For The Keepsake of It

Usually, when Mrs V and I drive back to central Virginia from South Carolina we stop at Olde Mecklenburg Brewing in Charlotte, mainly to swap our my growlers, have a beer, and maybe get some cans as well. On our most recent trip, we decided to change things up a little bit and go to visit a brewery that I have been following on Instagram for about 18 months now, Keepsake Brewery in Gastonia. We took something of a scenic route from Columbia as we had overestimated how long the trip would take, and so pulled into the adjacent parking lot with about 10 minutes to opening time. Thankfully, we were meeting up with Mrs V's life long best friend, so there was much hugging and chitchat to fill the empty time.

We wandered into the brewery premises themselves, noting the spacious beer garden, piles of kegs, crates, and other brewery type paraphenalia, and bimbled into the just opening taproom.

From many, many posts and stories on Instagram, I knew that Keepsake is dog friendly, so it was nice to not have to leave our wee Cairn Terrier in the car with the windows cracked - it also helps that Hamish, for that is his name, is quite content to just lay down and chill while we sit in a beer garden.

Having scoped out the lay of the land, parked the children at a picnic table with devices (yeah, yeah, judge away), we went inside the taproom and immediately I felt as though I was back in Central Europe - my favourite part of the world if you haven't already noticed. I am sure I have mentioned this in a post about my ideal pub, but I have a soft spot for eclectic, mismatched furniture...yay!

I was charmed to say the least, oh, did I mention the stammtisch nook? No, ok, here:

And yes, that is Hamish's fuzzy wee butt. Anyway, we weren't here just to indulge my Mitteleuropaphilia...there was beer to be had, so I started at the beginning, with their house helles lager, Heartsease.

Now, I am going to be honest, and if you've followed along with my approach to tasting notes at breweries you will know that I generally don't bother, and this day was no different. That said, I bought a six pack and took some notes last weekend. The helles is a very respectable beer, soft bready malt, with just a slight crusty edge and enough hop bite to keep things interesting, there is a nice floral hop aroma floating around. At 4.5%, I could quite happily sit around drinking a few jars of this. A solid start then.

Next up, as you can see, I went to the dark side with their "Vesper" Dark Lager - again I bought some home with me so these notes are from the weekend. First off though, kudos for a proper German style half litre bottle, you know what that looks like right? I don't recall the menu at the taproom stating what kind of black lager this is, I asked if it was schwarzbier, dunkel, or tmavé, but really didn't get an answer to the question. I later learned from pottering around the internet that it is considered a "San Francisco Style Black Lager". Not really having a sense of what that means in relation to the others...it is definitely black, jet black, like a blackhole swallowing the light. Mostly I got American chocolate, espresso, and a rich maltiness that made me think there was a fair old whack of dark Munich malt in there. It was surprisingly thick and chewy for a 5% abv beer, and put me more in mind of a London porter than the dark lagers of central Europe. Still, another flavourful, respectable beer.

Next up a style I don't think I had ever actually tried before, a California Common, monikered in this case "Causwell". Another well put together tasty beer, with plenty of bitterness to prevent the maltiness being overly cloying. As I had never tried this style before, I know, I am lame and a total beer dilletante, I have no frame of reference, but I had a second pint, so that's a good thing right?

For the remainder of our time at the brewery, we had to get back to Virginia after all, I actually stuck to Keepsake's pale ale, called "Little Helper", and I think it was my favourite of all the beers I tried. Hopped with Cascade and, I think, Spalt Select hops, this is a delightfully hoppy, citrus forward easy drinker. The grist is, again working from memory, is 100 pilsner malt, and the combination just works beautifully, I might have to try making something similar myself.

Having ordered in some food, there being no food truck that day, we finished up, leaving the band to carry on playing, and a growing crowd to enjoy the atmosphere. We enjoyed our visit, everything about the space is delightful, including, and I am not joking here, the décor in the bathrooms. It not only feels like a Central European space, but also a local hangout spot that were I to live in Gastonia would very easily become my local. I definitely expect we'll be back, as the trip out of the way makes a nice change from just churning through the interstates of Charlotte, and Keepsake are on to something good here.

Top 5 Virginia Ciders - 2026

I know I don't really write very often about cider on here - though of course you know I wrote a book on cider in Virginia, there's a link over there to it if you fancy buying a copy - Christmas is coming and all that. To support the book, I do have a cider only Instagram account, come give it a follow if you are there. That said, a couple of years ago, just before the book came out, I wrote a post listing the 7 best Virginia ciders I drank during my research. For this year's list, I decided to trim that to a top 5, mainly because 5 just seems a more manageable number. As with my Top 10 Virginia Beers posts, this is an entirely subjective list, so if I have missed out your favourite habanero mango dill pickle cider made with Red Delicious, oh well.

Let's dive in then...

5. Potter's Craft Cider: Farmhouse Dry

   This is the cider that launched Potter's Craft into my consciousness over 15 years ago, when it turned up on tap at my main drinking den back then, a place in Charlottesville called Beer Run. These days it is difficult for me to think much past it when Mrs V and I go down to their taproom. "Taproom" really isn't the right word for what is a former Episcopalian (if I remember rightly) church building in the rolling hills of Albemarle County's Piedmont. It is a glorious space, and when a friend's band is playing, there are few things more chill than sitting outside sharing bottles of Farmhouse Dry with the wife. Made with Gold Rush, Albemarle Pippin, and the Old Virginia Winesap, this is a riot of fruit, balanced with a dry acidic finish that just screams "drink more", and I often do. The acidity, at least for me, is something between lemon and Key Lime, and I get very subtle spicy hints in the background, think cinnamon and you're in the right ballpark. Cracking stuff.

4. Big Fish Cider: Virginia Hewes Crab

   Last autumn I did a grand tasting of single varietal ciders from Virginia using just the, allegedly, Virginia Hewes Crab apple. I say "allegedly" because a recent article by David Zakalik and Gregory Peck in the Journal of the American Pomological Society has shown that the "Hewes Crab" trees growing at Jefferson's Monticello are, in fact, not Virginia Hewes Crab, based on DNA analysis of their lineage that includes an apple variety unknown in the United States until long after Jefferson had died. Putting that fact to one side, and focusing on the liquid in the glass, Big Fish's offering here is a wonderful cider, regardless of the actual apple in use. Delightfully floral, like being in a meadow orchard in spring, in aroma, and brightly acidic, coupled with a trace of spice, this is, as I said in the Cider Review article "clean, dry, and leaves you wanting more, lots more".

3. Tumbling Creek Cider: Ruby Red

   Tumbling Creek Cider is located in far away Southwest Virginia, with a taproom in the town of Abingdon, not too far from the state line with North Carolina. It was the first cidery I visited when I was researching my book, and it made an immediate impression. So when my family and I went to Grayson Highlands State Park over the Memorial Day weekend, I made sure we stopped by to stock up. Stocking up turned into an afternoon session with a couple of the owners, Tom and Justin, and the standout cider for me was their experimental batch of Ruby Red. The Ruby Red crabapple, at least in a Virginia context, is unique to a single orchard where it was discovered growing as a seedling. Tumbling Creek made a single varietal with it and it was stellar, dry as a bone, but with a firm tannic body that belied the 9.5% abv, red berries marry with the apple flavour create a cider that is just too easy to polish off a 750ml bottle in a single sitting. Glorious.

