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Christmas at The Gunmakers
 If you flagged down a Clapham omnibus and asked a random passenger to name the birthplace of stout, he'd probably tell you it was Ireland.
I've had supposed experts tell me that porter originated in London, but that the first stout was born when Guinness dropped the last word from the name of his " Extra Stout Porter". Supposedly, this revolutionary beer gave birth to an entire genre. It would be nice for Diageo, the conglomerate that counts Guinness among its brands, if this were true. On their website, they seem to think it is. It isn't - the first stouts came from London, England. In his book Stout, Michael Lewis tells that " the earliest use of the word 'stout' clearly referring to a beer beverage appears in a letter of 1677", and writes of a 1734 text in which " stout butt beer is mentioned as a feature of London breweries of those times". Arthur Guinness didn't start brewing in Dublin until 1759, and his brewery didn't start using the word 'stout' until 1840, long after his death. Furthermore, Lewis contends that porter originated from stout, and not the other way round. If further evidence were need that stout was not an Irish offshoot from London porter, beer writer and historian Ron Pattinson (author of the online European Beer Guide) tells me that " all the London brewers whose logs I´ve looked at were brewing beers called 'Stout' well before 1800 ... I'm 100% certain stout originated in London". . Ron has also found evidence, in The London and Country Brewer (1736), that stout predated porter, and not the other way around. This backs up Lewis' theory, and is contrary to the assertion on CAMRA's website that " the strongest versions of Porter were known as Stout Porter, reduced over the years to simply Stout". There seems to be some kind of emotional need, particularly in the USA, to believe that stout originated in Victorian Ireland. The same emotional need seems to result in beer lovers declaring that Guinness Draught is something other than bland, mass-produced nonsense. . It's time for these myths to be knocked on the head, before history is rewritten permanently. .
 In 2004, Belgian Interbrew and Brazilian AmBev merged to form the world's largest brewing company. InBev operates in 30 countries, pushing a wide variety of fizzy yellow swill brands (along with a few sub-par ales) on to ever-expanding markets, dumbing down palates and clobbering local competition wherever they go.
We at The Clerkenwell Brewery have decided we need to do our bit. We are proud to announce a doubling of our brewing capacity, from one to two plastic food grade buckets. Our bottling and kegging line has also been upgraded with the addition of a new syphon tube with a nifty tap.
The gleaming new set-up is pictured right. We've even introduced a new "brand" - Vanilla Mild, happily bubbling away alongside our bitter.
 Sometimes you find a pub that ticks all the boxes, and when you do it's tempting to keep it to yourself.
Good job I'm feeling generous, then. The Sun Inn in Feering, off the A12 between Chelmsford and Colchester, has it all: great beer and food, a lovely setting, a dedicated landlord and a rich history. Parts of the building date back to the 16th century, and the rest of it looks suitably venerable too. The exposed beams are adorned with pump clips, and there are open fires in both of the front bars for winter.
 The cluttered bar offers six cask beers, often from local microbreweries. On our visit yesterday ales from Mauldon, Crouch Vale, Banks & Taylor and Mighty Oak were available. A pint of Mauldon Black Adder stout is always welcome, and Mighty Oak Simply The Best (the landlord's recommendation) was a lovely splash, a chestnut coloured bitter with plenty of spice and caramel. Thankfully, I wasn't the one driving.  Lunch, prepared by the landlady in a spacious kitchen by the garden, was nothing short of perfect. The beef, mushroom and stilton pie and rich desserts were a real treat. The menu is incredible for an intimate country pub like this one. If I rated pubs on this site, The Sun Inn would get five stars without hesitation. If you live in Essex, make yourself a regular. Unless you're Jodie Marsh, that is. Information:
The Sun Inn is at 3 Feering Hill, Feering, Essex, CO5 9NH (Tel: 01376 570442). The owners have a regularly updated (and eccentric) website.
[UPDATE - 11/07/07 - CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL REVIEW]
Scott Collins from the Capital Pub Company has been in touch to let me know that on Tuesday they opened a second brewpub. This is in addition to The Cock & Hen in Fulham which opened it's doors last month, and brings the tally of pubs in London brewing their own beer to seven.
The company recently acquired Ganley's Irish Bar down in Herne Hill (133 Dulwich Road, SE24 0NG, map), and are relaunching it as The Florence. In a previous life the building was known as the Brockwell Park Tavern. If that was the original name, it's a shame they haven't reverted to it.
Scott tells me the house beer will be a "golden ale that should look like a lager but with a citrus, floral finish", weighing in at a sessionable 4.5% abv. The plant at both the company's brewpubs has been installed by David Porter, a Lancashire microbrewer with fifteen years of experience. Batch sizes are 4.5 barrels in Fulham and 5 in Herne Hill.
I wish the very best of luck to both ventures. Since starting this website I've complained several times about the dearth of breweries in London, and it's good to see something's being done about it.
Information:
- The Capital Pub Company PLC is online here. It was founded and is part owned by David Bruce, who was responsible for the Firkin chain of brewpubs in the 80s and 90s. American readers will be interested to learn that Bruce has been a founding shareholder and director of several breweries worldwide, including Brooklyn Brewery in New York and Brew Moon in Boston.
