MBA on Tour in Sheffield

Last Friday was indeed a good Friday, as Mediocre Beer Adventures and their brother in law took it's second (and pending financial upturn, possibly last) 'foreign' pub survey of the year.

I have been to the Steel City before (well I've watched LCFC lose at Bramall Lane and been shopping at Meadowhall), but this was my first drinking-based visit - one I felt impelled to make, after hearing nothing but good from wiser and better beer aficionados than myself.

A full programme yielded visits to 12 splendid pubs, including 7 or 8 official/unofficial brewery taps and left a warm, rippling feeling inside my heart.

Because there were so many good beers and lovely pubs, this report is going to be a bit of 'whistle stop' (much like my day), so watch out for bullet points and try to keep up.

1. On the Sheffield Station itself is the amazing Sheffield Tap, offering Thornbridge on cask and keg, + other top craft efforts from the likes of Tempest and Magic Rock, all complimented by hundreds of the World's best bottles.  Nice leather seats too.  Magnificent.  I could have stayed here all day.

2.  A short trip by tram, to the destination furthest from the centre: The Hillsborough Hotel.  Or..... rather the about to be renamed 'The Hillsborough'.  A lovely raised beer garden afforded a lovely view of the local ski slope (!) and I enjoyed sampling 2 beers from their house brewery Crown.  Or.... rather from their about to be already renamed house brewery Wood St.  Top marks for the [nearly] defunct beers and for stocking November's issue of Ales and Tales (which is the local CAMRA mag for the Stourbridge/Halesowen/Dudley branch) and which (coincidentally) contains an article written by me!  I did offer to sign it for them, but they politely told me to sling my hook.

3.  A walk down a hill, through an industrial estate, landed us up at the Gardener's Rest, my fave pub of the day.  A tap for the Sheffield brewery - they stocked 4 of their offerings, plus other handpulled guests; but it was the decor and fabulous beer garden that won the plaudits.  What a lovely clean pub, with lovely light and furniture, and what a lovely garden: full of nick-nacks, stained glass pagodas and a river view.  Genuinely lovely.

4.  Tap for the Little Ale Cart brewery - The Wellington was up next.  Very quiet inside, but with excellent tables and nectar-like hoppy Goldens on the bar, I did not care.  Several charming rooms.  Another winner.

5.  No time to hang around, because it was 5 minutes down the road, to the multiple winner of CAMRA UK pub of the year, the Kelham Island Tavern.  Nice burger scoffed, then on to...

6.  The Fat Cat, unofficial tap for the Kelham Island brewery (are you keeping up?).  This was [yet] another beautifully genuine and unspoilt old boozer, nestling on a corner.  Dead comfy inside, with charming features and a mix of handpulls and foreign beers.

7.  But we couldn't dawdle, as it was off to the Shakespeare, our last venue in the Kelham Island area*, before wending back to the wending towards, heading back to town.  The Shakespeare specialised in old furniture, pump clips on the wall and a serving hatch that looked like it had been scraped from a giant bar of soap.  Summer Wine Vanguard was the beautifully hoppy pale ale sampled here, thank you very much.

*Of course, this is not strictly true, as we first popped into venue number 8, which was:

8. The Harlequin - brewery tap for the Brew Company.  Samples of their Blonde and Best Bitter were completed, just as a touring party arrived. Nice wooden furniture here also + good foreign beers. 

9. DAda.  Which is, of course, Thornbridge's reinterpretation of a wine bar.  Funky collages on the tables and funky keg beers on offer, mainly of the Thornbridge variety, but appendixed by the brilliantly hoppy Modus Hoperandi, from the Coloradan Ska Brewery.  Wowee!  What a greatly delicious beer to perk up the sagging central trunk of our crawl.  Onwards.

10.  Bonus visit!  We nosed our way inside Hop, on the way to pub number 10, and were rewarded with very loud music, lots of students and nightclub style interior.  Very strange when you consider that this is an Ossett gaff, with 4 of their beers on handpull.  Inspite of this, it was the lovely Hawkshead Dry Stone Stout, which tempted me.

Number 11 was the Devonshire Cat, which offered an impressive array of well known Belgian bottles and about a dozen handpulls.  Very big, very modern, very open plan, very busy, very short visit.

12. It took an age to find the Rutland Arms, but then again I did have to divert via a comfort break, which had become all too pressing.  The Rutland was more like rammed-land (by which I mean it was rather busy).  I believe this is an unofficial tap for the Blue Bee brewery, but didn't realise until afterwards.  This explains why I sampled an Ascot beer.  Chris had a pickled egg.  Bully for him.

