A visit to Bath Ales brewery

The latest IBD Southern Section seminar was at Bath Ales, a brewery bought by St Austell in 2016.  They've obviously been investing a lot of money as the were shiny new things everywhere.

Brewhouse has a Mash Conversion Vessel, Lauter Tun, Copper and Whirlpool as well as a hop infusion vessel.  The brew length is 90hl. If I remember rightly they're currently brewing twice a day.

They have a four roller mill.

More space is devoted to packaging.

There were lots of casks soaking when we visited as they'd come back skanky. If only publicans would cork them cleaning would be a lot less effort!

The cask washer was bought by Bath Ales from St Austell, so when St Austell bought Bath Ales they bought back their old kit!

Here's underneath the brewhouse:

And there's the hop infusion vessel:

The flow plate looks pleasingly simple:

The bottling line looks very flash, but as is a tradition or an old charter or something it wasn't running when we were there.

They've got a cross flow filter from Pentair which doesn't need a centrifuge. One of the talks at the seminar provided information on this and I really must write it up for the blog. I know Alan has a keen interest in kieselguhr free filtration.

It was promised that the slides from the seminar will be put online, but as far as I know this hasn't happened yet, and unless this changes me writing up my notes will be the best you'll get.

A South East pub walk

As we didn't get away for the bank holiday weekend we decided to get some walking in nearer to home. We (mostly) used a route from CAMRA's South East Pub Walks. The first pub stop is in Puttenham, home of Surrey's last hop ground and which gave me a chance to see how the hops were getting on as harvest time approaches.

We started at Wanborough station which had the added bonus that the foot paths took us across fields. First we went through wheat but soon we got to a superior cereal which pleased me. Walking through a barley field on the way to a hop field as part of a pub walk has a certain beery completeness to it.

Among the fields of barley

The Fuggles were looking on fine form.

The Good Intent was as good as last time with the added bonus that I wasn't driving. We only had a pint though as we had a long way to cover.

They had quite a selection at the bar but when Landlord is on I find it hard to resist. So I didn't.

Our next stop was the Harrow in Compton.

Sadly the Tribute was warm which was not ideal. I even had the finish the lovely Lisa's pint for her. Our route then took us past some huge houses and along a river to the last scheduled stop, The Star in Godalming. They had a good selection but again the beer was a bit warm.

We got the train back to Woking for food, calling in at The Sovs. It has an enlightened attitude to taking back poor quality beer.

Not that I needed to take anything back. I had a Hawkshead Windermere Pale, a beer that seems very popular with my fellow internet beer nerds. It was a good example of the ever so fashionable pale and tastes of American hops style of beer.

After eating it was time to crawl on to The Crown.

More Tribute in here, and it was a much nicer pint than it had beer at the Harrow. Then it was time for home.

I enjoyed out first outing from the SE Pub Walks book, and unlike some of the routes in the London Pub Walks book which have about eight pubs per mile, we had to earn our beer, which is no bad thing.

A strawberry-pink china mug

After the excitement of seeing the hop growers booths at Blissimore Hall Acre it was on to Devon and the beer festival in Branscombe. There were over 30 beers on at the Fountain Head Inn, each listed on a board and orders taken only by number, Chinese takeaway style.

This didn't make it ideal for remembering what beers you'd had but I think it's fair to say it was lots.

The next day we took a stroll along the cliff and followed the handy signs:

After a couple of something re-badged from Greene King in Beer we moved on to the Mason's Arms, now a St Austell pub. I can remember what I had there as it was the delicious Proper Job (4.5% ABV). The high spot though has be when we wandered on for more at the Fountain Head, and it doesn't involve beer at all.

Already fortified on arrival it was time to see if they'd let me use a strawberry-pink china mug. The barman was a bit of a miserablist who made it clear they were for display purpose only, but I did get to play with one.

 
So here I am pretending to drink out of George Orwell's favoured drinking vessel. I can see why he liked them, it must hold a quart.

Drinking in historic Wapping

As Saturday was declared the lovely Lisa's unbirthday it was time for another research trip. Armed with a small pamphlet detailing some local history we set off for Wapping.

When I hear Wapping mentioned the history I normally think of is the printers' strike, but I didn't think that was much use when plotting a pub crawl. Fortunately for us the pamphlet told tales of pirates, press gangs and more importantly pubs.

Our first port of call was the Town of Ramsgate. Apparently this pub was previously called the Red Cow after a particular red-headed bar maid! We sat out the back by the river drinking a refreshing pint of Wye Valley HPA (4% ABV) as the sun came out. A good way to start the day.

Next stop was the The Captain Kidd pub, named after the pirate who was hanged nearby. It's a Sam Smith's pub so I passed on the single cask beer and went for a wheat beer. Sitting by the river drinking beer has a lot to recommend it but having more than one pint of keg beer on a pub crawl would be carelessness so it was soon time to move on again.

We headed sarf of the river over tower bridge, which has a great view of an old Courage brewery (now flats).

The Dean Swift was our destination. A much more modern affair, it looked like one of these new fangled craft beer bars to me. Otley Columbo was on one of the hand pumps, surely the beer to raise a glass to Peter Falk with? Though having said that it wasn't entirely to my taste, some of these American hops are a bit harsh.

It was time for food next and the lovely Lisa wanted to get to her favourite pub, the Blackfriars. "As you wish" I said and we hot footed it down there. Prices were much more reasonable here than in the previous pubs, which was nice. Pie and mash soon had us ready for some more cold beer action so we washed our dinner down with pints of Tribute. And quite possibly some other beers too but the unbirthday celebrating was getting the better of us by then.

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!