- David Porter's company is based at The Griffin Inn in Haslingden, Lancashire (website).
 It's time to kick off the bank holiday weekend. Stonch's Stout is three weeks old, so there's no harm in sinking a few pints before leaving the rest to mature.
 Our Monday Night Brewery glasses arrived from Atlanta, Georgia today. In an unprecedented TransAtlantic homebrew / beer blog link up, we're enjoying our stout from their glasses. Cheers to Jeff, Joel and Jonathan. It's tasting great, initially sweet, with a bitter edge and a long chocolate aftertaste. . We're off to the Jerusalem Tavern now with a sample for Dave to enjoy at the end of his shift. He needs cheering up, the miserable sod. Have a great weekend everyone, and make sure it's a beery one.
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Global warming isn't just melting polar ice, it's making life more difficult for British homebrewers. Polar bears perch precariously on the drifting ice, while Stonch frets as his beer turns into paint stripper.
 London's heat wave is causing us problems. Ideally, ale yeasts don't like it when the fermenting beer reaches 23°C. Unwanted, excessively fruity flavours will result. If the temperature continues to rise, the experts tell me that longer chain alcohols are formed. These impart harsh alcoholic flavours and induce killer hangovers. Nasty.
This morning, all seemed well with the world. After just 36 hours, the yeast head on the brew had subsided. A hydrometer reading revealed we were already down to a gravity of 1015, meaning alcohol levels were already at around 3.6% and it didn't have far to go. However, the thermometer read 26°C, and a sweating hot day lay ahead. In a desperate attempt to shore the situation up, I've wrapped a damp beach towel around the bucket to cool it down.
If this doesn't work, even the tramps will turn their noses up at this batch.
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I lifted the lid on the fermenting bin this morning to see how our bitter was coming along, just 12 hours after we pitched the yeast.
Good news - the yeasties are hard at work. A thick head of krausen has formed and the spare room reeks of brewing.
I've already had one suggested name for the brew. Reader Jaytee has proposed "SGB" (Stonch Goon Bitter). If you have any other ideas, let us know.
We'll be toasting our success tonight at The Jerusalem Tavern, where Dave tells me they've got a cask of St Peter's IPA for the first time in ages.
[Continued here]
 Making beer, while drinking more beer. What could be better than that? On our last brew day, we got stuck into the Long Arm Brew, our very first creation. This time, we broke out some commercial beers instead.
 After sterilising the fermentation vessel and instruments, we started the session with Theakston's Paradise Ale, a 4.2% golden launched in 2004 to celebrate CAMRA's 30 th birthday. A nice refreshing drop, remarkably similar in taste profile to a quality lager, but with zero complexity. . Back to the brewing. We used a fairly cheap tin of concentrated wort this time. It's labelled John Bull Bitter, so the jingoistic will approve. For the fermentables, we used the best stuff we had to hand - 750g of dried malt extract and 250g of ordinary sugar. Hopefully the sugar won't let the side down too much. A 10 minute boil in a huge saucepan sterilised the wort, which we crash cooled in a sink of cold water.  While the beer cooled, we opened the very last of Long Arm Brew (pictured right), stored in a 33cl swing top bottle I secreted away when we kegged the rest. An extra fortnight hadn't done much to improve it, but the distinctive aroma and flavour brought back memories of that drunken, sunny day on Clerkenwell Green.  After cooling the boiled wort, it was time to dilute it to the full five gallons in the bucket, ready for the yeast to be unleashed and start doing their stuff. Before pitching the little fellas in, we paddled the hell out of the wort to introduce as much oxygen as possible. Moving the the bucket to the brewing room, we deployed the hydrometer to measure the original gravity. By comparing this to the final gravity reading once fermentation is over, we'll be able to calculate the alcoholic content. The initial reading was 1042, about right for a session strength bitter.  Time to relax and enjoy a few more beers. Ross turned up with a few bottles of Harviestoun Bitter & Twisted (Scottish and very bitter, just like him) and Battersea Power Station Porter (a dark beer packed with earthy flavours). . Barring any major mishaps, Brew #3 will be ready for sampling in a couple of weeks, and in a month's time we'll be tucking into a keg full of it. We're hoping to impart extra flavour by dry hopping during secondary fermentation - introducing a muslin bag of fresh hops to the barrel and leaving it in there like a beery tea bag. . One thing we haven't sorted out yet is a name for the brew. Any ideas? .
 Young's have been pretty coy about this one, and so have I.
They launched Ruby Star soon after the merger with Wells and move to Bedford, but it hasn't appeared on their website. I got my hands on a bottle back in March, but only just got around to opening it. I believe it's a Tesco exclusive, which may explain the lack of publicity.
First of all, I'm pleased to see this is bottle conditioned. This gives plenty of natural carbonation and a fresh taste. At 5.5% abv, it's strong for an English ale. In the glass it's mid-amber with a white head of fine foam. The aroma's sadly lacking, offering little clue as to what lies ahead.
I liked Ruby Star just enough to resent splitting the bottle two ways. There's a sharp hop bite balanced nicely with distinct caramel notes. A satisfying boozy feel means that a couple of pints of this could be very warming indeed. Not great, but good.
