UK2013: The Beer Diaries

During my travels around the UK, it was of course my pleasure and delight to sample various Ales according to which region I was in at the time. The UK appears to be enjoying a resurgence of breweries, both micro and otherwise, and there are plenty of tasty beverages to be had.

I'm going to backtrack a bit and take you on a whistle-top tour of the UK and its beers; stay with me for tours of a couple of Gloucestershire breweries. However since I'm writing this so long after drinking them, my mental tasting notes are faded with time; I'm not a beer writer - don't be expecting detailed descriptions of hops or aroma but I'll do the best I can. So let's return briefly to Bury St Edmunds, where I encountered my first British brews after a trip to Waitrose with Sarah.

Oakham Ales' Citra. This comes from Peterborough, so not very local but it was tasty and refreshing. I do love the Green Man Hop on their label.

Sharps' Doom Bar. Even less local - from Cornwall - but a well known beer in the UK these days.

We decamped into town to check out the new Wetherspoons pub, in which I couldn't ignore Bury St Edmunds's most famous local beer, Greene King IPA. They appear to have changed the logo, it used to feature a stern-looking king, not a landscape.

During my time in Sudbury, I made it a point to meet all my friends in the town's Brewery Tap. This is the Blackadder Tap just on the edge of the town center, and serves primarily beers from Mauldon's Brewery which is on an industrial estate up the road a mile or so. They also serve a good selection of other local beers, and they don't have TVs or serve food, it's a Proper Decent Pub. Definitely the place to enjoy a pint in Sudbury.

I think this was a pint of Mild. I tried a few Mauldon's beers and they are always pretty good.

At the end of the week, I found myself back in Bury St Edmunds, in the Old Cannon Brewery with friend Rob. They do flights of beer in 1/3 pint glasses. Since I was about to get on a train, I figured I'd try three beers this way.

I believe we have here some Old Cannon Best Bitter, Old Cannon Gunner's Daughter and some Adnams' Broadside.

Three train rides later, I was in West Yorkshire. This next pair were actually in Bradford, in another Wetherspoons pub there.

This one was OK

This was very ordinary. And with a name like that... aimed at the Stereotypical Yorkshireman, methinks.

These next two were in the Stubbing Wharf pub in Hebden Bridge. This place was really nice and very busy, with good reason. They did fabulous Sunday lunches and are located right by the canal. Nice place to be.

I had some Longdendale Lights, which I recall as being very drinkable, a nice light summer ale.

I had some Golden Pippin which was pleasant, but I preferred the first one. And then I had some Landlord because it would have been churlish not to.

Now we're in Gloucestershire, and in the Whole Foods supermarket I found This, next to a bottle of That. Teme Valley Brewery have a sense of humour, it appears. (When I was a kid, my mother said she wanted to get three cats and name them 'This One', 'That One' and 'The Other One'. I'm sure the vet would have loved us).

I am sure it was nice. It doesn't appear to have lodged any particular impression in my mind.

Moving up the hill to the Carpenter's Arms in Miserden, we find this nice handpump from Wye Valley Brewery, whose product we became quite familiar with.

Nice quaffable Pale Ale. Not as hoppy as an American one but pleasant.

This was in the Weighbridge Inn on the road out of Nailsworth, just before we went into Nailsworth for a very nice dinner.

My first exposure to Stroud Brewery's products. Teasel was very refreshing. We had some more from a bottle, back at my Dad's house later on. And for our American readers wondering what a teasel is? Here you go.

Off to lunch with friend Cherry the next day, and she had very kindly bought me a couple of beers. These are from Wickwar Brewing in South Gloucestershire.

I drank this at Cherry's. It was a nice, honest, English ale.

I took this one back to Dad's and drank it later. I don't usually drink Porter but this had a good flavour and wasn't heavy at all.

Now we're off to Gloucester for the first part of Dad's and my brewery tour. Yay! We went to Gloucester Docks after visiting the Cathedral and found the relatively new Gloucester Brewery.

They have these unusual wooden-clad brewing vessels which look great in the red brick brewery.

Why hello there, bags of Cara Pils and Crystal Malt. You look familiar, from Alan's brewing here at home.

This is the tasting station - straight from the barrels! It seems to be the way of British breweries to use these plastic kegs. They are lighter than metal ones and don't get stolen for the metal value. Each brewery has its own colours; Gloucester has the grey, pink and red you see here.

The shop area, from which you can buy tasty wares. Of course, we did not come away empty handed ;-)

Just outside the brewery lies this water trough for horses. It is inscribed, "Drink and let no man hinder you" Robert Brewin 1890. Kind of appropriate for the location of a brewery! That's a box of Gloucester beers sitting on top which we had just bought. It was a mixed case which allowed us to try a selection. They were generally enjoyable, for sure.

