Bavarian Beer trip

We've been members of CAMRA Members' Investment Club (CMIC) for many years but had never before managed along to any of their brewery trips, but, when we spotted that there was a trip this year to Bamberg, Franconia, we thought it was too good a chance to miss for a short break.

Getting there from Aberdeen involves two flights - Amsterdam-Nuremberg, then the U-Bahn in to the central rail station to catch the super quiet, super smooth Deuthsche Bahn (DB) train to beautiful Bamberg, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

A welcome dinner was arranged for our party of 40 for the first night at Brauerei Spezial just across the street from our accommodation:

Neil Kellett was our tour organiser and he welcomed the gathering, but, first, he had to make a political point by donning this t-shirt:

We were treated to a typical Franconian pork knuckle dish, washed down by the local speciality, a smoked beer. After dinner, Graham Lees, one of the four founding fathers of CAMRA, gave us a short talk about how he and his friends first came across Bamberg on a cycling holiday:

Our hotel across the road was the Brauerei Fassla:

TUESDAY 11/9

An organised trip to Weyermann Maltings, a huge, well-preserved old factory, supplying raw materials to breweries world-wide, rounded off by a couple of hours in their free bar!

The CMIC committee members and a CAMRA NE member lined up for a photo:

The afternoon was free and Jo and I roamed the medieval city, catching up with a few of our fellow travellers on our occasional refreshment stops. The city has 9 breweries/brewpubs within easy walking distance, plus a number on the outskirts which require short local bus journeys.

WEDNESDAY 12/9

The warmest day so far - 29 C - and we chose to walk up to the castle on the hill for a fine view of the city and surrounds before descending again and paying a visit to the town's oldest brewpub:

We had been recommended to pay a visit to the Franconian Beer Museum where a huge range of artefacts commemorating the town's illustrious brewing history were displayed. The only problem was that everything was in German - no translations provided:

A fine trip - looking forward to next year's - possibly to Brussels.

2018 Ale Adventures in USA

Better late than never - here's my annual observations on what we experienced and observed beer-wise on the other side of the Atlantic this summer.

Most of our time was spent, as usual, in Southern Oregon where our family live. The town of Grants Pass (pop. c. 35,000) has acquired two new beer outlets since we were last there 12 months ago - Vice Brewing Co and Double Taps. The former offered a more interesting selection:

Nothing much else had changed locally. Most of our beers were consumed at our daughter's house as our son-in-law slaved away on the barbeque - and virtually all of them from growlers. I have 3 favourite places to refill the growlers - Frank 'N' Stene's Monster Growlers, Cartwright's Market and JD's Sports Pub and Brewery. The former two supply a huge range from mostly West Coast breweries, while the latter actually brews its own beer. I'm all geared up to cycle there and return with a full growler:

Our definite favourite of all the growler beers we sampled was Hop Valley's Bohemian Dub Hop.

We had booked a week in Maui, Hawaii towards the end of our stay and, conveniently, our flight left from Portland - some 4-5 hours drive north - coincidentally at the same time as the long-established Oregon Brewers' Festival was being held. We'd tried to get to this a few times in previous years but never seemed to manage - but now was our chance.

The festival was first established in 1988 and it's the largest outdoor festival in North America, with 85,000 attendees. The site is the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, located in downtown Portland on the banks of the Willamette River - perfect. 80 breweries are represented, split in to 8 separate "trailers":

Strangely, however, each brewery was only allowed one beer, and many of them were distinctly left field brews with weird descriptions and sometimes even weirder names which didn't necessarily explain what type of beer it was.

First of all, however, we each had to buy a festival (plastic) glass and some tokens:

The tokens were $1 each and the glasses contained 4 oz. when filled, but you could ask for a 1 oz. taster. Pretty pricey - $1 per oz.

People came from all over North America - and the world - as witnessed by the number of pins in the maps below:

We enjoyed the overall experience in the hot sun, with plenty of shade from trees and tents, but there were far too many experimental/exotic brews for our tastes. Been there, done that now.