2. Daring Cider: Crab Apple Blend

   The first time I had Daring Cider's Crab Apple blend was sitting with owner and cidermaker, Jocelyn Kuzelka, talking about her work for my book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and made a mental note to buy a few bottles so that Mrs V could try it as well. Last autumn, I was invited to speak at a cider festival hosted by the Frontier Culture Museum, and behold Jocelyn was pouring the latest batch of this blend of Virginia Hewes Crab and Ruby Red. Mrs V tried it, loved it, and so we got a few bottles. Being 75% Virginia Hewes Crab, the dominant flavour is noticeably lemon, with with a background of red berries, mainly strawberries from the Ruby Red - a note that is also in the aroma. A gorgeous cider that paired wonderfully with the roast beef we had for our Yule feast back in December.

1. Troddenvale: Malus X Dolgo

   Talking about the winter holiday season...Early in January, I packed the kids and my wife into the car and took the couple of hour drive from central Virginia, down I-81 a bit, and across the mountains, to get to Bath County. It was a fun trip of beautiful countryside, winding roads, and at the end of the journey, Troddenvale Cider at Oakley Farm. A few weeks later, when I went to Norway for work, I took a bottle of Troddenvale's cider with me for the folks I was working with. I am sure I have mentioned this before, but Troddenvale's Dolgo is a cider that blew me away the first time I had it, and it continues to be something I love to drink, especially for the sharp acidity that slices through rich foods as though the barely exist. Sometimes I will say that it is like sucking a lemon and a teabag at the same time, but I mean that positively. Wildly acidic, massively tannic, but also deeply fruity, think strawberries and cranberries, with hints of flower meadows in the mix for fun as well. Troddenvale make a raft of great ciders, but Dolgo just hits the spot for me everytime.

The hardest thing with this list is leaving off so many great cideries, and magnificent ciders, whether that's Albemarle CiderWorks, Buskey, Blue Bee, the list goes on - Virginia is insanely fortunate when it comes to fantastic cider. So if you're interested in learning more about our embarrassment of apple riches, buy a copy of the book, and get out on a journey of discovery. 

Definitely though, don't sleep on any of these five.

Top Ten Virginia Beers - 2026

I love the end of July...our annual week at the beach in Florida is over, usually the temperature is starting to moderate (and it is a very pleasant mid 80s °F/upper 20s °C at the moment here), and in a couple of weeks Mrs V and the kids will begin their respective school years. It is also, obviously of course, Oktoberfest and pumpkin ale "season", at least for the package breweries that need their bottles in the stores as soon as possible, so yes, soon the leaves will start turning, and the happy dark days of autumn and winter will return.

For most years in recent Fuggled history, that has also meant time to post my annual list of the 10 Virginia brewed beers I have enjoyed the most in the last 12 months. For reasons that escape me right now, I skipped the list last year, but promised myself that I needed to get out more and bring the list back for 2026. I always say this, but it bears pointing out again, this is a purely subjective list, and as such will be heavy on the kind of beers I like drinking, so if you are looking for Virginia's most highly rated double IPA aged in gorilla snot barrels, you won't find that here. Hopefully though, the list will encourage you to go find some of the cracking brews we have in the Commonwealth, and in change from years passim, I will go in reverse order - you know, to heighten the tension and what not.

10. Alpine Goat Brewing: Pilsner

    Earlier this year, I wrote about finally getting back out to Alpine Goat Brewery in the Shenandoah Valley, having previously visited a couple of years back when a brewer transition was in progress. I hadn't expected it to take so long to get back, but when I did I found a brewery that ticks all the boxes for this mad Mitteleuropaphile. For most of that trip I was drinking their German style pilsner, and it hit all the right high notes. Obviously, as I had three or four pints in the course of our couple of hours there. We get over to the Valley pretty regularly these days, so soon I will introduce Mrs V to the delights of Alpine Goat, especially as their house beer is one of her favourite styles, kölsch. A welcome addition to this list!

9. Buffalo Mountain Brewery: Wolf Gang Vienna Lager

   Another new brewery to this list, and one that I stumbled upon by accident. Last autumn, I drove from my home in Central Virginia to the distant marches of Southwest Virginia to interview Diane Flynt for a Pellicle article about her work in orcharding and Virginia's cider scene. Rather than sit on the purgatory that is I-81, I took the Blue Ridge Parkway through Floyd County, and through the eponymous town itself. Having overestimated just how long it would take, myself and Mark (my regular photography collaborator) decided to stop in Floyd for a pint and a feed, thus ended up at Buffalo Mountain. Being a fan of Vienna style lagers in general, that was my choice. Pouring deep red, and being much more in the Mexican tradition of Vienna lager, this was a nice, suitably malty, but not syrupy pint. Not only was it a very decent pint, McDaniel's Tavern, the name for the brewery's taproom, is a delightful space that feels very much like a country pub from either the UK or Ireland.

8. Caboose Brewing: Voda Czech Style Pilsner

   I know you are surprised that it took this long for a Czech style pilsner to make its way onto this list. I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but although I work remotely (or remotely work, haha!), my employer's main office is in Northern Virginia, in the city of McLean. At least once a quarter then, I have to go up there for team meetings, and an inevitable overnight stop, and invariably, as I am the team lead and get to decide where we have dinner, a visit to Caboose Brewing & Tavern in neighbouring Vienna. Thankfully the rest of the team like Caboose's food, and a couple of them also like good beer, so I am on safe ground. On one of our visits they had Voda on tap, "voda" of course is the Czech word for "water", and I drank it almost as such, even though it was far from watery and insipid, in fact it was lovely and hit the spot, with plenty of Saaz character to satisfy my cravings for hay, lemongrass, and the wonderful aroma of Czech meadows. A cracker, I hope it's around when I am up that way again soon.

7. Patch Brewing: Pylon Pilsner

   Not a new brewery to this list, but oddly a new beer (though a perennial in my annual review of the year in December), given that when I drag the kids off to run around in the field and playground at Patch, it is my go-to beer, usually in my ceramic pot that they graciously fill for me rather than having to deal with the plastic pots they use for the outside space. While this is listed as a German pilsner, the base malt is, I believe, actually Weyermann's Bohemian Pilsner, and so it has a touch more body and heft, coupled with a solid hop bite and floral character, it's really easy, and pleasurable drinking. Which reminds me, the kids need a play date with some of their friends soon.

