Beer drought

Weddings do not organise themselves. Nor does work happen by itself. All of which serves as some small way of explaining the slight hiatus in activity here - apologies.

Upcoming posts will touch on the delightful availability of German lager in posh London enclaves; pub ham, eggs & chips as art form; and the difficulties of getting younguns on the cask ale bandwagon. Plus more updates on my Cambridge-based drinkathons.

You have been warned.

Tax not axed

Darling ups booze duty 2% in the Budget, from midnight tonight. Looks like the tax was not axed...

A mean time with Meantime Pale Ale

Meantime London Pale Ale was on cask at The Gunmakers, Clerkenwell, last night. It was a pleasurable beer totally suited to spring, with a golden body, thick malty texture and floral hoppy finish. Textbook.

Given Meantime's (in my view mistaken) reluctance to embrace cask as a way of broadening its customer base - in addition to its keg offering - this was a bit of a coup for Gunmakers landlord and beer writer Jeffrey Bell (pictured right).

He is a fine host and looked most dapper last night, though if I were him I'd lay off making offensive gestures to the punters. Especially just two days ahead of the Budget.

The jesusjohn legal team would like to point out that whatever Jeff is doing here, it was not an 'offensive gesture'. He blogs here.

PS - these headlines will continue to be pun-led. You have been warned.

PPS - thanks to fellow blogger Tandleman, who points out this beer will be on cask at JDW pubs as part of their International Real Ale Festival.Whether you'd want to go to a JDW pub just for this beer is another matter (I wouldn't myself) but those without a decent 'proper' pub nearby might like to take a punt.

Hypnotic beer advertising - a helluva force

Darth Vader and the evil galactic emperor pushing beer in an ad. It's not big and it's not clever, but it made me laugh. Sadly, the brew itself does not exist. Pity.

George Lucas cashed in pretty much every other way he could.



I have to say, Emperor Palpatine exhorting the masses to 'grab a cold six pack today' was the clincher for me posting this. I daresay this is one of those viral videos everyone else has already seen but me - if so, I crave your indulgence.

An unhackneyed lager in Hackney

Alex's birthday took us to Hackney's beer ground zero - The Pembury Tavern, part of the Milton Brewery empire. Milton Brewery is based in Cambridge, so I'm familiar with its excellent brews - my favourites are Pegasus (4.1%), a maltier, fuller-bodied London Pride, and Nero (5.0%), a pitch black stout with a solid punch and vanilla finish.

On the right, regrettably, is the only photographic evidence of a terrific night on the tiles. Some 'amusing' Kanye West sunglasses brought along for the ride and a necklace cadged from Alex's girlfriend succeed in casting jesusjohn as the ubiquitous Shoreditch/Hackney media twat in the Nathan Barley mould.

The only redeeming factor of this sorry business is that I'm seen clearly drinking Taddington Brewery's unpasteurised lager Moravka, which Jeffrey Bell wrote about beautifully here. It is the UK's best lager for certain - malty and satisfying while retaining the necessary thirst quenching drinkability. I think it's a hot contender amongst the very best of its style brewed anywhere.

Not just mussels in Brussels

'I don't know why people deride a country of five million people that produces 1,000 different beers.' - Jonathan Meades

Raised eyebrows often greet those who say they're off to Belgium for a holiday. Belgium? Why?

Quite apart from the beer, there's food, architecture and everywhere a sense of the gothic. The journalist and broadcaster Jonathan Meades hit the nail on the head with his contention that 'Magritte was actually a realist, not a surrealist - that he was a recorder of his country's condition, a reporter.' There is something exotic about a country that seems to share so many characteristics with the UK - dark wit, a confused collective identity, a labyrinthine and internationalist capital city - and yet is so evidently foreign.

The beer, of course, is a case in point. Both countries enjoy a weight and wealth of styles, traditions and innovations - yet the keg in Belgium is not synonymous with smoothflow tripe and bottle conditioned beers are everyday commodities. In Belgium it is commonplace to drink a bottle's sediment. Back home the same practice seems to ruin a decent brew. Odd. The sense of glee with which a beer hound heads for Brussels or Bruges is, then, that intriguing blend of the familiar and the thrillingly different. It will be a feeling many reading this will have experienced (yeah, both of you).

