Redoak

I have blogged previously about the Redoak boutique brewery. Sure it's overpriced but the beer here is pretty good. I have never had a dodgy beer here and it really is something special compared to even the best that proper real keg has to offer (generally all beers here are proper real - although occasionally they have a pump on, maybe one of only two or three hand pumps in Sydney).

Anyhow I was in there chatting to the bar dude on Friday night sipping their excellent Bitter (3.5% abv) when he informed me of their recent success at the World Beer Awards that were held in London last July. After being told by numerous anonymous assholes in the comments section of this blog and various others that "Australian's don't know about ale" etc I find it quite humorous that Redoak Bitter took out the award for Bitter category ahead of every brown 4% beer that the UK can produce. Hear that, Australians beat the Brits at their own game.

Over the weekend I also caught Oz and Hugh - Raise the Bar. Episode three was very interesting, especially the beer festival in Manchester. Now anybody who denies the CAMRA stereotype needs to watch this episode. Beards, bellies and weirdo's holding plastics bags are pictured. Hugh Dennis even makes a comment that he feels out of place without a beard and a plastic bag. There is no point in denying the facts here and anyone who tries to argue to the contrary obviously falls into the stereotype. And to top it all off there is a steam train at the end, the crowning jewel in the ticker train watching stereotype. Props to Oz and Hugh for going on the lash with a bunch of female students from Leeds, but what was the go with the place adding essences to beer? Overall that segment along with comments from several drinkers along the way throughout the series confirmed to me that the average UK enthusiast doesn't know shit about beer.

Rosey Nosey

Another beer I probably should not have bothered with, but seeing as I was faced with the option of Bombardier or Rosey Nosey (4.9 % abv), I opted for the latter. It was late on Sunday afternoon and I was hanging to get some lunch in. I managed to persuade the Aussie delegation sleeping on our floor to join me at The Queens Head on Brook Green for a meal and a couple of pints. I ordered the Bangers and Mash which was excellent and the pub was packed. Obviously the credit crunch is not affecting business here! The pub has also recently been refurbed and no longer smells musty, and it is now a lot lighter/brighter than it used to be.

Anyhow, Rosey Nosey is brewed by Bateman's and has a novelty pump clip featuring a life like beard and a glowing/flashing nose. They had this on at The Gunmaker's last week and one of the chaps commented that if Jeff grew his beard back, he would look the same. I tend to agree, but is Santa really a Geordie?

Website

Whitstable Bay

As I mentioned in another post, my brother in law is in town. Being an average Australian fellow, he has not had any exposure to real ale before and I thought a light refreshing ale with a 'down under' flavour would appeal to him. In this sense, I picked up a couple of bottles of Shepherd Neame's Whitstable Bay Organic Ale (4.5% abv) from Morrisons.

This beer is organic and is brewed with organic British malt and organic hops from New Zealand. For those who are slightly out of touch, New Zealand has the most exciting and promising new varieties of hops in the world. The new varieties such as Nelson Sauvin and Saaz D put the US varieties to shame and readily available despite the alleged 'world hop crisis'.

Anyhow, moving back to the beer! It has a slightly sweet malt flavour, with a nice dry bitter aftertaste. the kind of beer that you want after mowing the lawn on a hot summers day (which need not apply in the UK!). Anyhow, the verdict from the brother in law? "It's ok, but not as good as Tooheys Extra Dry". You can't win them all!

Whitstable bay is brewed at Shepherd Neame's brewery in Faversham. they have a website which is pretty good. I am also on the lookout for some of their delicious Porter which started to get distributed last weekend.

Shepherd Neame Late Red

I was back in the London office again on Friday and it was pretty quiet so a few of the lads decided to sneak off early and get a few pints in. As we were taking an earlymark, we decided to go slightly further afield and hit up the Rugby Tavern - a Shepherd Neame tied house in Bloomsbury. I was highly anticipating the opportunity to get my hands on some of the house porter, but it is still being brewed in Faversham and I had to settle with a few pints of perfectly conditioned Late Red (4.5% abv) - the Autumn seasonal.

