A visit to Harvey's Brewery

After the warm up at Burning Sky the main event was at Harvey's the next day. We were meeting at 11 am in the brewery tap before the BHS AGM at noon. Or at least that was the plan but a couple of leisurely pints of mild before getting down to business was not to be for me. A points failure meant my train slowly sauntered south and there was only time for a swifty before things kicked off.

Despite running late I stopped to take the obligatory photo of the brewery from the bridge in Lewes, correctly assuming that by the time I staggered back I'd completely forget about it.

Good, innit?

Though not quite up to IBD speed standards the AGM was mercifully brief. If only the committee meetings were like that.

If the BHS embraced keg beer there'd probably be more young people or something

A tour of the listed brewery followed the AGM

The extension to the tower only dates from the 80s though

We heard more from Head Brewer Miles Jenner before going inside:

He talked about when they were flooded. The tank behind him was ripped out of the concrete.

The flood level is marked by the plaque above the head of the gentleman on the right:

They still have a copper Copper, though it's relatively recent, dating from the 90s if I remember rightly. Miles was worried switching to all stainless steel might upset the yeast so replaced the old Copper with a new copper one.

They have a stainless Copper too.

and a steam engine they fire up once a year.

Old and new mash tuns too:

as well as a Sugar Dissolving Vessel with syrups and blocks of invert sugar:

This is where the sacks of malt enter the brewery:

Some of the hops come from The Hampton Estate so bear the Farnham bell.

A map on the wall from 1980 showed where hop farms were then:

Good old Bastard East Kent is there but shockingly no mention of Farnham.

This crime is then compounded by a diagram saying the Farnham bell is used for hops from Hampshire:

I believe all the hop farms in Hampshire are now gone, though the number of hop farms in the Farnham area in Surrey has recently doubled. Sadly only to two though.

Inside a mash tun

More of the copper Copper

They use open fermenters. The parachute shown below is used for yeast cropping. It can be lowered into the yeast head and the yeast runs into it and then down a pipe to where it can be collected below.

The gravity is given in Pounds Per Barrel, which I think makes it 48.6 in degrees Sacch. They still use Fahrenheit too.

Here's a parachute in an empty Fermenting Vessel, with an attemperator to cool the beer on the left, and what looks like some beer stone at the back.

Lots of dipsticks:

Harvey's are the only brewery in Britain to still use returnable bottles.

The 1948 chiller on the left

The recently returned to kegging to satisfy the demand of people who prefer beer that is not the pinnacle of the brewers art. They sell around a thousand barrels of keg a year.

The filler is from Lambrechts

As all good brewery tours do we ended in the sample room, where I'm delighted to say Tom Paine was on despite the fact we'd not quite reached July. I used to have a pilgrimage to Lewes with my dad every July to drink that beer.

The winner for beer of the day was Armada in the brewery tap though, but then the magic of cask beer is not something for mortals to understand.

Science and Booze with Key to the Scriptures

I added a scientific approach to my drinking researches this weekend. When ticking pubs in the good book I've now got a rigorous scientific system, thanks to my mate Jim (a Surrey compleatist).

It's a simple binary system where pubs are scored one or zero in the following categories:

1. Sign
2. Building/Decor
3. Beer range
4. Beer quality
5. Staff
6. Atmosphere
7. Beard or Weird
8. Special feature
9. Loos
10. Would you make it your local?

This gives pubs an objective scientific score and removes the subjectivity that might otherwise creep in when rating pubs.

As ofter happens when on a pub crawl we had some bright ideas so tried out some new categories too:

• Does it have a fireplace?
• Does it have a beer garden?
• Thurston's Law (i.e. is it close to a church for ease of finding)

We were down Brighton way and after a health walk on the downs had some refreshment at The Greyhound in Keymer. This was a great pub, only a couple of beers on though so I had a pint of Harvey's Best.

Then we got the train into town and called in at the Evening Star, the birthplace of Dark Star brewery. As ever from Dark Star the beer (Partridge and Old Chestnut) was good, but I suspect a tad too cold. After a couple we moved on the the Cask Brighton where I had a stout from the loin enders and the lovely Lisa had a Magic Rock Rapture (or was it the other way round?)

Having seen how much places like this charge for scotch eggs (five bloody quid each!) we'd taken the precaution of eating some from Sainsbury's (85p for two) before getting there. Burger and chips was at the more normal pub meal rate of a tenner so we stopped for food, which was good but irritating.

Yes, very pretty but could I have a plate please?

Next it was on to The Pump House. Beer quality was not so good, but they did have a proper weirdo at the bar so it scored there.

After that we headed back to where we were staying, The Jack and Jill in Clayton. Sadly I can't rate it as by 9.30 pm they'd stopped serving food and shut. An inevitable consequence of pubs turning into restaurants I fear. Well, either that or they're a bunch of inbreds.

Anyway, here's the scores:

We have it in our power to build the world anew

As it's the forth of July I put on my Tom Paine T Shirt and raised at toast to him. Sadly I didn't have any Harvey's Tom Paine to drink but a bottle of Goose Island IPA was a good consolation.  

I spent a very enjoyable afternoon drinking in the sun with the lovely Lisa and our friend Dan. The trouble is with afternoon drinking what do you do in the evening? Though not ideal for a Sunday there was no escaping the obvious answer: drink some more. Just a small nightcap though, there's beer to be made tomorrow. 

