The Bottle Shop, Canterbury

Canterbury is a great city to get drunk in. Lots of history and interesting places to visit, two universities, loads of pubs and bars, breweries nearby… It’s not been the best place for great beer, despite the breweries, but getting drunk is easy and fun.

Taking beer a little more seriously are a few new spots in town. The Foundry is about to open a brewpub and there’s La Trappiste, a sister bar to the Belgian Bar in Ramsgate which used to be the home of Ramsgate Brewery (I’ve got some stories about that place from my early drinking years, the short version includes a naked giant, some cigars, too much Delerium Tremens, being sick on the beach and a pizza…).

There’s also the Bottle Shop. At home inside The Goods Shed, it’s one of the most interesting and fantastic locations for a beer shop going: it’s a farmer’s market meets a restaurant plus an off-license, with the day’s freshest ingredients sold during the day and also cooked in the restaurant on site. Tucked on one side is the Bottle Shop, a tiny enclave of beer from around the world, with lots of British bottles, a good selection of Americans and a wide choice of Mikkeller and Struise, plus many other interesting Belgians.

Beyond just shelves lined with take-away bottles, it also becomes a bar at night, so if you arrive after the market finishes then you can buy your beers and sit down and enjoy in a really interesting space, surrounded by cooking and food products – it’s the sort of place that makes you really appreciate the small producer, like watching an watching an independent film in a tiny art-house cinema.

Andrew Morgan runs the place and he could talk until you’ve drunk the bar dry, recommending this or that, explaining beers, chatting about them with real enthusiasm and knowledge. He also hosts regular tastings – there’s one coming up with 19 single hop Mikkeller beers taking place at Kernel Brewery and when I’m there he’s got a table of 15 people clearly enjoying their way through 15 different bottles of trappist beer.

As beer shops and bars goes, the Bottle Shop is one of the best I’ve been to: the beer range is excellent, it’s in a place which needs a boost from better beers (but also has lots of people who are drinking), it transforms from simple shop into barn bar after the market tidies up for the day, the venue is different, interesting and unique, you can always get good food (try the gouda with cumin and mustard), and they really know what they’re talking about and love what they do.

myBrewerytap

I’m not the first (Pete and Reluctant Scooper) to write about these guys but they were nice enough to box up some beer for me so I’m happy to say what I think of them. It’s myBrewerytap, have a look at their website, it’s pretty good. They sent me a box of British ale from their 52 Week Beer Club.

I’ll admit that I was dubious at first: why would I want 13 random bottles? But when they came I was pleasantly surprised: the beers are different and interesting from all over Britain, you get a pint glass and a bottle opener and a list of tasting notes for the selection.

Golden Warrior's Empire Bitter is clean and tasty with a long, pithy-dry finish. Brentwood Brewing’s Hope and Glory is a red bitter hopped with East Kent Goldings which had a great marmalade and earthy hop flavor which went perfectly with a vegetable curry. Tring’s Death or Glory was all dried fruits and milk chocolate and very drinkable for 7.2%. There’s a Meantime London Stout and a Burton Bridge Porter in there too, plus a few others, Old Bear, Breconshire Brewery, Saffron – lots of new breweries in there for me to try.

It’s a pretty good idea but is this the sort of thing you’d go for with your own cash? Do you like the idea of getting random, new and (hopefully) interesting beers sent to your door (a bit like Beer Swap, really) every three months? Or do you prefer to choose your own bottles from the shop or online?

Sainsbury's Beer Competition

I don’t buy many beers in the supermarket anymore. There are a few which I pick up whenever I see them, the others I get when I want a specific beer. The supermarket is now the place for me to get those everyday drinking beers, just like it’s the place where I get my everyday eating stuff. But how can I resist a beer competition, eh?

Part of me wanted to buy a bottle of each beer in Sainsbury’s competition, part of me didn’t. The part that did wanted to do so out of pure thirsty curiosity, for the tick and the scoop. The part that didn’t feared a line-up of average beers. In the end I didn’t buy them all. What I did do, of course, was stock up on BrewDog’s, happy to see 7% and 9% uber-hoppy beers on the supermarket shelf for a little as £1.29, significantly reduced if it’s 3 for 2 (I also saw it for £1.59 and on a 4 for 3).

Williams Bros did pretty well in the competition, getting four beers out there. It seems that every other blogger got sent free bottles to review. I didn’t. I paid for mine. To be honest, I found an underlying earthy smokiness (the water, perhaps) which wasn't quite to my taste and left me a little disappointed overall, which was a real shame. These are not bad beers at all, it’s just that I’d heard a lot about them recently and they didn’t live up to my expectation. The 80/- was a little unsatisfying but I’d definitely try the lager again though and I should've picked up an IPA (Midnight Sun is a cracker and I want to try some more of their historical beers). Williams are definitely a brewery to keep an eye on, I think.