They might have ballsed up the first batch of Winter Warmer last year, and Young's Ordinary hasn't tasted the same since the move to Bedford, but this is a welcome sign that there's life after Wandsworth.
Information:
Wells & Young's Brewing Company are online here.
Last month I reported that a new brewpub had opened up down in Fulham. The Cock & Hen (360 North End Road, SW6, Tel: 020 7385 6021, map) remained mysterious at the time, but reports are beginning to filter through.
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A review in Time Out told us plenty about the food (not good, apparently), but didn't concentrate on the most important aspect - the brewing. Thankfully, readers of this blog have come up with the goods.
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 Only one beer is actually brewed on the premises, Bonobo (4.5% abv), priced at £2.50 a pint. It gets the thumbs up from Carsten. He describes it as "interesting ... a darkish strong bitter with a very pronounced fruitiness balanced by hops in the aftertaste", as well as "cheaper than I expected for something clearly aimed at the Fulham crowd". Two other cask ales were on offer, Admans Explorer and Regatta. Keg beers from Meantime, Erdinger, Budvar and Samuel Smith were also available.
 Jeremy describes the one-room interior as "dark, modern and minimalistic in design and fittings", with a small brew kettle on display. There's also an outdoor patio area out back. Piped music was "of the 70s laid back style, mixed with some modern stuff".
It seems, then, that the pub is a reason to stop by this otherwise uninspiring part of West London, better known as a young professional dormitory. The owners aren't doing much so far to promote the place as a brewery, so they must be relying on passing trade. I'll have to check it out for myself soon.
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Information:
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The Cock & Hen is owned by the Capital Pub Company, and has its own page on their website with opening times and basic details. The company is headed by the founder of the defunct Firkin chain.
 This year West Middlesex CAMRA moved their annual festival under canvas for the first time in almost three decades. We were there on Friday night. The weather didn't really play ball - plenty of rain during the week and cold evenings, despite the good weather we've seen recently. Good job we got our "beer coats" on pretty quickly.
The selection of milds and porters was particularly impressive. For me, the fiendishly strong E&S Elland 1872 Porter from West Yorkshire stole the show, offering a wonderfully complex interplay between sour, sweet and bitter notes along with lots of fruit, coffee and chocolate. Grand Union Honey Porter, a beer I've enjoyed on numerous occasions, went down well with both the lads and a couple of randoms I recommended it to. Grand Union Mild was another good choice from the Middlesex brewer: a 3.6% abv session beer with a surprising amount of hops for the style and a pronounced roasted character. A golden ale that really grabbed us was another beer brewed within the M25, if not in London proper. Tom's choice of Twickenham Crane Sundancer (3.7% abv) proudly wore its citrus American hops on its sleeve. After enjoying their porter, I tried E&S Elland IPA, true to the style in terms of strength (6.5% abv) but sadly a bit too sweet and sticky, with indistinct flavours and a cloying mouthfeel. The international beer bar was impressive, with the wonderful Jopen Droog Hoppenbier from the Netherlands on draught. This 6.5% abv light bodied blond ale had a sharp, clean hop bite coupled with resinous flavours. Jon tried a Christoffel Robertus, a red Dutch lager packed with fruit.  Amusement was provided by a fella with a white ponytail and tight leather trousers. He managed to pull one of the portaloos on to himself while taking a wazz. After dancing around in rage, he retreated covered in a cocktail of blue disinfectant and human effluent, accompanied by raucous applause from bystanders. Sorry, mate, but that was comedy. The outdoor element of the festival must have been great when the sun was out, but well before closing time things got a little too cold for us. For last orders, we retreated to the warmth of The Wheatsheaf (41 Haven Lane, W5 2HZ), a nearby Fullers pub and Jon's local. Pints of Chiswick and a few quid in the quiz machine rounded off the evening nicely.
The photos below were taken yesterday at the Ealing Beer Festival by my mate Tom. I'm the one on the left - although the resemblance is uncanny, I must admit.
More photos and a write-up of the festival will follow tomorrow.
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Stonch now, Stonch in 30 years?
Yikes. Maybe I need to cut down on the stout ...
[Continued from here]
 If you've been following our homebrew antics, you might remember this post last month. I'd just tried a sneaky half of the Long Arm Brew in its infancy. At just 12 days old, our first effort wasn't up to much, but it was a relief to know we weren't sitting on a barrel of infected mush.
So we can track the progress of Brew #2 at each stage, I poured myself a small measure this evening. It's been in the barrel for just 24 hours, having spent an extended period in primary fermentation. What's it like? It's a deep, opaque brown. When it clears, I expect it's going to be quite light coloured for a stout. The head is surprisingly white, as opposed to the dark tan I'd expected. On the nose, the "green" aroma gives it away a bit - you can tell it's got some way to go until it's ready. . The hop pellets we boiled up have added a pleasing bitter edge. We were worried fermentation had stuck, so over the weeked we pitched in a little more yeast. It seems to have done the trick: unlike Long Arm Brew, this isn't sweet. It's very full bodied, with a gentle coffee flavour that remains when the bitterness fades away. . So far, so good. 40 pints of this stuff will go down very nicely in a couple of weeks. In fact, I wouldn't say no to another quick snifter now . . . sorry, Dave, I promise to leave some for you . . .
