Research trip to West London

When I told the lovely Lisa I needed to visit Chiswick to stock up on Ron's beer she immediately recognised another research opportunity. Dedicated research scientist that she is, a route along the Thames was soon planned from the Fuller's brewery to the Bricklayer's Arms.

First port of call was the brewery shop so I could get my hands on the "Past Masters" XX (or XXK to those in the know). It was four quid a bottle, which I suppose is fair enough but I was a bit peeved to see the latest Vintage Ale (which I also had to have) was a fiver a bottle. I'm sure that in Waitrose last year it was £3.30 so I'm not sure why buying it direct from the brewery is this costly.

There was a slight hitch early on as the pub on the corner of the brewery, and the one next door ;-) , was shut but we managed to meet up with our mate Dan without much bother and were soon safely ensconced in our first pub, the BlackLion.

Two of the beers here were off leaving the choice of Adnam's Broadside or Wells and Young's Courage Best. Now Courage Best, or Courage Worst as we more commonly called it, was one of the beers I had to drink in my youth when big breweries owned most of the pubs. I was mystified when Wells and Young's decided to revive it and have steered clear of it so far. But as I was starting a pub crawl, and I didn't fancy a Broadside I thought it was time to give it a go. The beer was recognisably Courage Best, though perhaps slightly better than I remember it. Still pretty dull though, so is one to avoid generally. The round of two and a half pints came to just under a tenner which really made me think "Toto, we're not in Wetherspoons anymore". It was a nice looking pub but to charge prices like that their business model must be based on ripping off tourists.

Moving swiftly on we soon came to a Young's pub, the Old Ship. I had a pint of Winter Warmer in this one but it wasn't on form. I thought there was a strange tang to it giving it a hint of dodgy homebrew. Still, it wasn't off putting enough for me to take it back so it can't have been that bad.

Dan was quite taken with his kegged Double Chocolate Stout and it's another nice looking pub, though the water dripping from the balcony was annoying.

Moving further along the Thames we soon came to a couple more pubs and after peering inside the windows we decided to call in at the Blue Anchor. After some deliberation we went for a beer called Fagins from the Itchen Valley brewery. This was a well balanced bitter at a very drinkable 4.1% ABV.

Continuing our wanderings I was surprised to see we'd passed William Morris' house. I wonder what he would say about breweries producing up to six million barrels a year being called "craft breweries".

Close by was The Dove , a Fuller's house. I believe this pub's claim to fame is that it has a tiny snug, and sure enough there was a very small room on one side of the bar. The hand pumps were on that side of the bar, but with the badges turned round so you can see them from the main room. Whether this odd arrangement influenced my friends choice of drinks I couldn't say but the lovely Lisa had a bottle of Bengal Lancer and Dan had a bottle of porter, having recently discovered its delights at the Sloaney Pony winter ales festival. I don't really hold with drinking bottled beer in pubs as a) I can usually get the same beer for cheaper from shops and b) I can't get cask beer anywhere except in pubs. So I had a pride.

At this point we stopped doing original research and wandered on to one of our favourites the Bricklayers in Putney. Sadly it seems there are still problems with deliveries from Timmy Taylor's as none of their beers were there. There was an excellent selection though with lots from Dark Star. Unfortunately my beer nerdery let me down and I went for Acorn's Barnsley Bitter. I could remember Pete Brown writing about this and it was the first time I've seen it so I couldn't miss it. I wish I had though as it wasn't much cop. Maybe my pallet was a bit jaded by this point.

We went off for some food next, where I had a Mahou to wash my tapas down. Drinking lager can't be good for you though as I felt a bit rough in the next day.

After it was on to Dan's local, the Pelican, for a pint of Harveys Best.

History in the making

I was delighted to see that there's a video online of the beer bloggger's beer blogger Ron Pattinson with the big cheeses of Fuller's brewing making the first of their 'Past Masters' beers.

The lovely Lisa and I will be heading up to Chiswick tomorrow to stock up on some bottles and do a bit of research into the local pubs.

A tsunami of craft keg beer set to sweep across Nottingham!

Here's the provisional list of beers for the SIBA keg beer competition.

(Sorry about the formatting, it's: Brewery, beer, %ABV)

