Real Ale Reviews

Man walks into a pub…

A nice piece about beer in a tabloid sized newspaper? Surely not.

Ok to be fair it’s this months ‘What’s Brewing’, but I love the story on page 10 about Martin Brunnschweiler.

More than a decade ago Martin went to visit his sister at her pub on the Isle of Man and ended up staying there to set up a brewery called Bushy’s. The paper is a bit hazy on the details (I’m intrigued as to whether he drank the pub dry and then set up because he was thirsty and what he left behind) but I like to think the Martin fell in love with the island, the pub, the atmosphere and the opportunity. His brewery has ties to the nuclear industry (and sounds like it could double up as a bunker should a Dr Strangelove armageddon arise) and the equipment is based on a headache inducing tower arrangement that requires a certain amount of agility from head brewer Curly (yes, Curly!).

The best I can do is that I have on two or more separate occasions walked into a pub and ended up 1) working behind the bar and 2) doing the dishes, but never quite made the leap to brewing.

Accidental brewer: Martin of Bushy's brewery on the Isle of Man

A Tale of Two Cities

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…

…and I must first of all apologise for the lack of pictures to accompany this post. The reason is that I was not intending to ‘publicise’ what was initially going to be a quiet day out with my Mum and Dad. That is until we received shockingly different levels of service and quality of food at two Leeds eateries that inspired the Dickens theme for this post. So where did the weekend start…?

The weekend started well with the collection of my beerswap spoils. While I was posting I decided to contact Katie at Leeds Grub to see if she had any suggestions as to where I should take my parents for Sunday dinner. My Mum wanted to do some Xmas shopping so I needed somewhere in the City Centre but, as I don’t see them very often, I was wanting somewhere I could be sure was going to be good first time. Katie very kindly suggested one of the Leeds Brewery pubs which she told me, although she had never had a Sunday lunch, tend to do quality food on any day of the week.

It was with some irony then that the reason I turned up to meet my parents with a dry mouth and slight headache was the fact that the Cuthbert Broderick had had Leeds’ Midnight Bell as a guest on the Saturday night. With my CAMRA tokens they were only costing me £1.39 a pint. Wizard…. Read the rest of this entry »

Lager, lager, lager

Serving beer (Wikipedia)

Last week saw a host of articles on lager, CAMRA and why the two don’t always have a harmonious relationship (see articles by Barm, Mark Dredge, Woolpack Dave, Tandleman & The Guardian).

The same week r’ Sam couldn’t quite work out if William’s Brothers Grozet was a lager or a beer, with conflicting online reviews and it being deceptively lager like for an ale.

It’s fitting that the lager debate and lots of lager chat surfaced on the week we unearthed a parody of our sites, real-lager-reviews.com, and actually the Guardian article that kicked much of this off was one of the ways we cottoned onto our spoofers (thanks to an innocuous comment on there by the Real Lager Reviews lads).

It seems the question of lager brings up some awkward discussions. CAMRA clearly don’t associate themselves with CO2, which rules out a lot of lagers, but it doesn’t fundamentally rule out lager per se.

Which leads us to what is a lager: what it is and why is it different? Read the rest of this entry »

Brewing Tradition in Newark, MileStone Brewing Co.

On my way back from Nottingham today I stopped off in Newark-Upon-Trent to have a look around. I had accidentally driven through the town centre before and had always said I wanted to go back and have a proper look around, plus I wanted to stop in at the MileStone Brewery as I was passing. Unfortunately I had the car so was unable to drink but was confident that the historic brewing town would have something to offer a designated driver.

The Town

Newark Castle overlooking the Trent

I parked up in Waitrose (free parking in the town centre – don’t get that everywhere!) and headed across the river towards the castle gardens. Although the Castle itself has seen better days, there is a small museum and tourist information centre in the gardens and, after a 10 minute briefing, I headed off into the town centre. Newark seeps history from it’s narrow streets and it isn’t just the beer related sites that are worthy of note. In the Market

G H Porter, Provisions Store

Square, where there were a number of collectables stalls along with the usual fruit and veg traders, the place that most caught my eye was the  G H Porter ‘provisions’ store – serving traditional cooked meats, pies and canned goods, as well as serving teas. Also of note was the town’s Shopping Arcade and the whole square is overlooked by the Buttermarket building, converted to house a number of boutiques and eateries as well as the town’s museum and art gallery.

Frontage of The Old White Inn, now a Building Society branch!!

Turning to more beer related sites of interest, the Market Square has the pictured 15th Century frontage, this building used to be The Old White Inn but is now home to a branch of the Nottingham Building Society. Also in the square is this picturesque Wychwood pub.

Wychwood Pub

As I was driving this was the only pub I ventured into on the day and unfortunately the interior did not live up to the promise of the outside. However, as I did not have the time to go round all of the watering holes on offer (I will be arguing for a Real Ale Reviews group outing by train next time I get together with Fletch and Lanesy) I leave it CAMRA to sum up the drinking potential of the town.

Read the rest of this entry »