Bitter

Abbeydale
Absolution
Pale, hoppy, yellow, big and strong. A definite alcoholic kick in the flavour, where a lot of beers of this style turn sour. Interesting.

BigAmy
Bigamy? Big Amy? Don’t ask me. Bright yellow in colour; a hard hoppy bitterness that hits you straight away, with a yeasty body and a slight but definite sourness. In short, this is the ‘Manchester Pale’ style (although Abbeydale are from Sheffield), done pretty well. Not my kind of thing.

Dr Morton’s Hare Straightener
Yellow, hoppy, yeasty. Very yeasty – quite creamy in the mouth. No malt or sweetness, but no sourness either. I liked this quite a lot.

Allgates
Hair of the Dog
Dark – almost opaque – and very malty, with a fruity richness to go with the hoppy finish. Very nice indeed.

Bazen’s
1868
I like the idea of Bazen’s, but I’ve never really liked the beer – Flatbac is both too light and too bitter for me, while the concentrated bitterness of Blue Bullet has me casting around for something to take the taste away. (It’s an ordeal, I tell you – you didn’t think I was doing this for fun?) 1868 is a bit more interesting than either. It’s… heavy. Pale, but heavy. Not much malt in there, but a thick, wheaty flavour with hoppy bitterness behind it. Still not really for me, but I could imagine ordering it again, if the alternative was something even paler.

Salford Pale Ale
This is a bit more like it; a slightly darker colour and a solid thud of tannic bitterness backed by a bit of malt. Closer to the Robbies’ area than Bazen’s usually reach. Very drinkable.

Bollington Dinner Ale
I think perhaps there’s a “dark Manchester” style to go with the “pale Manchester” I’ve got to know so well; it would run from Robbies through to Holt’s bitter, which the first time I had it made me wonder if I’d been licking the varnish off the table by mistake. This is in that kind of area: a full-on flavour, malt swamped with hops.

Bradfield
Farmers Brown Cow
A nice deep colour and a fairly rich flavour; nothing to write home about, but a perfectly decent best bitter.

Farmers Pale Ale
O the brown pale ales of my youth! (See also Roosters). Very, very pale. But quite pleasant – a good balance between malt and hops (i.e. a balance tilted a bit further towards the malt than it usually is around here).

Sheffield Steelers
Yellow and hoppy, but with a bit more flavour than those pale bitters usually have. Slight yeastiness, although not at all sour, and enough malt to make it interesting. Quite a nice pint.

Brewdog
How to disappear completely
Crazy name, crazy beer. A session beer at 3.6% – shame, really; that would be a great name to give a strong ale. Tawny, slightly malty, but very bitter – really very, very bitter. A kind of clove-oil bitterness that hits in the front of your mouth as well as a hoppy finish. Interesting more than enjoyable, though I think the pint I had may have been a bit on the young side.

Zeitgeist
A “black lager”, according to its semi-literate and ludicrously pretentious Web page (no link for you). I like a nice Dunkel, and this was a very nice beer. Not like anything I’ve ever had out of a cask – somewhere in the region of a rich, sweet old ale crossed with a dark porter. One hell of a region.

Clark’s Resurrection Ale
Nothing special, but perfectly decent. A nice, well-balanced, pale and hoppy ale.

Coniston Oliver’s Light Ale
Light, very light; positively yellow, in fact. Not a good beginning, but the actual beer was rather good. A smooth, almost milky start and a nice hoppy finish, bound together in one of those complex flavours that seems to develop coherently as you drink. A bit of malt, none of that sour yeasty floweriness that tends to characterise the Manchester style. A very definite flavour, surprisingly so for one that initially seems so bland.

Copper Dragon Challenger IPA
I’ve never had an unpleasant Copper Dragon beer; they’re reliable, just not outstanding. This was brownish and malt-ish in a nice biscuity way, but a bit undistinguished.

Dent Aviator Ale
In comments, Rob bracketed Robinson’s with the Manchester pale/hoppy style. This surprised me, as (a) Robinson’s is brownish to look at and (b) I like it; it is hoppy, though. Perhaps we can identify three local sub-styles: tawny, some malt but a big slab of hops predominating (Robbies, Hyde’s current bitter); pale, heavy, very dry, no malt to speak of (old Boddies’, most Bazen’s); pale, thin, hoppy, slightly sour (old Hyde’s, Millstone). The Aviator Ale, anyway, was in the same area as Robbies’ or Hyde’s, but perhaps a bit more malt and flavour. Very nice.

