The Foundry, Canterbury

Off the main shopping street in Canterbury, down a small side-road and past The Cherry Tree is The Foundry, a new brewpub in the city. An old brick building with impressive high paned windows and a rusted and worn sign, it’s a smart two-storey place to eat and drink where the beers are brewed downstairs and the food prepared upstairs.

The Canterbury Brewers are Jon Mills and Tom Sharkey and they are using a new 4-barrel kit to make the beers to supply The Foundry and The City Arms, which is part of the same parent company owned by Jon (they also have The Beercart Arms). They currently make three beers: Foundry Man’s Gold, Torpedo and Canterbury Wheat.

Foundry Man’s Gold is a golden ale brewed with Magnum hops for bittering and Citra added post-boil (I know this because when I visited they were brewing so I knocked on the door to be nosy just as they were adding the Citra – “Stick your head in there,” Tom said, directing me to the hops). The Citra immediately jumps out with peach and apricot, plus a little floral fragrance, and it’s light and fresh and very tasty, with the sort of bitterness that doesn’t overpower but definitely gets noticed. At 4% you could happily pass a few hours drinking it.

Torpedo is an amber ale hopped with Bramling Cross and Cascade. The aroma is a subtle mix of British earthiness and American floral and citrus, with more fruitiness evolving through the glass. It’s very clean drinking with a simple background sweetness and a big, lingering British hop bitterness, the sort that gets in your gums and hangs at the back of your throat. It’s one of those modern, pale best bitters which is really drinkable a full of flavour.

Canterbury Wheat is an American-style wheat beer hopped with Target and Cascade. It’s light gold with a slight haze to it and the aroma is immediately interesting – hints of spice, bubble gum and vanilla and a little citrus pith. It’s light and gulpable and the yeast plays an unobtrusive role while still adding a lot of interesting flavour and a little body – it reminded me of an unfiltered lager. The bitterness levels are higher than usual, adding a peppery finish which works well. This beer is served on cask but also runs through a chiller so it’s served slightly colder than the other two cask beers.

The beers are great and all were served in perfect condition. You never know what to expect going to a new brewery, especially one which only started serving their beers two days before you visit, but I was impressed by all of them.

Alongside the Canterbury Brewers beers The Foundry serves a couple of local ales and cider ciders and four Meantime beers on keg. The food is also excellent with a wide choice of dishes on the menu from snacks to feasts. The beer-BBQ ribs, made with a wheat beer and honey marinade, were fantastic.

The Foundry only opened on the 10th June but inside it feels like it’s been established for a long time, with friendly and knowledgeable staff plus drinkers who already look attached to the furniture. It’s a super addition to Canterbury drinking and if you are in the city then it’s a must-visit place. It’s also one for the beer tourist to travel to, especially if you add in a visit to the Bottle Shop and La Trappiste and the many, many other pubs.

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.

Westerham Brewery: The 1,000th Gyle

I leave my flat, drive up the High Street and follow it ahead, turn left then I drive in a straight line until I need to turn right down a suspension-testing lane when I arrive at Westerham Brewery. It may take 30 minutes down country lanes, but my journey is straightforward.

Set up on a farm, my drinking soundtrack is yawning cows as dusk darkens, lit by a moon so big and bright it looks like a giant headlight in the sky. I’m here to celebrate the 1,000^th gyle at the brewery, enticed by the carrot-on-a-stick of IPA and sausages. I find the beer I want and help myself. A deep gold and tasting like it’s tank-fresh, the 1,000^th beer is 4.8%, hopped with Target and Progress and properly English in its flavour and bitterness which is fruity, dry, peppery, sinus-prodding and treats your uvula like a punching bag. Outside I drink the beer while watching the sapphire sky with great, billowing clouds and that floodlight moon. I get a sausage made with Westerham’s British Bulldog and cover it in ketchup and mustard before realising that the giant squeezy pot they have isn’t hotdog mustard but Colman’s yellow rocketfuel. Robert Wicks, the main guy at Westerham, says it’s the best sausage you’ll ever taste, but then he seems like he’s got the salesman’s gab and I can’t tell because the inside of my nose has been seared away, possibly irreparably. I finish the beer and head back for more before finding myself on a tour of the charming little brewery, led by Robert, who talks about the ingredients and process. It’s a lovely little brewery in a great location and it’s got a good feeling about it, something hard to put words to. Tour over I pour myself a Grasshopper which, for a 3.8% brown bitter, really walloped of Target and Kent Goldings and had a lasting, lingering bitterness and unbeatable freshness (the freshness thing is why drinking beer in breweries is the best place to try something).