The St Gilles district of Brussels is central, but has a suburban ease to it. Following a crazed period of work amid the ivory towers of Canary Wharf, idling along its sloped streets was a relaxed pleasure. Falling upon La Porteuse d'Eau brasserie was a delight. It is a palace standing as proud celebration of art nouveau and offered lunchtime perfection in the shape of onglet with shallots, chicken and mushroom stew vol au vent and chicory gratin.

Its beer selection is clearly well thought out and on my visit there was a subtle push towards a new beer, Hopus from Brasserie Lefebvre. It would seem Belgian beer is undergoing the hop revolution that has spread from west coast USA (I've already written about the superb La Chouffe Houblon). Five different hop varieties make it into Hopus, which packs a helluva punch at 8.5%. The bitterness is more like a hefty thwack than a spicy, floral build and I liked it.

Particularly pleasing was the dedication to its service - the bottle has a swing-stopper, which I always regard as an artful plus. With attention to her task, the waitress poured the beer into its rather camp branded glass, conjuring a generous perfumed neck of foam. A branded shot glass was revealed - into which was poured the murky, yeasty sediment. Theatrical, delicious and served alongside a good chewy cut of beef.

This brasserie puts in hard work to look the part and succeeds in providing something a lot of British pubs don't quite manage - a touch of flair, or a gold nugget of a reason to go out rather than neck a Duvel at home. And all this without the slightest hint of pretence, again rare in Blighty, where modish bars always seem to try too hard.

Decent grub and a super beer, to boot - both available in the UK and Belgium of course. But La Porteuse d'Eau does the job with class and a hint of exoticism. Perfect.

Autotilt this!

Writing frightening verse to a buck-toothed girl in Luxembourg

So, back to Blighty. Parting is such sweet sorrow. My second ever post here gave an idiot's guide to Luxembourg's beery underbelly but I'll have to serve up some more details on my return. The range of beer is limited, I'll grant you, but Bofferding, Simon Regal and Battin (especially Battin) are some of the best lagers around and taste especially good in glorious sunshine - with which we have been blessed these last few days.

All this as a precursor to better, more beery posts after the holiday lull.

Not a very likely contingency in Belgium...

The somewhat sporadic and wilfully threadbare nature of recent posts owes much to the fact I am journeying through the Benelux region (well, Belux anyway).

Sunday was spent in Brussels - Delirium Cafe may be full of wide-eyed 19 year old tykes from Wyoming and Minnesota, but the international crowd is young, there certainly are plenty of locals and the barstaff are friendly. In short, the ambience is more studenty than touristy. I like it.

It was here we tried La Chouffe Houblon - a mad, mad mash-up of classic IPA, bonkers-spicy US hopped IPA and Belgian tripel. A terrific find and, at 9%, just a short passageway to oblivion. Textbook.

My fiancee and I scanned the room again - there can't have been anyone in there over 30. Now don't get me wrong, I love the classic ideal of the British pub, with inter-generational drinking and frank exchanges over a disinterested hound. But it did strike me that Belgium must be doing something right to make its artisan beer worthy of seeking-out by hip young things. In the UK, CAMRA struggles to win the interest of youngsters (and where it does, such as myself - I am a member, they seldom become activists). Even the sterotypical Belgian beardy (male) beer geek has a hippy, rocked-out low-countries charm lacking in his Dungeons & Dragons anglo-saxon brethren.

And on that bombshell...have a good Easter break! I'll put up sexy pictures on my return.

Could life ever be sane again?

I had been sceptical of those wishing to sell papers off the back of 'the chilling rise in knife crime statistics'.

No more.

As this footage clearly shows, knife crime is all too ubiquitous - this incident took place outside The Bun Shop, Cambridge. My source (who we'll call IBU 400) says he found the knives outside the aforementioned establishment late last Saturday night. He freely confesses his contemporary sorry state of inebriation - though it was perhaps this detachment from his surroundings that meant we can feast our eyes on this devastating VT.

The Bun Shop has a wine bar, selling excellent Australian bottles from the D'Arenburg estate, and a 'traditional ale house' serving beers from Bury St Edmonds brewery Old Cannon, where the punchy Gunners Daughter can be supped. There is, of course, the possibility that the military connection to the beers in some way precipitated the knife incident - best be on to the Portman Group.

