Once again BadPoo has gone on the Real Ale investigation trail – much like Dustin Hoffman (short, dark hair, writing in italics, Richard) and Robert Redford (tall, ginger, Matt) in ‘All The President’s Men’ – to investigate the burning issues at the heart of the beer-quaffing community. This week’s fearless expose: what’s Lytham like for a session?

Our guide for the day’s activities would be a leaflet printed for the 2008 Lytham Beer Festival which suggests an Ale Trail round the place – intriguingly highlighting many features in the listed pubs and mostly seeming to focus on a) whether the establishments have hardwood floors and b) the prevelance of ‘raised seating areas’. Obviously, consumption at altitude and an ease of brushing is what really matters to the drinkers in this posh land between Preston and Blackpool.

The original plan was simple – get into Lytham at about 11.20 then have a bit of a wander around to get to know the place while we wait for the pubs to open. This plan was immediately spoiled/improved by the Station Tavern already being open as we step off the platform. Now, chances are you’ve porbably been to plenty of pubs that were built next to a station or, indeed, in a little part of the station but Lytham goes one better. The Station Tavern is the station. All of it. Clearly there’s no need for a ticket office and a waiting area in this town any more so they’ve replaced the lot with a spacious pub.

The Station Tavern- enough to make you want to lick Dr Beeching's face

It’s quiet when we get there and, disappointingly, the only ales on offer are Deuchars IPA and Theakstons Mild which at least represents a safe start to the day. With a couple of pints of the Scottish stuff on the go, it’s time for us to settle in with a titanic tussle on the pool table (Richard on the black) and, with this being one of those places that has a music channel on the widescreens, the first heated debate of the day unfolds as an attempt is made to categorise the music of the Black Eyed Peas (manufactured pop vs opportunistic genre chancers vs the Fugees but more Euro-dance). This proves frustratingly inconclusive but, our hearts lifted by what is a very nice opening place to drink, it’s on to the next pub.

[In an attempt at a spot of freestyle beer reportage, Richard now takes the writing reins.] Armed with nothing but an A5 pamphlet and a burning desire to quaff ale, we moved on from the Tavern to The Hastings, only a few minutes walk around the corner. This is an imposing building, looking like the backdrop for an am-dram about a Victorian murder. Large wooden benches litter the front yard until you hit the steps up into the building, which is when you realise that if a Victorian were to be murdered in here he’d have to have had a soft spot for olives and houmous. Most telling of all is the quote on their website: “Hastings restaurant in central Lytham is both inclusive and exclusive.” I think that essentially means they just want everybody’s money.

Despite the different colours, both of these beers taste of hair.

We tried a pint each of Hastings Bitter and Lancaster Blonde. The Lancaster Brewery should be noted for their superbly simplistic naming convention – blonde,black, ruby and so on. Unfortunately both beers tasted of nothing much at all. The Bitter had a hint of hair to it, while the Blonde reminded me of one of those posh bottles of water you get that taste very vaguely of some kind of generic fruit. I could have drunk four pints of this in an hour and thought it was tap water.

Fortunately, it was a glorious day in Lytham and we took full advantage by sitting outside in the blazing sun. Old dears met up for lunch, debonair elderly gentlemen strolled by with a wave and a smile, and we discussed the pro’s and con’s of the European football fixture system. Pints finished, on we moved.

The County Hotel is a bit of what we’d term a plastic pub (generic menus bellowing ’2 for £10!’ at you, numbered tables, that kind of thing) but there’s plenty of nice raised seating areas and a couple of intriguing beers available on the bar. We have a pop at the Amber from the local Lytham Brewery and the much further travelled Golden Hind from the Coastal Brewery in Cornwall. The Lytham beer is all very nice and pleasant but the Cornish tipple is the frankly extraordinary taste of insanity in a glass. Contrasting both sweet, biscuity flavours and odd, plant-based notes it’s bizarrely similar (we imagine) to eating a pudding made entirely out of leaves. Wierd.

After this there’s a brief inerlude for some fish and chips on the seafront. The food was bought from Seniors Fish Bar which is on the main high street and should really have a stamp dedicated in it’s honour. It’s that good. Even with the normal 20% taste bonus that fish and chips get from being eaten by the sea, it’s clear to see that the batter is light and crispy, the fish is moist and chunky and the chips are massive and golden. This is as close as eating battered, fried animals gets to being a spiritual experience. The first few drinks are duly soaked up and it’s on to the next pub.

