So much to answer for

There’s only one thing you really need to know about the launch event I went to the other week for JW Lees’ Manchester Pale Ale – a busy evening full of sarcastic MCing, warm men in suits, spaced-out DJing, tiny canapes, local legendry, munificent swag and much free beer – and that’s the amount of MPA I put away. Bear in mind that this was a weeknight, and that my ideal beer is something brown and malty – I ‘got’ pale beers a couple of years ago, but they don’t usually make me want to go back for more. Especially not on a weeknight.

Unless they’re really good, that is.

And the answer is: five pints. (Well, four and two halves.) It’s a very fine beer. No prizes for guessing what area of the style palette they’re going for: William Lees-Jones introduced it by saying, inter alia, that they thought they’d succeeded in putting the cream back into Manchester – “and by ‘eck, it’s gorgeous”. (This is probably a reference that’s best kept for the trade, sadly – there must be an awful lot of beer drinkers out there who miss the old Boddington’s bitter, but anyone who’s drinking what goes by that name now won’t be attracted by a much stronger-tasting newcomer.) So it’s a light, sessionable golden ale, but with enough hop character and aroma to earn the ‘pale ale’ tag; it’s got that ‘refreshingly bitter’ quality, particularly on the finish. It doesn’t have the aggressive hopping of a Marble or Titanic, or the smoky aromatic quality of an IPA (or Marston’s EPA); but it has got enough hopping to keep it interesting, and avoid the blandness of so many golden and blonde ales. On a cool evening it was very drinkable indeed; I can only imagine what it would be like on a warm day.

All this and… bloggers! (Well, Tand and Marv.) Bez, being Bez! Radio’s Mark Radcliffe, to whom I would like to apologise for the amount of time I spent hovering six feet away from his table without ever actually approaching! (Mark: sorry. It was late and I was drunk. Might I also mention that my folk music Web site is very good?) The smallest canapes you have ever seen (although, fair play, there were plenty of them)! Free bottles of beer, one of which I swiped for later, before discovering that the goodie bag pressed on us at the end contained a bottle of beer! An amateur photography exhibition curated by the great Kevin Cummins – something of a hero of mine – whom I also didn’t manage to say hello to! (What can I say, I wasn’t 100% sure it was him, and I didn’t want to risk asking some random stranger if he was Kevin Cummins. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this journalism lark.)

And lots and lots of men in suits. (I think I even spotted Richard Leese.) There was an odd sort of two-way disjuncture built in to the event, I felt. On one hand, here was a brewer staking a claim to contemporary relevance, breaking away from the past and making for the cutting edge, and they accompany it with music and visuals that evoke a period 20-30 years in the past. On the other, here were Bez! and Mark Radcliffe!! and Kevin Cummins!!! doing their thing – but they were doing it for an audience of, well, men in suits: Lees’ tenants and managers, most of whom looked as if they’d have been happier with Justin Moorhouse and “Hi Ho Silver Lining”. Perhaps it’s like time travel – Lees’ are collectively travelling forward to the present, but they’re doing it slowly. Next year: the Poll Tax, John Major and “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”.

As for Manchester Pale Ale, I’d recommend it to anyone except the most hardened neophiles and hop-monsters. The bottled version (at 4.1%) is good, but for my money cask (at a mere 3.7%) is where it really scores. At present you’ll need to seek it out in a Lees’ pub, but I think the plan is to sell it into the chain ‘guest’ market (alongside the Deuchars IPAs and Cumberland Ales of this world); I hope it works out.

I was invited to the launch of MPA by the nice people at Tangerine PR and plied with booze and canapes by Lees themselves. Free or not, if I hadn’t liked the beer I wouldn’t have carried on drinking it.

The moving finger

DOUGAL: Right, Ted. Looks like an ordinary blackboard, doesn’t it?

TED: Yes.

DOUGAL: That’s what I thought – but watch this! You see? You can rub off the letters!

There was a time when you didn’t see blackboards in pubs, except next to the dartboard or listing the food specials. These days they’re much more of a fixture, particularly in craft beer bars & places catering to beer geeks. Apart from the neighbourhood Spoons, all my local boozers have at least one. There’s one odd omission, though – see if you spot it as you read down this handy list of The Bars and their Blackboards. (You can’t buy entertainment like this, I tell you.)