 It was announced yesterday that Archers, a cask ale brewery in Swindon, has gone into administration. "Big Four" accountancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers have moved in, and aim to sell the business as a going concern.
Without doubt, this is bad news. The brewery had just celebrated it's 25th anniversary - it's a veteran of the real ale revival. However, I must admit I've never been too impressed with Archers' beers.
They claim to have produced almost 200 different brews, but most of these were somewhat similar, probably based on a small number of recipes with tweaks. They've certainly kept pump clip designers busy, that's for sure. There have also been rumours circulating about publicans being offered casks at knock-down prices, perhaps both a symptom and a cause of the company's woes.
It's tough to survive as a small, independent brewery. Building up a trusted brand is essential to long term success, and Archers' curious approach to their portfolio can't have helped them. Hopback Brewery in Salisbury is a fine example of how to do it: they've built much of their success on one beer, Summer Lightning. The strong, golden ale constitutes 60% of their output and is a perennial favourite on the free trade.
Information:
- You can read the full story on the Morning Advertiser website.
- Archers Brewery are online. Interested in buying it? Call Amerjit Singh at PwC on 020 7583 5000.
 Pub crawls are good things, but I try to avoid punctuating them with epic tube journeys. I start getting nervous outside of Zone 1, and the panic attacks begin when I cross the border into Zone 3. Beyond that I usually pass out, just before my wallet and kidneys get stolen.
Unfortunately for me, not all of London's best pubs are within walking distance of Clerkenwell Green: The Sultan, Hopback Brewery's only London tied house, is in South Wimbledon. To steel our nerves ahead of the journey, we sought fortitude in a shared 75cl bottle of Chimay Grand Reserve at The Crown Tavern. We continued the crawl by sinking a Samuel Smith Taddy Porter each at The Cittie of Yorke, before heading south.
We arrived at Colliers Wood station after half an hour of Northern Line misery, sober as judges again. From the difference in atmospheric pressure and the hungry eyes of feral, shoeless children, we knew we were deep in suburb country. The pub was about 10 minutes away, housed in a 1950s building on a quiet residential street. This was my first visit.
The Sultan, named after a famous racehorse, retains a traditional two bar layout, with a paved beer garden accessible through French windows. It was named Time Out's pub of the year a few years ago. This is a proper community pub, and no mistake. There's a relaxed, unpretentious air to the place, and I'm sure it's a great local. If you're a true beer hunter, this is worth the journey.
 We started our session with two pints of Hopback Entire Stout and a bag of scampi fries, and got settled into a chat with the local beardy contingent. The Stout was perfectly sessionable, light in flavour for the style. We followed up with a pint of Hopback GFB, a 3.5% golden bitter with a clean, floral taste and a light hop bite. Summer Lightning and a seasonal were the other ales on offer. A great line-up.
Geoff Strawbridge, organiser of the recent Battersea Beer Festival and editor of the London Drinker, was in the house. He took us to the The Traflagar Freehouse a few streets away for a quick pint of Cottage Black Prince Mild. Geoff's son Martin is a brewer in Downton, Wiltshire, and he's producing some interesting beers, including a proper 6.8% abv IPA.
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After our pint at the Traf, we said goodbye to Geoff then made for The Wibbas Down Inn, a lively Wetherspoons by Wimbledon Station. Our plan to have a single pint of Exmoor Gold gave way to lashings of real cider. Clio Jon ended up repeating his St Albans performance, falling asleep on the train home and missing his stop. The berk.
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Information:
- The Crown Tavern is at 43 Clerkenwell Green, EC1R 0EG (Tel: 020 7253 4973, map). It's a local of mine. You can read my full review of the pub here.
- The Cittie of Yorke is at 22 High Holborn, WC1V 6BS, Tel: 020 7242 7670, map). It's part of Samuel Smith's London pub estate, which was the subject of my article Yorkshire beers, London pubs.
- The Sultan is at 78 Norman Rd, Wimbledon, SW19 1BN (Tel: 0208 542 4532 map, website).
- The Hopback Brewery is based in Salisbury, and has a website.
- The Trafalgar Freehouse is at 23 High Path, Merton, London, SW19 2JY (Tel: 020 85425342 map, website).
- You can find out a little more about the Downton Brewery here. A list of their beers, past and present, is on Ratebeer.com.
The initial print run of the first Good Beer Guide back in 1974 contained the falling warning about Watneys beers: "avoid like the plague". In the 1930s, Watneys were the first to inflict a keg bitter on the UK market, taking the lead in efforts to rid the industry of troublesome cask ale.
. Red Barrel, first trialled in a West London tennis club, and ended up being served to passengers on the QE2. What was once a premium brand is now rightly regarded with derision. Richard English, a beer lover from West Sussex, remembers the experience of a night on the Red Barrel:  "Like many who started drinking in the 1960s I fell for the blandishments of the marketeers and drank Red Barrel along with Whitbread Tankard, Flowers Keg, Double Diamond and many others. I wondered why I, unlike all the daft old men who were drinking boring, flat, brown beer like Fullers, was not able to sup all night and be bright in the morning. On the contrary, I would go home, usually stopping en route to be sick, and wake up with a thumping headache and awful dyspepsia.