Then back to the Sheffield Tap and just enough time for a Sierra Nevada Ruthless Rye, before boarding train home.

Final thoughts:

• The best pub crawl in the World?  Yes.
• Every pub a winner?  Ain't that the truth.
• My fave was the Gardener's Rest, but the Sheffield Tap was amazing, the Wellington was grrrrreat, the Fat Cat was effortlessly homely and DAda dripped with cool.  They were all good.
• Lots of beer gardens.  A relative rareity in Brum, but in Sheff, each pub offered a bit of inner-city greenery and the chance to sample some fresh air.
• Great scenery in this hilly city.
• Good beer was unavoidable.  Every place offered lots of cask choice.  And keg choice.  And foreign bottles were ubiquitous.  And the quality was high.  And there about 1000 different breweries within a 10-mile radius. Mind blowing.
• Quite cheap too.  Not to be sniffed at.
• I love Sheffield.

(Photos will be posted separately (probably), once I have worked out how to use new iPhone.)

This post is dedicated to Steven Raymond Vaughan, who recently celebrated his 30th birthday.
 

Wellington Wednesday and a Killer Stout

Wednesdays can be beautiful.

Last night was a night dans le boozer, which unusually, involved spending time in the company of other people - people I know. Amazing and much needed.

The Wellington beckoned and was pleasantly empty.  The pre-Christmas crushes experienced at this venue had become exceptionally tiresome - a trip to the Welly usually involved squeezing through the front door, flighting to the bar, just about managing to get my order heard, then necking it and legging it, having shifted my own body weight in sweat during that time. But last night, aaaah - a seat, some chums and I didn't have to shout to make myself heard.  Bliss.

So what of the beers: first a fittingly mediocre Elland Diablo, which was a bit thin and taste like chocolate melted on a bar-b-q [that word has been spelled in a deliberately annoying way].  I also had a pint, yes a whole pint, of Oakham Citra which is the epitome of reliability.  It's tasty too.

The best offering though, was Beowulf Killer Stout, a 7.9% UK Imperial Stout, from a brewery I have made my own - by which I mean that, according to Ratebeer, I am the top taster/reviewer of Beowulf beers in the World.  That may make it sound like I love all of their beers, which is not true at all.  But I do appreciate their dark efforts - Dark Raven, Finns Hall Porter, Dragon Smoke Stout and now this Killer Stout, which is a very flavoursome, drinkable and balanced attempt at a beer style usually only mastered by our American cousins.  It's a real shame that more of these stronger beers simply so not turn up on tap in Birmingham pubs; but then again, if they did, I wouldn't have been inspired to begin this blog.

After leaving the Welly, and having popped into Tesco, I followed some good Twitter advice from the previous night and was lucky enough to sample Moor Unfined Confidence on tap in the Lower Temple Shakespeare. It was a ruddy tasty and ruddy coloured ale, which the lack of filtering had rendered mushy in the mouth and with some murkiness added to the hoppy bitter.

Finally, a dash through the Post Office Vaults en route to the bus stop; a flying visit which yielded a well priced bottle of De Molen Op and Top - a strange beer which sat somewhere between a UK IPA and a Belgian Ale ala Leffe.  Largely pleasant.

A good evening's work.

Where to go? Where to go?

Just a short note tonight, as Leicester's crushing win over Nottingham Florist needs to be celebrated with a cup of tea and several chocolate biscuits.

Tomorrow, a mid week visit to the pub beckons, but which one? 

I'm due to meet chums in the Welly, but it is acceptable to turn up, have a nose through the beer list, then if nothing grabs me, drag them off to another boozer? 

And if I do drag them off to, say, the Shakespeare, in search of Moor beers, what happens if the said Moor beers are nowhere is sight?  Can I then drag them off to a third pub (the POVaults), in search of cask treats, but knowing that I can have a De Molen whenever I feel like it?  Would a bitterly cold Wednesday evening be the right occasion to try and turn on some unsuspecting suburbanites, to the joys of Victory Storm King imperial stout?

Or alternatively, should I feign injury and mysteriously disappear during the proceedings, so that I can do a super covert 4 x Nicholsons' pub crawl?

Perhaps I should just stay in. 

Birmingham's Top 10 Pubs

The Evening, sorry Birmingham Mail recently pronounced it's Top 10 Birmingham pubs and it's a solid list.  Admittedly it's based on unspecified criteria, but this is not intended as a nit-picking blog post, more of a conversation starter and gosh darnit, a celebration of some fine Brum establishments.

