St Peters Cream Stout

Last Friday evening my mate Rich and I embarked on a quick pub-crawl around the Smithfield’s market area. Our first stop was the Jerusalem, a shop front that has been turned into a St Peters brewery tied house that is quite popular on a Friday evening. The beer here is served from small Firkins from behind the bar so you get the beer literally straight from the barrel. We decided that we would keep in with the winter season and opted for the St Peters Cream Stout which is delicious stout with strong chocolate and coffee notes. Surprisingly this stout didn’t whack a strong alcoholic taste considering its 6.5% abv. I highly recommend trying this beer draught, and I assume that it is just as good in the bottled variety. I am also looking forward to getting back to the Jerusalem tavern on a less busy night so I can have a yarn with the locals.

St Germain and the 'JT'

We have been having a series of all day departmental meetings at work recently. To celebrate the conclusion of these we let off some steam at St Germain pseudo French restaurant near Farringdon Station. Now these sorts of venues are the ones I aim to avoid - usually at all costs. As it was an all expenses paid affair, it would have been rude not to attend.

The beer list included the usual Belgian suspects - no surprises there. An inclusion that I had not seen before however was Vedett (5.2%abv). This beer is brewed by the masters that also produce Duvel and it comes in a similar style bottle. This is where the similarities to Duvel end. The beer is thin and dry and really, really bland in the Dortmunder export style. It tastes exactly the same as Carlton Cold - hardly a complement. Best avoided.

To refresh my taste buds and actually deliver something worthy, I scanned the beer menu. CAMRA activists would be most disappointed at the lager dominated selection with Chimey, Duvel and Hoegaarden rounding out a token ale selection.

I made a bold decision and ordered Brooklyn Lager (5.2% abv) for my team members. This beer is a nice Vienna style lager that I could easily spend a long time raving and waffling on about, so I won't. I will recommend that everyone tries this beer, even if you are a CAMRA activist. Once upon a time you could source it in Tesco, but those days are gone and you need to refine your search a little now, but it's still out there.

The food was ok, but hardly worth raving about, I also had some wine which I found rather one dimensional. I won't rant about that too much either.

After dinner a few of us went around the corner for a few more pints at The Jerusalem Tavern. In general this is a nice little pub, but I am continually finding it more and more over-rated and the beer going progressively downhill. I had two pints of the St Peter's: Organic Best Bitter and Ruby Red Ale. Both were rather uninspiring and not well kept. The Organic Best Bitter was a fresh cask and it was flat as a tack and about 15 degrees - way too warm. What happened to cellar temperature?

I am not going to head back to the 'JT' any more, there seem to be better options in the area and I can afford to be fussy. Also, I question how they get their beer up from the cellar? Do they have an electric pump moving it? I am obviously amused by thinking about these simple things.

At least I had some people to drink with though, much more exciting than my previous Friday night!

http://www.vedett.com/

http://www.brooklynbrewery.com/

An 'Outsiders' view to CAMRA and the Good Beer Guide

I have been on the verge of joining CAMRA for some time, but I have finally decided that I'm not going to bother. While CAMRA has brought real ale back from the depth of despair, it seems that their mission is complete and now they campaign for marginal issues which basically alienate the industry that supports the products that they are so passionate about; The Pubs. For instance, the 'Take it to the top' petition is a trivial campaign that insinuates that one in four pub landlords are deliberately ripping off drinkers. The linked article states that the statistics were generated by a CAMRA survey, hardly what I would call an independent study. Campaigns such as this clearly end up alienating pub landlords who in turn may think twice before deciding to stock real ale. The reality of the situation is that real ale costs more to keep, prepare and serve than lager or nitrokegged bitter and also has a smaller profit margin. Obviously most landlords are passionate about real ale, otherwise from a purely economic and business viewpoint combined with an active campaign branding them cheats, why would they bother?

Secondly the reserved use of the term 'beer' by CAMRA. This is something that has been a minor annoyance to me over the last few days. The blogosphere is currently awash with reports about how the CAMRA publication 'The Good Beer Guide' is produced. I find this process fascinating and appreciate that fellow bloggers such as Tandleman and Maeib have documented the process and how it works with their local CAMRA branches. My issues here is in regards to a discussion raised by Boak and Bailey. The post itself is civil and informative and reflects my own fascination with the process, but when I questioned the inclusion of real ale only in the 'Good Beer Guide' it opened up the true closed minded, elitist nature of the CAMRA commenter's on that particular post.

The official website of The Good Beer Guide states "The best place to find good pubs and good beer" where I interpret beer to mean both ale and lager. I understand that CAMRA stands for campaign for real ale, and that is the interest of the consumer group but surely the word 'beer' implies both ale and lager. This is pure ignorance on the part of CAMRA and in reality the guide should be called the 'Good Ale Guide'. Another issue is the indecision of what the guide actually is. Is it a guide to real ale, or a guide to pubs? Different commenter's on the post in question seem confused. I had a skim through at my local WHS at lunch and basically it features pubs and mentions the real ales served. I see that The Jerusalem Tavern who stock the amazing Moravka lager is listed, but there is no mention of the British produced lager in the guide.

Back over at Boak and Bailey, one commenter Tyson makes the following point;

"CAMRA is an organisation dedicated to promoting real ale. The GBG is a by product of that-it was started and its purpose still is to help find real ale pubs. It is not close minded for an organisation to fulfill its remit-it is normal. The Catholic Church does not print a directory of Anglican churches, nor does the AA print the Good Train Guide"

Interesting enough, but neither The Catholic Church or AA publish a guide which is published under a blanket title such as 'Guide to Christianity' or 'Definitive transport in the UK', which is akin to the the CAMRA title 'Good Beer Guide'.

Finally Tandleman pipes up with;

"As Tyson says it is interesting to hear an outside view, albeit one that seems to miss the point".

Sadly it seems that the CAMRA folk commentating have missed the point. I understand the issue fully, but as an 'outsider' the issue is obviously too complicated for me. Really sometimes I feel like I am shouting at people with hands over their ears!.

I could keep on ranting, but I really couldn't be bothered. I'll speak with my wallet and not join CAMRA. Besides the benefit of not being stereotyped as a plastic bag carrying, bearded freak, I'd rather not let my money go towards pointless campaigns like 'Take it to the top', which inadvertently accuses the industry I like blogging about. I think I'll stick with CAMEL.

Photo atrribution to 46137 @ Flickr

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.