Breweries of note

Greetings,

    now I know I sort of already did my Golden Pint awards spiel but I have, not accidentally, been mentioning my favourite, most impressive and consistent breweries in various posts throughout the year. So, with only tomorrow left of 2012, I have decided to compile my top ten breweries list, off the top of my head, without referring back to any previous posts. After all, if you rate a brewery, that shouldn't be necessary. Here's the shining stars, for your delectation..

1. Well, its got to be Mallinsons, not only because I already said that in my Golden Pints list, which is carved into a stone tablet and can never be changed (much how some breweries appear to regard their website), but because am still waiting for that first bad Mallinsons, beer, and can't see it arriving.
 

2. Revolutions Brew : once, and only once, I had a beer from this brewery that I didn't like. But that's a rare thing, and most of the time its a pleasure to sample their beer - even if I don't like or haven't heard of the band! Doing a collaboration with Brass Castle also earns them points, as does their impeccable unfined beer.
 

3. Magic Rock : not difficult to find, and despite a bit of a wobble where I had a few lacklustre pints (possibly a hop supply chain problem) its been another year where theirs have been the stand out beers - and they are only 18 months old. Still one of the few breweries whose beers aren't disappointing on KeyKeg, and whose Bearded Lady is my beer of the year.
 

4. Dark Star : If Bearded Lady hadn't redefined my feelings about Keykeg then 2012 would still have been memorable, mainly for the Dark Star Saison, and Revelation. The Saison was easily the most quaffable beer ever! The only thing that could have made it more perfect would have been a Summer to enjoy it in.
 

5. Black Iris : I hope this isn't influenced by their pumpclips but this is another go to producer for me - the Peregrine Pale and the Intergalactic IPA are two regularly faultless beers, along with their darker offerings.
 

6. Thornbridge : I might mock their position as "the new Ember Inns" and scoff at their fear of UK brewed KeyKeg beer but Halcyon, Pollards, McConnells, Yule, Evenlode and Thorny Goat simply can't be matched - and almost make up for how dire Kipling, Marples, St Petersburg and Jaipur have become. See, am at it again! Their inclusion in this list is also out of admiration for their incredible bottled beers, especially those that I have aged. 

 

7. Steel City : their 666 IBU festival alone warrants their inclusion, but when I see a Steel City beer I always find myself buying it. If they could just do a mild and a porter without too many hops they'd be much further up the list.
 

8. Blue Bee : Lustin For Stout, apart from a minor wobble, is consistently one of the best dark beers in Sheffield. And anyone who brews a black bitter,without any sense of irony is going to brewers heaven. The Shake Rattle and Roll was fairly awesome as well.
 

9. Blue Monkey : Love it! Great pumpclips and great beers which never disappoint, and now I can get there stuff in bottles as well its happy days. BG Sips is almost as faultlessly quaffable as Dark Star Saison.
 

10. Summer Wine : A huge range of bottles covering many styles is one reason why I like Summer Wine, even if they sometimes get a bit silly with hops. Their run of beers in Shakespeares and other Sheffield pubs earlier this year means I had plenty of their offerings to become enamoured with them - their red ale and Teleporter standing out.
 

11. You can't have a top 11, that's just silly. And besides, eleven comprises seven nearly's : Abbeydale, Fyne Ales, Acorn, Welbeck Abbey, Little Ale Cart, Hop Studio and Red Willow. All excellent breweries with a lot to offer. And heres a link to the list I compiled in April, just for comparison.

 
 

So that wraps up the list and the year for me, I have about a pint of Deception left which am saving for New Years Day, and then its back to the search for unspoilt pubs and amazing beers that has defined much of 2012.
 

Happy New Year!
 

Wee Beefy

Missing Logo Festival (AKA Golden Pint Awards 2012)

                                                      The Golden Pint Awards 2012 "LOGO"
Hello,                                                               

     after 3 and a half years blogging, initially just for me and Davefromtshop and the dubious benefit of my friends, usually under duress, I have decided to contribute to the Golden Pint Awards 2012. Its tremendously exciting, since it appears that this is what real bloggers do.

