Three Hundred Beers

Three Hundred Beers is a weblog of one South East London chap's attempt to try every one of the 300 beers covered in Roger Protz's classic book 300 Beers to Try Before You Die without dying first. Read More or visit the Beer Index »

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170. Perła Chmielowa

Hello! Still reading here? You'd be better off on threehundredbeers.com. This post, 170. Perła Chmielowa, has now moved to Perła Chmielowa on Three Hundred Beers.

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169. North Coast Brewing Old No. 38 Stout

It's about time we drank this one. It has been sat in The Official Threehundredbeers Kitchen Cupboard for longer than I can actually remember. The "best before" date appears to be some time in 2015, and it was purchased from the long-closed and much missed BottleDog shop on Gray's Inn Road.

I opened this one over the sink with some trepidation: with a beer this old—especially one at only 5.4% ABV—you never know what kind of chemical reactions may have happened in the bottle in the meantime. Thankfully there's no gushing to contend with, merely a gentle "pssssst" on opening.

What does burst out of the bottle is a huge aroma of chocolate, raisins and booze. Old No. 38 is certainly one of the finest-smelling beers I've come across in some time. This should be interesting.

Hailing from Fort Bragg, California, North Coast Brewing Old No. 38 Stout comes to us from the same brewery that brought us that rather nice Old Rasputin Imperial Stout a while ago. It's named after a steam engine that used to work its way up and down the Fort Bragg to Willits route, about which I know nothing whatsoever, but which I assume to be fairly picturesque.

Pouring a deep, dark, almost opaque brown colour with a smooth tan head, Old No. 38 sticks to the glass like a much stronger stout should. Perhaps on pouring the beer looks a little thin-bodied, but once you get it into your mouth, that couldn't be further from the case.

Instead, Old No. 38 is rich, smoky, roasty and very smooth indeed. There's a prominent dark chocolate bitterness that never becomes overwhelming, it's full of juicy dried fruits, and it's ridiculously easy-drinking for a stout. This is gorgeous stuff, to be frank.

This is a truly excellent beer. It's hard to know what role the ageing played in its development, but what is certain is that if I ever find another bottle, it won't hang around nearly as long.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: North Coast Brewing, Fort Bragg, CA Style: Porters and Stouts Strength: 5.4% ABV Found at: BottleDog, Gray's Inn Road, London (now closed) Serving: 355ml bottle

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168. Baltika No. 3 Classic

In some ways, this was a nice find: a beer I'd never seen before and was wondering how to track down. Until, that is, I accidentally spotted it through a shop doorway not far from my house whilst out for a run.

As soon as the sun finally came out, it was time to wander back to Lordship Lane and liberate a bottle or two from the fridges at my local Eastern European bodega, which I didn't actually know existed until this point.

Brewed in St. Petersburg, Russia, Baltika No. 3 is strangely hard to find in the UK. Strange because the No. 7—which I assume to be pretty much identical—is all over the place. It's a regular fixture in any branch of Spoons, for a start. There are probably some other numbers in the range. Who would know.

Initially, it's hard to find anything to say about this beer to make it sound interesting. It simply isn't. It's a bottle of 4.8% lager with quite a smart label. It's cold. It tastes of lager. The bottle is quite big. If it were more than 5°C on my park bench this afternoon it might even be quite refreshing.

But there is a little bit more than that going on in there. There's a fairly solid malt base, a faint aroma that I guess is from a Noble hop, such as Saaz, and some vanilla ice cream notes that suggest the brewers have at least tried, even if they are owned by Carlsberg these days.

Fine. Nothing life-changing to see here, but this isn't a terrible beer.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Baltika Breweries, St. Petersburg, Russia Style: Pale Lagers Strength: 4.8% ABV Found at: Eastern European Food, Lordship Lane, London SE22 Serving: 500ml bottle

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167. Marble Gale’s Prize Old Ale

Threehundredbeers is still up here in The North, but after a brief stay in Bamford, Derbyshire, we've moved on to Leeds. These days, Leeds is a great beer city crammed with excellent specialist venues such as North Bar, Friends of Ham and the venerable Whitelock's Ale House, all of which Threehundredbeers visited.

If you are in Leeds though, it's well worth a gentle stroll out of the city centre and down to Northern Monk Brewery and their spiffy Refectory, where you'll find countless taps full of rare and powerful beers from Northern Monk and from many other breweries besides.