HILLARY STEP: one (cask, cider and keg)
DE NADA: one outside (cask and cider), one inside (cask, cider and keg)
FONT: two (keg and cider)
PI: one (doesn’t really count – used sporadically for new & interesting beers on tap or bottle)
MARBLE: two (cask regulars and guests)
BEAGLE: two (keg and cask)

Apart from Pi – a bar which has blackboards quite literally coming out of its ears, but only really uses them for food and slogans – there’s one bar that stands out: the all-new and ultra-whizzy shrine of beer that is [the] Font (I have to keep remembering that definite article). Eight ciders, listed on a blackboard with producer, a.b.v. and price; sixteen keg taps, their respective beers listed on another blackboard with brewer, a.b.v. and price; eight handpumps and, er, that’s it.

I think I know what’s happened, though. Last time I went in, I asked the woman serving if they were going to put up a blackboard for the cask ales. She said they weren’t. I said I thought it would be a good idea. She nodded, smiled, then gave me a yeah-but sort of frown and said:

Thing is, they’re changing all the time.

So that’s obviously the problem – they didn’t ask around, and they’ve got stuck with one of those ordinary blackboards. Easy mistake to make.

Got the flavour

For one post only, here’s a return of my ‘tasting notes’ feature, dedicated to the various ‘craft keg’ beers I’ve sampled. I’ve had eight, that I can remember: BrewDog 5 a.m. Saint, Hops Kill Nazis and Zeitgeist; Hard Knott Duality; Lovibonds Dirty 69; Magic Rock Cannonball; Marble Earl Grey IPA; and Red Willow Soulless.

Beers served noticeably colder than cask: all of the above.

Beers with noticeably higher carbonation than cask: 5 a.m. Saint, Zeitgeist, Duality, Cannonball, Earl Grey IPA (i.e. most of the above).

Beers with a strong and distinctive flavour (as served): 5 a.m. Saint, Hops Kill.

Beer with an unpleasantly strong and distinctive flavour (as served): Hops Kill, which was revolting – either I really didn’t get it or the beer had managed to go sour in the keg. I’ll ignore this one from now on.

Beers with a nice but not particularly striking flavour (as served): Duality, Cannonball, Earl Grey IPA, Soulless.

Beers without very much flavour at all (as served): Zeitgeist, Dirty 69.

Beers whose flavour & aroma developed noticeably on warming up and/or outgassing: Zeitgeist, Duality, Cannonball.

Beer whose flavour & aroma developed noticeably and in a good way: Zeitgeist. (Both the other two released a blast of aroma, but the aroma was mostly one of dead leaves and old books.)

Strong beers which didn’t drink their strength: Dirty 69, Cannonball, Earl Grey IPA, none of which tasted anywhere near their 6+% a.b.v.

Beers which I’ve also drunk on cask: 5 a.m. Saint, Zeitgeist, Earl Grey IPA.

Beers whose flavour and aroma matched up to the cask version: none of those three, although in fairness the Zeitgeist wasn’t far short once it had warmed up a bit (by which time I’d already drunk half of it). (I also thought both the Zeitgeist and the Saint were better on keg than in bottle, for what that’s worth.)

Good, memorable beers: 5 a.m. Saint, Zeitgeist (when thawed).

Perfectly pleasant but just a bit ordinary: Duality, Cannonball, Earl Grey IPA, Soulless.

Wooden spoon: Dirty 69, an interesting-sounding beer which I wanted to like, but which just didn’t taste of anything very much.

With that, I think I really will let ‘craft keg’ alone, and the guys from Fraserburgh with it (until they see sense and go back to brewing some of their excellent cask beers). But I tried; never let it be said I didn’t try.

My lasting reaction is one of puzzlement. We’ll assume there was something wrong with the Hops Kill; on Duality, Dave has said that he was aiming for what I’d call “perfectly pleasant but a bit ordinary” (he didn’t use quite those words), so I guess that’s fair enough. That leaves six beers, and two questions. Zeitgeist and Saint were good, but I know they were much better on cask – and, in the case of Zeitgeist, it was much better when it had lost some of the excess chill & CO2. Why spoil great beers like that? As for the other four, Marble, Red Willow and especially Magic Rock are breweries I value for big, extreme, complex flavours, especially at higher strengths – and everything I read about Lovibonds suggests they’re working in a similar area. So why, when they brew for keg, are they making such light, undemanding beers?

On my way to the club

Quick addendum to the previous post. As you probably know, Wetherspoon’s have one of their periodic ‘beer festivals’ on at the moment. My local Spoons held a pre-launch event for local CAMRA members the night before the festival officially started. When I went along they were serving beers from Belhaven, Elgood’s, Moorhouse and Hilden (a new one on me, probably because they’re from Antrim), as well as two ‘international’ collaborative brews: a Greek coffee porter(!) brewed at Everard’s and an American amber ale brewed at Adnam’s. So, six decent guest beers, plus the usual suspects.