Dunham Massey
Big Tree
Malty, fruity, reddish-brown session bitter. An odd combination of bitterness and a slight sourness; quite an apple-y flavour, for a beer. Overall, a big, rounded flavour; nice change from all those bitter yellow things.

Stamford Bitter
A light summer bitter, a bit maltier than the average and decidedly less bitter, with a distinct front-of-mouth sweetness. I wouldn’t seek it out, but I’d have it again.

Summer Meadow
“Fruity and flowery”, someone commented unprompted when I was drinking this the other night. And it is. A light, hoppy summer ale, but fruity with it (and flowery).

Green Mill Northern Lights
Yet another pale and hoppy one, but like the Abbeydale Absolution in that odd sense of hitting a big slug of alcohol in the middle of the mouth. Made with Aurora hops, apparently; maybe that’s what they taste like. (If so, I prefer these to the sour and smoky kind the Marble uses.)

Hanby All Seasons
Pale to look at, not much malt, but a clean, almost milky flavour with no sourness. Quite reminiscent of the Coniston beer reviewed above.

Highgate Red Rogue
A ‘red’ bitter is one of my favourite styles, and this was a good one. Not much sourness, but a big hit of tannic bitterness in the middle of your mouth, backed by a good wallop of malt. A big flavour all round.

Holden’s Springheel Jack
Pale and hoppy – a very bitter finish – but quite a nice rounded, malty flavour to go with it; not at all sour. Nice.

Hopback Crop Circle
Note to self (as if this post was anything else): Summer Lightning is good, but that’s it. I like Summer Lightning a lot; it’s got that pale, heavy, hoppy quality, but it’s delivered with a real punch and intensity. There aren’t many English beers that remind me of Duvel, but that one does. But that’s Summer Lightning and this… isn’t. Pale, heavy, hoppy, and so forth. For those who like that sort of thing, this is the sort of thing they like.

Hornbeam
Bitter
This was my first encounter with Hornbeam, and I immediately decided I’d look out for them in future. A tawny-coloured session bitter (3.8%) with a surprisingly rich flavour – malty, with a bitter finish and (most surprisingly) some sweetness. An odd balance of flavours, particularly for its strength, but you get used to it quickly enough. A very nice pint.

Bramling Cross bitter
Oh good ale, indeed. Pale brown rather than yellow, malty rather than hoppy, fruity rather than sour. Very nice indeed.

Hard Rock IPA
Also very successful. You know the IPA flavour – that slight sourness at the start, building to an odd, metallic combination of malt and bitterness in the middle of your mouth, with a dry, hoppy finish? That’s what this was like. Nice stuff.

Lemon Blossom
Light, crisp-tasting, refreshing. A good example of the style.

Summer IPA
Very nice indeed. It’s seriously hoppy – leaves you tasting bitterness at the back of your mouth, in the middle and, somehow, on the tip of your tongue – but there’s a lot more going on alongside: malt, fruit, even some sweetness. If you’re looking for a really good IPA, look no further.

Hyde’s Mumbo Jumbo
According to the tasting notes, this is a “rich, dark, robust and full-flavoured ale”. According to me, it’s dark and, er, that’s it. It’s basically a Hyde’s Dunkel; a ‘darker’, less hoppy, more mouthfilling version of Hyde’s bitter.

Little Valley

Withens IPA
This reminded me of a much better beer. The first beer I ever got drunk on was Fuller’s London Pride, from a polypin; the first beer I drank at a pub was some ghastly keg bitter, best forgotten; but the first beer drawn from a cask that I ever drank was Buckley’s bitter. The malt is what I remember; great chewy mouthfuls of malt, balanced with a bit of mouth-cleaning bitterness. Very nice stuff. Withens IPA, anyway, looks like a lager and tastes like one too. It’s perfectly drinkable; clean, slightly flowery, rather bland. But it is still a pale ale, just about; there’s a tiny hit of malt there, just enough to taste.

Ginger
This also reminded me of a much better beer – it didn’t have the slightly off-putting sourness of the Ginger Marble, but it didn’t have the character or the strength either. Mild, smooth, almost milky, with a ginger burn at the back of the mouth. And, er, that’s it.

Maguire’s Rusty Ale
This is what bitter should taste like. I mean that literally: not that it’s the best bitter I’ve ever tasted (far from it), just that this is the kind of thing I feel you should be getting when you order bitter. Malt and a touch of sweetness at the front of the mouth, a hoppy finish at the back, and a rich, slightly sour flavour that goes all the way through. I suppose I should be used to the Manchester pale style by now, as I’ve been drinking it off and on since the early 80s; 25 years ago I was drinking Hyde’s yellow and vinegary Anvil bitter on a regular basis. Clearly, my tastes in beer formed a bit earlier.

