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Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
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Top Tastings 2011
ABV: 6.2%
Origin: Otahuhu, Auckland, New Zealand
Website: epicbeer.com, www.steambrewing.co.nz
 Steam / Epic Mayhem, on what's clearly a topless beach. New Zealand, or Aotearoa if you prefer, is the one of the latest countries to have come to the attention of international beer fans for its vibrant new generation of brewers, though its craft brewing scene dates back at least to the 1990s. On reflection, it’s well-placed to produce fine beer: despite its small population, it’s relatively compact, shares a language with several other important beer nations, and has a temperate climate that nurtures great brewing ingredients, including exotic hops that are the latest fad among the world’s most innovative brewers.
One of the earlier names on the scene was the Cock and Bull pub in a suburb of Auckland, which had its own brewery from 1995. It developed into both a small chain of pubs and the standalone Steam Brewing Company, where in the early 2000s the then head brewer Luke Nicholas developed a line of distinctive new beers under the Epic name – reflecting the big flavours of the beers, the challenge of taking on the big brewers and the epic journey that New Zealanders and their ancestors undertook, whether by canoe or jet aircraft, to reach the islands. In 2007 Luke gained the rights to the Epic brands and set up his own company, although continues to contract brew at Steam.
Epic has additional prominence among British beer fans thanks to Kelly Ryan, a New Zealander whose brewing skills first shone at Thornbridge in the UK, and whose charm and enthusiasm proved a huge asset to that brewery. Early in 2011 Kelly returned to the southern hemisphere to work at Epic, where he’s been much appreciated; shortly afterwards, he and Luke set out on a 4,500km journey around 44 Aotearoan craft breweries, documented in a video project, NZ Craft Beer TV.
One of Epic’s most admired beers is its strong American-style pale ale Mayhem, which first appeared as a festival special in 2006, and is still released on only an occasional basis. It’s created from English Pale Ale, Munich and Crystal malts and US Cascade and New Zealand Riwaka hops and described “packed with hop-fuelled flavour and aroma,” although at a relatively modest 35 IBU this isn’t an ultra-bitter beer. I picked up my bottle at 2011’s Great British Beer Festival.
My sample poured a lovely glowing amber with a thick creamy bubbly head. Aromas of cedarwood, oil and coconut wafted over biscuity malt and metallic notes, setting up a slightly oily palate oozing complex hop notes – citrussy orange, exotic spices, pepper, lemon and coconut oil, again with a slightly steely note, all dancing over a cushion of soft malt. Lightly woody and nutty notes emerged in a pleasant finish that developed poppy seed and cracked pepper flavours, with a long development into herbal bitterness and gentle orange.
The beer was an absolute delight, and a great demonstration of how to bring out the vivid, fruity flavours and complexities of New World hops while still producing an approachable beer with its bitter acids firmly under control. It should be a great food matching beer too.
Top Tastings 2011, Beer sellers: The Beermongers
ABV: 5.1%
Origin: Hood River, Oregon, USA
Website: www.fullsailbrewing.com
 Full Sail Session Lager While beer geeks are bedazzled by the extremities of American brewing, it’s important to remember that the pheonomenal growth of the craft beer sector in the USA is mainly based not on hop bombs and wood aged weirdness but on much more everyday brews of the sort that offer a simple quality alternative to mainstream industrial brands. The inspiration for many of these is drawn from the era before Prohibition in 1919, when a far more diverse and regionalised brewing industry, much of it run by people of German-speaking descent who still followed traditional practices, provided local drinkers with local beers that often enjoyed intense brand loyalty.
Take Full Sail, founded as one of Oregon’s pioneering new breweries and brewpubs in 1987 in a former cannery in the small but picturesque port town of Hood River, on the Columbia river east of Portland. It’s now one of the state’s most successful craft brewers and an employee-owned company. It makes its share of hoppy pale ales, big beers like a well regarded barley wine and eccentric specials, but since 2005 its mainstay has become a modest, good quality golden lager simply known as Session Lager, packed in attractive 11oz (325ml) “stubby” bottles with a distinctive retro label. The brewery adds to the fun, and underlines the sociability, by printing paper, scissors and stone symbols on the underside of each crown cap.
