Some Unusual Beers for the Area

It’s often interesting turning up at a pub, a few days after their beer festival has officially ended, just to see what’s left. This wasn’t our intention when we visited the Royal Oak in Tunbridge Wells, the other Tuesday evening, as we were there for our regular monthly Spa Valley Railway Beer Festival “update meeting”. Nevertheless it was good to have some unusual and indeed novel beers to try; something, if you like, to act as a “sweetener” to make a potentially dull and boring meeting seem a little less tedious. The beers were left over from the weekend festival, put on by the Royal Oak to introduce customers to some different beers; something they would not normally get the opportunity to drink, and thus something out of the ordinary.

My first choice though was a bit of a disaster. I had arrived slightly late for the meeting; 8pm starts are a bit rushed for me, and proceedings were already underway when I walked into the pub. Deep Porter 4.5%, from New Plassey Brewery, took my fancy, I nodded to it and the barman asked if I wanted a pint? I replied in the affirmative, the barman pulled the pint for me, it looked good, I pocketed my change and had a quick slurp before walking over to where my friends were sitting to take my place at the meeting. On the way over I had an inkling that something wasn’t quite right with the beer. Sharp-tasting with a sour edge! I had another slurp, after I had sat down and offered my apologies for being late, but that was no better; in fact it was worse. I noticed that the person sitting next to me was also drinking a porter. I asked him if it was the same one as me. It was, but he was at least a third of the way through his. “Unusual”, was his comment; more like “off” was my reply. After a couple more pulls at the beer I decided that I definitely didn’t want to drink a pint of it so, after apologising again to the chairman, I walked back across to the bar, and asked for it to be changed for something else.

“Ah”, said the barman, “that one was on when I came on shift. I wasn’t sure about it myself, but you’re the second person to return, so what would you like instead?” I opted for a pint of Rye Pale Ale, from The Liverpool Craft Brewing Company; a 5.0% full-bodied pale ale, which was rather nice. Mine host did the decent thing and turned the offending pump clip round, so that no-one else would end up with a dodgy pint; this was good of him, as it is not his pub. To me, it looked (and tasted), like an infected cask, rather than something which had sat around opened for too long, but full marks to the barman for taking it off sale.

My second pint of the evening was also from The Liverpool Craft brewing Company. This time it was American Red. It was enjoyable, but not as much to my taste as the Pale Ale was. I am not a huge fan of the “Red Ale” style; possibly it’s the inclusion in some versions of roasted barley, giving the beer a slightly “burnt “and to me, an unpleasant taste. (The beer which always springs to mind here is Hobgoblin; but there are others). Nevertheless, after the unpleasant experience earlier with the Deep Porter, it was nice to have something another beer that was perfectly ok to drink.

The third, and final, beer of the evening was Teleporter – a 5% porter, brewed by the Summer Wine Brewery, from Holmfirth (where else?). This was dispensed from a cask perched up on the bar, and because of this the beer was at room, rather than cellar temperature. This was despite an insulated jacket around the cask but then, on the other hand, the beer had probably been there since the weekend. Although slightly “tired”, the beer was still quite drinkable, but I still decided to make it the final beer of the evening as there was work in the morning, and I didn’t want the encumbrance of a “thick head” to slow me down and muddle my thinking.

Like I said at the beginning, it is sometimes good to catch the tail end of a festival. In the case of the Royal Oak, the festival had been running since the previous Friday, and the theme behind the event had been beers unusual to the area. I would have gone along myself, had the festival not clashed with Maidstone’s one, over at East Malling, which wrote about here. According to friends who did manage to get along though, there was another relative new-comer present, in the shape of Pig & Porter. This is an outfit who offer food as well as beer; an “event catering business” if you like. They’ve been functioning as a “cuckoo” brewery since starting up earlier this year, producing their beers as “guests” in a number of different breweries spread across the South East, but now they’ve acquired a home of their own, for the time being at least, in the premises of the former Royal Tunbridge Wells Brewery. Regular followers of this blog will recall that RTWB unfortunately ceased brewing at the end of 2012, after trading for less than three years. 

It’s good news to learn that the mothballed brewing kit  is to be put to good use once again, but the story doesn’t end there as, apparently, Pig and Porter will be sharing the premises, and the equipment, with an Estonian-based concern which is planning to brew a lager for its home market, back in the Baltic States. An interesting development and one which need watching with interest, but it does mean that the West Kent CAMRA area is now home to five independent breweries of various shapes and sizes. Will there be room for them all in the market? Well, that remains to be seen, but in the meantime the local beer scene has never looked so interesting.

The Great British Beer Hunt 2013

Having missed the Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt for the past two years I was keeping an eye out for this year’s promotion. Even so, had I not taken a chance walk down the “seasonal products” aisle I would have ended up missing this year’s as well!

I won’t bother repeating the details about the GBBH here, but suffice to say things have now reached the final stage where 20 beers from the regional finals stage now go head to head, for a three week period, in 300 Sainsbury’s stores across the country. 