"It wasn't until I took the trouble to try some of that "old man's beer" that I suddenly found that beer could taste good, get you merry but not sick, and leave you bright as a button in the morning. So I stopped drinking keg beers and switched to cask-conditioned ales."
But what happened to Watneys? The venerable London brewing company went through the familiar rounds of mergers and acquisitions, becoming Watney Combe and Reid in 1898, Watney Mann in 1958, and finally merging itself into Grand Metropolitan Hotels in 1972. The Watneys name lives on today, and not just through the unhappy legacy of keg bitters that still outsell cask ales in low-end pubs. In Canada, beers under the Watneys brand were still brewed by Sleeman until the late 1990s. In Belgium, Alken-Maes still brew a "Watneys Scotch Ale". Long after the brewery's demise, licensing agreements have kept the name alive.  When you're walking around London, if you look closely at a number of pubs you'll find evidence they were one part of the Watney's estate. The photos to the right show two examples: The King and Queen in Fitzrovia still has its original lamp with the company's stag emblem, and The Queen Boadicea in Clerkenwell has a sign bearing the legend "Watney Combe & Reid". Click on the photo for a closer look. Let's go further afield, to The White Lion in St Albans, CAMRA's home town. We visited the pub during our pub crawl there. On the bar they've got one of the few remaining branded fonts for Red Barrel (pictured left). The White Lion is now a temple to England's revived real ale culture, and the Watneys font dispenses lowly Carlsberg. Thankfully, the Red Barrel ran dry many years ago. Let's hope it's never rolled out again.
 [Continued from here]
.After eight days, the stout's looking fairly healthy. As expected the initial yeast orgy died down and the foam head dropped back into the fermenting beer. . During the week we got our hands on a hydrometer. It's a joyless piece of kit that dampens blind enthusiasm by alerting you to a stuck fermentation. All the while it bobs around innocently in the bucket, taunting you for being a novice homebrewer. . Water has a gravity of 1000 and the scale on the device is calibrated accordingly. As the fermentables are turned into alcohol by the yeast, the brew becomes less dense. We need to get our beer down to a final gravity of 1010, having started at around 1040. We'd only reached about 1022 after 5 days - the little yeasties were asleep on the job, and needed waking up. . We gently roused the sediment at the bottom of the bucket with our sterilised stirring implement (a stainless steel IKEA potato masher). That put the yeast back into suspension and kicked things off again, and now we're nearer 1015. . On Tuesday we'll syphon the beer off into a pressure barrel for secondary fermentation, following by conditioning. I'm looking forward to the next homebrew piss up already. .
 Recently I wrote about a couple of Victorian pubs on Marylebone High Street that were renamed and given the bland treatment by unsympathetic owners. What I didn't pick up on was the recent closure of a much-loved Marylebone boozer that still retained it's original character. Thanks to reader Ricolas for drawing my attention to it.
The Barley Mow (8 Dorset Street, W1) was built in 1791, making it the area's oldest pub. In the 60s it could count the Beatles among it's customers. Bob Steel in his excellent book London Pub Walks has this to say:
"There are three external doors and a rear room with some very old panelling, but the tour de force here is the pair of small drinking boxes. It is claimed these were used for pawnbroking transactions but they are very probably simply another example of the Victorian passion for privacy and are now unique in London" What's going to happen to those drinking boxes now? A developer's skip? Hopefully the interior is listed and the authorities are monitoring the situation, but there have been times when even that hasn't stop the vandals before.
 Normally I don't post links to news stories as a substitute for proper blogging, but this one's irresistible.
The Tan Hill Inn, perched high in the Pennines in North Yorkshire, is Britain's highest pub. It's a legend among hill walkers, among them my own dad. He spent several evenings there many years ago after hard days of trekking. The last time he was there, the landlord let him and a mate sleep in front of the fire, but bundled them out at 5am because their snoring was keeping his paying guests awake! This story on BBC News Online tickled me, and you might just enjoy it too: Information:
- The Tan Hill Inn is at near Keld in North Yorkshire (DL11 6ED, Tel: 01833 628246, map, website). They usually have six ales on, normally from Black Sheep and Theakston. Rooms are available.
- Kentucky Fried Chicken is a chain of horrendous fast food joints. Dryz, my mate who only drinks low quality lagers, regularly eats in the one by Farringdon station. If they served cans of Fosters and t-shirts with daft slogans on them, it'd be a one stop shop for him.
 I've been following the exploits of four guys in the US who aren't just writing about beer, they're making it. You can read all about The Monday Night Brewery here.
The sloppy efforts of myself and the Long Armed Goon to kick start The Clerkenwell Brewery pale into insignificance when compared to a mighty brewing operation that's already turned out beers like Lumberjack Stout and Swashchuckler IPA.
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 Well, it seems I "lucked out", to use a fitting Americanism: Jeff, Joel, Jonathan and Peter have pulled my name out of the hat. Apparently I've won two of their branded MNB pint glasses. They're gnashing their teeth - now they've got to send these across the choppy Atlantic to their new home in London, EC1 ... Sorry about that boys, but when Stonch's Stout is ready, you can bet we'll drink the first pints from your glassware! . Perhaps one day, when we've been bought out by Greene King, and you're 51% owned by Anheuser-Busch, we can brew substandard replicas of each other's beers under license?