Marble
Bee
Darker and a bit maltier than the average Marble bitter, but no let-up on the hops. (Why Bee? Honey? The actual beer certainly isn’t sweet.)

Brew 1335
A short-run seasonal special, apparently. You know that ‘Manchester pale’ style I keep talking about – lots of hops on top of a dry, yeasty flavour with a sour, almost stale-tasting edge to it? This is that. This is exactly that, done very well. If you like that sort of thing, you would definitely have liked this.

Brew 14
Interesting. Very dry, very hoppy, but with a smoky depth to it; I found I was thinking of this as a tall flavour, if that makes sense. I didn’t actually like it, but if you’re into beers with no discernible malt flavour you should certainly give this one a try.

Brew 1425 v2
‘Manchester pale’, check; hops, dry yeasty flavour, sour edge to it, check. (Especially on the nose. If they ever put this into production they’ve got to do something about the way this beer smells as you lift it – it’s really not good.) But this is 5.9%, which is very strong for Marble beers, and the strength hits you in a big, heavy, slightly apple-y flavour in the middle of your mouth; essentially, this is Wobbly Marble. Not bad at all, apart from the nose.

Dobber
This was new, expensive and 5.9%, which makes me think it’s probably a production version of the 1425. If so they’ve fixed the aroma – basically it doesn’t smell slightly off, which has got to be good. But something else has happened to the flavour; the uncompromising bitterness and the Wobbly Bob alcoholic richness have blended in a way they hadn’t before, and the result is, as far as I’m concerned, actively unpleasant. I really didn’t like this one.

Festival bitter
Pale, hoppy and sour. I owe the Marble Brewery a bit of an apology. The taste – and smell – of some of their hoppier beers has a distinctive sour edge, which reminds me of stale beer and (not to put too fine a point on it) vomit. I had assumed that this was a sign of something going wrong in the brewing, but not so – at a recent ‘meet the brewer’ event I saw (and smelled) the hops the brewery uses, and one of them has exactly this smell. As does this beer. It takes all sorts. (PS look out for the Marble barleywine.)

Ginger Marble
When the cider’s off and the guest beers both have ‘white’ or ’silver’ in their names, you can always rely on a Ginger. I used to get Brendan Dobbin’s bottled alcoholic ginger beer sometimes; this isn’t quite up to that standard (that was quite extraordinary) but it’s a very fine pint. Essentially it’s my pet hate, a Manchester-style pale bitter, but with some of the hoppiness and most of the sourness swamped by, well, ginger. (You can actually taste the ginger – it’s not just heat.) Not really a session beer – I had four one evening shortly after it came in, and felt quite peculiar the next morning.

Ginger 6
The 6% Ginger Marble, usually only available in bottle. I wasn’t very taken with the bottled version, but this was terrific – all the plus points of the normal Ginger, bedded down on a deep alcoholic richness of flavour. Think of an Abbey-style Triple and you won’t be far off.

Tawny No. 4
Not very tawny, as it goes, but a lot browner than the average Marble bitter. A lot of bitterness there, but a lot of flavour too. Not a million miles from the Well Cut mild, but a less aggressive flavour & strength (4.5%). Really very drinkable.

Millstone

Rich Ruby
I sampled a wide and varied range of beers at Stockport Beer Festival 2008, and this was one of them. I think I quite liked it – which is more than I can usually say for a Millstone beer – but apart from that I’m a bit stumped.

Tiger Rut
Oh dear. My problems with this one started with the name, which I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud (“A pint of the… er… the Millstone…”) (It’s an anagram of ‘True Grit’, another Millstone brew.) The beer was very pale – I swear I’ve seen darker keg lager – and very bitter. Nothing much else going on apart from a heavy mouth-feel and a slight sourness, which combined with the bitterness about halfway down the glass to produce a distinct undertone of stale beer. Not that it was stale, just that that hoppy/heavy/sour combination is hard to bring off & unforgiving if you miss. I didn’t like this one very much at all.

Namyslow Plum
From Poland, but I imagine it’s a novelty even there. Plum beer. Sweet, fruity. Doesn’t actually taste much like plums, unless you’ve cooked them with a lot of sugar. Well worth trying once.

Phoenix
Earthquake
This is 7.3% by volume, and it seemed like a good idea to try it as my last beer at the 2008 Stockport Beer Festival. It was pretty good; it had a bit of the depth of flavour that strong ciders have, and didn’t hit you with that big dirty slug of alcohol that barleywines always used to. I don’t remember much else. Update courtesy of the friendly local Wetherspoon’s: this is a seriously lovely beer. One of those ‘marmalade’ beers – a big rich fruity taste, driven home with a thud of alcohol. Good stuff.