A couple of clowns in the Clifton Arms, looking truly paggered.

Heading back from the sea front across the wide grassy patch between there and town, it seemed sensible to make our next port of call the Clifton Arms Hotel. There are instant images of Poirot and Miss Marple, of a bygone age when the gentry strolled along the sea front arm in arm, hotel porters were murdered in lifts and half of the population lived in grinding poverty. Simple times.

Taking a seat at the bar, staffed by a well-spoken continental barman in the true vein of Poirot, we tried a half of Titanic’s Clifton Arms and a half of Festival Amber. The brew made specially for the hotel was like a poorly administered but ultimately successful sex act. As Matt spoke those words, the well-spoken heavily-made up table of MILFs to our side gave more than one glance our way – presumably a show of interest in a four-way sex act. I found the Amber to be yet another inoffensive, bland beer – not bad in any way, shape or form, but totally unremarkable and without merit. As the beers were quaffed conversation turned back to Poirot and the QCU (Quaint Crimes Unit) was born – two elite coppers running their own department, dealing solely with quaint crimes. The victims must be poor, the villains must be dastardly, and we must be in the pub drinking real ale for 50 minutes until the answer finally dawns on us.

“Bloody hell, I tell you, it’s got me stumped this one.”
“Aye, it bloody has that. Another round?”
“Aye, why not. A pint of Directors and a pint of Did It For The Insurance please.”
*slowly turn heads to look at each other*

With the QCU born, we moved on.

Beer goggles.

Next, the Mother Lode. Actually, it’s called The Taps but dear Christ this place is heaven for the ale drinker. Fittingly, it would appear to have won more awards than Ricky Gervias did for The Office. An executive decision is called for and we decide to stay here for a couple- first round up is Thatcher’s Somerset Scrumpy and Shropshire Gold from the Salopian Brewery. The scrumps is, simply, scrumpalicious; a little bit tart, a little bit sweet, a little bit bitter and supremely refreshing. On a day as unseasonally warm as this one was, I could easily have fallen into the scrumpy trap I’ve mentioned before and sunk pint after quenching pint of this 6% stuff until my head started spinning without ever really noticing anything was up. The Shropshire Gold meanwhile, continues our disappointing run of beers that don’t really taste of much.

Moving outside into the covered L-shaped yard at the back, we tried another Salopian brew, this time Darwin’s Engine. It was treacly, like being forced to suck on a lump of the foul sugary objects pensioners survive off when their digestive systems give up the fight and anything more solid than watered-down Smash presents a challenge. There were hints of peanut brittle, again, a sweet and heavy taste. Matt tried a Funnel Blower from Box Steam brewery, which had a roasted chocolate taste like being landed on by a 14-ton Malteser.

Time for a pint on Lytham’s seafront next at the Queen’s Hotel. From our vantage point in the front beer garden we can gaze upon a heart-warmingly British scene stretched out across the town’s lovely green. Gaggles of teenagers lol about necking Magners; shirtless men play football to impress dis-interested ladies who are, curiously, all dressed in summery outfits apart from the Arctic beating warmth of Ugg boots; the guests of a wedding wander past toasting the luck that the couple have got with the weather; dogs are walked, joggers jog, the beer garden is bustling.

Richard gets stuck into some Theakston’s Black Bull which he describes as smelling like beer did before you’ve drunk beer for the first time and tasting nice and malty- good in most circumstances but like a Mardi Gras of taste compared to most of the stuff we’ve drunk today. I, meanwhile, have gone for a wheat beer- Flying Dutchman from Caledonian though, yet again, the taste is slight. At best, this is a beer that’s been breifly shown a picture of wheat and asked to describe it some weeks later.

Next stop was the Ship & Royal, a pub which in a trillion years time when an as-yet unknown species rediscovers the ashes of humanity, the Encyclopaedia Galactica will feature a photo of under the section “UK chain pubs of the early 2000s”. It’s all there: lightly varnished wood, mirrors on every wall, a carpet that clearly looked astonishing when it was first laid but has since been trampled into submission by the endless pattering of pensioners and children throwing food around. The beers were disappointing: we didn’t catch the names of the two unusual ones but noted that Directors and Bombardier were the two standards. Mine tasted like walking into a freshly-painted room: exhilerating and fresh at first, but then slightly nauseating when you breath in too deeply. Matt’s was a Hobnob in liquid form.

