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.

Summer Lightning

It seems to be the beer of the moment, Summer Lightning (5% abv) from the Hop Back Brewery seems to have saturated all the pubs in Clerkenwell of late. I have enjoyed a pint at The Mitre (with sparkler attached), The Gunmakers and also as a real ale in a bottle variant at home.

The beer is a pale, dry ale which tastes like a bitter but looks like a lager.

Out of the three pints I had, all of them tasted completely different! The best and most tasty pint was from The Mitre, I don't know why, but it was really fresh. They do sell a large volume so it may just be an age thing. The pint's I grabbed from the Gunmakers were nice, but were showing some cardboard tastes, which stem from oxidation. Maybe this is due to The Gunmakers location, I doubt they get the turnover of beer that The Mitre gets and it may have been a couple of days old or towards the end of the barrel. Finally the bottle I had tasted the worst. It was pretty astringent and had the taste of cooked corn, a sure fire sign of DMS.

Summer Lightning is an interesting beer, but what i have found most interesting is the change in character and taste between pubs and also between cask and bottle. The beer is considered a trend setter in the real ale community being the first true summer ale and is considered to be one of the most awarded beers in England. Website

Edit: 08/09/08

I think I may have been a bit hard on The Gunmakers. After having a quick pint in the packed pub on Friday afternoon, I witnessed a healthy turnover of ale (although the Mitre probably does turn over more - which was my original point). As it stands, I much prefer The Gunmakers to The Mitre for a number of reasons and I have yet to have a bad pint there. I just found the Summer Lightning to have a slight oxidation (it was till nice and far from stale). In all fairness, this is could also be due to a number of factors prior to the beer arriving at the pub in the first place.

Summer Perle

On Saturday afternoon I headed out to Kent to catch up with a mate of mine Neil who is about to emigrate to Australia. As it was getting on the afternoon and we fancied a feed we headed out to a cosy country pub near him called The White Swan where I opted for a Hearty Ploughmans lunch and a pint of Summer Perle (3.8% abv) from the Westerham Brewery. Summer Perle is a summer golden ale similar in style to the other summer ales I have been coming across over the last few weeks. The beer is a pale golden colour with medium bitterness and designed to be consumed at a slightly cooler temperature. Westerham originally brewed Summer Perle for the 30th Annavesary (Pearl Annaversary) of the CAMRA Canterbury Beer Festival where it was a sell out. The popularity of the beer was again demosntrated at the Maidstone Beer Festival and the beer has now been added to the portfolio as a limited special summer seasonal. The beer is quite dry and imparts a fruity, floral flavours which are derived from dry hopping with the Perle variety of hop (hence the name). Overall a nice summer beer but probably not up to par with some of the other beers of similar style. Website:http://www.westerhambrewery.co.uk/

Birrifico del Golfo

Whilst dining in Monterosso I finally struck what I considered to be micro brewed gold! Birrifico del Golfo (5.0% abv) is a Golden Ale brewed in nearby Le Spezia. The beer is a hazy golden colour with a slight cloudiness due to either astringency from the mash (ie leaching of insoluble tannins in to the wort) or yeast. I personally think that the haze can be attributed to both as their is a slight astringent taste upfront. Besides this shortcoming the beer was essentially pretty good! I can't find any more information besides this as its probably been knocked up in some amateurs backyard, but then who cares!

Fullers Discovery

My mate Chris's local is the Approach Tavern on Approach Road in Bethnal Green. Thoroughly tired out from our crawl we retired here for some tucker and a few final beers to end the session. The tipple of choice was Fullers Discovery (3.9% abv), a summer blond, golden ale which is extremely dry and refreshing with a stack of wheat malt character. I never really liked discovery previously, but I have to admit that the taste has grown on me. There are some negative aspects of the beer though and some of this comes from Fullers own marketing department. Last year there was a bit of an advertising campaign pushing Discovery with 'Ice and a Slice'! This refereed to the beer being served on ice with a slice of lemon or lime in the top. I think the idea was to snag a little bit of the carbonated cider market which was starting to boom around the same time. The thought of beer on ice makes me shudder! Website

Brewers Gold

Less than a block away from the Florist is a nice little boozer which has recently been restored called the Camel. Chris and I had worked up a bit of an appetite at this stage and were on the look out for a feed and heard good things about the pies at the Camel. Much to our disappointment the kitchen was closed when we rocked in, so we settled for a pint of Brewers Gold (4.0% abv) from the Crouch Vale brewery instead! crouch Gold is from the new school of British golden ales and won the award of Supreme Champion Beer of Britain at the 2005 Great British Beer Festival. The beer is an easy drinker and again is in a similar vein to Adnams Explorer and James Squire Golden Ale. Obviously this is the way summer beers are going in 2008. I like it! I'll definitely be tracking this beer down again in the future.