Navvy
Always good to see Pere Ubu getting a name-check. A very serviceable session bitter (3.8%) with a nice deep colour & a good hefty flavour. A bit bitterer & less full-flavoured than I’d like, but they can’t all be Thirsty Moon.

Spotland Gold
I know, I know, it’s got Gold in the title, what was I expecting? Yellow, hoppy, no malt to speak of – it’s another pale bitter. But a very solid example of the style – not sour at all, and they don’t overcompensate with the milky blandness of (say) the Little Valley beers.

Tennis Elbow
Pale, hoppy, not quite bland. Quite a refreshing summer bitter.

Wobbly Bob
A big flavour, almost too big. I’m reminded of apples, again; there’s a brash sourness edged with syrupy sweetness. But then it hits the back of your mouth with a great slam of bitterness and alcohol combined. Almost too big – not quite. The joy of Wobbly Bob is the way all these extreme flavours – and un-beer-like extreme flavours, if we’re honest – combine and blend. My second favourite English draught beer ever.

Pictish
Alchemist’s Ale
Golden yellow, with a smooth, creamy quality and not much sourness, leading to a big slam of hops at the back of the mouth. Really quite pleasant.

Liberty
Pale yellow and yeasty, but smooth and not at all sour; nice hoppy finish. A nice clean taste, not as full-on as most bitters of this type.

Millenium
Bright yellow and (when I had it) very lively. Not so much of the yeastiness and some definite malt. Pictish continue their run of “I don’t usually like this stuff but I’ll make an exception for this one”s.

Prospect Silver Tally
A light, pale, refreshing, mouth-cleansing beer; not a million miles away from Rolling Rock, say. I came to it after the Allgates porter, and compared to that it tasted like soda water.

Purple Moose Ochr Tywyll o’r Mŵs (Dark side of the moose)
Stockport Beer Festival 2008. A dark bitter, which is always a good start. I don’t remember much else about it.

RCH
Firebox
Stockport Beer Festival 2008. A good deep colour & a great big flavour, with just a bit of that fruitcake edge that tells you you’re getting into old ale territory (it’s 6% by volume). Very nice.

Steam Carnival
A strongish, brownish bitter, russet rather than nut-brown. A full flavour, with a bit of malt and some appley sourness to go with the hops. That apple thing that the Dunham ales have – there’s a bit of that in there, but not overpowering amounts.

Robinson’s
Chocolate Tom
Stockport Beer Festival 2008, again. Like Marble’s Chocolate, this has a strong and distinct flavour of cocoa, which in this case sits alongside the familiar old ale depth and complexity of Old Tom. And ‘alongside’ is the word – the two flavours don’t blend so much as alternate. It’s good, but it’s more interesting than successful. Update I’ve had this one again, in a Wetherspoon’s – which is ironic, as I chose it at Stockport because I thought the Ginger alternative would be much more widely available. Anyway, it worked much better this time: unlike the combination of flavours attempted by the Marble chocolate stout, this is basically an Old Tom with a muted chocolate aftertaste. Very pleasant – I could drink quite a lot of this (if it wasn’t 6%).

Nosey Parker
A nice tawny session bitter. Not a million miles away from Robbies’ Best, but a bit lighter in flavour and a touch sweeter.

Rooster YPA (Yorkshire Pale Ale)
An unfortunate name, I thought – a nice IPA is a thing of beauty, with a bit of body to it and a good tannic thud of bitterness. This didn’t have either – just a rather old-school-Hyde’s thinness with a bit of a flowery quality. I suppose you can’t really complain about something called pale ale turning out to be an ale that’s pale, but still.

Skinner’s Hunny Trap
Pale, flowery, not at all sour… not at all bitter either… and actually, when you look at it, just plain sweet. Not just sweetness – it has a definite flowery honey flavour – but honey is definitely what you’re getting. Didn’t work for me.

Spingo Middle
If you go to the Blue Anchor in Helston (as I did in the summer of 2008), you’ll see a row of bar pumps with one identical badge: ‘Spingo’. Actually Spingo is the family of beers rather than the individual brews, which are listed separately. Order a pint of Spingo (as I did) and what you’ll get is Middle. Middle is 5% a.b.v. and it’s quite unique. If you like your bitter dark; if you like a rich, malty flavour touched with sourness and sweetness; if you like beer to have a deep flavour, that seems to develop and unfold as you drink it; then you’ll like Middle. (I did.)

