Author Archives: simon

68. Worthington’s White Shield

Worthington’s White Shield is a near-legendary India Pale Ale from one of Britain’s most venerable brewing names. White Shield is the world’s oldest surviving IPA, and the one considered by connoisseurs to be as close as you can get these days to the original IPAs brewed in Burton-on-Trent in the eighteenth century to be exported to India.

The Worthington’s brand and White Shield in particular have had something of a chequered recent past, having been shunted around various regional breweries, and almost disappearing from existence at one point, having been deemed surplus to requirements by previous owners.

However, in a perhaps surprising turn of events under the stewardship of international brewing giant Molson Coors, in 2000, production of White Shield returned to Burton-on-Trent where it is brewed to this day almost entirely unchanged from its original 1829 recipe.

Worthington’s White Shield is typically found in bottle-conditioned form. It pours a not-especially-pale chestnut colour with a tight tan head.

There’s a massive, almost paintstripping, hop bitterness front and centre, but it’s perfectly well offset by the fat malt backbone so typical of the older, English style of IPA. There are toffee and caramel notes, dried fruits, and even a hint of esters that are reminiscent of a Belgian Dubbel.

It’s a remarkably complex beer, but all the flavours are in perfect balance, making for a particularly satisfying end product. This truly is a classic beer, and it’s great to see it being brewed to its full potential once again.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Worthington’s (Molson Coors), Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, England
Style:	India Pale Ales
Strength:	5.6% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	500ml bottle

67. Moorhouse’s Pendle Witches Brew

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A recent spell out of the office due to a minor injury left me keen to get away from daytime TV and back into the real world. Or at least the pub. Tell you what, shall we go to the pub?

We shall. The Grape & Grain up in Crystal Palace is a great little boozer, and very much one for the real ale purists. I like it. I want to love it, but I don’t yet. With a dozen hand pumps, knowledgeable staff, and discounts for CAMRA members, you know where you stand, and it’s a huge improvement on its previous incarnation.

That isn’t terribly hard, since as a “Jack Beard’s” it was part of a chain of utterly hopeless pubs that were a scourge on the entire South London area.

That’s no longer the case. Excellent management is now in place, the ales are plentiful and in prime condition, and you can even get a salad here if you ask nicely. My only real reservation is that the selection of beers tends to be quite conservative. With that many pumps, a pub can afford to take a few risks and whack on a good craft Black IPA, Barleywine or Imperial Stout, whereas here you’re usually going to be choosing between ten or so inoffensive, sessionable English bitters.

Today at least, one of those bitters was one that we need to cover here on Three Hundred Beers: Pendle Witches Brew.

Pendle Hill is well-known to anyone who, like your author, grew up in Lancashire. It has a long history of association with witchcraft and other supernatural activities, and so it gives its name to this beer.

“Witches” is fruity, vinous, bitter and floral. It’s pleasant enough, but it’s deeply, deeply unexciting. It has won all the CAMRA awards, yet you can drink it without actually noticing it, which, inconveniently enough, leaves you rather short of words if you’re trying to describe it on a blog later.

This is a beer very much from the old guard: safe but boring. It’s beers like this that are the very reason exciting new breweries like The Kernel and Beavertown exist. Breweries that challenge you to think about what you’re drinking.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Moorhouse’s, Burnley, Lancashire, England
Style:	Extra Strong Beers and Bitters
Strength:	5.1% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

66. Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter

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There are no less than four Samuel Smith’s beers in The Book—an honour shared only by London’s Meantime brewery—so it seems like it might be time to try another one. I sampled old Sam’s Imperial Stout a little while ago, but wasn’t completely blown away by it. Nor have I been truly impressed by the several other beers that I’ve tried in the brewery’s pubs.

This one though, the 5.0% ABV Taddy Porter, is really quite famous, and is very well regarded by those in the know. It also makes for the perfect excuse to seek out a pub that I’ve heard a lot of good things about.

The Anchor Tap is tucked away in London’s Shad Thames neighbourhood and wears its long history with pride. As its name suggests, it was originally the brewery tap for the Anchor Brewery, which was situated on the banks of the Thames next to Tower Bridge, but has long since been converted into apartments that you and I will never be able to afford.

The pub these days is operated by Sam Smith’s, and remains an unashamedly unreconstructed oasis of authenticity despite being besieged by gentrification and tourism. It’s a rabbit warren of tiny wood-panelled rooms, darts and pork scratchings, and even has a devoted cadre of working class locals, although goodness knows where they actually live.

And conveniently enough, it has Taddy Porter in Sam Smith’s characteristically generous 550ml bottles.

From the bottle, Taddy Porter pours a sumptuous deep brown, almost black, colour with a gigantic tan head thicker than some of the accents in the main bar. There’s an immediate waft of chocolate, black coffee and dark, bitter malts.