The Rugby Tavern is a small and cosy pub which had a nice log fire going, which is rare for central London. It is tucked away down a side street so you won't just stumble upon it, however it's proximity to several great pubs such as the Lamb mean that it is rarely heaving with punters and the service is both friendly and attractive. Website

Young's Winter Warmer

After Jay finally recovered a little bit, I took him to the Cabinet War rooms and the Churchill Museum and then a chaotic stroll along Regent Street. It was getting cold and late so we decide to head back west and grab a bite to eat at my former local - The Brook Green Hotel.

This is a Young's tied house that went upper class during a refurb after the smoking ban was introduced last year. Since then I have avoided the place, but I found myself in there last Saturday.

Jay was not drinking, but I got stuck into the Young's Winter Warmer (5.0% abv), the winter seasonal from Young's.

I really rate this beer - it is really nothing more than a dark special bitter but it tends to take on the character of a brown porter which I suppose suits the season well. Hopefully this is just a stepping stone in my so far unsuccessful hunt for Fullers London Porter! (Website)

The George Inn Ale

My posting has been a little sporadic lately as I am currently traveling with work. This means that I am pretty busy and don't get to blog much, but it also means that I get try some interesting beers. Anyhow as I left off, my mate Jay was in London over the weekend and I managed to take him out and show him around London. For whatever reason, sexuality or otherwise - Jay doesn't drink beer. So it was my mission to get him onto some of the local delicacies including the real ale. We ended up in Borough Markets after lunch on Friday afternoon and headed for the Market Porter. As usual it was packed, and unusual it did not have any interesting beers on. Jay is also a keen watcher of the TV series The Thirsty Traveler and knew there was a pub around the market which was featured on the show. A quick google on my trusty Nokia N95 and we were around the corner in The Georges Inn, a quaint 16th century coaching inn hidden away down a mews. This pub is a Greene King tied house and had the usual IPA, Abbot, Speckled Hen combo with one notable addition a house ale (4% abv). The beer tastes just like the IPA, but with maybe a slight caramel edge - overall not an ideal beer to introduce Jay to real ale.

For those interested, we then met up with Chris and his enormous head at the Jerusalem Tavern. I figured its decent enough (although not really my favourite in the area) and is not frequented by my boss or his mates. Jay had a pint of Mild and three pints of the Fruit (St Peters), I had a pint of Mild, a Golden and two Best Bitters. We then moved down to The Castle for a pint of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Anyhow, Jay spend the whole night, and half of Saturday driving the porcelain bus. He could not even keep water down. My wife was not impressed!

In other interesting news - Clerkenwell Shitter Deux Beers (on Hatton Wall) which I had blogged about previously, has been refurbed and is now an upmarket traditional pub. It is named the Hat and Tun which is a clever play on words. I am yet to check it out, but it received a favourable review in one of London's free commuter rags.

Rebellion Red

Today I am going to talk about another one from my Waitrose collection! Rebellion Red (4.5% abv) is a dark red coloured bitter which tasted quite similar to Fuller's ESB (which I have been drinking all afternoon). It tastes like ESB, but it has this acrid burnt taste in it, which I think comes from being a little heavy handed with 120L crystal. This beer was also really underwhelming hop wise, and I could not taste the cascade in it for the life of me.

The verdict? Well Clarkson really shat me tonight...

You can find out more about Rebellion Beers here. But I wouldn't bother!

On other news, my mate Jay is coming to visit. he is a soft cock and doesn't drink beer, so I am going to force him into the way of the ale. After seeing some of the insides of London's best pubs, I am sure I will have him converted. We are meeting my mate Chris (yeah the guy with the big head) near Farringdon for lunch on Friday. Even though I work in the area, does anybody have any suggestions on where I should take Jay? I have already ruled out the Sir John Oldcastle as its a JDW, The Mitre and a couple of others where my colleagues drink. I really don't fancy seeing them, on my day off!

Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted Blond

It's a Sunday night, I have just eaten a rewarding meal of Steak and Ale pie and I feel like a beer to cut through the heartiness of it all. I start fishing through my beer celler and pick out one of my recent Waitrose purchases. Harviestoun Bitter and Twisted (4.2% abv) is a unique but very flavoursome ale. The combination of hersbruker and challenger hops give a taste similar to a feshly sqeezed lemon. Nice zesty and refreshing.
It makes even Jeremy Clarkson bearable.
http://www.harviestoun.com/

Morrissey Fox Blonde Ale 2

After our crawl we stopped into the Pontefract Castle near Bond Street tube for a quick pint. They had Morrissey Fox Blonde Ale on cask - which was a million miles better than the bottled version. I have updated my original post here.
By the way, my previous report had over 10000 hits from google searches yesterday - well up from my usual traffic!

Oakham Ales Bishops Farewell

After leaving The Bridge House, we decided to ditch the Maida Vale and Canalside walk and head around past Sheldon Square, through Paddington to The Victoria. From there we could pick up the around Hyde Park walk. Anyhow we made it to The Victoria no dramas. The beer festival was still running and the most sensible option seemed to be Bishop's Farewell (4.6% abv) from Oakham Ales. Two Oakham beers in two days!

Anyhow the Bishop's Farewell was in very good condition. It's a pale fruity bitter with spicy hop character and was smashed down quite rapidly. At this stage we considered dumping the pub crawl and heading out to the Guy Fawkes display at Alexander Palace - which was supposed to have a German Beer Festival going on. A quick call on my handy to Rich (who was there) and the idea was off. The beer festival was a few trestle tables and a keg of Paulaner which is kind of lame. And it was pissing down raining. We decided to move on and try and find The Archery Tavern the next stop on our crawl, but after a good 15 minutes of searching we discovered that it had closed down and a pretentious French restaurant now stands in its skeleton. Faced with a serious thirst and with the gates at Hyde Park being locked, we decided to cut crawls again and head towards Edgeware Rd and pick up the Marylebone walk. A ten minute walk saw us in The Wargrave Arms - a dive of a Young's pub. We had a pint of ordinary there. Then headed to a BYO Persian restaurant just around the corner for a recharge. A couple of pint bottles of Budvar sorted us out with our special bread, hummus and lamb koftis with rice. This place got pretty busy as we went to leave and some ethnic looking guy tried to pick a fight with me as I was walking out. Luckily for the other guy, Chris noticed what was happening and pulled me away and said that beer was more important - which it was! We walked down a street a bit to the next pub from the book - The Windsor Castle. A quick look around this odd pub and we walked out again. It is full of collectibles and was patronised by weird looking locals - not my bag to drink with a bunch of stamp collectors. We powered on through to the next pub which was The Beehive. This place was a little scary too, although I managed to have a pint of past its best TT Landlord. There were a bunch of soccer lads drinking Fosters at the bar - and a Polish girl behind the bar who was making me feel increasingly more uncomfortable by giving me the seductive eye. We walked on to the next pub which the name of escapes me - it had been converted into a Gastro anyway so we gave it a miss. Powering through the rest of the walk the rest of the pubs had either closed down or were closed for the night. Slightly disappointing, but I guess that life!

Oakham website

Hogsback TEA

After The Price Albert, we ducked through some backstreets down to the canals of Little Venice and made our way into The Warwick Castle, a nice pub with a massive lamp out the front! if you look at their website, you will see their regular ale selection is kind of bog standard and the guest ale they had on was Hogs Back TEA (4.2% abv) which we reluctantly ordered. TEA stands for Traditional English Bitter and is a standard best bitter. I found that the beer had a cloying residual sweet flavour in it, which is not really to my liking. For this reason I won't ramble on for too long! Check out the pub, but beware the beer is a little lame.

from here we crossed over the Canal and strolled into The Bridge House, a pub which is frequented by my wife's colleagues. A potentially good pub, which is ruined by a half assed gastro makeover and a theatre upstairs. Ale choice was Brakspears Bitter which you can read about here. They also had a few unusual German beers in tap, including a Kolsch if you are that way inclined. This pub also had a curtain around the toilet door, I could see no functional purpose in this furnishing!