Westerham is one of the closest breweries to me and their beers are almost always on in my local Wetherspoons. They get many of their hops from the area, including Scotney Castle, and they certainly aren’t afraid to pack a few of them into their beers. The 1,000^th gyle is a faceful of Target and Progress which seems like a fitting combination to me.

Westerham Brewery, The Royal Oak and Viceroy IPA

Friday afternoon, a wonderfully sunny day, spring sprung and I’m thirsty for a pint. “You fancy a drive for a couple of beers?” I ask Lauren. “Okay.” She says to my happy surprise. I know where to go: The Royal Oak in Crockham Hill, the pub owned by Westerham Brewery. I want to go because I want to buy a couple of bottles of Viceroy IPA – one for me and one to send for Beer Swap – the beer they brewed for the National Trust using Little Scotney Farm hops.

The pub is about 11 miles away – a nice drive through the country. We arrive and it’s dark inside but that’s fine as it’s sunny and they don’t need the lights on yet. It’s 5.15pm on a Friday at the end of one of the weeks of the school holidays and, as I mentioned, it’s a gloriously lovely day. If any pub is going to do some good business it’s now, right? Apparently not... the pub was shut. Shut! Through the door I could see a few handpulls, all Westerham, all of them I wanted to drink. Dejected we went back to the car and pulled out of the empty car park.

On the way in, about a mile up the road, was a sign saying ‘BREWERY’. There’s only one brewery around this part of Kent so driving back we turned down the rough track road and headed to the barns at the end where the blue, red and white badge of Westerham watched over the surrounding farmland. We didn’t even get out of the car. That was also closed.

We ended up stopping at The Little Brown Jug where I had a pint of something with ‘Hopping’ in the name by Greene King (I think) and a pump clip with a rabbit on an actual spring, the kind of thing which would make the Parade.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait long to find the bottles as we went to Tunbridge Wells on Saturday and in a farm store in town, which sells lots of local products, they had Westerham’s Viceroy IPA. Result.

Sunday and I cooked pollack, new potatoes and green beans with garlic and lemon and opened a Viceroy IPA in what is deserving of FABPOW status. The beer pours a wonderful orange with a fluffy head. A swirl and a sniff and there’s some fresh citrus, lemons and lime, underneath there’s peaches and flowers. A mouthful and it’s caramel, a spicy marmalade, smooth with a fruity, vibrant hop flavour, peaches, apricots, spicy malt, a floral perfume and just a hint of Orval-like peppery tartness (there’s something a little wild about the nose... but all in a good way). It’s very tasty with a similarity to Fuller’s Bengal Lancer. It was also perfect with the dinner, the lemon and garlic working a treat with the hops. If you visit any National Trust sites and you fancy a beer then check it out, it’s good.

Now I just need to work out when the Westerham pub and brewery are actually open so I can visit them properly...

The Hop Press: Planet Thanet Beer Festival

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind the last few weeks and the blog seems to have been buried underneath a pile of other stuff. Thankfully I’ve still had time to go out drinking. I posted this little thing on the train home from the beer festival on Friday, but here’s a more detailed re-cap of my day at Planet Thanet.

