personal diary format is how I will be proceeding.

So what changes?

Basically nothing at all, except I will chuck in some non-beer related posts from time to time. I will also be putting together shorter posts as I will be directing more effort towards a new blog project that I am starting. I'll provide more details later in the week.

Pub or Refectory?

On Friday evening, my lovely wife and I headed out for a couple of drinks at the Ruby Grand in Hammersmith before enjoying a great meal at Saigon Saigon on King Street. As the weather was pretty good on Friday, I enjoyed a nice pint of Kronenbourg 1664 at the RG and half a bottle of New Zealand Sauvingon Blanc with dinner. On our trip back through Hammersmith on our way back to Brook Green, my wife had an acute case of the dreaded FBS (full bladder syndrome). To alleviate the pain discomfort we ducked into The Plough and Harrow, W6's very own JDW house. It had been a long time since I had set foot in this place and not much had changed. Basically it reminds me more of the UCL refectory rather than a pub and was full of old geezers and drunks. While waiting patiently outside the ladies toilets for my wife to sort herself out I took a quick look into the kitchen. Row upon row of industrial microwave ovens were visible with two kitchen monkeys reheating as fast as possible. Luckily I was in and out of the shithole as fast as possible, but I am still getting flashbacks. You really do get what you pay for.

BTW - the photos didn't really turn out right, but you get the idea.

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A Barrel of Fun

Innis & Gunn have been brewing their oak aged barrel beers for a while now and I have commented previously that I am not really a fan. In an effort to help me change my mind, Nicky one of their marketing types sent me their range of bottles hoping that I would say nice things about the brand. While I am not going to be nice, I am not going to be bad either. It seems the range has been bolstered by the addition of two new products; a Rum barrel aged and a blond which is a the original that has aged for a shorter period in the whisky barrel. The original brand still tastes rather boring as per my original post and could be confused with a light ale with a shot of whisky poured in. The blond ale is even more bland however, the rum aged on the other hand is a different beast. While it still tastes like a weak flavourless beer that has had some run poured in, it also inherits a big whack of vanilla and oak from the barrel. These flavours are present in the whisky barrel aged beer, but it's plain and boring. The rum barrel adds a higher level of complexity that really works. That saying I think darker styles of beer are better suited to oak aging and that in the scheme of things the practise of barrel aging beers is going to be more of a trend or fad than the next big thing. I say this, although I am willing to be proven wrong...

Baa Baa!

Yes, I am now officially a sheep. I have joined up to twitter in an effort to remain 'in the loop' about what is going on in the world.
While most of you probably will not be interested in what I am doing at any given time, or what colour socks I will wear on any given day, for some strange reason some people get off on this sort of thing. If you are interested in what I get up to, where I drink and what colour socks I wear then you can now follow me;

http://twitter.com/beerdiary

Kraków, piwo i czekolada Powlekany Śliwki

On Saturday morning I awoke at 4.15am with a massive hangover. That pint of Hooky Bitter must have caused it, I explained to my not so sympathetic wife. Anyhow we managed to get ourselves ready into a mini cab and out to Gatwick to get our dawn service BA shuttle to Krakow, Poland. I have to admit, based on my encounters with the Polish drunks of Brook Green I was expecting to see lots of nutters and drunks drinking tramp juice out of coffee mugs in a third world setting. Fortunately I was disappointed, but relieved to find that Krakow is an amazing unspoiled European city which is bustling with culture and people having a good time. The main market square is lined with chic cafes and restaurants serving generous portions of excellent food and beer at what I consider to be 1970's prices. Krakow to me seemed similar to how people describe Prague and Budapest ten years ago before they became crowded with busloads of tourists.

In terms of beer I had all the usual suspects that you find in your off licence. Okacim, Tyskie and my personal favourite Zywiec (pronounced Ja-vice).

There are two Zywiec beers that are widely available, the Pilsner style lager (5.6% abv) and the Baltic Porter, which weighs in at a hefty 9.3% abv. I got pretty tanked up after drinking a pint of Okacim Mocne, 2 pints of Zywiec Pilsner and 3 pints of Zywiec Porter. This was a grand prelude to seeing poor Ricky Hatton get the stuffing knocked out of him.

Besides getting smashed on super strength baltic porter (which is really good), the only thing of note that I can think of now was the food. I have included a picture of my pork knuckle below. It was soft skinned (not so good), but covered in an awesome BBQ sauce on top of a bed of fried kraut. Nice.

Friends of The Beer Diary

A lot of the bottled beer which has featured over the last couple of months has come courtesy of the following online retailers. They both provide a top service and offer excellent value for money compared to other retailers (including Tesco). Give them a go next time you stock up your cellar's, fridges and pantries.

Beer Ventures are a specialist beer company run from Dorset. I have been dealing primarily with Andrew who has provided excellent customer service and has matched beers to my requirements perfectly. Service is really quick (literally less than 24 hours) and the prices are extremely competitive compared to Utobeer and more in line with the prices you will pay at Tesco. I had the fortune of meeting Andrew's sister recently and she seemed like a top bird as well, with a love of all things Belgian. Andrew also runs a blog - Adventures in Beer.
Website: http://www.beerventures.co.uk/


BEERmerchants.com is the e-commerce site for Cave Direct. A family owned business started in 1979 to source and distribute top quality beers from all over the world - many of which are very hard to find in the UK and all from craft brewers who are passionate about quality. I recently met Phil from Beer Merchants at BrewDog's launch of Zeitgeist and he seemed very knowledgeable and approachable. Service from Beer Merchants is also very good and they even threw in a Duvel T-shirt for free. Phil has a blog which you can check out here.
Website: http://www.beermerchants.com/

Hooky Bitter

I was so smashed when I had this one at The Parrs Head that I forgot I had drank it! Last Friday, Gareth and I bunked off work at about 3.30 pm and headed down to The Gunmakers for a couple of quick after work beers. Being a bank holiday weekend, Jeff was playing it safe and only had Harvey's Best on so we had a pint (or was it two) before heading down to The Coach and Horses for a few Pints of Landlord. Sometime after that I vaguely remember being back in The Gunmakers drinking with Peter the Bike until I got an angry call from the Mrs demanding me back home. I still squeezed in another pint before going home to face the wrath of my wife!
Anyhow we ended up going to The Parr's Head for dinner and they had just put a cask of Hooky Bitter on. I can't tell you what it was like though as I cannot remember. It can't have been too exciting then.....