I thought Wood’s Shropshire Lass, hopped with Fuggles and Cascades and dressed in a decidedly effeminate yellow and lilac outfit, was pretty good - fruity and very drinkable - and I’d like to try it on cask. I also had a couple of darker beers too. Wolf’s Woild Moild was decent enough and Allgates' Porteresque was roasty but I thought it was a little too thin and sharp, nice earthy bitterness though. For me, the best beer in the festival – by a long way - was Chaos Theory. It’s a fabulous beer and when it’s opened as fresh as a daisy it’s a real bitter-fruity bomb. I like it a lot.

I hope the competition was a success for Sainsbury’s and I hope that it made people buy and try new beers. I hope this opened a few minds to the different craft beers being brewed in the UK and I hope it will encourage them to drink differently. I hope that the BrewDog’s didn’t scare too many normal people and I hope that Chaos Theory gets a year long run. I hope that more supermarkets attempt a similar thing and I hope that in the future the Sainsbury’s beer competition will run and that the supermarkets will be able to put the bottles on the beer aisle, rather than with the barbeques or the tins of Christmas chocolates, which are almost impossible to find.

While we’re on supermarket beer, I found 77 lager, zeitgeist, Flying Dog Classic Pale Ale and Gonzo Imperial Porter in Tesco at last. I’m very happy to see all of these in the supermarket, especially if the Tesco also stocks Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, some Chimays and Orval. The Classic Pale Ale was one of the nicest bottles of everyday drinking beer I’ve had in a while and the Gonzo was really very good indeed (bold, smooth, chocolatey, rich, nibbling hops) – I just need to find a Tesco near me which sells them because they are ones to keep in the fridge.

I’ve written about supermarket beer before, here and here. Oh, and that image at the top is Brewdog's from the post I linked to above.

If you had to...

I posted here about the best beers available in the supermarket, suggesting that Meantime’s IPA and London Porter were my then-choices. I think I’m changing my mind. And following yesterday’s FAB POW! post you might know what to: Orval. It’s a fantastic beer and I can get it in the supermarket.

Which, in a round-about way, leads me onto this: If you could choose, or if you had to choose, one bottled beer that you’d want available in the supermarket near you, but which isn’t already, what would it be? You can have anything. It can be from anywhere in the world. It can be a one-off or just something which you can’t buy near you. Literally anything. It’ll be sensibly priced, not completely marked-up if it’s something rare or from far away. And you still get all the other regular beers to choose from too. Even those of you who are pub drinkers must enjoy the odd bottle or two at home, but what’s the one. But you can only choose one extra to sit on those shelves so pick carefully!

City Beer Store and San Francisco

A few weeks ago one of my best mates, Lee (he's @Lee_B on Twitter and you should follow him!), went to San Francisco complete with my Good Beer Guide to the West Coast USA (love that book!) and a looooong list of beers to try and hunt out for me, with the promise of generous financial reward if he was successful. Anyway, he did a stellar job picking me up some bottles and has written about his trip, so here it is, City Beer Store and San Francisco by Lee, my beer-loving friend.

When I recently spent just over two weeks in San Francisco I made a good effort of trying as much good beer as this beautiful city had to offer. Whenever I saw a new beer on the menu of a restaurant I would always order it no matter what.

The signature beer of San Fran- Anchor Steam was a fantastic summer beer with a sweet and hoppy taste but it could only take you so far. So I found myself searching out the hidden gems. Beer like AleSmith’s Speedway Stout was a coffee like behemoth of 12% that really blew me away, whilst Speakeasy's Prohibition was even better with its caramel nose, deep reddish colour and rich, complex taste. On top of this I had tried some good Hefeweizen, Fat Tire and an interesting Sam Adams Black Lager. All in all I felt I had tried a good amount of new beer and would have a lot to talk about when I returned home.

As the holiday was winding down I decided to make a small pilgrimage to The City Beer Store just off of Market Street to see if I could pick up a few bottles for a certain blog writing friend of mine, but truthfully I wasn’t expecting much more than the beer I had already discovered earlier in the holiday.

Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Walking into The City Beer Store is a strange experience. It’s small, about the size of a garage with a small metal bar with five hand pumps, a few tables and chairs and boxes piled all around. The whole place feels unfinished but inviting. Behind the bar is a smiling young guy rocking an awesome moustache who turns out to be Craig Wathen, the owner (along with his wife Beth) of this fine beer Oasis. He invites me and my lady to take a seat and asks me what I would like to drink. A small chalk board on the wall lists approximately 6 beers that I have never heard of so I ask Craig what is good. He suggests a glass of the Telegraph Stock Porter so I take him up on and decide to look around whilst he pours.

On two nearby shelves are stacked approximately 300 beers from varying countries, all for sale individually (which is rare in America). A quick glance over these as I wait for my beer throws up some immediate gems such as Delirium Tremens, Deschutes' The Dissident and Lost Abbey's Inferno. Before I know it my beer is placed at my table and Craig gets back to work.