Onwards to Stroud Brewery. This lies in the valley between Stroud and Chalford, fairly close to where I grew up. It, like Gloucester, is a pretty new brewery. (There used to be another Stroud Brewery, it was situated in town and disappeared many years ago. This new one is no relation that I'm aware of.) Stroud's focus is on organic craft ales and intensely local names.
They have an open house on Fridays from 3pm onwards, which we didn't know about, and we had arrived a bit early. They kindly gave us a tour around anyway.

I think these are a mash tun and a hot liquor tank.

They were proud of the fact that all their grain comes from the last remaining traditional maltings in the UK - Warminster Maltings. This means that the malt is laid out to dry on the floor, in a large multi-level warehouse in which the grain is turned manually, just as it's been done for hundreds of years.

They have a nice control box for the brewery systems, made for them by another local company just up the road, so I was told.

These are the brewing/storage vessels. Lots of tables and chairs stand ready for the evening's festivities.

Inside the fridge. You can see here that Stroud's colours are green and brown. They were proud of the fact they'd just taken delivery of a large batch of new kegs. More kegs = more beer!

A selection of beers above the bar. There's some good local names amongst these. Five Valleys is named after the five valleys that radiate from Stroud. Tom Long is named after Tom Long's Post, a signpost that sits in the middle of Minchinhampton Common. Woolsack refers to the local woollen industry. The town of Tetbury still holds Woolsack Races, in which big, burly men run up a 1 in 4 hill carrying 60lb sacks on their backs.

They mentioned that they had a brick oven, which I was most amused to learn, so I had a quick look at it. It seemed about as finished as ours was at the time (Alan has done more to ours since then), although of smaller dimensions.

In the bar, we found they had a cunning way of taking beer home, in these 2-pint Tetrapaks. It was kind of unusual to be able to visit a brewery and just pay for beers to drink there, like you would in a pub. Texas laws at the time forbade breweries to charge for beer, so when you visit a brewery in Texas, they usually have you buy a glass and then fill it with free beer. Since my UK visit, the laws have changed a bit, allowing breweries to charge, although many are still using the old model. However, I don't think you can buy beer to take away in Texas, yet.

We bought some Budding to take home, named after Edwin Budding, the inventor of the lawnmower, who lived in Stroud. And of course we drank some there, too!

This one is Stroud Life, named after a local newspaper. It was a nice light and refreshing brew.

Back home to Dad's place, and we opened up the box from Gloucester. Let's see what's in here... First up, some Priory Pale, which was probably my favourite, but then I generally prefer the paler beers.

Cherry and White is named for the colours of the Gloucester Rugby team, I believe. According to their website, it is a re-badged Mariner copper ale.

Puddle and Spice is a festive beer named for the old nursery rhyme 'Doctor Foster, went to Gloucester, in a shower of rain. He stepped in a puddle, right up to his middle, and never went there again'.
I didn't get time in my visit to try the Dockside Dark, although Dad later said it was probably his favourite from the box.

We had one more encounter with Gloucester Brewery, at Stroud Market. Stroud Brewery had a stand there too.

One more beer; Butcombe, at a pub in Stroud. Pleasant enough; another very traditional English best bitter. Although after drinking so many excellently hoppy American beers, a lot of English ales just seem a bit flat somehow. I guess my palate has changed.

And one last bit of local history for you. These plaques appear on pubs all over Gloucestershire. This one is in Nympsfield, home to a lovely gliding airfield and a pub (the Rose and Crown) that does very nice food. It turns out that Stroud Brewery of old merged with Cheltenham Brewery to create West Country Ales. They stuck these plaques onto all their pubs from 1958 until 1967. (thanks to gloucestershirepubs.co.uk for the info).
Seeing these around is just part of growing up in Gloucestershire; they've always been there in my eyes.

So there you go; I hope you enjoyed this tour around British brewing. Cheers!

CreatureCam

We got ourselves one of those trail cameras the other day. We've been talking about getting one for ages, to see what nocturnal visitors we might get from the animal kingdom. They have motion detectors and infra-red flash/sensors so that if anything passes by, day or night, it should get photographed. I am discovering that one must be careful about where the camera is pointing; grasses waving in the breeze will result in 300 pictures of an empty lawn! However, point it in the right place and it will reveal nocturnal activity.

Here are some visitors, from the first week or so of camera ownership...


First up; it seems that Snowman is still making his rounds, although we haven't seen him by daylight for many months now. We saw him two nights in succession.


Here's a Roadrunner just in front of the tall grass (click for a bigger image on all of these).


One night we caught this fox.


And we get deer all the time, of course.


This one decided to photobomb the camera last night (he better not have been eating my plants at the time, either!)


Two nights ago, something broke through the cat flap to eat the bird food in the sun room. I suspect this raccoon is the culprit...


