CAT | Beer
Mondays to me are typically a halfway house between feeling slightly jaded after the weekend’s beer exploits, crossed with not really being too bad because I tone things down on Sundays. It’s like that first day feeling vaguely human again after having an irritating cold for a week. This being the way it is, it’s not often I fancy a dinnertime pint on a Monday.
Having had a quiet weekend, though, I got the taste on the Monday just gone and tried a bottle of Theakston XB with my dinner. It wasn’t cheap; £3.15 for the bottle, and this is from a council-owned cafe (Blakeys if you happen to know Blackburn). That’s more than double the price in the shops round here and leaves a bitter taste in your mouth before you even taste the beer; it wasn’t even pulled from a cask, for Christ’s sake.
I went for XB because of the label, to be honest. I don’t like hoppy beers with food and judging by the label I pictured this being a big bastard of a beer with really strong flavours to live up to the food. Medium malty beers don’t work for me either – I always find the only ones that work are dark beers that punch above their weight. Picture what I had on Monday, a Lancashire cheese sandwich, with a flowery beer – does that seem to match up for you? Perhaps it does, taste being individual of course, but for me cheese works best with something sharp and biting, full of its own flavours rather than just a compliment to food.
XB does, I must say, work well in these situations. The flavour is intense and lingers even while eating. It lasts just around the right time to match an easy-paced dinner break, so a fifth or so will be left for you to finish off when the food’s out of the way. I wouldn’t call it a great beer if I was out drinking – its strength and potency make it a slow one to get down and it’s definitely more suited to a casual dinner hour. However, on the occassional evenings where I knock together a few cheeses, breads and fruits and fancy a couple of beers to go with it, I’d definitely give XB another go.
Additional note: this would be a very efficient beer for getting banjoed in a short space of time.
According to horse racing people, going to The Derby doesn’t feel like going to The Derby anymore. Not since they moved to a Saturday from it’s previous long-standing slot on the first Wednesday in June. In it’s original place in the calendar, people had to take the day off work to go to Epsom for the race- it felt mischevious, it felt naughty, it felt deliciously like skiving. And now it doesn’t.
Well in the spirit of such devil-may-care bunking off, me and m’colleague Richard took this past Wednesday off work and set off to sample the Rail Ale Trail that is to be found headed out to the west of Manchester. At it’s heftiest this particular excursion can take in 8 different stops along the way between Stalybridge and Batley but only half of these paid host to us over the course of the afternoon – though another drink was tied on in Manchester at Official BadPoo Mighty Pub the City Arms Inn.
Two light ales and a debate on the merits of tiles in pubs.
Proceedings got underway at The West Riding Refreshment Room on Dewsbury station with a couple of perfect session-starting pale ales from Yorkshire’s Rooster brewery and Durham brewery’s Magus. They both slipped down easily, light and refreshing- only serving to strengthen our belief that pale ales are the ultimate was to get a day’s session drinking underway; though this decision was only reached after lengthy and appropriately grave debate. In fact, like many of the establishments on this journey, The West Ridings is a place where a man’s conversation can turn easily to the most heightened of philosophical musings. Naturally, we choose to go on and wrestle with that most unwieldy of beasts- is tiled decoration in a pub acceptable?
This debate rattled on for so long, and we got so comfortable in the pleasant surrounds of this station bar (the food smelled particularly alluring) that we briefly forgot we were on a tight schedule and came close to missing our train. Luckily the journey from our table to the platform and onto the train took less than 10 seconds so disaster was happily averted.
Huddersfield next where, in the Head of Steam, you’ll find 4 rooms of varying decoration; including a games room, where you’ll find brilliant old-fashioned two-player arcade table machines nestled amongst the Connect 4. We take up residence on the platform side of the pub in a room clearly set up more for dining than drinking. This is a good hint at what you absolutely must do if and when you find yourself in this establishment. You must eat here.
For they serve proper chips. Big, crispy, fluffy, gorgeous, proper chips.
