I'm 30 today

It doesn't bother me, honest. The other day I watched and enjoyed Skins, plus I can name all of the girls in the Saturdays, so I'm not really old and out of touch. So I have nothing to worry about. Big party tonight. Hooray.

Zietgeist, ja?

Last night I was at the press launch of Brew Dog's new beer, Zeitgeist. They're calling it Britain's first mass-market dark lager. The excellent turn-out proves that James and Martin's recent spat with the Portman Group (during which they took some bad advice and flirted with a defamation action against the group's headman) hasn't dented their popularity in the industry. I feared the party would be shit - launch parties often are (sorry, PR peeps) - but it wasn't. I particularly enjoyed the mellifluous Scots accents, and thankfully there wasn't too much boring beer banter.

Zeitgeist is easy to describe, and easy to drink: this isn't one for geeks only. It's smooth and malty. They've got the balance just right. I can't comment on the appearance as we drank it straight from the bottle. If the beer really is going to go mass-market, that's who it'll be enjoyed by most punters, after all. Well done lads, you've might just have a winner on your hands. The extreme beer market is just a sideshow: it's time to take your brewing skills to the mainstream.

Brew Dog's website is here. Brew Dog pay to advertise on this site and have done for some time (you can see their logo on the left), but neither this nor any other article is part of that deal. The photo was taken by James Cridland and is used under something called a Creative Commons license.

Chip bowl

The chip bowl should be at the heart of any pub kitchen. After taking the potato slabs from the fryer, they're tossed in the bowl with seasoning before being plonked carefully arranged in a Jenga-esque formation on the plate. A considerate chef always leaves a few stragglers to hang loose in there, to be swooped upon by waiting staff as they sashay by. As I survey my kingdom during lunch service, I'm happy to indulge too. Today I've stashed a sly half of Titanic White Star within reach of the magic bowl so I can wash the stray chippettes down properly.

"Could you put on a sparkler on please?"

Well, that was a first. Last night, a customer asked if we could dispense her beer through a sparkler. He choice came from a Yorkshire brewery - Copper Dragon - so the request made sense: that's how the brewery would sell it in their own pubs. The girls scrambled around behind the bar, found the little plastic widget and screwed it onto the tap. I've trained them how to pour a beer through one of these nefarious devices (there's a different technique involved), just in case some chippy Northerner wandered in off the street. It's good to see the effort wasn't wasted.

Of course, even if you do accommodate visitors from the North by deploying a sparkler, when you ask them to pay up you'll still get it in the neck about "London prices". As any fule kno it's a myth that things are cheaper up North: I went to a pub in Camden last week and it was over £3 a pint. Case closed.

Saint Peter

Peter the Bike got up from his stool today and said he'd see me after Easter. One needs to give up something for Lent, he explained, so his daily fix of XXXB was for the chop. I broke into a cold sweat as I contemplated the lost profits at this quiet time of year. Then the solution came to me - "Peter, why not swear off Carlsberg?". He agreed, and ordered another pint of ale.

"There's nothing wrong with that"

"There's nothing wrong with that, nothing at all". It doesn't sound like the most glowing endorsement of one's carefully tended ale, but then the customer likes a stronger, maltier pint.

The beer in question was Copper Dragon Golden Pippin, a sprightly little pale ale from Skipton in West Yorkshire. The customer I'm writing about was a Carlsberg drinker, until one day in a flurry of bonhomie he ordered a Bateman's XXXB. I think he did it to fit in. Since then he's been coming in more often to try the different beers. We have a convert. Even better, he's a Proper Londoner with a real connection to the pub: he was married to the daughter of the much-loved couple who used to run the place in the 1970s and 80s. Back then it was a Charrington pub, renowned for its cheeky lock-ins and free range Jack Russells.

Now, as a lager drinker you might think he'd prefer a light, sunny beer like Golden Pippin to a darker, heavier brew like Bateman's XXXB. Not at all: he wants as much flavour as possible. What I've learned in this game is that many ale abstainers aren't afraid of complex, challenging beers. Instead, what's put them off ale in the past is that half the time it's served sour and flat. When they realise you know what you're doing, they switch.

For some years now traditional brewers have been trying to win over habitual lager drinkers by coming up with cask ales that are as much like a mass-produced lager as possible. Instead, they should look more to how their beers are being kept and dispensed by publicans.