On my way to the Spoons I stuck my nose in every pub or bar I passed, making a mental note of how many beers were available & which breweries were featured. And I can report that the places I passed on that ten-minute walk were serving 22 cask beers from 15 different breweries: Art Brew, Brightside, Bristol Beer Company (x2), Buxton, Dark Star (x2), Green Mill, Hornbeam, Liverpool Organic, Magic Rock, Marble (x5), Red Willow (x2), Redemption, Salamander, Tatton and XT. This evening I tried the experiment of walking ten minutes the other way, to find another three bars and another eight beers: Beartown, Bollington, Hartley’s [sic], Hornbeam (again), Mobberley, Phoenix, Pictish and Thwaites. There are a couple of names in there that I wouldn’t necessarily cross the street for, but there are also plenty that would be worth a ten-minute walk any day of the week. (Plus three that I haven’t tried yet, and a fourth that I hadn’t even heard of before tonight.) It takes a bit of the shine off a paddle at Spoon’s, I have to say.

Miracle and wonder. I think this has to be a bubble, speaking economically (as well as culturally) – apart from anything else, speaking economically we’re all going down the tubes, and while people do carry on getting drunk during recessions they don’t tend to spend big on luxury items. (Although, as I’ve said before, the relative fixity of the price of cask beer has made it that rare thing, a high-quality good which isn’t a luxury good. (Another reason – or perhaps the reason – to be suspicious of craft keg.) So maybe beer will remain an affordable luxury and won’t be hit by the downturn.) Realistically you’d have to bet that we’re going to lose one of those bars and/or two of those breweries over the next year. Oh well – I’ll just have to keep propping up the ones I like.

Update 13th April. I stuck my nose in the local Spoons yesterday and noticed they had the special-edition 6% Wadworth 6X plus a 5.5%er from Orkney, both of which I rather fancied. I didn’t fancy them quite enough to drink them on the day – ‘day’ being the operative word – so left it until this evening… when they’d both gone. Curses. Instead, I had thirds of Central City Red Racer IPA, Robbies Hoptimus Prime and Lodewijk Fly By Night. All were quite pleasant, but they were (a) not much more than pleasant (Tandleman reports a similar experience); (b) in thirds, which increasingly looks like a doll’s house measure to me – you can get a taste of a beer in that volume but you can’t really get to know it; and (c) in a Wetherspoon’s, and one of the more barn-like ones at that. Not the greatest of beer experiences; I think that might be it for me and this particular ‘festival’. On my way back I passed by the Font, a venture which is surely doomed to fail – nobody’s going to go there if it’s always that crowded – and beat a retreat to De Nada, where I sank into a pint of Red Willow Directionless: a superlative pint in very nice surroundings (and a dimple mug, but you can’t have everything). The Font, incidentally, still doesn’t have a blackboard for cask beers, despite having one for keg and another for ciders. Presumably this is a deliberate decision, but if so it baffles me – they certainly aren’t all the same price, or cheap for that matter.

Drink the long draught, Dan

When we first moved here, there were many good things to be said about the area where I live – five minutes’ walk would get you to a laundrette, a post office, a bakery, a butcher’s, two newsagents (one each way), an ironmonger, a pet shop, an Indian takeaway and two chippies.

What you couldn’t really say was that we were in easy reach of a good place to drink. There was a pub within five minutes’ walk: just the one; a classic Big Four multi-room suburban pub, the size and shape of a very large detached house. If you didn’t like it, you could walk for another five minutes (in either direction) and find another one very like it. The South Manchester Reporter‘s pub column once ran a series of local pub round-ups; for our area, the writer said that a pub crawl would only be possible with the aid of “an obliging friend or a stout pony”.

(For those who know Manchester, I’m talking about Chorlton, or rather the bit between Chorlton and Old Trafford (“Chorlton borders” if you’re an estate agent). For those who know Chorlton, I’m talking about the Seymour, with the further-flung alternatives being the Royal Oak or the Throstle’s Nest.)

Times change; of all the shops I listed in the first para, the only ones still trading are the post office, the ironmonger, the chippies, the Indian takeaway and one of the newsagents – and the Indian’s the only one that’s still under the same ownership. And the pub – the Seymour – closed down long ago, having gone to seed in quite a big way. (While it was still open, the South Manchester Reporter‘s columnist noted that the wasteground behind the pub was littered with old boards and said that some of the regular female clients found they came in handy. Nice.) It reopened for a while as “the Grove”, before being closed for good and demolished. I don’t think anybody really took to the new name; the Seymour, or “where the Seymour used to be”, is a local landmark to this day.