We both plumped for the usually safe option of a sandwich and some of those chips for some lunch as we hoped to avoid eating too much and being struck down by the dreaded affliction of PCL (Post Consumption Lethargy, acronym fans). However, owing to the size of the chips and the butties being made with the world’s fattest slices of bread, it’s a close call and we only just get away with it after wofling the nosh down.
Food and beer in the Head of Steam.
In between gorging on foody delights, we had the time to take in the decoration and a couple of pints. Decoration first, which in the room we were sat is a beguiling mixture of railway based art and promotional material for various Drinks That Time Forgot (Virgin Vodka! Carling Premier!). This is probably an attempt to differentiate themselves from most station bars which content themselves with plastering the wall with various bits of brass from engines and lots of old signs- all very pleasant and evocative but a little bit akin at times to drinking in a skip.
As for the beer – there was 11 listed to pick from and we ended up sampling Organ Grinder from the Brass Monkey Brewery as well as Whispers and Lightyear from the Glentworth Brewery who appear to name all their drinks after aspirational 80’s nightclubs. All beers were nice though, unfortunately, rushed at the death owing to The Huddersfield Dash. This is a tradition at Huddersfield where, every time I do this ale trail, I forget that the platform you arrive into Huddersfield on is not the one you leave from if you want to get to Marsden. This leads to a last-gasp charge across the station- an easy activity normally but difficult when already a few pints into a session and in the early stages of digesting those chips and that massive bread.
On to Marsden and, with a tight schedule to keep, we foresake the trek down the hill into the village itself (recommended if you have the time) and drop into the Railway which is on the station’s doorstep. This pub is not officially part of the Ale Trail- possibly owing to it being a Marston’s pub and therefore light on the independently brewed stuff. It’s a nice place though and there is a dartboard on which a quick round of 301 is despatched (no doubles to finish though, as we don’t have a spare fortnight) while we sup a Wychwood Dirty Tackle and Marston’s Sweet Chariot- you may be able to spot a rugby theme.
A little deviation from the suggested route, but it saved time.
Game of darts over we settle down to read through Innspeak – a fine example of the magazines put together by real ale enthusiasts and usually frothing over with intriguing adverts for lovely looking pubs, notice of upcoming beer festivals, news about Debbie and Steve who’ve just refurbished the Lamb and Flag, and borderline hysterical invective against the government for whatever new law or taxes associated with drink that they’ve just come up with. These magazines are, almost without exception, brilliant and- since their written by enthusiastic amateurs rather than ego-riddled journalists- infinitely more informative than almost all other printed publications on the market. Plus, in the case of Innspeak, you get to find out about this issue’s Star at the Bar, the lovely Michaela who works at the Cross Inn, Halifax. You don’t get that in the NME.
A short stint on another train that we can watch arrive from the bar takes us to Stalybridge’s Buffet Bar and their choice of 7 ales from which we select Blair Atholl by Little Ale Cart and The North’s London Calling (or that could be the other way round, we never figured it out). Again, these are both very quaffable and it’s nice to report an entire days run without a single dodgy pint. Our conversation by this stage is hitting the ‘Hatching Mad Plans’ stage and there’s various talk of elaborate drinking holidays which’ll almost certainly never get followed up.
One of the few remaining Victorian station bars.
All this takes place surrounded by the Buffet Bar’s slightly odd decor of 70’s wood panelling and 50’s leather chairs all contained, in the bit we were sat, in a very 1990’s suburban conservatory. On the walls, meanwhile, the usual old fashioned pub paraphenalia (adverts for Martini and Bovril etc) and supplemented by a few maverick touches- like a certificate for a Domestic Millinery exam from evening classes at Ashton-Under-Lyne in March 1912.
Beyond this lies Manchester and our final drink of the day at The City Arms, but his isn’t part of the ale trail and this particular pub needs BadPoo consideration on it’s own sometime in the future rather than here.
And that was our day. I’ve done this ale trail on a weekend before where it’s so popular that the arrival at every station is marked by a mass charge to the bar by the dozens of people who’ve ended up on the same schedule as you. The descent down the hill into Marsden on these days really ought to be reclassified as an extreme sport. Far better is to skive the day off work and do it this way, on a weekday afternoon when you have have that little naughty thrill I mentioned earlier and where two men can find the time and freedom to experience 2 of the great means of opening the mind up to thought and contemplation – travel and a pint.