The following day we flew out to Maui and drove over to our resort on the warmer, drier side of the island. There are a few brewpubs and breweries there, but the only one within touching distance of our resort was:

The only other observation from our trip this year is that the trend towards cans, rather than bottles, continues to accelerate. Soon, canned beer will be more than half the beer market, I feel.

Aussie Ale

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Plenty of "craft" beer available on this year's holiday Down Under but the hunt for new outlets serving cask conditioned ale continues. Apart from one day in Melbourne and a few days along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, all of our time was spent in the state of South Australia, mostly around Adelaide city where we know our way around pretty well now, this being the 8th year in a row that we've been there.

Our favourite pub in Adelaide remains the Wheatsheaf Hotel, where there's always an interesting variety of beers available, including one hand-pulled cask, which this year was from one of our favourite brewpubs from the Adelaide Hills - the Bierhaus at Lobethal:

It was the time of the Adelaide Fringe and there were some good gigs at the Wheaty - although, unfortunately, none of them fitted in with the tight travel schedule our daughter had arranged for us:

Let's do this in chronological order - first Melbourne, where a Google search had promised the possibility of cask ale at an outlet up a laneway (usually Aussies shorten their words, but this is one they lengthen for some reason) in the centre of the city - a small place named Penny Blue. It was a cute enough little pub and it had  beers from a brewery I hadn't heard of before, but definitely nothing on cask:

We also paid a quick return visit to the Crafty Squire, one of the James Squire Brewery's brewhouses. The brewery in Sydney is named after (or for, as the Americans would say) a bit of a rogue who was a convict on the First Fleet and who is credited as being the first person to successfully grow hops in Australia. The names of their beers tell the tale - Hop Thief, Swindler, Chancer, One Fifty Lashes etc - you get the drift.

Our first stop on our road trip from Melbourne to Adelaide was Apollo Bay, where we stumbled across the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse (http://www.greatoceanroadbrewhouse.com.au/). Really nice selection of beers - we managed to spend the best part of the afternoon here on their decking looking out at the Southern Ocean:

No such luck on our next stop at Port Fairy, but we knew that, having been there before, there was a brewery at our 3rd overnight stop at Robe:

All their beers are bottle conditioned - this is my favourite:

We had only settled in Adelaide for a few days before we were off again on our travels - down the Fleurieu Peninsula to Carrickalinga. We go there every year and always pay a quick visit to the lovely Smiling Samoyed Brewery (http://www.smilingsamoyed.com.au/) in nearby Myponga. The even better news is that next year we'll be able to go to a microbrewery even closer to the house we stay at in Carrickalinga - Forktree Brewing are currently building a taproom there.

Another away day was on my birthday when we travelled up to the Adelaide Hills to Uraidla. We had lunch outside the hotel there, where we could watch the progress on the new brewery they were putting in next door:

Not far away from there is Prancing Pony Brewery and it would have been rude not to pay them a quick return visit - so we did:

Yet another weekend away was spent in the outback in the Flinders Ranges. On our return journey to Adelaide, we took a slight detour and stopped off at the old mining town of Burra where I happened upon the site of the long closed old Unicorn Brewery there:

Back in the city, a smart new (to us) place where they had an interesting and ever-changing selection of craft beers was Nola (http://www.nolaadelaide.com/):

That was about it for this year.

UK Road Trip 2017

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Just returned from an 8/9 day road trip to England, stopping in 6 different places and, if my counting is right, ticking off 16 ale pubs on the way - 13 of them new to me.

First stop was LIVERPOOL. On a walkabout from Albert Docks up to the Anglican Cathedral, we came across a pub called the Brewery Tap, adjacent to what used to be the Higson's Brewery. It looked promising and was OK, but it definitely wasn't a real brewery tap. They had a couple of ales from breweries I hadn't tried before - Cross Bay and Liverpool Organic. They had some nice etched windows too:

There were 2 pubs on my hit list here - the Roscoe Head, one of the elite group who have appeared in every edition of the Good Beer Guide, and the Philharmonic, whose interior is something to be admired. The former deserves its reputation - a cosy little back street pub with 6 interesting ales, all in good nick. Strangely, however, they have a policy of not offering tasters at all.

