The Thirty-Nine Steps, or Broadstairs re-visited

It's been 12 years since I last made a visit to the Isle of Thanet, although five years ago the Bailey family did touch on the edge of this protrusion into the English Channel. That occasion took place in September 2020 and coincided with a welcome lull in the COVID lockdown restrictions. We visited a Shepherd Neame "gastropub" (assuming those words are compatible); a venue chosen for a family meet-up by Eileen’s late brother, and his partner. Minis Bay is just about on the western edge of Thanet, being close to Westgate on Sea, and just one stop away, by train, from Margate.

Saturday's outing was a social arranged by West Kent CAMRA, which saw us visiting the most easterly point of the “island” with the attractive and pleasant town of Broadstairs our destination for the day. In the 19^th century, Broadstairs transformed into a much sought-after seaside destination, attracting famous personalities such as Charles Dickens, an author who seems to pop up all over the county. 

It was also the location of a private nursing home on Cliff Promenade, where author, John Buchan, penned his famous novel "The Thirty-Nine Steps", whilst recuperating from a gastro-intestinal problem.  During the Victorian period, the town enhanced its beaches and infrastructure, with the idyllic Viking Bay emerging as a major highlight. What I like about Broadstairs is the fact it has far less of the glitz, glamour and bright lights of Margate or the work-a-day busy harbour, which dominates the centre of Ramsgate.

Although I am no longer a CAMRA member, I am still on the mailing list of the local branch (West Kent), and the outing to Broadstairs certainly caught my eye. Don, the branch social secretary is a friend of mine and, as he carries out meticulous research when planning these events, I knew it would be a good day out. I therefore felt for him when, despite all the hard work he’d put in, only three of us turned up on the day.  We were advised of a particular train to catch, with times stated for travel from both Sevenoaks and Tonbridge. A couple of days prior to departure, I received a message on the West Kent CAMRA WhatsApp group asking who was going. 

The message was from friend and former business colleague, Dave. I replied that I planned to attend, which pleased him, because I’m sure he thought that he and the social secretary Don were the only two people going. He was correct, up until that point, but come the day there was just the three of us heading down to Broadstairs. Whilst waiting on the platform at Tonbridge, I bumped into a current work colleague, who was there with his wife and dog. The former had just completed the local parkrun, whilst Jim, being a sensible fellow, was there to look after the dog. Sensible fellow, as who wants to get themselves hot and bothered, huffing and puffing whilst running around a playing field?

Don has a habit of cutting it fine when it comes to catching a train, and true to form, he appeared nonchalantly walking down the steps and onto the station platform just 5 minutes before train was due. He asked if anyone else was coming, apart from my aforementioned, ex-colleague Dave who would be joining the train at Paddock Wood. I wasn’t aware of anyone, and neither was he, which meant just three of us would be making the journey to Broadstairs. Whilst not a particularly inspiring turn out, we are all of a similar age, and retired, or semi-retired and all have a lifetime’s experience of decent pubs and good beer. So, with an interesting itinerary ahead of us, what was not to like?

Our journey from Tonbridge down to Broadstairs, took us through both Ashford and Canterbury, before changing trains at Ramsgate. The latter is quite a large station, with four platforms which, given the size of the town is quite surprising, although but it does allow passengers to change services and access all parts of the island. But what about the island itself? First, Thanet is no longer an island and hasn't been one for several centuries, although when the Romans occupied this part of Kent, this area was separated from the main part of Kent by the Wantsum Channel. The latter is close to where the river Stour flows into the sea, but over the years the channel has gradually silted up, and today there is little evidence apart from a flattish area of grassland that is all that remains of the Wantsum channel.

I’m not sure you really needed to know that, but I like to add a bit of geographical interest to these posts for those who care about such things. After changing trains, and arriving at Broadstairs, made our way down the steps (39?), and headed down towards centre of town. Don had sketched out an itinerary for us to follow, and it roughly coincided with the pub list that I’d written myself, not so much as a guide but more as an insurance policy in case no one else had up. 

As I said at start of the post, this was my first visit to Thanet since 2014, when I joined in with a significant birthday celebration for a fellow West Kent CAMRA branch member. The individual in question had organised a minibus to transport a group of us around a selection of the various micro pubs on the island - all for a very reasonable sum of money. You can read about that experience here. This time we were left to our own devices, so it was shank’s pony, albeit with the option of a bus, if we wished. 

As things turned out we didn’t, mainly because Broadstairs is quite a compact town that is easy to get around in by foot. We headed steadily downwards, with the aim of reaching the seafront. On the way we stopped off at the first pub of the day, but I shall leave it until the next post to reveal its name, along with those of the other five pubs we visited that day.

