If you had to...

Right, I’m feeling mischievous so time for another ‘If you had to…’ This week it’s partly inspired by the BrewDog showcase which is happening at The Bull in Horton Kirby, Kent (I am so flipping excited about this that I’m considering leaving now and arriving early so that I don’t miss it!). From Thursday 2nd April until it runs out - probably Sunday 5th, at the latest - they will have the following on cask or stillage: Trashy Blonde, Zeitgeist, Punk IPA, Chaos Theory, RipTide, Paradox Isle of Arran and Divine Rebel. That’s mega cool!

I haven’t had Divine Rebel yet (it’s a 12.5% barley wine brewed with the gypsy beer warrior that is Mikkeller) but all the others I am very familiar with and some are among the best beers I’ve tried in the last few months (RipTide and Isle of Arran in particular, and I can’t wait to compare cask Punk to cask Jaipur). But I have only ever had BrewDog from the bottle so getting them from the cask is going to be a wicked new experience for me.

So, I’ve had these beers but I’m eager to drink them again (I’ve got a Punk open right now and it's goooood). I’ve got bottles of all of them in the house and whenever they run out they get topped up quickly. BrewDog have also got a few new beers on the way which I am really looking forward to - Zephyr, the Atlantic IPA, a collaboration with Stone and Cambridge and a Black IPA. All of these I will buy and try as soon as they are released. But the question is, in a round-a-bout way relevant to everything I’ve written…

If you had too… would you choose to never again have a beer which you’ve already had, or, never have a new beer again, only being allowed to drink what you’ve already drunk before? (and if you choose to go with only having new beers from now on then once you've had it you can have it again and again, if you wish)

In other words, are you happy to choose from what you’ve already had or do you want to try new things? But if you choose the new only then you have to give up all the beers which you've had before! This is a really tough one, I think!

I got a load of these but if you’ve got any you want to suggest then feel free and I’ll add it to the list! And if you want to come to the showcase then get the train to Farningham Road and use google maps to get there, it's pretty easy, about a 15 minute walk. I'll be there on Thursday (with the chaps from Ale Affinity) and Friday evenings I hope. Email me if you want directions.

Beer Ice Cream: Thornbridge Hark

A while back I made ice cream from BrewDog’s glorious RipTide stout. Ever since then I’ve been in the mood to try out different beers to see what kinds of flavours they bring to ice cream.

There’s so much potential for using different beers to affect different outcomes in dishes. Carbonade, stews, pies, breads, pannacottas and ice cream would all use the same base recipes each time you make them but the beer which is added will change what the final product is like, and that’s pretty cool – it’s something I’ll be experimenting with quite a lot.

Last weekend I opened a 9-pint mini-keg of Thornbridge Hark which I had brought back from my visit to the Brewery. Most of this was for me to drink but I also decided to do a bit of work in the kitchen. This ‘work’ was a carbonade, beer bread and an ice cream (plus this crazy experiment at Butterbeer). The beer is a 4.8% ‘winter warmer’ brewed with a little rye malt, crystallised ginger, coriander and caraway seeds and Seville orange zest. It’s fruity, spicy, zesty, clean and crisp and it’s all underpinned with a fantastic rye bread flavour which is just delicious.

The RipTide ice cream is fantastic. It’s chocolatey and packed with fantastic roast malt flavours, keeping the essence of the beer but fading out before the hops kick in. And in ice cream you don’t really want hops as they leave a dry, strange and unwelcome tang. Saying that, I will soon try a big IPA and see how that comes out, maybe Goose Island as it’s got that huge orange and caramel mix which could be very tasty (it’ll probably need some fruit going in though to emphasize the juicy hops, and it’ll want less of the beer).

When I first tried the Hark I wasn’t sure how it’d translate as an ice cream as it has a decent dose of hops in it, giving a little floral bouquet and some dryness, but what the hell, this was an experiment and I would still have 8 ½ pints left! So I made up the batch and you know what? It’s really good! What you get is like a brown bread/rye bread ice cream with hints of banana and citrusy spice. I gauged it just right on the beer front and there was no hop bitterness coming through to kick the back of the throat. A really good result. And it has left me wanting to try and ice cream sandwich with it in, maybe with a little strawberry jam too! Yum!

