Foraging with a Badger

When you're a delinquent blogger who hasn't posted for weeks there is always something nagging your conscience to make sure the blog is not consigned to history -be it a great day out, a memorable beer or a new book to tell people about.

As long ago as the middle of September I was invited for a day of foraging with the lovely folk at Hall and Woodhouse Brewery. I was unsure what relevance this had to beer and as it turned out very little but a good time was had by all.

Here are some of the things I learnt on that day :

The day began at Weymouth, Chesil Beach with a glass of Forager's Nip and a chocolate brownie made with Badger, Poacher's Choice beer. A heady start to a the day.

{Forager's Nip : fill a jar with blackberries, top up to half way with sugar, fill with whisky, shake once a day for a week, store in a dark place for a year. Simples !}

Armed with a pair of scissors and a tub of salt you can gather a feast by the seashore.

It pays to be with an expert and we were accompanied by John Wright who is the country's leading authority on wild food.

Check out his book, Edible Seashore, which is part of the River Cottage Handbook series - a practical guide to foraging for the rich pickings to be found on Britain's seashore.




After a morning gathering Marsh Samphire, Wild Thyme, Sea Beet and Wormwood it was time for lunch.

On the strength this quick lunch the food at the Crab House Cafe now has my hearty approval and a mental note is made to revisit sometime.


Badger England's Own with its white grape and elderflower flavors was a delicious accompaniment to the meal - going especially well with a fresh raw oyster farmed on-site.









Included for aesthetic purposes only. You can take the boy out of West London .....














To forage for razor clams visit the tidal waters as the tide is coming in, look for two small holes in the sand, pour in some table salt and the clam will poke his head up.

Grab the head, hold and he will release himself from the sand.

Put him in your pot for your feast later.














If you rely on your foraging efforts for sustenance you are going to be hungry.

Even the lone crab found in the pots that John had previously set in the waters did not really make a meal for eight though it was great fun getting the stove out and cooking it all up on the beach. No beer to go with it unfortunately (#PRfail)

This proved to be a good starter before the delicious meal that had been laid on at our hotel The Bull in Bridport - again this place has my recommendation and I hope to revisit sometime.

Copious amounts of Badger beers in the splendid company of Mark Woodhouse and his brewing team made a perfect end to the day.


Now, here's some of the really important stuff I discovered on the day :

Hall & Woodhouse have just invested almost £5 million in a new brewery, largely funded by the sale of some land to the side of a pub in Horsham. The brewery is just about finished and will be brewing the range of badger beers imminently. A significant once-in-a-lifetime investment and demonstrable proof of a family's continued commitment to the UK brewing industry.

I am often confused by the range of Badger beers so now I have an aide-memoir. Here is yours :

First Gold (best bitter, malty, orange and spicy)
Tanglefoot (stronger with hints of melon and pear character)
Fursty Ferret (tawny, amber ale with delicate hop)
England's Own (white grape and elderflower)
Golden Glory (peach and melon)
Golden Champion (hint of elderflower)
Hopping Hare (refreshing, hoppy and well balanced)
Blandford Flyer (ginger)
Poacher's Choice (dark with licorice and damson)

Thanks to James Peat for the photography.

Thanks to all at Badger for their hospitality.

Red Lion, Barnes - Beer Dinner

This evening looks like it will be a lot of fun with our favourite beer-world double act.

The Red Lion is a traditional Fullers pub in Barnes, SW13 with a great reputation for both beer and food.

I can't miss this and my tickets are already secured.

There is likely to be strong demand, so I suggest you reserve tickets soon if you wish to come along.

The Red Lion is on the bus route between Barnes and Hammersmith so both those stations are easily accessible. I'm going to walk !


From the press release :

Two local beer experts will be going head to head at The Red Lion in Barnes to persuade foodie customers who is the best beer matcher of them all.

Leading beer writer Melissa Cole and Chiswick brewery Fuller’s Head Brewer John Keeling have been challenged by The Red Lion’s managers Angus Mckean & Claire Morgan to match beers to a specially created menu. Both choices will then be served on the night with customers voting on their favourite match. Neither John nor Melissa will be aware of the other’s choices.

The ‘Battle of the Sexes’ event, designed provocatively to ‘find out who has the most taste – men or women’ will take place on Friday October 14th.