All six pubs were micros, and the consensus of the three of us was that, whilst they were all worth visiting, some were more worthy than others. No single pub stood out beer wise, but some had a much more impressive selection than others. of equal, if not greater importance was the town of Broadstairs itself, and without appearing too pretentious, it was the quiet and unobtrusive charm of this genteel, East Kent seaside town that ended up being the standout feature of the day.

 

 

Bayern -Tragerl ~ Bavarian Festbeer Tasting Box

Last Thursday morning I received a tip off on the blog, informing me that, as in the past two years, Lidl’s were once again retailing presentation packs of Bavarian Festbiers. I first came across these packs two years ago, and having bought one was very pleased with my purchase.  A very similar promotion was offered by the German discounter, last year, so receiving notice that these packs were once again on sale, came as little surprise.

I was determined to grab one of these packs, so after collecting Mrs PBT’s from her part-time job, we drove straight down to Lidl’s where, after quite a bit of searching, I found a stack of these Bavarian Festbiers, almost hidden away, on the lowest shelf of a display unit, towards the rear of the store. There had been a price increase since last year, as the packs now retail at £29.99, which is £5 more than last year, but still excellent value considering the quality, and pedigree of the beers inside.  I discovered at the checkout, that customers holding a Lidl Plus Card were entitled to a further five-pound discount, but seeing as I don’t possess such a card, I didn’t qualify.

The company behind these packs, is called Kalea – a name derived from the Hawaiian word meaning “to give joy”. The Kalea company was founded in 2010, in Salzburg Austria, and after starting out with beer advent calendars, the company expanded and now provides micro and gypsy brewers with a platform where they can promote their speciality beers. As before, most of the beers are marked up as either Märzen or Festbier. Märzenbier is German for “March beer,” and is a golden to deep amber lager style with a full body and a moderate bitterness. It closely resembles Vienna lager, a copper to reddish brown coloured beer that is characterized by a malty aroma and slight malt sweetness.

Until the final quarter of the last century, Märzen was the dominant style of beer served at Munich’s Oktoberfest, but gradually the beer was superseded by Festbier, which although brewed to a similar abv of around 6% strength, is a more normal golden-yellow in colour. It was developed by the Munich-based Paulaner brewery during the early 1970’s and gained rapidly in popularity following its first appearance at the event, due to it being easy to drink and its attractive appearance. By the 1990’s all beer served at Oktoberfest was Festbier, and Märzen had been officially replaced.

There are a number of Märzenbiers included amongst the 10 beers that are neatly packed in a sturdy presentation box. This one-metre-long pack - Boak & Bailey’s description, comes with an integral carrying handle and with the Bavarian flag emblazoned across the front of the box, looks every bit the part. 

 I now possess a variety of beers that are probably hard to come by in Bavaria (unless you know where to look), let alone south east England. I shall certainly enjoy getting stuck in to these beers during the approaching winter months, but for the time being I intend leaving the pack unopened.

Finally, there has been a change, involving some of the breweries represented, with four beers from the original packs dropped, to be replaced by four new ones, as detailed below:

Original beers:

 Wildbräu Grafing - Kirtabier Märzen 5.7%

Ettl BräuTeisnacher - 1543 Festmärzen 5.4%

Hohenthanner Schlossbrauerei - Märzen Festbier 5.6%

Falter – Pichelsteiner Festbier 5.9%

Kuchlbauer - Gillamoos Bier 5.2%

Schneider -  Festweisse 6.2%

New beers:

Ayinger Festbier Märzen 5.8%

Grantler Festmärzen 5.6%

Rittmayer Annafest Bier 5.6%

Wieninger Festbier 5.8%

Replacing beers from:

Erl Bräu – Erlkönig Festbier 6.1%

Bischofshof - Original Festbier 5.4%

Hofbräu - Oktoberfesbier 6.3%

Schlossbrauerei Irlbach – Irlbacher Premium 5.8%

 

Enjoy!

 

    

No joyous Noël three months before Christmas

You win some and you lose some, and yesterday I definitely lost, ending up by consigning a bottle of beer, that I’d eagerly been looking forward, to the ignominy of a “drain pour”. As its name suggest, Hepworth’s Noël, is the Sussex-based brewery’s beer, specially brewed to mark the festive season. At 7.4% abv, this vintage strong ale is brewed annually, and is designed to mature and improve slowly, over time.  It is a bottle-conditioned ale, (BCA), which is claimed, will improve with keeping. That’s the theory, and also the USP, but unfortunately my bottle didn’t live up to expectations.

I bought the beer several years ago, from an independent off-licence, called Armstrong’s, just off East Grinstead High Street.  I must have beer meeting up with Matthew, after his shift, and the shop he works at is just a few hundred yards away, it seemed a good idea to call in at Armstrong’s and see what they had on offer. The shop is the one of the only outlets locally for Sam Smith’s beers, and I’m fairly certain that I picked up a few bottles of Humphrey’s finest, whilst in the shop. It was the bottle of Hepworth’s Christmas Ale, with its attractive, and very festive looking, red and gold label that caught my attention.

