Travels With Nate

Sitting on the Baltic Sea, the tri-city area of Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia is not somewhere I’d ever thought of going until we had some time booked off work, searched “everywhere” on Skyscanner and found £20 return flights, but we’re glad we did. How to get there: We got direct flights from Stansted using Ryanair who operate 2 flights there, and 2 flights back every day but it is serviced by other airports in the UK. Once you’re there, it’s only a half hour bus journey into the city centre although if you have loads of luggage with you, Uber is cheap enough. Where to stay: We stayed in a Novotel very close to the centre because we’re a big fan of the cheap convenience of Accor hotels, which cost us about £120 for four nights. Unlike many cities, I would recommend stay right in the centre as public transport is tricky due to it not being on google maps. When to go: If you like cold weather, winter is the time for you! We’ve heard that the Christmas market is ...

For years and years my beer geek friends and I have dreamt of this day; the day that anarchic Scottish brewery Brewdog open a bar in Norwich. We called for it, we crawled the streets trying to find a suitable venue for them to move into, alas no luck but finally, about 9 months ago we got the news that we were waiting for, the news that Brewdog would open up in the former Hideout/Knowhere nightclub on Queens Street in Norwich. Friday 15th April, at Midday, Brewdog Norwich is finally opened to the public with craft beer, food and a bottledog shop. I mean, as if the need for Brewdog Norwich wasn't enough, it has a goddamn shop with around 200 bottles... something the centre of Norwich has been crying out for, for a long time too. I was lucky enough to be invited to a secret friends and family opening on Wednesday night, by my good friend and Brewdog barman Jay, as well as the EFP/Press Launch on Thursday night. Walking through the door, it's the same yet different as othe...

Everyone knows Duvel. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a fully fledged beer geek like me, or if you’re just an everyday person who likes the occasional supermarket selection when you can’t be bothered to go to the pub. For years now, the golden Belgian strong ale has been a mainstay in the fridges of many pubs and supermarket shelves. You can go to a seemingly average boozer with a less than interesting tap list and you’ll probably find Duvel. You will find it in all of the major supermarkets, too, rarely priced at more than £2 a bottle. This 8.5% foreign delight that you see everywhere, with its crunchy nut cornflake sweetness, just enough booziness that teases you, telling you to drink more when you know you shouldn’t, has become as common as Fuller’s London Pride, and it’s not a bad thing. Slightly harder to come by, however, is their yearly Tripel Hop release. This has been released each year for a fair few years now and I’m happy to say that I’ve caught 4 of them now....

Every so often I get sent a beer book review and from the moment I got a press release about Mikkeller's Book of Beer  I was excited. Mikkel Borg Bjergsø is one of the most famed and exciting brewers in Europe, if not the world I knew that hearing what he has to say about how he started up, why he does what he does and his view on beer would surely be exciting. First of all, the layout of the book is beautiful. It's so cleanly laid out yet full of Mikkeller's in house artist Keith Shore's artwork and wonderful photographs. First we have a brief history of beer, which basically retells many of the myths we've all learned are crap but it's entertaining and captivating nonetheless, before we get to Mikkeller's story. The whole story of Mikkeller is a fascinating one and the way he tells it cuts the bullshit. I've heard many stories from many different people about how he came to start brewing and none of them are remotely close to the one in this book...

As a beer geek I've been on many brewery tours... from London Fields back when it was tiny, all the way to Adnams which is not so small. I think it's fair to say that from a combination of this and my love of beer, that I know a fair bit about the stuff. I remember when Redwell Brewery first opened, it was much smaller than it is now and I was given a kind of informal tour of the brewery... this was two years ago. Two years on I'm working at Redwell, it's much bigger and now I'm doing the tours. I am actually hosting brewery tours. I've done two so far and coming into the brewery on a Saturday to educate people about craft beer and most importantly our beer, brewery and future plans excites me. Seeing people have their first taste of Steam Lager, their eyes lighting up, the 'woah, I didn't know lager could taste like this' factor, to me is exciting and it's what I live for. Then comes even more excitement when I tell people that we ...

I had Friday off work so I decided to go to London for a few beers. I'd not done a proper London pub crawl in ages so it was rather nice, I got to drink some beers that I otherwise wouldn't tried. I started off in Craft Beer Co Covent Garden (which, btw, isn't really in Covent Garden) with a half pint of the Siren/Beavertown/Magic Rock collaborative beer Rule of Thirds. It's 6.4% and pours golden with a fluffy white head, it's full of grapefruit, blood orange, mango & peach flavours and was really delicious. The bar itself is brilliant... one long bar with 45 beers on draught. Most of these are keg, but there were around 10 cask beers (about a third of these were Thornbridge so not that varied). It's very bright upstairs, windows all around allowing you to look at the busy passersby. There was also a small smoking area out the front which made me happy as I could take my drink with me, unlike many craft beer bars. Downstairs is The Lounge, which is dark...