Our visits were too early and late in the trip for food, but maybe next time...

Finally (apart from a cheeky there’s-15-minutes-till-the-train-comes-what-should-we-do? short in the Station Tavern) there’s a return to the posh confines of The Hastings Bistro for a couple more of their Moorhouse beers- Blonde Witch and Pendle Witches Brew. The former is alluringly described by Richard as ‘like a Twix’ while the former gives me a nice hint of honey. Both of these are refreshing but weigh in at over 5% so, much like the Jaipur and Kipling from Thornbridge, these have to now be officially labelled as BadPoo Danger Beers- and heartily deserving of the award they are too.

And from there it was a few seconds walk round the corner and a minute’s wait for the train home. It had been another classic day on the sauce in the vein of the Rail Ale Trail – civilized, gentlemanly and with some beers that make your eyes bleed in anticipation. Lytham gets a solid thumbs up for a few reasons – it’s easy to get to from anywhere near Preston, in theory as far East as York and Scarborough on the transpennine line. The pubs we visited were all in a few minutes walk of each other, roughly fitting into a small circle no more than half a mile across. Add to this the Victorian-esque splendour of Lytham itself, on a sunny day, and it gets a BadPoo silver medal.

Black Bull · Caledonian · CAMRA · Clifton Arms Hotel · Coastal brewery · Deuchars · Fylde · Golden Hind · IPA · Lancaster Blonde · Lytham · Lytham brewery · Mild · Moorhouses · Quaint Crimes Unit · Queen's Hotel · Salopian brewery · Seniors Fish Bar · Ship & Royal · Shropshire Gold · Somerset Scrumpy · Station Tavern · Thatchers · The County Hotel · The Hastings · The Taps · Theakstons

As I’m sure you know by now, Wetherspoon’s has begun another of their real ale festivals, this year billed as “the world’s largest real ale festival featuring up to 50 ales”. Yesterday we popped along to try a few of the first ones on offer.

Good Cheer Beer and Rollercoaster - two decent, if odd, ales. GCB was the better of the two.

First up, and off to a confusing start: a pint of what we have down as Good Cheer Beer’s Pale Yorkshire Bitter, but which on reflection must actually have been a Roosters’ Good Cheer Beer. Being damn cool customers, we’re never ones to loiter at the bar and our notes are based on a quick glance at the clip as we walk past (making sure to look disinterested in all things ale in front of the barmaids). It also proved that we didn’t pay attention to the “beer festival” signs above the clip, and actually bought a beer which wasn’t part of the festival. Thus, on occasion – frequent occasion, I must admit – we end up with a sheet of notes referring to nonexistent ale which isn’t part of the festival. This would be but the first of several such foul-ups of the day.

But: on to the beer itself. Good Cheer Beer seems to be quite widely available judging by a quick search, but it’s the first time I’d tried it. It’s very light, and I thought it tasted a lot like lemonade at first until the beer flavour kicks in. It’d make a cracking pint in a beer garden after work – refreshing, easy-drinking and like drinking pop. The VK of the ale world, if you like. My drinking partner Shaky found it soft and fruity with a tang of beer to finish, a good barbecue beer and definitely 87.6% as refreshing as shandy. A thumbs-up overall, I think.

Our first round also took in what we noted down as an “Oldham Ales Rollercoaster”. Again, our note-taking skills proved as piss-poor as a quadriplegic secretary and the closest I can guess at is that this was something by the Oldham Brewery, which is just a name used by Robinsons. I can’t even say that with any conviction and I’m sure by now it’ll have sold out and been replaced. Whatever the hell it was that we drank, it had a licquorice, heavy taste which was quite off-putting at first but eventually didn’t seem too bad – I gave it a 60%. Shaky meanwhile found the name apt, as you’re unsure of what you’re tasting, being sour, sweet, dry and comforting all at once – one to enjoy, but not to cherish.

Our terrible note-taking record continued as I went to the bar for round two, the first of which I decided was Three B’s Bee In The Bonnet, which after a conversation with Gordon from the brewery transpired to be Honey Bee. Again, this beer is not even a part of the festival, so we essentially may have gone to any pub in Blackburn, drank four pints and made up some names for them. But bear with me on this one: Honey Bee is our beer of 2010 so far. It’s simply tremendous, the most drinkable pint I’ve ever come across, and that includes my affairs with that seductress Harvest Pale. The very first smell of the pint got an “ooooh” from Shaky, a man whose usual reaction is one of almost invisible indifference. There’s a sweet, almost spicy smell, which I described as like wafting a piece of lightly honeyed toast under your nose, and he called a Chinese sweet and sour. And the taste? The word “quaffable” was invented for this beer. You know those massive Americans who enter contests to neck 20 pints in five minutes? The cheating bastards are on this stuff. It’s very, very nice, nothing too intense but a smooth feeling of honey in your mouth. It leaves you with a feeling of warmth and enjoyment, and is by far my favourite beer of 2010.