Springhead Bitter
A nice, easy-drinking bitter, with a bit of biscuity malt in the middle of the mouth to offset the thwack of hops at the back. Reminded me a bit of the Hornbeam Bitter.

Theakston’s Old Peculier
How long has this been on draught? I actually prefer the bottled version – it’s a bit more of a rounded flavour with more sweetness. This is still a very fine pint. A bitter that thinks it’s a porter – dark, rich, slightly fruity, and strong with it.

Three B’s Tackler’s Tipple
Dark bitter, with an almost oily tannic heaviness and a hoppy finish, but enough malt to bulk out the flavour in between; doesn’t taste like you’re drinking furniture polish, in other words. The brewery is in Blackburn, apparently – one to look out for.

Titanic
A night to remember
Mid-brown bitter, with a distinct fruity malt flavour blended with a big furniture-polish thud of hops. Very drinkable.

Captain Smith’s
A rich brown strong ale (5.2%), with a strong fruity character counterbalanced by hops. A stronger, darker and fruitier version of A night to remember, pretty much. Very nice.

Red Ensign
Big reddish-brown bitter, with a lot of malt rounded off by a bit of sourness. An odd kind of bitterness to it – not so much hops as charcoal. Not unpleasant.

Whim Arbor Light
Pale yellow. Hoppy, clean-tasting. Drinkable, if you like lager.

Mild, porter and stout

Allgates Hung, drawn and portered
You see what they’ve done there? I could taste distinct mild and stout elements, reminding me of the (mythical?) prehistory of porter as a mixture of different beers. The different flavours were well balanced and the end result is very drinkable – a fine porter, despite its name.

Beartown Polar Eclipse
This is a stout, but I ordered it under the impression it was a dark bitter & didn’t realise my mistake until about halfway down the pint. Quite a light stout, then – not as thin as the Rutland Panther (see below), but more like a dark bitter with added toasted-grain flavour than the full-on mouthful-of-ink-and-an-instant-hangover stouts we’re used to. (Or maybe that’s just me.)

Boggart Rum Porter
Very nice indeed. Not the ’stoutest’ of porters – could pass for a dark bitter or an unusually bitter mild – but a nice full flavour, rounded out nicely by a touch of rum. Sounds peculiar, but works rather well.

Grainstore Rutland Panther
Stockport Beer Festival 2008. A light stout – 3.8% and with the thin mouthfeel of a session bitter, but the burnt-grain bitterness of stout to go with it. Flann O’Brien’s ‘pint of plain’ was probably something like this (the Guinness we know now is ‘Guinness Extra’). I’m not a regular stout drinker, but I’d have this again.

Marble
Chocolate
It’s a stout – heavy, bitter, espresso-dark with a tight, creamy head – and then it’s not. More specifically, something strange happens around the middle of your tongue, where the malt and the burnt-grain sourness usually kick in: there’s some of that, but there’s also a big sweet dollop of, well, chocolate. It really shouldn’t work, but it really does. It’d be interesting to compare it directly with Orval, which isn’t a stout but works a similar trick of simultaneously tasting like (a) plain chocolate (b) marmalade and (c) beer.

Mild of the Times
Very dark, not very sweet; if you had this and the Boggart porter in a blind tasting you’d be hard put to identify the mild. The slightly sour flowery front end and the bitter finish are present and correct; in the middle there’s a bit more going on than usual, but it’s not really distinctively mild.

Well Cut mild
A good strong mild is a thing of beauty. (If you like mild, and you like stronger and darker bitters, what’s not to like about a good 6% mild?) But strong mild is also an oddity – almost a contradiction in terms – and a rarity with it; this is only the second example I’ve come across, the other being Sarah Hughes’s Ruby Mild. Well Cut is good, but it’s nowhere near that good; lots of malt and tannic bitterness, but not enough sweetness. Would also lose points, if I were giving points, for playing silly beggars with pricing (see also Decadence) – yes, it’s seasonal and yes, it’s unusually strong, but £3.20 a pint? Give over.