The Wellington, The Anchor, The Black Eagle, The Bartons Arms, the Old Contemptibles are no-brainers: places that combine good beer choices with a convivial atmosphere/good decor etc.

For the rest of my five, this is my thinking (in no particular order): 

Lord Clifden
Lovely artwork, good music, ping-pong, a GREAT beer garden and just enough good beer to top things off.  Cool pub.

Post Office Vaults
New kid on the block and already the subject of it's own blog post.  Could be the City's top venue soon enough.

Lamp Tavern
Small, located on an industrial estate, and fantastic. The welcome is warm, the beers are well kept and the banquette seating takes me right back to Syston in 1992. A magnificent survivor.   

The Shakespeare (the Summer Row one, not the Lower Temple Street one)
The Mail chose Bacchus, but I've gone for a different Nicholsons pub.  I love the arrangement of the L-shaped front room, with it's elegant street aspect.  I love the fact that it is Brum's most reliable stockist of Moor beers - this fills me with a deep joy.  This is almost my favourite.

The Brown Lion
This one scrapes in if I'm honest, as it is still a bit underfurnished and not quite lived in, although it is early days.  The beer is what brings me here, because the BroLi is the brewery tap for Two Towers - one of Birmingham's small crop of microbreweries.  At first, even the beer wasn't enough to bring me back regularly, but TT are pulling their fingers out now and I'm becoming quite paternal towards them.

What connects the above five places and the five Mail choices that I agree with?  Well, after a bit of chin scratching I think that it's some ethereal combination of good beer choice and an aspirational outlook.  I want to leave a pub with a good tingle on my tastebuds and a spring in my step.

Birmingham doesn't yet have a proper craft beer bar, but it does have some nice beer venues; and when I think back to late 2004, just prior to the opening of the Wellington, things were really grim.  Only the Anchor was shining a light.  Our City has come a long way.

And my favourite place of all?  Probably the Anchor.  Just.   

Whats your favourite, my beer brethren?

(With apols to the Red Lion, Prince of Wales, Old Joint Stock, the Junction (Harborne)).

Some rapid feedback on Sunday's stolen crawl

Let's strike while the iron is hot.  Let's do another blog post and try and learn how to use Blogger a bit better. 

Anyway.

The televised football finished about 3.00, and I was supposed to be on the other side the City by 3.30, with a journey time of between 40-60 minutes.  I wasn't going to make it.  I would face a wrath.  Oh dear, may as well make it worse by squeezing in a mini stolen crawl.

That was the backdrop to Sunday's mad dash down New Street in search of beery treasure (which I wasn't to find).  It was a further chance to play one of my favourite games - 'guess which Birmingham pub might be serving a good beer'.  Now this popular local pass time involves reading about all the lovely beers being supped across the UK (Twitter helps with this), then hoping that one of these might have reached Brum, then closing your eyes and jabbing your finger into a Birmingham pub map, in the hope that you might pick the right venue for that good beer.  It's a bit like playing the national lottery.

So off I trot, to hit two Nicholsons pubs, right in the centre of town, both with beautiful interiors, but middling track records for beer, although fond memories abound for previous good 'finds' of Salopian Kashmir and Moor Gold, Frankincense and Moor. 

The Shakespeare (which interestingly enough is one of three pubs in central Birmingham called 'The Shakespeare' - nothing like cashing in, eh?) is a rather nice, snug boozer, squirrelled just off New Street, next to a posh shoe shop. It used to be a bit rougher than it is now and as such is very pleasant.  The beer is rubbish 50% of the time mind, but bless them, they do try.  The beer (range that is, not the way it was kept) was rubbish today also, but scored a half of Leeds Midnight Bell and found it to be a reasonable dark ale, certainly a smooth one.  Are Leeds a good brewery?  The jury is out. 

Bacchus Bar is a beautiful mish mash of medieval banqueting hall and Victorian opium den, hidden conspiratorially under the Burlington Arcade on New Street.  It's dark, romantic, opulent, clean, posh and interesting and usually has 3 rotating handpulls.  Unfortunately, not much was on today, only Doom Bar, Brains' Rev. James and Dorset Ammonite. I've never sampled anything from the latter, so quickly guzzled a half of caramelly, lager-hopped strawness.  Not brilliant.  Not terrible though.

And that was that.  It took about 20 minutes all told.  I should have taken some pictures really, that would have livened this page up somewhat.  I'll remember next time.