When is an Old Ale not an Old Ale?

Question: When is an old ale not an old ale? Answer: When it's a sickly, yucky reddish- brown ale, rather than a rich, dark, full-bodied warming ale.

I had the unfortunate experience of enduring some yucky reddish- brown ale earlier today. I popped in to our local Wetherspoons, but only had time for just the one pint. Lined up on the bar I noticed Marstons Old Empire, a fine re-creation of an authentic IPA. I was sorely tempted, but next to it I spied a clip for Welton's Old Harry, abv. 5.2%. Being a fan of dark ales I went for the later - big mistake! The alarm bells were already ringing when the barmaid handed over a pint of auburn coloured liquid, devoid of even the slight semblance of a head. I handed over my money, silently cursing myself for not having asked whether this was a dark beer or not, (the young barmaid probably wouldn't have know, but she could have pulled a bit off to see first), before slinking off to a vacant table to consume said liquid.

My worst suspicions were confirmed on tasting the beer. Cloyingly sweet, totally devoid of balance and with an unpleasant, harsh bitter aftertaste. Unfortunately I've had beers like this before AND I HATE THEM! High gravity beers need plenty of good quality hops to counter the sweetness from the malt. Beers like Adnams Broadside, Batemans XXXB, Fullers ESB and even Greene King Abbot suceed in this respect. Likewise the reddish-brown hue of a beer needn't signify disaster; local brewer Larkins produce an excellent 4.4% Best Bitter, brewed from a grist that includes a high proportion of crystal malt (10%), but balanced out with just the right amount of hop bitterness to create the classic pint of Kentish bitter.

Welton's Old Harry has none of these virtues. As I sat there drinking this pint under protest, I kept thinking of the pale, hoppy, high-gravity Old Empire that I could have been enjoying. I was going to ask for brewers to stop prefixing beers with the word "Old" when they clearly aren't brewed in the style of an old ale, but the mention of Old Empire in the previous sentence defeats that argument. Perhaps it would just be better to ask that they stop producing sickly-sweet, under-hopped, reddish-brown ales, or where they do, could they please label them in such a way that I don't have the misfortune of drinking them!

More Dark Ales

After months of what seemed to be an absolute dearth of dark beers, today's foray across the border into Sussex certainly yielded some results.

Our local branch Good Beer Guide 2011 selection meeting took place earlier today at the Brecknock Arms, just over the Kent-Sussex border. This excellent Harvey's pub is easy to get to by train and. for guide selection purposes, is on neutral territory. Although our numbers were swelled later on, six of us caught the earlier train in order to partake of the Brecknock's Sunday lunch menu. Most of us opted for the roast pork, which was just the right sort of fare on a bright, but freezing cold January day. On arrival at the pub we were pleased to see three dark ales on offer, namely Harvey's Mild, XXXX Old Ale plus, much to our surprise, Fullers London Porter. The latter was totally unexpected, as I didn't think Harvey's allowed guest ales in their pubs, but whatever the brewery policy, I have to say this beer was absolutely superb. The Old Ale was also in tip-top condition, and I ended up having a couple of pints of each. I should perhaps have tried the mild as well, but a friend who did, pointed out that whilst it was in good condition, it was a bit on the thin side.

The selection meeting went remarkably smoothly, with consensus being reached on the majority of the entries. This is not to say that there wasn't the odd moment of lively, and occasionally heated debate, but on the whole the meeting passed off without controversy.

After the meeting ended, a group of us moved on back to Tunbridge Wells. We made our way to the Grove Tavern, a perennial Good Beer Guide entry, where we were pleased to see a further dark ale on sale. This time it was Hogs Back Winter Ale, a well-balanced and tasty, 4.4% dark seasonal ale.

It's probably just as well I don't live in Tunbridge Wells, otherwise I would be in the spending a lot of my spare time in the Grove! Suffice to say, the pub was pleasantly full without being overcrowded. The Hogs' Back Winter Ale was just the right beer to end up on, following an excellent afternoon of sampling the dark stuff.

