My first find was at the Narrow Boat in Skipton, a fantastic backwater pub with a cracking reputation and repertoire of real ales and foreign beers. Nestled amongst a typically eclectic mix was Wentworth’s Medium Chilli & Chocolate Stout (4.8%). The dusky half pint certainly lived up to its billing. A rich coffee and chocolate aroma persisted after the initial sip oozing into a silky palate. With perfect punctuality a fiery crescendo kicked in and lingered through the finish; a great counterbalance to the soft cocoa foundation. An explosion of taste and just up my street!

The Narrow Boat Skipton by Bob W

A few days later I found myself in Bury for lunch. This good-sized town just north of Manchester is famous for its fish market, but it also has a peppering of top-notch real ale outlets if you know where to look. One such place is Malt Bar at The Met (which also plays host to the enticing Bury Beer Festival in November). Despite being quite a classy modern cafe bar it always serves a few cask beers, usually from Outstanding Brewery with occasional guests. This was my lucky day as they had another Wentworth special on tap: Vanilla & Almond Stout (4.8%). A faint whiff of vanilla guided me into a maelstrom of sour cherries, dark fruits and berries riding on an undercurrent of mild bitterness. I was just beginning to wonder where the almond was lurking when it caught me by surprise in a delectable marzipan finish. Well-crafted with a powerful yet nicely balanced punch. Mmmm….

Peculiar and flavourful craft brews are growing in popularity and are well worth sampling if you get a chance, if only to illustrate just how different quality real ales can be. I’ll certainly be on the lookout for more weird and wonderful stouts while the season lasts!

Wentworth Chilli and Chocolate Stout

Wentworth Vanilla and Almond

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.

This accolade cannot be bestowed on The Roebuck which was our next point of call. Perhaps suffering from being amongst the  pre-lunch drinkers but I didn’t feel that either of the ales I tried in here were being served to their full potential. The Magpie Best, from the local Magpie Brewery, should have presented a decent hoppy flavour but offered no distinctive flavours, equally the Marstons Burton Bitter offered a coppery flavour rather than the ‘delicate hops and malty biscuit’ that the brewer headlines.

My notes for the Day were avidly kept in here

After the disappointment of The Roebuck I nearly hung up the diary for the day, luckily I didn’t. We were just about to enter the best pub of the day. The Bell Inn is part of the Greene King group but had an extensive range of Nottingham Brewing Company ales. I could easily have stayed in the place all day to sample the wide range of draught and bottled tipples that would have tickled the fancy of almost everyone I know. Erdinger and Hoegarden, Aspalls Cider, the already mentioned Nottingham Brewery Ales all accompanied the Greene King offerings.

I sampled the Nottingham Brewery Legend, which has a strong malty flavour. Far and away eclipsing the two ales I had had in the last pub. Next my day got the Hop blast I was waiting for with the Extra Pale, the hops not necessarily being extra strong but being brought to the fore by the subtle complimentary body of the ale. Finally I tasted Cock & Hoop which was not as prominently hopped as the Extra Pale and it brought in a more complex flavour with vanilla notes. My final drink in The Bell was a Greene King XX Mild. This beer was a lovely dark mild sweet and smooth to fully release the deep malt flavours. This was really drinkable and my glass was empty in super quick time.

The Bell Inn serving local beers

The last pub of the day was The Dragon which served Adnams Bitter and Broadside but is not an Adnams pub. Details of the pub can be found on their website, the place is quite small and narrow and reminded me a bit of Leeds’ North Bar. I opted first for a Broadside as it had recently been suggested against a post I had written about Old Hooky as a similar tipple.

Castle Rock, another local ale in Nottingham's pubs

I found the beer to be quite floral and light in flavour although quite heavy in texture and probably not a beer I would go back to as a ‘session ale’. I could therefore see the similarities suggested to Old Hooky, however I do not feel the flavours have the same rich spiciness. The final beer of the the day was to be a Castle Rock Brewery Harvest Pale. The Landlady told me that she sells a lot of this Blonde Beer, I can see why.  A little hoppy but very crisp and drinkable, especially when returning to a lighter beer from the Broadside. This would be a great way in for anyone looking to flirt with Hops or a quality session option for more Hop Hungry drinkers. It is also available bottled.

And so the diary was retired and evening bars were explored. It was great to have a day out somewhere different and explore the ales of the Nottingham area. Some of those that I tried weren’t to my taste and some were a joy to my taste buds. Writing about the day the main thing that comes to mind, and is very much to my taste, was the amount of locally produced ales available in Nottingham City Centre.  I would recommend a trail day out in Nottingham to any beer explorer, if my experience is anything to go by you won’t have to go far to get a flavour of the place.

I’ve come across Wolf before, last year (although not this year  as I didn’t get to the local section) at Norwich Beer Festival. The festival, held in the St. Andrew’s & Blackfriars’ Halls slap bang in the centre of the ancient city, not only has the usual set up of lots of UK real ale ales, but also a room each dedicated to world beers and local beers.

It’s in the local beers room, a rowdy rabbble of beer, cider and tombola, that Wolf features at Nowich Beer Festival. Along with St Peters (from Suffolk) and a handful of smaller breweries East Anglia’s beer is proudly poured for the red nosed punters amidst a loud din of jovialness.

