Tag Archives: England

81. Adnams Broadside

Whilst I’m not sure that I’ve lived down opting for that somewhat overcomplicated bottle of Affligem Blond just yet, it’s time for 300 Beers to show its face once again in the rather wonderful Grape & Grain, up the hill in Crystal Palace.

Let’s puff out our chest, involuntarily adopt a Cockney accent, and order something a bit more manly this time: a pint of cask Adnams Broadside.

Among their 12 handpumps, “the Grape” often have something on from Adnams, one of the most highly-regarded of the old-school English breweries. Like all the other cask ales in this pub, it’s always going to be in great nick too.

And so it is today. Broadside pours a lovely deep ruby or chestnut colour with a smallish off-white head. The aroma is all fruitcake and christmas, while the mouthfeel is thick, rich and just a little sticky.

The flavour is yet more nutty dried fruit and cake, with a dense underlying sweetness. Hops are subdued, making Broadside somewhat reminiscent of a Mild or a Brown Ale, styles of beer which continually prove that low on hops needn’t equate to low on flavour.

And Broadside is full of flavour. It tastes stronger than the nominal 4.7% ABV it claims to be, but goes down as smoothly as can be. Still I’m not sure I could drink more than a couple, as this really is quite a heavy, rich beer. It’s good though.

Broadside is also available in a 6.3% ABV bottled version, named “Strong Original”, acknowledging the fact that Broadside was once a much stronger beer. It’s a testament to Adnams’ considerable brewing skills that they’ve managed to tame the cask version down to the lower ABV without neutering the flavour one bit.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Adnams Sole Bay Brewery, Southwold, Suffolk, England
Style:	Best Bitters
Strength:	4.7% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

78. Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout

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After the rather wonderful pint of Kelham Island Pale Rider I recently enjoyed in Sheffield, this is the second beer in a row to hail from Yorkshire.

This time, however, we’re a little closer to home. A mild December Saturday saw me drift back to the Anchor Tap in SE1, the same pub where I sampled the Taddy Porter, to discover yet more of their tiny wood-panelled rooms. This one had a piano, and it had a burly man happy to dispense a bottle of this rather nice Oatmeal Stout.

The use of oats in the brewing process dates back centuries, and while it is apparently a bit of a sod to brew with, turning the wort a gelatinous, porridgy sort of texture and clogging all the equipment, it imparts a lovely, silky smooth texture, which complements a good stout beautifully.

And this is a terrifically good stout, pouring a deep reddish colour that’s almost black unless you hold it up to the light, and with a huge, dense tan head.

At first taste Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout is sweet, tangy and remarkably smooth, thanks to that oatmeal in the mash. Straight from the fridge it’s a little too cold, but as it warms hints of licorice and aniseed appear, and the finish becomes dry and moreishly bitter.

This is another top notch beer from old Sam Smith. It’s very easy-drinking for a stout, and it’s even certified vegan, if that floats your boat. If push came to shove, I’d probably plump for the Taddy Porter over this if I wasn’t blogging, but the Oatmeal Stout beats something like a Guinness hands down.

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

77. Kelham Island Pale Rider

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I’ve had my eye on Kelham Island Pale Rider since I first spotted it in The Book.

Not only is this a very well-regarded beer in its own right—Pale Rider was CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain back in 2004—but family connections in Sheffield meant that a visit to Kelham Island’s own brewery tap, The Fat Cat, was always going to be on the cards.

This weekend, I finally made it. It was a nostalgic sort of visit, having spent many school trips and family outings at Kelham Island Museum some 30 years ago. But this time I wasn’t there for education and amusement: I was there for a beer.

The Fat Cat is a tiny little place, and was justifiably packed on the busy Saturday lunchtime that I visited. It’s as genuine and as down-to-earth as pubs get these days, but it’s a real charmer. As one fellow customer remarked to her toddler “this is what pubs used to look like”. Thankfully some still do.

It’s also as friendly as can be, albeit in a no-nonsense Yorkshire sort of way, and it always, without exception, sells a cracking pint of Pale Rider.

Pale Rider is a beautiful golden beer, as you can see, though it’s a difficult one to categorise. It’s broadly in the same style as many modern American-style Pale Ales, and is hopped exclusively with American Willamette hops, yet its recipe predates the “craft” beer era by many years.

It goes without saying that as Kelham Island’s flagship beer, served at the brewery tap, it’s in exceptional condition. On first tasting there’s a huge hop explosion at the front of the mouth, but it’s perfectly balanced by juicy smooth malts, and a much fuller body than one might expect from the colour.

There’s almost a honeyed flavour and texture too, rounding out those delicious bitter hops with a hopelessly moreish sweetness, though I’m certain no actual honey goes anywhere near the beer.

My pint lasted about five minutes, and this really is the sort of beer that any beer drinker would love. You could give it to a lager drinker and it would be light and refreshing enough for their tastes, yet it’s unquestionably complex and satisfying enough for even a stout/porter lover such as myself. It also blows many “craft” drinkers’ usual pints out of the water.

