Borefts #1

Christ, Holland is flat. From the upper deck of this train, you can see for miles. Well, you could see for miles if the Dutch nation, no doubt freaked out by the endless expanse of Netherlands all around them, hadn't planted a lot of trees. The trees follow the road, they follow the canal, they act as waymarkers, and they break up the agoraphobia-inducing sense of colossal sky pressing down with biblical force on the horizon all round.

Buxton SPA (4%abv, Nelson Sauvin dry-hopped special edition) - straw gold colour, slightly hazy. Nose is a touch dieselly, like Riesling (diesling?), almost certainly from the Nelson. Tropical fruit, then slightly tart bitterness. Good.

Thornbridge Baby Black Harry (2.8%) - given that it's advertised as being dry-hopped with Amarillo and Citra, I was expecting a bit of oomph, but it's a pretty straight down the line dark mild, roasty, designed for pints rather than dinky tasting glasses. Nice.

An adapted line from Salt N Pepa's Grammy-winning smash hit "None Of Your Business" loops over and over and over in my head: "If he wants to be a freak and be a beer geek then its none of your business". I'm heading for the Borefts Beer Festival at De Molen brewery, for two days of unashamed beer-geekery. I've got a leather-bound notebook, a purple corduroy jacket, and a mischievous intention to try and introduce the phrase "boutique brewery" to the lexicon over the weekend.

Thornbridge Wye (4.7%) - pale, nay limpid gold. Fresh air (?) and pale malt on the nose, and then the palate bursts at the finish with cucumbers. Yes, it's wet-cucumbered (the antithesis of dry-hopped) in the conditioning tank. Very good, but again, needs at least a half pint to get it.

Mikkeller SpontanDoubleBlueberry (8.5%) - thick indigo, with a persistent purple head. Tart funky nose, intense jammy aroma, violets. Fruity and tart on the tongue, big bursts of red fruit and funk in the finish. Symphonic, superb.

Bodegraven is such a sleepy, two-storey sleeper suburb of a commuter town that it's hard to believe there is anything going on here at all, let alone a dozen or more of the worlds hippest brewers in town pouring beer for a couple of thousand fans. Which makes it all the more thrilling to turn the corner on Overtocht to be confronted with the the mill, De Molen, in full sail, turning briskly in the breeze. My stomach actually lurches at the romance of it all.

Evil Twin Gooseberry Danbic (5%) - hazy pink (aged in red wine barrels) with a weirdly nutty nose. Faint hints of oloroso sherry (oxidation? age? barrels?). Tartly fruity (although could be any fruit), slightly acetic, oddly mousy finish. Interesting.

De Molen Nat & Droog (6.2%) - hazy orange - end of the keg. Massive hopsack and marmalade aroma. Big sweeetness on the palate, then spicy, then a bitterness that after a while develops an oddly chemical note to the hop character, which m'colleague The Beer Nut describes as beeing "too much like sucking hop pellets". Good, becoming odd later.

Soaking up the easy-easy nature of it all. You can wander round the brewery and look at everything, from the shiny stainless beer porn of the brewery itself, to the bottle store, to fresh-filled barrels, to the pallets upon pallets of Keykegs waiting to be filled. Mind gently boggles as it realises there are far to many beers to try.....

Jester King Petit Prince (2.5%) - hazy double-shine gold, appealing witbier/saison nose. Full carbonation, silky and smoothly drinkable, again on the palate a witbier/saison cross. Totally sessionable, and the sun has come out in agreement. Excellent

Jester King Buddha's Brew (4.7%) - cidery nose, slightly mealy and slick on the palate. Gently tart, slightly mousy, but hangs together nicely. Honey, lemon, dry cider in the finish. Good.

Gout & About: A Slow Walk Through the Northern Quarter

Pictured: (L-R): James Campbell (Marble), Kelly Ryan (Thornbridge), Colin Stronge (Marble), Dave Bailey (Hardknott)

Gout is a particularly painful condition, consisting of a build-up of uric acid crystals (or urates) in the joints. Gout can affect any joint, but classically it appears in the second joint of the big toe. I have classical gout. It was painful last week, but this week, it's eased up a bit, and I'm almost normal. Going for a walk through Manchester's Northern Quarter last weekend wasn't a great idea, but throw in a brewery visit and a great pub, and I'm powerless to resist, gout or not.

Marble Brewery have been brewing for over a decade, and brewing damn good beers at that. Until recently, all their beers were certified organic and vegan, happily defying my assertion that organic beers are always compromised on flavour. Marble's beers have flavour packed into them - in fact, they clearly have too much flavour, because as soon as their beer is poured, the excess flavour leaps out of the glass, filling noses, rooms, cities with happy hoppiness. The organic certification has been allowed to slide for a few beers, mainly due to hop scarcity and pricing. The brewery has moved from its (by all accounts) homespun location at the back of the pub to a smartly whitewashed railway arch just down the road. The beers are still great, and their pub, The Marble Arch, is a jewel.

If one thing characterises Marble's beers, it's the extraordinary hop characters they coax into their pale beers. Manchester Bitter (4.2%abv), Summer (4.5%), Lagonda IPA (5%) and Dobber (5.9%) are stuffed beyond belief with exotic hop flavour and aroma. Dobber is the apogee of how much hop character you can stuff into a pale beer - lime, mango, grapefruit, mandarin, lychee. If Dobber wasn't so good, it would seem ridiculous to shower it with so many descriptors, but it's totally justified. My experience is that this beer is slightly more intense in bottle than in cask form, but your mileage (and ideology) may vary. Marble make other beers too - their Ginger is roundly praised, Chocolate is a rich delight, and get comfy, because there's a great tale attached to their latest release (sadly now all gone) Vuur & Vlam.