Angus said: “I know Melissa and John often have heated discussions about beer – how to describe the flavours, what tastes best with what – so I decided it was time to really put them to the test. I have no doubt our customers will get to try some amazing beer and food combinations – and they can watch the fireworks while they eat!”

Angus and Melissa have put together a mouth-watering (and belt-busting) six course menu including oysters steeped in Belgian lambic beer (made with wild yeasts), sweet potato and yam baskets with slow roast pork belly in plum sauce and pear tarte tatin with homemade Fuller’s Past Masters Double Stout ice cream. You’ll have to buy a ticket to find out the beer matches suggested by John and Melissa.

Head Brewer John Keeling said: “Beer is often overlooked as a match with food, but actually it often works better with many dishes than wine. And with finely crafted beers available from both the UK and abroad, now is the time to experiment. Forget about malbecs and muscadets, and try some porter and pale ales!”

Tickets to the event on October 14th are available from The Red Lion Barnes at £25 per head. Please call Angus on 020 8748 2984 or email redlionbarnes@fullers.co.uk

World's Best Beers

One of my failings as a beer blogger is that I sometimes enjoy someone else's hospitality and then fail to tell them or tell the wider blog world how much I enjoyed it. It then nags and nags my conscience like a stone in my shoe. I am about to remove one of those stones.

Ages and ages ago I took my fill of beer at the launch of World's Best Beers by Ben McFarland. I then gratefully received a review copy of the book some weeks later. I am embarrassed to say that this was over a year ago.

I haven't been totally remiss though. About three months ago I wrote a long piece praising this book, edited and tweaked the copy, then with a click of the mouse it was gone - into the ether never to reappear. Fat finger syndrome that also is the curse of my Twitter account !

It is my honest opinion that this remains the best book of this style published recently. Although it is another compilation of 1,000 of the world's best beers populated with colour photographs and tasting notes, it is very much more than that.

The opening pages include a comprehensive guide to ingredients including an excellent section on hops (hip hops ?). The next section on beer styles strays away from the boring tried and tested and includes styles such as Vintage Ales, seeking to explain the recent trend in aged and collectible beers.

The beers are the main course and are split by country, from Britain and Ireland, through Europe to America(s), Australasia, Africa and the Middle East.

Breaking up the 1,000 beer tasting notes and descriptions there are other sections telling the stories of breweries such as Fullers, Thornbridge, Cantillon, Mikkeller etc, all written in an entertaining style that makes the book an enjoyable read rather than a reference or coffee table volume.

(Watch out for the story of coffee beans passed through the digestive tract of an Indonesian weasel before being used in the brew of the legendary Beer Geek Breakfast).

Finally it is the final section on Beer and Food that made this a prize winner at last years Guild of Beer Writers awards. The section includes a concise guide to beer and food matching and then goes onto suggest beers that work well with seafood, meat, chicken, cheese, desserts and spicy food and includes guest appearances from Rick Stein and Garrett Oliver, a genius who has achieved most in the realm of beer and food matching.

So there you have it, not a particularly lucid book review but an honest one and at least part of my conscience is satisfied.

It is my honest opinion that this is one of the best, most readable, beer books published in recent years and I give it my hearty recommendation.

Cover price is £25 but you should find it on Amazon for less than £15.

Glasshouse, Kew

Now I am a simple sort of a bloke. That came out wrong but hopefully you get my drift. I prefer the simple pleasures in life; happy with a good pint in a well run pub sustained by a steak pie or a cod and chips.

Recently Mrs W and I have agreed that we should be upping the ante and visiting some smarter places than the Roebuck and Red Lion. It helps not that when I attend court the conversation in the retiring room is often about high end restaurants and holidays and I keep dragging everyone back to pubs and beer.

Last week we coupled a visit to Kew Gardens with lunch at The Glasshouse - a well respected local restaurant by KG station that has merited Michelin star status for a number of recent years.

On arrival I scanned the wine list per chance for an interesting beer list and was unsurprised to find no beers among the comprehensive collection. I selected a New Zealand, Sauvignon Blanc from the Marlborough region. I don't drink much wine these days but I do have an advanced WSET certificate and I know what I like.

The wine was excellent; dry, crisp and refreshing as expected. The food was fabulous which is unsurprising given the place's starred status but from my beer-geek perspective my meal was begging for a beer match.