Session Lager is an unpasteurised, all-malt brew that’s been named Best Premium Lager at the World Beer Awards and was recently voted Best Craft Lager by users of popular US beer news website thefullpint.com. It’s a yellow-gold beer with a fine white head and a soft cereal aroma throwing off slightly citric hop notes and very light varnishy esters.
A very creamy and full but light palate has the emphasis on cereal malt but with a tasty citric hop note and something of an earthy, sacky character developing. There’s a lime twist to a refreshing citric finish, with wholesome chaff and nice rounded hops. It’s modest and approachable but the quality is clear.
I sampled my bottle, by the way, in the unlikely surroundings of the famous Horse Brass in Portland, one of the US’s oldest established speciality beer venues, decked out in what now appears an artfully kitsch rendition of an “olde worlde” provincial English pub of the 1970s (readers of a certain age will wonder if they should order chicken in a basket).
Top Tastings 2011
ABV: 5.7%
Origin: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Website: cub.com.au
 Tooth's (now Carlton United) Sheaf Stout apparently kept these strapping Aussie Rules players fit. Those were the days. I discovered a plain looking 750ml bottle of this southern hemisphere classic, which I’ve never seen on sale in the UK, in the well stocked fridges of the excellent neighbourhood liquor store on the corner of 17th and Noe Streets on the edge of San Franciso’s Castro district, a short walk from our regular B&B. It prompted yet another breach of my self-imposed taboo on buying imports while travelling. The beer has been on my wants list since I read Michael Jackson and Roger Protz singing its praises in the late 1990s, as the leading surviving example of the British and Irish-inspired stouts that were once widespread in Australia before the ascendancy of industrial lager.
It was originally a Sydney beer, from Tooth’s brewery, once one of Australia’s oldest companies, established in 1835 by an emigrant from Kent who adopted that county’s white horse symbol, Invicta, as his logo. Struggling by the early 1980s, the brewery fell into the hands of asset strippers and was sold off in 1983 to Carlton & United, who were themselves in the throes of being taken over by megabrewer Fosters, now a subsidiary of multinational SAB-Miller. In 2005 the Sydney site was closed, and the brewery has since been demolished and redeveloped as housing, though the gate with its Invicta trademark has been preserved. Sheaf Stout also remains as a niche brand, thanks in part to its longstanding cult following in the US, though its production has been relocated to the main Carlton & United brewery in Melbourne.
Assuming that it’s still made to the same recipe reported by Jackson and Protz, the stout is warm fermented from pale and crystal barley malts, with unmalted roast barley and a hop bitterness of 35 IBU, though thanks to the roasted malt the flavour is sterner than this figure might suggest. It pours thick and near-black, with a thick dark beige head and a very striking, slightly estery, chocolate and vanilla aroma with notes of raisins and coffee. The rich chocolate palate is smooth and luxurious, with malt loaf, lightly burry hops, some unusual fruit notes and quite a bite of roast. Firm charred notes develop over chocolate and coffee flavours in an impressively long and quite salty finish, with a late tinge of banana.
“The name has now lost its teeth,” wrote Jackson in 1993, referring to Fosters’ removal of the Tooth brand from the label, “although the stout retains its bite.” I’m glad to confirm the continuing truth of that statement. The few rare traditional specialist brands like this that survive among the portfolios of multinationals lead a precarious existence: let’s hope that, like the white horse of Kent, Sheaf Stout remains unvanquished.