Stouter Stout
It was Christmas Eve a couple of years ago when I went to my local and noticed that they had the Marble Port Stout on. There wasn’t a price for it, so I asked how much it was. They said it was free. That had never happened to me in a pub before, and will probably never happen again. (It was nice, too.) I’ve had the Stouter Stout before and not liked it much. A draught stout is a difficult thing to get right, and in that earlier pint I couldn’t taste much apart from great slabs of inky burnt-grain sourness. (A real aficionado probably doesn’t mix beers, but I have to admit I’m partial to a black and tan, precisely because the bitter hides the sourness of the Guinness. Or rather, the sourness of the bitter and the sourness of the Guinness cancel each other out, somehow – with the right bitter, a black and tan tastes of almost nothing at all.) This one, anyway, was a lot better; the sourness was still there, but well down in the mix. A big, dark, bitter stout – inky in a good (metaphorical) way. As distinct from the earlier one, you understand, which actually tasted of ink.

Mordue Coffee Porter
Nice deep tawny colour – not stout-black – and a rich flavour, with a bit of malt and (as advertised) a bit of coffee. Not bad at all. I don’t often do acknowledgments on this blog, but in this case my thanks go to the local Wetherspoon’s for putting this on and serving it in third-of-a-pint glasses, the woman on the next table for cadging a taste, telling me it tasted like shit and dropping the glass, and (especially) her partner for buying me a half to make up for it. Very nice it was too.

Titanic Iron Curtain
A Russian Imperial stout, apparently. Very dark – and, at 6%, quite strong – but with a richness and ‘old ale’ quality which put me in mind of porter more than stout; just a slight edge of that sour burnt-grain flavour that overpowers a lot of stouts. Good stuff.

Cider

Biddenden’s
Cider (6%)
This is the good stuff. A pale colour and one of those flavours that just keep on developing, like a good white wine. Sweet, flowery, sharp and beautifully balanced: doesn’t strip your teeth with acid, doesn’t dry your tongue with apple-peel bitterness, and doesn’t particularly taste of apples.

Cider (8%)
Not quite that good – not that complex – but very nice indeed. With that kind of strength the alcohol is almost bound to be something you can taste in its own right; in this one there’s a sort of alcoholic tartness that seems to float above the other elements of the flavour.

Broadoak Moonshine
Still, pale green, fruity, flowery, 7.5%, dangerously drinkable. Not quite up there with the 6% Biddenden’s, but definitely in the same league. Really very nice indeed.

Butford’s cider
Presumably Butford’s dry cider specifically. Very, very sour. I have actually drunk vinegar in my time, and this reminded me of it. 6.7% a.b.v., but I couldn’t see myself getting through a pint anyway.

Cheddar Valley cider
Red. This one is actually red – or a very deep reddish-brown – and opaque with it, like Früli. Not a very interesting flavour, but quite drinkable (and 6%). Red.

Chucklehead cider
Deep yellow, intense apple flavour with apple-peel bitterness coming up behind (and masking the 7% alcohol). Not one of the greats, but good stuff.

Double Vision cider
Still, clear and slightly sweet; one of the more flowery, delicate ciders. Very drinkable, although it’s 7.4%.

Gwatkin’s Norman cider
It didn’t occur to me while I was drinking this – I just thought it was named after someone called Norman, like the Teenage Fanclub song – but perhaps this is Gwatkin’s stab at a cidre normande. If so they’re way out, but I wouldn’t hold that against it. There’s a real spoonful-of-vinegar sharpness on the first mouthful, but after that the flavour just builds and builds; for a cider it’s a deep, rich brown, and the density of the flavour matches the colour. It’s 7.5% – but, like most good ciders, doesn’t taste of alcohol – so take it slowly.

Heck’s Medium cider
At first sight this seemed to be a deep pinkish red colour, like Früli. Holding it up to daylight showed that it’s actually a deep, reddish brown. The flavour matches: it’s big and fruity, with a slab of mixed apple-peel and alcohol bitterness bringing up the rear. One of those flavours that seem to develop and expand as you get further down the glass.

Hunt’s medium cider
In many ways this was reminiscent of a particularly full-flavoured bitter, particularly in the way it bounces round your mouth setting off flavour alarms – sour! sour! dear God that’s sour! fruity! bitter! sour again! I didn’t need that tooth enamel, did I? and some more bitterness and… actually that’s quite nice… The effects are more extreme, though, and the alcohol content’s about double. Cider – it’s beer with atttitude.

Newton’s
Medium cider (6%)
Perhaps my judgment on the Biddenden’s – or rather, on anything that’s not Biddenden’s – was a bit hasty. Perhaps there are two really great styles of cider. Like cheese: you start out with Cheddar and work your way out to Wensleydale and Stilton and Camembert, none of which ring the same cheese bell as Cheddar. Subtlety and distinctiveness are great, but sometimes a good Cheddar is what you want – something that rings the cheese bell good and hard. Newton’s medium is the mature Cheddar to Biddenden’s Camembert: it tastes of apples, it’s got the acid to strip your teeth and the apple-peel bitterness to dry your tongue, and it doesn’t hide the 6% alcohol content. And it’s great.

