Travels With Nate

Last Thursday I was invited to attend the invite only launch party of City of Ale at Dragon Hall in Norwich, along with many of Norwich’s finest publicans and brewers. Arriving soon after opening at 6:30pm, I was greeted outside by Tim & Katie from The Jubliee with whom I shared a smoke and a chat before heading inside. Once inside I saw many recognisable faces, and got chatting to Moses from Fakir Brewery. Due to chatting, I had no beer at this point and heard Sadie summon me over saying “Nate, you can’t stand there without a beer!” and she had a point! Firstly I must note that all of the beers on the night were served bright, as they only had an hour set up so there was no time for secondary fermentation in the cask at the venue. Most were polypins (bag in a box) so it wasn’t too bad, although I do think that because it was bright beer, none of it was as good as it should have and could have been. My first beer of the evening was Woodfordes Craft Lager (4.1%) an...

In the USA, beer weeks are a big thing. From San Francisco, to Seattle, to Philadelphia; almost every major city, and even smaller towns, have a beer week. The idea is that bars and breweries come together to host events that promote the beer of that city, or rather the state within it. It’s a really cool idea, and something that was missing from the UK. Until 2011, that is, when Dawn Leeder and Phil Cutter launched the first City of Ale , a celebration of the fine ales and pubs of Norwich and its surrounding areas. City of Ale 2014 will be the fourth, and it runs from 22 nd May until 1 st June. It’s not like a conventional beer festival whereby it’s in one building; City of Ale is spread out across 44 pubs in Norwich which is absolutely staggering. Throughout the week that it’s on, you will find many different events such as beer tastings, food & beer pairings, meet the brewers, quizzes and we’re even hosting a special edition of Norwich Bottle Share fe...

You probably would have seen my original post about my birthday twissup in Norwich on Saturday 31st May , as well as my frequent tweets telling everyone to buy train tickets. If you don’t know already, my birthday event in London last year ( #Dawgocalypse ) was a raging success with around 30 different people joining us throughout the day and it was seriously fucking awesome. I really appreciate everyone coming out. This year, I’ve decided to try and haul everyone’s arses to my home city of Norwich as it will be approaching the end of our annual City of Ale festival. Anyway, there are just six weeks to go so essentially this is a reminder for y’all to book your tickets, and I’ll give you a brief overview of the pubs we plan on visiting. I believe we’ll be starting between 12pm & 1pm but if you’re any later to Norwich , you’ll find a map at the end of this post… ALL TIMES BELOW ARE APPROXIMATE. WE MAY SPEND MORE OR LESS TIME IN SOME PUBS, DEPENDING ON HOW BUSY TH...

The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community which was started by Stan Hieronymus at  Appellation Beer . On the first Friday of each month, all participating bloggers write about a predetermined topic. Each month a different blog is chosen to host The Session, choose the topic, and post a roundup of all the responses received. For more info on The Session, check out the Brookston Beer Bulletin’s  nice archive page . This month's session is hosted by The Beer Babe and is about Pale Ales . I'm not sure I understand what The Beer Babe is saying. We never get excited about pale ales? What? Pale ales are wonderful... they're generally session beers. When you feel like drinking a fair few pints but don't want anything too powerful... Pale ales are great. So our mission for The Session is to seek out and taste two different pale ales. Mission accomplished! The first pale ale I want to talk about is one that I've had many times...

So, the past weekend saw Dragon Hall Beer Festival 2 and it was a massive success. We had pretty much the whole crew of volunteers back plus some new additions which was great. We’re a great team. We had about 30 cask ales and bottled beers from Norfolk as well as 4 kegged beers and 9 bottled beers from Ghent in Belgium. Basically, if you missed it you’re an absolute fool. My two favourite beers of the weekend: Van Steenberge Gulden Draak 9000 Quadrupel – A wonderful example of a quadruple. 10.5% but definitely doesn’t taste it. Got nice caramel and malty aromas. Flavours are caramel, bananas & custard, light yeast and spice. Norwich Bear Platinum Blonde – A premium bitter. Pours a lovely golden orange colour with a bubbly off-white head. Biscuity malt aromas with some citrus. Tastes citrusy (possibly lemon) with that same buscuity malt flavour. Definitely my favourite cask ale of the weekend. See Dawn ’s impression of me here: https://twitter.com/#!/Nat...