Hi! I am a micro-brewer now retired and would like to just post this little note for people traveling in England.
Despite what you may have heard, traditional English ale or "cask" beer is a marvelous drink and it has been saved and preserved by various independent breweries on the Isles.
The best way to find and enjoy good pubs serving good beer is to contact CAMRA, the organization championing this unqiue style.
One can get their "Good Beer Guide" by mail or in any bookstore. It is the VERY BEST way to select pubs.
Beware! There is bad beer all over the nation. Don't be disappointed.
Thanks for the note Smitty. After all the discussions of wine, it is a refreshing change to read about beer! I always enjoyed the English beer and the pubs.
I could go on at some length but, in a nutshell, "cask" beer is allowed to condition or gain carbonation on its own in the barrel. Thus, it is less prickly than industrial lagers and, for this reason, the sumptuous sensations of the beer itself are front and center.
In addition, one can have a couple of pints and not feel, ahem, uncomfortably distended.
Finally, cask ale is not stripped by filtration. Yes, it is clear and sparkling but you get everything the brewer sent out the door.
Is English ale "warm?" Pish Tosh. It is served at 55 degrees or "cellar temperature. Industrial lagers are served at 40 degrees, the better to skate over your tongue on a tide of bubbles and into your tummy before you notice the absence of malt and hops.
Is 55 degrees "warm?" Well, your tongue is 98.6 degrees. You be the judge. This is a tongue enjoying ale--not being nasty.
Smitty
Posts: 479 | Location: Jacksonville, OR US | Registered: 25 February 2003
Glad to have another beer drinker and fellow-NW beer lover on the board. You can also find cask condition beer here in the NW at local pubs. It is great. We have done several NW road trips which have included finding local NWbrews.
Camra also has a great guide to beer in Holland and Belgium. It will help you locate some of best beers and suppliers in those countries.
- marta
Posts: 7480 | Location: Edmonds, WA | Registered: 25 October 2001
We did Belgium some years ago. Yes, to my way of thinking Belgium is to brewing as Notre Dame is to a country chapel.
No other nations has its brewing heritage on such display in 2003. Yes, it is a heritage in danger but, while one can, they should get Tim Webb's guide and sample some startling and delectable beers.
Posts: 479 | Location: Jacksonville, OR US | Registered: 25 February 2003
I was just talking to a friend who said that all US beer is pasturized, but European beer is not and that is why European beer is better. Is this true? What is pasturization?
I am going to have a beer with dinner!! I probably like beer more than wine - but don't tell anyone over on the Italy forum please!
Anyone can pasteurize and most do. The reason Budweiser and Coors last 90 days on the shelf is because nothig live inside them.
But, oddly enuf, if a brewer leave spores (brewers' yeast) in the bottle, it protects both flavor and essential integrity (i.e., resistance to spoilage). But, of course, those lovely little yeasties are what Pasteurization knocks off.
Much Euro-beer is pasteurized. The Becks, the Heineken, even the vaunted Paulaner and others. Yes, they will trumpet their process as better than others (you don't want to know the details), but it amounts to the same thing.
Heating beer destroys flavors. Beer is more like bread and fish than it is jam or ketchup. It is a living product and, as the Brits say, "tastes best when you can smell the brewery workings." Travel, heat, age are its enemies.
Pasteurization allowed local breweries to create an artificial shelf-life, thus dooming local brewing.
Enough? Want more? Put another nickel in!
Posts: 479 | Location: Jacksonville, OR US | Registered: 25 February 2003
Thank you for the paean to English cask ale, Smitty! My experience with English ales is extremely limited, but I found Adnams (Southwold, eastern Suffolk) to be incredibly good. You're right. Fifty-five degrees F was a perfect temperature for this fine brew. Anything colder would destroy its subtlety.
I could sup Adnams all day long any day of the year. A lovely and dependable beer that is out in the free trade and likely to turn up anyplace.
Anyone who can should drink:
Fullers Youngs Robinsons of Stockport Donnington Batham Taylor's (Landlord is superb) Sam Smith
On cask where they can find them.