Ronbo in print

Ron Pattinson, lover of all things old, forgotten and generally defunct, has published a book about mild ale. He wants me to tell you about them. I think he can speak for himself, so read all about it on his own website (I have to warn you, it isn't nearly as good as this one). They used to call what Ron's doing "vanity publishing", but I don't think Ronberto could ever be accused of that. Indeed, anyone who carries a light blue woman's shopping bag wherever he goes clearly doesn't give a shit what he looks like or what people think of him.

Ron has been properly sweating on me to make Tetley's Dark Mild a permanent ale in the pub. He only visits once every few months, but when he does come he tends to drink about half a year's worth of beer, so maybe I should listen to the hollow-legged old campaigner.

The Grapes

I'm off down The Grapes for lunch with a group of regulars from this here boozer, innit. This what I said about the riverside pub in the Karo 2009 Diary:

London’s Docklands have changed beyond recognition. Glittering apartment blocks line the riverside, themselves dwarfed by the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf. Only a building as highly regarded as The Grapes could have survived such extensive redevelopment. Charles Dickens knew the pub well, having been coerced into singing and dancing on a table there as a little boy. Perhaps he was trying to exorcise those childhood demons when he immortalised the pub in ‘Our Mutual Friend’, basing The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters on it. The rear deck, reached via a narrow staircase, sits directly on the Thames. It is the perfect place to enjoy the fine seafood on offer.

This quoted text above was first published in English and German in the Karo 2009 Diary. The accompanying photograph belongs to Karo Grafik and is used with permission. The Grapes is at 76 Narrow Street, Limehouse (E14 8BP).

Weston's - imaginary cider?

I'm now selling two draught ciders from Weston's of Herefordshire: Traditional Scrumpy (6% abv) and Old Rosie (7.3%). Soon I'll be doing their Country Perry as well. Now, I'm sure I remember being told by a CAMRA bod that Weston's produce doesn't count as "real" for some reason or another. That's despite the fact they're produced using traditional methods, arrive at the pub unpastuerised and unfiltered, and are then dispensed without the use of extraneous gas.

So - can someone enlighten me as to why some fundamentalists have a problem with Weston's? Don't worry, it won't effect my decision as to what to sell in the slightest.

Weston's are in Much Marcle, a village in rural Herefordshire. They've been making cider and perry since 1880. Pictured right is the visitor's centre. I'd like to visit, but Herefordshire's miles away. So I probably won't.

UPDATE: One thing I won't be stocking from Weston's is "Cider ICE" (their capitalisation). Just take a look at this video. The "couple" at the end couldn't look less like they're actually shagging if they tried.

"A load of blokes, sitting around talking about bitter"

That's how a friend and fellow publican described the scene when he visited my pub on Friday in the mid-afternoon. Maybe I've gone too far with all this rotating guest beer guff. Is it time to settle on a permanent line-up of four quality, complementary ales and leave it at that?

Double Maxim

Over a year ago I wrote about Vaux, the old Sunderland brewery. The article is here. As a teenager I served Vaux beers at The Steamboat in South Shields, a couple of years before the company's board decided to stopped brewing and concentrate instead on the hotel industry.

In the aftermath of the brewery's sad demise, two of the directors and the head brewer of Vaux founded the Double Maxim Brewing Company to keep the old recipes alive. After almost a decade of contract brewing at Robinson's in Stockport - on the other side of England - they're finally up and running with their own micro plant just outside of Sunderland.

Vaux Double Maxim, a bottled beer, was the Wearside equivalent of Newcastle Brown. A cask version has just been released by the DMBC, and I've snapped up a cask to see what it's like. So 12 years after I sold my last bottle of Double Maxim in South Shields, I find that I've got a cask of it conditioning in the cellar of my London pub. It'll be on sale on Friday. I can't wait to try it.

There's a very pleasing coincidence here: my pub's name refers to the inventor of the Maxim Gun, while Vaux's beer was named after the weapon itself.