And it’s good. It tastes like the quintessential porter, with bitter and sweet flavours in perfect balance. Taddy Porter is smooth, deep and dark, and thankfully avoids the slight wateriness that can plague lesser porters.

This is probably the best porter I’ve covered on the blog so far, and one of the best I’ve ever tried. Given that porter is the most London of beer styles, it’s both impressive and refreshing to see this idiosyncratic little brewery from Yorkshire show the London boys how it’s done.

If I’ve been slightly disparaging of Sam Smith’s beers in the past, this one has given me a newfound respect for the chaps from Tadcaster. This was a cracking beer in a cracking pub.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Samuel Smith Old Brewery, Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England
Style:	Porters and Stouts
Strength:	5.0% ABV
Found at:	The Anchor Tap, Horselydown Lane, London SE1
Serving:	550ml Bottle

65. Ommegang Abbey Ale

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Since there apparently are not enough Belgian beers in the world, we now turn to an American brewery doing their best to recreate famous Trappist and other Belgian ales in a postmodern mockup monastery in Cooperstown, New York.

Brewery Ommegang was founded in 1997 by Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield, two Americans with a genuine passion for quality beer, and everything else Belgian, but primarily with a keen eye for business.

With Don and Wendy having sold their share of the company in 2003, Ommegang are now owned by the European brewing giant Duvel Moortgat.

Despite the pretensions to authenticity and Belgianness, since Ommegang’s website contact page lists an extensive roll call of Public Relations, Marketing and Accounts managers, and almost nobody remotely involved with the brewing process, it’s probably fair to assume we are not dealing with an artisanal craft brewery here.

In terms of colour, Ommegang Abbey Ale is a lovely deep ruby, turning almost golden syrup-like in the right light. There isn’t much in the way of aroma beyond a few peppery Belgian-style esters, but it certainly isn’t lacking in flavour.

From the first taste, this is an intensely flavoursome beer. It’s rich, dark and treacly, and packs in dried fruit, christmas cake and rum notes. It’s every inch the Belgian Dubbel, but with every flavour turned up to 11.

The hefty alcohol content is hidden behind a slightly cloying sweetness, and unfortunately there’s a somewhat watery finish that lets the whole ensemble down a little.

I suspect some people would absolutely love this beer, and it genuinely has enough to say for itself to justify some enthusiasm, but to me it just isn’t the finished article. It’s a good beer, but I suspect there won’t be many Trappist monks losing sleep over Ommegang’s run on their territory tonight.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Brewery Ommegang, Cooperstown, NY
Style:	Abbey Beers
Strength:	8.2% ABV
Found at:	Utobeer, Borough Market, London SE1
Serving:	355ml Bottle

64. Hoegaarden

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One of the slight downsides of the 300 Beers project is that occasionally I’ll have to sample a beer that I already know I’m not keen on. Hoegaarden, almost certainly the most famous of the Belgian-style Wheat Beers, is a case in point. But never mind, let’s give it another try.

Hoegarden was created in 1966 by Belgian milkman Pierre Celis, regardless of what the “Anno 1445” on the label is intended to imply. It’s made with 55% malted barley and 45% unmalted wheat, and spiced with milled coriander seeds and dried Curaçao orange peel. Finally, each bottle is primed with a small amount of sugar and fresh yeast, to encourage subsequent fermentation in the bottle.

I’m struck that Hoegaarden pours a pale, golden straw colour, in contrast to the cloudy whitish colour I remember it being. I wonder if the yeast in this particular bottle has settled more than usual in the several months it has been sat in the kitchen while I dragged my heels over drinking it.

It certainly smells like a wheat beer, albeit a fairly light one, with those distinctive Belgian esters present as ever. Served chilled, Hoegaarden is a reasonably refreshing, summery beer, but it just isn’t exciting. There’s a bit of a void where the flavour should be—I can barely detect either the coriander or the orange peel—and I wonder if that’s why some folks like to dress Hoegaarden up with a slice of lemon, so that at least it tastes of something.

While I’ll probably never know for sure, it’s a little hard to believe that today’s Hoegaarden, brewed in vast quantities by international brewing giant AB InBev, let us not forget, is quite the same beer that old Pierre gave up his milk round for back in the sixties.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Brouwerij Hoegaarden (AB InBev), Hoegaarden, Belgium
Style:	Belgian-style Wheat Beers
Strength:	4.9% ABV
Found at:	Maxy Supermarket, Norwood Road, London SE24
Serving:	330ml Bottle

63. Fuller’s Vintage Ale

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To complete the set of three Fuller’s beers in The Book, we turn to something a little bit special. Late each year Fuller’s produce a limited number of bottles of their Vintage Ale. Each year’s brew will be subtly different, with head brewer John Keeling varying the choice of hops and malts to take advantage of the best available that particular year.