No need for the Cambridge Blues

Not for nothing have I been dubbed Jesus 'Twinkle-toes' John. Verily, I am the Vince Cable of the beer blogging world.

Ok, in truth I have two left feet. But dancing is a necessity if one is marrying in Luxembourg - that first waltz is make or break as far as many of the locals are concerned (one wrong step and auntie Irma will be muttering about my inadequacy - thank god they have decent brews).

My fiancee took pity, enrolling us on a dance course. Taking our places along with those beguiled by Brucie's patter of a Saturday night has been humbling - I'm not god's gift. I therefore extend all possible gratitude, then, to Dom and Mel - kind hearts who have ferried us to and from the lessons in their trusty Rover. By return of favour, we were happy to offer them a pint at one of our favourite pubs, the Cambridge Blue.

This especially ale-friendly tavern (featured in our inaugural Pubcast) has been buoyed of late by a fleet of superb Dark Star beers. Michael, a friend and straight-talking beer hound of the premier league, has a Beer Rule No. 1 - never pass on a Dark Star beer. Three pints later, I can vouch for that; this brewery consistently blends hoppy abandon with malt of superior quality, whether we're talking the sublime Hophead or the innovative and suppably enriching Espresso Stout. Helluva brewery.

Afraid this post doesn't get more intellectual than that - the moral of the story is simply never walk by a Dark Star brew. Basic, really.

Size does matter

Dave runs a pub, by all accounts a very good one, made all the better - so I'm told - by virtue of the face he brews his own beer. He speaks good sense and is open minded - so take a look at his blog from time to time.

His latest post runs through some interesting market research carried out by Coors' Bittersweet Partnership - a ghastly corporate racket determined to win over more women to the delights of the hop by shoving a Tab Clear-style colourless beer in their general direction. Good luck with that.

Anyway, despite disastrously patronising and maladroit ramifications, the report nevertheless raises some interesting points, which Dave sums up so I don't have to.

In the conversation on his blog, the issue of glassware was raised. Stay with me.

The pint is, often, too big. Walk into a pub with 5+ beers on tap and to try a range means halves. However, the half is manifestly too small - it just is. Pubs can legally serve 1/3 pint measures, but not 2/3s. Imagine trying three beers but only having had two pints - the 2/3 pint measure becomes an attractive proposition (to men and women - note a significant percentage of the latter see the pint measure as, itself, part of the problem when ordering beer).

Now I don't want to invite Daily Mail-style rants about 'abolishing the pint' - it is an iconic measure and a pint of mild or best bitter can hit the spot. But strong beers such as Fuller's ESB or Thornbridge's modern classic Jaipur IPA could well find more trade if people could order a measure of it that would be neither too disappointingly small, nor so big as to render the drinker legless. Size does matter.

Don't stop the press!

A mid-week session is a fine balancing act. On the one hand, five days of uninterrupted slog can kill off any residual traces of humanity. On the other, oblivion on a Wednesday would make Thursday unbearable.

Claire, Michael and I have hit on a decent balance during our Wednesday or Thursday beer hunt. It started off being always on a Wednesday, or as we called it 'Blendsday'. We'd fire ourselves off into different pubs experimentally trying out different half-and-half combos (the best thus far is probably the 'Bishop's Stortford' - half Fuller's London Pride, half Milton Sackcloth - christened by St Radegund barkeep Ollie).

But novelty has given way to Michael's no-pratting-around demeanour, making Claire and myself big fans of a very decent Greene King boozer. Some will scoff. The brewery's ubiquity in our part of the world certainly breeds contempt. Additionally, there is a school of thought that there is no such thing as a decent Greene King pub - because there is no such thing as a decent GK beer.

The Free Press, Cambridge (pictured left), proves both propositions false. It's a warm place with a varied crowd all huddled over pints and halves. The lease clearly gives them the opportunity to raid the GK 'real guest' list - the earthy Tom Wood's Bomber County bitter and Bath Ales' easy-drinking Gem are good examples.

