Middle Class Obesession ?

Can't resist sharing this. Apologies for not putting it into context but I guess you all read the newspapers ....

Signing Off .....

Taking a break ..... TTFN

Pig's Ear Beer Festival

Quick post as I am rushing around this week......

CAMRA's legendary London winter beer festival (known as Pig's Ear) makes it 26th appearance this week at Ocean in Hackney from Tuesday to Saturday this week.

Neither the town of Hackney nor the actual night club style venue were initially very well received by London's drinkers when the event was resurrected a couple of years ago after many years at Stratford.

However, last year, the numbers were up and plenty more beer was drunk so people are slowly getting used to it and clearly having a good time.

I don't think you can beat it for its range of winter, Christmas and one-off festival special beers.

I will be down there tomorrow as I am chairing the CBOB panel that is judging the barley wine category; mmmm barley wine at 10am.

Enjoy it everyone.

More info and beer list available on the ELAC Camra website here.

White Horse Parsons Green

I think I may have developed an allergy to hops. I had three pints yesterday but boy, do I know I had a drink.

Admittedly, the three pints were taken at The White Horse Old Ale Festival and were mostly in the region of 6% - 9% so, I guess that makes it the equivalent of six or seven normal strength pints. I will have to be dry now until Wednesday as there is a big week ahead.

The White Horse at Parsons Green has hosted the Old Ale Festival in the last week of November for the last 27 years so you would expect them to be getting the hang of it but this year's list must be the biggest and best.

Among the highlights for me was Thornbridge Raven, a beer you might call a black IPA, brewed with black and chocolate malt but with a generous hop bitterness that balances the roast malt character. A 6.6% sharpener.

My overall winner for the day was Sierra Nevada, Celebration. A cask beer brewed in California and released for Thanksgiving and Christmas each year to celebrate the season. A rich beer with a spicy hop aroma, a complex taste of orange, with hint of honey and almonds finished with a long warming, fruity aftertaste. A lovely 6.8% beer as good as you come to expect from Sierra Nevada.

Some people do say that the WH is a bit expensive but overall my three pints cost less than £15 - less than I would have spent on a session of six or seven pints in the pub and this for rarities that I probably won't see again. Very good value in my opinion.

The festival continues throughout the weekend. I recommend a visit.

Portsmouth Pubs

I seem to be a bit off the pace at the moment having spent much of the last two weeks out-of-town and away from my desk.

Last week saw us spend a couple of days in Portsmouth where my favourite son is studying. Hit the tourist trails and experienced the usual ups and downs of the local pubs.

Gun Wharf Quays is the newest, most recently spruced up part of Portsmouth. It is a re-development of bars, restaurants, nightclub, outlet shopping and apartments. It is a happening place with some good vibes. It is common that the traditional pub in places like this is an All Bar One or a Yates. Here we find the Old Custom House a large Fuller's pub converted from old naval office building. Gales brewery was a backward company in many ways but this is an example of the vision and ambition that could have saved the company as an independent outfit. Fuller's have inherited a great pub here. It is large and multi-roomed but still bright and inviting. The staff give the impression that they are there to make sure your visit is as enjoyable as possible. We have enjoyed a meal here on a couple of visits. It is a pub where you get the impression that people are trying hard. The wide range of Fuller's beers is an add-on for me and the beer has been good on all three visits. I think the pub has had problems with consistency in the past and as such does not appear in the Good beer Guide.

The next pub, venturing towards Southsea, is The Hole in the Wall, Portsmouth CAMRA pub of the year, and the home of Oakleaf Hole Hearted beer. I enjoyed a pint of porter here and my wife and son had the Weston's perry - both good. I was concerned to see most people drinking pints of squash - lemon and orange. On further research, the orange proved to be Cheddar Valley cider, a brighter cider you will not see and the lemon was alcoholic ginger beer. Unfortunately I tried neither as we were hot footing it to the next place.

The Florence Arms, further into Southsea is a friendly pub that focuses on cider. A list of about forty bottled and cask ciders was offered. Whitehead perry was chosen by the lightweights, I had a lovely pint of an Oakleaf seasonal beer - a long name that I cannot remember (and does not appear on their website - was I dreaming ?).

Onwards and upwards to the Fifth Hants Volunteer Arms on the main Southsea drinking stretch, Albert Road, a cosmopolitan, vibrant if slightly scruffy street. I was expecting a Fuller's pub from the Good Beer Guide description. I was surprised as we approached because it must be one of the only Fuller's pubs that has not received the post Gales makeover. When we entered it was clear that this pub was in dire need of some tender loving care and attention. The furniture and carpets were filthy, the welcome non-existent and the beer, like the rest of the pub, tired. This small pub has probably suffered in this long, deep recession and really does need, what I think is now commonly called in the trade, "tenant support". I hope it gets a leg up soon because this is a small, traditional, street corner community pub that is fast becoming lost in this country. I know tenants have obligations under their leases but this sort of run-down ambiance does nothing good for a company as widely regarded as Fullers. A Good Beer Guide pub for many years on the evidence of many certificates on show but it must be in serious danger of being omitted in future unless it pulls its socks up.

