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Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
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Beer sellers: Westholme Store
ABV: 5%
Origin: Melmerby, North Yorkshire, England
Website: www.hambletonales.co.uk
 Hambleton Nightmare Stout Nick Stafford’s Hambleton brewery is one of the most technically accomplished of British micros — and its founder is one of the more prominent characters on the beer scene. As commercial director of small brewers’ organisation SIBA, among other achievements he established the Direct Delivery Scheme enabling small brewers to sell to pubs owned by pub companies without the beer being trucked through central depots.
The brewery, which makes much of its Yorkshire identity and its roots in the community, has expanded and moved twice since being founded in 1991 — since 2005 it’s been on an industrial estate in picturesque Swaledale. The logo is a representation of the Kilburn White Horse, a local landmark cut into a hillside not far from the brewery in the 1850s, and many of the beer names have equine themes.
The bottled beers don’t get round as much as they ought to, which is a shame, as bottling capacity is one of the brewery’s strengths — they also contract bottle for around 30 other breweries and are proud of their quality record. They make no apologies for not bottle conditioning, instead cold filtering their beers, and the results demonstrate that if bottled with care, filtered beer can rival “real ale in a bottle” at its best.
Nightmare is a great example. This “stout porter” was one of the brewery’s early award winners in cask, and the bottled version lives up to that reputation. I’d place it as a particularly smooth and lighter coloured example of a stout, but the standard beer judging guidelines published by the BJCP in the USA cite it as an example of a “brown porter”. It’s made from four malts — I suspect brown and chocolate malt amongst them.
The beer is dark brown with a burgundy tinge and a fine beige head. A burnt toast, caramel and blackcurrant pastille aroma forms a prelude to a smooth and complex palate with lots of fruit — physalis, raisins, plums — and notes of toffee and liquorice, offset by a pleasant chocolate dryness and a touch of acidity. A slight sweetness mellows a chewy, burry hop fnish with more fruit that finally turns gently pursing.
The name is one of the brewery’s horsey puns but the beer is the stuff much more pleasant dreams are made on.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hambleton-nightmare-bottle/5545/
Beer sellers: Westholme Store
ABV: 5%
Origin: Horsham, West Sussex, England
 Hepworth Ridgeway Oxfordshire Blue Ridgeway, based at South Stoke just south of Wallingford in Oxfordshire, is a beer firm set up by former Brakspear brewer Peter Scholey when that historic company pulled out of brewing. The brand name references the prehistoric trackway, the Ridgeway, which passes nearby on its way along the crest of the chalk Chiltern Hills. The beers, however, are brewed some way south though still in chalky country, in Horsham, Sussex, at Hepworth — set up by Andy Hepworth, another survivor of an independent brewery closure, in this case King & Barnes.
Strong bitter Oxfordshire Blue claims to be “the first bottle conditioned beer brewed deliberately to taste great chilled with food at a barbecue” but it’s decent enough on its own. A hazy golden peachy colour with a thick white head, it has a flowery fruity salad aroma with a curious leather strap undertow. The palate is also floral and fruit salad tinged, at first dry and spicy though with a sugary note and flowery resinous hops. A lemon jelly finish has sweetish malt, peach fruit and crisp twiggy hops that turn peppery bitter later.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/ridgeway-oxfordshire-blue/59530/
Beer sellers: Westholme Store
ABV: 5%
Origin: Yattendon, West Berkshire, England
Website: www.wbbrew.com
 West Berkshire Dr Hexter's Healer From the image on the label, you might guess that Dr Hexter was some eccentric Victorian quack, but he turns out to be a more contemporary local character — the landlord of a pub in Wantage for whom this beer was originally developed. The brewery, too, began in a pub — the Potkiln in Filsham, where it was founded in 1995 by Dave and Helen Maggs. In 1997 it relocated to a freestanding plant which has since expanded into what the owners are proud to describe as the biggest independent brewer in Berkshire.
Brewed from Maris Otter barley and with three hop varieties including a US import, this decent strong bitter, sampled in filtered, bottled form, pours mid-amber with a decent off-white head. The malty, toasty aroma has fruit and olive notes and polleny hops. A smooth and malty palate has autumn fruit, citrus feel and a developing grapefruit hop tang offset by a sugary note. The long, rounded and bitterish finish has sappy fruit and malt and a slight mineral tang.
