May update/North Sea Ales

From http://iansaleadventures.blogspot.com/

It's exactly a month since I last posted and we're well into Mild Month now, but I certainly haven't seen any out our way. The best pint I've had in the last month was Macbeth at the Burnett Arms, Banchory last weekend - the usual slight haziness, but excellent taste. When out delivering North Sea Ales round the Deeside pubs, I also had a pint of Macbeth at the Boat Inn, Aboyne and it just wasn't anywhere near the same quality as the Burnett's pint.

It seems to me that the Boat Inn has gone backwards a bit in the last year or so. Only 2 handpumps in operation nowadays and I can't remember the last time I had a really good pint in there. The other beer on Monday was Ossian and it was apparently so-so as well - although I didn't try it myself.

The Learney Arms, Torphins had Cairngorm's Mountain Blue on last night, and the Potarch was Deuchar's. The latter still has 2 handpumps on the bar - the second usually for a Deeside ale, but there was none of that when I was there. I also took the opportunity to try again at the Feughside Inn. Dave was there, sitting on the customer side of the bar, but the handpump was once again dry. I think that's at least the last 4 visits that there's been no ale on there. I can understand that they would struggle with ale over the winter, but I would have thought that it would be back on by now if there was any demand at all. I had a brief word with Dave and asked him if he was going to be doing ale again and he said he would be starting at the beginning of next month - but I got the distinct feeling I was being appeased. I left a pile of North Sea Ales anyway.

Delivered to the Elizabethan and Cheers in Fraserburgh yesterday as well. Bumped in to Raymond and Bill from Inverurie (sorry, Bill - forgot your surname) in there, and Bill kindly took some spare copies of North Sea Ale back to Inverurie.

That's all my outlets delivered to now - bar one - the Tor-na-Coille Hotel. I've tried a couple of times to have a quiet discussion with somebody in there who knows something about the beers. Usually, it's so quiet and nobody working knows anything about it, but last night it was incredibly busy and all the staff were run off their feet. I'd been tipped off by a well-known local trade expert that perhaps, just like the recent revelation from the Macbeth Arms in Lumphanan, there may be a case of misleading dispense going on here. I've asked for clarification/confirmation from the Tor-na-Coille Hotel and, at the time of writing, I await their response.

I'm waiting for updates from Deeside Brewery to complete my quarterly BLO report, which is overdue now. Incidentally, I noticed that our local Aberdeen CAMRA web site has a list of contacts, which includes the various BLO's and there's an e-mail address attached to each name, including my own - but it's an address I've never heard of and when I tried to send an e-mail to it, it just bounced back. I noticed also that the brewery is still named as Hillside and that Old Foreigner is still listed there as well?