And where we can decide that yes, tiled decoration is acceptable in a pub.
Celebrating the Lake District’s most beloved author, in beer form.
The list of great Blackburnites is both grand and many. Lee Mack, Carl Fogerty, Corrie’s Wendi Peters. None of these however have ale in their name. Not according to Google anyway. Alfred Wainwright spent most of his days meandering around the Lake District and writing about his jaunts. Lucky bugger. His book was recently turned into a TV show. Much like Coast, but with less boats and that no mental shouting blokes.
In 2007, Thwaites decided to honour his achievements with an ale. Originally just a seasonal, it proved so popular they decided to produce it all year round. Good call. Like the good man himself, the beer originates in Blackburn and is available unsurprisingly in northwest pubs. If you can’t get to a pub, you can order it online or buy it in Waitrose or EH Booths.
The notes on the bottle invite us to ’savour a refreshing golden beer with soft fruit flavours and a hint of sweetness’. As long as the fruit flavours don’t consist of bananas and kiwi fruit, we should be onto a winner. I’m first greeted with a pleasant but light aroma that smells simply of beer. It doesn’t give anything away about the actual taste. There is no bitterness to this drink, if anything sums up sitting in the early afternoon summer sun, probably by a lake or river; this is beer for the job. Very, very drinkable. This is the ideal warm up to evening session or the pint you have with a lunchtime bite.
This is also where the beer falls down. It’s eminently drinkable; I could drink this by the case. Problem is the taste betrays the 4.1% volume. It tastes so light that I could quite easily neck this without it touching the sides of my mouth. The sweetness provides for a very nice drink, but one I could probably accompany with some toast before leaving for work. I’ve discovered the first drink I can class as a breakfast beer.
I like this drink, the taste is very refreshing. My feelings are that it should remain seasonal. Brilliant summer lunchtime drink, in March however, I feel somewhat short-changed.
Tesco’s beer selection was poor tonight. My continued search for Titanic Stout goes on. Not wanting to leave empty handed, I opted for a bottle for Ruddles County as I’ve never had it before. The bottle promises the flavours of dark toffee and a crisp bitterness. At 4.7% volume, it seems the perfect partner for a good hearty meatloaf cooked by herself.
First impressions are that it doesn’t have any particular aroma to it. I know it’s not wine but I like to start tasting my ale before it actually hits my tongue. Without a particular smell, there’s less anticipation of the wonders to follow. Maybe it’s jut me. As for the taste, well I couldn’t taste toffee, not at first but after about half a pint, the toffee flavour appears and lingers for a while. The bitterness was crisp but not overpowering. There’s a light hoppy taste which sits well.
If I had to look for a negative for this beer, it would have to be that although it isn’t bland, it has a generic taste. The generic taste is enjoyable and I’m sure there’s an apt time and place but as for something new and exciting? This isn’t it. Maybe it suffers from having been around for a while. Is it nice? Yes. Would I drink it again? Certainly.
Did it rock my face? No, not really.
Can I still taste toffee? Yes.
My attempt at sophisticated drinking got as far as finding the first glass cup I could lay my hands on.
Tonight’s beer is a familiar one to most, Morland’s Old Speckled Hen.
This is one of those beers that you can’t avoid and nearly everyone has heard of, but I’ve never figured out why. Even my local Spar has it, and their real ale choice is this and Newcastle Brown. Indeed, that’s why I’ve ended up buying a bottle of it to take home, when my normal approach is to try anything with a mental shiny label and a name like Yoko Ono’s been dicking about with a Swedish dictionary.
I get a little sick of seeing it everywhere because the taste is so generic; there are a thousand other beers just like it and no reason not to try them rather than sticking with the same bloody thing over and over. In this way it’s guilty of being one of those ales that become so popular that they become ubiquitous, lose their charm and are eventually dethroned from their shiny position at the forefront of the bar. Spitfire suffered that fate some time ago if you ask me, and Greene King’s IPA is so common there’s no real appeal to getting another pint of it.
