Dark & Delicious Winter Beers at the Cooper's Arms

It’s probably a good job I don’t live within walking distance of the Cooper’s Arms in Crowborough, as I’d probably be in there every night. Not only would my waistline be even more expansive than it already is, but my bank balance would also be looking rather unhealthy. I say this because the unspoilt Cooper’s, in its tucked away location, right on the edge of Crowborough, is definitely my sort of pub.

I first became acquainted with the Cooper’s over 20 years ago, when I was taken there for lunch by the owner of a printing company who used to look after the print requirements of the company I worked for at the time. The pub was Brian’s local, and straight away I could see why he liked the place. Back then it was a Charington’s tied house which served a very acceptable pint of Draught Bass, and also a very good lunch!

Fast forward to 2007 and several changes of job later, I returned to the Cooper’s Arms in the company of a group of local CAMRA members, to find it too had undergone several changes. After a number of changes of ownership, which included a spell under Greene King, the pub had become a thriving free-house. At the time of our visit the Cooper’s was holding a mini-beer festival celebrating that most threatened of native beer-styles, mild. It must have been a goods festival, as my recollections of that visit are somewhat hazy, but three years later I returned to the pub for a third time, again with friends from West Kent CAMRA. On that occasion we were on our way home from a visit to the1648 Brewing Company, who are based in the Sussex Wealden village of East Hoathly, just behind the King’s Head pub. Our journey had involved several changes of bus, so we decided to break the return trip up a bit with a stopover in Crowborough, and a visit to the Cooper’s Arms.

It’s a long walk down to the pub from the centre of Crowborough; in fact it’s one of those walks where you keep thinking the pub is just around the next corner, or just over the brow of the hill. We found the same on Saturday, when seven of us made the 20 minute bus trip from Tunbridge Wells, in order to attend the Cooper’s Dark and Delicious Winter Beer Festival. Crowborough is the highest town in South East England, and has a reputation for being cold and windy. This was certainly the case on this occasion, although we were rewarded with some sunshine; a welcome sight after the torrential downpours of recent weeks. The route down to the pub takes one past some large and very posh looking houses, many of which have splendid views out towards the High Weald. The terrain dips sharply as one turns into the side road where the pub is situated, and here the views of the edge of Ashdown Forest are quite spectacular.

The pub itself is an attractive late Victorian building perched on the side of the hill. It is constructed out of brick and local stone, with a terrace at the front. Internally there is one long and quite narrow bar, which opens up at both ends. There are rooms leading off at either end as well; one of which functions as the pub’s dining room. There was plenty of room when we arrived at the pub, shortly before 12.30pm, but that was soon to change. We had been invited along by members of North Sussex CAMRA, into whose branch area the pub falls. They would be arriving slightly later by bus, along with a contingent from the adjoining East and Mid-Surrey branch. Luckily for us this meant we were able to grab the best seats, and also order our food before the rush.

So what Dark and Delicious Winter beers were on sale? Well there were twelve in total, all dispensed from several banks of hand pumps dotted along the bar. With the exception of the pale, citrus-flavoured 3.8% Jarl, from Fyne Ales, all the beers were dark, ranging from milds and porters, to stouts and old ales, plus a barley wine. There was also a brown Abbey-style beer from Steenbrugge in Belgium, which was dispensed from a keg tap.

I didn’t try them all, and neither did I have pints of all those that I did try, but I did indulge myself with a few pints of the beers I was especially interested in. The ones which really stood out were Dark Monro, a 4.0% chocolate and coffee flavoured dark mild from Highland Brewery. (Their 5.0% Oat Stout was also very good). “Rhatas”, a rich dark bitter from Black Dog Brewery of Melmerby, North Yorkshire, was very enjoyable, but the star of the show, as far as I was concerned, was the award-winning 1872 Porter from Elland Brewery in West Yorkshire. Despite its 6.5% strength, this definitely was a beer to be drunk, and enjoyed by the pint!

The pub had one further surprise in store, a cask of Dark Star Critical Mass; a 7.5% winter ale which is brewed just once a year. The Cooper’s landlord had a cask of this strong and robust dark ale, which was brewed back in 2012, maturing in his cellar. Given the high strength of this beer to start with and lengthy maturation period it had been through, I wisely plumped for a half pint. It was certainly interesting, shall we say; slightly vinous in character with a taste which reminded me of the Galloway’s Cough Linctus I had been dosed up with as a kid. Not unpleasant, but definitely a beer to be sipped, rather than swigged!