I am lazy when it comes to my ice cream base but I am also scared of getting scrambled eggs when making custard, so I simply combine condensed milk with double cream and then add whatever else I want. It’s so easy but it just works perfectly. This hardly needs a recipe but here it is, and it makes around a litre. But here’s a warning: the amount of beer that you add varies between each different one that you choose; 300ml is not a blanket amount that works for every beer and most will want slightly less than this so start at 150ml-200ml and work your way up, trying it along the way.

• 1 can of condensed milk
• 300ml double cream
• 250ml-300ml Thornbridge Hark

Mix them all together and churn it in an ice cream machine then eat. I told you it didn’t need a recipe!

So Beer Ice Cream Take Two (well, technically Take Three as I made a tiny batch of BrewDog Paradox Isle of Arran which rocked) was a great success. I’ve got my eye on a strong Belgian ale next, probably Chimay. Then I’ll be testing out the IPA.

Any suggestions of other beers which could or do make amazing ice creams?

FAB POW! Curious Brew's Brut and Fish Fingers

FAB POW! the call of the gay superhero and the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week!

Curious Brew are the beer side of Chapel Down wines and they make three great beers which I’ve written about here. The Brut is brewed with champagne yeast and it’s a super little beer, spritzy and lively and light and elegant. It calls out for delicate seafood so what better to put with it than fish fingers?!

Fish fingers rock. Simple as that. I love them. Fish fingers, chips and baked beans is a winning dinner every time and don’t even get me started on the fish finger sandwich! It’s one of the greatest things this world has to offer. I love them.

This match is a little bit of cheeky with a little bit of classy. That’s a good fun pairing. And it’d be even better if you’ve got a Deus Brut des Flandres to open...

What good FAB combos have you had this week?!

Buying Beer 2: Beer Ventures

I posted about buying beer a few weeks ago. On the back of that I placed an order with Beer Ventures. I like their choice of beers which covers all styles and all of the world, including some rarer, or harder to come by beers: Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout (good price too!), Brooklyn Local No.1, Deus Brut des Flandres (I’ve had this once and loved it), magnums of Chimay Grande Reserve and Sam Smith’s Yorkshire Stingo. They’ve also got a lot of the BrewDog range.

The site’s really easy to use, ordering was no problem and the beer arrived super quick (maybe because I entered my company as Pencil & Spoon!!) and they were very well packed away. They also came with tasting notes on the beers that I’d picked, which is a nice touch. My order included: BrewDog’s Speyside, which I’ve never had before, a couple of Tullibardine 1488’s which I think is wonderful and kind of like a grown up Innis & Gunn, I got a Schlenkerla Weizen, an A Over T and a Schneider Aventinus after reading this post (which says hello to me!). There were also 6 other bottles in the case but they were for my boss – I’ve managed to get him into beer so we can now split the P&P on all the beer we buy... Clever!

Check out the Beer Ventures website and their beer selection. I'll be going back to buy from them again soon, I'm sure. Andrew also writes a really cool blog which focuses on food and beer, so he’s a chap after my own heart – and he’s bloody good at it too. And if you place an order tell him I said Hi!

Biere des Moulins or Beer in a Plastic Bottle

vBlog number 4 done. Just a quickie this time as I check out Biere des Moulins, or as the title will tell you, it’s a ‘Beer in a Plastic Bottle’. Ridiculous, I know. Anyway, you can check out my youtube channel here. There’s a load of other good youtube beer guys out there so give them a look too.

When I saw the curious green bottle in the booze section I just had to buy it and try it. I’d never seen beer in a plastic bottle with screw top before. Beer lives in casks, kegs, barrels, bottles, glasses and cans. Plastic bottles are the realm of fizzy pop and cheap cider.