It may not do much to heal you, but it could certainly perk you up a bit.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/west-berkshire-dr-hexters-healer/1310/
 The Lade Inn and Scottish Real Ale Shop, Kilmahog, Callander, Scotland A couple of decades ago, a Scottish Real Ale Shop would have sounded like a preposterous joke. Though Scotland boasted notable historic brewing centres such as Alloa and Edinburgh, in the post-war period Scottish brewers moved further and faster with consolidation and the development of pasteurised national keg brands than their colleagues south of the border. On the formation of CAMRA in 1971, only two significant Scottish independent cask beer brewers were still in operation, and the country was regarded as a real ale desert for some time thereafter.
 Vintage Belhaven clips at the Scottish Real Ale Shop The change, when it came, was dramatic. A mushrooming of micros has pushed the country’s craft brewery count to around 50. Consumer demand has been fed by a growing domestic interest in fine Scottish food and drink, one strand of a growing cultural distinctiveness boosted by devolution in 1999. And some breweries have done very well by playing to Scotland’s romantic international cachet and the Scottish diaspora in the tourist and export markets.
Against this background, the opening of the Scottish Real Ale Shop at Kilmahog, in the Trossachs near Callander, in 2007 was a particularly smart move. There’s not a little irony in the fact that this shop window of Scotland’s beer renaissance is on the site of a former temperance tea room. The handsome whitewashed building sits on the A821 just beyond its junction with the A84 between Stirling and Loch Earn, where the road crosses a lovely burn, the Garbh Uisge (“rough water” in Gaelic). It was built in 1935 as the Wayside Tea Rooms and Guest House for two teetotal sisters who ran it until 1965, after which – to their horror – it became licensed and known as the Lade Inn.
When Frank Park took over the pub in 2005, a recently installed microbrewery in an outhouse was producing beers developed with Douglas Ross of the nearby Bridge of Allan brewery, now Traditional Scottish Ales. But the brewery proved a headache and Frank closed it shortly afterwards, contracting the beers to TSA. Considering a new use for the outhouse, he and his son-in-law Fred Wilde settled on the idea of a beer shop. Fred has since gone on to repeat the trick for another region with a burgeoning beer scene, opening the award winning West Country Ales in Cheddar, Somerset.
 Interior of Scottish Real Ale Shop Over 130 beers from over 30 different breweries are stocked in the relatively small but pleasantly appointed space. Besides good ranges from relatively well distributed producers like Arran, Belhaven, Broughton and Williams Brothers, there are generous showings from Fyne and Traditional Scottish Ales, and bottles from a small breweries in far-flung parts of the country: Cairngorm in Aviemore, Colonsay in the Western Isles, Isle of Skye, An Teallach in Wester Ross. Lovers of strong special beers will be delighted by Traquair House and Jacobite ales, Harviestoun’s Ola Dubh, Innis & Gunn special issues such as the lovely Canada Day, and Orkney Dark Island Reserve.
 The Lade Inn's own brands, brewed by Traditional Scottish Ales nearby. If truth be told the shop’s name is something of a misnomer as only a minority of the beers satisfy the definition of Real Ale in a Bottle: bottle conditioned beers are still rare in Scotland and most of the beers on sale here are filtered. Exceptions come from Black Isle, Islay, Tryst and the tiny Moulin brewery near Pitlochry. The Lade Inn beers are on sale of course, including in minikegs, and there are a few ciders, glasses and T-shirts. Tastings are provided most weekends and the Trossachs Beer Festival, held across the pub and shop in late August and early September, recently celebrated its fifth year.
 Giant wall sign at Scottish Real Ale Shop, in case passing tourists are in any doubt. It’s a stunning setting in which to explore fine ales. Across the bridge the conifers of the Queen Elizabeth Forest Park clothe the lower slopes of Ben Ledi (879m), while further along the road the spectacular lochside of Loch Venacher reaches into the heart of the Trossachs. Back to town along the A84, red kites hover over the Callander Crags that tower forbiddingly above this handsome Victorian resort. In 2002 the area’s natural beauty was recognised when it became part of Scotland’s first national park, Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.
Yet it’s surprisingly accessible. Callander is one of the park’s gateway towns with a reasonable bus service from Stirling: I got here this way on my first visit, completing my journey with an easy 20 minute walk on the walking and cycling route that follows a disused railway alongside the burn. My next visit was in a car with an empty boot – it’s only about an hour’s drive from Glasgow and not much longer from Edinburgh.
 A wee tasting never went amiss. The setting lures customers from across the Central Belt and beyond. “We have regulars from Washington DC who have a summer cottage here,” says Frank, “and we’ve sent beer to most European countries, Japan and Australia, mainly to people who know the beers from visiting Scotland.
