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 ...-
February 8th, 2011Beer Reviews, BittersAdmittedly Ringwood Old Thumper has taken a while to grow on me. Approximately 10 bottles to be relatively precise.
Perhaps it was the nose that created images of toffee apples doused in vinegar or meths. Or the uncertainty of trying to enjoy the gone-off flavours of rotten veg, crab apples, musty drawers and dirty rags?
Yet, Old Thumper kinda grows on you.
Read the rest of this entry » Tags: apples, old thumper, pepper, ringwood, toffee
'Hint of apples' is a whopping understatement...
-
May 5th, 2010Barley wine, Beer Reviews
Burton Bridge Tickle Brain
So far, I’ve not found Burton Bridge’s beers the easiest to drink. Their labelling challenges the normal conventions of beer branding and similarly their beers challenge the in-vogue tastes. But Henry VIII and a lack of Amarillo/C-Hop infused smack-you-round-head flavours aside, there’s something else different about this brewery.
At Christmas I tried their Pale Ale and by a country mile it was the hardest beer I tried to write about during the festive period. I’ve still not got round to buying another bottle to formalise my views on it. So writing about the Tickle Brain is a bit of a gamble, especially as I’ve yet to distinguish what (if anything tangible) makes Burton Bridge so different.
Tickle Brain pours amber with a hint of ruby. It’s foreboding, with little head or carbonisation. It looks…difficult.
On the nose there’s noticeable brown apples, I can’t tell if the red or green kind. Esters or acetaldehyde, I guess. Alcohol dominates the first taste but further sips pull the curtains back on a complex interaction of bitterness and sweetness. Subsequent sips are washed around the mouth revealing the faintest tiniest hint of something Orvallian: root veg, pepper, spice; a weirdly sweet and perhaps imagined drop of raisins, Belgian Christmas-ale esque. Near the end I chuck the sediment in and the musty remains develops a buttery body, a surprisingly pleasing anecdote to the vinegar feeling the rest of the bottle left around my gums.
Tickle Brain is Old Thumper as barley wine (or Abbey Beer as the branding suggests) with a dash of Belgian seasoning and unmistakeable alcohol. Two pours in to the bottle my head feels lighter and heavier at the same time. I guess you could call that Tickle Brain.
CAMRA says...
Tickle Brain Ale. Does what it says the monk says on the tin.
Tags: abbey ale, Barley wine, burton bridge, old thumper, tickle brain*I wanted to say ‘undisguisable alcohol’, but my oversized Penguin dictionary (1,642 pages long) claims this does not exist as a word. Which seems silly. Language is fluid after all and undisguisable seems fairly standard. Am I missing an obvious alternative?!
-
December 6th, 2009Beer Events
The last few days have been fantastic. Despite a lot of travel kafuffle and too much time spent on my feet, I managed to get to the British Guild of Beer Writers dinner in London. I could write for hours about the adventures I’ve had, a sojourn around London with my camera, beers in the legendary Rake, a day rambling around London pubs with fellow bloggers and a huge and unsuccessful rush from the Pigs Ear beer festival to get home, but I’d be here all day.
So just a few words on the event we all went down for, and what was a great celebration of beer, food and the writing that so much passion goes into… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: beer awards, Beer Events, british guild of beer writers, flying dog, Fuller's, goats cheese, gonzo, jeff evans, mark dredge, Meantime, old thumper, pete brissenden, pete brown, pilsner, venison, vintage, woolpack dave, zak avery -
Our writers
M&S Wine Club
Donate to the East Africa Crisis