Pies and prostitution

The Newman Arms in Fitzrovia is renowned for its upstairs pie room. The bar on ground level is a cramped affair. On my last visit - at about 4pm on a Tuesday afternoon - it was packed with blokes. When I say "packed with blokes", I mean that quite literally: there wasn't a single woman in the house. Looking around, I quickly concluded I was the nearest thing to a piece of skirt in a sea of hacking, coughing geezerdom. There's a sign on the door to the little-used ladies' loos that doesn't exactly promote a more heterogenous clientele: "Mind the Whores", it warns. Now that, my friends, is an unreconstructed boozer.

The Newman Arms is at 23 Rathbone Street (W1T 1NG). The pub has a website, and it's surprisingly flash. They sell London Pride, Black Sheep and - inexplicably - Mort Subite in bottles.

Tory complains about the price of coke

I'm wary of regurgitating bullshit news stories from dubious sources. But then I'll always make exceptions (unless it comes from the Daily Mail). According to this story on geek site The Register, a line of cocaine is now cheaper than a pint of lager.

Tory spokeman James Brokenshire MP rails against the increasing availability and low price of hard drugs, but doesn't seem concerned about the flip side of the story: that beer's become too expensive thanks to ever-rising duty. The opposition have offered little to the pub trade and brewing industry. Surely there are votes in promising to reduce duty on beer? Ours is amongst the highest in the EU, after all.

The Cittie of Yorke

Today's crass theme pub might just be tomorrow's architectural gem. The Cittie of Yorke was built in the style of a Tudor banqueting hall in the early twentieth century. Empty barrels, tiny alcoves and even a minstrel's gallery conjure up an illusion of a medieval England that probably never existed.

The pub is thronged daily with office workers who crowd the long bar - the only quiet time comes just after the doors are opened. In the middle of the hall is a curious, free standing fireplace that appears to emit no smoke. Instead, it is diverted via a convoluted system of flues under the floor, up through the walls and out of a chimney on the roof. This masterful piece of engineering is representative of the latter-day period to which the pub's decor really belongs.

This piece was first published in English and German in the Karo 2009 Diary. The photograph belongs to Karo Grafik and is used with permission. The Cittie of Yorke is at 22 High Holborn (map). The pub is part of Samuel Smith's London estate (see Yorkshire beers, London pubs). The brewery's one and only cask ale, Old Brewery Bitter, is sold alongside two quality keg beers: Pure Brewed Lager and Wheat Beer. Steer clear of the food.

Bananas

I've just done something silly: I've taken a swig of banana-flavoured beer with chunks floating in it. Clerkenwell's Victorian sewer system is currently dealing with the rest of the bottle. Hopefully the rats won't fall ill and sue me for damages.

There's been a bottle of Mongozo in my fridge for over a year. I don't know how or why it got there. It'd been staring at me for too long. You see, as a rule I don't keep any beer at home: I entertain at my pub or in someone else's. So that lone bottle of bizarre Belgian muck was out of place. Its best before date had been and gone. Off with yer head and down the hatch, I thought. Big mistake. Yuck.

Is this a "community local"?

As I've alluded to before, I can't help thinking that "community local" is a rather crass euphemism. I think this boozer on the Hackney/Islington borders fits the bill perfectly.

Valentine

I've got to go to work now. Presumably 40 year olds don't care about Valentine's Day, because two of them are having a joint birthday party at the pub tonight. Only one of the girls can work, so I'll personally have to serve drinks to random punters (normally I only pull pints for myself and, at a push, my favourite regulars).

Today I tried to go shopping in Covent Garden. I wandered around H&M for about two minutes before bailing out, empty handed. It's just too stressful and it makes me feel old. I've decided to just make do with the shit I've already got for the rest of my life.

Old man's beer

Thank god I'm not a Real Ale Twat with an unexplained, chippy aversion to "big business". If I was, I'd have to pretend Tetley's Dark Mild was a shit beer just because it's brewed at the behest of Carlsberg, an international brewer. Thankfully I can revel in what remains an excellent example of a traditional mild.

It went on last night, when our last barrel of Bitter & Twisted was spent. I'd been looking forward to having the first pint (help - that's very sad!), but as I pulled the water out of the line and watched the first splash of dark beer emerge from the tap, a customer approached and asked what was coming on. I hadn't even hand-written a pump badge yet, but he wanted to try it nonetheless. So screwing on a sparkler nice and tight, I teased out a pint for the ugly bastard.

24 hours later, and all 72 pints have gone. I'll be ordering that one again. Best get a proper pump clip, then.