Top Tastings 2011
ABV: 4.6%
Origin: Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
Website: www.gose.de
 Bayerischer Bahnhof Gose Original Leipziger Bier Spezialität Gose remains one of the world’s most neglected historic beer styles, perhaps because the handful of breweries producing it remain small craft affairs and until recently it’s rarely been available outside its Saxon heartland. Michael Jackson was writing about it in the various editions of his Pocket Beer Book in the 1990s but it’s not covered by beer competition style guidelines like those issued by the BJCP and has been missed entirely from recent voluminous reference tome The Oxford Companion to Beer. I’ve not yet had the opportunity to track it down at source and had never seen it for sale in the UK or in other parts of Germany, so broke my usual rule of buying exclusively domestic beers while travelling when I spotted bottles from the oldest established Gose revivalist on sale at City Beer Store in San Francisco.
Gose is a wheat beer, but not of the Bavarian variety most familiar in Germany. Instead it’s one of the family of traditional, cloudy and often sour and/or spiced wheat beers once brewed across an arc of Europe that included southern England and the Low Countries as well as northern Germany. Like Belgian witbier, it’s flavoured with coriander, but also has added salt – a practice that would have been frowned upon in Bavaria, where the Reinheitsgebot outlawed the use of flavourings other than hops. It’s naturally conditioned, and was traditionally matured in distinctive bottles with long, narrow necks that weren’t stoppered, but sealed by rising yeast.
Its close relatives include Berliner Weisse and lambics – like the latter it was once spontaneously fermented, although the similarity between the name of the style and the Dutch term ‘geuze’ is likely coincidental. In fact Gose gets its name from Goslar, the city in Lower Saxony where it was first brewed in the early 18th century. But it achieved ascendancy in the great and historic Saxon city of Leipzig, where it became known as the local style, with its own local breweries, some of them set up by relocated Goslarers.
In the first half of the 20th century, Gose went into decline, not helped by the brewers’ practice of deliberately limited supply, and production ceased during World War II. It was revived in 1949 by a private brewer, Friedrich Wurzler, at a scale so small the brewery slipped under the nationalisation radar following the founding of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR, the Stalinist state otherwise known as East Germany) the same year. When Wurzler’s successor died in 1966, Gose became an extinct style, curiously at about the same time when the related style of Brabant witbier was being resurrected from extinction by Pierre Celis in Hoegaarden.
Gose’s own resucitation happened in 1986, three years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, when Lothar Goldhahn refurbished a historic Leipziger pub, the Ohne Bedenken (‘Without consideration’), and determined to revive the tradition of serving the beer. Initially his revived Gose, its recipe developed with the help of a former Wurzler employee and older drinkers with good memories, was contract brewed at the Schultheiss brewery in East Berlin. After reunification, Goldhahn had his own brewery for a while, then contracted to the Andreas Schneider brewery in Weissenburg, Bavaria (no relation to the more famous Schneider Weissbier brewery in Kelheim), who were clearly prepared to be flexible about the Reinheitsgebot.
In 1999, Andreas Schneider bought its own brewpub in Leipzig, in Germany’s oldest surviving railway station, the Bayerischer Bahnhof (‘Bavarian Station’, currently closed to trains due to construction of a new tunnel but due to reopen this year). The brewery here now supplies Ohne Bedenken and is the source of the bottles that have found their way onto the export market, in packaging that includes modern versions of the traditional bottles, although conventionally sealed with a flip-top stopper. A handful of other German breweries have also picked up on the style, including one in Goslar, and the ever innovative US craft brewing sector has experimented with its own versions.
My sample of the Bayerischer Bahnhof version, in a standard US 12oz (355ml) bottle rather than a fancy custom one, poured a cloudy dirty yellow with a thick white head. A gritty aroma was lightly tinged with coriander, heralding a delicate, creamy cereal palate with tangy citrus and only very lightly sour notes kicking in. Spices lurked in the background and a slight orange flavour developed, but though salt was evident, I’ve had beers without added salt that tasted saltier. More cereal lingered in a lightly fruity and pleasantly spicy finish, rounding off a tasty, well balanced, subtle, rounded and refreshing beer that rewarded my lengthy wait to taste it.
