Golden Pints 2012

Hello, yes. 

Last year I sent off my nominations for the Golden Pints awards, even though I wasn't a blogger.  A year on and I am, in the words of my wife "always typing on the ruddy computer", so I feel fully justified in making a proper 'blogger's' response to the 2012 version.

Here are my award WINNERS:

Best UK Draught Beer

Tiny Rebel Urban IPA

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer

Brodies Hoxton Special IPA

Best Overseas Draught Beer

Ska Modus Hoperandi

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer

Nogne India Saison

Best Overall Beer

Brodies Hoxton Special IPA

Best Pumpclip or Label

Anything from Moor

Best UK Brewery

Kernel

Best Overseas Brewery

Mikkeller

Pub/Bar of the Year

In Birmingham and the Black Country = Windsor Castle, Lye

Nationally = Sheffield Tap, err Sheffield. 

Beer Festival of the Year

Not a big festival fan.  Only been to one in 2012, so it'll have to be Birmingham Beer Festival. 

Supermarket of the Year

Tesco

Independent Retailer of the Year

Cotteridge Wines

Online Retailer of the Year

Beers of Europe

Best Beer Book or Magazine

None

Best Beer Blog or Website

The one and only.... Mediocre Beer Adventures

Best Beer Twitterer

Simon Johnson or Pierre Van Klomp

Best Online Brewery Presence

Brewdog

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year

I don't eat and drink simultaneously

In 2013 I’d most like to...

Visit Birmingham's new range of craft beer bars, on a regular basis

My Best Post of the Year

A typical day in the life of Mediocre Beer Adventures

Now, eagle-eyed viewers will spot that I've adopted a slightly provocative, 'Liam Gallagher' style posture in my nominations.  I'm not sure if I like it, so you may not see this persona a second time.

Love

Dan

My ten favourite breweries that I forgot to put in my top ten favourite breweries

As is already tiresomely well established, I love top tens and indeed lists of any type.  They keep me off the street.

Now, in last week's issue I listed my top ten breweries and was happy to do so.  Unfortunately it seems that in the course of that top ten I a) took leave of my senses and b) have subsequently remembered some more breweries that I really like, but which I failed to include, but which I now want to pay homage to, in whatever cockeyed route is still available to me.  What an appalling opening to a blog post this has been so far.  Genuinely terrible.  >>>Fast forward>>>

So then, here are 10 more outstanding breweries, who I love for my own reasons, and who could quite easily have been interchanged with any of the previous top 10*.  These ones are in no particular order. 

i) Stone

Original Yank powerhouse brewery.  I tried Arrogant Bastard and Ruination in 2004 and was blown away.  More recently in 2011, Sublimely Self Righteous was the first good Black IPA I ever tried.

ii) Great Divide

Can't believe I didn't include this lot in the original list, not least because my two highest rated beers of all time, were both brewed by them - Hercules and Yeti.  Wowsers.

iii) Andechs

Fabulous Munich** brewery - great lagers and weisse beers.

iv) Oakham

Another headshaker.  Cannot believe that I forgot to include the people who gave me Citra and Bishops Farewell, in my original list.  Green Devil is a new favourite. 

v) Buxton

I just cannot resist Buxton.  Such a sweet hop blend in all their beers.  Their Black IPA is magnificent, and so is Axe Edge.

vi) Brodies

Wonderful London microbrewery.  So fresh and full of experimentation, and yet so weighted down with finesse and quality. 

vii) Everards

Yes, they are from Leicester, so they sneak in through the local connection, and through happy memories of childhood.  But, in all fairness, Tiger is a brilliant ruddy Bitter.

viii) Crouch Vale

They predate the 'craft revolution', but their attention to hops fits well into this new paradigm.  Brewers Gold was a classic back in 2003, and they continue to churn out hoppy golden treats. 

ix) Paulaner

A wide variety of German proficiency is available from this giant.  Their Hefe is a classic, but it's their Roggen which is, for me, a classic beer sadly absent from these shores, in recent times.

x) Dark Star/Marble/Bristol Beer Factory/Magic Rock/Moor

Lists are always unsatisfactory (and yet I love them).  There will always be breweries I'm not able to include, but whom I love.  Here are a fistful of massively brilliant UK names, who deserve to be namechecked in any list of top breweries. 

I may write shortly about the lovely story which featured in the Birmingham Post.




*perhaps. To be fair to the previous top 10, they deserved their exalted status.
**not actually based in Munich, but close-ish.

 

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.