Beer
Beers drank on the 2013 Reading beer festival ‘ale trail’.
Please see my post from last year > https://hopticklist.wordpress.com/?s=ales+drank&x=6&y=6 for the reason behind the local CAMRA branch organising an ale trail.
This year only 20 Pubs to visit, but just the one free ticket on completion, rather than the 28 pubs last year and 2 free tickets.
Beer standard was high, just one pub served me an undrinkable vinegar tasting beer, and the ale trail pamphlet allowed beer ‘scoring’ this year, so that particular pub was duly given the mark it deserved!
Notes on this years trail appear at the bottom of this blog.
Only 4 weeks now until the festival, I can’t wait. :).
16/2 – 1 – The Royal Oak, Tilehurst, Beer – ‘Cumberland Ale’ 4.0% – Jennings Brewery
20/2 – 2 – The Fox and Hounds, Sunnyside, Theale – Beer – ‘Pride of Pendle’ 4.1%, Moorhouses Brewery.
22/2 – 3 – The Bird in Hand, Knowl Hill, Beer – ‘Vanilla Ale’ 4.0%, Art Brew Brewery.
28/2 – 4 – Inn on the Park, Woodley, Beer – ‘Doombar’ 4.0%, Sharps Brewery.
28/2 – 5 – Good Companions, Woodley, Beer – ‘Bitter’ 3.8%, Black Sheep Brewery.
4/3 – 6 – The Red Lion, Upper Basildon, Beer – ‘Bitter’ 3.6%, Otter Brewery.
7/3 – 7 – Horse & Groom, Mortimer, Beer – ‘Jail Ale’ 4.8%, Dartmoor Brewery.
8/3 – 8 – Bell & Bottle, Shinfield, Beer – ‘Sheep Dip’ 3.8%, Plain Ales Brewery.
9/3 – 9 – Ale House, Reading, Beer – ‘Hoppy Harrington’ 4.7%, Sherfield Village Brewery.
9/3 – 10 – The Nags Head, Reading, Beer – ‘Berkshire Beauty’ 4.3%, West Berkshire Brewery and ‘Intrigue’ 4.2%, Plain Ales Brewery.
9/3 – 11 – Rose & Thistle, Reading, Beer – ‘IPA’ 3.6%, Greene King Brewery.
11/3 -12 – Lyndhurst, Reading, Beer – ‘Midhurst Mild’ 3.4%, Ballards Brewery.
18/3 -13 – Star, Waltham St Lawrence – Beer – ‘Henrys IPA’ 3.6%, Wadworths Brewery.
18/3 -14 – Shurlock Inn, Shurlock Row – Beer – ‘Mr Chubbs Lunchtime Bitter’ 3.7%, West Berkshire Brewery.
21/3 -15 – The Swan, Three Mile Cross – Beer – ‘Landlord’ 4.3%, Timothy Taylor Brewery.
23/3 -16 – Fox and Hounds, Caversham, Beer- ‘Hop Fest’ 3.8%, Red Squirrel Brewery.
1/4 – 17 – Maiden Over, Earley – Beer – ‘King John’ 4.2%, Andwell Brewery.
1/4 – 18 – Abbot Cook, Reading – Beer – ‘Green Mantle’ 3.9%, Broughton Brewery.
2/4 – 19 – Wagon & Horses, Twyford – Beer – ‘Brickworks Bitter’ 4.2%, Binghams Brewery.
2/4 – 20 – Black Horse, Emmer Green – Beer – ‘Bitter’ 3.7%, Youngs Brewery.
We ate at the Red Lion, Upper Basildon, food excellent, Mon night so service quick. And we also ate at the Lyndhurst, food also good, also Monday, so ditto.
Tried and trusted favourites like the Nags Head and the Bird in Hand, as usual, interesting and tasty range of beers. I discovered the Waggon and Horses in Twyford, a very tasty Brickworks bitter from Binghams. I really liked this homely pub, log fire and a pub cat, it felt a really friendly place.
