Iconic pints of Britain and Ireland

Adnams is excellent when it’s on Form.
But as someone who visits Aldeburgh regularly (and Southwold) it’s not as often as it should be.

They have just released a load of Brewdog style beers. The business is in a mess as the share price tells us.
 
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This was very good, consumed with salt in the nostrils at the crusoe in lower largo this afternoon. Very sessionable. The enjoyment enhanced by a joyful battle with a malfunctioning pool table, which was eventually fixed by a bar tender and a screwdriver.
 
Down in the West Country so it’s Thatchers, the ubiquitous bag in a box pub cider round here, an accurately refreshing bittersweet job, like liquidised apple meringue pie with a smooth tannic twist.

At the George in Sherborne, a pleasingly sleepy inn in the heart of this fine old market town, notable not only for the abbey and school, but also interesting used book shops and walnut-faced granny drivers giving no quarter on the cramped one way streets.

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Burton Bridge Draught Burton Ale at Cask, Pimlico.

A potted account of this brewery and its significance may be found in this obituary by Roger Protz of the brewery’s co-founder Geoff Mumford, who died last month aged 82, having only quite recently managed to find a suitable buyer for the business, after a lengthy search.

As good an example you can find of a now rather bygone style I reckon, no shortage of the distinctive sulphate/eggy reek of Burton water plus stinging, woody English hop bitterness. Slipped down right quick on a muggy afternoon.

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A pint of Harvey’s Best in the brewery tap in Lewes would rank in my notional “top 5 pints”. The first taste of cask ale in a pub after the pandemic, what a way to end the drought.

My late mother had a simple binary scoring system for alcoholic beverages (“filth” or “nectar”) and awarded an extremely rare (for a beer) latter grade on this occasion.
 
Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter at the Cittie of York, High Holborn.

The great Ian Nairn’s description of this pub in its 1960s heyday (when it was Henekey’s Long Bar) is worth quoting in full:

“Any long bar implies serious drinking, but this has a sense of dedication that is far beyond mere commerce. Perhaps because of this it is often cram-full: it is more of an experience to be uncomfortable here than to relax amongst a farrago of clichés. It does not depend on Victorian ornament either. The effect is due to the long, tall proportions, the dark woodwork and especially to the scale of the huge oval barrels behind the bar, as concise as an airliner’s skin. A walkway high up connects rooms tucked under the roof and you expect to see acolytes coming out on it to perform some liturgy of alcohol. Cabins all round the walls, as a souvenir of Belfast or Dublin; but this place needs no stage props. They sell spiced buns.”

These days the glorious interior remains but all the serious drinking energy has vanished. Replaced by the trademark palpable sic transit glumness that seems to be decreed by the man in head office.

In contrast to every other Sam’s pub in London I’ve been in latterly though, there was fresh cask OBB actually on and being poured other day. It was OK: malty, balanced, nice hoppy twist. A lingering aftertaste of misanthropy. And no spiced buns.

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Pre Covid the draught beers at the Sam Smith pubs in London were remarkably inexpensive, a policy which sadly seems to have been discontinued. Bottles, in contrast, were always highly priced. I find many of them absolutely delicious.
Humphrey Smith is apparently soon to retire. He seems to be a nasty piece of work in many ways though I have a lot of sympathy with some of his 'rules'.
 
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This business-limiting set of rules is new to me but I've long avoided Sam Smith pubs for the atmos and have rarely liked the draught beers. Like Tom I think the bottled beers, particularly the various stouts/porters, can be great.

His Nibs' self-ossification is however applauded wrt non-standard measures, 550ml being a proper glass-filler, superior to 330ml, 440ml and 500ml and certainly to 2/3rd pint measures :)
 
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Thom Blach said:
Pre Covid the draught beers at the Sam Smith pubs in London were remarkably inexpensive, a policy which sadly seems to have been discontinued. Bottles, in contrast, were always highly priced. I find many of them absolutely delicious.
Humphrey Smith is apparently soon to retire. He seems to be a nasty piece of work in many ways though I have a lot of sympathy with some of his 'rules'.
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His son Sam was a nice chap (or at least he was in undergraduate days) although I sadly haven’t kept up with him.
 
Interestingly enough I went to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Friday. It was full of tourists that clearly read the same guide book. I haven't been to a Sam Smith pub for many years so ordered a mild on keg (decent enough, but a far cry from Hobson's) and the bottled oatmeal stout which I used to like a lot, but didn't like as much now due to the cane sugar in the list of ingredients which seems to have ruined that lovely roasted malt note I was expecting. I doubt they changed the ingredients so it's me, not them.

The below pint was drunk yesterday in my local. Tastes much better than the canned version. Not sure how iconic this beer is, but at least it had a cameo in "Oz and James Drink to Britain" which is not a bad achievement for a brewery set up in 2005.
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David Mansfield said:
Thornbridge don’t do bad beer. A favourite of mine.
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Agree David - they seem to straddle the line between trad and craft very skilfully - a brewery tour in Bakewell driven by Jaipur and a couple of their American Pale/IPAs had me really enjoying a straightforward "English Bitter" (forget the name) and everything of theirs I've tasted has been good stuff, though I've avoided some of he extremities. Equally, I haven't had a bad beer from St Austell (though they seem much more trad in their offering) or my local, Castle Rock.

I've always seen the craft thing as a raising of all boats, improving the quality of the trad beers at the same time as giving us the dubious delights of ten million identikit APA/IPAs and Pastel de Nata Stouts.
 
There's very little beer that isn't at least quite good when in peak condition and none that is good when it's not. The standard does seem to be a bit higher now that it's so expensive; I certainly have no hesitation whatever about rejecting a poor £6 pint.
'Craft' beers can be enjoyably thirst quenching though generally too expensive but there's no advantage to not drinking them at home whereas there's nothing to touch real beer fresh from the barrel.
 
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