The 20 finalists are shown below.





SCOTLAND AND NORTHERN IRELAND

• Barney's Brew - Hilden Brewery
• Gonny no brew that - Wiliams Bros Brewing Co
• The Honey Thief - Wiliams Bros Brewing Co
• Hipsway - Wiliams Bros Brewing Co
• Wayfarer IPA - Orkney Brewery

NORTH 

• American Pride - Double Maxim Beer Co
• Crafty Dan - Thwaites Brewery
• Infra Red - Hardknott UK LTD
• Swedish Blonde - Double Maxim Beer Co
• Windermere Pale - Hawkshead Brewery

WEST

• Devon Dreamer - Hunters Brewery
• Gower Gold - Gower brewery company ltd
• Harbour IPA - Harbour Brewing Co
• Harbour Porter No.6 - Harbour Brewing Co
• Serendipity - Bird's Brewery

EAST

• B Bok - Batemans
• Black Pepper Ale - Batemans
• Reindeer Droppings - Ridgeway Brewing
• Querkus - Ridgeway Brewing
• Lavender Honey - WBC (T/A Wolf Brewery)

 To start with, I selected six beers which, on paper, took my fancy. All are retailing at just £1.50 each. Over the next three weeks I may choose a few more, but for the record the ones I selected are:

• Windermere Pale - Hawkshead Brewery
• Harbour IPA - Harbour Brewing Co
• Harbour Porter No.6 - Harbour Brewing Co
• B Bok - Batemans
• Querkus - Ridgeway Brewing
• Hipsway - Wiliams Bros Brewing Co

As I drink my way through them, I will let you know what I think, but seeing as they are priced so low, it’s worth nipping down to Sainsbury’s and picking a few of them up yourself.

Maidstone Beer Festival 2013

A few weeks ago I wrote a post in which I described how I was suffering from “Festival Fatigue”; tired and disillusioned with the whole CAMRA beer festival scene. It’s somewhat ironic then that last Saturday I ended up eating my words and going along to the Maidstone Beer Festival – an annual event organised by the local CAMRA branch.

I must confess there is a personal interest here, as back in the early 1980’s when I was living in the county town, I was an active member of Maidstone and Mid-Kent CAMRA, and still keep in touch with several members of the branch. My association with Maidstone CAMRA was strengthened recently, as back in April I met up with a contingent from the branch at the CAMRA Member’s Weekend and AGM in Norwich.

Maidstone CAMRA have been running their annual beer festival for more years than I care to remember, and for a long time the event was held at the Kent Museum of Rural Life, at Addington, just outside Maidstone. I was a regular attendee at this festival, as was my son when he was younger, for there was always something different and interesting for him to see at the museum, whilst I enjoyed a few beers. However, in 2010, alarmed at the increasing costs of admission to the museum which, they believed, was starting to discourage people from attending, Maidstone CAMRA decided to take the festival elsewhere and relocated it to East Malling Research Centre. The event is now organised and run solely by the branch.

For various reasons I have missed attending the festival since its relocation, so Saturday was bound to be an interesting day out. I am vaguely familiar with the site, as in the past I have walked through some of the extensive orchards which form part of this important fruit research centre. To reach East Malling from Tonbridge my friend Don and I travelled by train along the scenic Medway Valley line, from Paddock Wood and then up through Maidstone to Aylesford; site of an ancient river crossing, but these days marred by industrial development and extensive paper mills. There was a free, half-hourly shuttle bus, running between Aylesford station and the Research Centre, making an almost seamless journey. The admission charge to CAMRA members was just £2.00; far better value compared to the £11.00 or so charged by the Alternative Maidstone Beer & Hop Festival, which is run by the Kent Museum of Rural Life, and takes place over the same weekend.

I have to say that East Malling Research Centre is a lovely place to hold a beer festival, with its orchards set against the backdrop of the North Downs and with the dramatic gap formed by the River Medway in the distance. A couple of marquees, set at right angles to each other, are used to store and serve the beers and also to provide a limited amount of indoor seating and protection against the elements, should it decide to rain. That perhaps is the main drawback to this festival, as it is much more weather dependent than most. We were lucky this year, as although temperatures had dropped significantly from their mid-week peak in the upper twenties; for the most part it remained sunny, allowing festival goers the chance to soak up the early autumn sunshine and to listen to the varying live acts that formed the afternoon’s entertainment.

However, although the large open field in which the festival takes place is surrounded by tall hedges, of the type traditionally planted in fruit-growing areas as protection against cold winds, there is little in the way of shelter should the heavens decide to open. We were lucky to get a seat inside the tent, as a couple of Don’s friends, who live locally, had arrived virtually on opening time and had managed to procure a table and chairs, so the folding canvas chairs I had brought as a precaution were not needed.