IPA challenge first bout: Fuller's Bengal Lancer Vs St Austell Proper Job

The lovely Lisa and I have started a challenge competition to find which IPA we like best. It's a knockout competition where beers will be matched with an opponent to be drunk side by side and the better beer goes through to the next round. 

The first bout is between Fuller's of London Bengal Lancer (5.3% ABV) and St Austell's of Cornwall Proper Job (5.5% ABV). The Cornishman has a slight weight advantage here but the Londoner has been recently revamped and is raring to go. 

Seconds away round one: 

Proper job comes rushing out with a big whoosh of citrussy goodness and lots of hop flavour. There's plenty of  body to back it up and Bengal Lancer has been caught sleeping. The Londoner just has no answer and seems harsh and thin in comparison. The size advantage may seem small but the Cornishman is a much bigger beer all round. Bengal Lancer has been completely overwhelmed and the ref has had to step in for a standing count. Bengal Lancer holds on to the end of the round but there was no going back.

The only hope the Chiswick Griffni had would have been to box clever and fight in the drinkability stakes. If Bengal Lancer could have got on his bicycle the thinner body could have proved an advantage, as I'm not sure how many pints of Proper Job we could have downed. It wasn't an option though as we're only doing a bottle of each at a time so they only get one round. There's no room for fancy tactics, just two beers slugging it out toe to toe until one emerges victorious. 

A win for Proper Job by 10-8

Pub crawl St James's and Mayfair

This pub crawl was a technological breakthrough being put together by the lovely Lisa on twitter. That'll get the tabloids going: people now using tweets to organise drinking binges!

Of course we didn't cause any trouble and were mainly interested in studying pub architecture. That we happened to down a pint or six over the evening was merely an added bonus. 

Once again we were planning to follow a route from London Pub Walks but stopped off for a beer before the planned start at the Feathers. The pub was nice enough, if a bit lacking in atmosphere. The had one of Nethergate breweries excellent 'Azza' beers on, this one being Azzaparrot, a lovely fruity malty beer.  I think we've now had Azzabadger, Azzaskunk and Azzaparrot. 



We then got to the 'official' start at the first of our Red Lions. The pub was packed out but we managed to find an empty room upstairs to install ourselves in. The light was off when we went in but due to our advanced technological capabilities we were able to flick the switch and turn them on.  St Austell Tribute was the beer here and it was as good as ever. 


Lights make rooms in pubs so much more accessible.


This Red Lion had a Red Lion

We were meant to go to the Golden Lion next but it was shut so so we moved on to anther Red Lion. This was a small Fuller's pub with a beautiful mirrored interior where we drank Pride until driven out by the stench of someone's fart. I preferred it when pubs smelt of tobacco so I've going to have a poll on this one: what do you prefer to smell in pubs - fags or farts?



We were getting peckish by now but the Coach and Horses wasn't serving food so after we'd guzzled our Adnam'sBroadside we went to Benito's Hat for a burrito. I assume Benito's hat fell off when his body was strung up upsidedown from a petrol station but quite why they named a restaurant after it I'm not sure. 



Next we briefly stopped the Bricklayer's Arms, where I picked up the interesting tit bit that apparently Sam Smith's have 415 pubs, double the usual estimate. They really are a strange company. The beer was all keg and who wants to go to a pub and drink keg  beer so we didn't even bother finishing our pint. 


They know their bricks in the Bricklayers Arms

The next pub was a Shepherd Neame house, the Bloomsbury Tavern.  We had Master Brew bitter which made a pleasant change from Spitfire. 

Finally we ended up at the Coal Hole, where the Timothy Taylor's Landlord was on excellent form.



By this point we'd studied enough pub architecture for one evening so headed home.

 

The all new Tribute

The new unpasteurised version of bottled St Austell Tribute I mentioned here has now hit the shops.

Me and the lovely Lisa did a carefully controlled scientific comparison of the old and new version and the new one definitely tastes better. It's 25% off in Waitrose at the moment too so time to stock up!



Spot the difference.

The best beer in the world*,

Tribute, has just got better.

The latest issue of Brewer and Distiller International has the news that the new bottling line St. Austell brewery were putting in when myself and the lovely Lisa visited means bottled Tribute will now be sterile filtered instead of pasteurised. 

It's an excellent beer on draught but has been a bit of a disappointment in the bottle so we're looking forward to the new version. 





*In a Tenacious D kind of way.

St Austell Brewery, Cornwall.

I'm a fan of St Austell, and as even my humolphobic brother has been round the brewery, a tour was a must on my Cornwall trip.

The tour guide had a reasonable stab at explaining what was going on but clearly had a few gaps in her brewing knowledge. Never mind though, it was a nice old brewery.



Here's the some sacks of malt.



And here's the malt mill. These things seem to last forever as every old brewery I've been round has an antique mill and St Austell was no exception. 



That's the top of the mash tun. It was in use at the time. They brew twice a day here, 150 barrels at at time.



This was an old mash tun now used for holding hops for the wort to be run through.



Here's the shiny new copper, there was a whirlpool outside as well where the wort is separated from the hop debris and trub.




There were a quite a few shapes of fermenters crammed in the brewery but I thought this one gave the best picture.



Firkins waiting to be filled.



And this one's just been filled.

With CAMRA membership the tour was a fiver (seven quid without), and you got a taste of all their beer and two free halves at the end. We went for the beers we hadn't had before so tried their mild, Black Prince, and bitter, Tinners. They were OK but nothing special. We were starting to flag by this point of the holiday so we left it at that.

Despite our best efforts to be abstemious when we got to the bus station we saw we'd have a 50 minute wait so we were forced to go back into town and pop into the Seven Stars.




This is the original St Austell pub, but it looks a bit run down now. And it didn't have Tribute on so it had to be a pint of Tinners while we whiled away our wait.