The beer reminds me of the first pint of Tetleys I ever had, which I thought I’d like based on the smell of beer wafting out from pubs, but actually felt queasy after drinking because it was so beery. I think that’s what sums it up for me – it’s one of the worst possible beers you could give to someone new to bitter. Everything about it is ultra-beer and if you don’t have the stomach for it, it won’t go down well.
These guys at BeerAdvocate (which is a misleading name since all they advocate is reducing everything down to a list of its chemical elements while slagging off the people who made it) come up with some staggeringly complex descriptions of it, while still failing to describe to anyone what it’s actually like to drink. So you should know:
- ONLY drink it if you can deal with shuddering slightly after each sip rapes the side of your tongue,
- DO NOT buy a pint of this if you have 20 minutes to kill before a train and think you’ll “slip a cheeky one in”, as you’ll curse the pain of trying to force it all down in the last five minutes,
- DO buy a pint if you don’t really like real ale but want to buy a pint of it in front of some blokes from work at Friday dinner so they think you’re a proper man who knows shit about beer.
So, a thumbs down from me. It’s not a bad beer, it’s just a pretty intense version of its type.
Wigan’s beer festival is just getting underway as I write this, and I’ll be over there tomorrow afternoon to see what it’s like these days. I haven’t been for a good six or seven years, when I went with a few of my uncles, we all fell out and ended up making a frankly bizarre attempt to con our way in with an out of date CAMRA card. That it was about 50p to get in didn’t seem to matter to us after five pints around Wigan beforehand.
Hopefully tomorrow will be a little less stupid as I’m just over for the afternoon session with my sister. Oh yes – the afternoon “quiet session”, my second favourite piece of beer terminology (behind “drinking career” but just ahead of “session beer”). Having been to quite a few afternoon sessions now, I have found that it really is quite a good description for the atmosphere, a blend of studious beer appreciation with banter without the din of a blues band in the background.
I’ll report back on how it goes, along with a look back at Wednesday’s day out with Matt along the Transpennine Real Ale Trail.
What would wine be like if it had grown up English? Or, to put it another way, what would real ale be like if it was French? What I’m getting at is this: the French like to make things complicated. Paris, for instance, has 3 seperate underground rail networks all on top of each other, while it’s only possible to utilise the language over there properly if you know the gender of a coffee table.
This love of needless complexity is best demonstrated via wine through which the French have taken the relatively simple process of fermenting grapes to make a pleasant alcoholic beverage and infused it with all sorts of rules and guidelines about what wine should be consumed with what food and a style of writing tasting notes that would leave James Joyce in his ‘Finnegans Wake’ days breathless with their impenetrability.
Meanwhile in Blighty, the brewing industry has been missing out on this trick for years and has only recently tried to gourmet itself up and now it seems every bottle worth it’s salt comes with a flowery description of the rapture you’ll recieve when you shove the drink into your face. Which makes tonight’s beer all the more intriguing.
From the label on the back of a bottle of Purity Mad Goose (current frontrunner for the coveted Badpoo award of ‘Beer That Sounds Most Like A Peter Gabriel Era Genesis Album Title’) and you’ll find a thorough breakdown of what’s gone into the brew- Maris Otter, Caragold and Wheat Malt with Hallertau brewing hops and Cascade and Willamette aroma hops since you ask- but beyone that the preview of the taste is limited to ‘great hop character and citrus overtones’ which you can pretty much deduce by reading the words ‘Pale Ale’ on the front.
Frankly, I’m not sure this will do anymore. We live in a world where not only are our alcoholic drinks dissected in tasting notes before we actualy taste them, but film trailers handily condense all the good bits of a movie into 2 crash-bang minutes and TV shows actively promote what’s going to happen in them just so people will tune in to see exactly what they’ve been told would occur actually occurring. Now I find I’m venturing into a bottle of beer without a detailled guide and full set of directions.
It’s a good job, then, that this is a belter. And that’s all I’m going to tell you- go and try it yourselves. If the people at Purity want to keep a little mystery alive before you taste their wares than I’m not going to spoil the party. Except to say that it’s got a great hop character and citrus overtones.