Including this one. This is a slight substitution for the actual beer listed in The Book: Gale's Brewery was based in Horndean, Hampshire from 1847 until 2006, shortly after it was purchased by London's Fuller's. The Prize Old Ale was a limited-numbers, bottle-conditioned Old Ale weighing in at 9% ABV, which was sadly discontinued by Fuller's in 2011, making it nigh impossible to come by these days.

In a pleasing turn of events, Manchester's well-regarded Marble Brewery, in a collaboration with Fuller's director of brewing John Keeling, revived the recipe in 2017 and created four slightly different barrel-aged versions, including Pinot Noir, Madeira and Barbera wine barrels, and this one: the bourbon barrel-aged version.

All four varieties were available in bottles, but this is the first and only time I've ever seen one on tap. I don't think there's any doubt that we're about to order a half.

Marble's brew pours brown and cloudy, and it's immediately evident from the aroma that the barrel-aging has done its work: the nose is all bourbon, front and centre. It's a shade too cold straight from a keg, but at 10.6% ABV this is one to drink slowly anyway, which should give it a chance to warm gently as we sip away at it.

I'd never tried the original Prize Old Ale, so it was hard to know what to expect. An obvious point of reference is Fuller's own Vintage Ale, though this is a little different, being lighter in body and less rich. It's vinous and full of toffee, raisins and lingering peppery spice. There is a sweetness to it, and a stickiness on the lips.

Given the ABV and the boozy spirit notes, this is a deeply warming beer, well-suited to a winter evening in Leeds. Yet it's hugely drinkable for the strength and style. I do wonder if the bourbon perhaps overpowers the subtleties of the base beer, rendering it a little more one-dimensional that it deserves to be, but without a "straight" version to compare it to, it's impossible to say.

What is undeniable is that Marble have brewed a cracking beer here, regardless of how it compares to the original. I'm extremely pleased to have had the chance to try it, particularly in the pleasant surroundings of the Northern Monk brewery.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Marble Brewery, Manchester, England Style: Old Ales, Barley Wines and Vintage Ales Strength: 10.6% ABV Found at: The Northern Monk Refectory, Marshall's Mill, Leeds Serving: Keg, half pint

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166. Black Sheep Best Bitter

Exciting times, once again, as Threehundredbeers hits the road and heads for The North. Today we're in the tiny village of Bamford in the Peak District.

It's Sunday and we're in The Anglers Rest, the community-owned village pub, post office, café, gift shop and of course dry cleaning drop-off point. What's not to like?

Very little, as it happens. The pub was once under threat, but is currently owned and run by about 300 local residents, reminding me of The Ivy House, another pioneering community-owned favourite, that one a little nearer to my home in South-East London.

As per tradition, Threehundredbeers is first to the bar, staking our claim to a barstool before the cagoule-and-muddy-boots hordes arrive for a well-earned pint and a Sunday roast.

The bar is stocked with local treats including beers from Sheffield's Abbeydale and Bradfield breweries, and—conveniently enough for our ridiculous project—Black Sheep Best from Masham in North Yorkshire.

The beer itself? Well, it's a classic Yorkshire Bitter and you'd be hard pushed to wander around this part of the world without finding a pint of Black Sheep Best in front of you. Not that you'd complain.

It pours a lovely burnished copper colour with a light tan froth on top. It isn't sparkled here, so we can't be that far north, after all. The aroma is all woody English hops and tired-but-happy Morris dancers, but it tastes better than that.

Black Sheep Best weighs in at just 3.8% and I'd say that's reflected in the taste. This is not a strong beer and does not pretend to be. Instead you've got a good, sessionable pint. It's refreshing, if a little light and watery at first, but soon fills the mouth with a huge bitterness, alloyed by a rich, caramel sweetness.

The bitterness builds to an almost numbing level, much to my surprise. You could drink a few of these, as long as it's in good condition, as it most certainly will be at the Rest.

Threehundredbeers is starting to wonder if we could sneak another one in before the cagoules arrive with their mud-spattered dogs and tired, disagreeable children but let's not. The Official Threehundredbeers Mother has Sunday dinner in the stove back in the cottage, and some things are more important than beer.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Black Sheep Brewery, Masham, North Yorkshire Style: Bitters Strength: 3.8% ABV Found at: The Anglers Rest, Bamford, Derbyshire Serving: Cask, pint

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165. Wells Bombardier

It's not getting any easier to track down beers from The List, but fortunately there are one or two quite widely-available ones left. Wells Bombardier, for example.