Palmers Copper Ale

On Saturday, I met up with my mate Chris (featured here, and yes the guy with the huge head!) and we decided to undertake a gulp and grumble mission starting in Maida Vale. After navigating around a posh looking tramp (yes he looked posh and spoke in Queens' English) we made a beeline for The Warrington Hotel, a marvelous Victorian Pub which is now owned by Gordon Ramsey. The reason we chose this place as we decided to start our crawl by following the Maida Vale and Canalside walk from CAMRA's London Pub Walks book.

Anyhow after pulling up a stool at the bar we noticed the handpumps had the usual suspects. London Pride, Greene king IPA and Adnams Broadside - not particularly inspiring. The barman told me they were about to put a guest beer on, Palmer's Copper Ale (3.7% abv) so we asked him to make hast and bring us two pints. This beer is a nice session bitter, and it was in good condition but its hardly a beer to get excited about. Anyhow as it was our first pint it was all over in about 10 minutes flat and we were on to our next stop - The Price Albert. Those of you who have not been to here, really need to check this place out. The original Victorian fixtures and 7 foot snob screens are still in place. Sadly half the pub is being turned into a fancy restaurant and the only ale on was Young's ordinary. No need to rehash over that again.

Palmers website.

Ringwood Fortyniner

Well with the wife away, I decided that I should have at least one night in for the week so I headed to the new Waitrose at Shepherds Bush to stock up on supplies to make for a good night in. I managed to pick up a large coiled Cumberland Sausage, mashed potato, a large Yorkshire pudding and a selection of ales from the booze section. One of these ales was Fortyniner (4.9% abv) from Ringwood Brewery. The name is pretty self explanatory considering the alcohol concentration. The beer is a copper coloured bitter which I thought would go down well with my bangers and mash, and sure thing it did!

Anyhow for those interested I whipped up some onion gravy and served up my sausage on a bed of mash potato in a giant Yorkshire pudding. Awesome.... the simple things are always the best.

Website

Oakham Ales Inferno

It's Friday lunchtime and a couple of the lads in the office fancy heading out for a pint. We had not been to ye Olde Mitre for a while so we headed down in that direction. Walking in - nothing has changed. It's supposed to be one of the best/oldest (CAMRA types tend to interchange these words) pubs in London, but I do not really rate it. It's musty and the service is not very friendly unless you are a regular, plus they insist on pulling the beers through a sparkler (I know they will take it off if you ask, I'm just lazy). Anyhow as I had a meeting to get back to I ordered a pint of Oakham Ales Inferno (4.0% abv). This was a tangy fruity pint which went down really easy and has a lasting satisfying bitterness. This actually aided me in smashing the beer down in about three mouthfuls so i could haul ass back the office to join the heated teleconference. Lets just say that the beer was much more exciting than the meeting!

http://www.oakhamales.com/

Jennings Sneck Lifter 2

When I first covered Sneck Lifter (5.1% abv) way back in April, I found the beer to be slightly unremarkable in bottled form. I could not relate my own tasting experience with others that I had found online (ok, this is true to a point, but I was probably not as serious in my posting back then as nobody read my blog!). Anyhow, whilst I was in ticker mode down at The Victoria last Wednesday night I managed to quaff a pint fresh from the cask. What can I say, it's like a totally different beer...... The first thing I would like to point out is that I have been quite harsh on Jenning's beers that I have had previously - and I have carried this through to commenting on others blogs as well. I think this stems from the fact that the brand is owned by Marston's and I think that the bottled beers are brewed under licence rather than up in Cumbria.

The cask version however is full of flavour. I am going to be bold here and suggest that the real deal (i.e. casks) are brewed in Cumbria and not in Burton-on-Trent. The beer is complex and has a strong smokey coffee flavour which works really well.

Anyhow, once again if you would like to find out more, just check out the website.

For what its worth, I went on and continued to drink Trade Winds till we got kicked out at closing time.

Moorhouse Premium Bitter

Tied house beer festivals bring out the worst in beer geeks like me. I can't be satiated when I am onto a good thing - I always have to keep digging. I can understand how people become hardcore tickers, and browsing through the archives of my blog sometimes make me feel like a ticker! I think I will mix the format of this blog up come the new year, but for now it stays. It was my new years resolution after all.