But why isn’t beer stored and sold in plastic bottles? History, I guess, is the first answer – beer bottles have always been made of glass. And it’s the brown glass bottles which do better than green or clear bottles because it restricts certain light photochemistry from occurring and funking up the beer. Plastic suggests cheap and throw-away and it just doesn’t feel right in your drinking hand - the weight and solid grip of the glass bottle is so much more comfortable. And the plastic screw top, don’t even get me started on that one, it was like opening a bottle of Sprite. Literally. Maybe it’s environmentally better? No… I’m pretty certain that glass wins that one too. So why bother with plastic? Maybe it’s a question of price…

On to the beer then, the important stuff. I didn’t expect much from it, which was good because I didn’t get much. The bottle had a slight amount of ‘give’ to it before it was opened which suggested a lack of carbonation. It cost 99p for 500ml which tells me it isn’t out to challenge the premium beer crowd. It has a poncy French name and describes itself as a Continental Lager, and then it suggests that it’s good with light meats (light meat? WTF’s that?). It’s made by InBev, by the way. And the taste? Well, it’s like a 3.8% lager, bland and uninspiring, a bit insipid, slightly eggy and metallic with a faint biscuity base and hops which you can almost miss. It’s fine, I guess, if you drink that kind of thing. I didn’t finish the bottle and I won’t buy another one except for novelty value or to enter as a dud on a beer night. Still, it was an interesting little taster.

Anyone know of any other plastic bottles of beer and are they any good?

And why the bath I hear you say? Well, I thought I’d open it in there because I wanted new places to shoot videos. Plus there was some hope that it might inspire me (I get a lot of good ideas in the shower…). I wasn’t inspired this time but maybe I’ll try again some day. Maybe not. At least the lighting is good thanks to the gorgeous sunny day, the perfect kind of day for a lovely, chilled bottle of Biere des… Don’t even go there.

Butterbeer

Did anyone watch Heston’s Tudor Feast last week? (If not it’s on again tonight or you can catch it online, it’s well worth watching) I tuned in just in time to catch Protzy and Heston Blumenthal recreating a curious brew called Butterbeer. I then read this post over at Blog O’ Beer and thought I’d give it a try myself.

There is a Harry Potter link, supposedly, but I haven’t read any of the books and only seen a couple of the films. I looked it up in the only way I know and then I found a few recipes. It’s essentially root beer, butterscotch sauce and butter and leaves the drinker feeling warm. Blimey! That’s no drink for a wizard-in-training, is it?!

Anyway, the beery version is a little different to that. I got the recipe from here but there is another one here. It’s basically beer, egg yolks, butter, sugar and nutmeg. A curious combo if you ask me. And I’ve been looking for some of the history behind it but I haven’t found anything yet, anyone know about it?

I followed the recipe, as you do, and then poured it out into my glass (the beer I used was Thornbridge’s Hark as I had just opened a mini-cask of the stuff). The kitchen filled with the smell of buttery nutmeg, which is pretty nice I tell you. The drink itself is a waxy yellow colour and smells just like an egg custard tart. And the taste? It’s odd. Kind of like egg-nog with hops. It’s creamy, rich and warm, unnervingly eggy for a beer, spicy from the nutmeg and sweet from the sugar. I kept sipping it for a while but in the end it made me feel a bit sick.

To conclude: butterbeer is pretty rank. Stick to the beer on its own. I you want to try it it’s easy to make but just be careful you don’t curdle the egg yolks or you'll get scrambled egg chunks in your pint and that is proper minging.

Beer Snacks: Mini Toad-In-The-Hole

Hunger and thirst alert! I love finding good food and beer matches for all courses and all occasions, but sometimes the best pairings are the simplest ones, don't you think? They are the ones which live in all the best pubs, the foods which we can hold in one hand while we sup a beer in the other. It’s going to be warm and probably meaty. It harks back to childhood foods, to eating with our fingers, to wintry warmers and (kind of ironically/strangely) school dinners.

If I had a pub I’d like to think that I’d have a whole blackboard chalked up with bar snacks. My ideal list would include the following, all homemade, naturally: Sandwiches (fat slices of salt beef, sausage, fish finger, etc.), toasted sandwiches (ham and cheese is king here), big scotch eggs, sausages and mustard, meat and beer pies, pork scratchings and platters of cheese. I’d also like malted Maris Otter grain to nibble on instead of peanuts.