The exact relationship between Charles Wells and Young's, who together were once Wells & Young's—not to mention Marston's, who actually brew this beer—is bewildering to me. But happily enough, it still seems to be the case that you can visit any of countless Young's pubs and confidently expect to see Bombardier on the hand pumps.

Which is what we'll do today. Welcome to the very pleasant The Clock House pub, overlooking the green expanses of Peckham Rye here in South London. Peckham Rye is known for being where wordsmith, engraver and general-purpose nutcase William Morris claimed to have seen visions of trees filled with angels and whatnot. But it's probably changed a bit since then.

Wells Bombardier is a famous Best Bitter, weighing in at 4.1% ABV and served here from cask. The colour is the classic deep, reddish chestnut that befits a Best. It's certainly aromatic, with big, fruity notes wafting up at you from the glass.

And very drinkable it is too. Bombardier won't surprise anyone familiar with the style, but it's certainly a good example. Again it's fruity to taste, all raisins and sultanas, with biscuity malts and a pleasing bitterness lingering at the end, courtesy of what I would assume to be English hops.

It's a decent pint, all told, though a beer that absolutely has to be in peak condition, which it is today here at the Clock House. Perhaps not a style that's always been guaranteed to excite your blogger, but without question this is a beer I would happily drink again.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Charles Wells, Bedford, England Style: Best Bitters Strength: 4.1% ABV Found at: The Clock House, Peckham Rye, London SE22 Serving: Cask, pint

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164. Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde

Fine. It's a famous, famous beer that gets the CAMRA types all excited, and we're in a great pub that has done wonders for this blog.

And honestly, all I can say is it smells quite nice—kind of like Parma Violets—it tastes of beer, and it isn't horrible. It's all yours CAMRA.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Mighty Oak Brewery, Maldon, Essex, England Style: Brown and Mild Ales Strength: 3.7% ABV Found at: The Grape & Grain, Anerley Hill, London SE19 Serving: Cask, pint

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163. Girardin Gueuze Black Label 1882

When the lovely people behind Camberwell's ever-magnificent Stormbird open a brand new pub in South London, you can sort of predict that Threehundredbeers will make an effort to be first on the scene.

Slightly too much of an effort in fact, as I pitched up outside the Star & Garter on opening night to find the place still to be something of a building site. Never mind, a couple of days later with the paint still drying, I was able to spend a very pleasant Sunday afternoon working through the impressive tap lineup.

And the fridge of course, because quietly minding its own business in there was a beer from the list which has not been at all easy to track down. In fact I'm not sure I recall even seeing it in Brussels. Anyway, here's the Girardin Gueuze 1882, or "Black Label" as it's known, for fairly self-evident reasons.

Girardin are a family-run brewery based in the tiny Belgian village of Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, and they produce two editions of their Gueuze: the White Label and this, the Black. This is the one the proper beer nerds tend to seek out, as it's the unfiltered, unpasteurised version, bursting with delicious Lambic flavours.

It's a complex beer, blended from 12, 18 and 24 month aged Lambics. It's sour as befits the style, but not as brow-moisteningly so as some examples. Instead it's zesty and citrussy yet full of soft vanilla and peach flavours and the unmistakable musty notes provided by the Brettanomyces yeast.

There are constantly extra depths to discover as you take your time over it and wish you had one of the larger bottles instead.

I shall certainly return to the Star & Garter before long and see what else we can find there. Bromley has certainly hit the jackpot now beer-wise, and I wish everyone involved in the new pub all the best.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brouwerij Girardin, Sint-Ulriks-Kapelle, Belgium Style: Lambic and Gueuze Strength: 5.0% ABV Found at: The Star & Garter, 227 High Street, Bromley, London BR1 Serving: 375ml bottle

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162. Nethergate Umbel Magna

After furnishing us with the Batemans XXXB and the Hambleton Nightmare, The Crosse Keys in the City of London is becoming a valuable ally on our quest.

Conveniently enough, a recent weekend saw something of a tap takeover by Essex's Nethergate Brewery, makers of that rather fine Old Growler I enjoyed a while ago, and of this: Nethergate Umbel Magna.