 

As for the beer, there was a mix of local brews combined with offerings from further a field, with around 60 beers in total. As things turned out, this was not enough. The sunny weather had attracted large numbers of people, and from mid-afternoon onwards thirsty drinkers were four or five deep at the bar. I felt sorry for the hard-pressed staff as they struggled to serve the hordes of thirsty punters, but by 6pm their tribulations were over and the beer had all run out. The cider had run out an hour or so beforehand, proving how popular this traditional alternative to beer has become in recent years. Unfortunately there were still two hours left, but with no beer left, Don and I decided to make a move, and catch the next bus back to Aylesford station before the queues built up too much, once people decided to leave en mass.

Beer of the Festival for me was Salopian Lemon Dream, a 4.5% bright-golden top-fermented, wheat beer, served “bright”. According to the copious tasting notes supplied as part of the festival programme, the recipe uses a small amount of fresh lemon to compliment the citrus flavours produced by the Goldings, Saaz and Cascade hops. Also on top form were Raspberry Blonde, from Saltaire and Top Totty from Slaters.

Would I go again? Yes if the sun is shining, but definitely not if it is pouring down with rain.

Time to Embrace the Can?

I must admit I’ve never been much of a fan of canned beer. For some reason I’ve always regarded the humble can as inferior compared to the glass bottle, but I’m not quite sure how this prejudice came about. It may date back to when I first started drinking, when 330ml cans were the only size available (apart from the dreaded Watney’s Party Sevens, of course, but that’s a different story!), but  that shouldn't have been a problem seeing as most bottled beers were packaged in smaller half pints (275ml). It may have been down to cans being cheaper, and hence “inferior” to bottles, or it may even date back to when it was necessary to use a can opener with a sharp-point to pierce the top of the can, making two holes, close to the rim, but opposite each other – one to let air in, the other to let the beer out.  Even so, one needed to use a bottle opener to prise off the crown cork, so there’s no real difference in the effort required to get at the contents.

The use of can-openers, of course, pre-dates the humble ring-pull. The first ring-pull can I was aware of, was that for Ind Coope Long Life, export pale ale. (I wasn’t old enough to drink at the time, but I remember being impressed watching the TV ads and seeing the cans being effortlessly opened!).

Compared to bottles though, cans are a comparatively recent form of packaging for beer. They were first introduced in the UK by Felinfoel Brewery of Llanelli, back in 1935, as a means of trying to boost the local tin-plate industry, which was flagging at the time. They had first made their appearance, a few years earlier in the United States, following the ending of Prohibition, but they didn’t really catch on this side of the Atlantic until the late 1950’s – early 1960’s. I have seen photos of these early cans, which were known as “cone-tops”, because they had cone-shaped tops, sealed with traditional crown-caps!

Until then, glass was very much the king, and the decades following the Second World War saw a dramatic increase in sales of bottled beers as consumers embraced the consistency which bottled beer offered, compared to the increasingly variable quality of much of the draught (cask) beer available at the time. Even as late as the early 1970’s, virtually all breweries produced a range of bottled beers, even most of the remaining small independent ones. A flick through the pages of Frank Baillie’s ground-breaking 1972 classic, “Beer Drinker’s Companion” will confirm this.  A decade or so later though, sales of bottled beer experienced a steep decline with the advent of “keg” beers, (effectively bottled beer in a bulk container), and with the increasing popularity, and rise in the consistency, of cask beer, following the success of the “Real Ale Revolution”, sparked by CAMRA.

Things swung back the other way again sometime in the late 80s or even early 90s, with the advent of single 500 ml ale bottles in supermarkets, aimed at the take-home market. Nowadays there is a vast range of bottled beers, both ales and lagers, adorning the shelves of supermarkets and specialist off-licences, but not so large a range of cans.

As mentioned, early cans were constructed out of tin-plate (steel, with a protective coating of tin), which means not only do they have a seam down the side, but they also require both the top and bottom to be welded on as well. During the late 1960s – early 1970’s ’aluminium cans began to make significant inroads into the canned beer market. Aluminium is considerably lighter than steel, and can also be “spun”. This means it is possible to manufacture the body of the can in one piece, leaving just the top to be welded on, normally after filling. The only problem was the inner part of the can, the part in contact with the beer, required a thin plastic coating to prevent the aluminium from giving the beer an unpleasant taint.  The coatings used today have virtually eliminated this problem, so really there are no reasons, apart from those based purely on snobbery, why the can should not take its rightful place as the “de rigueur” container for beer in the take-home market. 

Cans, of course, are much lighter than bottles, and are less bulky as well, but they continue to be regarded as downmarket. The rise in popularity of canned beer in America during the 1950’s, gave rise to the “six-pack” and led to beer packaged in this way being regarded as a commodity, something to be picked up with the rest of the weekly grocery shopping down at the supermarket.  Where America leads, the rest of the world often follows, and a decade or so later slabs of “cooking lager”, sold at giveaway prices, became a familiar sight on the shelves of UK supermarkets. Low prices have not helped the can’s image, but I have a feeling the can is on the verge of a comeback and a reappraisal of its cheap and cheerful image.