The Fat Cat’s Pale Rider is an immediate entry into my top five cask beers of all time, and at something like £2.60 a pint, let’s just say that it’s a good job I live a couple of hundred miles away, or I’d never leave.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Kelham Island Brewery, Sheffield, England
Style:	Golden Ales
Strength:	5.2% ABV
Found at:	The Fat Cat, Alma Street, Sheffield S3
Serving:	Cask, pint

75. Manns Original Brown Ale

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Beer number 75 seemed like a suitable enough landmark to justify a lengthy, shall we say, “research” expedition around the hostelries of South East London. And truth be told, there are some exquisite pubs tucked away off the beaten track, if you know where to look.

The Blythe Hill Tavern, in a sense, is about as on the beaten track as it gets, sitting as it does directly on the South Circular. It’s a famous little place too, widely and rightly acknowledged for the quality of both its beers and its welcome. And yet to my shame, I had never visited.

I have now.

Manns Original Brown Ale

And what a lovely boozer it is. The range of beers is a gloriously unplanned mixture, as are the clientele, but this little beauty caught my eye immediately.

Manns Original Brown Ale weighs in at a mighty 2.8% ABV and comes in hefty 275ml bottles. I know, steady on.

It’s packed with flavour, though. Rich, dark, sweet and dense, this is by no means a lightweight beer. It turns out that Manns was originally brewed in 1902 as a mixer, to be added to your pint of draught bitter. It seems that at the time, draught beer could be a little on the rough side, so you added a drop of the sweet, unctuous Manns brew to take the edge off it.

Which I guess explains the smaller bottles: maybe you’d get one for the table and share it around your Edwardian buddies’ pints. At only 2.8%, maybe if you were the designated penny-farthing operator, you could knock back a whole one and still get home without attracting the attention of the Bow Street Runners.

Obviously such grotesque historical inaccuracies are a shameless cover for the fact that the Blythe Hill Tavern’s exceptional hospitality diverted me from taking any further meaningful notes. I think it tasted pretty good though.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Marston’s Beer Co, Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire, England
Style:	Brown and Mild Ales
Strength:	2.8% ABV
Found at:	The Blythe Hill Tavern, Stanstead Road, London SE23
Serving:	275ml Bottle

70. Banks’s Mild

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Following a recent pub conversation with a colleague who was lamenting how difficult it has become to find a pint of Mild these days, I realised two things: firstly, he was right, and secondly, he was so right that I’m not sure that I even know what a Mild is.

So I was particularly grateful to spot this one at, you guessed it, The Grape & Grain. Time for your correspondent to learn a little bit more about good old-fashioned beer.

While modern Milds are typically quite low in alcohol—this one tips the scales at a sober 3.5% ABV—the term “mild” does not imply weak in that sense. Rather it means a beer lower in hop bitterness and sweeter than, say, a bitter. That’s why it’s no contradiction whatsoever for a brewery such as Partizan to create a rather tasty Mild weighing in at 6.4%.

The Banks’s Mild pours a lovely deep chestnut colour, with a thin off-white head. Despite the low ABV, it certainly isn’t mild in taste: it’s a hugely full-flavoured, full-bodied ale, not unlike a Best Bitter.

It’s dark, fruity and rich, and there’s a delicious underlying caramel sweetness followed by a satisfyingly long bitter finish.

Whatever the current score in the keg/cask debate, this is a beer that absolutely must be cask conditioned, and by someone who knows what they’re doing. I certainly cannot fault “the Grape” on that front.

This is a relentlessly sessionable beer, and at just £3.20 a pint (less for CAMRA members) I would happily have had another. Trouble is, I think I just spotted beer number 71 in the fridge…

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	Banks’s Park Brewery (Marston’s), Wolverhampton, England
Style:	Brown and Mild Ales
Strength:	3.5% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

69. RCH Old Slug Porter

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In retrospect, when I blogged about Pendle Witches Brew, I may have been a little harsh on The Grape & Grain, one of Crystal Palace’s very best pubs.

I criticised their slightly conservative selection of ales, but in fairness, recent weeks have seen guest visits from ales from some of London’s new wave of craft breweries: London Fields, By the Horns and The CronX have all been represented. To top that, the G&G have now provided three beers in a row for my humble blog, so I really should learn what side my bread’s buttered on.

The very day after I sampled the cask “Witches” and a lovely bottle of Worthington’s White Shield, this one came on tap: a curiously-named porter from a Somerset brewery I’d previously heard absolutely nothing about.

Any excuse to pay another visit to what is, truth be told, a great, authentic beer lovers’ pub where all walks of life rub shoulders.

Despite the name, RCH Old Slug Porter certainly is a fine looking pint. At first glance it’s as black as night, but closer inspection reveals a beautiful deep ruby red colour with a tan head.

It tastes just like a top-notch porter should. It’s dark and rich but medium-bodied, which is ideal for a porter. There isn’t too much of the tar, soot and smokiness that are more typical of a stout, and instead the “Slug” is full of dried fruits and christmas cake.

There’s a hugely satisfying dry, bitter yet wine-like finish, but the whole thing remains relentlessly quaffable and refreshing. Many people don’t expect that sort of drinkability from a dark beer, but my pint lasted no more than 10 minutes, and I’d gladly have had another.

It may be named after the least glamorous of creatures, but this is a first class porter, served here in prime condition.

Facts and Figures

Brewery:	RCH Brewery, Weston Super Mare, Somerset, England
Style:	Porters and Stouts
Strength:	4.5% ABV
Found at:	The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19
Serving:	Cask, pint

68. Worthington’s White Shield

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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

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