A Good Friday

Planet Thanet beer festival at the Winter Gardens in Margate. It's one of my favourite festivals of the year, no doubt. Good friends, good beer, good location; it's got all you want and need. This year Gadds' Uberhop (a traditional hopped-up lagerale) rocked it; Tryst Corronade IPA was bitter, apricoty, light, dry; Millstone Tiger Rut was a glass of fruity tangerine, floral and oh-so-drinkable - awesome. Some dark beer - Gadds' Black Pearl and Elland 1872 - rounded us up and some more Uberhop and Tiger Rut finished us off.

It was a Good Friday. I love Planet Thanet beer festival.

Swapping Beer

The intention for Beer Swap was to share beer and talk about it with others using social media, bringing people in the beer community together. It was about giving someone else a taste of what you can easily get hold of. It started as a blogger project but through the power of the internet it quickly and excitingly developed into more. But something really interesting has developed since everyone received the names of who they are sending to: we are all searching for local beers, we are trying them, we are enjoying them and then proudly talking about what we have found. I think that’s great and it’s something that I didn’t expect. In my own search I wanted to incorporate where I lived previously and where I live now. The two are only about 20 miles apart but they open up a lot more breweries to choose from. Where I am now allows me to reach into Sussex, where I was before allows me north and east Kent. Maybe this is stretching the 30-mile rule, but I think it’s okay… I wanted to send some bottles from Gadds as I think they are the best brewery around here, but as beermerchants stock them and as they are/were 40 miles away I chose not to. I ended up buying all of the beers in shops that I can walk to and shops which I go or weekly. To be sure I was sending the best stuff, I took the bottles off the shelves and I tried them again (research purposes) and suddenly those bottles which I automatically walked past come alive and knocked me on the head for not drinking them regularly. How could I have just walked past these so often? Ignoring them, looking for something more exotic. Silly me for looking elsewhere.

I eventually settled on sending Hopdaemon’s Skrimshander, Whitstable Brewery’s Raspberry Wheat, Westerham’s Little Scotney Pale Ale and Harvey’s Star of Eastbourne. I won’t tell you what they are like, that’s up to Sam Lanes from Real Ale Reviews. I also put a little bottle of Biddenden cider in for him to try as a bonus extra. My box arrived up north a few days ago (although sadly Skrimshander didn’t survive the journey, oops – I’ll send a replacement or two). I know a box is on its way to me – I can’t wait to receive it and drink them! There are still a few weeks left to send, receive, drink and write. I think Beer Swap has been great fun and I love seeing all the #beerswap hashtags coming in (I keep it constantly on my tweetdeck). I’m surprised at how well it’s been taken up and I’m sure there’ll be another in a few months time. For now, what it’s done is show me just how willing we are to share what we have and how eager we are to try new things. It’s also shown that I must look at what’s made on my doorstep as it’s really quite good.

In Search of a Local

I’ve never really had anywhere that I’d call my local; somewhere close that I’d want to drink in regularly, whether it's just a quick pint after work or a long session after work. At university there were a few places spread over the three years but nothing that I’d qualify as ‘my local’. Now that I’m living in a new town I saw the opportunity to find somewhere new to drink, so on Friday I went out looking for one.

I don't want or expect much from a local other than a decent pint and a good atmosphere (if I want more then I can travel and get more), but I had a criteria to judge the pubs against. Location: How far away is it? What’s near it? What do I pass on the way there and back? For example, if it’s near the supermarket then it possibly allows me a sneaky pint because ‘there were, like, really long queues in the shop’. Beer, Range/Quality/Price: What beer do they have – cask, keg and bottle? How well is it kept? How much does it cost me for a round? Atmosphere: What it’s like inside? Quality of the landlord and locals. Decoration. The way it ‘feels’. Extras: Do they serve food and what’s the quality, range and price? Any entertainment, music, quizzes, bar games, TV, etc? Is there a garden?