In Japan, a country I visited recently, there were no downmarket connotations attached to the can, in fact in an increasingly environmentally aware country, the can is king, so far as the take home market is concerned. This fact was brought home to me whilst shopping in a Kyoto supermarket for items to bring home with me. There were lots of different canned beers on the shelves, but precious few bottles. I remarked on this to one of my Japanese colleagues who was with me at the time, as I was concerned as to whether cans would survive the lengthy flight home in my hold baggage. My colleague replied that he had never had any problems in this respect, so I grabbed a few that took my fancy. He was right of course, and my cans made it home in one piece, and what’s more the contents tasted every bit as good as their draught counterparts I had sampled during my stay in the country. I also got to try a locally-brewed Japanese craft-beer in a Kyoto bar, and that came in a can. Yona Yona Ale proved to be an excellent pale ale, being one of a number of different beers brewed by Yoho Brewing based in the small town of Karuizawa. 

Leaving aside “cooking lager”, which is purposely sold as a cheap commodity, most of the leading ale brands, such as Fullers London Pride, Greene King Abbot, Wells Bombardier, Badger Tanglefoot etc., are available in cans, here in the UK. One or two of the new wave of “craft-beer” brewers, such as Brew Dog, have packaged some of their higher volume brands in cans as well. It remains to be seen whether others will follow.

There is one additional advantage that cans have over bottles, and that is by their inherent nature they are completely light-proof. As we know, all bottles allow a certain amount of light to pass through them.  This applies to both brown and green bottles, because if they didn’t they would be completely opaque and it would not be possible to view the contents inside. Brown and, to a lesser extent, green bottles filter out the harmful waves of UV light, responsible for imparting that “light-struck”, or “skunked” effect. This can cause unpleasant off-tastes and degradation of the finished beer. Bottles manufactured from clear glass, of course, offer no such protection, but marketing departments, keen to show their company’s beer, and its colour, in the best possible light, often ignore this fact and insist on the beer being packaged in clear glass. There is no possibility of marketing departments doing this with cans; it just cannot happen! The result is a much more stable product.

 

Is it therefore now time to re-appraise the humble can, drop the misplaced snobbery against this form of packaging, and embrace it for the advantages outline above?

Beer Appreciation

This post was originally written some 15 years ago and describes my introduction to beer, and how I developed both a taste for and an appreciation of the best long drink in the world. It may seem a little dated now, but I have included it it here as my contribution to Boak & Bailey's "Long Post Project".

"The author, Graham Greene, wrote about his first taste of beer in his autobiography "A Sort of Life". He described how, after initially hating the taste, and having to force it down to prove his manhood, he later found the memory of the taste coming back to haunt his thirst during a long walk in the country. Greene went on to describe how he and his companion stopped for a drink plus some bread and cheese at a country inn, where he “drank bitter for the second time and enjoyed the taste with a pleasure that has never failed me since.”

The journalist and pioneering beer writer, Richard Boston in his highly informative and entertaining book "Beer and Skittles", describes a similar sort of experience.

I cannot claim that my first experience of drinking beer was as memorable, or indeed as special. It was at a "Country Fayre", held in the small town of Wye, a few miles from my home village of Brook. I was member of the local scout troop at the time, and our contribution to the Fayre was to run the coconut shy. The main highlight of the event though was to be a re-enactment of a civil-war "skirmish” by members of the “Sealed Knot Society”. 

Watching this colourfully dressed bunch of cavaliers and general bon-viveurs, wandering around the Fayre, prior to the enactment, with a string of pretty girls in tow and clutching their foaming tankards of ale, persuaded myself and a couple of my fellow scouts that a drink would be a good idea. So forgetting all about what Baden Powell might have said, we nipped into the beer tent where I was treated to a light ale by the two patrol leaders. They were both a couple of years older than me, and were no strangers to beer. Like Graham Greene, I wasn't over keen on the taste, but drank it down nevertheless.

The reason I chose light ale was that I believed that the description "light" would adequately describe its taste. However, a comment from one of my two companions, that brown ale was sweeter than light, prompted me to try one the next time.

The occasion was at the house of one of the aforementioned patrol leaders. A group of us would gather there to listen to records and play cards. Bill's father always had a supply of beer in stock and was not adverse to us lads having the odd bottle, or can. I found brown ale to be eminently drinkable and enjoyed it on quite a few occasions.

By the time I reached the VIth form at school, I was a regular visitor at several local pubs. I slowly graduated from bottled beer to draught. In Whitbread pubs I tended to drink brown and mild, whilst in Courage houses I drank Tavern Keg initially, before switching to PBA - a light mild which has long since been discontinued.

Later on my friends and I went through a phase of drinking mild and bitter. This was for the somewhat perverse reason that we liked asking for a pint of "AB" ("And Bitter") and seeing the effect this had on inexperienced bar staff, Experienced landlords who had been in the trade a long time knew of course what we were referring to; the abbreviation referring to the fact that at one time mild was the normal drink, and that the bitter mixed with it was, in effect, an addition (hence “AB”).