Brewdog Ltd Punk IPA 5.4

Brewdog Ltd 5am Saint 5.0

Coniston Brewing Co. Ltd Coniston Thurstein Pilsner 4.8

Coniston Brewing Co. Ltd Coniston Oliver's Lager 3.4

Elgood & Sons Ltd Black Dog Smooth 3.6

Elgood & Sons Ltd Cambridge Smooth 3.8

Freedom Brewery Ltd Freedom Pilsner 5.0

Freedom Brewery Ltd Freedom Organic Lager 4.8

Freedom Brewery Ltd Freedom Four 4.0

Freedom Brewery Ltd Freedom Organic Dark Lager 4.7

Freedom Brewery Ltd Freedom Stout 4.0

Fuller Smith and Turner Fuller's London Porter 5.4

Fuller Smith and Turner Fuller's Organic Honey Dew 5.0

Fuller Smith and Turner Fuller's ESB 5.9

Fuller Smith and Turner Fuller's Export London Pride 4.7

Hambleton Ales Hambleton Nightmare 5.0

Hambleton Ales Hambleton Stallion 4.2

HARVIESTOUN BREWERY BITTER & TWISTED 4.2

HARVIESTOUN BREWERY SCHIEHALLION 5.0

Hepworth & Co Mitchell Krause Pilsner 4.2

Marston's Beer Company Banks's Bitter 3.8

Marston's Beer Company Marston's Oyster Stout 4.5

Marston's Beer Company Marston's Smooth 3.6

Noah Beers ST Mungo 4.9

Noah Beers Hefe-Weizen 5.2

Noah Beers Dunkel 4.9

Noah Beers Munich Red 4.9

St Peters Brewery Ruby Red Ale 4.3

St Peters Brewery Organic Ale 4.5

The Caledonian Brewing Company Caledonian Old Seadog 5.2

The Inveralmond Brewery Ltd Sunburst Pilsner 4.8

Titanic Brewery Titanic Stout 4.5

Tunnel Brewery Limited Munich Style Lager 5.2

The craft keg revolution continues! As aficionados of keg beer might have expected Brewdog are in there, and Fuller's London Porter. But not only that, there's also such delights as...er...Marston's Smooth. Clearly the days of cask beer are numbered.

My new drinking hero

Whilst looking through the news on the BBC website one topic in the section on Sudan caught my eye: Gin brewers thrive despite Sharia. In an interesting article I learnt how on the outskirts of Khartoum a drink called araki is made by fermenting dates and then distilling the liquid. This is despite the fact that Sudan is an Islamic country and the usual Sharia punishment for being caught drinking is forty lashes and a fine. Brings a whole new meaning to getting lashed I suppose.

Though some of the boozers didn't want to be photographed one called Maysara insisted on having his picture taken, adding: "I like it, I like drinking - why should I be deprived of drinking?"

So for fearlessly carrying on boozing despite the threat of religious and state authorities here's to you Maysara, my new drinking hero.

More fascinating facts

One of the beer books I got for Christmas this year was Charlie Bamforth's 'Beer is proof god loves us'. It's a rambling collection of writings on beer, brewing, football, politics and spirituality. It's all very readable but I must say I prefer the beer based amusing anecdotes to the politics and god stuff.

In amongst the vast footnotes (which take up almost as much space as the main text) there were some figures on beer tax that really show how much we're screwed over in Britain:

Total revenue from taxing beer in 2004 (Euro):

Austria 202,000,000
Belgium 196,760,000
Finland 415,000,000
France 291,841,950
Germany 787,408
Ireland 457,100,000
Italy 306,714
Lithuania 31,804,000
Netherlands 324,000,000
Portugal 84,000,000
Switzerland 68,393,951
United Kingdom 4,516,000,000

I'm a little suspicious that some of the figures may be wrong, surely British beer drinkers can't pay nearly 6,000 times as much as the Germans! In fact earlier he says the British tax rate is about nine times the rate in Germany. But having said that I don't doubt that we're well ahead of everyone else in how much we pay overall.

What's worse than a hangover?

A hangover with a cold.

After not having had a bad cold for years I've been struck down with a couple of stinkers in quick succession recently. After guzzling whatever beer I could get my hands on (guinness, abbot and red stripe) when seeing the mighty Hawkwind I felt so rough the next day that death would have been a merciful release. It was a relief when my nose started dripping as at least I knew I was proper ill and not just a total lightweight.

I recovered from that cold in time for the Christmas celebrations but was soon struck down with another one, which meant I ended up staying in on New Year's eve.

I'll still not feeling quite right but I'll be going for a stroll soon to stretch my legs, and if I happen to find myself walking past a hostelry I may pop in for a pint or two of therapy.

What's in Ned's head?

For me Christmas is a time for drinking copious quantities of beer, washed down with more beer and followed by beer chasers. What makes it different from a weekend is that you get to stuff your face with huge amounts of food and you get pressies too.

The drinking kicked off at the Ship in Ripley on Christmas eve. They had four beers on: Abbot which is too strong, Courage best which is too rubbish, some filth from the unrighteous brewery I used to work for which I wouldn't touch with a barge pole and Fuller's London Pride. I went for the Pride and fortunately it was on form as I had quite a few.

As the evening progressed the lovely Lisa took to building a scale model of the lake district out of sweet wrappers, such is the power of beer. Bonus points if you can name the valley on the top left.

Extensive supplies were in stock for Christmas day. Not quite up to Drinkalongwithronathon standards, but suffice to say that there was no danger of running short.

I'm going to make a change from the normal drivel I post by not waffling on about what I drank. No, I'm going to post about one of the presents the lovely Lisa got me: 'What's in Ned's head?', a relatively simple game where you rummage inside a model of Ned's head to see which of a variety of revolting object you can pull out.

For some reason I fail to understand this game seemed to cause enormous delight to everyone except me. They must be easily amused.