I may think of others as I get more thirsty, but these guys are almost bullet-proof. That is, they are fine beers when they leave the brewery and they stand up pretty well to long motorway journeys and rough handling by the spike-haired lager-louts that pubs employ to wrestle casks off the trucks and into the cellars and "tend" them (hah!) whilst they settle down.
Posts: 479 | Location: Jacksonville, OR US | Registered: 25 February 2003
These are all my husband's favourite brews - although his pride was dented a bit to find that someone coming from the land of Budweiser could name one(Donnington)he hadn't yet come across! But he swiftly considered this to be a great challenge and he is now resolved to track it down.
As you are obviously a person of taste and breeding, you might find the following link interesting. This week's Food Programme on BBC Radio 4 is about British beers and you can listen to it by clicking on the appropriate link.
Beebee
Posts: 1954 | Location: London, UK | Registered: 09 September 2002
Yes! We can all take a look at the programme and see what they have to say. I know Protz and Dorber. Anyone who is in range should visit "The White Horse" on Parson's Green. A fascinating pub that has regular events to spotlight fine beers and beer styles.
Dorber is a stockbroker who took over the Horse's cellar many years ago and taught himself "cellermanship," the art of tending cask beers. He did this in his spare time and for no fee. Is he now the "landlord?" Wow!
Why is ale no longer the bevvy of choice for the English middle-class? This is a good question but another might be asked, "Who says it isn't?"
True, one gathers the upper-middle class is drinking more wine and certainly the pub is not the institution it once was. But the UK is probably the 7th ranking beer nation with about 100 liters per capita yearly intake.
The USA is below 90 liters while the Czechs, bless 'em, put down 160+ liters per head. The other leaders are all small (with the exception of Germany) Northern European countries and this mirrors the historic growing regions for brewing baley as opposed to regions more suited to growing wine grapes.
If I had to hazard a guess about declining beer consumption, I would blame "time" or the perception of it. Beer is the social drink, meant to be taken in relatively large volumes. This involves devoting a period for the act and many persons don't seem to find that comfortable in this hurried world.
What does anyone else think?
Posts: 479 | Location: Jacksonville, OR US | Registered: 25 February 2003
I have consulted the oracle and he says that the decline in beer drinking is down to the following factors, at least in part:
- more people travelling in Europe and tasting the wines, with the consequence that pubs now sell better wines than used to be the case.
- too many breweries have been taken over by the big boys who have mostly been interested in making a quick buck
- there is a huge amount of tax on beer. Beer used to be the working man's drink and whisky was only affordable by the few. Now whisky is much cheaper than beer.
- boring lagers are given german sounding names and priced as if they are exotic.
But... the good news is that the real ale afficionados have ensured that the good local breweries are still going strong, and beer throughout the provinces is not lonly plentiful it is cheaper than here in London.
Finally, the oracle suggests that your list is lacking a few fine ales, such as: [LIST]
Marston's Pedigree - a Staffordshire ale,
Greene King's Abbot Ale - from Suffolk
Braine's if you're in South Wales and
a good Kentish ale called Spitfire.
Beebee
Posts: 1954 | Location: London, UK | Registered: 09 September 2002
I can agree with the Oracle that the Pedigree is a nice beer but only when the Burton "sn**ch" isn't evident. He will explain this. But I do like their "Owd Roger" as well as Robinsn's "Old Tom."
I used to find Abbot I liked but it seems to be variable out in the free trade. I loved it back in the mid-80s, or so say my notes. But I only get to England every 4 years or so.
Never had any Brains, but Michael Jackson gives their SA 3 stars. Shephrd Neame's "Spitfire" isn't ranked by him but the other Sheps beers are highly rated. I see I liked Master Brew Bitter in 1986 and 1988 (anyone getting bored, yet?) but didn't care for their Stock Ale.
Well, sounds like it's time for something nice!
Posts: 479 | Location: Jacksonville, OR US | Registered: 25 February 2003
A quote about beer vs. wine from E.M. Forester from Where Angels Fear to Tread, 1920
"They travelled for thirteen hours down-hill, whilst the streams broadened and the mountains shrank, and the vegetation changed, and the people ceased being ugly and drinking beer, and began instead to drink wine and to be beautiful."
About the train from northern Italy to Tuscany. Not my opinion - just a cute quote from a novel.
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