Review of my ale and music year

Around this time of year, bloggers tend to do a review of the year. I don't feel able to speak generally about the whole country on the enormous subjects of music and ale, so I've decided to write a short review of my personal year.

Best Folk Club: Southport's Bothy, which is one of the oldest folk clubs on the country, continues to provide, within the limits of what a voluntary, non-profit making organisation can, an excellent range of guests withing the folk scene, using the broadest definition of that term. Traditional singers, singer-songwriters, old established favourites and rising young stars make up the guest nights. In between guest nights, there are singers nights when anyone can get up to play a couple of songs and tunes: the quality of singers nights is such that some people prefer them to the guest nights. The format hasn't altered since the club was founded in 1965, and it has clearly passed the test of time.

Favourite pub: this has to be the Guest House in Union Street, Southport. Despite being a pubco tenancy, Gail the licensee consistently has up to 11 real ales on, which usually constitute a mixture of microbrewery offerings alongside more familiar regionals. This does mean that occasionally the selection is not especially exciting for lovers of microbrewery beers, but generally I'm more than happy with what's on offer; I don't know of any tenancy that can provide such a range. The pub itself is just over 100 years old, largely unaltered with wood-panelled walls and it hosts acoustic music nights on the first and third Mondays of each month.

Favourite pub in Liverpool is harder: the Ship and Mitre on Dale Street has an excellent range but suffers from a ill-judged 1960s refurbishment, while the Lion on Moorfields also has a good range and is an attractive mini-gin palace as well. The former pub hosts the Woody Guthrie Folk Club (last Thursday of the month), while the latter has my acoustic song session on the 2nd Thursday of the month.

Favourite beers: around the 4% mark, I'd mention Southport Golden Sands (4.0%) and Liverpool Organic 24 Carat Gold (4.2%). My favourite strong beer has to be Liverpool Organic Shipwreck, a 6.5% IPA. Honourable mentions go to two Wigan breweries: Prospect for consistently good beer and Allgates for its significant improvement. The formerly good Cains of Liverpool continues to be disappointing.

Best Beer Festival: for my money, the Wigan Beer Festival. Although it's in a sports hall with less atmosphere than the now redeveloped Wigan Pier venue, it makes up in so many other ways: much more extensive and interesting range of beers than before, ample seating for all, regular courtesy bus between the festival and the town centre, and it's friendly to boot. To any who still miss the old venue: the festival was outgrowing Wigan Pier even before it moved, and would have no chance of fitting in there now even if it were available. The National Winter Ales Festival in Manchester and the Southport Beer Festival also worth visiting.

Favourite Music Festival: this has to be Whitby Folk Week. I've been going since 1988 (with one year missed since). The setting of a beautiful old fishing town is unique with a good range of guests and events in various venues across the town, pub sessions for songs and tunes all over the town, frequent folk dancing in the streets, plus for me the annual Lunchtime Legends gig in the Elsinore, which has been a fixture of the folk week fringe since 1992. Also extremely good was Fairport Convention's Cropredy Festival, which had a completely different character: a big stage in a field with a succession of acts invited by Fairport throughout the weekend. Their big-name guests this year included Squeeze, Joan Armatrading, Bellowhead, Richard Thompson, The Saw Doctors, Dennis Locorriere, Big Country, Ashley Hutchings Morris On, and Richard Digance, plus a load of newer artists, most of whom I hadn't heard of but who were all pretty good.

Best non-folk gig: rock band Karnataka whom I saw in St Helens. Hint of progressive and hint of Goth, but mainly themselves. If you recall All About Eve, Karnataka are vaguely in that style. A seasoned band with good material and a lead singer, Hayley Griffiths, who has a beautiful voice.

Biggest disappointment of the year: being put on tablets in April for four weeks with no drinking for a month. During this period, I went to stay with my friend Geoff in London, but the expected pub crawls didn't materialise and the trip to Fullers Brewery was interesting but lost something with me on the wagon. I also opted out of a Wigan beer festival helpers' trip to Ulverston Brewery during this period, and I cut short my attendance at a friend's stag night once I'd had my fill of pub coffee.