Honey Bee and Lush. The former is the mightiest drink since the invention of roofs.

And so, somewhat reluctantly, to our final pint of the session, Hopstar’s Lush. These are another local brewery to us, just down the road in Darwen. I’ve enjoyed their beers in the past but the smell of this one was a bit off-putting – we thought it was somewhere between a mild cheese and a pair of wet socks on a changing room floor. Somehow, the taste is totally different – there’s a definite taste of wood, which I thought was like sucking on a piece of moss-covered bark on one of those massive cool trees in a forest-based episode of the X-Files. Shaky felt it was more like chewing on a pencil and suddenly realising you’ve crushed the lead beneath your teeth. Overall, a curious beer, drinkable but leaving you with a strange sensation.

And those were the beers that were. It was an intriguing session, mostly caused by our total inability to actually write down what we were drinking. But in the space of an hour we drank a piece of wood, had a lemonade beer, were left perplexed by a literal rollercoaster of a pint and enjoyed our champion beer of 2010 so far, the tremendous Honey Bee by Three B’s Brewery.

You try topping that, Foster-boys.

Beer festival · Beers · Good Cheer Beer · Honey Bee · Hopstar · J D Wetherspoon · Lush · Oldham Brewery · Rollercoaster · Roosters · Three B's

Tonight’s tipple is Fursty Ferret from Badger Ales. The bottle promises “ale full of character” as well as “tawny amber ale with a sweet nutty palate and a hoppy aroma with hints of Seville oranges. Goes well with cheese”. That’ll keep Richard happy then. The bottle also tells of a legend about some ferrets turning up at somebody’s house to drink the ale. Right oh, on with the tasting.

The drink has a strong golden brown colour with a pleasant aroma with hints of citrus and hops. The drink sits nicely on the tongue, perhaps a little heavier than I’d normally like. The hoppy taste slightly overwhelms the citrus and nutty tones which are present but seem to be fighting a losing battle against the mighty power of the hops. This is a shame really as it firmly places Fursty Ferret in the ‘just another beer’ category. It’s also quite dry.

If someone was to ask me how Fursty Ferret tastes, I’d have to say it was nice, agreeable but certainly not memorable. It’s the alcoholic equivalent of a supermarket curry, it’s nice. It fills a hole, it does a job but it’s just not the same as going to a restaurant. Ferret has that same effect, whilst I’m definitely happy to drink it, it’ll always taste like a regular, run of the mill beer. Oh well, I’m now two levels away from the “Choose the Impossible” achievement on Bioshock 2 so time to crack on with that.

Goodnight.

badger · Beers · cheese · fursty ferret · richard carr

Childhood is often characterised by single memories floating around, which are impossible to place in time or space. The best you can manage is a stab in the dark at when it roughly must have been and whereabouts it must have taken place. For example, I know that when I was roughly three I was somewhere in the whereabouts of Big Ben; I couldn’t place any more details until this weekend just gone when my coach drove past Westmister Bridge Road and I realised I must have been at the far end, looking over the river towards Big Ben. I also know that I was about eighteen when I had a horrific, life-altering sexual experience somewhere in Blackburn, but it wasn’t until a friend filled me in on the details that I knew exactly which room, who upon and what baked product it involved.

The smell of beer is another such memory, a vague collection of events that I’ll never know the time or place of. I was around it from an early age so there will have been a million times I played in a beer garden or my dad’s mates came back with fruity breath. The only one I can definitely place is walking along the side of the Jubilee in Blackburn, in the days when the waft of ale was pumped out of pubs like the smell of fresh bread fills supermarkets. It was a wonderful smell – I don’t remember it ever seeming anything other than absolutely genuine, like a woman without perfume. Of course, in those days the pubs were generally busy so I’m sure I’ve formed a few associations of that smell with the people around me having good times. Perhaps that’s why I never found trouble drinking beer.