Woop, day two! That means two blogs in one day. Poor you. Anyway, I'm sure y'all know what the deal is. Brewery: Thornbridge Beer: Sequoia ABV: 4.5% Style: American Amber Ale Country: UK Where I drank it: Mash Tun, Norwich Thornbridge are, without a doubt, one of the best breweries in the UK. Again, it's a brewery that nails everything they do and I've been drinking their beers for as long as I remember. Sequoia is an American Amber Ale... it's a style that's not brewed so often over here, with many breweries favouring American IPAs or even Red Ales. I'm probably cheating a bit here as it's a beer I know and love already, but still. Looks: Dark Amber, slightly hazy (cask was fresh on & I don't mind a bit of haze) with a lovely fluffy white head. Aroma : On the nose you get chewy toffee sweets along with some pine and citrus fruit. Flavour: Citrus fruits leading into light toffee with a lovely marmalade covered digesti...

So last week I posted a blog about the fact that I had a pint of Brewdog This. Is. Lager, a beer that I like, after having two pints of Pilsner Urquell thus rendering BD TIL pretty shit. See, Brewdog and I, we’ve had our differences in the past but they were pretty cool about it and offered to send me a few bottles which was awfully nice of them! A couple of days later, before the bottles arrived, I had a spare hour or so on my hands so I decided to pop into The Bell Hotel Wetherspoons in Norwich and have a pint on an untainted palate, and it was the beer I remember having pre-Urquell. It was great – it had that solid biscuity malt backbone, that hop bite and a crisp and clean refreshing finish. Somehow it was warming, even on a cold evening. I loved it! Then, last Thursday, three bottles arrived at my house. Sadly I was suffering from a really horrific cold so I couldn’t crack one open there and then, I shoved them in the fridge and decided to come back to them ...

A while ago I had mentioned that I was involved in the social media side of Norwich’s first ever craft beer festival and now I have a list of beers that will be on over the course of the festival and everything is finalised for this coming Thursday, I figured I’d write a blog. Firstly, what/where/when/how/why? Where: St Margaret’s Art Church, St Benedict’s Street, Norwich When: Thursday 9 th October – Saturday 11 th October (5pm - 11 Thursday then 12pm til 4 & 5pm til 11 Friday and Saturday) Cost: £4 (£2 for NSV wristband holders) includes branded glass which can be returned for £1 refund Food:  Proper Pizza Co & Meat Merchants Beers: A mixture of cask, keg, bottles & cans We are very happy to have the following breweries with their own bars, these are: Firebrand Brewery – A seriously bloody good up and coming brewery from Cornwall. I first sampled their beers at Craft Beer Rising this year and was impressed so I’m excited to see these guys ...

I'm not well versed in Canadian beer as it doesn't seem to make it to the UK often. Sure, I've drank a lot of Carling which originates from there and I remember spending a day in London years ago in the Maple Leaf pub in Covent Garden drinking multiple pints of Sleeman's IPA and Honey Brown lager, but I'd never had anything from Canada's oldest independent brewery. What's interesting about Moosehead is that it was founded by a woman, Susannah Oland back in 1867 and is still operated by the same family. The fact that it was founded by a woman all of the way back then is great but people generally don't know this. People quite rightly celebrate the female brewers of today, but Moosehead is quite an important brewery, in Canada at least, so she deserves some recognition. They've had quite a rocky history, changing names a couple of times and unfortunately two fires within 8 years but each time they recovered and got stronger. Also, its success in th...

On Sunday some friends and I decided to travel down to Oval Space in Hackney for London Craft Beer Festival. As I mentioned in my preview blog, it’s a festival whereby all of the beer is included in admission price as well as the breweries serving their own beer (or at least someone who knows about beer. Probably). We got to the venue and collected our glass, bottle caps (third pint tokens) and program before heading up to the room of doom. The Venue: It was a small but comfortable venue with a decked area where food was, as well as a balcony area overlooking the old gas terminals. There were breweries all around the room and a stage in the middle for the performers. Across the road there was also another venue that they were using to promote holidays in Flanders. We sampled some delicious cheese and whitebait. The Food: I would have liked to see some more reasonably priced food. There was a stand selling hot dogs in burger baps for £6.50 which seemed like a ri...

