Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas Cheers!

With best wishes, and a promise to make 2017 even more beery, cheers!

Christmas Ales in East Sussex

It's that time of year and, for the past few years, we have had available, down here in East Sussex, not only had the long-established Harveys (website) 7.5% Christmas Ale, but also the, Hastings brewed, FILO (website) Our Auld Ale at 6.5%. This is a gorgeous 'Christmas Pudding' of an ale, well worth the visit to the First In Last Out in the Hastings 'old town' High Street, rich, but not too sweet, with a dry bitter finish... I had my first pint of the year yesterday, and it's at least as excellent as in previous years.

Enjoy your Christmas build up with good ales wherever you are, cheers!

A Great Bitter by the Beach!

My brother and I had a nice wee 7 mile walk to Cooden Beach, East Sussex, yesterday, and enjoyed this East Sussex brewed 3.8% Session IPA very much indeed! The brewers, Long Man (website), say this session ale is brewed using "the famous triple C hops", which I believe means, Chinook, Cascade and Columbus, 3 hops from the USA that usually mean plenty of citrus flavours and bitterness, particularly as this ale is 'dry hopped' too! And they're not far wrong, excellent, thirst quenching, with a hint of citrus (Dan, the Routemeister, suggested "quince", though I'm sure he was jesting, I caught more grapefruit and orange flavours), very bitter with a dry aftertaste, pretty damn good indeed, cheers Long Man!

And cheers to the skills of the cellar manager at the Cooden Tavern, part of the 1931 built Cooden Beach Hotel, built for the same gentleman, Earl De La Warr, who sponsored the construction of the rather splendid De la Warr Pavilion in nearby Bexhill, whilst he was mayor of Bexhill in 1935 (website). 

We supped up, then walked the 7 miles back home along the seafront, cheers!

Cask Ale Week (22-09 to 02-10-16)

How did I nearly miss this?!? Cask Ale Week 2016 started yesterday! For information on events in your area go to the website, and enjoy, cheers! 

Kelham Island Brewery... Another excellent ale!

Drinking in the Dolphin Inn, Rock-a-Nore Road, Hastings, as I often do, and yet another excellent ale imbibed earlier today, brewed up in Yorkshire, by the brewery I used to work for quite a few years ago when I was a postgraduate student up there... Kelham Island 45 R.P.M. (4.5%), brewed with hops from 3 continents! I have to share this, being the decent person that I am, as only 1 firkin available at the Dolphin, and, it did go on today, but will go very quickly, take my word for it...

My notes... the first sense used was smell, and what a gorgeous aroma! Citrus plus plus plus... this is a very dry bitter pale ale, plenty of citrus in the flavour, particularly citrus, mostly grapefruit, and my notes say "LUVVERLEY" which is what it is, and I drank more than just the one pint!

CAMRA Great British Beer Festival 2016

OK, I've taken a while to write this, but I can only say that I have quite a few other responsibilities too, well, that's my hogwash out of the way, so, to the beer festival, and ale! We were a wee bit concerned about visiting this year, mainly because of industrial unrest on Southern Rail, but we came up anyway by way of South Eastern, so to Charing Cross rather than Victoria, that is, Mark, Dermot and myself.

I'll start at the very beginning, and have to admit I pretty much enjoyed every ale, but, after collecting my Festival pint glass on entering Olympia, I first tried the Marble Lagonda IPA (5%) and eventual Bronze winner in the Golden Ale category, this was an excellent first choice! Nice body, grapefruit flavour, dry and bitter, my kind of ale!

People happy to be here, mostly!

From that bar, I moved on, my next ale was another quality brewer and ale, from the Welsh brewers of the 'Supreme Champion' last year, Tiny Rebel Juicy (4%), a brand new seasonal ale with "American" hops, which does what it says on the label, intense tropical and citrus fruit flavours and a lovely dry bitter finish; a brewer that continues to not disappoint!

I then had another seasonal ale from another of my favourite brewers, from Yorkshire, Ilkley Summer (4%), with Citra, Chinook and Galaxy hops from the USA, a fruity refreshing golden ale I could drink all day, but I couldn't this day, as I had so much more to choose from...

This bird doesn't look so happy!

After being chased off by the big bird, we went on to our first free drinks... I'll have to explain a wee bit about this first. Dermot and I had accompanied Mark, a local pub landlord to us down in Hastings, with free entry to the festival on the Trade Day, so many thanks to Mark for sharing with us, cheers! And our first free drinks were courtesy of Harvey's of Lewes, who had supplied us with the free trade passes, so many thanks to them too! The others had some darker ale, may have been the Dark Mild, but I had the hoppier golden ale, Armada Ale (4.5%), not as fruity as many of the golden ales, but nice and bitter, cheers to Harveys!

My next ale was from another Yorkshire brewer I trust to provide excellent ales, and they certainly didn't let me down, this was Salamander Blondie Pale Ale (4%), not Debbie Harry on the pump clip this time, sadly, though an interesting adaptation of Botticelli's Birth of Venus... This Blondie was another lovely dry pale golden bitter ale, true to West Yorkshire ales, indeed!

From one Italian job, to another Italian Job (5%) from Cornish brewers, St Austell, brewed with Sorrento lemons and Mount Hood, Waimea, Dr Rudi, and Pacific Jade hops from New Zealand, a pale new-style IPA with lemon in the aroma and taste, unsurprisingly. This was another free drink, luckily, Mark knows the local rep, cheers again to him, and to her!

On to an ale from Grantham in Lincolnshire, and a brewer I haven't drunk anything from for years, but only because I moved to where I don't see their beers, sadly. This one was Oldershaw Sorachi (4.2%), brewed with the Sorachi Ace hop, which was originally developed in Japan in 1984 for Sapporo Breweries Ltd! Another golden ale with a lemon aroma, (are you getting an image of what I like here? Though I usually prefer the 'grapefruity' hops), pale and quite bitter, nice...

But to my favourite ale of the day, and from the other side of the Pennines in Lancashire, Pictish Citra (4.5%), obviously brewed with Citra hops, hence the strong citrus aroma and lemon, grapefruit and peach in the taste. Another pale golden ale with a lovely dry bitter finish, loved it!

But it wasn't a nice pale dry bitter than won the CAMRA "Supreme" Gold award, nope, it was something much darker, hence my not having drunk any of it, but the Berkshire brewers Binghams Vanilla Stout (5%), you can guess, dark and infused with vanilla pods, congratulations to the Binghams lads! A quick mention for the overall Silver award winner, Kent brewers Old Dairy Snow Top (6%), a winter ale, so 'seasonal', just not this season; see an earlier blog of mine for my opinion, it's pretty good!

I can't believe I only drank 8 different ales at the beer festival, though we did sample some of each other's ales during the afternoon, but there was an excellent choice of food too, much more than I can remember from previous years (best was an amazing Game Pie!). I met some old friends from when I lived up in Sheffield and elsewhere, nice one! And, walking back to Earls Court tube station we did pass the last abode of Harold Laski, an old political and academic hero of mine, which was interesting...

If you've read my recent blog you'll know where we went drinking near London Bridge Railway Station, ie Borough Market, a good time was had, cheers!