We don’t often see Hepworth’s beers in Tonbridge, as we are slightly out of the brewery’s trading area. This is more of a problem now, since Hepworth’s relocated from their original home in Horsham, to the large village of Pulborough. The latter is not a location I am familiar with, either, although I note that the settlement does have a railway station, and is just three stops down the line from Horsham. Hepworth’s Brewery was founded by Andy Hepworth in 2000, following the closure of King & Barnes, where Andy had been head brewer. The company moved to Pulborough in 2016, and into a brand new, state of the art brewery, that embraced energy-efficient processes and advanced recycling techniques. Hepworth’s remain independent and claim that they make no compromise in brewing beers that meet their own exacting standards.

Back to the Christmas beer. Somewhat unusually, Hepworth’s give this particular brew a "Best After", as well as a "Best Before" date, with a two-year window between the two.  The Best After date allows a period in which the beer can mature, and with my bottle the date was 20^th April 2023. This meant the Best Before was 20^th April, this year, so by the time I got round to opening it, the beer was five months past its Best Before date.  I admit that I’d let this one slip a bit and had left the bottle gearing dust at the back of the cupboard. In an ideal world I would have cracked the bottle open last Christmas, but for whatever reason, I didn’t.

Unperturbed, I though that despite the Noël being a few months passed its Best Before date, that it would still be OK. Sadly, it wasn’t, and despite the having plenty of condition, it was tart, sour and definitely undrinkable! This wasn’t the first incident I’ve had with a BCA, and it does highlight the potential pitfall with this type of bottled beer. I’m wondering though, that if I’d opened the bottle within that two-year window period, would the beer have been alright? I suspect not, but conversely, would the beer have been drinkable if opened prior to the Best After date, and here I strongly suspect that it would have been.

Whatever the case, the incident highlights my concerns that despite all the hype, and CAMRA designating these type of beers as RAIB (Real Ale In (a) Bottle, the additional conditioning process the beer undergoes in the container, is very hit and miss, and with the risk of the bottle not being 100% sterile, prior to filling, the whole ideas of BCA’s, really isn’t worth the extra effort.

A few alternatives to the Great British Beer Festival

After the shock news regarding the massive loss racked up by last month’s Great British Beer Festival, and the rather less shocking follow-up, that next year’s planned event, will not now be going ahead, it’s time for more than a little soul-searching. That’s something to leave to CAMRA’s national executive, their advisors and their accountants. What follows instead is my own take, not so much on what might have gone wrong, but on what I see as an undercurrent and change in public perception, which will almost certainly mean that 2025’s festival, is the last of these “big ticket” events.

CAMRA as a campaigning organisation, representing beer lovers, has been running festivals in praise of our national drink, for the last half century. The honour of holding the first UK beer festival, belongs to CAMRA’s Cambridge branch who, in July 1974, organised a four-day event at the city’s Corn Exchange. With 6,000 eager drinkers in attendance, the festival was a great success, and proved to the sceptical big brewing concerns that cask ale (Real Ale), could be kept and served in good condition at venues other than a pub.

Three months after the Cambridge event, Stafford & Stone CAMRA branch, organised a similar festival of their own, and a year later the first Kent Beer Festival took place at Canterbury's Dane John Gardens. The event was held in a marquee and was organised by a lady called Gill Keay (nee Knight), who I first met a year earlier, when a former school friend and I attended our first CAMRA meeting at the City Arms, close to Canterbury’s imposing cathedral. In an extraordinary feat of endurance, Gill went on to run a further 40 Kent Beer Festivals, before finally stepping down for a well-deserved rest in 2014.

1975, saw CAMRA holding its first national beer festival, held at the old flower market in London’s Covent Garden. Billed as the Covent Garden Beer Exhibition, the event was a huge success, that helped introduce the delights of cask beer to a much wider, and appreciative audience. I attended the Friday lunchtime session with a friend from university, and we were bowled over by the number of independent breweries with beer on sale at the event. We returned the following evening, but with queues snaking right around the outside of the building, we were unable to gain admittance. 

Two years later, the first "proper" Great British Beer Festival was held at London’s Alexandra Palace. During the 1980’s the event moved around a bit, with events taking place at Bingley Hall in Birmingham, the Queen's Hall in Leeds, and the Brighton Metropole. The latter venue was handy for those of us living in West Kent. The festival returned to London in 1991, when the event was held at the Dockland's Arena. This was a short-lived concert, sports and exhibition centre on the Isle of Dogs. The venue was totally unsuitable for an event like GBBF, and I remember my friends and I coming away feeling very disappointed. (CAMRA ought perhaps to have remembered this disastrous flirtation with a modern exhibition centre, even if it was over 30 years ago!) Since then, and until this year, the festival remained in the capital using both Earl’s Court and Olympia as its base.