“The variety of Scottish ales is tremendous,” he continues. “And over the past few years we’ve seen great improvements in quality and consistency: we have very few customer issues with our stock. I believe we’ll see more and more small breweries springing up over the next few years, particularly those targeting the local customer with local ales.” The real ale desert seems a distant memory.
Fact file
Address: Lade Inn, Kilmahog, Callander FK17 8DN
Phone: +44 (0)1877 330152
Web: www.theladeinn.com/microbrewery
Hours: 1200-1800 (1230-1830 Sundays) or by special arrangement at other times within licensing hours
Drink in? Selected lines also sold in neighbouring pub
Mail order: via website
Manager’s favourites: Lade Inn LadeBack (the bestselling beer in both shop and pub) and a wide range of other beers.
Beer picks
All from Scotland
Beer sellers: Scottish Real Ale Shop; Top Tastings 2011
ABV: 4%
Origin: Larbert, Falkirk, Scotland
Website www.trystbrewery.co.uk
 Tryst Drovers 80/- Tryst is a strong candidate for the list of the most underrated breweries in the UK — I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad beer from this micro just outside Falkirk. The wide range of accomplished bottle conditioned beers is particularly rare and noteworthy among Scottish brewers. A good number of the beers are unusual and innovative for Scotland, but brewer John McGarva can also turn his hand to traditional styles, as with this impressive take on an 80/-.
The beer is a rich mid-brown with a creamy beige head and a slightly yeasty and varnishy aroma yielding spice cake, malt and figgy fruit tones. The toasty malt palate has a lightly fruity note with sweetish cinder toffee flavours and a suggestion of sage in a dab of herbal hops, the result of a modest but noticeable late addition to the kettle. A gentle hop burr emerges from a comforting, lightly roasty sweetish malt finish with the slight crack of burnt toast.
There’s some more background to the brewery in my review of Brockville Dark and Carronade IPA.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/tryst-drovers-80–aka-wheel-ale/71979/
Beer sellers: Scottish Real Ale Shop
ABV: 4.5%
Origin: Throsk, Stirling, Scotland
Website: www.traditionalscottishales.com, www.theladeinn.com
 Traditional Scottish Ales Lade Inn LadeBack In 2003, the owners of the delightful Lade Inn in the Trossachs near Callander decided to add to the pub’s attractions by opening a microbrewery in an outbuilding, developing a range of own brand beers in collaboration with Douglas Ross of Bridge of Allan Brewery. In the event the brewery proved problematic and shut down a year later, the building later being converted into specialist off license the Scottish Real Ale Shop, but the beers endured, brewed under contract by Douglas at what’s now Traditional Scottish Ales. They’re available in cask in the pub, but also in filtered, bottled form as an additional point of interest in the shop.
LadeBack is business owner Frank Park’s particular favourite, a well balanced and accessible amber Scottish ale which I enjoyed on cask at the pub. A biscuity, slightly whiskyish and orange tinged aroma rises from a smooth and persistent yellowy-white head. The palate is malty and smooth with sweet fruit and controlled rooty hop notes. The finish is subtly fruity and creamy with a touch of powdery dryness in a careful balance of malt and hops. You can almost forgive it the groan-inducing name.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/trossachs-ladeback/34499/
Beer sellers: Scottish Real Ale Shop
ABV: 4.5%
Origin: Pitlochry, Perth & Kinross, Scotland
Website: www.moulininn.co.uk
 Moulin Brewery Real Ales Special Brews From one of Scotland’s (and the UK’s) smallest and most scenically situtated breweries comes this bottle conditioned rarity in an intriguingly screen printed bottle. It’s from the village of Moulin, actually the historic centre of an ancient parish that includes nearby Pitlochry, the latter now bigger and better known since its days as a Victorian tourist resort.
In 1995 the owners of the Moulin Inn, a pub at least three centuries old, opened a brewery in the old stables and coachhouse opposite, with most of the production sold through the pub both as draught cask and carry out bottles. Occasionally the beer does venture further afield, as evidenced by this example which popped up at the Scottish Real Ale Shop, though the cask beer is usually limited to nearby outlets.
Ale of Atholl, a pun on the name of nearby geographical feature the Vale of Atholl, was the first regular brew. Pleasingly, though the pub owners’ background was in brewpub management in England, they opted for a beer more in tune with local tastes, adopting the slightly sweeter, darker, maltier profile of a traditional Scottish ale.