Best apocalypse: 21 December, which was when the Mayans had supposedly foretold our doom.

Favourite blog: after this one? Too close to call!

All the best for 2013!

Mild for this time of the year

This month is Make May Mild Month.  The idea is to encourage people to drink mild to help boost the declining sales of this style of beer.  Mild tends to suffer from an image problem, being seen as an old man's drink, which is a bit odd, as a lot of old men actually drink lager.  Lager was presented as a clean new drink in the days when processed cheese, meat and sliced white bread were seen as the future; it was reliable and consistent, unlike that boring old cask ale, which was thought to be on the way out, an attitude confirmed by the fact that it was often not well kept.  If a modern real drinker could travel back the the fifties and sixties, he or she would, I believe, be sadly disillusioned with the real beer available.  The reputation of mild wasn't helped by the fact that licensees often put the dregs from all other beers into the mild cask.  This isn't an urban myth - it actually happened; mild was not treated with respect.  The poor image of mild still remains, whereas real bitters, stouts and porters seem to have been largely rehabilitated.

Modern milds are quite superior to what went before.  If you want a reasonable example of old style milds, try Tetley's, which actually tastes better than Tetley bitter, but which I find unremarkable, thin and weak flavoured - having said that, a lot of people still like it.  Milds should have flavour, but being more lightly hopped, shouldn't be particularly bitter.  Because of their lower strength, they are sensible choice if you have to drive or go back to work.  Milds I do like are Moorhouses Black Cat and Prospect Nutty Slack, and I know Theakstons Mild has its advocates.

The only thing I don't really understand is why May should be Mild Month, seeing that it is often considered a winter beer.  In May, the golden ales that herald the summer are making their appearance, which must surely push mild out of drinkers' minds.  There is an on-line campaign to Make March Mild Month (link here), but it doesn't seem to be making much headway.

It would be a pity if mild disappeared completely, especially now that small brewers are producing good versions of the style.

Burscough pub saved

On our travels collecting adverts for Ale & Hearty (the local CAMRA magazine), Fred and I were rather impressed by the Hop Vine in Burscough.

This pub was formerly known as the Royal Coaching House before its closure and did not have a good reputation among real ale drinkers. It was reopened by Mike and Julie, and has been tastefully redecorated throughout. The old pool room is now a side room that can be used as a function room. The food is well thought of by regulars, and there several real ales on: Theakstons Bitter, Moorhouses Pendle Witches Brew and Hop Vine, a house beer brewed by Prospect of Wigan, are always on with changing guests. There is a courtyard to the rear, which will be nice to sit in when the weather’s better, and plans are well developed to open a microbrewery in the outhouses. This would be only the second brewery in our local CAMRA branch’s area, and will be a very welcome development.

They are holding their first beer festival over the Whit weekend. Details should appear on their website soon.

Also, if you'd like hear to hear a great professional guitarist, Alan plays there on alternate (every 2 weeks) Sunday evenings between 6 and 8 pm, whilst you enjoy a meal or a pint. His next performance is on the 16th May. He does a wide range of tunes from most times in the past.

Finding it: the pub is on the main road through Burscough, the A59, and is a couple of hundred yards from Burscough Bridge station and about half a mile from Burscough Junction. The train journey from Southport is about 13 minutes. Postcode: L40 4BY.

FemALE Jewel in the Crown

The Crown at Worthington is an award-winning pub about 20 miles from Southport.  It has just come second in the CAMRA National Pub of the Year for 2009, losing out to second time winner, the Kelham Island Tavern of Sheffield. It has also won various awards from the Wigan CAMRA branch. It is the brewery tap for the excellent Prospect Brewery that I have written about previously.

