This Is Camden
"I'll explain how the process works as I prepare your order" shouts Ahrash over the buzz of the crowds and the whirrrrr of the industrial food mixers. And donning a thick gauntlet, and dropping plastic safety glasses, he turns to the cannister containing nitrogen oxide and casually turns the latch, releasing a gushing of colder-than-ice-cold steam into the pureed ice cream mixture. This is Camden. This is England. Eating nitro ice cream in the 2010's and drinking ...
Build A Rocket Boys! by Elbow & Robinsons
Elbow are the kings of soaring melancholy, masters of poetic northern introspection. Let Elbow's albums flow over you and you can be mesmerised by their beauty alone. Put in the time to listen, to soak up the poignancy, the humour, the extraordinary manifestations of the ordinary and their albums become life affirming tributes to the everyday. Conversely, it's quite easy to stick an Elbow album on and realise thirty lethargic minutes later that time - and ...
The humble pint
So the pint is done with we're told! Well what would they say in Prague, where refreshing pilsners stand proud in tall half litre glasses, quenching thirsts almost with their looks and frothy gusto alone. Tell the football fans sinking a pint of bitter before the well trodden march to the ground that their beer will be served in flutes or tulips or whisky tumblers. "Like hell" they cry! The ugliness of a nonik pint glass aside (does ...
York Tap
It's a drinking hole essentially, underneath it all. For all the domed skylights and stained glass, people come here to let off steam, to pass the time, to forget the day. To drink. But to say that is to do York Tap a disservice as it stands resplendent next to the revived station complex. Like its Sheffield counterpart it was born in an old resting room, and the 104 year old building suits its new life ...
Meantime Union Vienna Style Lager
Deep in a basement bar not far from Bohemia, the cerny pilsners of the brewery up the road changed my perception of lager. Sweet and rich but surprisingly light, they distributed refreshment and nutrition as if feeding me and five thousand other thirsty drinkers. Meantime Union shares a similar contradiction. Broody and brown, this is is no pale bodied pushover. Lagered it is, and a tad metallic to boot, coupled with a dark caramel composition and ...
Roosters Pumpkin Beer
Roosters Brewery, whose beers are the staple diet of many a Yorkshire pub, marked this Hallowe'en with a pumpkin beer. No ordinary pumpkin beer though, a pumpkin beer served in nothing less than a giant pumpkin. A really, really giant pumpkin. Pumpkin 5 Spice Ale was tapped at North Bar in Leeds, in front of Calendar news and a small selection of excitable beer lovers. Arguably a more delicate task than tapping a cask, the job ...
Killer jerk chicken with killer ginger beer
Jerk chicken isn't just tasty to eat, it's a joy to make. The honey and coriander marinade is messy and sticky, the chicken succulent with a crispy skin - lots of kitchen mess and fun. Juices of bird and salad mean this a meal best served sans cutlery but with plenty of, well, Plenty. For a ginger beer Robinson's Ginger (brewed for M&S) is a dark and syrupy affair, quite different from a can of Barr's ...
House of the Trembling Madness
The goofy moose head gazes down aloofly from his lofty perch below the rafters, and we sit cradling a kriek and a pilsner in a building that has almost a millenniums worth of years on us. House of the Trembling Madness sits above the cobbled shopping street of Stonegate, York. The city walls skirt their circular path near here, the famous minster is but a Viking throw away. Students from the continent order coffee and thirds of ...
North By North Orval
Orval is the sort of beer spoken about with reverence. I like to think the same goes for North Bar. It should have been me and my friend Tom sat there, dissecting Leeds United's yo-yoing fortunes, laughing at the Howson Is Now blog and deliberating the creaminess of the Orval cheese whilst sat on the classroom chairs and the well leaned on tables. But it's my brother partnering this trip due to Tom's tight schedule as a relatively ...
Moorhouse's Pendle Witches Brew
From Pendle Hill you've more chance of seeing Ian Holloway celebrating at Bloomfield Road than coming across any broomsticks or clandestine hurlyburly. And that's on a cloudy day. The sandstone plateau does have a slightly spooky aura about it though. Standing proud from the undulating hillside you can imagine a cackling coven of witches peering over the landscape and plotting the demise of their rivals. Especially if you visit during thunder and lightning... Moorhouse's Pendle Witches Brew is inherently ...
Sainsbury's Great British Beer Hunt 2011
Over the last few months the Sainsbury's Great British Beer Hunt has been taking place providing a welcome opportunity to try some different beers from the familiar supermarket shelves. And in October Bad King John from Ridgeside Brewing was crowned winner of a six month national listing in 300 Sainsbury's stores. Bad King John beat beers from around the UK to the throne via four regional heats (120 beers), a three week stint in Sainsbury's stores (16 ...
M&S London Porter
Smoky as hell to smell and like a burnt caramel bar to taste, M&S's London Porter is a sweet beer to devour with masses of chocolate or marshmallows over a camp fire. If you don't fancy the great outdoors then no worries, the lingering smoky presence hangs around for a long time in your mouth and may invoke daydreams of sitting under the stars and gazing at the heavens. It's packed with malt variety: you can settle ...