Times change, and while you’d have a good long walk to the nearest butcher or baker (or a drive to the nearest branch of Pets ‘Я’ Us), we’ve got places to drink coming out of our ears. First, and furthest away (a good ten minutes on foot) was the Marble Beerhouse: small, dark, bar-like but working that superficially unwelcoming “this is a pub, you middle-class whippersnapper!” vibe that a lot of GBG pubs have. Around the same time, JDW’s converted the local snooker hall into the Sedge Lynn, an establishment with a distinctly different appeal to the Marble (but some good beer to go with it). Iguana also opened around this time – a conversion from a restaurant, the owner’s previous venture on the same site – but they didn’t serve real ale, so I’ll pass over. Then there was the Hillary Step – light-ish and bright-coloured, stocked with expensive nibbles, smoke-free before the smoking ban and generally out and proud about being middle-class. (You won’t go long without hearing a local accent in the Marble. You could go weeks in the Hillary Step.) After the Hillary came Pi; then Jam Street, and then the Nip and Tipple. There’s a definite progression there. My father was a middle-ranking civil servant and a lay reader at the local church (which was in Surrey); I went to a fee-paying school and then Cambridge. I’ve been in the N&T once and felt genuinely uncomfortable: it was so middle-class – so comfortably middle-class – it set my teeth on edge.

This may of course just be me.

But that’s not the end of the story by any means. The Marble had, well, Marble, plus Pictish, Abbeydale, Phoenix and whatever else passed the pale’n'oppy test; the Hillary had Thwaites plus guests; Jam Street had Outstanding, the N&T had Hornbeam and Pi, after an early dalliance with Bank Top, had Tatton, Acorn and Red Willow. (Mmm, Red Willow.) I was settling in as a regular at Pi when De Nada opened, on the site of what was briefly a vodka-and-classical-music bar called Chopin. (Perhaps that particular concept was a bit too middle-class.) Initially De Nada had regular Lancaster beers; subsequently they’ve specialised in Brightside, Worth, XT and Red Willow (mmm, Red Willow). (And comfy chairs.) Then there was the Beagle – a big, unpubby, dining-oriented sort of place, offering all the craft keg you can eat, plus Quantum, Magic Rock, SWB… And now Font: the bar formerly known as Iguana, formerly formerly known as Paschal’s Greek restaurant, is now the Chorlton arm of the expanding Font empire.

What’s it like? Well, the “hip, hipper, hippest” progression continues – as in Marble/Hillary, Pi/De Nada, Beagle/Font – with Font a nose in front of the Beagle. On the opening night there were seven cask beers on (an eighth pump clip was turned round); the breweries were Dark Star, Thornbridge (Jaipur), Redemption, Bristol Beer Co, Harbour, Moor and Magic Rock. Plus eight real ciders/perries (which is to say, one or two perries and six or seven ciders), dispensed from taps on the wall – presumably by gravity; there was no signage in that part of the bar, just a blackboard. Plus sixteen(!) keg fonts – Aspall’s cider, Duvel and another couple of continentals, and the rest devoted to hipster keggery a-go-go (Magic Rock, Brodies, Kernel, Brodies, Lovibond). The Chorlton Tap est arrivé. In terms of comfort it’s nowhere: a big draughty barn with leather sofas dotted about & a scary man on the door. This strikes me on reflection as a model which works fine in Fallowfield, but looks a bit out of place in Chorlton. I imagine that as time goes on it’ll get a bit more homely (and/or pubby) – either that or it’ll fill up with parties & vertical drinkers, and I’ll stick to De Nada.

All in all, that’s an awful lot of places to drink. (And I didn’t even get as far as Chorlton itself.) An interesting development, too – possibly a bubble (and there surely isn’t room for many more bars, is there?). We shall see.

A quick summary, which can stand as one person’s record of the rise of the real ale/craft beer bar. (All measurements are taken from the standard reference point of My House.)

Places to drink within ten minutes’ walk, 1998: the Throstle’s Nest, the Seymour, the Royal Oak.

Places to drink within ten minutes’ walk, 2013: the Nip and Tipple, the Hillary Step, Jam Street, De Nada, the Font, Pi, the Marble, the Sedge Lynn, the Beagle. And the Royal Oak.

Update:I followed up this survey a few days later by counting the restaurants in the two-mile stretch of road between two defunct pub landmarks, the Seymour and the Feathers. I counted anywhere you could go for a sit-down meal: pubs serving food were included, but I arbitrarily excluded anywhere that was mainly a takeaway (from kebab shops to McDonald’s) and anywhere that only served cakes or breakfasts. I only included restaurants fronting on the main road itself – I didn’t wander off exploring Chorlton. One road, two miles, not counting takeaways. Fancy hazarding a guess? (My guess before I left home was 12.)