I admit I’ve shamelessly cribbed much of the historical background from the reliably authoritative Ron Pattinson, who provides further detail at www.europeanbeerguide.net/leippubs.htm.
Top Tastings 2011, Beer sellers: The Beermongers
ABV: 9%
Origin: Bend, Oregon, USA
Website: www.bendbrewingco.com
 Bend Hop-Head Imperial India Pale Ale My trip to one of the US’s top craft beer cities, Portland, Oregon, in Autumn 2011 could easily have accounted for half my Top Tastings of the year, but to spread things out a bit I’ve limited myself to a few outstanding and representative beers. This is one of them, an amazing West Coast hop bomb that also manages to be seriously complex. It originates from a brewpub overlooking the Mirror Pond which, with the surrounding Drake Park, provides the scenic focus of the town of Bend, on the Deschutes river. Deschutes is also the name of one of the US’s most successful and impressive craft breweries, a near neighbour, but the beers produced by Tonya Cornett and Ian Larkin at the much smaller Bend Brewing hold their own in terms of quality.
Hop-Head is brewed as an autumn seasonal, and I tasted it on draught at one of Portland’s leading specialist pubs, Belmont Station, which doubles as a beer shop. The beer is a clear golden colour with a persistent white head and an aroma packed with resins and esters – pear, apple and pine. The rich palate burrs with hops, revealing layers of coconut, citrus, apricot tart, toast, pot herbs and even a bit of meatiness and smoke, with a slight alcoholic burn and an almost meringue-like sweet and pasty note. That apricot fruit persists in a finish which soon develops a massive peppery, chewy, pulpy and resinous hop attack, but the delightfully complex fruit steers you through it. One of the examples of the style that I’ve enjoyed the most.
 Box Steam Funnel Blower Top Tastings 2011
Southwest porters and strong beers
ABV: 4.5%
Origin: Colerne, Wiltshire, England
Website: www.boxsteambrewery.com
Family-owned Box Steam, founded in 2004 near Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s celebrated Great Western Railway tunnel under Box Hill in rural Wiltshire, is a brewery well worth keeping an eye on. I bumped into them in Bristol at a regional heat of the innovative Sainsbury’s Great British Beer Hunt. Unfortunately the beer they put forward at that event, the very decent porter Dark and Handsome, didn’t make the final. Maybe they should have entered their special vanilla porter, Funnel Blower, as the review bottle they gave me turned out to be splendid.
This dark and dense brown beer, previously known simply as Vanilla Porter and dosed with roasted barley and real vanilla, has won numerous festival awards in cask form. My bottle conditioned sample poured with a fine light beige head, throwing off a rich chocolate and vanilla aroma with plenty of cakey malt. There was more vanilla, though subtly blended, on the palate, along with some fruity flavours that were more reminiscent of darker cask ales, and an almost whiskyish note. The smooth, slighty stony palate turned roasty and tarry. The vanilla softened the sharpness of the roasted flavours, keeping the beer accessible and attractive while adding to its complexity.
The curious name, by the way, follows the same Brunel theme as all the brewery’s beers. It refers to an accident aboard the engineer’s steamship the Great Eastern, one of the largest ships in the world when launched at Millwall in 1858. During its maiden voyage in the English Channel, one of the five funnels was blown off by a buildup of excess steam caused by an exhaust mistakenly left closed. Six crew members died and several more were badly injured. The results of enjoying the beer that commemorates the event should, I hope, prove less catastrophic.
 Pakenham Arms, London WC1 It’s testament to the current dynamism of the beer scene in London that, 11 months after I finally drew the line under the ever-growing list of potential contents for The CAMRA Guide to London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars, I’ve just posted a near-40 page update listing around 65 additional places to drink (and with still more to investigate), and 21 operating breweries — over 50% more than when the book went to press.
This is the second PDF update, the first having been published simultaneously with the book itself, and collects together all the additional pub and shop reviews and brewery updates that have appeared on this site in a handy format similar to the book itself. You can download it here.