I ought to add a word or two here about lager. I first became aware of this drink when along with a couple of school friends I spent an evening in the seaside town of Folkestone. We were joined on this visit by a friend of one of my companions who was a couple of years older than the rest of us. This particular character thought he was the height of sophistication, smoking cigars and knocking back a drink called “lager and lime”. For some reason I thought that this was a soft drink; the confusion in my mind having arisen from a mixture sold in cans when I was a boy called “Limeade and Lager”! After trying a pint or two I soon realised my mistake, but although the straw colour of the drink looked attractive, the combination of lime with British-brewed Harp Lager was not to my taste.

As I became more mature I developed a liking for bitter itself. I have written elsewhere about how I first sampled cask-conditioned Trophy and of my love-hate relationship with Shepherd Neame. I have also described how a burgeoning awareness of the enormous variety of cask beer available, and the different breweries, still in operation during the early 1970's sparked off a life-long interest in beer and brewing.

As well as wanting to sample the bitter ales brewed by as many breweries as possible, I tried to sample the corresponding milds as well. Other styles, such as old ales and barley wines were particularly enjoyable on a cold winter's night, but it was not until the late 1970's that I began to take an interest in Irish Stout.

At the time, Guinness was the only brand of this style of stout available, and I enjoyed it mainly in bottled form. In those days Guinness was naturally conditioned in the bottle, and formed a welcome friend in many an otherwise “fizz only” pub. When I was eventually persuaded to try the "draught" version, I found it a lot less gassy than I had been anticipating, albeit a trifle on the cold side for my liking.

The appearance, in Britain, of Beamish proved to be something of a watershed. This genuine Irish Stout, brewed in Cork, had a chocolate-coffee like aroma that perfectly complemented its hoppy bitterness. For a keg beer it was superb. It was joined soon after by a stout from another Cork brewer - Murphy's. The latter though, was brewed under licence in the UK, and whilst it is a pleasant enough beer it has to my mind never quite matched the taste of its close neighbour.

As the years passed, I slowly learned how to appreciate a good pint and how to recognise a bad one. But it was to be nearly a decade later that I began to take an interest in beer styles from other countries.

My first taste of foreign beers had been during the summer of 1975, when I embarked on a month's travelling round Europe by train. However my travelling companion, Nick and I were on a very tight budget, so beer of any description, yet alone quality beer, was not the highest of our priorities. Lager of course, was the order of the day; we even managed to take in visits to the Heineken Brewery in Amsterdam and the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen where the drinks in both instances were provided free of charge!

However, our arrival in Germany proved to be something of an eye opener. We had decided to split up for a few days, the idea being that Nick would spend some time with his then girlfriend, who was studying in Stuttgart, whilst I would stay with an old school friend who was working in Cologne.

We parted company at Hamburg railway station, having made arrangements to rendezvous in Stuttgart a few days later. I boarded the train for Cologne, and was met at the main station by my friend Mick. I was promptly dragged back to the office where my friend was working, to find a party in full swing. The actual reason for the celebration escapes me, but it was a Friday afternoon and someone was either retiring, getting married or had been promoted.  What I do remember was the brightly polished wooden cask standing upright on a table in the corner. There was a small brass tap inserted into the side of the cask, an inch or two above the base, allowing the beer to be dispensed by gravity.

Throughout the afternoon it was a case of “get Michael's friend from England a drink and make sure his glass doesn't get empty!” I've no idea what the beer was, but it tasted superb, especially to someone weaned on English ale that had been forced to put up with cold fizzy lager for the best part of a fortnight. I was drinking on what was virtually an empty stomach, and as the afternoon wore on I became more and more affected by the beer. When Mick's boss suggested stopping off on the way home for a drink, plus a bite to eat, I was all for it.

The following evening, Mick took me to one of Cologne's famous pubs where the local beer style of “Kolsch” was actually brewed on the premises. “Kolsch” is a pale, straw coloured beer which is top-fermented. It can therefore be classed as an ale, despite its lager like colour. I did remember to take notes this time; the tavern was called Paffgen, and although the beer was served in tall thin 33cl glasses, we managed to put a fair few of them away that night.

The beer drank on the rest of that holiday was unremarkable. Almost exclusively it was cold, gassy pilsner style lager. However, my experiences in Cologne had awakened an interest in German beer at least.

Intermittent visits to France, Italy and Germany, plus a holiday in Spain in the years that followed, afforded precious little opportunity to sample any decent beer. In France, Italy and Spain, wine was the order of the day, whilst a single business trip to Hamburg, gave very little time to sample anything other than bottled pilsner.