 A couple of weeks ago I was up in Hampstead, and took the opportunity to visit another of the six brewpubs now operating in London. The Horseshoe is at 28 Heath Street, NW3 6TE (Tel: 0207 431 7206, map).
This ex-Wetherspoons was refurbed last year into a bright, white, airy affair. Grinning waitresses stand poised to impose table service (and service charges). You'd think this was just another gastro, aimed solely at minted locals with more money than sense. The bar tells a different story. Alongside a decent bottled range, quality lagers and Adnams beers, they're serving up two real ales brewed on the premises. A Best Bitter and a Summer Ale were on offer when we visited. Owner Jasper Cuppaidge is the grandson of a Queensland brewer. He promised his mother he'd resurrect the defunct family business, McLaughlin's Brewery. He did so, but chose an affluent London suburb rather than the dusty land down under. It was a hot day, and when I first tasted the McLaughlin's Hampstead Summer I knew I wouldn't be leaving for a while. It's just great. Light but not insubstantial, a beautiful light golden colour with a foaming, perfectly white head, and a gorgeous floral aroma. This is followed up by a gushing burst of hops and a fruity, refreshing body. All this, and an alcohol content of only 3.6% abv. Absolutely cracking.  This guy deserves credit, he's done what some of the other London brewpubs seem incapable of doing: brewing a beer that stands up on it's own two feet, does a backflip, and finishes with jazz hands. You've done your grandad proud, mate. The pub's won awards for its food. We ate. It was good, though I think some of the portions need to be a bit more generous. Want to know more? Sorry, this blog isn't about that kind of thing. Eating's cheating, don't you know. Information: The pub isn't online. So you'll just have to visit it to find out more. It's very close to Hampstead tube, so if the Northern Line's running that day, your laughing.
Two weekends ago, five of us took the river boat from Bankside to Cutty Sark, and spent the day knocking about in Greenwich. We ended up spending most of the afternoon in the beer garden at The Greenwich Union, Meantime's brewery tap.
 The pub had a new beer on, and it sounded right up my street: Extra Dry Stout (4.5% abv). Like almost all of Meantime's draught beers, it was served from a keg, but we'd be fools to dismiss beers for this reason alone. If it's fresh, unpasteurised and unfiltered, a keg beer can still hit the spot.
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This one didn't. The beer was way, way too gassy. They seem to be serving their stout under the same gas pressure as the lagers. Secondly, it was so cold condensation clung to the side of the glass. Yes, it was dry, and there seemed to be some coffee notes in there, but nothing else came through. Even when the glass warmed up, the carbonation still messed with my palate. A real shame.
Meantime are now the capital's second biggest brewer, and are to be commended for coming so far in just seven years. I just wish they'd put the appropriate styles in casks from time to time.
Information:
The Greenwich Union is at 56, Royal Hill, Greenwich, London, SE10 8RT (Tel: 020 8692 6258, map). You can read my earlier review of the pub, and Meantime's India Pale Ale, here.
 Yesterday, after a visit to The Junction Tavern in Kentish Town to catch the tail end of their beer festival (an experience that was disappointing and frustrating in equal measure), I took a walk down to Quinn's in Camden (65 Kentish Town Rd, NW1 8NY, Tel: 020 7267 8240, map).
Quinn's is a family-owned, family-run Irish pub well-known for two reasons. First, on the outside it's painted bright yellow. Second, it's got the best selection of German bottled beers in London, along with a very competitive Belgian range. Whoever's choosing the beers certainly knows their stuff. You won't just see the usual suspects here - most of it's imported directly from micros. In the past I've even enjoyed the elusive Westvleteren beers in here.
Yesterday, I spotted a few new bottles in the fridge, but it was a long-limbed cat stalking a fantastic landscape that caught my eye. The label for De Struise Browers Aardmonnik ("Earthmonk") is unusual even by Belgian standards. It's described as a Flemish sour ale. In my review of Panil Barriquée I professed a love for the style, so this was an easy choice.
Even with a vigorous pour, there was very little head, just a few bubbles clinging to the sides of the glass and quickly dropping away into the dark, syrupy beer. The aroma was of tart cherry and red wine, and the first sip was breathtaking. The sour, acidic, vinous notes are intense, but miraculously give way to an unexpected smooth, creamy mouthfeel that just begs you to take another mouthful. The alcohol (8% abv) is certainly evident, but a beer this good deserves to be treated with respect anyway.
Apparently this is a limited edition brew, with only 5000 bottles to be produced in two years. A shame, because it might just be the best beer I've ever tasted. I was tempted to buy up every bottle Mr Quinn had and hide them away, but honour forbids it. Brave the Northern Line, and try this fantastic beer before it's too late.
Information:
De Struise Brouwers are online here.
 Three weeks ago, we took a tin of something resembling brown treacle, whacked it in a dustbin with a kilo of sugar, 36 pints of water and then pitched in a small sachet of dried yeast. The microbes partied and made us some beer.