That said, Stupid Blogger (for it is they) have still failed to offer me the chance to upload images, so this is no doubt going to be the only Golden Pint Awards post in 2012 with no chuffing logo. So, erm, not like a real blogger after all then....

Anyhoo, that's enough fannying about with caveats and explanations, here's some cold hard listing :

1. Best UK Draught (Cask or Keg) Beer : Magic Rock Bearded Lady Bourbon Cask (Keykeg...) - the end is nigh basically. Liking a Keykeg beer is not something that sits comfortably with a miserable old caskard like me, but I can't get past how incredible a drinking experience it was. Fifty matchless minutes sat in the Sheffield Tap, drinking one half.

2. Best UK Bottled or canned beer : Thornbridge Highland Reserve Imperial Stout (2006). Does this count? Only, I opened it a couple of months back, so despite being brewed in the black and white era, its a beer I opened in 2012. It was my penultimate bottle of six from the batch I purchased at some cost. Not had a bad one yet. Not had any that were less than "wow" beers to be fair.

3. Best Overseas draught beer. Maui Coconut Porter, again at the Sheffield Tap. Took 10 minutes (seemingly) to pour, but was worth the wait, and the price.

4.Best Overseas bottled or canned beer : Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast. Sorry, I know this is a bit like saying that happiness is one of my favourite feelings but BGB is a very rare thing. I really wanted to pick unusual or off the wall choices on the whole but am afraid that having tried this its impossible to pick anything else really. A not bad wallet lightening agent.

5. Best Overall Beer : Thornbridge Halcyon. Because I enjoy it on cask, on Keykeg and even in bottles. That's some crossover.

6. Best Pumpclip or label : Anything by Stroud brewery. Old school ultra traditional and not a lurid colour in sight.

7. Best UK Brewery : Mallinsons. From a shortlist of 5, because everything of theirs I drink I like. And helpfully, some of it is actually incredibly, not just pretty damn, brilliant.

8.Best Overseas Brewery : Nogne. Because I like the sound of everything they do, even if I have only tried about 4 of their beers (and loved every one).

9. Pub/Bar of the Year : well, according to blog mentions/tag cloud numbers, and with one having only being open a year, its a dead heat between Shakespeares Sheffield, and DAda bar. My dream Tuesday line up.

10. Beer Festival of the Year : New Inn Cropton Great Yorkshire Brewery 2012. Just a fantastic occasion.

11. Supermarket of the Year : A question much like "who's your favourite dictator?" See below....

12. Independent Retailer of the year : Always go independent. Try Archer Road Beer Stop for starters.

15. Best beer blog : I like the comments on Boak and Bailey. Am not sure if this is a compliment or not. Also, Timbo at "A Swift One" is concise, like what I want to be.

16.  Best Beer Twitterer : @sparklepete - because he writes about pubs. Although mainly on his blog, less so on Twitter. Maybe should have skipped this category in the absence of a relevant answer....

17. Best Online Brewery Presence : Revolutions Brew. Lots and lots and lots of UP TO DATE information. The indecipherable note readers best friend, and nicely themed.

18. Food and beer pairing of the year : A pork pie in the Blake, Sheffield, with any beer they have on.

19. In 2013 I'd most like to : Upload pics to my blog again.

20. Best Tegestological undertaking by a brewery : Brampton's. Beermats that wouldn't look out of place in the 1930's. As all such cardboard advertisements should be.

So that's it then, my first exciting foray into writing down 20/18 things that are good, with a beer theme. I look forward to rubbing shoulders with the beer prose aristocracy as a direct result. Or a few stats. Or just a stat. Please help me....

Wee Beefy

A young man's favourite beers part 2

Hello,

    here is the second part of my top 20 Desert Island beers from 1996, when I was nobbut babby. Choices eleven through twenty should hopefully throw up as many points as the first ten...