Medium cider (7%)
Most of the same comments apply, but with an emphasis on the sour. This one had that extreme, is this actually cider or just vinegar? acidity that mars some ciders and perries, but it somehow made it work.

Ralph’s Cider
Encountered at the Stockport Beer (and Cider) Festival 2008. A bit like Newton’s – certainly at the Newton’s end of things rather than the Biddenden’s. Great big bold appley flavour; quite sweet, but not overpoweringly so. Generally well-balanced – which is more than it’ll leave you, ho ho (it’s 8.2%). Very nice indeed.

Ross on Wye Cider
Rather unremarkable. At 6% this is practically a session cider – that is, you could reasonably drink more than one pint – and the flavour is similarly reined-in. Nothing much more to say about it than that it tastes of fermented apples. (Which is what you want, after all.)

Weston’s organic cider
I’ve had some very ordinary stuff from Weston’s – back when they were more or less the only real cider makers who exported to the rest of the country – so I ordered this with some misgivings. They were rapidly dispelled. This is one of the best ciders I’ve ever tasted; I felt quite privileged to be drinking it. It’s got the bold, definite flavour of the Newton’s but without the rough edges; it somehow comes across as subtle and complex, while tasting of nothing other than cider. 7.3%, but almost worth ordering a pint anyway.

Winkleigh Sam’s Cider
Another 6%er. Perfectly likeable – sweetness at the start, a big mouth-filling sharpness and that bitter apple-peel finish – but not terribly special. Sorry, Sam.

Wiscombe Suicider
The first time I had this it was very, very dry. 8% alcohol, hidden in a barrel of vinegar. The second time it was more of a straight heavy apple flavour with a bitter edge to it. Didn’t taste 8% either time, which is an achievement of sorts. Not great.

Perry

Broadoak perry
Pale, greenish colour; almost but not quite still, just slightly pétillant. The sweetest perry I’ve ever tasted,  but not in a bad way; it’s also got the strongest pear flavour – a really rich, complex flavour with hardly any sourness and no discernible alcohol. On a hot day you could drink this by the jug. And then fall over – it’s 7.5% a.b.v.

Double Vision perry
Nothing really wrong with this; deep yellow colour, rich chewy flavour with a nice balance of sour and sweet, 7.4% a.b.v. Not much pear flavour; more like a cider. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing very distinctive either.

Gregg’s Pit Thorn perry
My notes show that I tried this perry at Stockport Beer (and Cider) Festival 2008, and that it was 7.5% a.b.v. I can’t remember a thing about it. This may be no coincidence.

Gwynt y Ddraig
Two Trees perry
An unusually light perry at only 5%. Crisp and fruity, although not too sweet, with strong carbonation. Very easy drinking – you could get through a lot of this on a hot day, and a fair bit on a cold evening.

Farmhouse pyder
Made with apple and pear juice; see also under ‘Oliver’s’. Very much along the same lines as the Two Trees perry – crisp and fruity, unusually fizzy, not too sweet – with a bit more alcohol and a bit more apple-peel bitterness. Again, very drinkable.

Harland’s Perry
This one had all the elements of a really good perry – a curious, honeyed heaviness, combined with a sinus-clearing sharpness of flavour with floral (not to mention pear-like) overtones – but they didn’t quite gel for me: it was a bit like drinking ice-cold honey which turned into vinegar when you swallowed. On the bright side, it’s only 6%, so you could order a pint without too much hesitation.

Heck’s
Perry
Pale, heavy, fruity, surprisingly sweet; the sharpness and the sweetness nearly come apart to give that honeyed-vinegar effect, but not quite. Very drinkable – 6.5%, but doesn’t taste it.

Red Perry
Unlike the Heck’s cider, this wasn’t red at all; it wasn’t even brown. (Maybe it’s a pun.) Pale, slightly greenish perry, a bit like the Biddenden’s cider to look at. A powerful flavour – big and fairly complex, but not delicate; no floweriness, and this time the alcohol isn’t hidden (also 6.5%, but it tastes like it).

Holder’s Perry
A bit on the sour side. 8% and didn’t taste it; a clean taste with a pleasant heaviness to it. But very, very sharp – sourness unbalanced by sweet or flowery flavours. Not a hit.