This Toad-In-The-Hole recipe would be right at the top of the list, perfect for any dark beer and the ideal snack for a cold day. The batter is crunchy and soft in different places, the onions are sweet and charred, the sausages hot and meaty and the gravy is thick and unctuous. And it’s all made with a can of beer (possibly my favourite canned beer right now – Twaites’ Dark Mild, which is smooth, nutty, light and fantastically roasty). This beer, with its minimal hop invasion, adds a great flavour throughout.

If you want eight huuuge individual puds and a monster pot of gravy, then follow this.

• 3 fat sausages
• 2 onions
• 3 field or portabello mushrooms
• 125g plain flour, plus an extra tablespoon for gravy
• ½ teaspoon salt and pepper
• 2 eggs
• 150ml milk
• 150ml beer (a dark beer, ideally a mild or light stout – check out Twaites’ Dark Mild)
• 200ml beef stock
• 1 teaspoon tomato puree
• Olive oil

First you have to make the batter and leave it to chill out for an hour or two. Put the flour and seasoning into a bowl. In a jug measure out the beer (keep the rest of the beer on the side) and milk then add the eggs and whisk it together. Add this to the flour and mix together to make a creamy batter. Pop it in the fridge until required.

Turn the oven to 220C, place a small drizzle of oil into the bottom of each hole of a yorkshire pudding or muffin tray, and heat until smoking. Then chop the onions into thin slices and fry gently in oil (there’s no hurry – you want them sweet and golden), when soft add the finely chopped mushrooms and cook until they let out all their juices and turn dark brown. Chop the sausages into three or four chunks and cook with the onions and mushrooms.

When the oil in the oven is so hot that it sizzles violently when you flick some batter into it, pour the mix into each hole (three-quarters of the way up) and pop a piece of sausage or two into each, along with some onion and mushroom, reserving about half the onion and mushroom mix (just set this aside). Then bake for 30 minutes or until crispy and golden and cooked at the bottom.

To make the gravy, heat the remaining onions until they sizzle again (you’ll probably want an extra splash of oil here, or maybe some butter) and add a spoon of flour, mixing it around. Add the tomato puree and stir in for a minute or two. Deglaze the pan with the stock (don’t use beer or you get a nasty hop tang) and then add the beer and simmer gently for 5 minutes, stirring so that all the flour cooks out and isn't lumpy, until it is thick and rich. Season if you need to.

When the puddings are cooked just pile them high around the pot of gravy and enjoy with a pint of beer. I recommend any dark ales, stouts, porters, milds; anything like that. Particular beers of note, which come to mind, would be: Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout, Meantime’s London Porter, Fuller’s London Pride or ESB or 1845 or London Porter, Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, Adnam’s Broadside, Gadd’s Dogbolter… beers with roasted flavours and a nice depth of sweetness which calls out for the meaty gravy.

This is a damn fine beer snack. If ever I saw mini toad-in-the-hole served in a pub then I’d buy it in a second.

If you had to...

It’s Thirsty Thursday so let’s throw out another If you had to… conundrum.

It’s inspired by my evening at the London Drinker last night. The two beers at the top of my hit list were Thornbridge’s Jaipur and Fuller’s London Porter (cask!). Two fantastic beers with similar ABVs (5.9 and 5.4 respectively) but two completely different beers. So…

If you had to... would you rather drink Pale beers or Dark beers for the rest of your drinking days?

No arguments about the spectrum of brown, I’m ignoring that, this is: Pale Beer (lagers, IPAs, golden ales, etc. – anything lighter than amber) vs. Dark Beer (mild, dark ales, stout, porter, etc. – we all know Wychwood’s Hobgoblin, so anything darker than that). Go!