The Philharmonic's bar is a beauty:

The Gents' toilets are to be admired as well - but hold your nose as you enter - they stank!:

It's part of the Nicholson's group now.

Nest stop was WINCHESTER. By accident, we stumbled across the Royal Oak, which claims to be England's oldest pub. It's now part of the Greene King empire and, apart from a signboard outside the pub, they seem to be ignoring this heritage. The interior doesn't look particularly old and their web site doesn't even have any photos of the pub. As a pub it's fine - comfortable and nice layout, but why aren't they making more of their history?

Further along the south coast, we stopped overnight at DOVER, where we discovered a lovely brewpub/restaurant called Cullins Yard. Two of their in-house ales - Jimmy's Riddle and Pigs Ear - flanked Adnam's Broadside.

Just north of London, on the Hertfordshire/Essex border, lies BROXBOURNE, where we used to live in the 1970's - this was our next stop. Two of the pubs there were formerly favourites of ours - the Crown and the Bull, the latter a McMullen's pub. Not exceptional, but an acceptable pair of locals.

LONDON would surely provide some interesting fare? The Albert between Victoria and Westminster is another GK establishment but they still had an interesting selection of beers. The Nell of Old Drury has some interesting history. It has an underground tunnel that links the pub with the Theatre Royal across the street, and this was allegedly used by Charles II to visit Nell Gynne in the late 1600's.

Back in Westminster, the Feathers is a hugely popular Nicholson's pub whilst the nearby Buckingham Arms is a Young's outlet which is another of CAMRA's famous four pubs that have appeared in every edition of the GBG.

Friday night and lovely Shepherd Market in Mayfair is mobbed, but we managed to find a seat in Ye Grapes, which used to be a pub I frequented back in the 70's when I worked in the west end. It's as popular now as it was then - and deservedly so.

Our last London pub was the Marquis of Westminster, which, strangely, is in Pimlico. It has a nice dining room above the pub.

CHESTER was next and it had a great selection of pubs, with the pick of them probably being the Pied Bull, which is bedecked with CAMRA awards, both for its in-house ales and also the pub itself. We spotted the Albion, whose landlord is a controversial local character, but it's closed on Sundays.

Along the canal front, there are a few good pubs. Best for food was Artichoke, with 3 good ales too. The Old Harkers Arms has a good choice of 9 ales available and it was warm enough to sit outside late at night:

Just across the road is The Cellar which has an interactive screen displaying the choice of beers:

Interesting trip.

USA/Deeside Brewery/Yorkshire Dales etc

It's been a while since I posted to this blog so here's a catch-up of some ale tales, including from my travels over the last few months:

USA

We did a tour of the south in July, which took in Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Misissippi. Starting in Atlanta, we stayed in the city centre and did the usual touristy things by foot, which meant we didn't travel to the outlying areas of the city where many of the new breweries and brewpubs were situated. We did come across Max Lager's Wood Fired Grill and Brewery and it had a good selection of beers:

On Thursdays, upstairs, they feature a different cask ale each week.

The next stop on our Southern Sojourn was beautiful Savannah. We tried one of the World of Beers outlets, which wasn't bad, but we timed our visit to the Moon River Brewing Company badly as it was the day before their Cask Night - bummer.

Our next two stops - on Hilton Head Island, SC and Pigeon Forge, TN - were unexciting from a beer point of view, but Nashville was much better. Our first - and favourite - stop was at Acme Feed and Seed. Not a brewpub as such but a great selection of beers and good food, plus a wonderful location on the corner of Broadway, overlooking the Cumberland River. Try the rooftop bar.

We tested two of the local brewpubs - Yazoo and Jackalope. The former is definitely a beer only place - no food, other than snacks:

Both brewpubs were worth a visit and the local Rock Bottom outlet also had a nice rooftop bar and some interesting beers.