However, to finish, we can take a different cue from the world of wine and discuss what sort of thing this drink would be a perfect accompaniment for- much in the same way that we all know Merlot is nice with steak and it’s a terrible faux pas to drink a dry white while eating a Mars Bar. Here’s a few examples of things which would be enhanced by a pint of Purity Mad Goose:
- Chicken
- Fish
- Pork
- Crisps
- Nuts
- Watching ‘Cheers’
- Doing the hoovering
- Juggling
- Yelling
- Life
After a horrific weekend experience of ‘going out’ in the way that many people seem to actively enjoy but which I can’t help feeling is a sign of mental illness (crowded clubs, 4 deep at the bar, extortionate prices, ear-bleeding music, toilets ankle deep in piss etc.) tonight has provided a welcome opportunity for a quiet drink at home in front of the telly.
This evening’s entertainment is the Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey final between the USA and Canada which, I’ve got to say, is proving to be a superb spectacle- mostly because the actual playing of the sport seems to be secondary to everyone trying to clatter their nearest opponent into the rink-side plexiglass at every available opportunity.
Now the obvious choice of beverage to accompany this event would be an ice cold North American beer of some description but this would be hamstrung by the fact that major beers from that part of the world are, to quote Eric Idle’s immortal line, “like making love in a canoe” (i.e. fucking close to water). There’s a few interesting drinks coming out of some of the smaller American and Canadian brewers but my local Co-op seems unwilling to stock these at the moment so there goes that plan.
Therefore, I’m taking this opportunity to try something bold; drinking cider in the wintertime (which sounds a little like a euphemism from an Alan Bennett monologue: “Well, Percy often turned his nose up ay my macaroons, though the rumours in the village were that he enjoyed drinking cider in the wintertime” [Warm Cobbles; 1983]). Cider or scrumpy are, of course, among the ultimate summer drinks- offering as they do an unrivalled combination of fruity refreshment and thirst-quenching lightness. Though this is allied to the potentially dangerous combination of being deceptively easy drinking yet infused with mind-bending alcohol levels. Everyone needs to have had one of those days in a sweltering beer garden where the first neck-wetting pint is swiftly despatched and followed up by two more in quick succession before the ability to walk or even blink in unison is lost for the rest of the day.
But it’s many months since we’ve had weather like that and it’ll be a while before it’s back which means I haven’t had a cider for ages. It’s just not felt right since the sun and warmth buggered off. So I’ve put my prejudice to one side and indulged in a bottle of Henry Weston’s Vintage Special Reserve- clocking in at 8.2% and available in most places with a decent bottled beer selection- to see if it’s pleasure is still intact at the end (hopefully) of this cold, cold winter we’ve had.
Well the first thing to report is that it still tastes as nicely balanced as ever- neither too tangy or dry, a little bit of sweetness and the real bite of the apple coming through on the finish. The light fizz is there which, for me, makes cider inferior to the refreshing flatness of scrumpy but at least this effort lacks the almost sherbert tartness that ruins pretty much all of the more mainstream ciders.
However. Without the need to quench a thirst and now being drunk just for the pleasure of a beverage, I’m getting the phenomenon of ‘furry tongue’ with alarming speed here. It’s usually about three pints of beer before the feel of a dry, rough tongue becomes noticable and I’m pretty sure that cider doesn’t have that effect so quickly when the sun is high in the sky but I’m only halfway through a bottle and already I feel like the inside of my gob needs a shave. I can only think this is being caused by the fact that, with the refreshing properties of the drink diminished by the current weather, a large part of the experience has actually been compromised and therefore I’m free to notice the more negative effects it’s having on the inside of my face.
I could try to mull the cider but this, as far as I can figure out, involves a saucepan, half a spice-rack and low-to-moderate witchcraft and I can’t be bothered with any of those. So I suppose the finding of this little experiment is that yes it is still worth drinking cider in the wintertime- but only if you have the one bottle. Which, at 8.2%, means it’s probably the most sensible way to consume it.
It just isn’t the best way.