Oliver’s Pider
Pider, eh? Can’t really be doing with funny names, personally, but I suppose if you mix perry and cider you’ve got to call it something. Lots of bitterness, which is quite unusual for either perry or cider and may have something to do with the combination of the two; a tongue-drying apple-peel start and a bitter finish with a definite alcoholic kick in it (unusual for real ciders and perries, surprisingly so given that they’re usually in the 6-8% range). Big fruity flavour in between, with both apple and pear in there. Really not bad.

Bottles

I probably drink more bottled beer than draught, but only some of it’s worth writing home about.

Black Sheep Riggwelter
A big dark warm fruity ale, with one of those big complex flavours you get in the dark Trappist/’abbey’ beers – cut short in this case by a big bitter finish. I don’t like to rave about beers that are available from your friendly local supermarket, but this is the good stuff.

Marble
Decadence stout
The Marble brewery’s only recently got into bottled beers; most of them are 500ml bottles selling for £2.80, which is a bit steep but worth it for something like the bottle-only 6% Ginger Marble, which is rather fine. Decadence was a late addition to the range: an 8.2% stout sold in a 330ml bottle (with a painted label), for £4.50 a throw. Call me a skinflint, but to my mind £4.50 is a ridiculous amount for a bottle of beer. So the chances are I won’t be getting this again – but I’m very glad I tried it, & I’d recommend anyone who likes beer to try it once. What’s it like? Think of Dragon Stout, then multiply by Guinness Foreign. Think of the deepest, fullest-flavoured Trappist ale you’ve ever had, and add that. It’s the kind of flavour that rushes up to meet you and then keeps on going, enveloping you and then unfolding some more. Ink metaphors are hard to avoid with stout, and what this one reminded me of was the way black ink on wet tissue paper spreads out and unfurls into shades of blue. Shades of malt, in this case; shades of ale. It’s like swimming in beer, or possibly drowning. Really very nice indeed. Still ridiculously over-priced, though.

Tawny
There’s a particular flavour, or combination of flavours, which immediately signals “Manchester pale” to me. You get it at the front of your mouth: a flowery, aromatic quality, combined with a slight sourness. It’s probably a particular kind of hops, or a particular kind of hopping, or something. The Tawny has the back-end qualities you’d expect from a dark bitter (malty body, bitter finish), but the front is all Manchester. Nice enough, but not quite my thing.

Young’s Old Winter Ale
Tawny, malty, fruity and other good chunky adjectives. A really nice beer.

Venues

Greater Manchester Real Ale Festival (part of Greater Manchester Food and Drink Festival), Spinningfields, 10th October 2008
No, I don’t know where Spinningfields is either. Well, I do now, but it wasn’t easy. It’s a new district, as far as I can tell – basically half of the city out of Blade Runner seems to have sprouted up in the angle between Bridge St and Deansgate. Very odd and rather disorientating. The festival, when I eventually found it, served some good beer in good condition (I particularly liked the Allgates porter and the Hornbeam IPA), and was staffed by CAMRA volunteers who didn’t try to get money off me there and then (mainly because it wasn’t actually a CAMRA event). What worked particularly well was the ticketing and payment system: everything was £1 a half, payment was by £1 tokens and admission was £5 including four tokens. My previous experience of paying by tokens has not been brilliant – at the St Clement’s festivals in Chorlton I’ve ended up agonising over how to tailor my choices to the precise amount left on my card, under the threat of either drinking too much beer or leaving lots of money unspent. By contrast, the commitment to drinking four halves was neither hard to keep straight in my head nor hard to fulfil.

Paradise Brewery Bar, Arndale Market, Manchester
I’d really like to like this place – a changing roster of ales from the cask, right in the middle of the Arndale’s revitalised hot food market; what, as they say, is not to like? The condition of the beer, is what. I’ve had four or five beers from the Paradise bar; one of them was OK, one was quite enjoyable in a “pretend it’s meant to taste like that” sort of way, but all the others have been far more sour than anything out of a handpump ought to be. I’m taking their beers off the Bitter list and, reluctantly, crossing the bar itself off my visiting list. (Update: I returned once more and bought two bottled beers, which were both in date but were also both sour – one to the point of being undrinkable. The next time I passed the bar it had closed. I found it hard to mourn its passing.)

Boggart Micro Bar, Arndale Market, Manchester
Replacing the late and sadly unlamented Paradise bar, on my visit the Boggart outlet was serving two Boggart ales (including the excellent Rum Porter) and two guests (including the Brewdog bitter named after the Radiohead song), as well as Broadoak Moonshine and some lager or other. The Brewdog was a bit rough round the edges, but the Boggart porter was a fine beer in excellent condition. Perhaps Boggart can succeed where the Paradise failed – let’s hope so.