All of these memories cropped up thanks to tonight’s drinks at Le Chateaux Edna, first of which is J. W. Lees John Willies, which in the pantheon of beery bitters sits up there with Boddingtons before it went tits up and pretty much anything by Theakstons. The smell just sums up beer. There are no hints of anything, no whiffs of fruits or chocolate or bloody hazelnuts – just the smell of beer like it used to drift out of pubs. This is one of the most evocative smells I know, one that takes me right back in time and to a happy place straight away.

From here on John Willies becomes a junk food of beers, luring you in with the smell and then hardly satisfying your appetite with an inconsequential taste. There’s really nothing bad about it but you just think it’s a shame it doesn’t live up to that wonderful beer garden smell. Is that harsh? Maybe, but at the same time I know full well I’ll be buying another of these, just for that smell that takes me somewhere in time.

On next to Brakspear’s ‘Double Dropped’ Bitter, which I was due to try last night until life got in the way. This beer tastes like a five year old set loose with the ingredients of a Supermarket Sweep run. I can taste so many things at once it’s bordering on the confusing, though that’s undoubtedly just my chilli-ravaged palate at work once again. At first I thought it was chocolate, but that fell way to an impression of something indistinct – a heavy, dark beer flavour, with a dubious aftertaste. If I’d bought a pint of this with 20 minutes to go before my train, I’d manage to drink it but it wouldn’t be fun.

Between them these beers have some good moments but I would only go back to John Willies for the smell of walking past a busy pub, back in the day.

Brakspear · Double Dropped Bitter · J. W. Lees · John Willies · Le Chateaux Edna

Traditionally there are two things the Americans can’t do. One is make a car that goes round corners and the second is brew ale. The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company have been brewing since 1980 and their Pale Ale is the flagship beer of the brewery, winning several awards over the years.

This grabbed my attention because ten years ago, I was in the Sierra Nevada mountains, hurling myself down a snowy hill like a maniac. As for the idyllic picture on the bottle, the region really looks like that. I was also drawn to the beer as you can get three bottles for £4 in Tesco. Bargain.

There’s quite a gentle aroma to this drink however it’s barely present at all, you have to really shove your nose into your glass to pick it up. The beer has a pleasing rich golden colour, clear to the eye.

Most importantly the taste is one hell of a surprise. I don’t know what I was expecting, having never drank an American ale. There’s a slight hint of a fizz to the drink which initially plays on the tongue. A bit like a faint memory of popping candy. Once you get used to the taste, you realise you’re drinking a pleasant pale ale. Not mind blowing in anyway but certainly above average. We’re in pure summer beer territory here. Light and hoppy with tingling citrus undertones.

There’s no real aftertaste to speak of but you won’t worry about that, you’ll be too busy opening the next bottle. I’d gladly drink this all night long. Bad news is that was my last bottle.

america · Beers · pale ale · sierra nevada

As I mentioned earlier today, my plan this week is to motivate myself to do some uni work by working until half past ten each day and then rewarding myself with a beer. If you know me in person, you’ll probably know I need to resort to this kind of thing to avoid calamitous falls into blind panic about where my next moment of fun will come from. If you don’t, well, you know what they say – whatever gets you through the day…

I become disproportionately pleased with myself when I make any sort of achievement involving beer, be it abstaining for a month or correctly identifying a type of hop based on a brief whiff of a beer across a smoky bar, so I’m happy to say that I stuck to my plan tonight and got a good chunk of work done. Two and a half books down, ten pages of poorly scribbled notes and then, finally, the Brakspear Oxford Gold.

A bottle of Oxford Gold, lovingly served on the antique bar I installed over the course of many years (a.k.a. my grandma's 1970s kitchen).

This is a very light beer, and I do mean very. The smell transported me ten miles into the country on a warm spring day as I raised the first shandy of the season to my friends and, with a brief nod, let summer commence. It is a really nice smell – it reminds me of how beer smells in those brief glory days until you’ve vomited it into a bush enough times for the association to be forever tainted by an unwelcome waft of bleach and cat piss. If I’d had to guess what this was, I’d have gone for a lager, and a damn nice one at that.

But, of course, we’ve all had a beer that smells like mana from the Gods only to reveal itself as a Chimera of tastes, smells, feels and lingering effects on the gut, the majority being so utterly repellent that you cannot conceive what strange chemical reaction is at play to produce such a wonderful first smell. I normally experience a variation of this at beer festivals by getting a beer that stinks at first but I still swear to at least give it a try, at which point it doesn’t actually seem that bad – until I’m half way down, and then the true smell of this foul multi-headed beast emerges from the bowels of the pint. You just know this is the one that you will pay for the day after.