And of course, Smokey gets picked up doing his rounds :-)

UK2013: Gloucester Cathedral

The city of Gloucester is the capital of Gloucestershire county, and sits very close to Cheltenham. It is not all that great for shopping but it does have a couple of jewels in its crown. One of them - the Docks - I'll talk about in the next post, but here I will concentrate on the fabulousness that is Gloucester Cathedral.

My Dad and I had a day on our own, so he drove us into Gloucester. We parked on a street close to the Cathedral and found this statue. It is of King Charles II, carved in 1662 by Stephen Baldwyn.

I guess you could call this a lytch gate! If memory serves, the plaque on the wall said this building was of 14th century vintage. Passing through the arch leads you into the Cathedral grounds.

Going around the corner into the main courtyard, you wind up near this entrance gate. Beyond are some shops, one of which sold Interesting Local Wool.

Turn around, and Behold. Gloucester Cathedral.

The site of the Cathedral has been a place of religious worship since 700AD. The present Cathedral building started construction in 1089, with additions and modernisations carried out through to the 1470s. So it's been around a while.

A close up of the entrance. For scale, notice the guy standing in the doorway. They built things big, back in the 1400s.

A close up of the decorative stonework leading up to the Tower. There's a curious little iron railing up the wall, there, near that flying buttress.

Inside the entranceway, looking up at the ceiling and windows.

Looking across the nave from the entranceway. The large round pillars are part of the original construction, built by the Norman Abbot Serlo between 1089 and 1130. The vaulted stone roof was finished in 1242, replacing the original wooden roof which burnt down.

We turned to the right and walked up the right hand (south) side of the building. We came to the Seabroke Chantry, named after Abbot Thomas Seabroke whose tomb I presume we are looking at here.

The carved ceiling of the South wing.

St Andrew's Chapel remains painted in glorious splendour. Apparently most of the building would have looked like this during the Middle Ages. This is the ceiling as you enter.

Here's the altar of the Chapel.

The walls are also painted with scenes from religious history. This shows St Andrew being called to serve Jesus. (And look; a Door! Maybe this is what's on the inside of one of those Little Side Doors...)

Popping back into the nave area for a moment. Standing under the separator between the main part of the nave and the chorister's area - the Quire, looking up at the massive East Window. I'll need to come back during the summer season; at that time they run tours up the Tower and upstairs gallery, from which you can get a closer look at the glass.

A close up of the Altar with the window behind it.

The immense carved ceiling above the choir stalls.

Standing near the east end, looking back into the choir stalls.

I assume the choirmaster leads his singers from here.

Back out of the Quire area, to the south side again. This is a figure of Robert of Normandy, eldest son of William the Conqueror. Robert has rested on this site since 1134; they think he is buried under the Chapter House.

This is the South-East Chapel. It contains very modern stained glass, from 1992, made by Thomas Denny. There's supposed to be animals and birds and plants depicted in the glass, but I'm having a hard time spotting them. I tried to do the colour justice; it's a host of delicate shades of blues and purples, which are hard to capture properly.

This is the Lady Chapel, on the far eastern end of the building. The font in the foreground is of Norman vintage, around 1130, and made of lead. We didn't go into this chapel as there was a service in progress. This is a chapel, mind you, and it's still vastly bigger than most churches!

Here's that East Window again, looking up at the ceiling from the bottom.

Heading around the end of the building, we come to the North-East Chapel, in which are commemorated the servicemen of Gloucestershire. This is the corridor outside, where the flags are held.

Prince Osric of Mercia (an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom) established the first religious house on this site, in 679. This is his monument. I guess the Cathedral has grown a bit since then.

This is the tomb of King Edward II, who died in Berkeley Castle in 1327. It is also the reason the Cathedral still exists. King Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1540 and would have torn down the Cathedral (which was a monastery at the time), except for the fact his ancestor was buried here.

Looking down to the west end of the building, outside the nave. If you go along here, on the right there is a door leading to the Cloisters.

These cloisters are pretty big, in keeping with the size of the building. They have really fabulous fan vaulted ceilings which date from the 1350s.

A close up of the centre part of the fan vaultings.

Looking out into the central garden. There's a well in the middle. The structure to the right of the corner is the Lavatorium, where monks (and later, priests) would have washed themselves.

Looking back at the Tower from the garden.

And a wider shot.

Another view of the Cloisters. This one has clear glass windows.

Back inside, and of course a visit to the Shoppe, at the west end of the building, where I may have bought one or two items :-) Standing at this end of the nave, one can look back at the Organ, which was built in 1665. Sadly we didn't get to hear it, but I bet it's magnificent.

By this time I was knocked out and brimming with Architecture Overload; this really is a magnificent building with a colossal amount of history. Sorry to disappoint you but I didn't remember all those dates; Dad bought me a walkaround paper guide which I am grateful for, as it explains a lot of what we saw. Photographers should be aware that the Cathedral requires you to buy a photo permit, but to be honest I think they undercharge; that's got to be the best three pounds I ever spent.