Imagine being able to go to a beer festival, where all of the bars are manned by the breweries representing them AND beer is included in your ticket price. I’m just going to let that sink in for a while. You ready yet? Yes, at London Craft Beer Festival all of the beer from each the 24 breweries is included in your £35 (+booking fee) ticket price. For that money you can have a ‘small pour’ of every single beer in there, if you wish, as well as 4 ‘big pours’ which amount to 1/3 rd pint each… you also get your LCBF glass and a program with information of all of the breweries involved. This kind of beer festival is based on ones you find in America. They’re not like the ones here where you pay to get in, pay for a glass then pay for all of your beer. You get to try everything if you want, for one price. I think it’s a great concept because for me, a beer festival is all about trying as many different beers as possible. Amongst the breweries represented will be Br...

The Mash Tun . Such an appropriate name for a craft beer establishment. They could have used “ Hop Store ” I suppose, but that gives the image of being rather cold. It’s situated on Charing Cross in Norwich and is in the building that was previously known as The Hog in Armour , a pub that I recall being awful. Luckily for us, The Mash Tun isn’t. In fact, The Mash Tun is rather good. When you walk in you’ll notice that the main room is incredibly long and narrow, and right in front of you is a large board displaying the names of breweries ( Weird Beard was spelt wrong ), the beers, ABV and prices. Oddly though, only the keg prices are listed. Not cask. You glance to the bar on the right and you’ll notice the unique keg taps which have a chamber above it, showing you the colour of the beer as well as beer menus on tables which give you a brief description of the beer. This can be incredibly helpful for customers in deciding what to drink based on their preference B...

The Georgian Townhouse is an iconic building, right at the top of Unthank Road in Norwich. It was previously a rather upmarket hotel, paired with RARE Steakhouse but closed maybe last year, I don’t know, I wasn’t really paying attention. Now it has been refurbished and reopened, not as a hotel but as a Restaurant/Craft Beer Bar, with private function rooms. I was first alerted to it on Twitter a couple of months ago, before it opened. They tweeted me a photo of Budvar Dark, saying they’ll have it on tap when they open and I remember thinking “oh, that’s nice”, not quite expecting the rest of the beer list, but more on that later! Walking into the car park, you get a real sense of scale when you look at the big, beautiful building. It really is a sight to behold. Although there are a few doors at the front, you have to walk to the furthest right to get in. You’re greeted by a host who asks if you’re dining, in which case they’ll show you to your seat, otherwise you’re ...

These days I usually don’t bother with posts like this, but something is frustrating me. That something is people complaining about prices of beers they don’t drink. Complaining about prices of a beer you have no intention of drinking is like complaining that your cock has been chopped off when in fact it hasn’t. It makes absolutely no sense at all. It’s got me thinking though, because the same people who are complaining about the price of ‘craft’ (which they don't want to drink - i.e. really hoppy or strong beers) are the same people who are complaining about the price of mass produced beers (that they don't plan on drinking) and this all boils down to not understanding why some beers have a premium price. Why mass produced beer costs more: You can make a completely valid point in saying that in theory, mass produced beer should in fact be cheaper than ‘craft’ because it’s made on a massive scale and bulk buying cuts the costs of the already relatively chea...

William Sharvatt’s London Velvet is described as “a delicious blend of porter ale and cider”. I imagine that if most of my fellow beer bloggers or generic craft wankers were to read that in an email, they’d probably not even bother reading the rest. They’d rage at the fact that their beloved ale is getting ruined by apples. They’d cry out “HAHAHA THAT’S DISGUSTING” without even bothering to try the beverage whilst also maintaining how cool beer cocktails are. But not me. I read on for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it was nostalgia. When I was younger, a good friend and I used to mix Strongbow with Mackeson Stout as my dad told us that they used to mix cider and Guinnness when they were younger, it’s like a poor man’s black velvet (a black velvet being champagne and stout). I remember enjoying it, although I figured that could have been the stupidity of youth and/or undeveloped tastebuds. Secondly, y’all know me; I’m not scared to tackle the review of a slightly odd (an...

Well oh dear, it looks like the argument of requiring a definition of ‘craft beer’ is back in full force. To be honest, I’m not going to argue about why it is/isn’t a good/bad idea. It’s boring to be honest. Just let ‘em get on with it. My focus is on the word ‘craft’ when attached to beer. See, I like beers from many breweries who call themselves ‘craft’ but it can get too much. You see, it’s one thing to say “We are brewing great craft beer” and another to be rubbing the fact that you are most definitely a craft brewery and nobody can say otherwise in my face. The latter, to me, is a massive turn off. Recently, Bateman’s Brewery has gone through a dramatic rebrand in line with the current ‘craft beer’ market trends. They’ve swapped their comfortable and traditional style ‘Good Honest Ales’ branding which gives you the image of sitting by the fire in a nice village pub, on a cold winter’s evening with what I believe to be a complete mess. Batemans old logo This reb...