What, you want tasting notes? Get a life.

Help! Oktoberfest

Achtung! I have a friend called Hardy. He is an animal. He's getting married. We're going to the Oktoberfest in Munich for his stag. My understanding is that each of the city's breweries has its own tent during the festival. Which offers the best beer?

Running again

After spraining my ankle badly in September, I'm finally running again. This afternoon - after a mad busy lunch - I did a circuit of the Thames, hoofing it down to Blackfriars, over the bridge, along the South Bank to Westminster, past the lions, then back up to Clerkenwell via the Strand, Fleet Street and Fetter Lane.

Arriving back at the pub, I took heed of a Spanish study last year that confirmed the best thing to do after heavy exercise is knock back a beer. It's got all the nutrients you need to set you right. There's a good crowd in downstairs, so the conversation's flowed and I've had more than one. I've seen off a pint each of Bitter & Twisted, Landlord and Oakleaf Hole Hearted. Time for a shower.

This is a good day.

Stout cocktail

Myself and John O' are putting our stash of free Nigerian Guinness to good use. Although it's a lovely drink on its own, if you mix Foreign Extra Stout with normal draught Guinness (not such a lovely drink) the result is very interesting. Oh, the joys of having a pub of your own to play with on a quiet, rainy night.

UPDATE: Our opinionated pal James Whitbread just walked in and tasted our concoction. His family heritage surely makes him a suitable judge. I put it to him that it tasted like a really excellent stout. He said it just tasted like Guinness with some Nigerian Guinness in it. He chose a pint of Oakleaf Hole Hearted instead. Bah.

Tetley's Dark Mild

My beer supplier called on Friday to say that one of the ales I'd ordered was out of stock. Put on the spot, I had to make a quick decision as to substitutes. In a moment of madness worthy of a Welsh politician I freaked out and ordered a cask of Tetley's Dark Mild. I don't know what came over me.

Tetley's has been brewed in Leeds since 1822. That'll soon come to an end: the brewery's owner, Carlsberg, will be moving production to Northampton in 2011. The Danes acquired the brewery in 1998, having previously owned a 50% stake. Nowadays the brand is better known as a smoothflow beer, but some cask production remains, most of the real stuff going to pubs in the North.

Sure enough, my lone cask of Dark Mild arrived on the lorry today. The draymen said they'd never seen it before. I doubt it's has been sold in London for a long time, but perhaps I'm wrong. Again, I don't know what came over me.

Rick Stein the publican

Chef Rick Stein is expanding his empire. He's agreed to take on a 15 year lease at his local pub, The Cornish Arms in St Merryn, Cornwall. The pub's freehold is owned by St Austell Brewery, and he'll be selling their beers. The press release included this encouraging quote from Rick:

“Rather than create a “gastro-pub” or restaurant, we’ll work with St Austell Brewery and with the pub’s customers to ensure the Cornish Arms stays a welcoming, traditional community pub - which also happens to serve excellent pub food.”

I doubt you'll see him behind the bar there, but good on him for getting involved in the trade. In the beer world, Stein has previously been closely associated with another Cornish brewer - Sharp's. He collaborated with them to produce Chalky's Bite, a bottle-conditioned beer flavoured with fennel. Despite only starting up in the 1990s, Sharp's have overtaken St Austell (founded 1851) as the region's largest brewer. However, they don't own or operate any pubs.

Last month I visited Sharp's with an assortment of bods from the British Guild of Beer Writers. Afterwards we were taken to Stein's cookery school in Padstow, where we met the man and mixed it up with his sous chefs. Here's a picture I took of Stein, drinking Chalky's Bite alongside Sharp's MD Nick Baker. As with all of my photos, it's crap. I could pass it off as "gonzo", but that would be entirely disingenuous.

I've got a cask of St Austell Tribute in the cellar. It arrived this morning. It's a lovely beer that sells remarkably well.

Pub sign

The other day, I received a letter recently from a chap from Essex who'd read about the pub in the London Drinker. He praised the "resurrection" of the pub, but complained about the "uninspiring sign". I agree. I've inherited a plain, black sign that doesn't even state the pub's full name ("Arms" is missing from the end).