FAB POW! Okell’s Aile with Fish Pie and Spaghetti Bolognese

FAB POW! No. 2 coming at ya! That's the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week, by the way. And as it’s St Paddy’s Day it’s a pint of black stuff. But not Guinness. I’ve got nothing against Guinness, I just find it a tad heavy to be a quality food pairer. Instead, we’ve got one of the finest porters I’ve had this year (and I’ve had some good ones – Elland’s 1872, Meantime’s London Porter, the Porterhouses’s Plain Porter): Okell’s Aile, a smoked Celtic porter (which I first had here). The pairing is not just for one dish this week, it’s for two classics, both of which are spot-on matches.

FAB POW! Okell’s Aile with Fish Pie and Spaghetti Bolognese

The beer is a great looking deep brown with a cappuccino head. It’s got a sweet nutty aroma with hints of charcoal and burnt toast. It’s incredibly drinkable, the smoke is very delicate and smooth, there’s candy sugar sweetness and chocolate in there along with an earthy hop quality. It’s a real moreish glugger, packed with flavour and the perfect buddy for plenty of dinners.

It’s great with the fish pie because it pulls out all the sweet fishy flavours and lifts them up, especially if you use a bit of smoked fish in the pie. It also cuts through the richness of the white sauce and clears the palate leaving a really pleasant nutty, smoky flavour. Tomato-based pasta dishes, I think, are difficult matches, but the smoke in a porter like this softens the sweet sharpness of the sauce, bringing out the earthy nuttiness in the beer and grabbing hold of the charry flavours and seasoning (especially the black pepper) in the meat.

It’s a really superb and versatile beer for pairing or just for drinking. It also does the job against mild spice and with a barbeque. I got my bottle from Utobeer but you can also buy it from Beers of Europe and Hi-Spirits. The beer is definitely worth hunting down. Yum.

Anyone had anything good to eat and drink this week?