Then, in 1984, I spotted a trip to Czechoslovakia being organised by the now sadly defunct, CAMRA Travel. I persuaded a couple of friends to accompany me on the trip (they didn't need much persuading!) We duly paid our deposits and waited eagerly for the day of our departure to arrive. I have written a separate article about the trip, but suffice to say genuine, Czech-brewed pilsner was a real eye opener, and a superb and well-crafted drink to boot. The beer we sampled in the Pilsner Urquell Brewery ranks amongst the finest I have ever tasted, as was the beer in several of Prague's fine old taverns, including U Svatheo Tomase and U Fleku.

Over the last few years my interest in continental beers has widened with my sampling of some of Belgium's delightfully different beer styles. Again, I have written elsewhere about Belgian beer. At beer festivals I have always tried to include the sampling of at least one different foreign beer style. On the home-brew front too I have experimented with the brewing of a number of different beer styles, and have successfully brewed Marzen, Bock, Doppelbock and Rauchbier, as well as Pilsner style beers, using the authentic continental malts and hops which are now available from specialised suppliers.

Despite this burgeoning interest in European beers, I have not neglected indigenous ales, porters, stouts and barley wines. British beers remain first and foremost the main love of my life. This year, (1997) I attended seven different beer festivals. At these events I tasted, for the first time, nigh on 70 new ales; the vast majority of them were excellent, some were superb. Also, in the course of a year’s drinking, I drank 60 different ales in roughly 40 separate pubs; not bad for someone who is not much of a regular pub-goer these days.

As you can see, the quest I embarked on some 30 years ago, is still going on, and will hopefully continue for many years to come."

 

Roppelt's Keller

On the Saturday of our recent holiday in Franconia, we decided that a visit to a country Keller or two would be a good idea, and a nice way of spending the afternoon. As it happened we only had time to visit the one Keller, due to a late start. My son, like many lads of the same age (early 20’s), is not particularly good at getting up in the morning. He’s ok when he absolutely has to get up on time, like when he’s going to work, but on days off, and particularly on holiday, trying to prise him out of his pit is like pulling teeth!  I feel this is a real shame, especially on holiday when there’s so much to see and do, but this particular Saturday he was even more stubborn than usual about getting out of bed.

In the end I left him lying there and took a short walk into Forchheim town centre, (literally just around the corner from our apartment). I bought some cigarettes for my wife, plus a present or two for myself, and then called in at the local tourist information centre, handily situated in the town hall. Here I was able to pick up a handful of timetables for the local bus routes in Forchheim, as I had it in my mind that we would head out into the countryside to the west of the town and visit a Keller or two.

The previous afternoon we had met a group of English beer enthusiasts in the garden of Café Abseits in Bamberg. Comparing notes, as beer hunters invariably do, the group told us about the Kreuzberg Keller complex situated near the village of Schnaid, and strongly recommended a visit there. I had also read about this group of Kellers in Jon Conen’s Guide to Bamberg & Franconia. Jon recommended taking a bus from Forchheim, alighting at the small village of Stiebarlimbach where a brewery called Roppelt is situated, visiting their Keller first before walking up through the woods to the Kreuzberg Kellers. After spending time here, one then walks a further kilometre or so to the village of Schnaid, in order to pick up the return bus to Forchheim.

This plan would have worked fine, if No. 1 son had been up several hours earlier, but although he was ready by the time I returned from my errands, we still had some further shopping to do, primarily items we wanted to take home with us (beer for me, copious quantities of crisps for Matthew, plus various goodies for our respective work colleagues), before we could go off beer-hunting. This was unfortunate, but we were unable to leave our purchases until the following day, as this was a Sunday, and all shops in Bavaria are closed on the Lord’s Day. We were also unable to leave this task until the Monday either, as that was the day of our departure. Consequently, by the time we had finished it was well passed midday, leaving just the afternoon in which to cram our visit into. The timetable showed that unlike during the week, the last bus back left Stiebarlimbach at just before 4pm. Our visit would have to be confined to just the one Keller, and Roppelt's seemed the obvious choice.

The bus arrived on schedule; we boarded and purchased a return ticket each. The journey took us in a northerly direction out of Forchheim, before turning west, crossing the River Regnitz and then heading off in a north-westerly direction. The bus climbed steadily up towards the Steigerwald, and took us through a succession of unbelievably pretty villages. This really was rural Franconia at its very best. Eventually we reached our destination, the tiny village of Stiebarlimbach. Our driver told us that the return bus would depart from the same stop, which was directly opposite Bräuerei Roppelt, quite a substantial looking affair and obviously THE major source of employment in the village.

Two other people got off the bus at the same time as us. I’d read that the Keller was sited behind the brewery and as this couple seemed to be heading in that direction, we followed them through the brewery yard, before turning off left, passed a pond along the edge of a field and up into the woods. As we drew nearer, we noticed a fair-sized car park, and then a group of yellow painted buildings. A short distance beyond the buildings were numerous wooden tables and benches, most sited under the trees for protection from the fierce afternoon sun. There were quite a few drinkers sat at these tables, most with stoneware half-litre Krug mugs in front of them. We soon discovered that one of the buildings was the Ausschank, where the beer was dispensed, whilst the other was the Küche, or kitchen, where the more solid nourishment was served. We found an empty table and then I wandered over to the Ausschank to grab us each a nice cold beer. Roppelts Kellerbier was the beer on sale, a tasty and well-hopped brew, and at just €1.90 a go, was the bargain of the day. A bit later on I went and ordered us some food to go with the excellent beer; sausages with Sauerkraut and Landbrot (dark rye bread) were the perfect accompaniment to the beer.

