Beer

Just seen that Gales Brewery in Hordean has been bought out by Fullers of London and production will move to the 'Smoke'. Some beers will apparently be chopped. I didn't mind when Brickwoods fell many years ago as imho it was crap but this lastest closure is a sad day for decent ale drinkers. Drinking Beer is a subject close to Jack's heart and thought it ought to be a subject worthy of it's own thread. Personally I can't stand 'chemical' rubbish lager so who brews the best?

 

NO CHEMICAL BEERS IN CHISWICK
Fullers are one of the two largest producers of living Real Ale in London together with Youngs of Wandsworth. Both also extensivley use dray horses for local delivery.

The best of Gales Ales will be kept by reducing the local water back to zero salts etc. them adding a mix to bring it to the standard used in Horndean.

Many real ales would have been lost with out this method such as "Old Speckle Hen" now brewed in Suffolk etc.

Nutty

 

Had a bottle of "real" ale while in Somerset and part of the ingredients was fish in the findings. No won der it tasted like Crap

My Grandad used egg whites in his pubto do the same thing

 

It's a sad day that Gales os going. Went on a brewery tour in Horndean inly last year - fascinating. They still have all the old apparatus they used to use there. I hope it's made into a museum, but would have preferred it kept as a working brewery.

Inetresting how they're going to try and replicate the liquor (the water used for brewing) - it taken staright out of a borhole in the middle of the building in Horndean.

 

Part Timer

Having visited the Green King's Brewery in Bury St Edmunds they only brew ale's not Euro Fizz in an ancient building were all works by gravity. Like Gales they have their own spring on site, this is then reduced to zero and has salts etc added to match the origional water/liquor for the beer to be brewed.

IPA
Old Speckled Hen
Ruddles County
Belhaven Beers
plus a couple of strong ales and mild's

Or the beers can die and disappear

Nutty

 

Anyone remember when Vaux breweries closed in sunderland? that was a very sad day for a lot of the townfolk. you still get the odd bottle of double maxim knocked out from somewhere in the area. i think its the only vaux ale still going, and it just happens to be a very fine rival to newcastle brown...and you thought that stuff was loopy juice! DM is mental. it tends to be the new 'mod' drink up north due to it being rare cool and doesn't take a lot till your on your arse, no matter how good a drinker you are!

 

Has to be Theakston's Old Peculiar for me, not a chemical in sight Close second is Hobgoblin, I've visted the Wychwood brewery, it's a great afternoon out!

 

Unfortunately, I believe in the German purity law and like to look after my teeth, so I only drink beer where all the sugar is turned to alcohol. Therefore, it's Becks or Warsteiner for me!!!

GBTD

 

Coincidence?

With the gradual shrinking of the Andrew....

Pompey lost Brickwoods (OK, not a big deal) and now Gales
Portland (Weymouth) lost Devenish and, more recently, Eldridge Pope (Huntsman)
Plymouth lost Courages

 

any one ever serve at RNAS culdrose remember SPINGO brewed in the back yard of the anchor pub many a party started by filling up blue d containers (washed out first )and filled with the stuff mixed with
scrumpy quite palatable but used to melt the containers overnight

 

Used to do a bit of part time work in a very well known regular matelots pub in Keyham area (no names). The guvnor used to tip all the drip trays (everything except cider and guinness) into a bucket and this special brew was used again by being filtered via a specialy made system into the John Smiths barrel.
Used to laugh like drains when the (beer expert) northern monkeys used to drink it and say "ey oop, that is the finest pint of JS thee has had in a long time".
Didn't stop me or any of the staff drinking it though, nice drop of grog.

 

Cheap booze. Early sixties at osprey,the days when we got paid fortnightly.As you oldens may well remember, always barasic the second week.Three old chockheads(I was only 17) on a sunday lunchtime over to the NAAFI with a nice shiny bucket to be topped up with the roughest scrumpy in dorset and the added spicer of a bottle of ruby sherry.offered a glass and downed it.A week later still hungover it was back on the limers for me!The bucket remained shiny for a long time without polishing.

 

Agree with Nutty - Youngs and Fullers in London have definitely kept the art of brewing alive. Anything by Youngs, Fuller's London Pride are excellent and if it now does the Horndean Special Bitter it will be fine.

Sidon55 - one of the most common of ALL 'finings' (not 'findings') is ISINGLASS - sometimes called fish glue. It's the shredded, freeze dried, powdered swim bladder of sturgeon, dissolved in liquid. Positively charged fining agent traditionally used for beer but can also be used for wine. Finings are used to speed up clearing. All of the particles clouding up beer have an electrical charge. Positive charged finings will attract negatively charged particles and bind with them, making them too heavy to float. Negative charged finings will attract positively charged particles producing the same results. (paraphrased from a brewing website)

 

Alternatively get some banana skins and boil them up in a pint of water,let cool strain and use for finings,works well and no sturgeon harmed in the process.
I like a drop of Riggwelter by the Black Sheep Brewery of Masham.

 

I am partial to any beer brewed in a microbrewery, and to Tuborg's Red Beer (Rød Tuborg) which is sadly no longer made. Changing topic ever so slightly, I also love Sheppy's Gold Medal cider - their medium is drier than most other makes of dry cider!

[align=center]Sheppy's Gold Medal cider



Tuborg Red Lager

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Hi

Just returned from a weekend in Pompey and had a few good pints of HSB in the old Vernon Building.

On the subject of Scrumpy, Pompey shorebase/ships used to get Veg/Potato deliveries in mid 80's from a Bristol supplier.

Drivers brother had a farm and we used to give the driver washed out teepol containers and next delivery would get gallons of cheap scrumpy was about £5 a gallon. I can remember this from HMS Nelson and then joined a well known T42 where we carried on the practice until the contract was changed.

Was a nightmare if the SO decided to do a surprise check of the Veg delivery.

 

Unfortunately, in the case of Ruddles it doesn't work
I used to live a few miles from the Ruddles brewery when it was in Rutland and a number of my locals used to serve County. The brew called COunty produced by Greene King tastes totally different and also has a nasty chemical overtone to the taste.

 

Real ale is all very well, but CSB was always the best for me. Maybe it's just a rose-tinted view of the world!

If we are to talk real ale though, I'd recommend Hook Norton beers.

 

A note from the Pond’s Western Shore..

Welcome to my world…

Since I was a pup, almost all of the local breweries have been bought up by the big three.. European/UK beer does not travel well (tastes nothing like when on the Eastern Shore) ..

So we have three mega brewers making a watery swill and spending millions of $US on television advertising to convince us how great it is..

I was standing in the checkout line of the USN Liquor Store at NS Rota (Spain) behind one of your very own. He asks me “Do you know what American beer & making love in a row boat have in common?…. They are both F*****g next to waterâ€. What was funnier than the joke was that Jack was buying three cases (72 cans) of Budweiser..

:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

 

Sampled a few beers at some stage.

First pint - Chatham High Street (the pub is now a slot machine place) in Blues, with cap on back of head - a real sailor at 16 !!

The worst ? - Devenish in Portland - even harder to take than Workup
but still welcome enough after being 'killed' on exercise.

The best ? - varies on where I was at the time (except the above)
Dryborough Export in Scotland was a good'un

Shepherd & Scream in Chatham not too bad but could give you a dicky stomach

And who could forget Tiger or San Mig? especially in the nightspots of China Fleet or Singers (what was the name of that club in front of Raffles?) then on to enjoy the company of a nubile young lady ....memories !