But the real triumph is Greene King XX Mild. It has a gently sour base delivered through a thick, gluggable body. At just 3% ABV, it is sessionable in the extreme - and session drinking is social drinking, end of.

It's a good match for meat dishes, which are in plentiful supply at the Press. The pub offers probably the most reliably enjoyable food in Cambridge. The landlord is keen to secure meat from local suppliers, making perhaps rather vanilla-sounding dishes such as liver & bacon and sausages & mash works of true joy. The sausages we chose earlier this week were pork & black pudding and were robustly juicy. As you can see, Claire and Michael (pictured) very happily scoffed the lot.

I'll go along with those who bad-mouth GK IPA - it's never an ideal drop, delivering the characteristic GK sourness without any balance. With the turnaround GK often expects, the beer is seldom well conditioned. But the Free Press makes a point of storing its beers long enough for them to develop - the Abbot, for example, is a reliable (if unexciting) pint. Even so, the real star is that mild. In this pub it's a beast of a beer.

Couldn't have put it bitter myself

Credit goes to Realaleblog for linking to this diverting little video. David Mitchell talks a lot of sense about beer and, if you can ignore the meerkats, keeps it funny, too.

Porter-way to have a good time

So we were in the pub last night, Matt and myself that is. The Gunmakers, Clerkenwell, was celebrating St Patrick's Day in the only way it knows how - by lining up a jovial Dubliner to serve an anti-papist porter.

Harveys of Lewes is a terrific brewery and produces, arguably, the finest best bitter there is - all floral hops carried on a solid malt body. Their porter doesn't skimp on those characteristic floral notes, but is loaded with chocolate malt, as you might expect from a richly dark porter/stout.

So we had a few of those. The Gunmakers, winningly, also has wi-fi; if Matt (pictured) looks hard at work, that's because he is - signing up a techno-sceptic jesusjohn to Twitter. This blog now has a Twitterpub wall on the left sidebar - if I'm in a pub I like, wish to evangelise about a beer or want to get the word out about a terrific off-licence, I'll use this to spread the news double-pronto.

Hopefully, this will excise a lot of beery guff from the main posts (myriad blogs are better at the forensic dissection of beer flavour - and comments such as 'at 7.5%, this beer must be treated with respect', or 'of course, this is just a rebadged Welder's Daughter' I'll leave to others).

Home and spring in a glass

I am from Kent. Born west of the Medway (a geographical feature of some importance to those from Kent - me neither), this makes me a 'Kentish Man', as opposed to a 'Man of Kent'.

None of which has stopped me, in the past, describing Kent as 'the Alabama of England' or bemoaning the number of former Tory leading lights mooching about spending more time with their families.

But memories of my home county are shaped by cruel proximity to London - west Kent dorm towns had the life beaten out of them long ago. The inhabitants may be cash rich, but they spend what they have indulging in the cultural promise of the bright lights.

My fondest childhood memories are of lazy afternoons driven around the countryside by a kindly uncle figure who had a battered taxi in which he lounged around the county searching for barley wine. His dedication to the pursuit of his favourite nectar necessarily limited the number of fares he could pick up. He was not rich, but he perfected completion of the Times crossword.

Work done for the day, the sun shining and fearing a train home to Cambridge would limit my enjoyment of it, I took the executive decision to trundle my way to West India Quay and its Lloyds No. 1 bar The Ledger Building.

Now Wetherspoons would scarcely be my first choice - but this effort has a sizeable outdoors area and was just the ticket. In shirtsleeves and pretty chirpy, I ordered a pint of Westerham Grasshopper.

Westerham is three miles from where I was born, in west Kent's prettiest countryside. If you've visions of oast houses and stately homes bounded with rhododendron bushes, you're most of the way there.

Canary Wharf was but a memory. UV rays and a pint of this tasty beer (imagine a perfect pint of Shep Neame Masterbrew - but with an added warming blanket of chocolate malt and bitingly spicy hops) and I was scuttling down the hedgerowed lanes of my youth, with uncle and his barley wine on the way.

Sentimental, perhaps. But a beer that can put a smile on your face is ok in my book.

On selling beer

Those of us living or working in London knew the recession was coming when tube station billboards started carrying the same ads for months and then, eventually, became bare. Ad spend is - crazily - seen by bean counters as discretionary in a downturn.