Yesterday, a group of us sat in the sun on Clerkenwell Green (which hasn't been green for centuries) and drank the barrel dry. Only Dryz refused to get involved, sticking to his usual pint of Fosters from The Crown Tavern instead (pictured below, angry man with glass of fizzy yellow swill). . Brew #1 is nothing but a memory. Nearing the end of it's journey from bin to belly, the Long Arm Brew was a mid-strength, thin-bodied, light amber bitter. The forthright hop aroma was its real selling point, but the sweet, cidery notes let it down. Served cool on a hot day, it did the trick. A decent first effort - Stonch's Stout should be even better. At one point a tramp came over with a glass he'd found and asked if he could have a drink. He had a few sips and declared that it was better than what he normally drinks, before helping himself to a top-up and wandering off toward Holborn, pint in hand. . The Long Arm Brew may not be able to compete against the finest craft brews England has to offer, but according to a tramp it's preferable to Special Brew. .
After the surprising success of the Long Arm Brew, the Clerkenwell Brewery is fully up and running. We've got the equipment. We've got a bit of know-how under our belts. We've got nothing better to do with our sad lives than make substandard beer in my spare room. It seems we're recruiting new brewers, too: Wee Ross showed up and stuck his oar in.
Brew #2's going to be a stout. We're sticking with the basic "kit" brewing method for now, using tins of concentrated brewer's wort from Brupaks. This time we're using an all-malt kit, so we won't be throwing in a bag of sugar like we did last time.
 After cleaning and sterilising everything that would come into contact with the beer, we emptied the tins into a huge saucepan and boiled it up with water for 10 minutes. We then cooled this by standing the pan in a sink full of cold water, covering it to keep airborne bacteria out. The kit came with a tea bag of hop pellets to add bitterness and aroma. We boiled this for 40 minutes in a pan of diluted wort while the rest of it was in the sink, discarding it at the end. Next up, we mixed the lot together in the fermentation vessel, and topped it up with cold water. .  Things were going well, so it was time to balls something up. Dave stepped up to the plate, managing to miss the bucket as he poured the wort, wasting a good slug of it. As a result, we had to cut down the batch size - it'll be 4.5 gallons instead of 5. Well done, you Long Armed Goon. . Brupaks claim the strength of the beer should reach 4-4.3% abv. We want it a bit stronger than that, so we threw in a bit of Munton's Spray Malt to bulk it up.  After a few minutes of frantic agitation to aerate the wort, we pitched our rehydrated yeast into the bucket, stuck on the lid (with airlock), and stepped back to let those little s accharomyces cerevisiae fellas work their magic. Simple as that.
 After 12 hours, I had a peek under the lid. I wasn't disappointed - there's a foaming head on the beer, and the water-filled airlock's been going apeshit, gurgling happily to itself as it expels gas into the flat. . In about 10 days we'll syphon the brew into a pressure barrel for secondary fermentation and conditioning, and a fortnight after that we'll probably start drinking it. If we were any more pleased with ourselves, we'd drink our own bath water. . . Information: - We ordered our Brupaks Black Moor Stout online from Hop & Grape up in Darlington.
- The instructions that came with the kit were helpful, but we also took note of Chris's advice over at 18000Feet.com. Cheers, Chris.
 As far as beer styles go, mild's an endangered species. It dates back to at least the 17th century, before the use of hops to flavour beer was common in England. As such, every time you knock back a glass of traditional mild ale, you're drinking pure brewing history. It mustn't be allowed to fade away and die, like so many things that connect us to our past.
In the 1960s, mild had already become unfashionable. Back then, my dad worked for a few months at a boozer down in Brixton, right opposite the jail. The pub's long gone now. The landlord, mindful that his staff would want a beer, but wary of them cutting into his profits and getting drunk on the job, said they could drink when he wanted - as long as it was mild. My dad used to play along, while surreptitiously topping his glass up with stout. It looked the same in the glass, and the boss could never pull him up on it. Anything to avoid drinking something associated with old men playing dominoes.
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Believe it or not, it wasn't until the 1950s that pale, hoppy ales finally supplanted mild as Britain's most popular beer. Sales of milds have fallen ever since. The style stands firmly against prevailing trends, particularly in North America, but they enjoy cult status here in the UK. Milds fly out of the casks at beer festivals, and they're best sellers for the handful of London pubs that offer them all year round.
 CAMRA are doing their bit by designating May as "Mild Month". Publicans are being encouraged to stock a guest mild for the month. The community of beer bloggers that participate in The Session, of which I am one, have devoted this month's online event to the little-known style.
Mild is the ultimate session beer. The style is generally low on both hops and alcohol, usually (but not always) dark in colour. Soothing sweetness on the palate gives way to gentle roast - or even smoky - flavours that linger in the aftertaste. A relatively thin body make milds wonderfully drinkable, and a perfect refresher all year round. When I'm bunkered in at the Jerusalem Tavern, the mild's always my drink of choice. Whenever I'm somewhere with a mild on offer, I pounce on it (see my review of Elgood's Black Dog earlier in the week).
Pubs in London that offer mild all year round deserve a special mention:
- St Peter's Mild can be found at my local The Jerusalem Tavern (55 Britton Street, Clerkenwell, EC1M 5UQ, map, closed weekends), and is one of their best selling beers.