The beer’s style is always broadly consistent though, typically being an 8.5% ABV, bottle-conditioned barleywine-style ale based on Fuller’s own Golden Pride. The presentation of the beer is immaculate, with each bottle being individually numbered, labelled using the highest quality label stock and finally presented for sale in a handsome claret-coloured box.

There are quite a few beer lovers who make an annual tradition of snapping up at least a case of each vintage and squirreling it away, only to be broken out for very special occasions many years into the future.

And this certainly is a beer that benefits from some judicious aging. I tried a couple of bottles of the 2012 vintage pretty much as it rolled out of the brewery, and while it was a fine beer, it was clear that it was by no means the finished article.

I’ve a 2006 tucked away, though since I can’t bring myself to open it, I was rather pleased to stumble across bottle No. 014468 of the 2010 vintage innocently minding its own business behind the bar of the same pub in which I tried Fuller’s London Pride recently.

Fuller’s Vintage Ale pours a deep burnished amber colour, with a tight off-white head. On pouring there’s a huge waft of orange peel and booze escaping, no doubt pleased to be liberated after several years of gently fermenting in a confined space.

The barley used in 2010 was the endearingly-named Tipple, while the hops are the very traditional Fuggles and Goldings, and the beer is dry-hopped using Target and yet more Goldings. Three years on, though, there’s very little by way of hop bitterness remaining, and instead that barleywine sweetness is front and centre, once again complemented by the distinctive orange notes provided by Fuller’s signature yeast.

The mouthfeel is strikingly thick and unctuous, while the flavour is like orange marmalade and butter spread on fruitcake soaked in rum.

Indeed, there’s an indulgent booziness that reminds you that secondary bottle fermentation means this beer may actually be stronger than the nominal 8.5% on the label. It certainly gets to work pretty promptly, providing a warming glow that, while very welcome even in August, would make this beer especially well-suited for drinking in the winter. In fact, this may be the ultimate Christmas beer.

All in all, this is a very special beer, and certainly not an everyday tipple for many reasons. While numbers are finite, Vintage Ale from the last two or three years is far from impossible to get hold of, at least here in London. I recommend finding one of the smarter Fuller’s pubs and making friends with the staff. You never know what they may have lurking in the cellar.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Fuller, Smith & Turner, Chiswick Lane South, London W4
Style:	Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales
Strength:	8.5% ABV
Found at:	The Mad Hatter Hotel, Stamford Street, London SE1
Serving:	500ml Bottle

62. Fuller’s London Pride

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This is the second beer to be featured here from London’s oldest existing brewery, after the excellent pint of Fuller’s ESB I enjoyed a couple of months ago.

Given the relentless ubiquity of both Fuller’s and their flagship London Pride around these parts—practically any London supermarket or corner shop will stock it, not to mention Fuller’s own network of 367 pubs, or London Pride’s countless appearances as a guest ale—it may seem remiss that it has taken me so long to get around to covering it here.

Clearly this isn’t the first time I’ve tried London Pride, and so I’m well aware that it’s a beer that, unless kept and served to absolute perfection, can make for a fairly underwhelming pint. For this reason, as with the ESB, it’s well worth seeking out one of the better Fuller’s pubs where they really know how to condition a cask ale.

And so it happened that a rainy bank holiday weekend saw me make my way back to the Mad Hatter Hotel in London’s Stamford Street, the very same pub in which I sampled the ESB.

Fuller’s London Pride is a lovely deep amber or perhaps burnished bronze colour, with a thinnish off-white head. It smells of good old-fashioned beer, in such an honest manner that it defies you to write anything pretentious about its “nose”.

London Pride is somewhat lighter than the ESB, but the rich, underlying caramel and toffee sweetness is there, as befits a well-kept cask Best Bitter. That’s complemented by Fuller’s signature orangey notes, provided by their in-house yeast, and balanced by a dry, bitter finish full of peppery hops, making London Pride satisfying yet refreshing, and a cut above the average session bitter. It’s really quite moreish. So I had another.

At a sensible 4.1% ABV, you can afford to do so. It’s to Fuller’s eternal credit that they’ve created a beer of such complexity and depth at such a sessionable ABV, and so it’s no wonder that they shift well over 100,000 barrels of the stuff each year. To some extent London Pride is a victim of its own success in that its ubiquity means it tends to be taken for granted by Londoners, myself included.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Fuller, Smith & Turner, Chiswick Lane South, London W4
Style:	Best Bitters
Strength:	4.1% ABV
Found at:	The Mad Hatter Hotel, Stamford Street, London SE1
Serving:	Cask, pint

61. Pitfield 1850 London Porter

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This is the second of three beers in The Book to hail from the Essex-based Pitfield Brewery, following their Shoreditch Stout, which I covered a few weeks ago.