The emphasis at those early CAMRA festivals, was on showcasing beers from the 171 remaining independent brewers, in the UK, most of which were family-owned concerns. Whilst not all of these companies supplied beers to GBBF, many of them did, meaning that even four decades ago, there was plenty of variety for all but the most fastidious of beer drinkers to chose from. Where I think things started to go wrong was the unforeseen, but very welcome appearance of a whole generation of new start-up breweries, bringing a variety of different beers and different styles.

Today the number of active breweries in the UK stands at 1641, a decrease of 136 from the previous year, but still almost 10 times the total existing in 1975. This increase is mirrored roughly, by the number of beers on sale at GBBF – 900, compared the 100 or so available to drinkers at the Covent Garden event. I personally feel that 100 different beers are more than adequate, although I am prepared to compromise slightly for a major event, such as GBBF. Unfortunately, that figure is pure conjecture now, although I’m still convinced that 900 different beers is way too many, in fact it’s pointless, as too much choice is actually less choice. By stocking such a crazy amount, festival organisers are adding to their expenses unnecessarily and are running the risk of the event making a loss, as witnessed last month.

Moving away from the UK and across the North Sea to Germany, and the granddaddy of all beer festivals, Oktoberfest. This world-famous event is over 200 years old, and is also very commercial, but you won’t find hundreds of different beers on sale there. Instead, only six breweries are allowed to sell the beers at the event, and then you will only find two or three brews from each of these companies on sale. Only the six large breweries that brew inside Munich’s city limits are allowed to supply beer to the Oktoberfest, and these concerns are Augustinerbräu München, Hacker–Pschorr, Hofbräu, Löwenbräu, Paulaner, and Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu.

Normally only one style of beer is served, Festbier, a strong, golden coloured, lager-style beer with an abv ranging from 5.9% -6.3%. In these health-conscious times, a 0.5%, low alcohol, Festbier is also normally available. Mrs PBT’s enjoyed a litre (Maβ) of the latter, during our 2017, family visit to Oktoberfest. Some of the beer tents also stock a wheat, or Weiβbier, from one or more of the six breweries, permitted to supply the festival. You are probably getting the picture by now, the most famous beer festival in the world, only has a dozen or so different beers on sale, but what it lacks in variety, it more than makes up for in the atmosphere, which is electric. people from all over the world gather to celebrate and make new friends from diverse backgrounds as they share a table in one of the massive beer tents.

The hearty "Prost!" (cheers) echoing throughout the grounds creates a sense of unity and celebration that is truly contagious. It’s all very different from ticking off numerous half-pints’ produced by breweries you’ve never heard of, and which after a while, all start to taste the same anyway. Of course, people have fun at GBBF, but it’s a lot more subdued, and ends to take place amongst small groups, most of whom already know each other, and may even belong to the same CAMRA branch.

It’s doubtful that such an approach would work in the UK, but you could still have a slimmed down event with say, five or six examples drawn from the myriad of different beer styles brewed in Britain, today. So why not start with mild (light & dark), bitter – both ordinary & best, golden ale, pale ale, India Pale Ale, porter, stout, old ale, barley wine, stock ale – the list goes on and the possibilities are endless. People would come for the chance of meeting up with friends, mixed with the chance of sampling the best that Britain’s brewing industry, with its long heritage, has to offer. There would be no more furtive ticking of scruffily drawn up, hand written beer lists, instead people would be there for the chance to enjoy beers in all its styles and glories, whilst conversing and engaging with their fellow men and women.

Proper food and decent entertainment would be provided, much the same as at present, but whether such an event will ever take place now, given the recent catastrophic failure of GBBF 2025, is highly improbable. Perhaps the way forward is in more local events, organised by individual CAMRA branches – assuming they’ve still got sufficient fit and able-bodied volunteers available to staff the event. Alternatively, an event staged by a local pub is every bit as enjoyable, as witnessed by the highly successful, twice-yearly festival, hosted by the Halfway House, at Brenchley, whose laid-back event, I enjoyed last Bank Holiday weekend. 

And for those who fancy something a little more livelier, then why not plan a trip to Munich’s Oktoberfest next year? There’s also Annafest- an outdoor event that takes place on a wooded hillside overlooking the small Franconian town of Forchheim, situated roughly halfway between Nuremberg and Bamberg. 

Alternatively, slightly earlier in the year, spend a few days at Frankenfest, another outdoor beer festival, this time held in the spacious moat of the massive castle that dominates the skyline of the old city of Nuremberg. There are many more beers on sale there, than at the other two festivals, with 25 - 30 mainly local breweries exhibiting their wares, so this event is much more like a British beer festival, and with sensible, half litre measures, rather than unwieldy litre Maβ Krugs, there’s something to keep the "tickers" amongst us, happy as well.