The aforementioned bus party turned up about 20 minutes after our arrival. Their mode of transport was a vintage red London Transport Route-Master, double-deck bus, complete with its front destination board showing Putney Common. The pub, of course, was expecting them, although as they all started filing in I had my doubts there would be enough room for them. I needn’t have worried, as the Tardis-like pub managed to accommodate them all. I had taken the precaution of ordering another pint, as well as my lunch, the moment I saw the bus drive past the pub window, but the landlord and his two helpers behind the bar coped admirably with the thirsty arrivals, and soon everyone had a beer and found a place, either seated or standing, and people were mingling and chatting affably.

The Cooper’s is a “quiet pub”, in respect of no recorded music or fruit machines, but in the room at the left, closest to the entrance, it had provided a large screen TV for those wanting to watch the opening games of the Six Nations Rugby Tournament. I was quite content, for my part, to sit and enjoy my home-made burger and chips, together with the excellent beer. Later, I enjoyed mingling amongst some of the newcomers, and swapping information about beer and pubs as CAMRA members are wont to do.

We left the pub just after 4pm, for the long walk back up the hill into Crowborough. The festival was still in full swing when we departed, but we thanked the landlord and his staff for their excellent beer and food and for their hard work in looking after us all. We called in at two other pubs on the way back to Tunbridge Wells; possibly not the wisest of decisions considering the amount of strong beer we had already drunk! I won’t say anything more at this stage, but both were good and both were heaving. It seems that at least some pubs in this part of the country are doing things right!

Winter Ales Of Our Discontent?

As mentioned previously I’m off this coming Saturday to the Dark and Delicious Beer Festival at the Cooper’s Arms, Crowborough. It promises to be a good do, and one I’m really looking forward to. Pub beer festivals always seem more homely, personal and atmospheric than events held in old town halls, exhibition venues and other large public spaces. Well certainly in this country that is.

The following weekend sees Dover, Deal and Sandwich CAMRA holding the 21^st Festival of Winter Ales, housed in Dover’s historic town hall - the Maison Dieu. I’ve attended the event on several previous occasions, including last year, but with this festival following hot on the heels of the one in Crowborough, I’ll more likely than not give it a miss. Don’t get me wrong, the Winter Ales Festival is an excellent event, albeit a little dangerous. I say dangerous because all the beers are 5.0% abv or above, and I’ve returned from previous visits slightly the worse for wear. However, there are quite a few other things happening during February, not all of them beer related, that I would like to participate in, so it won’t hurt to miss the Dover Festival this time round.

I‘ve had a quick look through the beer list for the festival, and whilst there are some cracking winter ales that I would love to sample, there are also a significant number of beers that I wouldn’t class as winter ales. They may well be 5.0% abv or above, but IPAs, Red Ales or Amber Ales do not in my book warrant inclusion in a festival like this. Granted the organisers have stated “The festival features around 75 winter and strong ales, of between 5% and 10% abv, which have been selected from mostly small independent and micro-breweries from across the country”, but looking at the beer list, nearly half of the 75 beers fall into the aforementioned category of IPAs, Red Ales or Amber Ales, and whilst they are all strong in terms of strength, they are not “Strong Ales” in the accepted use of the word.

I know I’m being extremely pedantic here, and for the record I really like strong, hoppy IPA's. However, there's a time and a place for everything, and the place for the enjoyment of these beers is not a winter ales festival. But without sounding too churlish, I suppose that even with 35 or so of the beers not falling into the category of true winter ales, there are still some 40 or so which do, and surely this is enough to satisfy even the pickiest of beer geeks? Perhaps there's another reason though for the inclusion of the strong IPA’s , Red Ales etc., and that is are enough Winter Ales brewed to provide sufficient variety for a festival of this sort? Did the organisers struggle to find sufficient numbers of true winter ales, and then ended up having to supplement those they did manage to source with other types of strong beer?

I obviously need to get out more, but sometimes it doesn’t hurt to ask these sorts of questions. Does anyone know the answers though?  

For the record, CAMRA judges the following categories of winter beer styles against each other at its annual Festival of Winter Ales in order to crown the Champion Winter Beer of Britain. These Categories are:

• Old Ales & Strong Milds
• Porters
• Stouts
• Barley Wines & Strong Old Ales.

A Taste of the West Country

I mentioned before that I have quite a stash of beers left over from Christmas. The number is slowly going down, but there’s still plenty to see January out and last me well into February. Foremost amongst the beers which have so far lain un-touched, are five offerings from Cotleigh Brewery which were given to me for Christmas, by a friend at work.