My Visit to Thornbridge Brewery

What makes a few breweries rise up above all the others? What makes them special and unique? What makes them who they are? If you ever get a chance to visit Thornbridge Brewery you’ll find the answers to these questions. I first met the guys from Thornbridge at The Rake a few months ago. I had a lot of great things to say about them. This week I went ‘up north’ to the brewery with Matt, the same Matt from this Beer Night, to have a look around. It started early. Very early. I decided the best bet would be to train it there and back, but this meant eight trains overall. Eight. We arrived at Dronfield - home of the mighty Coach and Horses pub - at 10am and Kelly Ryan, the brewery manager, was there to greet us and drive us to work/the brewery (his car is so retro-cool, by the way, that he had Metallica on tape playing as we started driving!). Kelly is an amazing guy (he even sent me a text to remind me to bring a sandwich for lunch). He’s literally overflowing with beer knowledge, passion, love and enthusiasm. And he doesn’t stop. I think he only walked when we were there to slow him down, the rest of the time he was running (actually running). Reluctant Scooper has been to visit for a brew day (his article is so brilliant, you must read it) and he uses the term ‘ceaselessly bounding’. That works for me. The brewery is in the grounds of Thornbridge Hall and it’s a stunning place to go to work. The brewery is tucked away inconspicuously out the back. There’s a small brewhouse, an office, a lab and a few storage units. Inside the brewhouse is all the stuff you need to make beer (I won’t go into all that, read it in a book or here). Dave Pickering was in there brewing and Matt Clarke was running around, sorting out casks. At Thornbridge they brew one beer a day and have up to six fermentation tanks doing their stuff. The best thing: this place smells amazing! It’s full of that gorgeous ovaltine malt from the mash and there was a constant orange and tropical fruit hop sweetness. Lovely stuff. I couldn’t do math or science in school, it just didn’t stick. English was more my thing. After spending a day at Thornbridge I wish I’d been able to get the sciences because they make it sound so cool (they are number one in the periodic table of cool). I was completely fascinated by the whole scientific side to beer and it’s given me a greater depth of understanding about this stuff that I love to drink. And Kelly doesn’t make it geeky either. All the talk of science-stuff was glamorous; it wasn’t white coats, it was leather jackets. They were brewing Jaipur while we were there and we got to spend some time with Dave as he was brewing. He’s a really great guy, full of that same Thornbridge passion and knowledge which fills the air. And he was patient too as we kept asking questions about what he was doing and getting in his way as he tried to do his job. (He fancies brewing a smoky beer to go with the summer barbeques and he also said about making a small beer alongside Bracia, here’s my idea: take the small beer and age it on smoked oak chips. I have no idea if that’ll work or if it’s even possible but it sounds mighty good to me!). Dave managed to keep us quiet for a while as we cleaned out the mash tun. I went in with instructions of ‘push it towards the hole’. ‘I can do that’ I thought. I climbed a ladder and looked down. It was a pit of spent, hot, wet grain that looked like dark porridge. And it was pretty far down. It was at this point (the top of the ladder, no turning back) that a few things dawned on me: 1. I am terrible with heights. 2. I can go up ladders but not back down them. 3. I have a fear of sinking sand. Shit. ‘Just jump in’ Dave said, which was easy for him to say standing on the hard floor. With vertigo making everything swirl, the heat from below increasing the tension and a certain amount of pride at stake, I clambered up onto the narrow rim of the mash tun. Completely unstable and fearing a rather nasty fall (which only exacerbated the vertigo) I jumped in and slowly sunk about a foot, encased in a round tank, hot grain closing in, still sinking, not stopping. I gripped onto the side for dear life, the heat engulfing me, pulling me down. I almost yelled for help. But thankfully I stopped sinking. I was stable. I couldn’t move my legs but I wasn’t going further down. And I actually started to like the comfort of the heat through the wellies and the sweet smell of the grain as I began pushing and shoveling. Matt stood at the other end as I shoveled the hot stuff at him, frequently overzealously, burning his hands and making a real mess. Oops. With the tank clean I had to get back out again and I remembered my fear/inability of getting down ladders. Oh boy. I still had to climb out of the mash first, precariously balancing on the edge, trying not to look down as I made an awkward crab shape and tried to shuffle on to the ladder. I pretty much burnt my hand on the copper but I wasn’t letting go. I got a foot on the top wrung, then the other foot made it. It was a pretty sorry sight seeing me sweaty, shaking, covered in grist and coming down a ladder backwards, but I made it! We looked around the brewery some more and saw a few special things, including the sherry and Madeira casks that were used to make the Alliance trilogy. And you want to know something super-cool? These giant oak casks are now filled with Bracia! Yup, I know, how flipping awesome does that sound! We saw the special ingredients for one of their next brews: cocoa nibs, star anise and mandarin peel. We smelt plenty of hops (it may be geeky but I just love smelling the different hops). We tried some St. Petersburg stout aged on cocoa nibs which Stefano (the head brewer and all-round cool guy who had been busy in the office until then) declared to be very good (this declaration is a great sign for a beer; his tasting of it seemed to last forever, I was hoping that by saying I thought it was great I hadn’t made a complete palate faux pas, but a smile soon appeared and his eyes lit up. Phew.) We also got to check out some yeast which is analysed after every brew (fun science stuff which involved looking into a microscope!). They were checking some Jaipur yeast. Here comes a brutal yet beautiful truth of brewing Jaipur: the yeast dies to