A couple of places on the trail IMO had a dull and uninteresting range of bog standard beers, these days with ‘locale’ I expect a least a local tasty micro brew beer. One good thing, I did not have to suffer Brakspear beers, awful insipid stuff.
IMO I’d rather see pubs that consistently offer an interesting range of beers year after year and have them repeated in the trail rather than have new pubs on the trail, seemingly, just for the sake of somewhere ‘new to go’. It should be the best 20 for the year, if that top 20 doesn’t change, tough.
Everywhere I found a friendly welcome, though one place though seems to wallow in its ‘clique’ atmosphere, that gets worse every time I go there, about time they stopped taking their irregular customers for granted!
So, I achieved my goal of a different real ale in every pub, and only 1 that I purchased was virtually undrinkable. And my favourite beers drank were;
1/ ‘Vanilla Ale’ 4.0%, Art Brew Brewery – Bird in Hand.
2/ ‘Green Mantle’ 3.9%, Broughton Brewery – Abbot Cook.
3/ ‘Brickworks Bitter’ 4.2%, Binghams Brewery – Waggon and Horses/Twyford.
4/ ‘Sheep Dip’ 3.8%, Plain Ales Brewery – Bell and Bottle.
Beer and penalties in South Norwood
Date -Saturday 26th May 2012.
Time – 12-7pm, Venue- Selhurst Park, Crystal Palace Football Club. 
What for? – The 2nd annual CPFC beer festival 🙂
A beer festival at a football club, unusual?, yes, but apparently one of the ‘CPFC 2010’ consortium Stephen Browett is a big real ale fan. And it was his idea in 2011 to launch the 1st beer festival at Selhurst Park. A good idea, as it went down very well, and although I didn’t attend, a number of friends told me it had been a good event, and so, the 2012 version was pencilled in the diary, and my ticket was pre-purchased, along with apparently 1400 +others, and off I set.
On a very warm day, I shared a train from Reading towards Clapham Junction with many egg chasing fans heading towards Twickenham for the Premiership play off final between Harlequins and Leicester. But frankly I was much more interested in the outcome of the League One play off final at Wembley between Sheffield United and Huddersfield Town.
Walking down the Holmesdale Road from Selhurst station on a very sunny but breezy day, the streets empty, got me to thinking of how different the atmosphere was on a non match day. It also triggered some memories of other non football events I’d attended at Selhurst Park in the past. Specifically I remembered going to two ‘Reggae Sunsplash’ events, and also making an effort to go and see ‘The Undertones’ play their last gig together as support for Peter Gabriel, all these having taking place in the 1980s.
As a fully paid up CAMRA member of twenty or so years, having attended many festivals over the years, I was expecting to view the CPFC festival with a very critical eye.
Upon arrival, entry being at the top of the Holmesdale Road, I was a little surprised to see prices of 1.90 for a half pint and 3.80 for a pint. Well above the norm at CAMRA festivals, my second thought being, well I guess if the profit is going to Palace, it’s not such a problem.
The club had set up the festival on the three concourses in the Holmesdale Road stand, the lower tier housing more common household name beers, the middle concourse the more rare unusual beers, and apparently the Red N Blue bar (which I didn’t get up to) only had a small number of beers, including the house beer, ‘Palace ale’. The programme listed 111 beers in numerical order, now I didn’t get round to check that all of this number had actually turned up, but if they hadn’t it wasn’t far short, so a pretty impressive number. Having travelled on a busy train, I was gagging for a drink on arrival, and when spotting one of my favourite draft beers on the lower concourse, ‘Betty Stoggs’ from Skinner’s Brewery, I was very happy to slate my thirst 🙂
I then walked a few yards into the seats in holmesdale stand to take a look at the ground, which I’ve spent much of the last 42 years of my life at. It was a little surprising to see the pitch bare of grass, sand as far as the eye could see, with watering taking place.