- Milton's Minotaur is always on offer at both the The Oakdale Arms in Haringey (283 Hermitage Road, N4 1NP, map) and The Pembury Tavern in Hackney (90 Amhurst Road, E8 1JH, map).
- At The Royal Oak in Borough (44 Tabard St, SE1 4JU, map) you can try Harvey's Sussex XX Mild.
- The Wenlock Arms (26 Wenlock Rd, N1 7TA, map) almost always includes a mild among its constantly rotating choice of 8+ real ales, ciders and perries.
- The Bricklayer's Arms in Putney (32 Waterman Street, SW15 1DD, map) is one of the few places south of Yorkshire to sell Golden Best and Dark Mild, both from Timothy Taylor...
- ... although Golden Best's also a regular at The Trafalgar down in Merton (23 High Path, SW19 2JY, map). They usually offer a dark mild too.
It's also worth dropping in to Ye Old Mitre in Holborn (1 Ely Court, Ely Place, EC1N 6SJ map). Landlord Scottie's a firm support of Mild Month, and there'll be a rolling program of 19 different cask milds on offer over the next few weeks - there's a list here. It's a great pub, and if you haven't been before this is the perfect excuse. Note that it's closed on weekends. That isn't all I've got to say about Mild in May. Throughout the month, I intend to review every mild ale I encounter. Your help in tracking them down would be appreciated. .I can't get around every pub in this city, but I promise to do my best.
 Since starting this blog, I've found myself spending time reading other people's efforts. There's a host of great beer blogs out there, mostly from writers in the USA. There are also enormous "portal" sites, which catalogue almost every commercial brewery and beer in the world. Links are on the left hand side, and if you haven't used them yet, take a look.
One of my favourites is Lew Bryson's blog, Seen Through a Glass. Lew's a professional beer writer from Philadelphia. As far as I'm concerned, he's the best thing to come out of the city since the Fresh Prince. Lew and I started blogging at around the same time, and I'm flattered he links to my own puny effort from his engaging and informative site. Lew's promoting something he calls "the Session Beer Project". He wants American craft brewers (and those that drink their products) to give a little more time to beers you can enjoy all evening without having to stagger home legless.
Session beer is where the real fun's at. The social side of beer drinking is where the appeal is for most people. The hedonistic pleasure of something more powerful, a barley wine or an imperial stout perhaps, is something I'm no stranger to. But if that was the be all and end all, I'd just be an alchie with a hardened palate.
 If there's one thing we do great in this country, it's sessionable beer. At any major CAMRA festival, you'll see row upon row of casks filled with interesting, flavoursome ales. The vast majority will have alcoholic contents of less than 5%. It takes a skillful brewer to produce a great session beer. Remember, extreme flavours can mask the kind of flaws that would render a more modest brew undrinkable. So next time someone tells you that Belgium and the USA are home to the best beers in the world, ask yourself this: can you imagine drinking your favourite beers from those countries over the course of an entire evening? Believe me, I've tried it. Last year, I had to be carried home after late lock-in at 't Brugs Beertje, the legendary Bruges bar. The next day, I could barely stomach a glass of water - a tough school when you're in a beer lover's paradise.  Yes, there are admirable Belgian and American session beers, but no-one does it better than the British. It's what allows our brewers to hold their heads up high, while someone on the other side of the Atlantic pours in another truckload of hops and hopes for the best.
When I first began to explore the the beer world in earnest, it was the "extreme" brews that grabbed me. Now that I'm a little further into the journey, in-yer-face flavours served up with lashings of booze don't always do it for me anymore. So, give me a pint of bitter or mild, something that's gentle and easygoing, that's packed with distinctive yet subtle flavours, developing on the palate as you gradually drain the glass. Because when I have a beer like that, I know I can have another, then another.
[Continued from here]
 Beginner's luck? It certainly seems that way.
. Any sensible homebrewer knows that there's no point in wasting your brew by drinking it too early. Before it's even drinkable, you need to allow at the very least a week of primary fermentation, a week of secondary and two weeks to condition and mature. It's a pity we aren't sensible homebrewers. So how's the Long Arm Brew (pictured right) shaping up after only 20 days in total? I've had two pints of the stuff this evening, and I feel fine so far. If this is my last ever post, you'll know what happened. . Seriously, it's OK. The hop aroma is less green and much more enticing. The colour's a rich amber. The voluminous white head lasts almost to the bottom of the glass. There's some juicy malt and a pleasant aftertaste to boot. It's still too sweet, but that'll be due to the cane sugar we used at the offset. We've since learned that the smart money's on dried or liquid malt extract. . Saturday's our second brew day, providing our stout kit arrives on time. Why didn't we get into this homebrewing game earlier?
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If you flagged down a Clapham omnibus and asked a random passenger to name the birthplace of stout, he'd probably tell you it was Ireland.
In his book Stout, Michael Lewis tells that "the earliest use of the word 'stout' clearly referring to a beer beverage appears in a letter of 1677", and writes of a 1734 text in which "stout butt beer is mentioned as a feature of London breweries of those times". Arthur Guinness didn't start brewing in Dublin until 1759, and his brewery didn't start using the word 'stout' until 1840, long after his death. Furthermore, Lewis contends that porter originated from stout, and not the other way round.