make it. It’s the ultimate sacrifice. It makes that beer and clearly realises that it has reached a certain pinnacle in its life and it can do no more. There’s something wonderfully romantic about that, I think. And we were even part of a little beer tasting in the office which allowed us to try three beers by Odell’s in Colorado. There aren’t many of their beers in the UK so this was pretty cool. The star was undoubtedly the IPA. Great stuff. When Kelly and Stef taste other breweries beers’ it’s clear to see why the Thornbridge beer is so good; their palates are sharper than Gordon Ramsay’s knife (and his tongue) and they pick up scents like hunting dogs. They swirl and sniff and pull out what they get, one flavour or aroma after the other, chasing them around the glass, searching for them. In the office we got to speak to Stef more. There were discussions of funk (Brettanomyces, that is) and barrel aging and I had a load of questions about the move to the new, bigger brewery. He is sorting it all out and the next few months are going to be crazy-busy for the guys up there. But the move will mean more beer so we’ll be able to get their stuff in more places and slake our thirsts much easier. They’ll also be able to knock out more bottles (they are playing around with bottle conditioning too, trying different yeasts, etc – more science stuff) which is a great thing. I am already excited about going up to visit the new place once it is up and running (eight trains you say?! I don’t care, I’d travel on double that to be there!) After work we hit their pub, the Coach and Horses. This is a dreamy place which is run by Kelly’s lovely girlfriend Catherine. We were in awe of the beer selection - bottled and cask. There were five Thornbridgers (not a typo) on cask and we started, in the only way possible, with Jaipur. It was just simply perfect. Biscuit and toffee malt base and then tropical fruits and hops-a-plenty giving a crisp and elegant finish. I could drink this all night. It was served through a sparkler though, a thing curious to my southern eyes. I asked for my second beer without the sparkler and to be honest I couldn’t taste a difference. It did however look better with the sparkler fitted. Kelly changed out of his work shirt and then it was just three mates at the pub talking about beer and music and TV and films and laser eye surgery and Korean food. Kelly then brought out his homemade lambic. Yeah, he ‘brews’ at home too. He’d taken some of their Blackthorn Ale (I was drinking that when he brought the lambic out, very nice indeed) and popped it into a bottle and left it to do its stuff for 18 months (there was some other detail to it, something about taking it from the pipes, I don’t know – Kelly, help me out here!). And it was really good. Creamy yet sharp yet sweet. Nice one. Dinner came next. Kelly, Matt and myself ordered three dishes and shared it around (it was a sharing kind of day). The oxtail was rich and oh-so-juicy, the brisket was like butter and the belly pork with Toulouse sausage and beans (a deconstructed cassoulet, if you like) was just brilliant (wicked crackling!). The menu is great, the food is proper pub grub and delicious and the portions are huge - this is a must-visit place. With dinner I had a pint of McConnels, their vanilla stout, which was magical (and made with real vanilla pods). It’s smooth, rich and roasty with a sweet hint of the vanilla. I’d wanted to try this for ages and wasn’t disappointed. Sadly there wasn’t time for dessert because we had to go. We didn’t want to, that’s for sure, but we had to. We did have time to split a bottle of Bracia before we left - a great way to end the day. And what an amazing day it was. A tiny insight into what’s going on up at Thornbridge and what’s to come. It was truly exciting and fascinating. It has made me taste better, think better and understand beer better. I now know the back-breaking effort that goes into making their beers, I’ve seen where it all comes from, I see everything that they do in the minute detail that they do it. I left invigorated and it has made me realise just why I love beer. Why it means so much. Why I spend the hours that I do searching for it, drinking it, reading about it, talking about it and writing about it. It makes all of that worthwhile when you see that there is so much passion on the other side and you see what the beer means to its brewers in places like Thornbridge. Innovation, passion and knowledge are their tag lines and you cannot fail to go anywhere without these being entirely evident. They know so much, they clearly love what they do and they want to try new things. There is so much energy around the place, it just feels right being around them, it feels comfortable and we felt welcome even though we were interrupting their hectic day with silly questions. But they all had so much time. And they are so generous too. Beer is for sharing and when you’ve got such great knowledge it just spills out and you cannot fail to learn an awesome amount from them. And the beer stands up to all of this. It is second to none. You just have to see the piles and piles of awards they have stacked up in the office to know this. You just have to try the beer to know this. On the train home I was sad to have left. I wanted to keep a piece of what I felt at the brewery with me. I wanted that feeling every day. But then I realised something. And it’s here as I sit down now with a Jaipur. We do get to feel a part of the brewery, we do get to experience it and we get it every time we drink their beer. That beer that we have in our hand is prepared with so much passion and enthusiasm that we taste the essence of the brewery, something special deep within it, something intangible, something missing from so many other beers. Their beers are ‘never ordinary’ - they are spectacular. They are special. The brewery is special. The people are special. Thornbridge is a remarkable place. And I thank them for allowing us that little insight into their world. If you want to buy their beers then go to beermerchants as they have the widest selection available that I've seen, including the Alliances, Bracia and the ever-so rare barrel-aged St Petersburgs. You can also get mini-casks from the brewery. And Kelly Ryan has a blog which you should be reading here.