6. Dynasty Brewing: Yorkshire Bitter

   On my previously mentioned regular trips to Northern Virginia, the only place on earth where the speed limit signs are aspirational, there is a British style pub that I love to get to called The Hawk and Griffin. Conveniently it is just a hop, skip, and a jump from Caboose. My primary reason for going is that they are a pretty fair bet for having some kind of cask ale available. When sitting myself at the bar on one such trip there was a pump clip with magical words "Yorkshire Bitter" on them, and on making sure there was a sparkler attached I knew what I wanted. Apparently it is hopped with just East Kent Goldings, and so there is plenty of that classic orange marmalade character, and without darker crystal malts it is very much a biscuity malt thing that dominates, and I thought it was lovely, served at proper cellar temperature to boot. I was a happy camper that night.

5. Selvedge Brewing: Chain Stitch

   It's pale, it's Germanic, it's damned well made, and when it is on tap at Selvedge then you can almost guarantee that I will have at least one pint of Chain Stitch. It's a beer that many times I have joked about needing to become the equivalent of a full kit wanker but for bike riding, prop my underused bike up next to one of the picnic tables out front, and just spend a sunny afternoon drinking. Hopped with the classic Halletauer Mittelfrüh and lagered until it damned well ready (the best kind of lagering process in my opinion), it is as close to Bavaria as you will get in Virginia. It is difficult to really opine about how much I love Chain Stitch, but often that first mouthful is followed by an exclamation of "echt!", and another Willibecher will soon be on its way...

4. Fine Creek Brewing: Farmhouse Lager

   Very few beers make it onto this list having only been drunk once. Very few beers only drunk once, make this kind of impression. Fine Creek are literally just up the road, a relatively quick and easy 45 minute drive, just round the corner from one of our favourite state parks for camping, and much to my shame we still haven't managed to make it to the brewery itself. However, Josh from Selvedge gave me a bottle of the Farmhouse Lager, and as I said in an Instagram post, it is the "perfect marriage of elegance and rusticity". If you can imagine sitting at a Franconian bierkeller drinking their local brew, I imagine it would have a similar effect on you, this was just a gorgeous beer - and I promise, Brian if you are reading this, we will get out there soon.

3. Superfly Brewing: Private Number (cask)

   It could be recency bias, it could be nostalgia having recently been back in the UK and had something of a revelation about bitters which have darker crystal malts in the grist, it could just be sheer glee at a Charlottesville brewery having an actual cask ale program headed up by brewers who get it. First though, let me tell you a story, the first time I had Private Number, several years ago, I was not a fan. I really wanted to be, because I think what Ed and co are doing at Superfly is fantastic, and best bitter is a style I love. That iteration just didn't work for me. Fast forward to Mrs V's birthday weekend and we headed over with friends to have fish and chips for lunch - SuperFly now has a chip van, and they have quickly become the default place for folks who know about these things to get their fish supper on. They also had Private Number of the beer engine, and I was keen to give it another chance. It took that chance with aplomb, laden with toffee, dark fruit, and rich fruit cake maltiness, balanced with a hefty hop bite to scrape the palate clean. Painfully easy to drink and drink it I did. I am looking forward to more of their cask offerings...

2. Selvedge Brewing: Coat Czech 12°

   That there is a new batch of Selvedge's dvanáctka hitting the taps next week makes my life just a little simpler. Every time I go to there these days, I struggle to decide which of the several superb Central European style lagers I want to drink first. Do I want Batiste, their German Pils? What about Chain Stitch, which I mentioned earlier? Do I fancy Vested Interest, a Franconian kellerbier? Decisions, decisions. Yes, I have got to the point where I just ask Erin to bring me a lager because I trust her judgement and honestly they are all magnificent. Once Coat Czech is back, that indecision will disappear because I know what I want first, not necessarily the only beer I will have, though there is always a strong possibility of that too (yay cans to takeaway for porch drinking). Coat Czech is the epitome of great Czech style lagers, decoction mashing for those subtle Maillard reaction flavours, masses and masses of Saaz hop character, with an almost sherbert like note that reminds me of Unětický Pivovar's superb 12°. I am confident that were you to serve this blind to any well regarded beer writer with extensive knowledge of Czech lager - looking at you guys, Evan and Max - they would not be able to tell it was brewed in far off Virginia.

1. Selvedge Brewing: Spoolboy 10°

   Take pretty much everything I just wrote about Coat Czech and add a couple of caveats for Spoolboy: it won't be on tap next week, and when it is on tap I almost exclusively the beer I drink. Desítka, that's a 10° lager (regardless of colour technically speaking) for the non-Czech speakers of the world is just my preferred Czech beer "style" (ugh, I hate that word when it comes to Czech beer). Again with the decoction mashing, again with extensive lagering until it is good and ready to be on tap, Spoolboy hits every spot that a great desítka does. Yes it is ridiculously easy to drink, yes it positively reeks of Czech hop goodness, yes you will never only have one, and yes it has the Mrs V seal of approval. There was a point when it was on tap that Mrs V and I would be lost in a revelry of Czech Ostalgia (not a typo) for our years in the Czech Republic. It was a beer that took us, even after 17 years in Virginia and neither of us being actually Czech, home. It is the beer that we dragged many of our Czech, and Czech adjacent friends to Selvedge to try, and watch as their faces almost instantly go full on Anton Ego. Byla to dokonalost.

So there we are, my (revived) annual list of the beers I have enjoyed most in the last 12 months - as subjective and lager centric as always, anyone would think I had a type...

Looking Back and Forward

If you've been following along recently, you'll know that several weeks ago I spent 9 days in the United Kingdom, split pretty evenly between getting home to Scotland and being at a conference in London. During those 9 days, I spent a decent amount of time in pubs, brewery tap rooms, and even the classic Highland hotel public bar. Since I got home to Virginia, I have spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about those spaces, the beers I drank, and the emotions that they inspired - and if you don't think pubs are emotional places then maybe I can change you mind by the end of this post.

The last few posts have not been a blow by blow account of my drinking whilst in the UK, as I mentioned in one of them, I haven't posted about drinking Tennents in the Station Hotel in Alness, or my afternoon pub crawl in Inverness. I've not discussed drinking London Pride and Guinness at Lords while the rain stopped play ad nauseum, meeting Phil Tufnell at the Danubius Hotel bar, or the Harvey's Sussex Best at The Washington in Hampstead. Not everything needs to be shared, and in some cases there are blanks in my memory...

As is probably evident, I was taken aback at how much I really enjoyed the kind of bitters that get roundly derided as being "boring" and "brown". I have mentioned several times that I am working on formulating a version of my best bitter that incorporates crystal malt, and indeed I have an ordinary bitter on keg right now that has some crystal 40 in it, but it is still rather paler than the beers I reveled in back in the UK, so I guess I need to buy some crystal 120, or maybe even some 260 if Murphy & Rude ever make that again. It is also a result of at least one bitter, in this case a strong bitter, that has me hunting for a supply of Admiral hops. I've played around with some of the newer British hops, especially Endeavour, and while Admiral isn't really all that modern, having been released in the 1990s, I feel like I need to explore beyond Goldings, Fuggles, and Challenger a bit more, especially given this autumn and winter could very easily become the season of Bitter.