Pukka pints in Paddington

We managed to track down Fuller's latest take on IPA last night. Heading up to Paddington we went to the excellent Victoria for some Bengal Lancer and very good it was too. The beer was smooth and hoppy with plenty of body.



The second pint tasted even better, but at 5% ABV we were a bit worried we were guzzling too quickly. We had steak and Guinness pies with mash to help soak up the drink. Quite why the pie was made with Guinness when you can buy steak and ale pies made with Fuller's Golden Pride in my local Waitrose I don't understand but there you go. 


See

After eating it was time to stretch our legs so we wandered on to the Cleveland Arms. 



This is a run down looking boozer that looks like an old fashioned locals pub, complete with dart board and pool table. We were ordering pints of Harvey's Best when I spotted bottles of White Shield stacked up behind the bar. We've been trying to track this down since reading Pete Brown's Hops and Glory. A couple of bottles to take home were purchased and bag carrying duty passed over to me. Free peanuts were provided in this pub but after a brief conversation about the (admittedly dubious) stories about how many types of urine could be found on pub peanuts we decided to passed on them. Unbeknown to us these peanuts would cause problems later.   

Next stop was the Leinster Arms. This had the look of a chain pub about it, being owned by M&B, but the beer selection was good.




And they had jugs to serve the beer in which got me all excited. 


The lovely Lisa showing off her jugs.

There were some old beer adverts stuck up on the wall which I always find fascinating.


They knew how to name beers in those days.

One of them showed a beer with kola nuts as an ingredient.



I wonder if it tasted anything like Brewdog's Dogma?



A sign in the pub toilet let them down though, being microbiologically incorrect (Legionella is of course a bacterium). I tried not to let such a shocking scientific lapse upset me.

As Pratt's Celebrated Invalid Stout wasn't on sale we had Thornbridge Kipling, a very hoppy beer flavoured with the latest hip hop Nelson sauvin (Cascade is sooo noughties). Good stuff it was too but at 5.2% ABV our alcohol levels were pushed even up further so it was time to move on.

Our next port of call was a Young's pub, the Mitre.



I'm not generally keen on Young's beers but the Winter Warmer was on, an old style Burton ale which goes down very nicely. Lisa was slowing down at this point so only had a half and I decided to get in touch with my feminine side by doing the same. The Mitre's a rambling pub with lots of nooks and crannies where we found a sofa to sit on and delicately sip our halves. 

Posters were up advertising a meal deal with wine, which seems to confirm my suspicion that all the efforts at promoting beer and food pairing have got absolutely nowhere.



Lastly we staggered on back to the Victoria for more Bengal Lancer before heading home. We managed to get a seat in one of their upstairs rooms called the library which looked like somewhere out of a gentleman's club. We'll definitely be back here. 

We felt a bit grotty this morning, despite our modest intake (I mean, sometimes we even drank halves!). As green crisps or dodgy peanuts are the most common cause of feeling bad after a night out on the lash we wracked our brains for where we might have eaten anything we shouldn't have but drew a blank. Then I remembered the bowl of peanuts on our table in the Cleveland Arms. Though we didn't touch them I have no doubt we are now suffering from passive peanuts. I would urge the government and press to do everything they can to publicise these dangers, and surely further measure such as minimum pricing are necessary to protect us from this menace. 

The White Horse, Parsons Green

I went up to London at the weekend, not to get to the GBBF, but to see a mate. The lovely Lisa had spotted many pubs were making an effort with their ales to coincide with the GBBF though, and we managed to take advantage of this.

The fact that this was the only weekend the Old Mitre is open tempted us, but as our friend lives in walking distance of the White Horse in Parsons Green that made more sense.

The pub was packed out when we got there but they had plenty of bar staff so it didn’t take long to get served. Popularly known as the Sloney Pony most of the clientele did look posher than what you find in your average boozer. Apart from the woman who’d dressed up as a Thai prostitute that is. Or so my friends who’ve been to Thailand tell me, my interest in Thailand only goes as far as the boxing of course. 

The pub has long had a reputation for serving good beer, even in the days when it was a Bass pub. Its particular claim to fame was that it employed a full time cellar man and I once had a trip with the Craft Brewing Association to visit the cellar. I can't say much more about that as we got to visit the bar too and they had a barley wine on draught. I've no doubt that I was briefly very knowledgeable about cellarmanship until my memory dissolved in alcohol though. 

There was a good range of beers on offer, tending towards the more unusual. Never having seen Fraoch heather ale on cask I had to give that a go and the lovely Lisa went for something herb flavoured from Thornbridge. Both tasted a bit funny, not 'funny ha ha' more 'that's funny this tastes a bit crap'. After that Lisa retreated to the safety of a pint of Harvey's bitter whilst I went to no hops to more than you could shake a stick at with a Dark Star Hophead Extra. 

The Hophead Extra was a cracker, very much in the American IPA style and not the sort of thing you often see on cask. It had huge taste of citrussy hops and more alcohol than it is sensible to drink by the pint.



I'm glad I had it as after that we moved on to a Spanish restaurant where the beer was nothing worth mentioning, so I won't.