I’ve recently taken it upon myself to start reviewing pubs for this site which is, on reflection, an idea born of monumental dumbness for two reasons- I’ve no idea how it’s done and I don’t know if it’s even possible.
I’ve reviewed plenty of things in my time and it’s a fairly easy process; if it’s a film, TV show, book, comic, album or game the main question is always the similar- is it entertaining/engaging/enjoyable/moving/funny/exciting or not? All you then have to do is flower the answer out to however many words and make references to other works by Martin Scorcese (this works best when reviewing a film by Martin Scorcese).
But what do we look for in a pub? If I review one, what should I really tell you about? Obviously the beer selection’s important but there must be more to it than that- otherwise I’m just reviewing a bunch of pints rather than a place itself. A general sense of he ambiance is important but how do you measure that? When I’ve put the quandry of how to review pubs to various people they’ve all mentioned that the toilets need to be analysed- but I don’t know anyone who actively frequents or avoids a boozer because of the state of the bogs. Similarly, food has been suggested as an area for investigation but do we rely on pubs to do food all the time or is it only important when we’re hungry? If I was reviewing chippys, I wouldn’t score it based on the cans of pop in the fridge.
On the subject of which- should there even be a scoring system? Should I give a pub a mark out of 10? Or 100? Or just give a verbal description which you have to read to have a clue if I like the establishment or not?
Clearly this is something of a minefield so I’ve aksed m’colleague Richard what he thinks. And this is it:
Having stewed over this for a few days and thought back over a decade spent in all the unique types of pubs we have in this country, I think what a good pub boils down to for me is:
- a setting for good memories.
I suggest this because that process of thinking back over the innumerable nights I’ve spent in pubs made me realise one main thing, that my memories always pop into my head in the form of: “do you remember that time in [a pub] when [a jolly good time was had by all]?” So it’s a case of time, place and event.
I think the pub’s role as the “place” for these memories is vital. Of course, for the memories to last years, you need good people too – but you can spend time with good people anywhere, so that’s getting away from the point of this question. Matt alluded to the sense of ambience a good pub creates and I believe this is what kickstarts the chain of events that ends up with a bunch of lasting memories surviving the haze of the morning after.
Attempting to categorise or score pubs on certain criteria seems pointless to me because when the pub’s role is just to create the right setting for people to have a good time, there are an infinite number of “good” and “bad” things. What is terrible and off-putting to me, and there are many things in pubs that do make me feel ill at ease, can be ideal for someone else. Rather than trying to create a rigid definition of what makes a pub good, I would rather look at a pub from the point of view of how it makes me feel. The main reason I keep going back to pubs and spending colossal amounts of money hunting down new ones is because I know there are always new ones out there which I’ll never know are just round the next corner, and I’ll wander in, sit down and suddenly experience that unquantifiable feeling that everything’s pretty much okay with the world.
So, then, I tend to agree with Matt. Scores and grades aren’t really much use in such a subjective world. I’d approach it by trying to capture the feeling, be it good or bad, and let the reader see if they empathise with the description. And what are the permanent plus points for me? I like pubs where I don’t feel any pretensions wafting around the air; I love dark wood and beams that haven’t changed for centuries; I love droplets of dew on a beer garden lawn, just after a summer shower has ended and the sun shines brightly through your beer. I like how people find it easier to talk, or sit alone with a paper if they want. I don’t really know of any other institutions this country has quite like a good pub, or where so many happy memories are formed.
So there we have it- no scores, no grades, just writing and remembering.
Starting later this week when me and Richard hit the infamous Ale Trail through Dewsbury, Huddersfield and Stalybridge back to Manchester on the train.
And then we’ll see what we remember.
Tomorrow is Wordy’s birthday, a day which I like to think of as a walking trip. That there happen to be about 28 pubs on the route we take is just by the by.
For 20 years or so now he’s done the Revidge Run, a pub crawl in Blackburn that goes right from the northern edge of the town into the centre – that is, for the few who make it to the end. I don’t think I ever have, usually tapping out somewhere around the Hole i’th Wall. Out of curiosity I knocked a Gmap together…
You can see it in full size over on Google Maps. Not bad eh?