I think we can therefore safely assume they know something about beer, so it's with interest that I learned that they are putting on a "FemALE Real Ale Festival" from today. They say: "Beer isn't just for Blokes, or by Blokes! We want to explode the myth that beer, beards, and beer goggles are the only connection. We’re the brewery tap for Patsy, owner and award winning brewers of Prospect in Standish. She’s promised us a barrel of the new “120” - a tribute to the late Beth Slevin."

I suppose calling the stereotype of the real ale drinker a myth is good, and a way of grabbing people's attention, but I do wonder whether there is any such thing as a female drinker. At the Wigan Beer Festival last weekend, there were plenty of women who preferred darker beers and stouts. They didn't all just want light beers with hints of lemon or other fruits, although such beers are perhaps a way in for people who are used to lager but who are prepared to try something different, but that applies to men as well as women. We are long past the age of the glass of sweet sherry "for the ladies", and I can remember my grandmother enjoying the occasional bottle of milk stout, as did many older women in those days, so women drinking beer is hardly new. Beer's macho image should really be old hat by now, but it lingers on anyway.

Irrespective of these musings, all credit to the Crown for trying something a bit different from putting on a festival that simply goes down the laddish route. I just hope it doesn't have the effect of reinforcing new preconceptions about the female drinker - to help you form your own view about that, you can peruse the beer list here, which looks quite extensive. The festival runs to Sunday 14 March.

Platt Lane, Worthington, Standish, WN1 2XF.

Meet The Brewers

I've had an e-mail from Mike Perkins of the local CAMRA Branch stating that Southport's Wetherspoons pub, the Sir Henry Segrave on Lord Street, is organising a series of Meet the Brewer Evenings on Wednesdays in January 2010.  They will begin at 7.00 pm, and the first two of these will coincide with the Wetherspoons January Sale that I wrote about a few days ago. Here is the programme:

6th  - All Gates, Wigan. CANCELLED due to the snow!!
13th - George Wright, Rainford.
20th - Prospect, Wigan.
27th - Moorhouses, Burnley.

P.S. I've heard these dates are now all subject to change. I'll give you the correct ones when I get them.

Baron's Bar Oktoberfest

The Baron's Bar in the Scarisbrick Hotel is currently holding a beer festival on the theme of English versus Scottish beers.  I was there last night for the opening night and listended to Patsy from the excellent Wigan micro-brewery Prospect talking about her brewery and how she went from being involved in nursery education to brewing.  The beers are not all on at once (not enough handpumps), but even so I was surprised that there wasn't even one Prospect beer on, in view of Patsy being there, and the fact that there are several Prospect beers lined up for later in the festival.

Among the beers that were on, I had Harviestoun Hoptoberfest, a light-coloured 4% beer that I found very pleasant. I also had a Brentwood Hope & Glory, a beer that was malty but not especially sweet that I couldn't take to.  The best beer I tried was undoubtedly Orkney Dark Island, a fine dark beer that I stuck with all night, to the surprise of my drinking companion who is used to see me drinking paler beers.  I noticed there were three real ciders on, although I didn't try any on this occasion, as I'm not keen on mixing cider with beer.

This festival runs until Monday 12 October. If you have any outdated illusions about Scottish beers being thin, sweet and malty, come along and be prepared for a pleasant surprise.

Meet the Brewer

Patsy from the excellent Prospect Brewery of Wigan will give a presentation at 7.00 pm in the Baron's Bar this evening.  The Baron's is in the Scarisbrick Hotel on Lord Street.

The Baron's beer festival begins on the same day.

Update: Prospect Silver Tally has come second in the Champion Beer of Greater Manchester awards.  I have written in praise of this beer before.  This micro-brewery just keeps winning awards.  Tandleman gives more more details here.

Swiggin' In Wigan

On Friday, I went for a drink in Wigan with my young friend Helen, a fellow trade unionist until I succeeded in escaping last year. Helen joined CAMRA at the Wigan Beer Festival earlier this year, but tends to prefer cider to ale. Our first drink was in the Berkeley, a pleasant,comfortable pub just across the road from the railway station, and the beer was a rather nice Prospect golden ale, the exact name of which has slipped my mind. Prospect beers are usually worth seeking out.