The evening ended watching the football in the Leopold, a modern pub also on Albert Road. Excellent pints of Oakleaf Hole Hearted made the Thierry Henry handball even more funny.

So there you have it, a trot around the pubs of Pompey. Some highs and some lows. Mainly good beer, great choice of local beers and cider and reasonable prices.

Good Beer Guide

I like the Good Beer Guide. I always buy the latest edition. I have it on my sat-nav, I use it on every trip. Over the years, I have helped with surveys, editing and distribution - I trust the formula.

However, every now and then it lets me down. Last week, I came across the most dirty pub I have been in for years. The furniture was filthy, the carpets too. It has had no investment for years despite being owned by one of the regional breweries. Sometimes these pubs do make it into the GBG if the beer is of sufficient quality to overcome all of these deficiencies. After all it is the GOOD BEER Guide. On this occasion the beer was close to being undrinkable too.

I suppose the guide covers about 5,000 pubs so sometimes things will slip in depending on each local CAMRA branch. I would be surprised to see this pub in the Guide again unless it receives some significant improvements - both to the decor and the beer.

I hope I have more luck this week. My research continues.

Double Beer Festival

On Saturday there was a joint beer festival between the Bull at Horton Kirby, Kent's CAMRA pub of the year and the Dartford Working Mens' Club, the Club of the year for Kent.

Both bars had twenty or so beers available and transport was laid on between the two - a ride of twenty minutes or so - an excellent idea that should be applauded and supported.

I enjoyed three pints of Gales Seafarers at the Fullers results presentation at breakfast on Friday morning and decided to hot foot it down to Kent for the beer festival.

Idiot ! I did not check my diary - or my London Drinker - for if I had I would have realised that the beer festival was only on the Saturday.

Nevertheless I enjoyed three pints of great beer at the Dartford Working Mens' Club at £2.05 a pint - the Marble Pint and York Centurion's Ghost were both excellent choices. My plan was then to get the bus to HK but I ran out of steam and headed for home with my tail betweeen my legs. A lesson learned the hard way.

A dead parrot ?

Given that this blog has been fairly well received in the eighteen months that I have been working on it, and continues to attract an increasing readership, I thought it worth spreading my quill a little farther afield and see if I have the capability of some more formal writing projects.

I had a few ideas, one of which I have worked on in more detail in the last couple of weeks. I shared it with someone I trust and we agreed that it was worthy of further research and work.

I am fast learning the ups and downs of the publishing world. My proposal has been tweaked at least four times so far and the pitch is now ready for a wider audience.

I am not going to elaborate further at this stage as the project is still very much a work-in-progress. One thing is for sure, I will give it my best shot to see if I have the confidence and the ability to become a "real" beer writer.

Roebuck on Richmond Hill

The view of the Thames from the top of Richmond Hill has been celebrated for centuries and now has protected status. Read more here.


This is also the view from one of Richmond's most historic pubs, The Roebuck.
Get to the pub early, sit in the window, and the view, while you sup a pint of London Pride or one of the three guest beers, is priceless.

Alternatively, on a fine day, take your beer onto the terrace to enjoy the panorama in its full splendour. The painting copied above is by JMW Turner, a resident of Twickenham, painted in 1815; the ones below are my own take on such a delightful setting.

Prize Old Ale

One of the highlights of the recent Willoughby Arms Halloween Beer Festival was a rare cask of Fullers, Gales Prize Old Ale.

The tasting notes in the festival program were written when Roger Protz was a boy, describing hand-corked bottles and wooden fermenters and really relate to a beer from a bygone age.

The story of the new version of Prize Old Ale is as follows :

Fullers acquired the beer when they took over Gales of Horndean in 2007. They also acquired a final batch of forty barrels of the beer that had been brewed by Gales and was being matured. Fullers took this beer back to Chiswick and launched it in bottle last year. The beer had a distinct, overpowering sourness reminiscent of the Belgian lambic style beers.

Fullers first effort at brewing the beer was last year. The 9.5% barley wine style beer was brewed in Chiswick in 2008 and blended with the very last drop - a small amount - of the old Horndean brewed beer thus retaining the provenance and continuity of the Gales beer, imparting some infected tartness but not allowing the lambic character to be overpowering. This beer was then matured in the brewery for a further year.

The beer was brewed again in 2009 and has just been blended 60:40 with the matured beer. This is the beer that has just been launched in bottle (and ten casks). The remainder of the new beer will now be blended with a small amount of the old beer and further matured until next year. A real labour of love for John Keeling, Fullers Brewing Director.

John provided me with some tasting notes for the new beer (via Twitter, hence the brevity) :

Prize Old Ale - aroma lots of fruit,sour cherries - flavour tart fruity sherbet edge balanced with malty sweetness

My own tasting notes at the Willoughby suggest a dark ruby colour, small tight head and a spicy hop aroma. Some alcohol evident on the nose. A full bodied beer, with a sweetness of fruitcake and wine gums with notes of raisins, leather and tobacco and a little sour tartness. A long spicy hop finish with a lingering alcoholic warmth.

The beer labelled the 2008 vintage will be available soon at the shop at the Fullers Brewery - which will also be getting an on-line presence in the very near future.