Local matters

Chef and Brewer's feedback site: will they respond?

Here’s my beer drinking week so far. It’s a tale of the importance of local choice when choosing and drinking beer.

Tuesday: I welcomed a friend from a distant land and we only had time for one beer before leaving Leeds. So it we chose Lotus IPA at Arcadia in Headingley – at a thumping 5.6%. I found that the alcohol overwhelmed all other tastes and envied the strawberry beer from Belgium that others seemed to be choosing. But was happy that mine had been brewed just ten miles up the road.

Wednesday: At the end of a visit to London, I found my way to my favourite boozer off Russell Square and enjoyed two pints of Young’s Gold. It’s brewed south of the Thames in Wandsworth, but is undeniably a local beer.

Friday: Time for fish and chips. Time I thought for a Daleside beer at the Smiths Arms in Beckwithshaw. But what’s this? A choice of Adnams Bitter, Greene King IPA and Black Sheep Bitter as a guest. Let’s take these in turn.

Adnams is an admirable business; on bad days I dream of Southwold and the Sole Bay Brewery. Suffolk is a very special place, but it’s not what I’m looking for in Yorkshire. I chose to drink it but the temperature was so numbing that the taste had little chance.

Greene King IPA. What can I say? Not local, not special, not a treat. From Suffolk (see above).

Black Sheep. Though at least from the same county, it’s ubiquitous round here so again not special.

The bar staff seemed unhappy. Clearly a decision has been imposed from head office, and I was given a feedback card that encourages me to ‘tell us about your experience.’ I will – and I just have.

The future for country pubs

Here’s a tale of three country pubs and their struggle to survive in challenging times.

All three are on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales in attractive scenery and within easy reach of Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate, Ilkley and Skipton.

The Hopper Lane Hotel is on the busy A59, but with no immediate neighbours. It’s had its ups and downs and has just reopened following acquisition by the small Inns of Yorkshire group and an expensive refurbishment. It’s a large building and has been transformed in gastropub style (though the owners hate this description). It wasn’t busy when we visited on Thursday lunchtime – but the redecoration has been well done, the food was special and there was a choice of Black Sheep bitter and Golden Pippin from two well-known local breweries. I’ll be back.

The Timble Inn has had an even bigger transformation having been closed for several years. Timble is a hidden-away conservation village and I was surprised to find how busy it was on Thursday lunchtime (smart cars were overflowing along the village street). Not having made a reservation, we were not able to eat there – so the Theakston’s Best, Golden Pippin and Hambleton Ales are for another day. This is much more a restaurant with beer than a pub with food. I’ll leave it for a special occasion – though a village pub would be welcome here as Timble is a hub for good local walks.

The Sun Inn at Norwood is on a busy B road between Nidderdale and Leeds-Bradford. There are a few near neighbours (I’m one of them) but this large pub relies on attracting people from the urban areas just over the hills to the south. In particular, it’s a well-known bikers’ pub and though it’s been expanded over the years, it’s resisted a makeover like the two above. Its fans admire its traditional qualities and the presence of the landlord. Yet a large pub that isn’t known for food, that welcomes bikers (who don’t drink much), and is not a free house (Theakston’s Best and Old Peculier are the only local beers) is clearly going to struggle. So there’s a planning application to transform it into an events pub (with amplified music inside and out). Call me a NIMBY, but I oppose this plan. Their business may be at stake, but so’s the quality of my life (and that of my neighbours): we have all chosen to live in a peaceful rural area that is part of the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. We’ve tolerated the bikes up to now, but more traffic and many more events would be intolerable. I don’t welcome a fight – but it’s one we need to win.

A perfect day

Dallowgill is a hidden-away corner of the Yorkshire Dales next to Nidderdale.

It’s a good place to avoid the Bank Holiday crowds, queuing to park at Brimham Rocks.

We walked for four hours along drovers’ roads, farm tracks and ancient bridleways and barely met a soul but were accompanied throughout by the sounds of curlews and lapwings.

The route was planned to take in the Drovers Inn, open today because of the Bank Holiday.

We drank the pale, hoppy Hambleton bitter and the horse motif was complemented by two riders turning up for a drink (see picture).

Good business?

The number of new breweries suggests a vibrant market – though it could also be an indication of a risky business with many failures.

The newest around here is the WharfeBank Brewery (so new it doesn’t yet have a fully-functioning website). I’ve tried the Cam Fell (amber) and Slingers Gold (pale) at the nearby Hunters Inn and the freshness of such local beer certainly appeals.

The Copper Dragon brewery in Skipton still seems like a newcomer, but it’s been around since 2002. This was my first visit to its rather antiseptic buildings on an industrial estate on the south side of town – but many others have discovered its bar and bistro. Inspired it seems by Black Sheep in Masham, Copper Dragon has diversified into food and a range of branded merchandise.

We enjoyed a taste of Golden Pippin, of Black Gold (see picture) and a specially-brewed beer in honour of Fred Trueman whose sculpture now stands alongside the Leeds to Liverpool canal in the town centre.