This is a dark ruby beer with a thick and creamy beige head. The aroma is slightly cakey with mineral malt and a hint of dark fruit, setting up a date-tinged palate with a big bite of biscuity cakey malt enlivened by fruity esters and a definite, but not too troubling, acidic note — I woudn’t advise storing the beer for too long before drinking. The finish is complex and chewy with tart fruit and nutty malt notes. The bitter balance is more thanks to roast than hops, and there’s a slightly powdery, pursing character at the end.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: www.ratebeer.com/beer/moulin-ale-of-atholl/16040/
Beer sellers: Scottish Real Ale Shop
ABV: 6%
Origin: Swannay, Orkney, Scotland
Website: www.highlandbrewingcompany.co.uk
 Highland (Swannay) Orkney Blast One of Britain’s most northerly breweries and one of its more ambitious, the Highland Brewing Company’s Swannay Brewery was established by Rob Hill, formerly with the Orkney Brewery, originally as a beer firm that contracted out to English breweries. Since 2006, however, it’s had its own small plant, recently expanded, on a Orcadian farm. “World Class Ales” claim the labels, and the beers certainly do their best to live up to it.
Orkney Blast is a notably strong and characterful golden ale that in 2010 won CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Scotland competition — although it’s brewed from the decidedly English ingredients of Maris Otter pale malt and hops from south of the border. The result is a rich gold brew with a fine just off-white head.
On cask at the 2010 Great British Beer Festival, I found it had a cereal fruit aroma with plentiful esters and slightly farmyardy, almost pooey notes. A rich and weighty but dry and quite hoppy palate was generously fruity and mouth-filling with impressions of apricot tart and pine resins. A slick of nectary malt underlined a slow developing piney bitter hop finish with more apricot fruit and chewy tannins. Overall a big beer, but it didn’t really cohere and take flight with me.
Although it was the cask version that won the award, I found myself more impressed with a bottled version bought in 2011 at the Scottish Real Ale Shop. The beer isn’t bottle conditioned but the light haze was suggested of a basic filtration and there was no obvious pasteurisation. There were no musty notes on the aroma which had fruit salad, citrus and pale malt with hints of tropical fruit emerging. Again the palate was firm and big and almost Tripel-like, very fruity and slightly sweetish — I picked up peach notes, some sulphur and pine and a a grapefruit bitterness emerging from the fruity wash. The beer bittered further on the swallow with peppery hops building up far back in the mouth over a fruity wash in the finish with notes of orange malt.
In both forms this is an accomplished and tasty beer but I suspect it needs to be really pristine in the cask for the freshness of the fruit notes to soar over the rather burly malt and hops. The extra carbonation in the bottled version helps too. Dare I say it — this might be a good candidate for a craft keg.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/highland-orkney-blast/60258/
First published in Beers of the World April 2009
 mi orge mi houblon I’m particularly proud of this piece as it was the first time I interviewed someone in a language other than English. Christophe Gillard speaks English more than well enough to offer assistance to the international customers in his shop, but talking in greater depth about the business and the local beer culture, he was clearly more comfortable in his native French. What you’re reading below are my translations.
When you’re researching great beer shops and get a personal recommendation from Tim Webb, compiler of the authoritative Good Beer Guide Belgium, you don’t take it lightly. And so I find myself one chilly early spring day on a lengthy but scenic train journey from Brussels to Belgium’s hilly far southeast. My destination is the country’s oldest town, Arlon, provincial capital of Belgian Luxembourg, and the last stop before entering the Grand Duchy of the same name.
It’s a pretty little town rich in Celtic, Roman and mediaeval heritage, with terraced streets clinging to a hillside. Brewing traditions in this rural region are also deep rooted. Sadly few of the once prolific village breweries survived to the 1970s but the past couple of decades have seen a number of intriguing new micros appearing.
 Christophe Gillard, propriètaire de mi orge mi houblon, Arlon. In 2005, local beer enthusiast Christophe Gillard left his job in a Luxembourg bank to “do something I’d enjoy”, opening the town’s first ever beer shop, Mi-Orge Mi-Houblon (Half Barley Half Hops). It’s been a great success, and by the time you read this he’ll have relocated to a new custom-built environmentally friendly wooden building at the bottom of the hill, near the station. As well as bigger and better storage for his range of around 250 beers from 40 breweries, the move will provide better parking for customers that come from far and wide. This might particularly please his patrons among the US troops stationed in nearby Luxembourg, who have been known to turn up in armoured Hummers.
 Présentation des gueuzes artisanales à mi orge mi houblon The shop’s 100% craft-brewed range has good showings for young, small but dynamic local micros like Rulles, Sainte Hélène and Millevertus, all of whom balance appreciation of tradition with healthy innovation. It extends to great beers from other parts of French-speaking Belgium (Caracole, Dupont, Vapeur), some good Flemish choices (Dolle, Anker), a comprehensive range of Trappists (Orval is the province’s sole significant surviving pre-war brewery) and a cellar of fine lambics from the likes of Cantillon and Drie Fonteinen.
