May mild mission miracle

Actually miracle might be a slight overstatement but I do like alliteration, and I did find a great mild. Despite the difficulties I find reaching for my wallet when the word 'tossers' is going through my head we were back at the Sloaney Pony on Saturday. Fortunately the specially inflated prices and 'no tasters' policies weren't in operation, so though it still wasn't cheap it wasn't painful.

Seeing the excellent Oakham JHB on one of the handpumps I went straight for that, but sadly it had a touch of the wet dog about it. Pondering what to have next I remembered my mission for the month is to drink mild and they had one on the bar. Hobsons seem to have gone for the slightly odd position of making the ABV the most prominent thing on their pump clips, but the word 'mild' still stood out.

 The beer was dark enough, but not quite black, and despite its modest strength a delicious dark delight.

That was the order pretty much sorted for the rest of the afternoon, so whilst the jugs of Pimm's were flying out of the bar it was pints of mild for us.

I don't drink mild often, as you don't see it much round my way and I generally prefer beer with more hops. But if I saw milds like this more often I may have to have a re-think.

Canada's best brewer comes to town

One of my Canadian friends, Brian, came to visit this week. He's the man who made the beer rated as the best in Canada by beer writer Ben McFarland. Brian brought his friend Mike with him, but more importantly he brought a couple of bottles of Olde Deuteronomy too.

Brian reading about his beers

Having visitors from overseas there was only one thing to do. We headed up to the big smoke to get some quality cask beers in. First stop was The Blackfriar, for the fantastic interior and the delights of Timmy Taylor's Landlord. 

Brian and Mike in the Blackfriars

Then it was on to Ye Old Mitre. As well as proper beer I was keen to show the colonials some history, and taking them to a pub older than their country combined the two. Despite now being owned by Fuller's there was still a varied selection of beers on which was good to see. We had Oakham Ale's excellent JHB. On the downside they have stuck a sign up pointing down the small alley way the pub is in, so playing spot the pub was a bit of a damp squib.

Brian in Ye Olde Mitre

Next stop was the only pub on our list that the lovely Lisa and I hadn't been too. We were off to one we'd fancied checking out for some time: beer nerd HQ, the Gunmakers arms. One time king of the beer bloggers, Stonch, runs this pub and the diminutive Northerner behind the bar may well have been him. Though Stonch knocked his blog on the head in January, when beer bloggers meet in London they seem to congregate here. Anyway, the guy seemed friendly enough and pints of Purity Brewing's Mad Goose were had by all. We weren't overly taken with the pub though, and the noxious odour one of the Canadians emitted didn't help, but with so many excellent pubs nearby I can't see us rushing back anytime soon. 

Outside The Gunmakers

Our next port of call was the Cittie of Yorke, a Sam Smith's pub. It's another pub with a fantastic interior but Sam Smith's beers are always a bit of a disappointment. The lovely Lisa skipped on the beer here and the rest of us had the stout, with Brian also having a half of the ever boring Old Brewery Bitter so he could tick off having had beer served from a wooden cask. We managed to get seats in one of the confessional booths, though no one took the opportunity to own up to dumping their guts in The Gunmaker's. 

One of the many eccentricities of Sam Smith's is that everything they sell is own brand. Not just the ales but the lagers, the wines, the spirits and the soft drinks. I once heard it said that there were only five non-own label thinks that can be found in a Sam Smith's pub and one of those is the angostura bitters. It might be less now as we noticed the crisps are now own label too. 

Own label crisps

We needed food next so scoffed our emergency sausage rolls and headed to The  Old Bank of England. This fine looking Fuller's pub may not have quite the architectural interest of some of the pubs we visited but it does serve good pies, and pie and mash was just the thing we needed to set us up for the next leg. It was washed down with pints of pride for most of us, but Brian edged further ahead in the alcohol stakes by going for an ESB. 

The Old Bank of England

Revived by the power of pies we moved on to the Devereux where Brewer's Gold was the order of the day. The after work crowd was starting to thin out as our pints went down so when we'd finished we popped next door to the Edgar Wallace. 

The Edgar Wallace

The beer we had was Blackwater Ska from Salopian brewery. This was an excellent pale beer with a new world hop flavour. I could almost pretend I'm a proper beer writer there. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were hints of kumquat in the nose.   

I have a photo of one of Brian's legs from this pub, which I feel I should share with the world. 

Masonic infiltration of Ed's beer site

We poured ourselves back to Woking after this and all had a pint of Bitter and Twisted in the Sovs before the walk home.

I was up to eight pints by this point so I'm not quite sure why I ended up sharing with Brian a bottle of a double IPA I've been working on but no doubt it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Many fried pork products were needed the next morning... 

Farnham beer exhibition 2010

It was my favourite beer festival last night: Farnham beerex. As usual we went to the Saturday evening session, which means we don't have to dash down after work and cunningly allows me to get beer recommendations from my mate John who goes on the Friday. 

Despite this the lovely Lisa had an even more cunning plan for the first beer - get something in quick and then worry about tracking down particular beers. Fortunately for us the first beer that caught our eye was St Austell's Proper Job. We'd enjoyed this recently in the bottle and the weaker draught version sorted out the thirst that had built up on the journey. With a beer safely in my hand I had several minutes to find the next one. The RCH breweries East Street Cream was the next choice and and it was a good recommendation from John. Even better though was the next one on his list, Funky Monkey from the Milk Street brewery. There was a touch of caramel to the taste, but hops to balance it out and even though it was only 4% ABV was the beer of the festival for me. 

I settled down to some steady guzzling after that, Oakham Ale's Inferno, stands out in the beery haze of the evening, as does Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild. I'd gone years without seeing Sarah until the Wandsworth Common beer festival last month, and now I got to have some more only a few weeks later. 

Looking at the festival programme I was slightly disturbed to realise I'd been coming to this beer festival for 20 years, from when I was a fresh face youngster only able to bore a handful of friends about real ale to now being recognised as one of the 20 biggest beer bores in Britain!

Standing in the courtyard with my mates, getting steadily pissed on quality beers, with cunts with banjos a folk band playing in the background I was reminded why this is my favourite festival. Here's to another 20 years!