The answer is: 25. It looks as if the beer bubble is sitting on top of a general night-time economy bubble.

As for the Font, I went back the Saturday after opening & found it changed, both for better and worse. On the plus side, the management have sorted out the furniture situation, and the doorman seems to have stopped opening the door wide whenever anyone comes in or out: draughty barn no longer. On the minus side, still no blackboard for cask ales, making me think this is probably a deliberate feature (why?). Also, some of the more interesting beers had gone off and been replaced by equally hip but less interesting candidates (no Moor, no Magic Rock). I went for Bristol Beer Company‘s Double Acer. The barmaid warned me that it was £4 a pint; this was nice of her, although that price does seem excessive – even for a 6.3% beer (another minus). Fortunately I was able to claim a CAMRA discount, taking it down to a more reasonable £3 (a plus!). Unfortunately it wasn’t that great – although it’s a single-hop brew it wasn’t slap-in-the-face hoppy, and I’d never have known it was an IPA without being told. But the really big minus factor, which wasn’t present on the opening night, was the piped music. A key fixture of my Saturday night routine is ordering a takeaway over the phone (hey, rock’n'roll), and I usually try and do this on licensed premises. Not in the Font – that night I ordered in the street (on my way to the Beagle). The music was seriously loud; certainly too loud to hold a conversation without shouting. I wouldn’t have minded so much, frankly, if it had been better music (De Nada and Pi have excellent selections, as well as not having it up so high). As well as seriously loud, it was seriously bland: at one point I was genuinely disappointed when I realised that the track starting wasn’t Coldplay. I wouldn’t have thought there was much crossover between those people who like it cranked up really high and those who find Dido a bit edgy and left-field, but what do I know? (The Bugle did a bit better on the night: nowhere to sit – bah, gastro-pubs – but a prominently displayed blackboard and a pint of something proper ‘oppy from SWB for an only slightly excessive £3.60, with discreet background music.)

Winter Wonders 5

WWW 2012 part 5: Stockport.

I’d been looking forward to this. Stockport boasts one terrific multi-ale free house (the Railway in Portwood), one even better than that (the Crown) and numerous Robinson’s houses, several of which were on the Winter Warmer Wander; what could possibly go wrong?

Well, one or two things. The beer running out, for one. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Arriving in the centre of Stockport, my plan was to head for the Railway and then work my way back to the Crown. The plan lasted until I passed the Swan with Two Necks, where I’ve had a very nice half of Old Tom before now. I went in. Old Tom was off. I came out again.

I still fancied the idea of hitting the Railway with an Old Tom already under my belt, so I went in the Tiviot. They were serving Old Tom from a freezer-jacketed pin on the bar. I’m in two minds about this arrangement; the half I got was close to room temperature and had lost most of its condition. On the other hand, it tasted really good. I think I’d still prefer it at cellar temperature and with a bit of condition, but it did work the way I had it – it seemed to bring different aspects of the flavour to the fore.

There should be a standard classification for pies, I feel. The main dividing line would be very simple: on one side there would be pies which can be held in the hand and eaten while standing up; on the other, pies which call for seating and the use of a fork, and which are liable to disintegrate messily if approached without due care. Every pie on sale for immediate consumption would be clearly marked as a “hand pie” or a “fork pie”. Customers purchasing a “fork pie” would naturally be offered a disposable fork to go with their pie, together with a paper napkin and perhaps a wet-wipe or two. I feel this would greatly enhance the customer experience offered by such businesses as Greenhalgh’s. No reason, it just crossed my mind.

By this time I fancied another Old Tom, never mind my original plan, so I went in the Arden Arms. There was a pin on the bar, from which the landlord managed with some effort to extract about a fifth of a pint – for which he very sportingly didn’t charge me. Unfortunately – if unsurprisingly – it was on the turn, so I left it after a couple of swigs.

What would the Railway be serving? I mused as I headed over there. (An old ale would be nice. An old ale other than Old Tom, especially. A barley wine would be really nice…) What they were serving was about six different bitters in the 4% region, plus one strong one (Jaipur) and Rossendale Pitch Porter. So I had that (and a half of Jaipur). The Pitch Porter was every bit as good as it had been at the Mark Addy, and much more reasonably priced at £2.30 a pint – or, to look at it another way, three pints for the price of two.

I stuck my nose in Calverts Court but didn’t see anything qualifying except for Brewster’s Belly Dancer, which qualified on strength alone and didn’t appeal. (Besides, I had my 25 stickers now.)