To make things easier for readers, the essential additions are highlighted. They include an impressive list of new beer specialists. Beer Boutique, The Botanist, BrewDog Camden, the Bull, the Craft Beer Company, the Duchess of Cambridge and Tap East are among the names that have grabbed beer geeks’ attention but there are other important newcomers, like Antic’s craft beer flagship the Red Lion and the dazzling Sussex Arms out in Twickenham.
More modest developments like the revamped Pakenham Arms, the new management at the Duke of Hamilton and the reopened Tapping the Admiral are also welcome. Upmarket burger chain Byron’s espousal of craft beer is significant in reaching out to new audiences.
Then there are the places I simply overlooked, like Teddington gem the Masons Arms and Fulham’s German-themed Fest. The updates do better justice to Antic’s estate and catch up on a few more Nicholson’s pubs worth knowing.
There are undoubtedly more changes to come, so look out for further new material on the website, and for the next update which is due in July, just in time for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
For more see the London page.
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
West London: Twickenham and Hampton Hill
 Sussex Arms, Twickenham TW2 (London) Contemporary pub, specialist (Punch)
15 Staines Road, Twickenham TW2 5BG
T (020) 8894 7468
Open 1200-2300 (2230 Sun). Children welcome until 2000.
Cask beers 10-12 (Unusual guests) Cask marque, Other beers 40+ bottles, Also 6 ciders/perries, some wines.
Food Pies and pub grub, Outdoor Large beer garden, front terrace, Wifi. Flat access but no disabled toilet.
Tue acoustic music, monthly Irish session, other events planned.
The transformation in July 2011 of this big “brewer’s Tudor” roadhouse just west of Twickenham Green from a sink boozer (“it wasnt a nice place,” said a customer) into a flourishing beer and cider specialist is yet more evidence of craft beer’s renewed ascendancy in the capital. The pub is a Punch lease but by special arrangement is able to source beer from all over, so friendly and expert managers Ashley Zobell and the appropriately named Peter Brew preside over up to 12 handpumps dispensing beer and another six with cider or perry.
Beers tend to be from small producers, often in unusual styles, and come from all over the UK, chosen with the aid of ratings sites like ratebeer.com: Bradfield, Hardknott, Ilkley, Nelson, Otley and Three Castles have all appeared and you might often spot a Scottish brewer like Cairngorm, Highland or Orkney. Tasters are provided to help you choose. Bottles widen the choice further — Chimay and Rochefort Trappists, Belgian fruit beers and strong stuff like Tripel Karmeliet, several BrewDogs, reliable British bottle conditioned beers from Cheddar, Downton and Hepworth, US entrants from Goose Island, Odell and Stone. As if this wasn’t enough, beer festivals are planned to widen the range still further, and they’re hoping to install an experimental nanobrewery as a point of interest rather than a commercial proposition.
The environment is pleasant too — the original dark wood and leaded windows have been restored, there’s dark wood furniture and floorboards and a delightful little room at the back tiled in green and white. Beyond this, an old market barrow forms the centrepiece of a large and attractive beer garden. As food goes, pies are a highlight — the chef is a specialist baker and pastry chef — but there’s also sausages, fish, stews, vegetarian options and a range of artisanal cheeses that provide a perfect match to the great beers. Unsurprisingly the formula is attracting enough of a crowd of thirsty and appreciative drinkers to make even a pub of this size seem busy.
National Rail Strawberry Hill Bus First Cross Road (110 Twickenham, Hounslow, 490 Twickenham, Feltham) Cycling Link to LCN+ 37, Hampton Wick, Brentford Walking River Crane Walk linking to London Loop
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
West London: Chiswick
 Tiles at the Tabard, London W4 Traditional pub (Taylor Walker/Spirit)
2 Bath Road W4 1LN
T (020) 3582 2479 W taylor-walker.co.uk
Open 1200-2400 (Thu-Sat 0100). Children welcome until 2100.