The Keller became quite busy as the afternoon wore on and the temperature continued to climb. We managed to put away three mugs each of this tasty country beer before deciding it was time to make a move. After all we did not want to end up stranded in the middle of nowhere, even though there was an excellent Keller there. Before we left, I noticed a path leading further up into the woods. People were heading off in that direction from time to time, so I assumed it was the path leading up to the Kreuzberg.  I made a mental note that if we ever returned we would visit mid-week, arrive much earlier and make a whole day of visiting the other Kellers as well!

We arrived back at the bus stop in good time, passing back through the brewery yard en route. It was a stiflingly hot afternoon, but we didn’t wait in the bus shelter, as there were a couple of slightly disreputable looking blokes in there, but instead stood in the shade round the side. After a wait of less than 10 minutes a bus appeared. “Is this ours?” my son asked. “No”, I replied confidently, noting that the destination shown on the front of the bus was Willersdorf, the village at the end of the route. “This bus will return shortly after turning round at the end of the route”, I said, but as we watched it depart an awful thought struck me that perhaps we should still have got on. This thought was reinforced by the bus being more or less on time, and was confirmed when I looked at the timetable, displayed inside the bus shelter, showing the same time for arrival and  departure in  Stiebarlimbach. It dawned on me that the last section of the bus route was circular, rather than linear, which meant, to our horror, that the bus would not be returning for us and we were stranded!

In the normal run of things this would not have been too much of a problem. We are both fairly fit and quite capable of walking a fair distance when necessary. However, with the sun beating down on us quite mercilessly, and temperatures in the mid 30’s, a long walk was not something either of us relished. I was mindful of a story which had been in the news back home, shortly before we left, where a couple of would-be SAS recruits had collapsed and died from heat exhaustion following an exercise in the Brecon Beacons during a spell of hot weather. Obviously we would not be pushing ourselves to those sorts of extremes, but I was still concerned that we both only had a small bottle of water each and that neither of us had hats. I blame my wife and son for this omission; both had regularly taken the mickey out of the bush hat I wear at home whilst in the garden, to the point of refusing to go out with me if I am wearing it. I was now cursing the lack of suitable headgear!

I have had a dose of sunstroke before, and it was not an experience I would care to repeat, but our options were somewhat limited in this respect. My plan, such as it was, was to walk to the much larger village of Schlammersdorf, which we had passed through on our outward journey. I knew there was a pub there attached to the local brewery, and I was certain we could get details there about taxis which could take us to one of the nearest stations, (either Eggolsheim or Hirschaid). I had been watching our general direction of travel on the outward journey, so I knew roughly which direction we need to proceed in, but I was still kicking myself for not having purchased the local map I had been looking at that morning in a newsagent in Forchheim.

We set off out of the village, and soon came to a T-junction. We turned right and set off up a hill. It was certainly hot and I was beginning to doubt the wisdom of my decision to walk. Matthew was moaning, so when we eventually came to a shady, wooded area I decided to do something I hadn’t done since my student days, namely thumb a lift! There wasn’t that much traffic passing along this quiet country road, but our luck must have been in that day, as the second car to come along stopped to give us a lift. Our “saviour” was a young jobbing builder and, after I had explained our predicament as best as my German would allow, he offered to drive us to the station nearest to his home. This turned out to be Hirschaid, which was absolutely fine so far as we were concerned, as we could get a train back to Forchheim from there.

The journey probably only took about 20 minutes, but it saved us from what would have been an exhausting walk in the crippling heat. During the drive I chatted to our driver, mainly about where we were from and that we had come over for Annafest. He pointed out the brewery in Schlammersdorf, as we passed through, and also the one in Hirschaid as we arrived in the small town. Our driver dropped us off right at the station, and refused all attempts by us to give him some cash for his kindness. He did say though to look out for him at Annafest the following day and buy him a drink then. 

From Hirschaid, after a short wait, we were able to catch a train back to Forchheim, and arrived back at our apartment hot, but none the worse for our adventure. On the walk back from the station, Matthew swears he saw a bus being driven by the same driver who was in charge on our outward journey, and that the driver had waved at him. I replied it was a pity he hadn’t been driving the return bus, as he would certainly have beckoned us on board if he had seen us waiting at the stop in Stiebarlimbach.