No such problems with the Oxford Gold though. The taste is quite nice, in a fairly unremarkable way. It’s very refreshing, ideal for a quick pint in a beer garden, and having just had the last mouthful it’s got a bit of zing on the side of the tongue. There’s a feeling coming back to me of that crackling sweet that you used to dip sherbet into at school – an odd feeling of wondering what’s going on in the tongue department. All in all, not bad at all though and definitely ample reward for tonight’s work.

As promised, for supper I tried a little cheese and crackers. The people on telly keep going on about five a day, so I’ve tried to cover everything – apples, cheese, cottage cheese, bread and beer. I needed the piece of toast to stodge it up a bit – those crackers are gone in one and then what do you do? For tonight’s cheeses I’ve gone for 300g of Morrison’s Value Mild Cheddar alongside 200g of Morrisons 99p Offer At The End Of The Aisle. I can report back that both are quite cheesy, with the 99p tasting especially cheap. Cottage cheese on toast is a mixed bag but do be sure, readers, not to attempt apple on toast. I enjoyed my late supper in the fine surroundings of Le Chateaux Edna and can heartily recommend a table/settee here to all fine diners.

Fine dining on a Tuesday night, Blackburn style.

Brakspear · Le Chateaux Edna · Oxford Gold

We’ve decided to have a go at the second Beer Swap and have begun to pick out our four local beers. I’m hopeful at least two of the micros around here will be able to sort us out with something a bif different, but we’ll have to wait and see. Most people will have heard of Thwaites and probably Moorhouses, but East Lancashire does have a good few other little ones – just have a look at our East Lancs CAMRA page for details. In particular, we know people at Red Rose so it’d be nice to have one of theirs in – but it’s meant to be a secret, eh, so we’ll have to wait and see…

I’m quite looking forward to this one now…

Beer Swap · Beers · Moorhouses · Red Rose · Thwaites

This is what I will be doing this week.

Like any science, social science – the study of people – can make discoveries based on observing repeated patterns. Unlike astrophysics and neurochemistry it falls down somewhat when confronted by the sheer erratic lunacy of human behaviour, where 2 + 2 can equal 4, 5 and ministrone to different people. Nonetheless beneath this madness runs a steady tide of predictable behaviour which we can learn from.

Using this power they call science I have, then, been able to observe the repeated pattern of me

1. knowing I have something to do,
2. knowing I have plenty of time to do it in,
3. therefore proceeding to fill this time with journeys to supermarkets to buy beer and cheese.

This pattern has not failed to emerge again today as I know I need to spend most of the next three weeks doing uni work, but it’s not quite urgent enough to stop me doing everything else. I’ve just managed to temper it a little by giving myself a reward to motivate me to work – if you like, treating myself like a child, a donkey or a plantation worker.

This is what I want to be doing this week.

And so this week, to help me get through the ceaseless, crushing feeling of boredom and impending death I feel when I know that I’ll just be at home after work every night, I’ve picked up four bottles from Morrisons to get me through each night. One for Tuesday, one for Wednesday, one for Thursday, one for Friday. I have a lot of reading to do each night, chapters from six books on the New Right’s impact on welfare provision (1979-1990), so I’m aiming not to open a bottle before 10.30pm each night. That’ll give me an hour and half to enjoy the bottle and a few crackers and cheese – which I read so much about beer lovers enjoying too, as well as Matt earlier this week, I thought I had to give a try – and then give a brief write-up. If I can do that each night, I’ll get all my work done and the cloud of lonely ennui which hangs over my head will take a kick in the balls from my beers to keep it at bay.

I’ve got four to try, as I mentioned – Joseph Holt’s Maple Moon, J. W. Lees John Willies and Brakspear’s Oxford Gold and Bitter. Not the most inspiring bunch ever but as I discovered today while looking through Morrisons selection, I’ve already tried most of them so I’m down to the ones I’ve skipped over in the past.

Look out for tonight’s first report at approximately 11.30pm, unless science proves itself right again and I neck all four by half eight.