The main thought that has pottered and re-pottered around my noggin is just what a fantastic place the British pub is, whether that incarnation is in Inverness or Westminster. Of course every serious beer drinking country has it's pubs, from Ireland to Czechia, and all stops in between, people love to drink in communal locations rather than just getting battered at home. Perhaps it's that there isn't an undercurrent of puritanical shame about going for a pint or two and just hanging out, there doesn't need to be a purpose or an excuse to go for a drink. Anyway, back to British pubs - and of course this is all just subjective - but being, still, even at nearly 51, a rather introverted person, I find it interesting that going into a British pub is the easiest thing in the world for me. Let me give you an example, a few years ago, back in the before times (you know when I mean), I went to Bamberg, and had several pints of magnificent beer at Schlenkerla. Before I could muster up the courage to enter those hallowed halls, I had walked past the door several times, scoping out the flow of patrons, the places to sit, and the general vibe. When I went to any pub in the UK, there was none of that, I would just go straight in the door, get my pint and worry about where to sit, or stand, when I got there.

I realise that actually says more about me not wanting to stand out as the obvious outsider with my rusty school boy German, which brings me back to the introvert within. I feel instantly at home in the British pub because I can so easily be anonymous, and I love being anonymous. Let me sit with my beer and just people watch, and when I am ready for another pint, I will address myself to the stout yeoman of the bar. I have got used to table service, you really have no other choice in the US, and most places in Europe to be honest, but I love going up to the bar to get my next pint. It's almost a diagnostic thing, it's easier to tell how tiddled you are if you have to walk to and from the bar, half way with a pint in your hand, hopefully one that you're not slopping all over the place. With table service you are insulated from that until it is time to leave and suddenly your head spins as you get to your feet.

It likewise struck me that for such a country so renowned for our reserve, the pub is the place we let our guard down and open up a little, and perhaps becomes a little more observant of, and for, our fellow human beings. For example, I was standing in the St James Tavern, tending a pint of London Pride, enjoying the buzz of an early Friday evening crowd. To my left a couple were standing at the bar, clearly wanting to find a table to sit at, being 6'4" (that's 1.93m in the modern world), I could see a table opening up on the other side of the bar, so I let the couple know and off they tottered to claim those seats. Again, I am not the kind of person to just point things out to people in the normal run of things, but put a pint in my hand in a pub, and that goes out the window a little - don't worry I don't turn into mister gregarious or anything crazy, and I am not sure the rumours of me smiling a little in the pub are true or not. So, yeah, I miss the pub.

The weird thing here is, I left the United Kingdom nearly three decades ago as a 23 year old, and since then I have probably been home fewer than a score times. I have drunk in hospody, bierhalle, brewery taprooms, and cafes far more regularly than I have a British pub, yet the sense of instant familiarity stays with me, like a well loved security blanket whenever I get back to the UK. I have been told in the dim and distant past that I am more "pub-centric" in my approach to beer than a craft beer fan, and there is a lot of truth to that. Pubs, regardless of where you find them, are special, almost liminal places and we fail to value them at our peril.

South and North

This is the last of my posts about my trip to the UK a few weeks ago, mainly because I didn't really take lots of pictures of the many beers I drank while I was there. For example, I have no pictures from the wonderful pub crawl I went on in Inverness with a long time friend of mine, unless you are interested in Aitken founts that is (and if you are interested, Black Isle Bar & Rooms on Church Street is the place to go). Even for this post, I only have a couple of pictures.

With the conference over, we arranged to meet at Piccadilly Circus, but I had about 90 minutes before meeting up, so I dropped my laptop at my hotel, nipped to Westminster Abbey to get a key chain of the venerable building for one of my sons, and experienced unexpected garden envy.

To get to Piccadilly Circus from Westminster Abbey, I had decided to skirt St James' Park on Horse Guards Road, past the Horse Guards Parade - being an army brat it was instantly recognisable from many viewings of Trooping the Colour on TV. Before you reach the Parade itself, you pass Duck Island Cottage, which had the delightful garden you can see above, it made me miss my little garden back in Virginia.

I have to admit that walking around the City of Westminster was one of my favourite things, and the stroll from Westminster Abbey to Piccadilly was a delight, though obviously with a distinct lack of traffic cones on the statuary. Even so, I had badly mistimed how long it would take, and so ended up at Piccadilly Circus a good 30 minutes before I had arranged to meet everyone else. What to do then? Well, find a pub obviously, so I looked up pubs in the streets just off the Circus itself. St James Tavern it was then, a corner pub where Great Windmill Street meets Shaftesbury Avenue. Finding a spot at the bar, I may have mentioned this before, but I loved being in buzzing, busy pubs again, I squeezed in and ordered a pint of London Pride.

By this point in my trip, I was having an identity crisis, as I was actively enjoying pints of best made with crystal malts, and London Pride fresh from cask is such a lovely beer, even without a sparkler on the swan neck. Perhaps it is a case of absence making the heart grow fonder, and in many ways this is stating the obvious, compared to the stuff we get in Virginia, proper Pride is night and day. I reviewed my Old Friends post about Pride as I was drinking this first pint, and the biggest difference is the brightness of being fresh, and the hops are actually obviously present. Since returning to the US, I have longed to just sit in a London pub enjoying multiple pints of fresh Pride. As it was, I had time for a second before meeting up with the folks I was at the conference with.

I wish I could remember the pub that we went to immediately after meeting, but eventually we wound our way to a Sam Smiths pub called the Glasshouse Stores. This was the first time I had ever been in a Sam Smith's pub, and unfortunately they didn't have any of their famous beers on cask, everything was keg. Having got our orders in, I started on my trek through the various bitters available, we snagged a seat, all the while keeping a beady eye on the table in the charming bay window, so we could relocate once it was available. It wasn't long before we took our opportunity, and by this time I had relished the dark mild as my precursor to the bitters - a lovely beer from memory, the kind of thing that would make for a wonderful autumnal session with the rain pouring outside. I had also had the first of a couple of pints of Sovereign Bitter. Eventually though I would settle on the Old Brewery Bitter as my tipple of choice, no doubt lamenting aloud that it wasn't on cask.

Apparently we moved on to a few other stops, but I have no pictures of those, either mental or on my camera - yeah, drinking at scale happened and it had started to gently rain...I may have got myself a little turned around walking back to my hotel, but eventually I made it to my bed and gratefully collapsed in a heap.

Timmy in Thames Town

Having left the Westminster Arms, I had a very particular pub to wander to, for family reasons that are probably daft. I had promised my younger twin son that I would visit a pub called The Albert, as that is his first name.

The Albert is a Greene King pub, but it is also listed on the Timothy Taylor website's Pub Finder tool as a permanent stockist of their beers, so I knew that if nothing else took my fancy there would be something from Timothy Taylor as a guest beer. Sure enough, once I had squeezed my way through the crowd - something I loved about being back in the UK was seeing groups of pub-goers standing with pints on the street, I immediately spotted the Timothy Taylor Landlord pump clip and knew what I was going to drink.