 As for our rescuer, I distinctly heard him say he would be at Greiff Keller on the Sunday, and I think he said he would be there at 7 o’clock. We looked out for him earlier, and were intending to return later for a further look. However, it was around that time that the storm blew up, the sirens started to sound and the authorities closed the festival for the evening, following the severe weather warning. So unfortunately we never got to thank this chap personally in the way we would have liked. If, by some remote chance, he ever gets to read this blog, please accept our sincere thanks for saving us from a long and gruelling walk, and please get in touch so we can meet up and buy you a drink on our next visit to Franconia.

Another Success Story

Back in June I posted about the successful opening of the Windmill at Weald, describing how new owners had rescued this run-down Greene King pub from almost certain closure, completely renovated the place and turned the pub into a thriving village local selling a wide range of locally brewed ales, and offering a selection of excellent home-cooked food. A real success story, if you like. Now I am pleased to report another success; this time concerning a town pub rather than a rural one.

High Brooms is a suburb of Tunbridge Wells. I’m not certain how it acquired its rather grandiose title, but it’s not the grandest of places. Although nearer to Tunbridge Wells, High Brooms is the intermediate station on the railway between Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells, and has developed into a popular domicile for commuters, given the slightly lower property prices, compared to its near neighbours, and the good, semi-fast rail connection to London.

 The High Brooms Hotel was built back in 1899, and is a substantial three storey detached brick built property. It stands in a prominent position looking back down the hill towards the station. I don’t know when the building ceased to be a hotel, but it must have been quite some time before I first knew it. That was back in the mid 1980’s, when I worked a short distance away from the pub, and would sometimes call in for a pint at lunchtimes. It was owned then by Beards of Lewes. Beards were a pub-owning, former brewery that had ceased brewing in the late 1950’s, supposedly because of a yeast infection, but more likely because their brewery premises in Star Lane, Lewes were rather cramped and in need of updating. The company entered into an agreement with Harvey’s, whereby they would purchase beer from their Lewes neighbours and sell it under their own name. I distinctly remember drinking Beards Sussex Best Bitter during the early 80’s, and seeing the same range of bottles which Harvey’s produce with Beards labels on them.

 I’m not sure exactly when this practice ceased, but during the mid-1980’s, Beards branched out into wholesaling, and operated out of premises in nearby Hailsham. This operation was eventually floated off and became “The Beer Seller”. We all know what happened to them, but Beards continued to operate their pubs in much the same way as before.  Then in 1998, the company sold their 40 or so pubs to Greene King, in a move which shocked local drinkers. Rumour has it that it also shocked Harvey’s, who had always been under the impression they would get “first refusal” on Beards, should the company ever come up for sale!

After a short period of adjustment, Greene King quietly set about restyling the pubs as their own and removing Harvey’s beers from their new acquisitions, much to the annoyance of local drinkers. The disappearance of Harvey’s from the High Brooms Tavern, as it was now called, coupled with the fact I was no longer working in the area, meant my visits to the pub became few and far between. I know the pub continued to thrive as a community local under landlord Roy Gibb, and acquired a bit of a name for itself because of the large amount of bric-a-brac and other assorted memorabilia on display there. It was also home to various darts and pool teams, plus the local ukulele club!

Roy retired in July last year and the pub closed. It did obviously not fit in with Greene King’s plans for their tied estate so they put the High Brooms Tavern up for sale. Although the company did leave things open for the building to continue as a pub, there was a real threat it would be bought by a developer and converted to alternative use, or even demolished. (The pub occupies quite a prominent site, just a short hop from the station). A local campaign was set up, with backing from West Kent CAMRA, to try and save the pub and to try and get it re-opened. Fortunately local residents Peter Whitaker and his son Greg, bought the pub in March this year, and then spent the next four months carrying out an extensive renovation plus a complete refit of this 19^th Century building.

The result, when the pub re-opened last month, is a bright and airy pub, which retains much of the original layout, but with sensitive restoration of some of the building’s best features. The pub has been renamed the “Brick Works” in memory of this once thriving local industry. The remains of a substantial quarry where clay for making bricks was once extracted, can be seen a couple of streets away. (The quarry now houses a small industrial estate). There is a door way in the pub which has been bricked-up using old bricks from the local works, which are stamped with the words “Tunbridge Wells”.

We held a well-attended branch social at the pub, earlier in the week, and were all impressed with the way the pub has been renovated. We were also pleased to see the pub well-used by a mainly young clientele, with the darts and pool area particularly well-patronised. Beer-wise there was Greene King IPA and Golden Hen on sale, alongside the regular’s old favourite, Harvey’s Best!

The beers were all in good form, and it was encouraging to see the pub thriving once more, after having a new lease of life breathed into it. Not all closed pubs though are lucky enough to be bought by sympathetic new owners, but meanwhile the residents of High Brooms, and visitors from further afield, have cause to raise their glasses and be thankful to Peter and Greg Whitaker.

Ps. there is even more good news about another formerly closed pub, also in High Brooms, and this time it’s Greene King who are the heroes, rather than the villains of the peace. I will postpone reporting on the pub until I have had the chance to visit it myself.