Umbel Magna is a recreation of a 1750s Porter recipe brewed with an addition of coriander to spice things up a little. It has won awards left right and centre, and I'm going to have a pint, even if it isn't quite midday yet on a Tuesday morning.

It's lovely stuff too, malty and chocolatey and hugely aromatic. It's sweet and rounded at first, but with a hefty great dose of bitterness in the finish to balance things out and keep the beer hopelessly moreish. There are toasty notes alongside the chocolate sweetness too.

True to the Porter style, the body is a little lighter than a stout, while the colour is more of a deep, warm mahogany than a black. There's a bit of booze in the nose, though perhaps that's the early hour making me a little more sensitive than usual.

I didn't actually know at the time that coriander was involved, and I certainly didn't spot it, which suggests it's contributing to the overall flavour of the beer rather than dominating proceedings, which suits me.

Either way, Umbel Magna is a cracking winter beer and one I'd happily drink again, especially at the Crosse Keys' improbably reasonable prices. Good stuff from Nethergate once again.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Nethergate Brewery, Pentlow, Essex, England Style: Porters and Stouts Strength: 5.0% ABV Found at: The Crosse Keys, Gracechurch Street, London EC3V Serving: Cask, pint

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161. Wychwood Hobgoblin

I've been scandalously neglecting the Threehundredbeers project recently, but I'm still here. That this beer was consumed back in March will tell you how far behind we are, and so the time has come to get things back on track.

This particular beer was consumed at the London Palladium, more specifically at one of the finest gigs I'm ever likely to attend. This was the night Glen Hansard nearly took the roof off the place with a three hour set (setlist here) including six encores, a guest appearance from Dublin poet Stephen James Smith, and even some death-defying balcony-dangling from Glen himself.

The choice of beers at the Palladium is, to put it politely, limited. So unless you fancy a Stella Artois (I didn't) it's a Hobgoblin for you tonight. Fortunately, that's one we've yet to tick off The List, and doubly fortunately, it's the stronger, 5.2% bottled version and not the watered-down cask offering.

Furthermore, the good people at the Palladium are more than happy to let you take it to your seat while Glen makes whiskery love to your earholes with his big ginger acoustic face.

The beer itself is a bit of an English classic. It isn't as strong as it used to be, even the bottled stuff, but it's still welcome enough tonight. It's a beautiful deep ruby colour with a small yet firm tan head, even in an idiotproof plastic pint pot. It still packs a punch at 5.2%, but that strength is well backed up by big, fat fruits and juicy malts. There's almost a wine-like finish and it all goes down very easily indeed, especially if you're on some sort of musical cloud nine as I clearly was by this point in proceedings.

I'll leave you with some shakily-filmed moments from the gig. Here's Glen taking an old Frames song up a notch. The video doesn't quite capture the walls of the Palladium visibly shaking in response to Glen's bassist's thumping great bass line:

Here's Her Mercy from the 2015 album Didn't He Ramble:

This is the sort of thing you don't want to see when your vertigo is already playing up from being way up in the cheap seats for the last couple of hours:

And finally an unexpected highlight of the night. This is Stephen James Smith performing perhaps his best known poem, Dublin You Are, which had about 2,500 people on the edge of their seats, hanging on his words in quiet awe:

It's impossible to put into words how good this show was: the cameraderie and warmth and love in the room, the audience participation and the sheer spectacle of the last night of the tour. All in all, a pretty magical evening, and Hobgoblin did a fine job of accompanying it, even if I did later have to run to the Lyric for an emotion-calming pint of Magic Rock Cannonball just in time for last orders.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Wychwood Brewery, Witney, Oxfordshire, England Style: Extra Strong Beers and Bitters Strength: 5.2% ABV Found at: The London Palladium, Argyll Street, London W1F Serving: 500ml bottle

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160. Woodforde’s Wherry

It's getting rarer to find these beers by accident now we're beyond the halfway mark. But here we are back at the Alleyn's Head—right near my house—for a spot of dinner, and look what's on the pumps at a mere £2.59 a pint.

Woodforde's Wherry hails from Woodbastwick, way out in Norfolk. On the face of it, it's a pretty standard English Bitter of the type that rarely gets me excited. But this pint is in impeccable condition, as is so often the case with the cask ales here at the Alleyn's Head.

It's a little paler in colour than most bitters, pouring a rich copper colour with a modest off-white head. It's as smooth as can be, too, with none of the harsh aftertaste that can plague a lot of beers of this style.