Cask beers 5 (Young’s, local & other guests) Cask marque, Also A few malts and wines.
Food Taylor Walker pub grub menu, Outdoor Front/side terrace, Wifi. Disabled toilet.
Fringe theatre/comedy in upstairs theatre, alternate Sn blues, ocasional quiz.
“We’re the best real ale pub in west London,” the cellar manager of the Tabard tells me with admirable loyalty. The claim may be debatable, but this large and friendly place just round the corner from Turnham Green Tube is certainly several cuts above average for the Taylor Walker chain in terms of beer choice, and has many other attractions. It’s on the southwest corner of Bedford Park, the “garden suburb” development of the 1880s that also spawned the Duke of Sussex (p221), and likewise celebrates the Arts and Crafts style of the day.
The handsome, rustic-styled exterior, designed by Norman Shaw, still displays its original sign, and encloses a series of rooms preserving some fascinating original features. Don’t miss the spectacular tiles by William De Morgan in the right hand bar, and also look out for the tiled fireplaces, one of which includes a depiction of nursery rhyme heroine Little Bo Peep. Further points of interest are the popular upstairs theatre, which has played host to the likes of Al Murray and Russell Brand; a blissful lack of piped music; and its proximity to the green spaces of Acton Green and Chiswick commons — it’s popular with amateur footballers enjoying a pint after midweek practice.
Of the five real ales on offer, only Young’s London Gold is a resident. The rest constantly change, often chosen in response to customer request. Beers with a localish slant are particularly favoured and breweries regularly supported include Itchen Valley, Purity, Red Squirrel and Sambrook’s. Staropramen is the best lager choice. There’s an extensive but standardised pub grub menu including sandwiches, jackets, burgers, pies, steaks, fish and chips and a “mega masala”.
Underground Turnham Green Cycling Link to LCN+ 35
London’s Best Beer, Pubs and Bars updates
West London: Fulham and Hammersmith
 The Swan, London W6 Traditional pub (Nicholson’s/Mitchells & Butlers)
46 Hammersmith Broadway W6 0DZ
T (020) 8748 1043 W nicholsonspubs.co.uk/theswanhammersmithlondon
Open 1000-2300 (2400 Fri-Sat, 2230 Sun). Children welcome until early evening.
Cask beers 10 (Fuller’s, Sharp’s, St Austell, Nicholson’s guests) Cask marque, Other beers 2 keg, 5 bottles, Also Some wines.
Food Nicholson’s pub grub menu.
This large landmark street corner pub, right in the centre of Hammersmith opposite the shopping centre and a short step from major music and comedy venue the Apollo, began life as an 18th century coaching inn, and was demolished and rebuilt in the early years of the 20th century when the District Line was routed underneath it. It spent recent years as an anonymous circuit drinking bar — “a bit of a s***hole,” according to one regular I talked to — before being splendidly refurbished by Nicholson’s late in 2009. The new incarnation has reclaimed the pub’s early Edwardian opulence — elaborate ceilings, big plaster arches, pillars, tiling, stained glass, mirrors, wooden partitions, a marble bar top and a distinctive double staircase leading up to the usual Nicholson’s dining rooms.
Beer choice is also impressive, with a row of ten handpumps dispensing Nicholson’s regular trio of London Pride, Doom Bar and Tribute plus, usually, Thornbridge Jaipur and interesting guests from the pubco’s seasonal list: beers from Adnams, Brains, Brentwood, Stonehenge and Thwaites occupied the pump clips when I visited. A few more bottles than usual — Duvel, Meantime Chocolate, Sierra Nevada Pale — join keg Pilsner Urquell and Suffolk Blonde among the other options. A very welcome addition to this busy west London town centre.
Underground Hammersmith Cycling LCN+44, Putney, Fulham, link to NCN4 Walking Thames Path
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Cask  This pioneering new book explains what makes cask beer so special, and explores its past, present and future. Order now from CAMRA Books. Read more here.
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