The first thing I notice about the Stock Porter is the spicy chocolate nose. This is one interesting smelling beer! After the first taste I realise there is an interesting tug of war going on between nose and taste as this porter has a surprisingly floral acidity to it. I gulp it down and tell Craig what I thought. I then decide to try one of the beers that caught my eye as I perused.

Russian River’s Blind Pig wasn’t an IPA I was aware of, but as Mark had seemed excited about their Pliny the Elder I thought I would try one of it’s sister beers. Craig cracked one open and handed it to me. The beer has an extremely citrus nose even for an IPA and it wasn’t particularly to my tastes but after the first sip I was hit by a pleasant bitterness and a good balance of malt and hop smoothness. All in all I would say this is worth seeking out if you head over to America.

Sadly I couldn’t stay at The City Beer Store much longer so I decided to pick up some purchases before I went. Mark had given me a list of beers he wanted (some were wishful thinking though methinks) and I managed to grab him his own bottle of Blind Pig and then a some bottles of Pliny the Elder (no Younger I’m afraid) and DogFish Head 90 minute IPA.

I thanked Craig for his great store and headed back to the hotel with a gentle but enjoyable buzz on.

I really can’t say enough about City Beer Store and if you’re ever in San Francisco you should definitely seek it out, you won’t have got a full taste of the city’s beer scene without it.

Lee B.


Don't you just wish you could find a beer store like that in the UK?! I sure do. Lee, you are a bastard getting Speedway stout and the Deschutes stuff. I’m so jealous of you because the store sounds amazing, the pic of the fridge shows off some beauties and because I wanna meet Craig! Now when can I get my beers?!

And remember, check out @Lee_B everyone, he rocks!

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!

Graduation

Today I graduated from my Masters degree. It felt kind of odd because I handed in my dissertation over six months ago, but it was still great to get all dressed up in the cap and gown and feel special for a few hours. Plus I worked damn hard to get that!!

After the ceremony I went a few miles up the road to the Real Ale shop. I hadn’t been there for a couple of years; it’s a little magic box of treats and I was inspired by this post over at Impy Malting. I picked up some crackers: the three Thornbridge Alliance’s and a Bracia, an Admiral’s Ale after watching this video, a Downton Chimera IPA which I tasted at the Battersea beer fest a few weeks ago, a couple of Stone IPAs (which have so far eluded me!), a Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier which I’ve read loads about recently, a Hog’s Back O.T.T (my Dad’s choice, but a great one) and a Saison Dupont, which I've never tried before and figured I should’ve. They’ve got a great selection over there at the shop or you can buy online; I like that place a lot.

I have also received a delivery from beermerchants. I’ll be picking that up tomorrow. Very exciting. I love getting beer in the post!!

Then I came home and recorded a quick video blog which will be up at the weekend. The beer: a Westvleteren 12. This seemed like a worthy-enough occasion to pop the golden crown off the bottle.

Later we ate, my mum made a congratulatory pie (pictured), we drank the O.T.T which was excellent, then a Meantime IPA with dinner and a Paradox Smokehead to finish.

It was a good day.

Buying Beer

This follows on from last week’s post about The Best Supermarket Beer and asks: Where do you buy your beer from?

I like to drink new beers; ones I’ve not had before. There’ll also be a few staples in the house, picked up from wherever, but it’s the new beers that I’m talking about here.

I think I’ve pretty much exhausted the supermarket selections now and I tend to only buy from there if I want it for a specific occasion, food pairing or if I see something new. There are some brilliant beers available in the supermarkets, I’ve just worked my way through them so want more choice.

I go to Utobeer in Borough Market a lot and there’s a decent selection in my favourite farm shop, Macknade Fine Foods, including plenty of local beers and the range of Sam Smith’s.

I’ve bought my last few hauls online. Beermerchants (run by Phil who has a cool blog here) have a load of European beers and also an ever expanding selection of American beers (that’s what I’m after!), some which can’t be bought anywhere else yet, from Port Brewing, Lost Abbey and AleSmith. I put in a big order a few weeks ago and most of the beers I bought I’d never even seen anywhere else before (I actually only live 15 minutes drive from the depot so maybe I’ll pop over sometime!).

I’ve ordered from Beers of Europe recently too. They’ve got an excellent selection of beers from all over the world, including lots of British and American bottles. My order arrived within 48 hours (in spite of the snow). They also have Europe’s largest beer shop.

What about the others? Zak Avery runs a beer shop in Leeds. Beer Ritz are an online beer shop and they have a large selection of bottled beers from around the world. There’s RealAle.com, which is based in Twickenham (while I was at Royal Holloway University a few miles away we used to venture over to pick up our beers); they have expanded their selection recently to take in more American and world beers, and they sell online. There’s also Beer Ventures and Only Fine Beer (I don't know much about these two). Some breweries sell direct too, which I like, but there aren’t enough doing this.

Who else? Who do you recommend? Where do you buy your beer from? I need to know where to go to next!