I’d been saving these as not only is Cotleigh an old favourite of mine, but their beers are also rarely seen in bottled form in this part of the country. Come to think of it, we don’t see their cask beers here anymore either. Contrast this to 10-20 years ago, when a hand pump offering Tawny, Barn Owl or Old Buzzard was quite a common sight in local free houses, and you will understand what I am talking about. The same applies to Exmoor Ales, another West Country brewery whose beers were also once very common in Kent.

I’m not sure why this should be, although the explosion of much more locally-based breweries in Kent and Sussex probably has a lot to do with it, but I digress. Cotleigh were amongst the first wave of new breweries set up in the wake of the cask-ale revival, having been established in Devon in 1979. They started life in the old stable block of Cotleigh Farmhouse at Washfield near Tiverton, using a five barrel brewing plant, but a year later, buoyed by the success of Tawny in particular, moved operations to the historic brewing town of Wiveliscombe in Somerset. Ironically, in view of my previous comment about them, Exmoor Ales are also based in the town, in an outbuilding of the former William Hancock’s brewery, which closed in 1959.

Cotleigh’s original owner Ted Bishop, was succeeded in the early 80's by John and Jenny Aries, a husband and wife team, who built upon the brewery's success. The brewery expanded in 1985 in order to fulfil ever-increasing demand, and in 2009 celebrated 30 years of brewing excellence. It is now owned by  Stephen Heptinstall. Most of the beers are named after birds, primarily birds of prey, and these feature on  the distinctive pump-clips and bottle labels.

So what of the beers and how did my friend acquire them? Well to answer the last question first, my friend’s wife has relations living down in the Exmoor area and on a pre-Christmas trip to the region, he spotted them on sale at a local farmer’s cooperative. The beers are:

Tawny Ale 3.8%

Golden Sea Hawk 4.2%

Barn Owl 4.5%

Buzzard Dark Ale 4.8%

Peregrine Porter 5.0%

Buzzard and Peregrine are bottle-conditioned; the rest are brewery conditioned, (filtered and pasteurised). I shall enjoy drinking them over the next week or so, and will let you know how they stack up.

In Search of Harvey's Old

Whilst writing my previous post about dark beers, I was acutely aware that I still haven’t sampled any Harvey’s Old Ale this season (autumn/winter). This is a glaring omission in my usual seasonal drinking patterns, and one which need rectifying pretty soon. Left much longer the Old will disappear to be replaced by other Harvey’s seasonal brews.

Kiss, springs to mind as the next seasonal beer to appear; definitely my least favourite amongst the brewery’s normally excellent repertoire, although the 1859 Porter which follows, makes up for it. Old though should still be available throughout February, and even into March, although by the end of that month it will inevitably have petered out.

So where to tack down some Harvey’s Old? The beer is sometimes seen in the free trade, but normally one has to visit a Harvey’s tied pub in order to sample it. There are two in the area; neither particularly close by, but both can be reached by public transport, (well it wouldn’t be a good idea to drive to them!).

The Brecknock Arms, at Bells Yew Green is about five minutes walk from Frant station, (one stop after Tunbridge Wells on the line to Hastings). However, the Hastings line has been affected by the recent adverse weather, with a landslip at Wadhurst causing all sorts of disruption. The other pub, the Two Brewers at Hadlow, is on the No. 7 bus route between Tonbridge and Maidstone, and whilst this service is pretty good during the week, on Saturday evening and Sunday, the two days when I would most likely want to go to the Two Brewers, buses are few and far between.

Social media is an excellent source of information about beers, and I've just noticed on their Facebook site that the excellent Royal Oak in Tunbridge Wells has Harvey’s Old on the bar. A pity then that I didn't see this earlier, as it’s a bit late in the evening now to walk down to the station and jump on a train over to the Wells!

I’m still fairly confident that I’ll manage to track some down before the winter is out, but why oh why aren’t local licensees a bit more adventurous in what they choose to stock? With a few honourable exceptions, such as the Royal Oak, Fuggles and the Bedford in Tunbridge Wells,  most pubs in these parts shy away from serving dark ales, in the mistaken belief they won’t sell. The trouble is they won’t know until they try, and I wouldn’t mind betting that few, if any, have actually tried. I know full well from when we had our off-licence that dark beers fly out the door, particularly during the winter months.