Vote in my Poll

I have been thinking of changing what I do here at The Beer Diary. Have your say what goes on. Vote in the poll on the left.

Should I change the format of The Beer Diary to;

• a diary style blog about what I get up to, not just about beer?
• a hardcore tickers blog?
• include more anti CAMRA/establishment articles?
• move away from beer and into comedy and pisstaking in general?

I'm interested in hearing your thoughts.......

Ribs

For those few who actually take interest in what I have to say will now that I am pretty fond of pork products. Sausages, ribs and Pork Knuckle are a prominent and regular feature here at The Beer Diary. These two photos chronicle the preparation of the delicacy that is known as BBQ Ribs. Basically I coated the precut ribs (just the ones you get from Tesco, I wanted a whole rack but they only had precut ones) in a BBQ spice rub and left them in the fridge to marinade for a couple of hours. They then looked like this;

I then baked them at 180 degrees C for 30 minutes and viola they came out like this.

I should let you know that they went down a treat as well.

A bit of catch up

Life has been hectic lately and my regular lunchtime posts have become ever more irregular. Luckily, today is ticker Tuesday so I can eliminate my backlog in pretty much one bludgeoning swoop. To keep it interesting I won't go on about my pub binges with Peter and Co. at The Gunmakers, or my adventures at The Parr's Head and The Havelock- they were standard pissup affairs.

Interesting beers;

Thornbridge Halcyon (7.7% abv) - this hop monster IPA uses fresh green hops as opposed to dried stable hops. Judging by the hop haze this beer had, I will assume there were a lot of hops added as well. I won't go into too many details, but Darren over at Blog o'Beer posted some good stuff here.

Dorothy Goodbody's Golden Ale (4.2% abv) - This gem from the Wye Valley Brewery has a strong wheat malt taste which I don't really appreciate. It's an easy quaffing beer though and I have a bottle of the stout at home still to get through which should be more to my taste.

Casablanca Premium Lager Beer (5.0% abv) - The wife and I met up with some friends in Kew and went to a new Moroccan restaurant (Tangine) that has just set up shop. It was a warm day and I had worked through a couple of pints of Staropramen and a summer ale from Hog's Back before getting into this beer. It's your standard malty premium lager affair and probably the tastiest alcoholic beverage to come out of Morocco. The food was pretty good too. I had the lamb shank.

Sam Smith's Pure Brewed Lager (5% abv) - One of the best lagers brewed in the UK. This beer really suits the the warmer weather and went down a treat. I should drink this more when I visit Sam Smith's pubs. I have suffered with and been let down by Old Brewery Bitter for way too long, and I usually opt for Alpine Lager in the lager stakes. Could this be the most under-rated beer in Britain?

Ben Nevis Organic 80/- (4% abv) - A beer I really enjoyed.... malty and full of melanoids with minimal hopping this beer went down a treat. I am not really that big a fan of 80/- beers in general, but like any beer style when you get a good interpretation of the style you get a good beer. Anyhow, it's brewed by Bridge of Allan Brewery somewhere in Scotland.

Well that sums up the most interesting beers from the last week. Instead of the usual Nokia quality photography, I have offered you the reader a nice collage for the first time ever. I also went to Krakow over the bank holiday weekend so I guess I will be ramming the virtues of Polish beer down your neck for the remainder of the week!

I am also running a poll and I would like to solicit your opinions.

Is Lager Expensive?

I recently blogged about how some of CAMRA's marketing towarsd lager was factually misleading. I think it was;

"lager is weak in flavour and usually overpriced"

When I saw this display in Tesco recently I couldn't help myself. Compared to nearly £2 a bottle for 'premium bottled ale', I consider a crate of 24 Stella tins (9L in total) a steal. Please note that I did not take Tesco up on their offer...

Sam Adams

Well it's my final post featuring my New York trip, and I have spun it out over a couple of weeks. I'll try and keep the post brief. Basically I picked up a couple of Sam Adams beers from a mixed business. Sam Adams had something to do with revolutionary America and his name is now a brand that represents the Boston Beer Company. The Boston Beer Co. was born in 1985 by Jim Koch and has seen significant growth with the rise of the craft brewing segment in the US. The beers are well distributed and are relatively easy to track down here in the UK and literally everywhere in the USA. I picked up the Boston Ale and the White Ale. The Boston Ale is malty and the relationship between it's cousin (Boston Lager) is evident from the first sip. The White Ale was a little disappointing and like most American Wheat beers, lacked any complexity and was pretty one dimensional. http://www.samueladams.com

That sums up my trip to NYC. I may not have been to the beer mecca that is the Blind Tiger or some of the other haunts, but I did track down some interesting beer. One thing that I really did like is that most venues had at least 7 or 8 craft brewed beers on draught at any one time. There are not too many pubs in the UK that can lay claim to this and I see it as the key benefit of kegging over cask. Each has their place, but in all seriousness the keg is too quickly dismissed in the UK.