From memory - taking notes in a crowded pub was very much not on the schedule - Landlord in The Albert was in good nick, wonderfully hoppy, and far too easy to down in a handful of mouthfuls. Landlord is a classic for a reason, and eventually I need to brew myself a clone recipe, especially taking into account the evolution of the Timothy Taylor yeast to require invert sugar - every other attempt I have made has been all malt, and I think that is a mistake.

One of my plans, which in traditional manner went agley, was to find a pub with Boltmaker on the pumps, but that never materialised for various reasons, I did however bump into Golden Best at the Sanctuary House Hotel, a Fullers venue just a couple of doors down from my hotel. It was the second day of my trip to London, and the first of the conference I was attending. I had spent the evening having dinner near Piccadilly Circus, with the incredible folks my company is working with on a major project, and had ambled my way back through St James' Park, with last orders nearing. Having ascertained that I had enough time, the last pint of the night was ordered.

Golden Best, despite the name giving hints in other directions, is a pale mild and a brand new to me beer. Despite having never had it before, it served as an inspiration for the pale mild, that I call Summer Mild, currently on tap on my downstairs kegerator - yes, there is also an upstairs kegerator. Anyway, to Golden Best, what a freaking delicious beer it was, in stunning condition, had I had time I would have had a second. I found it particularly interesting that a beer that, according to the their website, uses the same ingredients as Landlord is so completely different in flavour from its more illustrious counterpart. Say it quietly, but if both were available at a bar, I might actually be more tempted to Golden Best than to Landlord, which may just be heresy, who knows?

So while I completely failed to locate Boltmaker, and as such my clone recipe plan that I mentioned in a previous post has been postponed (unless of course Timothy Taylor are reading this and want to send me a care package, erm..."commercial samples"), one thing become abundantly clear, should I see a Timothy Taylor pump clip, whenever, and wherever, I am in the UK, I will be indulging.

The Westminster Arms

I have something of a soft spot for Kent's Shepherd Neame. It was their Bishop's Finger that got me into better beer than the keg swill I would drink as a younger man after all, as well as a friend in Prague having been a barman in an SH pub. Whenever I get back to the UK, which is nowhere near as often as I would like, I will pick up a few bottles of Shepherd Neame beers, usually the aforementioned Bishop's Finger, but also their Double Stout and even <gasp> the India Pale Ale. However, and for obvious reasons, Shepherd Neame pubs are few and far between in the Highlands of Scotland, and I don't think I have ever seen a Shepherd Neame beer on a beer engine at any of the pubs I frequent when I go home. Having a few days then in London was the opportunity to find the nearest Shepherd Neame pub to my hotel and dive into their range a bit more.

Given that my hotel was just yards from Westminster Abbey, said nearest Shepherd Neame pub was The Westminster Arms. On arriving at my hotel, being given the key, and heading up to my room, I opened the door to discover that it was still in the throes of being cleaned. As such, I ditched my main case, slung the bag I use as a laptop bag over my shoulder and wandered off to locate the pub and catch up with work over a couple of pints.

Thankfully it was a mere 3 minute walk, and what a delightfully charming pub The Westminster Arms is (photo credit: the image is from the Westminster Arms website). Apparently the pub has recently undergone a refurbishment, and as I went through the door, I was presented with an archetypal British pub, as Tweedy Pubs would say, "a pubby pub". Everything was wooden, there were nooks and crannies with stools and ledges for drinking at, and on the bar a clutch of handpumps. I knew immediately what I was going to have, partly because there wasn't Bishop's Finger on the pumps, but also because I wanted to start with something a little more sessionable.

I took my pint, went downstairs to the basement bar, and found myself a perch at a table, set my laptop up, and took my first ever mouthful of Master Brew.

Master Brew is Shepherd Neame's ordinary bitter, with an ABV of 3.7%, and clearly it is in the tradition that naysayers often deride as "boring brown bitter". It is, though, anything but boring, at least in my opinion. It was moreish, deeply, deeply moreish in fact. I think that first pint was gone before I had even been able to hook into the wifi and log into my email. I had to head back upstairs to the main bar to get a second pint as Master Brew wasn't on the downstairs hand pumps. One of the many things that I loved about this, and to be fair most other bitters I had in and around London, was they were properly bitter, with dollops of hop bitterness to scrape away the crystal malt character - weirdly I was starting to become sure I needed to do some experimentation with my house bitter. What was going on? Had it been on the pumps downstairs I might never have ventured from it.

It was during my second pint that a group of Americans made their way down to the basement, and proceeded to make me almost despair that real ale will ever be anything other than a niche in the US, so embedded is the collective ignorance of cask ale in the popular consciousness. Yeah, sorry folks, we writers can blather on as much as we want about places doing real ale, but it's not getting outside of our bubble. One of the group approached the bar and ordered a Spitfire, but a lady sat in the booth they had plonked in yelled across the bar to "make sure you get the Spitfire lager, not the cask, the cask is warm". Now, I prefer Master Brew and Bishop's Finger to Spitfire, but this notion that unless your beer is as cold as penguin feet it is "warm" really needs to be put to bed. I may have started ranting via text message to my long time collaborator, Mark. I had at this point moved on to Whitstable Bay Pale Ale for a palate reset, when across the bar I heard the most ridiculous thing I have heard in many years, and here I quote:

"don't tell the pastor we are in a pub drinking beer".

Admittedly I have some sympathy with this, given that when I was studying theology with a view to a religious calling, I would often go to the pub to unwind and the thought of being spotted gnawed away at my guilt riddled soul. But, you know, I don't recall ever announcing to the entire bar that I really shouldn't have been there, and to not share this information with the leadership of my church. It reminded me of folks I know who when in Prague moved their beer to the other side of the table for pictures, so their religious friends wouldn't think they were drinking when it hit social media. Thankfully, though painfully slowly as the group worked its way through their one pint of Spitfire lager for about 45 minutes, they eventually toddled off steeped in English sin, so I had another Master Brew, beautifully cask conditioned, at perfect cellar temperature, and everything a English bitter is at its best, or most ordinary, if you get my reference.

Having caught up with work, had a fantastic rambling chat with the lads behind the bar - top fellows! - it was time to find some food, maybe another couple of beers, which we'll get to, and get myself prepared for the conference I was in town for. Clearly though, if I ever find myself staying in Westminster again, the Westminster Arms will be top of my list for pubs to get back to, it was just a perfect afternoon of great beer in a proper pub.

Good News!

A quick break in the scheduled postings - trust me, I carried on my bitter and pub adventures in the UK after flying to and from Inverness - but this is good news that needs sharing.

On Wednesday an email was sent out that I have actually been expecting for a few weeks now, but I didn't want to let the cat out of the bag. Simply put, Murphy & Rude are not going out of business.

But first, a tale of how I learnt that news. When it became public that Jeff and co were going to be closing down, I said to Mrs V that I needed to make a big order of malt to see me through the rest of my brewing year. To that end I bought a 50lb/22.7kg of Virginia Pils, and one of English Pale - they are, after all the base of pretty much all of my beers. Also as part of that order I got 25lb/11.4kg bags of Vienna and Biscuit malts; 10lb/4.5kg bags of white wheat and brown malts; and 5lb/2.3kg bags of Munich 9, Munich 15, and Americano (basically pale chocolate) malts; oh and a packet of Greenmont Mother hops for good measure. A total then of 185lbs/84.1kg of malt.