A few minutes walk away down a side street and scarcely visible from the main road is the John Bull, a rock pub with an excellent juke box, and serving 3 Thwaites beers, Original, Wainwright and Bomber. The Wainwright seemed a little insipid to me, so I stuck with the Bomber. I didn't get around to trying the Original. We met some other reps there on their Friday night out. A great pub, but with my hearing being what it is due to too much heavy rock in the 1980s, I found conversing difficult.

The final pub was the Anvil, a pub that has won many awards from the local CAMRA branch. There was a selection of golden ales: Banks & Taylor Golden Fox, Northumberland Jolly Rogers Ale and Bad Ass True Blonde cask lager. All were pleasant but tended to taste much of a muchness to me.

There are other good pubs in Wigan, which is well worth a trip out for a change of scenery and a few different beers. I intend to publish a proper pub crawl of Wigan some time in the Southport CAMRA magazine, Ale and Hearty, but as a starter these three pubs are worth trying.

Bank Holiday Monday

You've got to go out for a drink on a Bank Holiday, so I went to the Guest House. It tells us a lot about the times we're in that it was not heaving as it would have been in the past ~ yet another consequence of the out and out failures of the "free" market system. However, looking around the nine real ales that were on, I saw Prospect Gold Rush, a beer I hadn't had before. It is a 4.5% light beer with a hoppy finish that I found just so drinkable that I didn't bother with anything else. Yet another fine beer from Prospect Brewery, which is in Standish near Wigan. The Wigan area is increasingly the place for fine micro brewers, worth keeping an eye out for.

Wigan Beer Festival

I came back from Wigan beer festival on Sunday tired but happy. Wigan is run in a way that I think really works:

• It has no advance tickets, a system which tends to exclude casual punters.
• It is open all day, just as CAMRA campaigned for years ago in pubs.
• It is a good venue with acceptable disability access, an indoor queue at opening time and a courtesy bus between the festival and the town centre.

Wigan has a theme each year. In 2-007 it was James Bond, The Pie Who Loved Me. This year it was the light versus the dark, with Darth Pie Eater versus Luke Pie Walker. The light ales were all on one bar and the dark on the other. I was pleased to notice that the first beer of the festival to sell out was Southport Golden Sands. I found Anglo Dutch Apistus with a faint heather honey taste interesting, although I couldn't drink it all night, but it was popular with women who were unfamiliar with real ale. I also liked Dark Star American Pale Ale, Lytham Gold, and Oakham Bishop's Farewell, among others. I tried a few dark beers but nothing attracted my attention particularly.

Wigan is a friendly festival that attracts quite a broad range of drinkers, including groups of young drinkers who start there and then go on to clubs in town. Unlike, say, Liverpool, you get groups of young women on their own, not dragged along by boyfriends. Many of these go straight to the cider and perry bar, but some try the ales. A group of lads come each year dressed in bear costumes, declaring they were told it was a real bear festival. To get a good idea of what it was like, look at the pictures on the Wigan CAMRA website. I can be seen in one unpacking glasses, something we were close to running out of at one point, it was so busy.

The Light Beer of the Festival was Dark Star American Pale Ale. The Dark Beer of the Festival was Dark Star Expresso Stout.

By 9.00 p.m. on Saturday, every single cask and bottle of beer, cider and perry was empty, and only a few fruit wines remained. So we volunteers went to the Boulevard and the Berkeley in Wigan, where I was introduced to Prospect beers. Nutty Slack is a delicious 3.9% mild which I found to be full of flavour but not overpowering. A dark beer, I announced, to add to the small range of dark beers I drink. Then I tried Silver Tally, which at 3.7% is light but still tasty; I don't often drink beers below 4% as they can be thin, but this one certainly wasn't. Another to enjoy. Finally, I tried Big John, a 4.8% dark beer, and found another dark beer to add to my 'dark' list. Keep an eye out for Prospect beers.

If you weren't at Wigan, you missed a treat.