Lakeland IPA
Tuesday night, two bottled bitters sunk and the quenches for thirst and flavour continue to itch away unabated. Cue Lakeland IPA, a beer that for one moment in time justifies the beatification of hops single-handedly. The perfect hiss released as metal hits glass and twists plastic; an aroma eager to reach a nose and knock on the door of the senses. Soft-fleshed fruit says hello - mangoes might not be typical of Cumbria unless visiting a certain kitchenware ...
Moor JJJ IPA
This not, I repeat NOT, an IPA. Punchy, citrus hops? Nil. Alcohol? Deep, stewed and sweet beyond believe. Apple skins & fruit pudding? Yes, yes, YES! None of which gives Moor JJJ IPA much credence as an IPA. But then again this isn't an IPA nor a double IPA. It's only a bleedin' triple IPA(!!!). This couldn't be further from Green King's bland and monotonous flagship brand of ale and is similar in nothing but colour. By their own admission Moor didn't ...-
April 13th, 2012Desert Island BeersSimon Jenkins started his career in Goole, but not even that hampered him. Cutting his teeth as a journalist in East Yorkshire and the vale of Calder, Simon landed at the Yorkshire Evening Post in 1991 and never looked back, working for fifteen years at Leeds’ flagship evening newspaper.
Though now working at Leeds University, Simon still writes the Taverner column for the paper and in 2010 he won Best Writing in the UK Regional Press for his contribution to beer. It was an award which ultimately led to the deserved crown of Beer Writer of the Year, and the ominous duties of representing the beer industry (not to mention writing a speech for the following years awards do!)
In his spare time Simon follows both Leeds United and Oxford United fan and has recently penned his first book, The Great Leeds Pub Crawl, a ramble around the history and character of every type of pub the city has to offer.
Near the Negev Desert
Jaipur IPA
Pint of Landlord...
Tags: Greene King, jaipur, landlord, yorkshire
...just as good bottled
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January 6th, 2010Breweries, Pubs & bars
On the lead up to Christmas me and a few or my more intellectually challenged University mates decided to go for a day out in Nottingham to see if we still had the stamina to managed an ‘all-dayer’. Obviously I knew that the ales were going to merge at some point after lunch and that the details would be difficult to get down. I therefore armed myself with a Cancer Research pen and 2010 Diary and met at the 10am rendezvous, The Bank pub, for beer and breakfast.
Bass in The Bank
The Bank is what I would dub a Weatherspoons rip-off. The breakfast menu was almost identical to Weatherspoons and the range of beers available was similar. I was therefore able to order a pint of Bass to go with my Americano and Large Breakfast. I couldn’t remember whether I’d ever actually had Bass before but I knew that it used to be very popular with my Dad’s friends out of a can. The lightness suited accompanying a large meal and my initial impression was of an relatively sweet toffee flavour but this was tempered by the development of a more peppery body. The existence of these flavours was I think testament to how well the ale was kept and I have since been disappointed when having the same pint at The Wobbly Wheel near Banbury where none of these subtly complex flavours appeared from ‘the same’ pint.
Tags: adnams, Ale trail, Bass, bitter, Broadside, Burton Bitter, Castle Rock Brewery, Greene King, Magpie Brewery, mild, nottingham, Nottingham Brewery, Old Hooky, pale, The Bell, The Dragon, The Roebuck -
September 6th, 2009Real Ale
I had a hard day on the other love of my life today – Hockey. Yes I am aware that it is a girls sport! Anyway, I’ve been at the Yorkshire Cup tournament all day which involved stopping and starting and ultimately just getting the result we needed to not get relegated from next year’s tournament. Limping back to the car earlier this evening I decided I needed a Chinese takeaway and my pre marathon ration of beer (T- 7 days until normal service resumes).
So, having ordered a Special Chow Mein, I nipped down to a Somerfield garage to pick up a bottle. There wasn’t a massive range, not that you would expect there to be as it is one of those mini supermarkets that seem to have attached themselves to petrol stations just recently. The choice was mainly limted to quite mainstream ales so I was quite conscious that I didn’t want to pick one that had already been reviewed…racking my brains I couldn’t recall ever writing anything about Old Speckled Hen, despite having had it on a number of occasions. I decided that this was the winner for tonight.
I had always assumed this beer was called Old Speckled Hen because of it’s dark reddish brown colour which, if I recall correctly from growing up in the country, is the same as a lot of chickens. It turns out that I was wrong. The beer is actually named after a car, which was known as the ‘Old Speckled Un’, used in an MG factory years ago. In 1979 MG asked Moorland Brewery to create a commemorative beer to celebrate the factory’s 50th anniversary and somewhere along the line the name was changed to Old Speckled Hen before finding its way onto the bottle.
This story is one of those that I think would make James May puff out his chest with pride in English tradition and, to be honest, the fact that you can walk into a Tesco Extra and buy a beer named after a car, to commemorate a factory’s 50th anniversary 30 years ago, kind of gives me a warm glow as well.
Tags: 1979, 5-6%, Commemorative, Greene King, MG, Moorland Brewery, Old Speckled Hen -
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