Traditional v modern: a surprise winner

One of my favourite beers last year was Purity’s Mad Goose. Very pale and very bitter, it reminded me of home (Yorkshire) when I went on my travels.

What’s happened since? I tried it twice in the Friend at Hand just off Russell Square in Bloomsbury this weekend and the balance seemed wrong. Too bitter – almost metallic. It didn’t compare well with the Adnams Bitter in the Betjeman Arms at St Pancras station. A classic, hoppy, amber beer. Perfect. In a retro move, they even served it in those old style chunky glasses with handle. Can’t wait to revisit Southwold.

Am I losing my taste for northern bitter? I chose a Saltaire Dark Mild yesterday which suggests so, but today I’ve discovered Kletswater from Dewsbury’s Anglo-Dutch Brewery (apparently recommended by Roger Protz). Pale, bitter and not too hoppy – perfect in the sun and should win over a few lager drinkers.

The great British pint

I welcome an emphasis on quality beer in pubs and bars. I welcome good writing about beer in print and on blogs. Above all, I welcome the dynamism shown by small breweries.

But I’m less impressed by Adrian Tierney-Jones‘s puff piece in today’s Telegraph Weekend section. Yes, there’s a strong revival in real ale and craft breweries. Yes, some women enjoy beer (some always have). But pubs are struggling; lager still outsells beer; and publicity-seeking breweries like BrewDog are not yet part of the mainstream.

Much more mainstream is the current real ale festival being run by national chain Wetherspoon’s, which offers third of a pint glasses so you can try three festival beers for the price of one.

This afternoon, sitting in the sun in the patio area at the Winter Gardens in Harrogate, I was reminded of a Munich beer garden.

In the past week, I’ve taken two visitors (one male, one female) to the Craven Arms. Neither disputed my suggestion that this was the best pub in England (I found Adrian Tierney-Jones’s top ten rather too urban for my tastes).

Like a betting shop, with beer

I’ve rehearsed the arguments here before. You can admire the way this chain is managed, you can’t argue with the prices, and they’re champions of real ale (as well as big providers of coffee and food). Or you can hate Wetherspoons in the same way that you hate McDonalds or Starbucks – for its market dominance, ubiquity and uniformity.

Bryony Gordon stumbled into this debate in her Telegraph column:

For the uninitiated, they are a chain of pubs where the booze is ridiculously cheap and the company is even cheaper – it’s one half student, one half old man, like a betting shop, with beer.

A mild weekend

The cold weather seems to have ended at last, but my winter cold has been dragging on. As a result, my taste in beer has been for darker brews (stout, mild) in recent weeks.

Salamander Stout, brewed in Bradford is my pick of the stouts (the Saltaire Hazlenut Coffee Porter is extraordinary, but not perhaps for everyday drinking). Of the milds, Theakston was disappointing (the woody taste that works well with the ales seemed out of place here); my choice is Ilkley Black (delicious bitter-sweet taste, though what became of the promise to name their beers out of the famous song?).

It seems I’m good at picking beers that win awards at beer festivals (Ilkley Black was a winner at a recent Bradford beer festival) – but I’m not keen on beer festivals. Why? Because I prefer to drink in pubs (and because I like avoiding crowds if possible).

There’s lots happening outside the festivals. There’s a new brewery opening nearby at Pool-in-Wharfedale in April and the long-awaited Wetherspoons renovation of the Bowling Green pub in Otley is proceeding at last.

Battle over booze

Now that smoking has been defeated, booze is becoming the next target of health campaigners and politicians.

The Economist sketches the battleground (‘Plastered for a pound‘) and includes a graph of alcohol consumption in Britain since 1900. Surprisingly (to me), beer consumption is as high now as at any time since the First War. It was at its lowest in the middle of the last century – a period I’d always associated with pubs (think of those Oxford authors meeting in the Eagle and Child, and of John Major’s Orwell-inspired elegy ‘long shadows on county grounds, warm beer… old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’).

Wine has of course grown rapidly since the 1980s, but the volume consumed is still much lower than beer. Spirits are holding steady, with cider and alopops growing. The figures are harder to analyse because beer is much lower in alcohol than wine.

Here is my personal response to the problem of cheap booze:

• Restrict beer drinking to the pub – where it’s very rarely cheaper than the proposed minimal pricing.
• Prefer quality to quantity, and be willing to pay for it.
• Choose lower alcohol beers (up to 4%) where available.
• Restrict your days for drinking: I’m currently up to three dry days a week. (Good for health; good for cash flow).

Christmas in the Craven Arms

Mulled wine on the range

This pub doesn’t ever disappoint, not in summer nor in winter.

After a cold, clear and very snowy walk over the fells, where better to warm up than beside the range at the Craven Arms.

The steaming cauldron contains mulled wine, which went down well (though I chose Moorhouse Black Witch as my winter warmer).