Anyway, it was great to meet up with Steve and Ffion (and meet Ffions friend Michelle), Kevin/Dave/Andy/Tim, Mod Paul, and bump into Alan Russell, and many other faces I recognised. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves even though we all thought the beer was a little warm, and some not as well-kept as they perhaps should have been, and did not taste like top quality. What was very good though, was a beer specifically named after an old Palace player from 50+years ago (Tom Barnett) by his son, who is apparently the brewer of the Sawbridgeworth brewery, and has produced a beer called ‘Selhurst Park Flyer’. I made a beeline for this, as my 2nd or 3rd beer, and not surprisingly I heard that within a few hours it’d sold out, much to the disappointment of some of our gang who hadn’t tried it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Barnett_(footballer)
There was live music, perhaps a little loud for some (maybe just me), various food options, and all the screens on the concourses were showing the womans FA Cup final (Chels v Birmingham), which most showed no interest in, followed by the Div One Play off final, which most kept an eye on. Sometime around 5.30 pm the whisper went round that it’d finished nil all and had gone to penalties, this caused a bee around a honey pot affect as most headed under one the TVs. It was immediately clear that almost all the Palace fans in attendance wanted Huddersfield to go through. Reason being two-fold, firstly because Palace cult hero Alan Lee is now a Terriers player, and secondly, probably because most football fans have enormous empathy with Huddersfield for missing out on promotion last season, after having an enormously long unbeaten record in the league, but then turned up at the play off final at Old Trafford and froze against Peterborough, losing three nil!
Well, Alan Lee, who whilst walking up to take his spot kick, received the time-honoured chant of “Alan, Alan Lee, Alan, Alan Lee” as he stepped up from the gathered Palace fans, but he took a howler, as did a couple of others in the designated first 2/3 takers. In fact the kicks improved the longer it progressed. But each time a Huddersfield player took a kick, the beer festival crowd chanted “Alan, Alan Lee etc” Eventually Huddersfield won 8-7 to right the wrong of missing out last season, and become a Palace opponent for the 12/13 season.
My friend Huddersfield Chris got a congratulatory text on the way home, and he called me later, obviously chuffed to bits to finally get out what in old money was Div Three.
A thoroughly enjoyable day out in great company, but would I go again? Hmmm, only perhaps if they made an effort in 2013 to improve the overall quality of the beer.
The beers drank at the CPFC 2012 festival, by programme order as follows, not in drinking order! ………
5 – ‘Betty Stoggs’ -Skinners Brewery – 15 ‘ Old Bushy Tail’ – Bushey’s Brewery – 29- ‘Festival’ – Dark Star Brewery – 38- ‘Czechmate’ – Enville Brewery – 61 – ‘Kohinoor’ – Windsor and Eton Brewery – 68 – ‘Asylum’ – Oakham Brewery – 80 – ‘Parkers Porter’ – City of Cambridge Brewery – 81 – ‘West Coast IPA’ – Phoenix Brewery – 92- ‘Cascade Pale Ale’ – Saltaire Brewery – 95 – ‘Selhurst Park Flyer’ – Sawbridgeworth Brewery.
Beers Drank at the 2012 Reading Beer Festival
The festival opened at 6pm on the Wednesday to grey skies and damp ground. But the usual enormous selection of beer made up for this!
May 2nd –beers drank.
‘Oscar Wilde Mild’ – 3.7% – Mighty Oak Brewery
‘Pale’ – 3.7% – Loose Cannon Brewery.
‘Springwheat’ – 4.8% – Kent Brewery.
‘Bobby on the Wheat’ – 4.7% – By the Horns Brewery.
‘Love not war’ – 4.7% – London Fields Brewery.
‘Revelation’ – 5.7% – Dark Star Brewery.
‘Nine’ – 5.5% – XT Brewery.
May 3rd – beers drank.