This is another dark beer, this time an example of that most London of beer styles, and a confirmed favourite of your author: Porter. As with the Shoreditch Stout, the 1850 London Porter is entirely organic and vegan, should that be a factor in your beer selection process.

In a rather endearing Accidental Partridge turn of events, this one proudly bears the denomination “2010 Champion Bottled Beer of East Anglia”.

Pitfield 1850 London Porter is a deep reddish-brown, rather than truly black, and pours with an enormous sudsy head, despite having been sat perfectly still for several weeks. There’s a good, fresh hoppy whiff, backed up with some inviting toastier aromas, as befits a decent porter.

It soon becomes clear that I’ve overchilled this bottle, because at first the 1850 tastes what I can only describe as a little bit strange. There’s an odd sweetness in there, which perhaps originates with the cane sugar which is added to the brew, and there’s an overwhelming and not entirely pleasant bitterness which makes it hard to detect any other flavours.

However, this all changes as the beer warms a little and starts to near room temperature. The flavour really fills out and deepens, and becomes a complex combination of dried fruits, burnt toast and nutty black coffee notes. The difference is quite pronounced, so I’ve learned my lesson there.

And I’m glad, because I like this tiny brewery and didn’t want to post a bad review. I’m now particularly looking forward to the third and final Pitfield beer which I have to track down: a mighty 9.3% Imperial Stout. I’ve haven’t come across that one in London yet, so perhaps a trip to Essex is on the cards!

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Dominion Brewery Co, Moreton, Essex, England
Style:	Porters and Stouts
Strength:	5.0% ABV
Found at:	City Beverage Company, Old Street, London EC1
Serving:	500ml Bottle

60. Chimay Blanche

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This is the third and final Chimay beer to be covered here, after the luxurious Chimay Bleue and the fruity and sinister Chimay Rouge. The Blanche has proven a little harder to get hold of for some reason, but a recent lunch hour stroll to City Beverage Company finally resolved matters.

Chimay Blanche is very much in the Belgian tripel style, so should be more reminiscent of Westmalle Tripel than of the previous two Chimays. Let’s find out.

As expected, Chimay Blanche pours a much paler colour than its siblings, a beautiful and typically Belgian golden shade, with a pillowy white head. It smells light, subtle and again very Belgian with those distinctive esters that their golden beers always offer.

One taste is enough to know that the Blanche is far more suited to the summer months than the Bleue and the Rouge. It’s a truly refreshing beer, but at a respectable 8.0% ABV, it’s no wimpy pale ale. Instead it’s deep and rich with a huge and satisfying bitter finish.

There isn’t the complex fruit of the Westmalle Tripel, and that beer’s distinct banana notes are largely absent, being replaced by slightly darker toastier notes.

All in all this is a lovely beer. It isn’t a particularly easy one to describe, not least since it constantly reveals more depth as the glass drains, and the beer edges towards room temperature. I think I’m going to need to try another one!

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Bières de Chimay S.A., Baileux, Belgium
Style:	Trappist Beers
Strength:	8.0% ABV
Found at:	City Beverage Company, Old Street, London EC1
Serving:	330ml Bottle

59. Grolsch Pilsener

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In retrospect, I may inadvertently have given The Commercial a bit of a hard time
when I reviewed that underwhelming pint of Hop Back Summer Lightning last week.

Which, all told, is a bit of a flimsy excuse for drifting back there today and ordering a bottle of Grolsch.

I know what you’re thinking. Grolsch doesn’t exactly have the finest reputation around these parts: in the UK, it’s typically a flavourless, slightly-too-strong-to-be-sessionable keg lager with very few redeeming features. I was surprised to find it in The Book at all.

In fairness, this is no ordinary Grolsch. This is the proper, imported, Dutch-brewed Pilsner in the tactile, sculpted green glass bottle with the famous swing-top. Young people of my generation might recognise the ceramic cap from the shoes of such popular modern beat combos as Bros. Google them, kids.

It may be my imagination, but imported Grolsch seems to get harder to get hold of as each year passes. No problem: The Commercial have it on permanent standby in the fridge, and a chilled bottle of lager seemed irresistible on this, the muggiest day of the year so far.

Well, there it is. A slightly stingily-sized 450ml bottle of lager with a fancy lid.

It tastes like a halfway decent lager, which is to say that there’s the slightest hint of malt in there to prevent it tasting of nothing at all. This, in essence, is where the imported Grolsch differs from the UK-brewed keg stuff.

It was cold and I didn’t hate it, but yeah, pint of Brooklyn Lager, please Zöe.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Koninklijke Grolsch N.V., Enschede, Netherlands
Style:	Pilsners
Strength:	5.0% ABV
Found at:	The Commercial, Railton Road, London SE24
Serving:	450ml Bottle