No rise in booze duty!

Which is a good thing really as we're going to have less money to spend on it. Not that the amount we spend on booze will fall, in fact when the VAT rise comes in we'll be spending more, so it's other things that will get cut. 

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... 

Home brewing competition

I've started getting emails asking me to plug things on my blog. One of them in particular caught my eye as in return it offered free beer. Now I've always thought that free beer tastes better so I happily ditiched my internationalist principles and plugged Spitfire. I've now got two emails from what looks like two different companies asking me to blog about a home brewing competition. The fact that I couldn't see any offer of free beer had me heading for the delete key, but then I has second thoughts. The competition does look like the sort of thing I'd have been interested in if I didn't now work as a brewer so I'll pass the info on: 

If you home brew and would like the chance to get your beer brewed at Sharp's check out the Big Lunch Beer Challenge. 

Brewery on the telly

When I got in from work Michael Portillo was on the telly. Normally I'd reach for the control switch at this point, but he as was at Burton Bridge Brewery talking about the history of beer in Burton I made an exception this time. 

You can watch it here

Fame at last!

My picture is in the latest issue of First Draught, the magazine of Fuller's Fine Ale Club. I'm grinning away, clearly a with a few pints inside me, at the Fine Ale Club's 10th anniversary celebration back in December. That was a cracking night.  

The Fine Ale Club is well worth joining. It's free and the occasional magazine you get sent is an interesting read, and always contains discount vouchers for beer, and even better competitions for free beer. 

Drinkability research

As a beer professional my work never really ends. Though I would like spend my weekends engaged in healthy pursuits like strolling in the Surrey Alps and mowing the lawn I'm often forced to go out and drink lots of beer in order to keep my beer knowledge up to date. The crosses we have to bear... 

Last Saturday was a case in point. As it was a bank holiday weekend, naturally my thoughts turned to DIY, but it was not to be. Just when I was getting ready to go to Homebase the lovely Lisa looked up from the sofa and said "lets go and get wankered". As Continuing Professional Development is something I take very seriously, how could I refuse? Earlier in the week I'd delivered some beer I'd made to a local pub which gave us a research opportunity too good to miss - a chance to test the drinkability. 

At work I do have to have the occasional beer, purely for quality control purposes of course. Useful though this is, it doesn't tell me how drinkable the beer is over a session, an important element of a decent draught beer. 

The beer at the bar

When we got the the pub my beer was was on and the research commenced. The beer had good condition, was a clear golden colour and tasted of citrussy hops but still had body. So far so good. The next pint went down well too, as did the one after and the one after that. Thus we can conclude that the beer had drinkability as well as good flavour. 

At that point we felt we'd done enough research for and afternoon (after all, pints count double then) so we staggered headed home to write up our findings. 

My lovely research assistant hard at work

Not so NICE

Price control on alcohol draws ever nearer. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has shown it's not so nice by coming out in favour of a minimum price for alcohol, with the figure of 50p a unit being discussed on the radio this morning. This move was first suggested in Scotland.

The argument that it would help with problem drinkers was fatally flawed for me when it was revealed that Buckfast Abbey Tonic wine, a favourite of Glaswegian winos would not be affected!