Beers · Brakspear · J. W. Lees · John Willies · Joseph Holt · Maple Moon · Morrisons · Oxford Gold

And so to the White Swan in Stokesley this week for their annual Beer and Cheese Festival, a gathering which- in the eyes of some North East real ale drinkers- threatens to relegate the death and resurrection of Jesus to a mere support act in terms of important Easter weekend events. It’s well worth a visit and, despite this year only being my second time as an attendee, I can already offer you one vital tip if you plan to make the most of the full range of guest ales on offer and turn up on the opening day of Good Friday- the pub opens at 12pm, make sure you’re there for quarter to. Then you’ll be at least in the first 25 or so in the queue at the door. The determination to beat the coach loads of folk who turn up from nearby Camra groups is such that people are patiently waiting outside earlier and earlier with each passing year. And it’s always my would-be in-laws at the front. By next year they’ll probably be lining up outside from about mid-February.

Once you’re inside there’s a mobile bar which has 10 pumps on- most of these will be empty by the Saturday. This year, only 4 ales survived into the second day of the festival- though the guest taps on the permanent bar keep turning over new guest stuff regularly, alongside the pub’s own Captain Cook microbrewery output.

Those will have to wait though as it was time to get cracking on the festival drinks on offer. Straight off the bat we’ve got a couple of hefty offerings from the Thornbridge Brewery who’ve supplied the festival with two of the most resoundingly fruity pale ales ever attempted at a British beer festival; both of which also come with a hefty 5%+ hit which renders them as dangerous as they are refreshing. First up, there’s Jaipur which- clue in the title- is an India Pale Ale with a sharp, citrusy kick which is powerful and pleasant, though stopped precariously just short of being bitter enough to make the drinker go cross-eyed. There’s a real sense of both danger and refreshment at work here- like the feeling one may experience while goosing a lemon plantation owner’s daughter on a summer’s evening. In India, obviously.

Next up from Thronbridge is Kipling which is a South Pacific Pale Ale that, and we’re warming to something of a theme from these boys here, is similarly redolent of both pleasant fruity flavours and the dizzying threat of encroaching menace. It’s got gooseberry and melon in the mix somewhere but also weighs in at 5.2%, it’s like being mugged by a can of Lilt with a flick knife. The overall impression I’m left with of the Thornbridge Brewery is that of the Man from Del Monte not so much saying “Yes” as demanding  ”everything from the till and no sudden movements”. You are commanded to drink their beers immediately- I wouldn’t upset them.

There now follows a couple of drinks to have picked up some regional awards down South before venturing up the A19 to Stokesley.   B.G. Sips first from the Blue Monkey Brewery which claimed a Gold at Camra’s Peterborough Beer Festival in 2008. Rest assured people of Peterborough and surrounding districts that this ale carries your reputation as fine judges forward to other parts of the nation with aplomb. It’s biscuity- but not so much that it feels like drinking stale Hob-Nobs (Brewhouse Brown Ale- I’m looking at you) and there’s even a hint of malt and maybe a touch of quenching sweetness. It feels like floating on cheesecake on a flapjack lilo- especially if you’re mind’s been opened up by 4 pints of Jaipur before you got stuck into it.

It’s the Champion Beer of Gloucestershire for 2009 next- Old Rocky from Nailsworth. If this is anything to go by, the ale denizens of this particular county like their stuff refreshing, fruity and to be- intriguingly, according to the tasting notes- “the perfect beer to accompany breakfast”. Mind you, if your county capital had only really been in the news in recent years due to a flesh eating virus and Fred West, you’d probably be getting sloshed over your cornflakes too. The beer itself, continuing the theme of being in tune with the newly-awake, turns out to be as refreshing as a dewey spring morning and heartily recommended to all, not just unfortunate people from disaster-ridden counties like Gloucestershire.

Finally, the Shardlow Brewing Co. offer up Narrow Boat about which I have very little to say. This may be the ultimate session ale, the most cooking of cooking beers. It’s taste is so light and etherial it’s comprised mostly of ideas and notions rather than anything tangible and real. Here we might actually have the first ever conceptual real ale and it the perfect drink to offer anyone who gets dragged along to a beer festival but doesn’t like the taste of beer. Or anything, come to think of it.

The White Swan Beer and Cheese Festival runs over the Easter weekend every year- which means it’s practically 13 long months rather than just a year till the next one.  Or 9 months till my girlfriend’s parents are queuing at the door.  See you there.

b.g. sips · blue monkey brewery · captain cook brewery · jaipur · kipling · nailsworth brewery · narrow boat · old rocky · sharrow brewing co. · stokesley · thornbridge brewery · white swan