When I swung by their old location to collect my order, Jeff was there and the very first thing he said to me was "Murphy and Rude will abide my man, Murphy and Rude will abide". He then proceeded to tell me the story behind the demise and resurrection of Murphy & Rude. The demise was basically a perfect storm of increased rents, heat affected green barley, and climate change impacted agricultural loss, resulting in a lack of product to tide the company over a planned move to a new location about 35 miles from Charlottesville.

The resurrection, which is the important part of this story, is the result of an agreement with Carolina Malt House, based in Cleveland, North Carolina, just north of Charlotte. As a result of their partnership, production of Murphy & Rude malt is moving to North Carolina, but importantly (at least in my opinion) Carolina Malt House will continue to purchase barley from M&R's Virginia farmers specifically for Murphy & Rude products, which will be malted to M&R's product specifications. So, Virginia Pils will still be Virginia Pils, made with Virginia grown Violetta barley.

While production is moving to North Carolina, Jeff will still be leading the sales, product development, and order fulfillment for the Murphy & Rude brands throughout Virginia. For homebrewers, like myself, Jeff is working on a solution to keeping the Grain Store going, which is fantastic as I really want to continue using Murphy & Rude malt in my beer.

In a time when we are seeing brewery, and allied industries, closings regularly, it is great that a solution has been found that keeps alive Virginia malt, made from Virginia grain, turned into Virginia beer. Here's to years more of brewing with Murphy & Rude malt!

Windsor the Second

Having left behind the warm embrace of the Windsor & Eton Brewery, picking up a copy of the local branch of CAMRA's latest magazine on the way out, I walked back to Arthur Road, past the appropriately named, though not yet open, Duke of Connaught.

I had a short list in my mind of places to visit, an amalgam of places visited by Tweedy Pubs in this video, and a few suggestions from folks on Reddit. First up on that list was the Carpenter's Arms, just down a narrow lane from Windsor Castle itself. Now, I have to admit, being an abysmal beer tourist - nothing new there if you know me - I didn't take that many pictures of the outside of pubs, but for the Carpenter's I did take a picture of the building opposite as it was just so funky.

I had snagged a seat opposite the bar in a bay window that was just delightful, and just as thrilling was seeing the pump clip of heaven on the bar.

Ok, sure, it's not a local beer in the furthest western reaches of Berkshire, but when you see Landlord on a beer engine, you drink it. It really is that simple, and it was as simply wonderful as you would expect. At this point in the proceedings news started filtering through about the sacking of Arne Slot from his role as Liverpool manager (head coach, whatever). Also distinctly not local, but something I haven't seen on tap for many a year was Budvar, so naturally I had a pint, and I almost wish I hadn't bothered. It wasn't bad per se,  it just looked deeply sad with the merest schmeer of foam on top of the liquid. My final pint here was the Nicholson's Pale Ale, the Carpenter's Arms being a Nicholsons pub after all, and it turned out to be surprisingly nice, I wish I had taken a picture really. Apparently the beer has Galaxy hops as well as the traditional Fuggles and Goldings combination, and it works really well. As with Windsor & Eton, I'd have happily stayed until the bus came, but other places needed visiting, and next up was The Corner House, so off I toddled.

Again as I stepped in, I was the only person in the place, and thankfully I didn't have to struggle to make a decision as to what beer was next. The bright blue pump clip made that decision for me.

Harvey's Sussex Best is a beer that I had never seen in the wild before. I have never seen it in the US, and so it was high on my list of beers to hunt out. It really is a pretty looking beer.

Unfortunately that first pint was distinctly vinegary, and the barmaid told me that she hadn't got round to pulling the lines through yet, and so a fresh pint was duly poured and that vinegar thing was no longer there. Setting to one side for a moment the idea that the barmaid served me beer that had been sitting in the line overnight, once I had a fresher pint I could kind of see what the fuss is about. This is such a quintessentially Southern English bitter, with notes of toffee, dark fruits, and a subtle sweetness in the background, all balanced expertly by the hops. However, I felt a pang of almost guilt at not really enjoying it as readily as I had various other beers that day, though that may have been a touch of palate fatigue at this point. 

I had a second anyway, before heading off to the final stop of the day, all the while aware that I had to get through security at Heathrow in order to fly to Inverness. The last place on the visit list, and the only place from which I have literally no pictures, was The Two Brewers, back up the road towards the Castle from the Corner House. My main reason for choosing the Two Brewers was that they actually have a beer list on their website, shocking as that may seem. As I mentioned in a previous post, pubs in England seem adverse to listing what beers they have on. Wine? Sure. Cocktails? We have a page for that. Beer? Good god man are you trying to encourage ruffians to drink here or something? They also had Fuller's London Pride at a very reasonable price, and so I had a few pints of that, sat at one of their various bars, keeping an eye upon the clock...

Make it back to Heathrow I did, through security and baggage drop off with no drama, only to discover nowhere was showing the Champions League final, and then eventually on to Inverness I went...

Of Guards and Fathers

It was 7.30am when my plane landed at Heathrow, the beginning of my 9 days back in the United Kingdom. Given the fact there was only an hour or so between that flight and the earliest flight to Inverness, I decided not to do a connection on the one ticket, and instead just get a separate ticket for the evening flight to Inverness. Thus I had the best part of half a day between flights, and as I mentioned in my last post, I decided to go to eschew the Tube into London proper, and get the bus to Windsor.

I had been to Windsor all of once previously, but I may have been about 12 years shy of being able to drink legally, and as such I don't remember much about that visit. There is though a family legend/inside joke that at some point whilst wandering near the castle, I asked my parents why it wasn't finished yet given the scaffolding that surrounded many of the buildings. I was then somewhat keen to walk by the castle to check up on progress in the intervening 40 odd years - there was still scaffolding to be seen, still not finished then I guess. It was getting pretty bloody warm by this point of the day, even though it was only 9.30 by now, so I took myself off along the river to get to my first planned stop of my tour of the town's hostelries.

It felt great to really stretch my legs after planes and buses, and also getting caught behind bimbling tourists (yes, I know) on the streets of Windsor in the early, comparatively, morning. Eventually I had to abandon the delights of a Thames stroll to amble my merry way through the Alexandra Gardens, through some railway arches and on to the taproom location of the Windsor & Eton Brewery.

Given that it was just a couple of minutes past opening time, I was the only person in the place, already with half a mind as to what my first beer of the trip was going to be, indeed my first beer in the UK since pre-COVID days, it had been that long. Alas the original plan went out the window as there was a problem with the Guardsman best bitter from the beer engine, so I went for Father Thames, a strong bitter - I am reticent to use the term "ESB" for strong bitters in the UK out of respect for the Fullers branding.