Then ho for the Crown. I’d been spoilt for choice on previous visits and was looking forward to this one. I was greeted by the familiar and welcome sight of a forest of handpumps – how many beers is that, 12? 14? What came to light when I examined the pump clips, however, was a huge array of 4%-ish bitters with just a couple of dark ones, and nothing like an old ale. I tried Wilson & Potter’s Pudding Porter and wasn’t wildly impressed – it’s one of those “cake spice” beers made with actual cake spices, which I always think is missing the point a bit. Then Millstone Stout: a light, thin-tasting, easy-drinking stout. Which was OK. There were a few other things that I hadn’t tried, but nothing I particularly fancied, so I left it at that.

26 beers in 26 pubs, and they were:

	This area	Total
Old ale / Barley wine	1	4
Porter / stout	2	9
Vaguely Christmassy beer	0	4
A.N. Other Beer at 4.5% or over	0	9

I may just have been unlucky, but the numbers in those last two rows look rather high to me – and the number in the top row looks very low, particularly when you take into account that three of the four were Old Tom. I’m a huge fan of old ales and winter warmers, and I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed. I wonder how many other people went out in the hope of finding an old ale and wound up settling for something like Last Drop. I understand that numbers are limited, but then why exclude pubs that do serve dark beers (Electrik, De Nada, the Odds) and include pubs that don’t (Royal Oak, 57 Thomas St, the Hyde’s estate)? If the idea was to encourage pubs like these to stock ‘winter warmers’, it doesn’t seem to have worked.

Perhaps it’s a work in progress; our influence will be cumulative, and the next Wander will see 6%ers sprouting from bars across the city. We can hope. In the mean time, I’m looking forward to the NWAF – at which I intend to drink nothing pale, hoppy or below 5%. Mmm, winter ale.

Winter wonders 4

A quick update on WWW 2012.

Part 4: Salford

Only two pubs on the list in Salford, but they both delivered the goods.

I hadn’t been in the Mark Addy for quite a while. It’s had a relatively recent change of management, with an emphasis on food, and I’d heard awful rumours about £10 fish and chips and £5 scotch eggs. But I was there for the beer, and the choice on that front was excellent. I had a half of Rossendale Pitch Porter, which never disappoints – a big dark beast of a beer. A bit pricey at £3.50 a pint, but not insanely so. Then I noticed a Red Willow pump, offering a house beer – Fearless, or “Mark Addy is Fearless” to give it its full name (google ‘Mark Addy’ if you don’t get the reference). So I had a half of that, too, and it was superb – a pale, dry, smoky hop-fest, beautifully clean-tasting and with just a touch of sharpness before the bitter finish. The results are in and it’s official: there is nothing this brewery can’t do. All hail Toby McKenzie! Please give me free beer! (Sorry, didn’t mean to say that last bit out loud.)

What is there to say about the temple of beer that is the Oxford? What there is to say on this occasion is “what a very fine array of strong, sweet, full-bodied beers appropriate to this cold season you have, and what a shame they’re all in glass bottles”. The Oxford’s amazing range of Dutch and Belgian bottles was complemented by a range of draught beers that was as broad as you like, but not very heavy on the winter ales – with a couple of exceptions there didn’t seem to be anything dark or over 5%. I’m not really complaining, though, as one of the exceptions was Sarah Hughes’ Ruby Mild, a really outstanding beer which I’ve never seen on handpull before. It’s lovely stuff (and I suspect in a blind tasting it’d be quite hard to distinguish from a dark old ale).

So where does that leave us?

	This area	Total
Old ale / Barley wine	0	3
Porter / stout	1	7
Vaguely Christmassy beer	0	4
A.N. Other Beer at 4.5% or over	1	9

Next up: Stockport.

Winter wonders 3

WWW 2012, part 3: Didsbury

Well, I say Didsbury. Rusholme, Fallowfield, Withington, Didsbury and Parrs Wood, to be more precise. It’s a crawl down the 42 bus route, basically.

I started in Rusholme at the Ford Madox Brown; a Spoons, and – like all the other Spoons in my recent experience – rather lacking in dark beer. I had a Greene King Abbot Reserve, which was a lot better than it might have been.

On the bus to Fallowfield and the Sir Joseph Whitworth, a Hyde’s pub serving nothing on handpull except cider: a veritable Pub With No Beer. (I went back another time and had a half of Last Drop, of which more anon.)

Just down the road is the Friendship, which (on this particular Saturday afternoon) was absolutely, totally, incontrovertibly rammed. It seems to get busier every time I go in there; this time it was standing room only, and not much of that. And it’s a huge pub, too. Hyde’s are definitely doing something right with this one. I had a half of Winter Cheer, which I’d class as a seasonal bitter more than an old ale. (And as such not really a qualifying beer, at only 4.4%, but who’s counting?) I might have warmed to it more if it hadn’t been on the turn – I guess they can’t have sold enough of it. Whatever all those people were drinking, it can’t have been that.