11. Jolly Boat Bideford Plunderer, Fat Cat, Sheffield, July 1995 - "it was dark, it was sweet(ish) and it was BIG. And I loved it"

12. Kelham Island Fat Cat Pale Ale, Derby Tup, Chesterfield, March 1995 - "the ideal accompaniment to a heart meal - at the Fat Cat or Derby Tup for example"

13. Mill Brewery St Patrick's Ale, Cask and Cutler, Sheffield, March 1995 - "the best St Patrick's day beer I tried, and the best stout I had for ages after"

14. Ridleys Winter Ale, Small Beer Off License, Sheffield December 1994 (consumed elsewhere!) - "one of three amazing beers I had from Small Beer in December, this wins by a whisker because it was so many beers rolled into one"

15. Titanic Stout, Tap and Spile, Sheffield June 1995 - "I was in need of a thick, robust and huge tasting dark beer"

16. Tomlinsons Richard's Defeat Porter, The Beer Exchange, Leeds, December 1994 - "I only had it a few times, and picking out a favourite time was difficult, but this was the time I probably enjoyed it most"

17. Townes Pynot Porter, The Dore Junction, Sheffield, September 1994 - "this is what made me take notice of Townes, and carrying on with the undoubted quality of this porter, they've never brewed a bad beer since"

18. Vaux Extra Special, The Grouse Inn, Longshaw, Derbyshire, October 1995 - "It was really easy to drink for a beer of that strength, and had a brilliant fruity aftertaste - I can't wait to try it again"

19. Whim Hartington bitter, Cask and Cutler, Sheffield, September 1995 - "whats best is, it tastes bloody wonderful every time. My favourite bitter."

20. Woodfordes Stout Cat, The Fat Cat, Sheffield, August 1995 - "I was a bit broke, but still opted for three pints of this inbetween sampling the other beers"

So that's it. A twenty three year old real ale drinker appraises the best of the scene between 1993 and 1995. And thank god I recorded the venues as well - I can even remember who I was with at the time on some of the occasions described (at my age!)

Once again there are some defunct pubs, like the Dore Junction, the Tap and Spile (in so far as its changed name, hands, and doesn't sell real ale) and the Beer Exchange in Leeds closed pubs entry here , as well as some rather odd flavour characteristics ticking my boxes - sweet? Am I sure this was me?

Mind you, there are a large number of dark beers in there. And across the list, there are some national brewers beers, like Vaux, and the Allsopps recreation in list one was brewed at Tetley Walker I think. The fact that I seemed to drink and find my favourite beers in the Fat Cat and Cask and Cutler almost exclusively is telling, because at that stage the Valley of Beer didn't exist.

And, once again, there are some beers that I still rate - Hartington Bitter, Titanic Stout, Townes Pynot Porter (assuming they still brew it, can't access their website properly in my browser), and the Derby Tup and Small Beer, now the Archer Road Beer Stop, still appear in the GBG.  Its nice to see some consistency over the last three decades.

The final point is, how many of these beers were very hoppy?

Almost none! Only Whim's beer had any prominent hops, and there was almost no mention of the pale citrussy beers we see today. So from that you could draw the conclusion that in the early nineties, (given that I was able to write the list having tried a plethora of different beers from across the UK) regional and national beers were perhaps more popular, and the micro brewers made more "traditional" ales. I don't remember tasting really hoppy beers until Freeminer Trafalgar IPA appeared in bottles along with Burton Bridge Empire Pale Ale, both of which I bought lots of between 2000 and 2003.

Perhaps I need to do a new Top Twenty in 2012 and see how my tastes and the microbrewing world's tastes have changed.

Wee Beefy

A young man's favourite beer

Hello again,

    I am distinctly off colour today, and despite the prospect of going to see Stewart Lee on Friday cheering me up, I am looking forward to spending tomorrow Saturday and well, most of the rest of the month's nights indoors. This is quite unusual for me these days, because I normally like to get out twice a week at least. If am not on a "beer quest" I am enjoying a fine wine with Chala, so am well watered most nights, but this never used to be the case. I used to stay in more, and, before the magic of blogging, I used to write things, on paper, using a pen, and everything.