The starter of scotch egg was cooked to perfection. The crisp outside matched with the smoothness of the meat and rounded off with a soft yolk of the egg inside. Lovely comfort food.

However it was calling out for a spritzy golden beer such as Meantime London Pale Ale where the carbonation would cut through the fattiness of the scotch egg and a delicate hop bitterness might compliment the runny yolk.

My main of braised rabbit leg was falling from the bone, the gamey flavours from the rabbit combining beautifully with the onion and potato that accompanied. I was by this time enjoying the sauvignon blanc but what I really wanted was a more malty number. A small glass of Adnams Broadside or a Belgian dubbel would be a perfect match with the sweet maltiness bringing out the gamey meat character and finishing with a warming, spicy aftertaste.

By the time I was ready for dessert I was certain my wine would not go perfectly with a chocolate terrine so I slugged back the last glass. As my wife was driving I had to drink three quarters of the bottle (hardship, I know) so had no capacity for glass of sticky from the strong list of dessert wine.

The rich taste of the chocolate torte was set off by a refreshing raspberry sorbet and by then I was drfiting away dreaming of a strong stout or even a tart geueze to heighten the sensational flavours of the chocolate and raspberry.

All in all, it was a fantastic afternoon and I will definitely return on the strength of this one visit. Food, service and ambiance of this place are all first class. [Luch for two with wine and service was £90]. I didn't expect a beer offering so was not disappointed. I just feel that with food of this quality they are missing a trick by not offering at least a short beer list. But then again, you could say I am a little biased.

Next in the pursuit of beer in good restaurants is the River Cafe, Hammersmith. Then I am going to try the Harwood Arms in Fulham, London's first pub to be awarded a Michelin star and somewhere I can be guaranteed a choice of beer.

The Beer Cook Book

For some time now I have been seeking an addition to my bookshelf in the form of a beer cook book. Not just any beer cook book. but The Beer Cook Book by Susan Nowak that was published in 1999.

It has been out of print for some time and whenever I have looked on Ebay or Amazon, the search has proved fruitless. (admittedly it was only an occasional search). Last week, I looked on Amazon and there are now plenty of second hand copies available through their merchants scheme. I paid 24p plus £2.75 postage but I notice there is now even a copy available for 11p. It is a 300 page paperback with an original cover price of £9.99.

Many books on beer and food published more recently are more lavishly illustrated but often do not hit the mark for me - though I admit The Brewmaster's Table by Garrett Oliver is an excellent read, it is not really what you might call a cook book. Personally, I am not really one to intellectualise on beer, preferring simply to enjoy drinking the stuff. However, I am interested more in beer used as an ingredient rather than beer and food matching.

Susan Nowak's book is not particularly well illustrated but it is clearly written by an enthusiastic beer lover. It is not just a collection of over 150 recipes including beer. It covers all parts of the menu from soups to desserts, vegetarian, baking and pickling. It also includes every style of beer that you can think of. Her passion for beer comes across in her writing making it a good read as well as a reference volume.

Some of the beer choices do seem a little dated (remember King & Barnes Festive ?) some 10 years later but that is just the passage of time. It does not detract from the enjoyment of this book and will not prevent me coming up with my own suggestions when trying out some of the recipes.

Bon Appetit and Cheers !

Pancake Day

Possibly staying on a pagan theme, next week brings us Shrove Tuesday and our friends at Black Sheep have suggested Mrs Theakston's pancake recipe which I hope to find time to try.

110g/ 4ozs of plain flour
2 large eggs
7fl ozs of milk
3 flozs of Black Sheep ale
2 tblsp of melted butter
Butter or oil for the cooking pan

Mix all the ingredients together in a blender except the 2 tablespoons of melted butter. Leave to stand for 30 minutes. Heat a non stick frying pan and just coat it with a little butter or oil. Add the melted butter to the pancake mixture and pour enough into the pan to coat the base. Swirl it around so that it covers all the pan. Cook for a few minutes until the underside of the pancake is golden brown and then turn it over with a spatula or flip it and cook the other side. Serve it immediately with filling or sauce.

Only three fluid ounces of beer in the mix means about three quarters of the bottle left to drink with the pancakes - perfect beer and food match.