Tonbridge Crawl

A couple of weeks ago we had one of the best turnouts for a mid-week CAMRA social that most of us can remember. The event was a tour of a few selected Tonbridge pubs; pubs we perhaps might not normally go to. We kicked off at the Ivy House at the top end of the High Street. This 350 year old inn re-opened earlier last year after an extensive refurbishment. It is now somewhat of a foodie’s pub, with links to Michelin Star Chef, John Burton-Race. It certainly wasn’t packed out with diners on a damp Wednesday evening, and only had Harvey's Best on sale. The barman though, must have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of beer he sold in a short space of time. Seventeen of us amounted to over two gallons of ale! I must say that the Harvey's was in good condition, although a tad expensive at £3.20 a pint!

We then moved on to the Wharf, in Lyons Crescent. This converted former wharf building has been through several changes since it first opened as a Beefeater Restaurant back in the mid-1980’s. I have fond memories of its time as a Hogshead Alehouse, when it offered a wide range of real ales direct from casks kept behind the bar. In more recent times it had stopped selling cask beer, changed its name to the Wharf and become something of a young persons haunt. Now it is good to see the Wharf back in the real-ale camp.

That night, there were two cask ales on offer; Adnams Old and London Pride. There was some doubt that the former was Old Ale, as it certainly wasn’t the dark colour this style of beer should have been. The London Pride was quite drinkable though, and just before we left the bar staff put on a third ale – Black Sheep Best. The pub didn’t seem to have changed all that much since its Hogshead days and is definitely a place worth keeping an eye on.

Our third port of call was Mojo’s, at the back of the station. Again this is a pub that has a couple of name changes. For many years it was called the South Eastern, but in more recent times it was known as the Station House and unfortunately acquired a bit of a bad reputation. Now a recent refurbishment and change of name has given the pub a new lease of life. Decorated in a modern, minimalist style, Mojo’s was selling Harvey’s Best alongside Sharp’s Doom Bar on the night of our visit.

Time was getting on so we moved on to the last pub of the evening, the Punch & Judy in St Stephen’s Street. This is yet another pub that has seen several changes of name, being formerly known as the Gardener’s Arms. The Punch hit the headlines just over a year ago, when the then landlord, Mr Colm Powell, went on hunger strike in protest at the high rent being charged by the owning pub-company. He was pictured in several national newspapers lying in a coffin, symbolising the "Death of the English Pub". Since Colm's departure there has been a succession of landlords. When we called in, Young’s Bitter and the ubiquitous Doom Bar were the ales on offer, but unfortunately the former was way past its best and had to be returned. It was replaced, without question by mine host, and several of us got stuck into the Doom Bar whilst a fresh cask of Young’s was brought into service.

So ended a most enjoyable and highly successful tour of Tonbridge, during which we were pleasantly surprised by what these four pubs had to offer.

CAMRA Good Beer Guide 2011

I’ve been somewhat tied up this past couple of days. We’ve got our branch Good Beer Guide selection meeting coming up this weekend, and I’ve been kept busy filling out a load of boring Survey Forms. The joke of it is that these forms haven’t changed much since the early days of CAMRA, and were primarily designed for old-fashioned typesetters.

We all know that the world of printing has moved on since then, but these antiquated forms are laid out in a series of blocks. Entries for each section have to be made within the relevant squares using BLOCK CAPITALS. One is not supposed to break words at the end of a line – very frustrating when you have a word that is just one letter too long to fit at the end of a line! In short, the forms are a proverbial pain in the butt!

The even bigger joke though is that these forms are not now the final format in which the data is submitted to the guide editors. Instead some poor sod (our Branch Chairman and his wife) will have to sit down at a keyboard and input all this data onto the National Online GBG Submissions System. In short local branch members are doing the bulk of the Good Beer Guide editors work for them. So what exactly is Herr Protz being paid for?

Why also have I wasted the last couple of evenings writing out pub descriptions and beer lists in BLOCK CAPITALS, a form of writing I haven’t used since primary school? Come on CAMRA get a grip, stop taking the piiss and stop taking your hard-working members for granted!