Back on the bus for Withington and the Vic, which was also full but not insanely so. Nothing dark here and nothing over 4.5% apart from Hyde’s Last Drop, which was… OK. Well, it was just about OK. Malty, grainy blandness with a slight tannic edge – like a best bitter but not so interesting. I’d love to like Hyde’s beers more than I do, but they never seem to hit the spot with me. At least they don’t brew Anvil any more.

Then ho forth to Didsbury. I started at the far end, with the Gateway. They had Saltaire‘s Winter Ale on: a perfectly nice, flavoursome but not particularly memorable BB.

Back in Didsbury proper, I headed for the Royal Oak. The Royal Oak was probably the first pub I ever went to in Manchester, and I’ve got glowing memories of what it was like in its 1980s prime. (They served a terrific pint of Marston’s dark mild, I remember. And that was before I’d even discovered the cheese.) Well, the 1980s left town some time ago, and the Royal Oak isn’t what it was. It’s a perfectly serviceable high-street boozer, though; if I lived in Didsbury and liked Pedigree I’d probably go there myself. The choice on this occasion was Marston’s bitter, Pedigree and Banks’s Fine Fettle (or should I say “Banks’s”). The barmaid was a bit disorganised – no sign of a sticker, and she dealt with a request for Fine Fettle by pulling a pint of Bitter, then (when her mistake was pointed out) explaining that the FF was off and turning the clip round. Nothing wrong with that, except that she pulled a pint of FF for the next person who ordered it…

I’ve said good things about the Fletcher Moss here before, and it is rather a nice pub, architecturally at least. Can’t say much for the beer selection, though. Another half of Last Drop. I know it’s historic and everything, but I can’t say I’ll be sorry when it runs out.

Last Drop, Pedigree, a winter ale that wasn’t quite, a seasonal that turned out to be a best bitter… by now I was positively jonesing for a dark beer. No such luck. The closest thing I could find to a qualifier at the Milson Rhodes was Bateman’s Rosey Nosey, yet another variation on the theme of “something vaguely winter-y with a novelty pump clip”. It was fine. The best thing on the bar was Hawkshead NZPA, so I had a half of that as well. That was excellent – but, of course, not a ‘winter warmer’. But then, neither was anything else.

	This area	Total
Old ale / Barley wine	0	3
Porter / stout	0	6
Vaguely Christmassy beer	3	4
A.N. Other Beer at 4.5% or over	5	8

Eight pubs; zero old ales; zero porters or stouts. I’m looking forward to Stockport.

Winter wonders 2

More Winter Warmer Wander.

Part 2: Chorlton

There are six Chorlton pubs on the Wander.

I don’t remember what I had with my WWW sticker at Pi, but it doesn’t really matter; I’ve had three or four porters or stouts there in the last few weeks, all of them good. Lately they’ve also had a few ‘winter’ beers, including the rather stellar Tatton Red Hot Poker – a proper old ale at 6%.

The night I hit the Marble Beerhouse with stickers in mind, they had Campbell & Stronge on, so I had a half of that. It’s a strong red ale, putting it well over on the dark side by Marble’s standards. I didn’t much like it, I have to say; there was quite a complex combination of flavours in there, but I wasn’t sure if they all worked together or even if they were all meant to be there. ‘Clean’ it wasn’t.

Then ho forth to the local JDW’s, the Sedge Lynn. Nothing dark or wintry there – mind you, this was mid-December (and the first night of the WWW), so they may have made good that omission since then. So I had a Wobbly Bob. You can’t go far wrong with a Wobbly when it’s in good condition, and this one was. I’m always slightly surprised not to see Wobbly Bob at other Spoons – it’s been a fixture on the bar at the Sedge Lynn for so long that I think of it as a house beer, like GK IPA. I rarely order it, though, so it was nice to have an excuse.

There was nothing cask-conditioned and dark and >4.4% at Electrik, and for a moment I was wondering about going for something unreal (they had Anchor Porter on keg). In the nick of time I remembered that qualifying beers only had to be dark or >4.4%, and went for a pint of their own Black Out XO. I sometimes feel a bit odd about cask stout, given that it’s essentially a style that’s come back from the dead within my drinking lifetime – are we drinking good cask stouts these days? how would we know? But such philosophical worries dissolve when faced with Black Out; my palate says it’s a very nice stout indeed, and I’m not arguing.