Anyhow, it was Rich's shout and after harassing Dillon (The Ray Quinn look-a-like who runs The Victoria) we settled on two pints of Moorhouse Premium Bitter (3.7% abv). The beer is a amber coloured session quaffer and is smooth with a hoppy flavour. think John Smiths with a malty smoothness and a hoppy aftertaste and you will be close to the mark. Not a remarkable, but very drinkable and probably better than similar beers such as Brakspear Bitter. Well it doesn't have that sulphery smell that the Brakspear Bitter has.

Moorhouse has been brewing since 1865 and has been owned by such legends as Thomas Fawcett (the maltster). More history can be found on the website.

Cairngorm Trade Winds

We caught the tube around from Farringdon to Paddington and and quickly hiked passed the tourist trap pubs near Praed St and down to one of my favourite Fuller's tied houses - The Victoria. For those of you who have not been there, do yourself a favour and check it out.

We were hoping top catch the London Porter but instead landed ourselves in the middle of a month long guest beer festival which was occupying all but the London Pride pump.

We asked the young South African, Ray Quinn look-a-like landlord Dillon which beer he recommended, he replied he doesn't like ale. After ripping into him for five minutes about his favoured Castle lager, we finally ordered Cairngorm Trade Winds (4.2% abv) a delicious summer blonde ale which is hopped with perle and seasoned with elderflower. This combo results in a strong citrus flavour which works really well. The overall impression is like a clean wheat like APA - without the cascade bite. An awesome beer that I really like, and I am sure you will too.

Website

Baron's Black Wattle Superior

As we strolled along Hatton Garden towards Farringdon Station, I noticed the beer festival signs on the window of the local Wetherspoons place - The Sir John Oldcastle. For those who have never been to this pub, I will spare a comprehensive description. Just think tacky fruit machines, pensioners, tramps, sticky carpet, smell of sick and/or urine - You get the picture, its a dive. However, for one reason or another I was drawn to a beer from my Homeland, Baron's Black Wattle Superior (4.8% abv a bit weaker than the Aussie version which is 5.8%). Now initially when I heard (via my Uni Alumni letter, yes I went to uni with the Baron's), that it was going to be brewed by Marston's, I immediately thought that I would give it a miss. Nothing good comes out of that place. But curiosity got the better of me. I have had this beer before, back in late 2005 or early 2006 whilst in Sydney, and for those of you who don't know their Australian operations are brewed under licence by AIB. It's basically an Amber Ale with a nutty edge which is supplied by the roast wattle seeds. Surprisingly, this beer was actually ok, which is amazing due to where it was brewed. Still I did risk my own personal hygiene and moral standing by venturing into this establishment. I work around the corner, I was lucky a colleague didn't see me!

Website

Dark Star Best

Ok, we finally found the beer we settled into for the night! Dark Star Best (4.0% abv) is a very drinkable tasty best bitter that in a blind tasting could be mistaken for a Mild. For a beer like this, the roast flavours that come through are unbelievable, and it was brewery fresh!

I will definitely be trying to find this beauty again! I also think its a lot better than Hophead - which I do not really find that hoppy!

Anyhow, thats enough blogging for one day. I'm off to meet my mate Richard at The Gunmakers before we head of on another adventure!

http://www.darkstarbrewing.co.uk/

I would also like to thank the guys down at The Castle for their generous donation of pump clips. If anybody else would like to give me some, I'm now accepting!

Salopian Golden Thread

Our search for a session beer continued! Due to the failure -The barman recommended Salopian Golden Thread (5.9% abv)- which is a straw coloured bitter. Golden Thread is the Salopian breweries oldest beer (well its 12 since they only opened in 1996) which is way before the recent trend of golden ales. This beer was insanely easy to drink and had a dry hoppy flavour. A session on this would have turned ugly! Our quest for a session beer continued!

BTW - The Salopian Brewery was established at The Old Dairy on the outskirts of mediaeval Shrewsbury in 1995. Since then the brewery has become synonymous with the production of top quality consistent beers.
The brewery has had to increase capacity twice to keep up with demand, with production now topping 80 barrels a week.