Like Nashville, Memphis has many attractions and beer isn't exactly at the top of the list, but, like all big US cities, there's always plenty of outlets to try the local brews. We found ourselves returning to the Flying Saucer a couple of times - it's not too far from the craziness of Beale St, but it's just a little more - dare we say, civilised? They had an interesting concept/contest there:

 

The beers are anonymous and the idea is to rate them online after sampling.

We spent the last month of our US vacation with family over in Oregon. It's familiar ground for us so we tend only to repeat visit to places we really like. The local supermarkets have an excellent choice of bottled - and, increasingly, canned - beers, but, as cask is hard to find in fairly rural areas, the next best option is to drink draught (draft) keg, and the easiest way of doing that is by using growlers. Apart from all the pubs who are more than happy to refill growlers, there are both specialist and grocery outlets set up to do the same. The nearest to us and the ones I used most regularly were http://monstergrowlers.com/ and http://www.cartwrightsmarket.com/tap-list/. Getting there was fairly easy - particularly when the bike I use is fitted with the right equipment:

The newest local brewpub was http://www.theram.com/beer/ in Medford:

Their "Happy Hour" runs from 3pm to 9pm!

We also returned to http://calderabrewing.com/brews.html in Ashland:

They usually have one beer on cask - normally a pretty strong "exotic" one.

EDINBURGH

We got back home from our US trip mid-August - just enough time to reacclimatise, recover from the jetlag and then head down to Edinburgh to catch the last weekend of the Fringe. We didn't have time to do any exploring of new (to us) pubs, so stuck to the tried and tested - the Guildford Arms and Cafe Royal were well up to their usual standard.

BRAEMAR

I'll slip in a quick mention here for http://www.moorfieldhousehotel.com/, which I reckon is probably the best pub for beer on Deeside nowadays. The Banchory pubs all seem to be going downhill, but we've found those further up Deeside - like most of the Ballater ones and, particularly the Moorfield in Braemar - are much better. The latter had 4 interesting cask beers on, all in great condition, when we visited recently.

DEESIDE BREWERY TRIP

Early in September, I had arranged with the MD, Steve Crossland for a visit to the brewery by local CAMRA members. Steve showed us round the brewery operations and also introduced us to the new sister operation Twin Rivers Distillery. Here's Steve (4th from left) addressing some of the group of 16 members:

After the brewery visit, we all travelled round to the Ravenswood British Legion for a branch meeting, held outside in the bright sunshine:

YORKSHIRE DALES

Most recently. I spent a long weekend with our walking group in the Dales. Our accommodation was in Kettlewell at http://www.racehorseshotel.co.uk/, which had 4 Timothy Taylor beers on. There are two other thriving pubs in the village:

• http://www.thekingsheadkettlewell.co.uk/ - bit of a gastro pub - excellent food and 3 decent ales, but hardly any space to sit/stand at the bar.
• http://bluebellkettlewell.co.uk/ - as many as 8 ales available, but the food is decidedly at the lower end of the good pub food scale.

During our trip, we also sampled ales in:

• Green Dragon, Hardraw
• Queen's Arms, Litton
• The Falcon, Arncliffe
• White Lion, Cray
• The Fountaine Inn, Linton in Craven
• The Foresters Arms, Grassington
• Fox and Hounds, Starbotton

It was a virtually unanimous vote for the beer of the weekend - Buckden Pike, brewed by Yorkshire Dales of Leyburn. Lovely pub too - and great food.

Aussie Ale Tales

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6 weeks in Australia and only one cask ale! They haven't quite caught up with their American cousins where cask, whilst still very niche, provides a certain amount of kudos to outlets which can offer it alongside the usual variety of keg ales.

Still no movement either on re-filling growlers - the H & S lobby still prevails Down Under. Again, the Americans have no such qualms, with umpteen outlets more than happy to re-fill growlers.