Pub 1: George and Dragon.
Location: Five-minutes walk, out of the town. Not near much and wouldn’t ever be ‘just passing’. Beer: Harvey’s Best Bitter and Bombardier on cask; Guinness, Strongbow, Bulmers, Kronenbourg, Fosters, etc, keg; Bud and Newcastle Brown in the fridge. My Harvey’s was fairly well kept, no complaints. A pint and a diet coke cost £3.85. Atmosphere: Large place, lots of tables; bit of a locals’ local, busy with salubrious old chaps; working man club feel to it; pretty bad service. Extras: Lots of TVs turned to Sky Sports, two pool tables (which we couldn’t get to work) and free dartboard. Didn’t see anyone eating. Overall: Not terrible, beer fine, ok for watching TV or playing darts. Lauren didn’t like it.

Pub 2: Punch & Judy.
Location: 12 minute walk from the flat, but close to the mainline train station. Have to walk the length of the high street to get there and back so pass a lot of things on the way, including supermarkets and takeaways. Beer: Harvey’s Best Bitter, Sharp’s Doom Bar and Flowers IPA on cask; Fosters, Carling, Kronenbourg, Strongbow, Guinness on keg; Bud and Newcastle Brown in the fridge. I had another Harvey’s which was better than the previous one. Pint and a coke cost £4.10. Atmosphere: Nice feel to the place, good mix of people, music playing, friendly bar man, cosy. Extras: bar billiards (which swallowed my pound so I had to get the barman to refund it), regular live music, cool jukebox. Overall: Really nice little pub, friendly and welcoming, fun, good range of beer. I was given an old £5 note though, which was annoying. Lauren liked this one.

Pub 3: The Humphrey Bean - Wetherspoons.
Location: Five-minute walk down the high street, two-minutes from work, right in the centre of everything and I pass it almost every day. Beer: Six cask beers on, I think – Hobgoblin, Bank’s and Taylor Dragon Slayer, Leveller, Ruddles, Abbot and Pedigree; usual bottles, fairly cider-heavy; usual keg stuff including Tuborg, etc. My Hobgoblin was no good, but then I haven’t enjoyed it since they dropped the ABV from 5.2%. Lauren’s diet coke was also pretty crappy. It cost £3.50 (they wouldn’t accept the bum old fiver either…!). Atmosphere: As usual, not too busy for 8pm on Friday night. There were bouncers on the door, which is never a particularly good sign. Amusingly, we did see two laddish oiks dressed exactly the same, walk into the pub. That made us laugh; they looked like right twats. It’s a big ‘Spoons though, lots of seating for food, a huge garden out the back. Extras: Lots of food, cheap deals, quiz machines, free wifi, free condiments (I don’t want to pay for mustard when they give them away!). Overall: Not great. Bad beer this time. But I can’t help but be drawn back to it. I have had a couple of good pints in there and I’m now in the habit of ‘popping in just to see what’s on’. It’s not the best pub but not the worst.

Pub 4: The Man of Kent.
Location: The closest pub to me, less than a three-minute walk. I pass it on the way home from work (and on the way to work…). Beer: Harvey’s Best Bitter on both handpulls; Strongbow, Guinness, Fosters, etc, on keg; lots of alcopops in the fridge. The worst kept Harvey’s of the three. It cost £4.10 for ale and coke. Atmosphere: Ok, fairly busy, small pub but lots of seating and different areas. Didn’t feel especially comfortable, lacking atmosphere. Extras: Music, TV showing Sky Sports, not sure about food as we didn’t see anyone eating. Overall: Disappointing. Beer wasn’t good and Lauren’s coke wasn’t great (it seems there is disparity in how coke is kept, as well as the ale). They also looked at me as if I was trying to pay with soiled tissue for handing over the dodgy note (what?! I didn’t want to be carrying it around all night!); I didn’t feel welcome after that, as if idle local gossip was beginning. Neither of us liked it.

So my search for a local was disappointing and my earlier fear that Tonbridge is a beer wasteland was confirmed. Part of the problem is that I now compare every pub to The Bull and very few can ever come close. The Punch and Judy is a pub that I’d want to drink in regularly as it felt like the best place to hang out, but it’s the furthest away. The Wetherspoons looks like it’ll be the pub I drink in most often, although I can be door-to-door with The Rake in under an hour, so that’s always an option...!