Instead, there's a full-yet-balanced, malty body with a fruity, almost tangy, caramel sweetness and a little peppery bitterness from the English hops.

Wherry successfully packs in a great deal of flavour for its eminently sessionable 3.8% strength. I'm still not sure I'll be going out of my way for a pint of bitter, even this one, but served in this good a condition it's a great little beer.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Woodforde's, Woodbastwick, Norfolk, England Style: Bitters Strength: 3.8% ABV Found at: The Alleyn's Head, Park Hall Road, London SE21 Serving: Cask, pint

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159. Beavertown Black Betty

It's time for another substitution for a discontinued beer, and it's a bit of an old favourite of mine. This one replaces Hogs Back BSA, an English-style IPA that I fear I might have struggled to get excited about anyway.

You may remember London's Beavertown from a previous substitution, the Bloody 'Ell blood orange IPA, and may be concluding that I'm something of a fan. This is their Black IPA, named Black Betty. I've wanted to sneak a Black IPA in here for some time, as it's a style I'm rather fond of, and yet it's one that simply didn't exist at the time The Book was written.

Whether an example of the style would have been featured anyway is open to debate. The author Roger Protz apparently is not convinced. Addressing a summit of brewers in Burton-on-Trent a couple of years ago, Protz said:

If you’re tempted, please don’t brew something called Black IPA. As the great American brewer and beer writer Garrett Oliver said on the subject: "Don’t get me started". In other words, which part of India PALE Ale do you not understand? Black IPA is absurd and an insult to history.

Cue dozens of new wave breweries falling over themselves to brew a Black IPA and name it "Insult to History".

Black Betty has really become the classic example of the style, and is a thing of beauty. Where better to try it than at the Beavertown Brewery itself, where the tap room is open on Saturday afternoons and into the evening.

The tap toom is bustling by the time I arrive, barely an hour or so after opening. But the staff are plentiful and efficient, and Threehundredbeers soon has a half pint of beer number 159 resting on a keg of Gamma Ray in front of us.

And what lovely stuff it is. What you get with a Black IPA of this quality is a giant hit of big, hoppy IPA bitterness and tropical fruit balanced out by rich, smooth and toasty chocolate and black malts.

Beavertown Black Betty packs a punch at 7.4%, and I think that's appropriate for what is, after all, an IPA. I've seen weaker Black IPAs at around 5%, but they never seem to quite cut it for me.

This one does. There's no question this is one of the finest beers being brewed in London today, and Black Betty seems to get better every time I try it, with an almost chocolate milk shake sweetness creeping in these days, and a full, smooth body to match.

A true modern classic, I reckon.

After this it was time to work through the rest of the formidable tap lineup, sampling experimental IPAs, barrel-aged Imperial Stouts, and an Imperial Smoked Porter in short order, all in relaxed and convivial circumstances in among the fermentation vessels.

It was a grand day out, and there's very little doubt that I'll be returning to Beavertown before long.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Beavertown, Tottenham Hale, London N17 Style: India Pale Ales Strength: 7.4% ABV Found at: Beavertown Brewery Tap Room, Lockwood Industrial Park, London N17 Serving: Keg, half pint

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158. Caledonian Deuchars IPA

Our time in Scotland is drawing to a close, and after a night in Aberdeen, there's just time to break up the long trek home with a final night in Edinburgh.

This time we'll go for something altogether more local: Caledonian Deuchars IPA is brewed just down the road to Slateford, in the shadow of Heart of Midlothian's Tynecastle Stadium.

Caledonian Deuchars IPA is a beer I remember well from my years as a student in Edinburgh. I'm convinced it used to be stronger though: these days it's an eminently sessionable 3.8%.

And where better to try it than The Oxford Bar, famed as "The Ox" of Ian Rankin's Rebus novels. Inspector Rebus is a regular here, often holding clandestine meetings in the back room, and this is his tipple of choice. When he's not on the whisky, that is. That's because Ian Rankin is also a regular here, and has been known to try the Deuchars IPA once or twice himself.

Of course the Deuchars IPA is in good condition here, and served in the correct glassware, always a nice touch.

Some may dispute the labelling of this as an IPA, given its modest strength and subtle hopping, but by traditional Scottish standards it is a hoppy beer. It's zesty and refreshing, with lemony fruit perfectly balanced out by juicy malts bearing a hint of caramel sweetness.