Dark at Last!

At long last I have managed to track down a drop of the dark stuff, in fact I managed it two days on the trot! Friday lunchtime saw myself and a work colleague paying a flying visit to the recently re-opened Rock at Chiddingstone Hoath. The purpose of our visit was to inspect the pub ahead of next weekend's West Kent CAMRA Good Beer Guide 2011 selection meeting.

I have written about the Rock before. It is a fine example of an unspoilt rural alehouse, with low-beamed ceilings, a floor of bare and well-worn bricks and in winter a cosy log fire keeping the place warm. For many years it belonged to the local Larkins Brewery - just down the road in Chiddingstone village, but at the end of last October Larkin's owner Bob Dockerty, decided not to renew the lease on the pub and it reverted back to its original owners. After being closed for most of November, the pub re-opened the following month after an extensive re-fit. This involved replacing the rotten floorboards in the saloon bar, scrubbing the brick floor clean in the public bar, re-painting the ceilings, installing new toilets and, most recently, a new kitchen.

There is a very pleasant young couple running the pub now; those who remember the previous incumbent will breath a huge sigh of relief on that score. Larkins beers are still on sale, alongside Sharp's Doom Bar - a beer that seems to be everywhere at the moment. We were pleased to see Larkins Porter on sale, and can report that this 5.2% dark beer, full of rich roasted and bitter chocolate flavours, was in fine form.

Today, I nipped in to our local Wetherspoons in Tonbridge, and was pleased to see S.O.D (Shefford Old Dark) from B&T Brewery on sale. Like the porter the previous day it too was in excellent condition, and was just the ticket on a damp January afternoon.

Last night I enjoyed a bottle of Guinness Foreign Extra (I bought several last weekend at ASDA for just £1 each!). I had forgotten just how good this high strength version of Guinness could be. I won't have one tonight; I've got a bottle of Marstons Oyster Stout to enjoy instead. I've also got a couple of bottles of Innis & Gunn left over from Christmas to sample, including one that has been matured in a rum cask. Should be an interesting evening!

Bad Day at Black Rock

I know it's got nothing to do with beer, but this morning's news that American processed cheese manufacturers, Kraft have finally won their battle to buy Cadbury's must come as a blow, not only to all chocolate lovers, but to anyone who holds this much-loved, iconic British company in their affection.

To hear Cadbury's chairman declaring on the six o'clock news that the £12 billion deal will be good for shareholders just about sums up all that is wrong with British business today. His comment that the deal will be less good for Cadbury's employees, whilst brutally honest, just shows how the interests of shareholders (often large, faceless city institutions), seems to override those of both workers and consumers alike.

The whole affair has a sadly familiar ring to it, looking back to the takeover of Rowntrees, by Swiss giant Nestle, but at least Nestle had a background in chocolate and confectionery. All Kraft manufacture is plastic, processed American cheese, packed full of salt, artificial colours and other nasties. Just where Cadbury's fit into Kraft's scheme of things remains to be seen, but as is inevitable following any such takeover, the victor will seek to recuperate some of their costs by closing plants, slashing jobs and cutting back on investment.

Cadbury's R.I.P.

Burn's Night Celebrations at Wetherspoons

Popping into my local Wetherspons for a quick breakfast this morning, I noticed a promotion for Burn's Night. However, the company seem to have turned the occasion into "Burn's Week" as the celebration runs from 20th-25th January.

Now at the risk of upsetting my friends from north of the border, I have to say I am not a great fan of this particular poet, who's verses, to my mind at least, seem virtually un-intelligible. This aside, I am all for pubs trying to promote trade, and where this involves the celebration of a national hero, then so much the better. The promotion for "Burn's Week" is offering a traditional Burn's Night Supper dish of haggis, neeps and tatties, all for the princely sum of £3.99. This also includes a drink, and more importantly the company's outlets will be showcasing cask-ales from Scotland's craft brewers.

I therefore take my hat off to JDW, and will be heading down to my local "Spoons" to enjoy some of the above. (Just as long as I don't have to listen to any of the man's poetry!).