Last summer, a few weeks before Lehman's collapse revealed just how buggered we all were (and sewed up the US election for Barack Obama, thank god), Fuller's ran this ad campaign for their organic brew Honeydew (pictured).

A boring ad, I think all will agree. Far from being evident, it does nothing to demonstrate why people love Honeydew. A row of pints and a tagline about being the country's favourite organic beer is hardly going to stop traffic.

Compare, then, with this billboard directly next to it for Amstel.

Now I thought this was terrific, neatly encapsulating the social role of beer while at the same time using arresting imagery. No allusion to flavour or provenence; no 'since 1345'; no sweeping fields of barley. Lovely stuff.

I'm sure Heineken (which owns the Amstel brand) has far deeper pockets in terms of marketing than Fuller's. But I do think the comparison provides a good example of the lack of imagination demonstrated by some UK - and particularly cask - brewers.


Apologies to Fuller's - this campaign is hardly the most egregious example and, to be fair, I do think their London Pride cinema ad recently was terrific - voiceover by Michael Gambon, no less! For the record, I think Amstel is horrible with a weird metallic ting that ought not to be present in beer at all. A big fan of Fuller's, I've got to say I really dislike Honeydew - but then I've got a bit of a downer on honey in beer per se.

Luxembourg's secret is out...

Luxembourg is not famous for its beer, perhaps, but those in the know will have come across the eminently quaffable Bofferding, marketed as 'the secret of Luxembourg'. Its ad campaign (see below) is tremendous - and could teach UK brewers a thing or two; though it shows how deep even Bofferding's pockets are that they could get Saatchi & Saatchi to do it.

Bofferding is ubiquitous there - a pale session lager that is extremely clean finishing. Nothing special about it, but it is fine at what it does. The urbane and sophisticated young Luxembourger heads for the city, scoots for the relaxed Grund district and hops from bar to bar until the wallet is emptied or capacity reached (this being Luxembourg, of course, the former is unlikely to occur before the latter).

My favourite bar in the Grund is Aula Cafe (pictured) - where glasses of Bofferding can be seen off with a potent honey eau de vie secured from a local farm. It's small, shadowy and filled with relaxed young things; some so young they're ordering wine and coke - a peculiar concoction also loved in Spain, for some reason. The walls may once have been white - who knows? - but neither paint nor paper is necessary when smoke adheres to every surface and provides a dull, satisfying beige hue. When someone is drunk enough to believe they could be the next Duke Ellington, a key from the barman will unlock the piano and music spues out.

There are better Luxembourgish beers - Battin has a wonderful caramel look and is full of superb lagery malt and hop. Simon Pils and Simon Regal are fine efforts indeed (though Simon Presitge - with added Luxembourgish sparkling wine - is to be avoided at all costs).

But to shun Bofferding would be ridiculous. From teens who should know better to bankers who should definitely know better, a glass of this unifying brew is usually what's drunk. And that's not a bad thing.

The opening salvo

Pubcast #1: Cambridge from The Pubcast on Vimeo.

Am I a throwback? I'm 25 and most of my friends are totally divorced from the notion of the pub as I enjoy it - as the great leveller, a social hub. When I take a chum into my favourite pub, the St Radegund (King Street, Cambridge) and one of the many cheery barkeeps yelps 'Jesus John!', typically the friend's face becomes a vision of shock. They'll often even say 'it's so wonderful you have this.' But back in their own world, they'll make no effort to become a regular in their local. It's bizarre.

To find out if we were indeed throwbacks and to celebrate the pub as we know and love it, my like-minded good pal Matthew Nida and I made a film about our favourite Cambridge pubs, optimistically titled The Pubcast #1. You can watch it here - I'm the short one with the glasses. It's not in the same league as Jonathan Meades, but it shows an affection for the pubs we visited, I hope, and for the type of joint we like to relax in.

We do intend to make more - the next film is in pre-production, as the industry wags would have it. We're thinking of doing a sweep through Holborn and Clerkenwell, with a stop-off at Stonch's gaff.

The pubs we visited in Cambridge were The Live & Let Live, Cambridge Blue and St Radegund. Click through for details.