That's all sat on top of a slight Burton-like saltiness from the hard local water that helped to make Edinburgh a renowned centre of brewing for many, many years.

It's a great little pint, this one, and the sort of thing you could drink all night if push came to shove.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Caledonian Brewery, Edinburgh, Scotland Style: India Pale Ales Strength: 3.8% ABV Found at: The Oxford Bar, Young Street, Edinburgh Serving: Cask, pint

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157. Abbaye des Rocs

The Threehundredbeers tour of Scotland continues. After a day out in Ellon, Aberdeenshire touring the BrewDog brewery and tasting some of their wares at the giant-dog-friendly DogTap, we'll stop off for the night in Aberdeen and see what beery delights the city can offer us.

I've heard a lot of good things about six°north. Indeed, any bar that gets to hold a Cantillon Zwanze Day is going to be worth a little of our time. Plus it's about 20 yards from my Premier Inn, so let's pop in and have a look.

We're officially in Scotland to look for Scottish beers, of course, but among six°north's extensive menu of 313 bottles (yes, I counted them), Belgium is particularly well-represented. Here's one I haven't spotted on any of my trips to Brussels: a hefty 9.0% Abbey Beer from Montignies-sur-Roc, a tiny village close to the border with France.

We've already tried Abbaye dec Rocs' Blanche des Honnelles wheat beer, but this is a very different proposition: stronger, darker and heavier, I can see the good people of Aberdeen welcoming a glass of this on a near-Arctic winter evening.

Abbaye des Rocs is a deep, rich chestnut colour, though by no means opaque. There's very little in the way of froth, in part due to the well-trained barman's careful pour.

The aroma is as Belgian as it gets, with those distinctive esters front and centre. Goodness me it's rich too, and full of that roasty, bonfire toffee caramel sweetness. In fact this one probably has more in common with a Barley Wine than a typical Belgian brown.

It's pretty easy to forget the strength, and glug away happily as the beer gets to work and keeps you warm, despite the proximity to the Arctic circle, which I haven't actually checked on a map. But this is the furthest north that we've sampled any of the list so far, and it seems a fitting choice.

Good stuff then, and I can definitely recommend a visit to six°north any time you're in town.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Brasserie de l'Abbaye des Rocs, Montignies-sur-Roc, Belgium Style: Abbey Beers Strength: 9.0% ABV Found at: six°north, Littlejohn Street, Aberdeen Serving: 330ml bottle

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Golden Pints 2015

In no particular order.

Best UK Cask

I don't get through a lot of cask beer, as it's generally pretty underwhelming, hit-and-miss stuff. But the Moor Beer Sloe Walker two weeks ago at the famous Bag o' Nails in Bristol was an absolute treat. This is a very personal beer for me, as a few years ago—along with Thornbridge Jaipur and Marble Black Marble—it was a gateway beer, changing forever my perception of what a beer can be, and starting me along a beery journey, of which this ridiculous blog project is just part.

It's delicious stuff and in painfully short supply, so the 250 mile round trip from London was an easy decision to make. The opportunity to hang with some of the pub's 15 cats was a nice bonus.

Best UK Keg

I could start listing all sorts of 15% barrel-aged Barley Wines and Belgian Quads and whatnot, but The Kernel's Pale Ale was the revelation for me this year.

Hiding in plain sight, and often overlooked in favour of the brewery's giant IPAs and Imperial Stouts, the Pales are the bread and butter of the Kernel range, yet when served eye-wateringly fresh, as can often be found at The Lyric in Soho, they're very hard to beat. Attempting to brew something similar myself has been enough to show me why the Kernel are a world-renowned brewery, and I'm a computer programmer.

Brewery

It's almost redundant to mention how good The Kernel are, and it was nearly going to be them, but for me this year has been all about Moor Beer. In many ways an understated brewery compared to some, their keep-it-simple approach to just brewing straightforward beers to the highest possible standards resonates strongly with me. The chance to spend an hour or so drinking and chatting with giant brewery dog Baz at the Moor taproom in Bristol recently remains a special memory, even if he steadfastly refused to pose for photographs.

UK Pub/Bar of the Year

It's always going to be the ever-magnificent Stormbird in Camberwell, isn't it. The exceptional selection of beers, the lovely staff and the unnecessarily reasonable prices combine to make Stormbird one of the very finest places to drink beer on the planet.