But did we have a good time discovering new brews and brewpubs? You bet we did. Just a short walk from our daughter's house in Semaphore, SA, a new retail outlet - West Side Massive - has been opened by Big Shed Brewing. This was a fairly typical selection:

My one taste of cask ale came at our favourite Adelaide pub - the Wheatsheaf Hotel, who hosted an event while we were there that we would love to have attended but hadn't heard about beforehand - a blind tasting - https://thecraftbeerking.com/2017/01/16/blind-tasting-analysed/.

We again celebrated Australia Day on 26th January. That's the day when Triple-J, the Australian radio station roughly equivalent to our Radio One, reveals the votes for the Hottest 100 tracks of 2016. This long-standing tradition has now been replicated by the Great Australasian Beer SpecTAPular (GABS), who had set up online voting for the Hottest 100 Aussie Craft Beers. Naturally, I took part too. The full results can be viewed here - https://www.gabsfestival.com/aussie-hottest-100/#hottest-100-aussie-craft-beers.

We took a trip to the Red Centre - Uluru/Alice Springs etc - where we discovered that it's not only cask ale that's hard to find - any kind of draught beer was in short supply.

Back in Adelaide, we finally made it through to the relatively new tap room at BrewBoys. It had just opened the day before we came home last year, so we missed out on that occasion, but it was good to finally make it. Their beer selection and some interesting beer-y lightshades follow:

I was delighted to spot that most of their beers were also sold in large 650 ml bottles. I was getting rather fed up of paying high prices for so-called craft beers in tiny little 330 ml bottles - what a scam the whole craft beer sector is - and no wonder many brewers are jumping on the bandwagon - but, beware - a backlash will surely follow when the public wise up. Rant over.

We also paid return visits to a couple of our favourite brewpubs - Lady Burra in Adelaide city centre and Smiling Samoyed in Myponga, 40 minutes south of the city.

 Our local craft beer cafe, Sweet Amber Brew, which had only opened just over a year ago, seems to be going from strength to strength and our daughter's partner, Chris, held his 40th birthday party there.

Probably the most interesting part of our trip from a beer point of view came on the last 5 days of our holiday when we travelled over to the Gold Coast - previously uncharted territory for us. As you can see from some of the photos above, one of my great joys is going to a brewpub I've never been to before and tasting their range from a sampler paddle, and we found 4 good ones - 2 of them crackers.

We took a drive down to Byron Bay and the Cape Byron lighthouse in NSW. The town is a former hippy hang-out that has since been gentrified somewhat, although there are still some remnants of the way things were.

There are, in fact, two brewpubs in the town, but I was driving and could only afford a visit to one of them. The tourist information office gave us directions and advised us that the real local one was Stone & Wood, but I'd tried a few of their bottled beers back in Adelaide and wasn't greatly impressed, so we plumped for Byron Bay Brewery, which we subsequently discovered had been taken over by Lion, a large PLC who control a lot of the Aussie breweries. Don't be deterred, however - it's a super place to chill out and the beers and food were excellent:

In a corner of the outdoor seated area, there is a small stage for the local bands and, occasionally, plays are held.

Our resort was in Surfer's Paradise - no brewpubs there, but we found the House of Brews, which had a good selection of beers and they were happy to indulge my fetish for sampler paddles:

(Our selection noted in the top right corner)

Another day we drove up to the rainforest at Tamborine Mountain - lots of nice walks and falls etc to view. Also, another great microbrewery - Fortitude, which has a cheese factory and bistro adjacent:

Our very last day was spent in Brisbane. We took one of the tourist hop-on, hop-off buses and got off at the South Bank, where it all seems to happen. A short walk from there took us to not one, but two brewpubs, less than 100 yards apart. We were aware of Brisbane Brewing, having Googled it, but the fairly new Catchment Brewing took us by surprise. Although it had been a fairly short walk, it was very hot and steamy and we were in urgent need of refreshment when we finally got there:

Suitably refreshed, we next headed for our original target:

Yes - another sampler tray!

So that's it until next year.