Some younger readers may find this an alien concept, but I used to find any scraps of paper I could to jot down ideas, song lyrics, track listings, and record all the beers I tried (yep, in the days before it became "material" or "research" this was called beer scoring, for which I sincerely apologise). I also often recorded details of the pubs I had visited, more often those that I wanted to visit, indeed during the prolific nineties I probably only managed to keep myself sane by writing this stuff.

Better than a Top Ten...

Where I am seemingly never getting to is this - I wrote  a list of Desert Island beers. Not a top ten, no that was passe, I wrote a top twenty. Mind you, looking back, it seems possible that it would have been a twenty five or thirty had I been able to find some more paper. I wrote it some time in 1996, so this was a list from someone who had been drinking real ale regularly for probably only three years. And I was barely past childhood -  I wrote the list aged just twenty three. Imagine! I probably wore faded grey clothes that I wished were still black, ginormous framed glasses which no-one had the heart to tell me looked ridiculous, and weighed ten stone. Even I can't imagine that...

Better still, I found that list tonight. Here it is, not written out verbatim because each beer comes with a lengthy description, but I shall provide the name, place tried and one quoted line of prose. Please note that the order of the beers confers no preference - I really didn't have a favourite.

1. Samuel Allsops Traditional English Stout (also called dry stout), White Lion, Heeley, Sheffield April/May 1995 - "gorgeous, totally refreshing, if a little overpriced"

2. Arkells Kingsdown, Fat Cat, Sheffield, July 1995 - "I can't describe the taste, but I must say - butterscotch"

3. Bathams Best Bitter, Great Western, Wolverhampton, June 1995 - "the sort of bitter you can drink in Winter (I suspect) or Summer, beautiful"

4. Cannon Royall Millwards Cannon Mild, Cask and Cutler, Sheffield, May 1994 - " the best mild I've ever had and the only beer I ordered another pint of that night"

5. Church End What the Fox Hat, Fountain Real Ale Bar, Gornal, West Midlands, June 1995 - "it was wonderful, as was the atmosphere, as was the barmaid. There was a beer festival on at the time, and in the corner of the tiny bar a band belted out covers of the Pogues"

6. Devenish Regal Ale (1977) at home, July 1995 - "It had a taste and smell I'll never forget, like the Kingsdown it was butterscotch"

7. Enville Gothic, Fat Cat, Sheffield, July 1995 -  "it was beautiful, not only that night, but every night I've drunk it since"

8. Federation Best Bitter, Miners Arms, Acomb nr Hexham, June 1993 - "the last pint I'd had before this was a unnaturally cold Newcastle Exhibition, and this just hit all the right spots"

9. Hexhamshire Shire Bitter, Yellow Lion, Apperknowle, Derbyshire, June 1994 - "it was low in alcohol and easy to drink, but it had a beautifully strong flavour for a beer of that strength"

10. Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, Beacon Hotel, Sedgely, West Midlands, February 1995 - "this is a wonderful beer, and the Beacon Hotel provides the ideal surroundings"

I'm going to leave the other ten until my next post, because this is a lot of information to take in (and to write out!).

A few things strike me about this - firstly, that the Yellow Lion was demolished years ago, but that the Miners and Great Western are still in the GBG (2011). Secondly, that I keep using the word beautiful, which is really not a word I use very often to describe beer (or at all) nowadays; perhaps this was a romantic phase of my life.

Also, my appreciation of Federation !?!, which quickly turned into one of the most dreadful real ales in the UK, in fact am not even sure it is still available as a real ale. The fact that virtually all these beers were tried after I had got my first job, and finally, that price was an issue then - the Sarah Hughes was £1.55 in the Beacon in early 1995, and £2.15 at the Yellow Lion the same year, according to the notes. I was most displeased...

Somethings of course, never change - I still love Bathams Bitter, Enville Gothic, Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, and Hexhamshire Shire Bitter.

I can't escape my black malty beer past it seems...


Wee Beefy