Extra special mention has to go to The Lyric and The Queen's Head, both in Soho. It's so rare to find a proper, honest, individual pub in central London, and I'm lucky enough to have two right on the office doorstep.

Overseas Pub/Bar of the Year

Alright, I've only been to two other countries this year, but I'm pretty sure I could travel the globe and struggle to find anywhere of the calibre of Moeder Lambic Fontainas and Poechenellekelder in Brussels, and La Capsule in Lille. Happy, if slightly hazy, memories of all three this year.

Twitterer

It's clearly non-shrieking beer-drinking sardonic sickpot Matt, isn't it. A man who knows a good beer when he sees it, and the perfect antidote to the cliquey, self-appointed Twitter beer elite. Besides, who else do you know that has adopted a seagull this year?

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156. Orkney Dark Island

Threehundredbeers is still in Scotland, but a very picturesque Scotrail journey over the Forth and Tay bridges and on up the East Coast finds us in Angus to pay a long overdue visit to The Official Threehundredbeers Mother and her extravagantly-sized new German Shepherd, Kai.

I've brought a little something with me in my rucksack, sourced from the heaving shelves of The Beerhive back in Edinburgh. As the name suggests, Orkney Dark Island has come all the way from Stromness in the Orkneys.

Orkney Dark Island is certainly dark: a deep chestnut brown that appears black in most lights. There's a small tan froth, though not a great deal of carbonation.

It's listed in The Book as a Scottish Ale, which seems about right. It's big and malty and very much at the sweeter end of the spectrum. But where a lot of Scottish ales can seem cloying to those accustomed to the hoppier beers from further south, this one is balanced out by toastier, almost Stout-like notes.

Dark Island goes down smoothly enough, though I'm not sure I made the right decision by choosing this as a pre-dinner beer. It's a little too heavy for that, and perhaps better suited to keeping you warm on a cold Orcadian evening. That said, there's a lightness to the body that makes it very gluggable indeed.

Good stuff. Back in Edinburgh I also found this one on cask at Bennets Bar, and that seemed to work well: smoother and fuller-bodied and the perfect preamble to a nice drop of malt whisky.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: The Orkney Brewery, Stromness, Orkney Islands Style: Scottish Ales Strength: 4.6% ABV Found at: The Beerhive, Rodney Street, Edinburgh Serving: 500ml bottle

[threehundredbeers]

155. Belhaven St. Andrews Ale

It's Day Two in Edinburgh, and I'm rather enjoying revisiting the city that used to be my home, and learning what a great beer scene it has these days.

Threehundredbeers may not be firing on all cylinders today, though, since that Ayinger Celebrator at the Bow Bar last night led on to BrewDog Edinburgh—downstairs from a flat in which I briefly lived—and the utterly magnificent new Hanging Bat.

After a nostalgic stroll around George Square and The Meadows, I reckon I could manage a half of Belhaven St. Andrews Ale in The Albanach up on the Royal Mile.

The plan for today had actually been to hop on a train out to Dunbar and visit the Belhaven brewery, but the tour was cancelled since only one person (me) had booked a place. Apparently running this ridiculous blog does not yet carry the weight of beer-related influence I so clearly deserve.

So to make up for that, we'll at least visit a Belhaven pub. In my day The Albanach was a swanky café bar named "EH1" or something similar, but it has staged a bit of a recovery and is now a decent, slightly localsy, boozer. I believe this is also the pub in whose cellar the skeletons were found in Ian Rankin's Fleshmarket Close.

And conveniently enough, it has the St. Andrews Ale front and centre on the bar.

Belhaven St. Andrews Ale is a lovely looking beer, deep amber in colour and unfortunately more head than beer due to a somewhat hasty pour. It's in good condition here though, and welcome enough after the climb up to the Royal Mile.

It's Scottish alright: sweet and malty and lacking in any kind of hop character. Instead there's caramel and Werther's Originals and maybe a little bitterness at the end, unless I imagined it.

I'm initially quite pleased I stuck to a half, but whilst not enormously exciting, this one has enough going for it that I'm soon ordering another, before shambling back to my Travelodge with a chipsteak supper and a couple of nice finds from The Beerhive.

Facts and Figures

Brewery: Belhaven, Dunbar, Scotland Style: Scottish Ales Strength: 4.9% ABV Found at: The Albanach, High Street, Edinburgh Serving: Cask, half pint