Best of British

Now my local Marks & Sparks has upped their game to stock more in the beer section I have been able to try a few more of the “exclusively for” beers that M&S’s beer buyer has arranged for us all. St Austell do a lot of them, in fact if you see Cornish on a beer bottle it is a good bet it is brewed by them, London is usually Meantime and Adnams is the Suffolk brewer.

Not a bad thing, in fact good old M&S has had more unique beers for me to try than any other supermarket and Loughton has much larger stores than it’s branch of M&S so for this one to beat the others… they are doing well. Whether the beers are subtly different from the breweries other beers or they are fresh takes on old recipes is neither here or there for me. It’s the fact they are easily available and tasty!

Over the next couple of weeks expect to see a few reviews of their beer range!

Side note, I really do love the union jack bottle caps!

Pub Cats!

How cool is this!

http://www.pubcats.com/

Some fantastic person has started a website to praise the pub moggy!

As most should have guessed I am a cat fan, I like dogs too but I share my home with three cats. One of which is my avatar on the web, the black and white monster in the top right hand side of this page.

Pub cats website is aiming to create an interactive map showing where pubs are that will provide feline company to go with your pint. The gentle company of a cat, unlike the pub dog who is just after your crisps, the cat is only (usually) after a head scratch and a quiet place to curl up next to you for a nap...

Purrfect.

Sadly pub mogs are a rare breed these days, even if I can think of a few pubs in the City of London that desperately need one to stop the hoards of mice! I heard though the hopvine that the cat of the Seven Stars Tom Payne is no longer with us which is a shame, he was a lovely character and didn't mind the ruff!

Last pub moggy we saw was in Battle in the Kings Head, a small black longhair who settled down for a nap with our table. Love to see more of them.

Diamond Jubilee Beers

Brewers love these special occasions to come up with new beers or to dust off old traditional recipes.

Yesterday I saw in M&S their beer for the Jubilee which I will be popping along to get at most stage, however I have decided against looking online for other beers. This special occasion I will be looking in the shops and not worrying about the ones that got away from me that I have found online.

Any folks out there with a Jubilee beer already in their cupboards?

Battle of the Beer Bottles

Yesterday was the Virgin London Marathon and it was from cheering point at mile 22 that I can say that the female runner in the Hook Norton Bottle was quite cheerfully out running the male London Pride Bottle. This year's third place was held by the lady in the Adnams Bottle but well done for a hard race in the sunshine and wind!

Well done to all runners, you did brilliantly!

Redefining Smooth...

Apparently Caffrey's is redefining smooth by having their beer for sale in.....


...wait for it.......



aluminium bottles.

Woo!

Whilst the campaign is very pretty and glossy, as spotted in one of the monthly magazines I picked up over the weekend, it just seems a bit of a crap point to sell your beer on.

I'm sure these bottles have been used before by one of the major brands and it just seems daft. The adverts themselves are moodily shot with models but the bottle jars with the image.

Pubs & Food

I think that the only thing which will kill off the beer movement is food.

Or lack of......

Yes, designer snacks which are meat based are lovely but where Wetherspoons and Nicholsons work better than craft pubs is that they have a menu of food that can be quickly brought to the table, for the table.

Some folk are lazy, once you are at a place that you like and nab a table, a group of folks can remain there for a long time. Food isn't the biggest part of the bill compared with drink but it is there. Pork pies which are popular in pubs now do nothing for group ordering, they are not things you can share out.

I can see where individual serving foods are from, wine bars. But then what craft pubs are missing is the fact that wine bars which are still going (and going well, last one I went to in Covent Garden was heaving!) have moved from these personal serving foods to tapas.

We, British are big ones for sharing food at a table, crisps are opened out wide for all to share. Platters, tapas or bowls of chips are popular, because again, they are great sharing foods.

The folks which have got into beer will move on to places where you can socialise and eat, beer is a novelty at the moment but soon that will fade off.

People will want to go to a place and settle for an evenings laughter and drinking and that includes food.

Brains' Original Stout

4.1% Abv

Smoky

Roasted Coffee Beans

Ashy

Malty and fades into nothingness with a coffee kiss on the end

Brains’ Original Stout is a good mainstream stout, better than Guinness in the fact that it actually is brewed to have taste and not to be served at ice forming temperatures to disguise the lack of flavour.

It is not as smooth as some stouts and does have a heavy roasted coffee and ashy flavour combination which is odd but strangely morish.

As a lunchtime beer it went very well with the ploughman’s I had sorted out from the fridge and with the chocolate cake. The ashy notes are very weak and food overcomes them as I was a bit concerned that it would jar with the food but it worked well.

For a stout which can be picked up locally from most supermarkets (at least in my area) it is a very nice change from the usual one stout that sells. And so to nab their slogan; use your brains and drink theirs.