Many licensees around here seem to think that karaoke evenings and Sky Sports are what the punters want, then wonder why their pubs are half empty. It really is high time they woke up and stepped out of their comfort zone. There’s a whole horde of discerning drinkers out there who at the moment are stuck at home, like me. Although we are all enjoying a wide variety of bottled beers, many of us would rather be drinking and socialising with our fellow enthusiasts. Beer definitely tastes better when enjoyed in the social mix of a good pub, but present day entrants into the trade, (especially those taking on Punch or Enterprise tenancies), seem oblivious to this fact. Wake up and smell the coffee, or should that be the malt and hops?

Dark & Dreary January

It’s a funny time of year; the excesses of Christmas and New Year are now well and truly behind us, and we’ve already nearly seen January out. The weather has been damp, dull and miserable, but thankfully not too cold, so far that is! Work has been rather frantic as we’ve had staff appraisals to fit in alongside all the normal routine stuff, so I’m feeling somewhat cream-crackered at the moment. Thankfully I’ve only got one appraisal left to write up and a nice relaxing weekend to look forward to.

The weekend really started at lunchtime when, wanting to escape the madhouse for a while, I took myself off to nearby Chiddingstone and the wonderfully unspoilt Castle Inn. Sitting in the tranquil surroundings of the public bar, with just the ticking clock and a roaring log fire for company, I managed to regain my sanity for a short time at least, helped by an excellent pint of locally-brewed, Larkins Porter. This delicious 5.2% dark ale, is not that easy to come by, but the Castle is the nearest pub to Larkin’s Brewery, so if anywhere is going to stock the beer then this has to be it.

The Castle doesn’t come cheap at £4.20 a pint, but it was worth every penny so far as I was concerned, just to escape into a more peaceful and far less hurried world. This evening we all enjoyed a really tasty and rather filling Chinese takeaway, and now I’m sitting here tapping away at my computer, listening to music and wondering which beers would best wet my whistle.


Actually I’ve already decided to continue the dark theme I began at lunchtime, and chilling nicely on the back doorstep is a bottle of Budvar Dark, along with one of Bernard Cerny Lezak Dark Lager, brought back from Prague last month. Sunday sees our local CAMRA branch’s Good Beer Guide selection meeting. I shan’t be going along, but hope it all goes smoothly, and the selection process isn't too protracted. Instead I’m saving my energies for next Saturday’s cross-border foray into Sussex, to Crowborough’s Cooper’s Arms and their Dark and Delicious Beer Festival.

This event is a joint social with North Sussex and East & Mid Surrey CAMRA branches, and I’ve been told there will be getting on for a dozen dark and hopefully delicious beers on sale. The Cooper’s Arms is a stiff walk downhill from Crowborough town centre, but is definitely worth visiting. I remember it years ago, when it was Charrington’s pub, but now it’s a thriving, destination free house, which offers a good, and unusual, range of beers.

Three days later I’m heading up to London, as I’ve an invite for the re-launch of a beer from one of the City’s oldest “new-wave” breweries, followed by a guided tasting of some of their other beers. I’m not saying anything further at this stage, but watch this space and all will be revealed. After a month in the doldrums the local beer scene seems to be hotting up nicely.

Notes: Post originally written Friday evening, but not published until Saturday. The Cooper's Arms, Crowborough, doesn't have a website.

Last Rites for CAMRA's Good Beer Guide?

For the first time in many years there wasn’t a copy of the latest CAMRA Good Beer Guide in my Christmas socking. I’ve got a complete run of guides starting with the 1974 edition (the first guide to be commercially published) through to the 2013 guide, which was rightly celebrated as the 40^th edition. Now enough is enough, and I have neither the space on my bookshelves (most of the earlier editions are in boxes up in the loft), nor the inclination to go on accumulating these volumes.

But there is another reason, apart from that of space, as to why I won’t be buying this year’s, or indeed any subsequent year’s Guide; and that is the book is no longer a Good Beer Guide.  Instead it has become a cross between a Good “guest beer” Guide and a Good Pub Guide. Unfortunately it can never be the latter, as that title was claimed by another, rival publisher back in 1982, so it appears stuck in limbo land at present, with no clear ideas as to where to go from here.

My views on this subject are well known, and I have argued for several years now that the Good Beer Guide cannot continue in its current form. The unfortunate thing is that when the Good Beer Guide first appeared in 1974, as a modest 96 page, stapled booklet priced costing just 75p, it really was like a breath of fresh air blowing through the stuffy world of guides. The Guide’s editors knew this, and the introduction went so far as to claim, “It is not just another pub guide recommending the unsuspecting traveller to places cluttered up with horse brasses or landlords who won a medal in the 1949 FA Cup Final. It is for the millions of people who spend millions of pounds between them on beer – and deserve a product of quality.”