Vuur & Vlam is a beer originally brewed by the Dutch Brouwerij De Molen. It's a hearty American-style IPA, all resinous hops overlaying toffeeish malts. For this year's Borefts beer festival, festival organiser (and brewer at De Molen) Menno Olivier made the recipe for Vuur & Vlam available to all the invited breweries, and the challenge was to brew the best version they could. Marble's version came second. You might think that there's no shame in coming second to a brewery like De Molen, but in fact, De Molen's version came third. Talk about beating someone at their own game....

The visit was part the latest Twissup organised by Mark Dredge and Andy Mogg. The brewery and pub were the highlight of the Manchester leg. Being of sound mind but unsound body, I sat out the Huddersfield leg, where The Grove will have undoubtedly been the other highlight. You can read other reports on the full event here: BeerReviews.co.uk Pencil&Spoon Tandleman IMHAGOB Oh Good Ale

The Michelin Guide uses its star ranking system to rate restaurants. These stars originally had a specific meaning. One star indicated "a very good restaurant in its category, worth a stop." Two-stars meant "excellent cooking, worth a detour," and three stars reserved for "exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey". Without even trying the food (which looked great), I'd pitch the Marble Arch somewhere between a two- and three-star rating: Great beer straight out of the brewery, an incredible tiled interior, and food that made me hungry when it went by on a plate. I'll be making a special journey back there soon.

International Beer-Geekery

I had a very nice evening out last night. I went for a beer with Rick Kempen of Bier & Co, who was in town for the night. He very kindly brought me the bottles shown in the photo, and I paid him back with bottle of Fuller's Gale's Prize Old Ale 2007. As we swapped bottles in the pub, his colleague Gaius Voûte commented that we looked like a pair of beer geeks. We were pleased, but I don't think he meant it as a compliment.

There's something nice about making a gift of beer from home, whether that's me taking some proper Yorkshire beer down to the family in Wiltshire, or swapping beers in person with a foreign visitor. It reminds of the time in the late 80s that I used to visit friends in New York - I'd always take some English beer with me as a gift, although the 4 pint carry-out keg of Tanglefoot didn't travel too well. They let me take it on as hand luggage. No, honestly, they did - it was acceptable in the 80s.

Taking it a stage further, there's always the trading forums on Ratebeer and Beer Advocate if you really need to swap something to get something (you need to be logged in to view them). I've never done that, and would be interested to hear if anyone has any stories of success or failure either way - not for any journalistic (bloggeristic?) reason, but I'm just curious. Plus a Facebook buddy who lives near to Russian River has suggested we trade bottles (hi Will, if you're reading this). Obviously the cost of postage doesn't make financial sense, but I like the idea that beer geeks on different continents will happily send each other rarities at their own respective expense.

It could be like the Cameron-Obama beer summit, only with good beer.

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The Grove Inn, Huddersfield

I like places that exceed expectation. The bar with tapas that I mentioned a few posts ago is a case in point. My good lady tells me I came over a bit lukewarm about it - I'm not, I thought it was very good, and delivered far beyond our expectations.

If I may be so bold, I also think that the shop I manage, Beer-Ritz in Leeds, delivers beyond expectations. With a band of merry bloggers about to arrive in a few days, I may be setting myself up for a fall by saying this, but I like to think that the combination of backwater location, slightly shabby exterior, and a metric shedload of good beers delivers far beyond what anyone expects if they've never visited before.

Another place that is something of an over-achiever is The Grove Inn, Huddersfield. We went their recently for our annual staff outing, and aside from their being an absurd number of great bottles and casks to chose from, the thing that did it for me was the disparity between it's ordinary pubbiness, and it's beery eclecticism.

It's a little walk from the station, but well worth the effort. I love the fact that there are so many beers on offer that the staff need a map to find them (seriously). It took a couple of goes for me to be served with an Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock, despite my description of it having a little plastic goat hanging from the neck. When the bottle eventually appeared, it did so accompanied with a classic dry aside: "Goat? It looks more like a bloody antelope to me"

Anyway, have a look at the regularly updated draught menu and the list of bottles, and judge for yourself. It's like an ordinary pub, but brilliant.

Here we are, returning from the Grove, having a beer on Huddersfield station. We bought a bottle of De Molen Summink or Oeder to take out, and before you think ill of us, we brought the glasses with us. We had a bottle of Deus and an Ola Dubh 40yr Old on the train on the way there, just to liven the palate a bit. The top pic is one of Ron Pattinson's historically accurate beers, brewed at De Molen. On the basis of this bottle alone, both Ron and Menno rock.

Get Back to Work

Today is my first day of work since December 23rd 2009. By all accounts, the shop is devoid of stock, and we're about to get hit with a load of snow, so my work today is going to be (a) keeping warm and (b) ordering enough stock to make the shop look like a shop again.

Priorities are: restocking with local beers; finding what Sierra Nevada beers are available; how well has BrewDog done over the New Year; and planning our works outing on the 11th January. I'm hoping that it coincides with the cask of De Molen's Blood, Sweat & Tears Bruichladdich Cask Finish going on at The Grove Inn in Huddersfield. Now that would be a party to remember (or at least try to remember)