Astonishingly for Belgium, there’s a small range of imported beer too. “Belgium has some of the best beers,” says Christophe, “but it’s no longer the case that ‘if it’s Belgian, it’s good’. There are some excellent beers from other countries that Belgians just don’t know about. I find different beer cultures interesting. Breweries in Colorado are brewing Belgian-style beers, while Britain has porters that once influenced Belgian beer styles.” His customers agree as beers from the likes of Thiriez, Unibroue and Flying Dog sell well.
 Des chocolats artisanales à mi orge mi houblon Christophe’s second passion is chocolate, and the unrealised potential for food matching it with beer. He’s teamed up with artisanal chocolatier Jean-François Vaux, originally from the South of France but now based nearby, and the Rulles brewery to create JeanChris Numéro 1, not a chocolate beer but a beer designed to taste with chocolate. Numéro 2 is soon to follow, this time from the Sainte Hélène brewery. You’ll find Jean’s chocolates and several other artisanal food goodies on sale, including as part of beer and chocolate gift packs.
 Des prix des bières et chocolats à mi orge mi houblon Christophe’s enthusiasm for sharing knowledge extends to a tasting club, currently with a waiting list, and a beer (and beer and chocolate) tasting service, as well as the guidance he volunteers as a matter of course to curious customers. And amazingly the shop remains a second job: he also teaches business studies full time, thus the limited opening hours. “I love beer because the tastes are so varied,” he says. “Gueuze is acidic, there’s the bitterness in hoppy beers that you don’t find in any other products, there’s a different beer and a different pleasure for every occasion. It’s la richesse gustative de la bière, beer’s richness of taste”.
Fact file
Address: 56 rue du Gazomètre, 6700 Arlon
Phone: +32 (0)63 677673
Web: www.miorgemihoublon.be
Hours: Tue-Fri 1600-1900, Sat 0900-1830
Drink in? No
Mail order: No
Manager’s favourites: Cantillon & Drie Fonteinen Gueuze, Rulles Estivale, Saison Dupont, Borgo Re Ale
Beer picks
All from Belgian Luxembourg
- Fantôme 8%, Soy-Erezée. Idiosyncratic saison from an eccentric but erratic brewer, dosed with hand-picked local herbs and bursting with berry fruit, toffee and cider notes.
- Millevertus Mère vertus 9%, Toernich. Orange golden triple indulging Belgium’s new taste for hops alongside caramel, toast and spicy citrus. Brewery suggests saying six Our Fathers and three Hail Marys after each swallow.
- Orval 6.2%, Villers-devant-Orval. The most noncomformist of the Trappist beers, at its mature best a taste extravaganza of orange, peach, incense, Indian spice and a slug of sourness.
- Rulles Jean-Chris No 1 6%, Rulles. Soft, clean and fruity amber ale with a lightly roasty finish, designed to be drunk with chocolate but excellent in its own right.
- Saint-Monon Brune 7.5%, Ambly. Tasty brown from a delightfully rustic brewer, with soft rich malt, pastilley winey red fruit, liquorice and herbal hops.
Beer sellers: mi orge mi houblon
ABV: 9%
Origin: Tintigny, Luxembourg, Wallonie
Website: www.millevertus.be
 Millevertus La mère vertus This interesting and very small brewery from rural Wallonia was launched in Toernich in 2006 by an ex-banker with the aid of a retirement bonus. It’s since done well enough to expand in July 2011 to a new and better site in the hamlet of Breuvanne in Tintigny commune. There are three strands to its product range: traditional Belgian ales, beers with unusual ingredients including a tasty wheat beer with mirabelle plums, and commissioned commemoration and event beers.
Mère vertus, originally known as Mère supèrieure (Mother Superior), is one of the first class, a strongish twist on an abbey tripel made with barley malt, wheat and four undisclosed hop varieties. It’s a hazy golden bottle conditioned beer with a foamy off-white head and a complex spicy hop aroma with some slightly medicinal phenolic notes. A cheerful palate is fruity, spicy, seedy and lightly marmaladey with obvious alcohol. It’s a little on the hoppy side for the style, with a controlled but coating bitterness on the finish with herbs and black pepper emerging over apricot syrup.
“After every swallow you will say six Our Fathers and three Hail Marys,” demands the forbidding looking nun on the label. I’m not a religious or a guilt-ridden type, but I can see how a beer like this might make you feel self indulgent.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/millevertus-la-mere-superieure/84796/
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