‘Thai-Bo’ – 4.6% – Otley Brewery.
‘Jaywick’ – 4.8% – Thornbridge Brewery.
‘Andescher Helles Weissbier’ 5.5% – Andechs Brewery (Germany).
‘Green Devil IPA’ – 6.0% – Oakham Brewery.
‘Hoxton Special IPA’ – 6.6% – Brodies Brewery.
‘Tasmanian IPA’ – 5.0% – Wolf Brewery.
‘Enigma’ – 5.5% – Kent Brewery.
‘Urban IPA’ – 5.5% – Tiny Rebel Brewery.
‘Hoppeditz’ – 7.5% – Braustelle Brewery (Germany).
Favourite three beers tasted;
1/ ‘Springwheat’ -Kent Brewery.
2/ ‘Jaywick’ – Thornbridge Brewery.
3/ ‘Helles Weissebier’ – Andechs Brewery.
2012 awards given by the local CAMRA branch.
Pub of the year – The Nags Head- Reading.
Club of the year- Wargrave Snooker Club, Wargrave.
Ales Drank on the Reading Beer Fest (2012) Ale Trail
For anyone reading this who is not aware. The Reading beer festival, which is my home town these days, hosts the 2nd largest regional beer festival in the UK every Spring bank holiday week at ‘Kingsmeadow’, this year from May 2nd-6th. The event is organised by the campaign for real ale’s (CAMRA), local branch.
400 + beers (plus many ciders) are sold from within two large marquees. To add to the festival atmosphere, there is live music every evening, traditional pub games, stalls, food etc. As a real ale enthusiast myself, it is one of the highlights of the year, and only a short bus ride away for me 🙂 > http://www.readingbeerfestival.org.uk/ 
I don’t know exactly which year the ale trail began, as I have only been living in the town since 2006, and this is my ‘2nd’ trail year. But it seems the reason for the trail starting was because the festival had become so popular with the general public that the queues to the festival became a problem, and local CAMRA members were receiving no advantage in admission into their local festival. I can vouch for this, having stood in a long queue a couple of times prior to completing the trail in 2011. Because the beers are housed in marquees, and even though the size of the site is pretty big, there is ‘fire limit’ restrictions on numbers allowed onto the site. And once it’s full up, it’s 1 out, 1 in. And if you are in a queue of 250-500 people, it can take some time to get in!!
SO, they are ways around this, avoid the busy times, Fri night, and Saturday. Or, like me do the ale trail. Each year the local CAMRA branch chooses 28 pubs within the Reading area, known for it’s consistently good ale, and then produces a pamphlet with information on these pubs, with space for a stamp from each pub. Get 18 and you get 1 free ticket to the festival (to be used at anytime), get all 28 and you get 2. Also, the most important part of this, you get to join a separate queue for those who have done the ale trail, so rather than join a queue of potentially 500 people, it might be 20 or less!
Last year, 2011, I completed all 28 pubs. Frankly, not being a fan of beers from the Brakespear brewery, I couldn’t get excited about a few of the pubs visited, but I think I managed to get to about pub 26 by drinking a different beer in each, before, you guessed it, a Brakespear pub let me down. Personally, I find their beers very insipid, and wouldn’t have any of their pubs on the trail, but I guess they must have some fans out there in CAMRA world!
This year I decided to do ‘at least’ 18, maybe more, so obtaining 1 free festival pass, incase I decide to visit the festival on the busy Saturday. Like last year my plan of action was a different beer in each pub. And if time allows before the deadline (Apr 11) for sending for the ticket/s, I may complete all 28, if my different beer criteria is met! So below is the list of pubs in chronological order of visit and beers drank, hic 🙂
1- The Royal Oak – Tilehurst – ‘Maid Marian Blonde ‘ – Springhead Brewery.
2- The Fox & Hounds – Caversham – ‘River Crossing’ – Appleford Brewery.