If I were to have a proper pictorial sign painted, I'd probably ask the artist to base it on the image to the right. It's a photograph taken in the 1890s of Royal Navy sailors operating the world's first machine gun. It was invented by Sir Hiram Maxim in a workshop at the top of the street.

If you can recommend an artist who specialises in pub signs, I'd love to hear from you. I suspect it won't be cheap. I've never asked readers to contribute anything toward the cost of my beery lifestyle, but perhaps an appeal to fund this project might be appropriate?

Guinness is better in Dublin

A girl at an ad agency that works for Diageo - the owners of Guinness - just sent me a present: a box of Nigerian beer. Thank you, Laura from Splendid Communications. Sadly this isn't the start of a beautiful friendship, but rather an unsolicited thank-you for my article about Foreign Extra Stout back in 2007. Apparently we've reached the 250th birthday of Arthur Guinness, and the brewery he founded wants to spread some love. Well, I'm no fan of Guinness generally - see here for the evidence - but Nigerian FES is a nice drop.

Now, the arrival of the package led into further pointless discussions with my mate John O'. Despite the fact I've brought him round to drinking cask ale (although a visit to The Wenlock Arms almost scared him off for good), he still won't cry off the black stuff. He's from Dublin, so perhaps some kind of misplaced national pride is at work. Of course he's entitled to his opinion, but one thing that's really annoying me is the man's continued insistence that Guinness is better in Dublin. Moreover, he claims the stuff served in the brewery's home town is unpasteurised. I've told him this isn't true, but he won't listen. Help me out, will you?

As I was writing this a breathless John O' appeared at the top of the stairs. I hit the minimise button pretty sharpish. He'd come to ask if there's another cask of Landlord ready - we've just caned our second this evening. The answer's no, I'm afraid - we're a man down on the handpumps.

Budvar Half and Half

The Lord John Russell's special. It's a pub that manages to be down-to-earth without being dirty and off-putting. Best of all, it's in a lovely part of London: Marchmont Street is the nearest thing in Bloomsbury has to a main drag. I first discovered the pub in 2005 after reading about it in the London Drinker. Budvar had just launched their all-new dark lager. The state-owned Czech brewery's UK office is on Marchmont Street, and after seeing their new beer pick up an award at a CAMRA festival, they offered to supply it their London local as an exclusive. I wrote about the pub and the beer here. Since then Budvar Dark has become fairly common in the UK, both on tap and in bottles.

Last night I took my pal Johno there for a pint. Although it's been one of my regular drinking spots for the last few years, I haven't been for a couple of months. It seems they have a new USP: Budvar Half and Half. Now, this isn't a new brew. All they've done is install a device that draws an equal amount of beer from each of the light and dark kegs, and sends the mixture through one tap. Drinking light/dark mixes is common in the Czech lands: they call it a řezané. When I lived in Prague my Czech colleagues told me that was the only acceptable way of drinking a dark lager.

When you mix the two Budvars, the result is fantastic - greater than the sum of the parts. Unlike many lagers of its colour, the dark isn't terribly sweet. It's got a touch of ashtray that some people find a bit upsetting. When it's cut with the light version, it's an easy yet complex pint. The barmaid told us that the LJR is the only pub in Britain to have the special new tap installed. Of course, it'd be a simple thing to pour a řezané from two taps, but this way of dispensing it is a fantastic bit of marketing.

The Lord John Russell is at 91 Marchmont Street, London, WC1N 1AL (map). Budvar's official website is here. There's a good article by Roger Protz about Budvar Dark here

Cask ale in Paris

More end of the bar blogging. A chap just walked in and enthusiastically ordered a pint of the Adnams East Green. He then told me his brother has a pub that sells it. So what? Well, it's an unusual outlet for cask ale in that it's near Paris (if I was American I'd probably append a comma and " France" to that, but I'm not so I won't). So a quick whirl on Google later, and we have it: The Bitter End.

Wikio

Wikio is a European search engine for news and blogs. It was launched in 2006. Among other things, it ranks websites within categories. The rankings are based on the number of links from elsewhere, weighted on the basis of the authority of the specific sites linking back (or something like that).