And I think that’s the way these beers are meant to be drunk, because served up in a bottle in front of me I don’t get the same excitement of buzz as I did at the festival.

Wolf Whistle is the paler of the two ales, although it is still a vibrant Fantastic Mr Fox red, bold and amber in complexion. There is a sweetness and gentle hop aroma on the nose, and this is washed down by the easy to drink liquid that leaves a malty aftertaste. The hops add a subtle aroma and later a bitterness that, without, would leave this beer uninteresting.

Wolf Whistle and Woild Moild: one red one ruby, both very drinkable

No doubt this is a session beer rather than an occasion beer and I can see it being better from the cask. It’s clean and light and makes you want another sip, but that’s more to do with the pleasant malt bitterness than a bursting taste you can’t wait to get back to.

Woild Moild is a much darker affair, with a rich nose and a smoky dark mild body and a gentle carbonisation that adds (a slight) bite on the tongue. What sets this apart from similar dark beers is Woild Moild’s fruitiness, which, as with Wolf Whistle’s hops, it would be uninteresting without. For me this beer is held back because I can’t find the chocolate malt the label promised. Without that it’s a simple, fruity dark beer but isn’t as interesting as I was expecting.

These beers are well worth a look though, not least for Wolf’s attitude as a brewery and local business. Wolf are very much focused on their local heritage, placing emphasis on sustainability - they draw water from their own well, recycle waste products and source barley malt from just across the Suffolk border.

Wolf Brewery have certainly done very well to get in the 15 finalists, and the beers are good and highly drinkable – in my opinion they’re just not great. These are session beers, and good pub beers – tasty, fruity and easy to drink – but a little more spark would be needed to be competition winners.

Thanks to Duncan at Wolf Brewery who came to my rescue with a bottle of Wolf Whistle, the only one of the 15 finalists I wasn’t able to get at my local Sainsbury’s.

How To Disappear Completely - it's very complicated

How To Disappear Completely is something else.  To say its heavy on the hops is an understatement! The aroma and the first sip are larger than life, a complete juxtaposition with the Radiohead song it’s named after. This is, as the bottle suggests, is imperially hopped.  That’s something I can be pretty keen on, but of course with beers super charged with hops, balance is inevitably lost. My first reaction is that for the piney-hoppy-dark-malt fest that this beer is right from the start, this isn’t alcoholically strong, begging the question where does this taste come from (or where does the alcohol go?!).

BrewDog’s beers are generally very drinkable, especially considering that they are usually above average strength, and How To Disappear Completely is deceptively light. And considering the immense bitterness this beer exudes, it is sort of drinkable…relatively speaking. But if I’m honest I just didn’t enjoy it anywhere near as much as Punk IPA or Chaos Theory.

It’s not a bad beer by any means, there’s a depth of flavour that I found quite overpowering and perhaps a bit OTT, something I find with Stone Ruination IPA – a beer of such character that it can barely get into it before it’s tripped me up and spat my back out. How To Disappear is similarly hopped, I’ve no doubt the ascerbic power of this beer will take you by surprise and the off-the-scale theoretical IBU count of 358 (or something) will have your taste buds screaming for mercy and jumping ship like lemmings.

It feels like a seasonal beer, something suitable for the autumn and winter, not one of the last hot and sunny days of summer, watching the football results with accumulator in hand. The flavours are astonishing – I’m sure that cocoa, cigars, grass, fruit and leaves all hit me at different points when I wasn’t stunned by the bitterness. The malt manages to make brief, fleeting appearances and adds a smoky, roasted flavour …but blink and it’ll disappear. The flavours of the beer do disappear and intertwine like the do in the same way, just in a much cruder way.

How To Disappear Completely by BrewDog

My friends Jimmy and Jay were not at all impressed, this being too far flung from the safe arms of Birri Moretti and Erdinger, about the fanciest they get. Their first reactions were knee jerk – this was just way, way too much to handle.

And I’d agree to a certain extent. For me I like the idea and I like it that a milder beer (ABV wise) can be amazingly complex. But How To Disappear Completely didn’t strike me as interestingly intricate, I found it difficult. For me its balance is lost and the hop/malt struggle within this beer isn’t a tug of war of the taste buds but more of an uncoordinated rabble that peters out leaving an uncomfortable aftertaste. The stormy brew doesn’t ebb and flow, the flavours crash and erode, leaving your senses a little worse for wear. That’s if you’re able to get through the bitterness and find those flavours!

Let’s put aside the hyperbole and verbose descriptions for a second. When it all boils down, How To Disappear is a beer I’ll try again. Maybe my taste buds will become attuned to it, maybe I’ll find something else in it,  but it’s not one I could drink regularly, and certainly not something I could convert friends to easily.  Like the song, which wasn’t my favourite on Kid A to start with, it really took a lot of effort to get under the skin of it, and I still don’t fully get it. But I love the song now, so maybe the beer is a grower?

If I had to choose, if I could have only this beer or the song of the same name, then I’d have to take the song every time.

But being an optimist, I’d definitely take the song and the beer if that was an option, even if I’m never able to quite enjoy it or get it.