3- Castle – Hurst – ‘Vanilla Stout’ – Binghams Brewery.
4- Baron Cadogan – Caversham – ‘English Ale’ – West County Brewery.
5- The Fox and Hounds – Tilehurst – ‘Bitter’ – The Butcombe Brewery.
6- The Elm Tree – Beech Hill – ‘Doombar’ – Sharps Brewery.
7- The Swan – Three Mile Cross – ‘Landlord’ – Timothy Taylor Brewery.
8- The Nags Head – Reading – ‘Pale Ale’ – The Redemption Brewery.
9- The Bull – Theale – ‘Henrys IPA’ – Wadworth Brewery.
10- The Queens Head- Reading – ‘Hullbaloo’ – Loddon Brewery.
11- The Royal Oak – Knowl Hill – ‘IPA’ – The Rebellion Brewery.
12- The Bell – Waltham St Lawrence – ‘Artful Dodger’ – The Vale Brewery.
13- The Cross Keys – Pangbourne – ‘Bitter’ – JW Lees Brewery.
14- The Abbott Cook – Reading – ‘Build a Rocket Boys’ – Robinsons Brewery and ‘Somerland Gold’ from the Moor Brewery.
15- The Maiden Over – Earley – ‘Hoppit’ – Loddon Brewery.
16- The Crown – Swallowfield – ‘Amber’ – Otter Brewery.
17- The Turners Arms – Mortimer – ‘FortyNiner’ – Ringwood Brewery and ‘Special’ from Brakspear Brewery.
18- The Elephant and Castle- Whistley Green – ‘Libertine’ – Greene King Brewery.
19- The Duke of Wellington – Tywford – ‘Sunbeam’ – Banks Brewery.
20- Lands End – Charvil – ‘Bitter’ – Brakspear Brewery.
21- Foresters Arms – Reading – ‘Pigs Tea’ – West Berkshire Brewery.
22- Moderation – Reading – ‘Tribute’ – St Austell Brewery.
23- The Ale House (Hobgoblin) – Reading – ‘Jesters’ – Butts Brewery.
24- The Hop Leaf – Reading – ‘Spring Twist’ – Andwell Brewery.
25 – The Retreat – Reading – ‘Hereford Pale’ – Wye Valley Brewery.
26 – The Fishermans Cottage – Reading – ‘ESB’ – Fullers Brewery.
Breweries worth seeking out!
I’ve been drinking Real Ale and ‘craft’ beer now for oh, about 25 years. Until my mid twenties I drank lager and then cider before being introduced to the joys of tasty real ales by a friend, and really not looking back since. Good beer is part of my life 🙂
People often ask, “what is my favourite beer”?
I always struggle to answer this question, as I do like different styles of beer, and what I’m enjoying at any one particular time can depend on the weather or my mood. IE, On a Summers evening a refreshing ‘golden ale’ or ‘Indian Pale Ale’ might hit the spot.
In the winter, a dark smoky ale by the fire could equally hit the spot.
But, I do consistently favour Wheat/White (Weissbier) Beers. Sometimes known as Wheat beers, sometimes as White beers, generally more common in Germany, although produced and seen in Belgium and these days more common in the UK, not to be confused with golden ales, which are now heavily produced and promoted. Weihenstephan Weisse is my favourite. Much tastier than the commonly available Erdinger or Leffe. Another good one is the Augustiner Weisse, not widely available in the UK, but worth seeking out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_beer
I also very much enjoy hoppy IPA’s, the hoppier the better!
I drink bottles at home, and these are some of my favourite and most consumed beers either from bottles or sought at the pub.
Weihenstephan ‘Weisse’
St Austell ‘Tribute’
Cairngorm ‘Tradewinds’
Bath Ales ‘Gem Bitter’
Skinners ‘Betty Stoggs’
West Berkshire ‘Good Old Boy’
Dark Star ‘Hophead’
And some of my favourite breweries logos are below….
hopticklist 