I had it in mind that as much as possible I would be drinking real ale while back in Blighty, and Father Thames set a pretty high bar, though I wasn't taking notes. According to the Windsor & Eton website this is actually a "winter bitter" brewed with local malt and Admiral hops. According to me, it was freaking delish, goodness me I love the marmalade thing that you get from Admiral, it is just a bit punchier than East Kent Goldings in this regard. The scrape of bitterness in the finish was enough to leaving me wanting more, and that first pint may have vanished in about four mouthfuls. Four mouthfuls of glorious real ale, all of those classic toffee sweet malt flavours, conditioned perfectly and at cellar temperature, the proper temperature if you are at all confused. If my fellow Brits cannot recognise that real ale is indeed intangible cultural heritage then they are lost beyond measure. So I had another while the magnificent bar staff sorted out Guardsman.

Once ready to be on parade, a pint was duly ordered, and being an army brat, I kind of geeked out on the pump clip, most likely for details a lot of folks would miss. For example, the central guard is a member of the Scots Guards, how can I tell? The tunic has buttons in sets of three, and the bearskin doesn't have a plume. Likewise the buttons and plumes are correct for the regiments being depicted, it's little things like this that I notice, yes I am weird. Fun fact, my great uncle was a guardsman during World War 2, Coldstream if I recall correctly (correction: it was the Grenadier Guards), back when regiments in the British Army had their own mechanical and electrical engineers. In the aftermath of the war, the plan to create the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, aka REME, was concluded, and my great uncle was transferred over to the new regiment. Anyway, the beer looked like this...

Another classic southern English bitter, this time of the best variety, and perhaps more "classic" than Father Thames, as it is hopped with Fuggles, Styrian Goldings, as well as Pilgrim. I love that this is a properly bitter, bitter beer, clocking in with 40 IBUs, about the same as my own house best bitter, and funnily enough the same ABV of 4.2%. There is something about the aroma of Fuggles, and Styrian Goldings does it too for obvious reasons though it is less noticeable, that always reminds me of pipe tobacco. That note was present, floating around with the usual earthy suspects that Fuggles brings to the table. Something about the word "earthy" makes me think of hearty peasants bringing in the hay, and maybe there is a whiff of grass and summer in the mix too. Maybe I was getting carried away, but I seriously started entertaining the idea of re-formulating my house bitter to have a darker variant in the roster...what heresy was Windsor making me entertain?

I spent a good few hours in the Windsor & Eton taproom before heading out into the wilds of Windsor to hunt down a few more of the pubs that I had put on my list to visit before I had to get the bus back to Heathrow and a plane to the Highlands. In those few hours I tried halves of some of their other beers, including Knight of the Garter, a 3.8% golden ale that was very much like a session American Pale Ale, bursting with the pine and citrus character of Amarillo, and Eton Boatman, a slightly stronger golden ale, that has more of a Southern Hemisphere hop character. Eventually though, head out I had to, there were other pubs to see, other breweries beers to try, and that will have to wait until another post.

A Little Help Goes A Long Way

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am heading to the UK in a few weeks, mainly for work, but with a little personal time chucked in as well. While I own the fact that I am a terrible beer tourist, I really don't plan my trips around breweries or beer cultures I want to visit - rather I go places and just see what is around. A key part of my planning process then, and maybe I a sad bandit for this, is to use Google Maps to find places in the locations that I will be, and then check out their websites to see if it is likely to be the kind of place I want to visit.

It is almost exactly 15 years that I wrote a post called "Do Pubs Help Themselves?" in which I lamented the standard of many a boozer website. My biggest beef was that many pub websites go to great lengths to tell you about their wine list, their cocktail list, their food options, but almost nothing about what beers are actually on draft, which is just as true for a tied house as it would be for a free house. So you would like to think that in our increasingly online world, pubs would have upped their game then, right?

Errr.....wrong. Sadly.

Maybe it is a product of the parts of the UK that I will be visiting, the north of Scotland, and London, with a minor detour to Windsor when I first arrive. Let's start with the positives though, the Windsor & Eton Brewery website is really useful, and as a result of reading that, and watching the Tweedy Pubs video on Windsor and Eton, I made the decision to spend my several hours between flights in and out of Heathrow by going west instead of east. I really like that they have their draft list in the taproom readily available, and so they will definitely be on the list of places to hit. Admittedly I'll probably go to their tied house, The George, as well, but they don't keep an up to date list of beers on their own website.

Also on the good side is the site for The Two Brewers, again for actually having a beer list on their website, but extra kudos for having the price of a pint on the list as well. I imagine I will be popping in for a pint of London Pride at some point in my day then.

My biggest challenge though, and I am sure there are reasons for this, but with so many tied houses in the English part of my trip, it does get really frustrating when there is a shared platform with generic information, and almost universally no list of what is on cask in a given pub - this goes for chains like Wetherspoons as well. Yes, the many Fullers pubs in the city have elegant, beautifully designed websites, but again I can't find out which beers of the Fullers Brewery range are available, making it pot luck to stumble across less regularly seen beers (at least from what I have been told) such as London Porter. I don't want to single out Fullers, as I have seen the same with Shepherd Neame, Greene King, and Nicholsons, though several Young's pubs tend to have at least a list, and occasionally pricing as well.

In the spirit of sharing around the opprobrium, places in Inverness and further north don't fare much better when it comes to an absence of useful information for the drinkers among us.

So, in the fifteen years since I first broached this issue, we seem to have gone from generally crap to being something of a curate's egg, which is progress I guess. Surely I am not alone in wanting to get a sense of what is on tap before I visit a boozer, whether this side or that side of the Pond?

Some Closing Thoughts

On Friday afternoon, with work concerns disappearing into the rear view mirror, and a little time to go until I had to pick up the twins from school, I was having a very fine pint of lager (but which one?? It was Vested Interest, a Franconian-style kellerbier) at the bar in the Selvedge Brewing taproom. As I reveled in the magnificence of that beer, which is a stunner in an already superb lineup, I heard news that instantly yucked my yum.

Virginia's only craft malting company, my good friends Murphy & Rude, are closing their doors at the end of May.

To be honest, I don't know the ins and outs of why Jeff has decided to shut up shop, so I am not going to speculate on that. From what Murphy & Rude have told customers though, they were looking to scale and it became clear that the challenges of scaling made it unfeasible. What I do want talk about though is the ramifications of their coming demise.

From a very personal, and entirely self-centred, perspective, I am bummed that I am going to have to re-formulate all my homebrew recipes. For several years now, I have committed myself to brewing as much as possible with only their malt. My reasons are pretty simple, they are local, they malted, for the most part, Virginia grown grain, oh and their malt made my beer a lot better. While my best bitter was perfectly good with Maris Otter or Golden Promise, when I switched to using Murphy & Rude English Pale malt, the ante was upped quite significantly. Fresh malt makes a massive difference in terms of flavour. I also have recipes that I have designed specifically for Jeff's malt, my Haus Lagerbier is built on his Virginia Pils malt, which uses the Violetta strain of barley, as has the most recent versions of LimeLight, my lime witbier. As such, I will have to drop some dollars on stocking up on my preferred malts, and some containers to keep rodenty bastards at bay, so I can carry on brewing my favourite recipes for as long as possible.