What was unique for the time was the breweries section at the rear. Nothing like this had been attempted before, and it provided valuable information for a growing audience of beer lovers, which was obtainable nowhere else, which inspired them to get out there and try something new. I was one of those early beer enthusiasts, and the Guide certainly encouraged me to travel around the country in an attempt to sample the remaining local brews. It is no exaggeration to say that in its time, the Good Beer Guide was truly inspirational.

What CAMRA should have done, at least a decade or so ago, was to separate off the breweries section from the rest of the guide. In effect publish two separate but complimentary books. However, they were either too frightened or too apathetic to innovate, and instead chose to stick with the status quo, preferring in effect to leave what had become a cosy money making machine exactly as it was.

CAMRA will argue that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, but my argument is the GBG isn’t so much broke, but damaged beyond repair. It has become vapid, boring, trapped in its own comfort zone, uninspired, more like a phone directory than a beer guide, staid, stale, way past its sell by date and in a terminal decline. What’s more, it is rapidly losing its appeal to REAL beer lovers, of whom I’m just one of many!

The lengthy timescale from selection of the pubs at the end of January, to the launch of the Guide at the beginning of October, in time for the all important Christmas book trade, does the book no favours at all. It means the Guide is already 9 months out of date by the time it hits the book shelves. This is all the more galling because members of CAMRA’s various branches do the lion’s share of the work, including surveying nominated pubs, inputting the data into a print-friendly format and then proof-reading the final drafts.

This process is normally completed by mid-March, but the Guide then disappears into a sort of limbo-land for a six month period whilst Editor Roger Protz, and his team at CAMRA HQ in St Albans, knock the final copy into shape. Exactly why this takes them so long is beyond me; especially in a digital age, but it is this exact digital age which has made the GBG increasingly irrelevant in this modern world.

CAMRA has taciturnly, and belatedly, acknowledged this by launching the whatpub.com website; but what the Campaign has failed to grasp is Whatpub effectively sounds the death knell for the Good Beer Guide; certainly in its present form. Whilst not outwardly admitting this, CAMRA Director Andy Shaw said “CAMRA has developed WhatPub to be the ultimate online pub guide for all pub-goers. It may even help encourage people who have stopped using pubs regularly, since WhatPub will help them find the ideal pub to suit their needs.”

Compiled over a two year period, by thousands of CAMRA volunteers, Whatpub features 47,000 pubs, around 36,000 of which serve real ale – making the site the most definitive online guide to real ale in the UK. Of the 35,800 real ale pubs featured, around 22,000 have details of the real ales being served, thereby taking the guess work out of a visit for real ale lovers. Another key feature is that Whatpub is designed to automatically optimise for use on laptops, tablets and mobile devices, and offers over thirty different search fields ranging from dog friendly pubs to those that offer newspapers or live music, making the results customizable to each person’s individual preferences. 

 

According to CAMRA’s own website, “WhatPub entries are written by local CAMRA members and then approved by dedicated branch volunteers. A full entry offers a description and pictures of the pub, the address, opening hours, who owns it, lists the regular real ales they stock, states whether the pub offers Guest Beers, highlights the pubs main features e.g. availability of food, gives a map of where the pub can be located, sat nav reference, OS reference and highlights the local transport available.” In other words, everything the Good Beer Guide does but without the £15.99 price tag!

Even more damaging to the continuation of the GBG in its present form is that Whatpub lists nearly 36,000 pubs which sell real ale; eight times as many as the Guide’s 4,500! Anyone wishing to make use of the site will therefore have access to far more pubs and bars than the Good Beer Guide could ever hope to list, and by using a modicum of common sense, they will be able to choose a pub to suit their individual tastes, needs and circumstances. They will no longer be at the mercy of local CAMRA branches whose whims, or sometimes even out and out skulduggery*, dictate which pubs are selected for the GBG and which are left out.

At present the GBG remains a cash cow for CAMRA. It is reported to make the best sellers lists every year, although having done quite a bit of research on this, I can find no evidence of it being a massive seller. In fact it’s far more likely to be the Campaign’s executive St Albans “bigging” the book up. However, in view of the new website, with its powerful search features and all the other advantages mentioned above, the question has to be how much longer can the Good Beer Guide survive in its present form?