After the little crawl I came home and opened two bottles of beer and enjoyed them more than the cask stuff I'd had out in the pubs, then I pawed through the beer collection and saw some cracking bottles in there, begging to be drunk. And then I realised something… if it's just about the beer then the best place to drink in Tonbridge is probably my flat. But as we all know, it isn't just the beer.

The Swan on the Green

There’s a microbrewery/brewpub near me called the Swan on the Green. I love the idea of brewpubs and wish there were more of them. It seems to me that there are a lot more US brewpubs than English, but attaching the brewery to the restaurant is surely a great way to sell your beers and to make an income from food too. The Swan on the Green brew the beer out the back and serve it out the front; that’s a pretty good system, I think. It’s a modernised 16th century pub in the middle of quintessential Kent countryside, opposite a tiny, banking cricket pitch and surrounded by old houses. It’s a handsome looking place, that’s for sure. Lauren and I went along on Friday to celebrate me getting a new job. I got quite drunk. She drove me home.

Let’s start with food. Their menu is good, with a decent range of fare, exactly the sort of things you’d want to eat in a country pub: hunks of meat, fresh fish, lots of vegetables, different potato dishes. I went a year or so ago and enjoyed the food more than this time, but it was still very nice. My steak was perfectly cooked, my potatoes perfectly nice, the sauce a perfect accompaniment. Lauren’s salad-thing was good too, big sweet pieces of squash, lots of green things, I can’t remember what else... So yeah, a decent meal if unexceptional, but I was there for the beer, of course.

They had six Swan beers on which gave me a half of each and then another half or two after (time restricting – we had to get back for Big Brother, you see). I started on the lager and my half was the last of the keg. Blonde is 4.0%, cold and fizzy and then a whole lots more. It’s biscuity and buttery in a good way and there’s a really great citrusy hop finish. Towards the end it had a grape-like quality to it and actually reminded me of champagne. Very nice; the best lager I’ve had in ages. Next I had Ginger Swan, a 3.6% copper ale (they are all copper coloured…) brewed with ginger ‘and other spices’. Now I’m not a lover of ginger beers… until now! This has a great fresh ginger quality beneath a blackcurrant and raspberry fruit aroma which goes straight through into the taste. It’s fragrant, fresh and fruity with just enough zing to bring it alive.

Then I had the Fuggles Pale, a 3.6% session ale, hopped, I would guess, with Fuggles. It’s crisp and clean, easy drinking with some sherberty sweetness but just a little nothingy compared to the others – not bad, just a little lacking. With my steak I had the Bewick Swan, a 5.3% bitter with a great body of fruity malt and a proper bite of English hops. It worked perfectly with the steak, pairing with the peppery sauce and juicy meat.

After dinner came a Trumpeter Best, a 4.0% best bitter hopped with Target and First Gold. It has a great aroma of brown bread, overripe apples and dryly bitter-herby finish and it’s another classic British bitter. And then was Cygnet, a 4.2% a hopped with Cascades. It was fruity and crisp and bitter and a really enjoyable brew, one I could drink quite a few of. Then, with Big Brother looming, we had time for one more half and I was completely torn with what to go for: I wanted the lager again to try a fresh barrel, I wanted the Cygnet again because, well, it tasted nice, but in the end I went for the Ginger Swan because I was really impressed with the spicy-fruity playful nature of the beer.

The beers from the Swan on the Green microbrewery surprised me. It’s not that I expected them to be bad, I just didn’t expect them to be as tasty as they were and it was great to drink a lot of sub-premium strength beers, brewed with lots of flavour just a few miles from my door.

The thing with getting this new job is that Lauren and I will be moving and it just so happens that the Swan on the Green will be a little bit closer than it is now. That’s a very good thing.

Oh and if you go then watch out for the toilets. They don’t have male or female on the doors, instead the choice is Cobs or Pens painted beneath a white swan. After a few beers I must’ve stood there for ten seconds working out which was which eventually choosing the wrong door. FYI: male swans are called cobs.