They've asked me to be the first to announce the "gastronomy" rankings for the UK this month. I've agreed because I think doing so might attract people here who have an interest in food and drink generally, rather than just beer. I'm keen to do that because there's no point in preaching purely to the converted. I don't want my readership to resemble the crowd at a CAMRA beer festival, after all. So here are the rankings:

1 The Guardian - Word of Mouth 2 eat like a girl 3 Spittoon 4 spittoonextra 5 Cheese and Biscuits 6 Stonch's Beer Blog 7 FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD! 8 The Wine Conversation 9 Tamarind and Thyme 10 Joanna's Food 11 jamie goode's wine blog 12 The London Review of Breakfasts 13 Intoxicating Prose 14 World Foodie Guide 15 A Slice of Cherry Pie 16 DOS HERMANOS 17 Cherrapeno 18 Domestic Goddess in Training 19 Bubble Brothers 20 Apple & Spice Ranking by Wikio.

Drunken oiks

The publishers of Restaurant magazine seem to have gifted me an unsolicited, free subscription. I run a pub, not a restaurant, but we do employ a proper chef who produces lots of very high quality food. As such some of the articles are useful, and I'm happy to receive it.

One piece this month raised my hackles a little, however. It's an interview with chef Steve Love, who currently runs the kitchen at Cotswold House in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. Here's an extract:

"The pub we owned, The College Arms, had a fine dining restaurant as well as a brasserie. But it was the only pub in the village and we had so many problems because of the bar and the muppets coming in to drink there. We couldn't control them. People entering and exiting the restaurant had to walk though all the drunken oiks".

Mr Love, I don't think you've very nice. If you wanted to run a dining-only business, then you shouldn't have situated it in a pub. If you found certain elements such a menance, then you should have barred them - it's every licensee's right. But I suspect it wasn't just the odd rowdy customer that you'd have considered a "drunken oik". I imagine you objected to anyone who just wanted a drink in their local pub, without pandering to your ego by ordering your overpriced food.

I must drink ale

Today's first customers were a couple, he English, she Kiwi. As they scanned the bar she announced she "had" to have a pint of ale. I asked why she felt compelled to do so. Apparently she'd just completed her British citizenship ceremony, and had been told at the town hall to celebrate by drinking her first pint of proper British beer. She chose our pub to do it in. I gave her a couple of tasters. She chose one of today's guest beers: Adnams East Green (the first from a fresh cask, in fact).

As she sat down to sup, a more considered verdict was delivered: "that's alright - I actually like that". Her chap muttered that he's never liked ale, and ordered a pint of Staropramen. I don't think he'd just completed his Czech citizenship test, but never mind.

PS. She's quite fit, so the boy's done well, and so has the British nation.

Wellies

One of the very annoying things about this weather is that people with family or second homes in the country get to show off. They've got all the proper gear, I've got nowt. I don't think I've owned a pair of wellies since I was about five years old. Those ones were green and had frog's eyes on the toes, I seem to remember.

Snow business

I was alone behind the bar, and chef was billy-no-mates in the kitchen. Against all odds - and with the help of some very understanding regulars - we've just served 40 lunches and poured twice as many pints. However much I big up this little pub, I'd never claim Mondays are busy, but today's been manic. I think people were happy just to escape their near-deserted offices. I've just poured myself an ever-so-slightly cold pint of Landlord.

Snow

London is covered in snow. Clerkenwell looks even more Dickensian than normal: I half expected to see dirty-faced urchins pelting chaps in frock coats as I slipped and slid my way to the pub this morning.

The tube network is down (wrong kind of snow on the line) and half the buses aren't running, so suburbanites can't even get to work. I doubt if we'll get all of our deliveries, but I'm anticipating little trade anyway. Our kitchen porter and cleaner have both called to say they can't make it, so chef's going to be chopping his own spuds and I'll have to acquaint myself with a mop and bucket. A character-building day lies ahead, then.

UPDATE: I'll have to cope without a barmaid, too, it would seem. It's just me and the chef. The fishmonger and the greengrocer have both delivered but the all-important draymen are nowhere to be seen. I expect them to turn up in the late afternoon with faces like slapped arses and tales of woe to relate. To be fair, I wouldn't want to be skidding around central London in a lorry full of beer barrels. Thankfully, I've got plenty of ale ready to go in the cellar: Landlord, XXXB, Thwaites Nutty Black, York Nordic Fury and Adnams East Green. I might run out of Carlsberg, though. What a shame.