*Every year CAMRA branches, up and down the country, go through the process of selecting pubs for the Good Beer Guide, and every year the procedure is full of pitfalls. I am not for one minute suggesting that brown envelopes, stuffed with tenners, change hands before selection meetings, but branch officers will always have their preferences and, as I’ve argued before, vociferous or strong willed individuals can often sway a selection meeting into voting for the inclusion of their favourite pub(s), even when there are obvious far better candidates.

How to Taste Beer

Here, as promised, is the follow-up to last week’s post about the “tutored beer tasting” organised by West Kent CAMRA, at the Crown Inn in Groombridge.

So what exactly takes place at a “tutored beer tasting”? Well, the first and most surprising thing is not a lot of beer gets drunk. More on this later, but those of us who attended last Saturday’s session, at the Crown in Groombridge, were more than a little surprised by this.

On entering a pub, the normal behaviour is to quickly scan along the bar to establish what beers are on offer, and then to order a pint of whichever one takes your fancy. Most of us were about to do this last Saturday, when we were stopped in our tracks by branch chairman, Iain, and told if we bought a pint first, we would not be able to take part in the tasting. All a little harsh, you might think, but the reason is tasting needs to be conducted with a fresh palate, so not only were we deprived of beer to start with, we were also not allowed to eat until after the session had ended.

The pub knew we were coming, and had reserved their snug bar area for us. What Iain did next was to order a couple of four pint jugs of the first beer to be tasted (Black Cat Original), along with 12 pint glasses. He also ordered a couple of jugs of water, for palate cleansing purposes, and produced a packet of cream crackers, for the same end (so much for not eating!). After we were all seated, Iain talked us through the whole tasting procedure, whilst we sat there looking longingly at the jugs of beer, like parched travellers in the desert!

There are three parts to properly tasting a glass of beer: appearance, aroma and taste. There are also sub-categories and steps to each of these processes, and a whole host of different things to look for. CAMRA has usefully produced guideline cards on which the various stages are outlined, along with which criteria to look for, and how to score each one. Individual results are then recorded on the cards, and the overall results pooled at the end of the session. An example of this card is shown above.

First the beer style which the beer to be tasted falls into is selected. There are 10 styles in total, ranging from mild to barley wine/strong ale, with a host of others in between. The O.G. and abv of the beer in question is also noted and then, after the beer has been dispensed, the tasting can begin. I mentioned pint glasses earlier, but we were only given an approximate half pint each of beer. The reason for this is the beer needs to be swirled around the glass to release some of the aromas, and this would not be possible with a full glass.

Appearance is judged on colour, (black, dark-brown, red, brown, tawny, copper, pale brown, amber, gold, yellow, straw), clarity (bright, clear, hazy, cloudy) and head (tight, loose, clingy, big, medium small, none).

Aroma is next on the list, and to release the various aromas, the glass containing the beer is swirled and then sniffed. The following aromas are looked for: malt, roast, caramel, hops, fruit, sulphur and yeast. Obviously roast and caramel aromas will be more prevalent in darker beers, whilst fruit and hops are more indicative of bitters and pale ales.

Now comes the part everyone will have been waiting for, namely you actually get to taste the beer. Take a mouthful and allow it to swirl around your mouth and over your tongue. Then swallow; no poncy spitting here! Note the taste whilst drinking and record accordingly: malt, roast, caramel, hops, fruit, sweet, bitter, sulphur, astringent and yeast. Twenty seconds or so after swallowing, note the aftertaste, using the same criteria as for taste.

Whilst tasting, Mouthfeel (smooth, creamy, grainy, watery or other) and Carbonation (high, medium, low or flat) should also be determined; although the latter can also be partly ascertained whilst swirling the beer around the glass, prior to the aroma stage.

Finally the Body of the beer is scored on a scale of 0-5, with 0 being thin and 5 being thick, followed by the Overall score for the style (0-10), based on one’s impressions of the beer during the tasting. And that in a nutshell is it!

We tasted the two Black Cat Brewery beers on sale in the pub; the Original (a 3.8% Best Bitter) followed by the Black Cat (a 4.9% Old Ale). Obviously as with any beer tasting, the weakest one is tasted first, but both were first class brews which were served in peak condition.

Afterwards we got down to some serious supping of the two beers, and got some food  inside us as well. All those who attended found the session very interesting and extremely useful, and there are now a dozen or so of us who can say we are trained CAMRA beer tasters, which means we can officially taste other local beers  in order to provide tasting notes for the Good Beer Guide. Our thanks to the Crown at Groombridge for hosting the event, and to our branch chairman, Iain for guiding us through it.