St George Heritage Ale

A colleage of mine and myself went for a tipple on St Georges day at 'The Castle' just of High Holborn. The Castle is unique in that it always has a good selection of well kept guest ales in a location which pretty much just caters for the lunch and after work crowd. Most of the pubs in the area tend to offer the more mass produced bitters and their quality is usually dubious, however the Castle seems to always come up with the goods. Being St Georges day, we decided to have a crack at the St Georges Heritage Ale (4.9% abv) by the Coach House brewery. Now in general, I make it a rule to avoid beers which are just one off gimmick's such as 'Striker' for the 2006 soccer world cup, and 'Swing low' for the 2007 Rugby world cup as they are generally rubbish. The St George heritage ale on the other hand was a pleasant surprise. The beer was a straw colour with a nice not too bitter but creamy finish. A nice well balanced beer with citrusy hop notes which would be better enjoyed through the summer months than in April, but hey I was just glad to enjoy it at all! Website:

Sharp's Cornish Coaster

Sharp's beers seem to be popping up a pubs throughout London. I'm not sure of the exact reasoning for this, but I assume they have a marketing and distribution agreement with one of the bigger players as Doom Bar seems to be available nearly everywhere now. Cornish Coaster (3.6% abv) is a golden coloured bitter which has been brewed as a session beer to celebrate for Cornwall's fishing heritage. The beer itself is not the most balanced of beers with the citrus armoa totally overpowering whatever malt profile and bitterness are supposed to be there. To this end the beer is a little dissapointing as the aroma give the impression that the beer is going to be a big beer. As a session beer, the beer is ok and will keep you sober'ish at 3.6% for more than a few pints. I probably wouldn't have this beer again, but if aroma is your thing, then check it out.

http://www.sharpsbrewery.co.uk/our-beers/other-beers/

Brains SA Gold

From the Cockpit, Chris and I headed up to Bow Lane, behind St Pauls and settled into a pub which was serving beers from the Welsh Brains Brewery. Rather than have a pint of 'Ordinary' Brains, I opted for SA Gold (4.7% abv) a rich Welsh golden ale. SA Original is more commonly known as Original Cardiff Skull Attack (for unknown reasons?? hehe), and I was hoping that this stuff would follow suit. However, the beer turned out to be slightly disappointing and tasted pretty much like flat lager. I guess it would be a good beer to turn Lagerheads on to real ale, but then that doesn't say much! The most interesting thing about this particular pint was the high population of Essex Wide Boys trying to pick up young attractive city office Secretaries. The young sectretaries themselves are out to score with young bullish multimillion pound a year city boy trader types (who the wide boys are pretentding to be) and hence a vicious cycle of desperation starts, much to our entertainment. Also worthy of note are the obviously underage girls out and about totally smashed of their heads. I'm sorry, there is nothing attractive about a 13 year old wearing her Mum's sluttiest outfit, overdone with makeup , and puking in the gutter!
Anyway SA Gold official website: here.

James Squire Golden Ale

This bottle of James Squire Golden Ale (4.5 % abv) I managed to scam out of my mate Greg for the purpose of this blog! Formerly a seasonal brew it seems to have been added to the full time brewring roster and most likely shifted production from the Malt Shovel Brewery to the massive Lion-Nathan industrial site at Lidcombe. The beer is attempting to be an American Pale Ale and has the right aroma with Amarillo hops on the nose but misses heavily in the bittering department to make the beer slightly unbalanced. Don't get me wrong, the beer goes down a treat on a hot late summers afternoon in the outback but its no Little Creatures Pale Ale or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Again as the beer is relatively new there is not a whole lot to report. I enjoyed it, but I don't think it lives up to James Squire's real gems such as the Porter, Pilsner and IPA. Website.