There was an even more recent revival at Horse and Jockey, where Conwy‘s Honey Porter called to me. Conwy do some extraordinary things in the darkish, sweetish, maltish line; a Honey Porter should be right up their street, and so indeed it was. I had a honey beer from them once before (Honey Fayre, aka Cwrw Mêl (the Welsh for ‘honey beer’, unimaginatively enough)) and found the honey a bit overpowering. Not so with the Honey Porter – a beautifully balanced beer. The Horse seemed to be doing all right, too. The previous time I’d been in the pub had been unusually full, and I’d seen one pump-clip after another turned round until only the Holt’s Bitter and IPA were left (I had the IPA). No such problems this time; guest beers and in-house brewery in full effect.

And finally, the Parlour. I haven’t really got the measure of the Parlour; it looks like a rather up-market gastro-pub until you get inside, when it turns into a welcoming and comfortable real ale bar. It certainly doesn’t feel like a pub – even to the same extent as the heavily dining-oriented Horse – but that’s not such a bad thing. The beer choice is generally excellent, anyway, and this visit was no exception. Old Tom, on cask, sparkled, and 20p a pint cheaper than the Castle (which is a Robinson’s house). Get (as I was saying earlier) in.

Scores on the doors:

	This area	Total
Old ale / Barley wine	2	3
Porter / stout	2	6
Vaguely Christmassy beer	0	1
A.N. Other Beer at 4.5% or over	2	3

Chorlton did the WWW proud – which is just as well, as the next area is a bit of a shocker.

Winter wonders 1

I had high hopes of this year’s Winter Warmer Wander. Taking advantage of my current part-time status and the late end to the autumn school term, I was going to Do Chorlton, then Do Town, Do Fallowfield And Withington And All Those, and (saving the best till last) Do Stockport. 25 ticks would be the work of four or perhaps five days, and what fine days they would be.

Then a few things happened in quick succession. First, I remembered that I’d decided to get all my marking done before Christmas, so as not to have to do it in my own time over the break; in practice this meant doing some of it in my own time before the break, & hence eating into my WWW opportunities. No sooner had I got down to that than a cold which had been threatening to develop since mid-October decided to develop good and proper; I was working again within a couple of days, but it was a while before I was match-fit on the boozing front. When a day or two did become available, a look at the calendar sufficed to tell me that Christmas shopping was going to have to be the first priority. Then it was Christmas – and call me a hidebound traditionalist, but for all the many things Christmas is a Time For, I don’t believe it’s a Time For Dad To Bugger Off On A Pub Crawl. Not more than once, anyway.

So here we are in January, and I haven’t got my 25 ticks yet – haven’t even made it to Stockport. But here’s where I have been.

Part 1: Manchester City Centre

The Paramount and the Waterhouse. I group these two together because they’re both Spoons (although very different pubs) and because I haven’t got a clue what I had in either of them. This is rather embarrassing, so I won’t dwell on it. I think it was a stout at the Waterhouse and a 4.5ish seasonal bitter at the Paramount, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

At Joshua Brooks I had a half of Rooster‘s Liquorice Stout; it was clean and well-balanced and so on, but marred slightly by the fact that I don’t like liquorice. (What can I say, I thought I might have grown out of it.) JB’s is very much a student pub, although how they afford it I’m not sure – Old Tom aside, I think this was the single dearest beer I’ve had.

Moving along… At the Micro Bar I had a half of one of their permanent beers, Boggart Rum Porter. It was in good nick and very nice.

I’ve never seen anything dark at 57 Thomas St, and this visit was no exception. The Lagonda IPA was in surprisingly good condition – I’ve had very few well-conditioned beers on stillage, and plenty that weren’t. This was pretty good, though.

There had been rumours of Decadence on tap at the Marble Arch, but if it was on it had gone off by the time I got there. I had a half of Chocolate Marble and stood around like a spare part trying vainly to find somewhere to sit down. The Marble Arch genuinely is “deceptively spacious” – it looks a lot more spacious than it is. A less-than-satisfactory visit was rounded off when I parked my glass on a convenient bench while I visited the Gents, only to find when I got out that it had been cleared away. (There wasn’t much left in it, but still.)

Ah well, there’s always the Castle. What brewery is the Castle? Robinson’s. What do they have on permanently, at least while there’s an R in the month? Old Tom. I rest my case. Initially I thought I was out of luck – there was no sign of the usual pin on the bar – but when I asked it turned out that the Old Tom had just been put on, on handpump. Old Tom, from cask, sparkled. Get in.

Scores so far:

Old ale / Barley wine	1
Porter / stout	4
Vaguely Christmassy beer	1
A.N. Other Beer at 4.5% or over	1