Taking a broader perspective, there are several local breweries who are now in a similar position, though obviously with far more at stake as they make their living from Murphy & Rude malt. If I remember rightly there were about 12 breweries in Virginia that only used Jeff's malt, but something like 50 outfits using it at some level, including in some wonderful award winning beers. All of these will have to be re-factored for different grains, and in some cases find new suppliers, set-up accounts, contracts, etc, etc.

Taking it slight broader yet, there are farmers with grain in the ground right now who will have to find a new customer for their harvests. Most of those farmers, as I mentioned earlier are in Virginia, with some in Maryland and Pennsylvania, according to the M&R website. Hopefully the malting companies in those states will be able to pick up those harvests.

I don't think it is overstating the case to say that the loss of Murphy & Rude is a tragedy for the craft brewing and allied industries in Virginia. As Josh Chapman commented in my article about Murphy & Rude in Pellicle:

"When you close the distance between supplier and producer, things can only get better".

With that distance inevitably widening again, we are all the poorer for it.

Note: all the pictures here are beers I made exclusively with Murphy & Rude malt.

Making Bolt

I am going to the UK in about five weeks time, mostly for work, but also taking the opportunity of being over there to go an visit my parents in the north of Scotland - basically get to Inverness and keep going north, yeah, that north. 

The primary purpose for the trip is a work conference in London though. I haven't been to London in absolutely ages, I think the last time I was there was on one of my trips home to Scotland from Prague, when I would take the bus from Czechia to London and from thence up to Glasgow, and on to the Isle of Skye for the ferry to Uist. I honestly have no idea when I last spent a few days in London, it might be way back in the dim and distant past when we would go and visit my nan when my little brother and I were proper nippers - I have a core memory of watching "It's A Knockout" safely tucked up in her sofa bed.

In amongst all my looking at pubs in and around Westminster, I'll be staying just round the corner from the Abbey, I have been keeping an eye out for places that stock Timothy Taylor Boltmaker. Now, I realise that it is available in bottles, and I intend to get a couple to bring back to Virginia with me, but you really can't beat traditional British beers as Odin intended, from a beer engine, preferably with a sparkler attached...

But why Boltmaker specifically? Well, it all began when I watched a video from a YouTube channel called The Barnyard Brewhouse where he brewed a recipe inspired by Boltmaker. Every time I have got back to the UK in the last 20ish years, getting some Timothy Taylor Landlord has been high on my list of priorities, but I have overlooked their other beers, to my shame I am sure. Also, though, I have brewed a few times with Wyeast 1469 West Yorkshire yeast, which is reputed to be the Timothy Taylor strain, but I've never really been happy with any of the beers I have either brewed or drunk over here using that strain.

Imagine then my interest being piqued when The Craft Beer Channel, as part of their series on cask ale, went to Timothy Taylor and the head brewer, whilst showing them around said something to the effect that their yeast has evolved to need invert sugar to really get going. Hmmmm, I may have rewound that part of the video to make sure I had heard correctly. Indeed I had, they add about 5-7% of sugar to the wort, with this nugget in mind, and the very helpful ingredient list on the Timothy Taylor website, I set to coming up with a localised version of Boltmaker, using as I always do now, Murphy & Rude malt, and this is what I will be brewing in a couple of weeks:

• 69% English Pale
• 7% Biscuit
• 7% Crystal 40
• 7% Munich 9
• 5% Brown
• 5% Invert Sugar 1
• 17.5 IBUs of Fuggles at 60 minutes
• 9.5 IBUs of East Kent Goldings at 15 minutes
• 4.5 IBUs of Styrian Goldings at 5 minutes

For the invert sugar, I will use the very handy directions from Ron's book "A Homebrewer's Guide to Vintage Beer".

If everything goes to plan, when I get back from the UK, I will have a 3.9% abv Yorkshire style bitter on my kegerator, and hopefully a mini-keg cask or two in the cellar, with which to do a taste comparison with the bottles, and my memories of cask Boltmaker in London, which should still be fresh.

Aged Porter and Mild

In 2017 I designed and brewed a beer with Three Notch'd Brewing in Charlottesville, Blackwall London Porter. The recipe for Blackwall was based on copious amounts of research into porter brewing in the middle of the 19th century, and named for the docks in London which were so central to the history of the British Empire.

 

Featuring about 30% brown malt, the beer was only brewed a couple of times, but at the last brewing in 2018, I made sure to get myself a growler's worth for a little project. Beer hacking, to use Evan Rail's term. As well as my growler of Blackwall, I bought a bottle of Orval, which I promptly drank and pitched the dregs, containing all that brettanomyces goodness, into the growler, and soon enough the gasket on the swing top was thoroughly deformed as the additional CO2 created by our friend brett was expelled.

Yesterday, after nearly 8 years of the growler sitting on the shelf in my beer room, I took the opportunity of the head brewer from Selvedge helping me transport my new-to-me kegerator, to finally broach the growler.

I had two major concerns when I unclipped the lid...a geysir of foam, or being as lifeless as the grave. Thankfully neither happened and as you can see from the picture, there was carbonation in the beer, but not to excess, though the glass I poured for Josh did overflow, but that was more user error on my part than the beer itself.

So how did it turn out? Well, while it is true that I didn't take any notes, Josh and I had a pretty wide ranging conversation around what we were experiencing. In terms of the aroma, that classic barnyard character was present, not overwhelmingly so, however. Maybe it is because I grew up in a very rural area, but I have always found that character to be somewhat comforting. I was most relieved though there was no real vinegar aroma, and it was still identifiably a porter I was shuffling my nose about.

Tastewise I was getting some interesting nuttiness, I imagine from the brown malt - fun fact, when we first brewed the beer, the brewers at Three Notch'd were a little reticent about using 30% brown malt in the grist. I am glad I stuck to my guns on that one. Also in there was that thing which is often described as "vinous", which in this case reminded me of sour cherries, but lingering in the background was an umami character that I absolutely love in dark beers, just a merest wisp of soy sauce, but good quality soy sauce rather than industrially produced.

Clearly the presence of the brettanomyces had dried the beer out a little more than it had already been, but it wasn't like sucking lemons, just there was a tartness that I enjoyed. Nearly 8 years sitting around had meant that the hops were barely perceptible as anything more than bitterness in the finish. Overall I was really happy with how it turned out, and I enjoyed a couple of glasses, even persuading Mrs V to try a little as well.

I can't remember the exact quote, but I do recall seeing that well aged porters were described as being "racy and mellow", an epithet that now makes sense to me after this experiment. It's just kind of a shame that to repeat will mean brewing Blackwall at home again sometime...oh darn.

From one extreme, we went to the other, by broaching my final mini-keg "cask" of dark mild that I brewed earlier this year, and boy was that just flat out awesome. I think I need to get myself another couple of mini-kegs so that my mild brews can all be cask rather than in the keg. This one, Crystal Conjunction, was fine on keg, but with natural carbonation it absolutely shone. It's good to know that you can make very solid beer at home...