Manchester Beer Festival

Having been to most incarnations of CAMRA's National Winter Ales Festival in Manchester over the last fifteen years, from the first one at Upper Campfield Market in Castlefield in 1999 to the ones at the East Germany circa 1960 New Century Hall, I was looking forward to the Manchester Beer and Cider Festival at Manchester Velodrome, the replacement post-Christmas drinking get together now the NWAF has moved to Derby.

The first thing to say is how impressive a venue the Velodrome is. I've seen it before on TV but that doesn't give you any idea of how high and steep the track really is. I reckon I'd struggle to get round one lap of it, never mind the dozens the professionals do. I know some disabled drinkers had problems accessing the bar area in the middle of the track but as far as I could see the volunteer stewards did everything they could to work round that, taking people down to it by lift and putting extra seating there, and one plus of the Velodrome is that trams stop pretty much outside the front door.

I went to the first session on Wednesday afternoon and the last one on Saturday. The stand out beers for me on the first day were the cask version of Fuller's 1845 Strong Ale and the dangerously drinkable 6.5% Elland 1872 Porter, interspersed with a few halves of Robinson's Old Tom. Unsurprisingly they had all run out by the last session, as did the rest of the beer by about three o'clock, something reflected in free admission for CAMRA members and a reduced entry price of £1 for non-members. Like most people we headed back into town on the tram and went to a pub in the Northern Quarter, the beer shortage at the Velodrome providing a windfall for a number of city centre hostelries.

Driven to drink

The decision by Wetherspoon's to open a pub at a motorway service station has led to predictable protests from road safety charities and health professionals who predict that hordes of tanked up drivers will now be wreaking havoc on the highways.

Even if it may be unwise to drink and drive, it is not currently illegal to do so as long as you stick to the limits. There is nothing to stop drivers at the moment turning off the motorway and going in a pub and of course many people at service stations (passengers in cars, coach parties) are not drivers at all.

Silks on strike

Today's walk out by barristers over the Government's proposals to cut the amount of legal aid available in complex criminal cases has produced predictable responses.

To be honest, I've no idea whether barristers are hideously underpaid as they claim or outrageously overpaid as the Ministry of Justice contends. Probably somewhere in the middle I'd guess. My only real experience of the legal aid system is from when I worked as an employment adviser in a law centre in one of the most impoverished parts of South Manchester and saw how the cuts to it by the then Labour government reduced access to advice and representation on housing and benefits (the centre has now closed as a result of cuts in local government).

One thing that did strike me about some of the comments from barristers on the picket line is how high their concept of "low pay" is. One of them asked "Would you be happy to be represented in court by someone only earning £35,000?" and another claimed that such pay levels would deter young people from entering the profession.

The walk out also reminded me of the episode of Rumpole of the Bailey where the head of chambers Guthrie Featherstone QC MP played by Peter Bowles leads a strike of judges and arriving home early is met by his appalled wife who asks him if he now intends to go down the working men's club in a flat cap and order a pint of wallop.

Books of the Year

I've been scanning my bookshelves, looking at the books I've read this year.

Most of the fiction I've read has been as a result of media of one type or another, whether radio, TV or newspapers, and so has some of the non-fiction, such as Morrissey's Autobiography. Some of the fiction has also been the result of reading non-fiction too as I'll explain.  Anyway, here are the fiction books I've read in 2013.

Black-out in Gretley by J.B. Priestley

Spy thriller set in an English town in World War II which I read having listened to a radio adaptation with Anton Lessor.

The Code of the Woosters, The Inimitable Jeeves and Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G.Wodehouse

Having read The Fascists in Britain by Colin Cross, about Mosley and the British Union of Fascists in the 30's, I went in search of his fictional counterpart Roderick Spode.












The Aerodrome by Rex Warner

For the same reason, I also read this about an attempted takeover of Britain by fascist air force officers.

Sweet Thursday and East of Eden by John Steinbeck

I read Cannery Row years ago and would have read the sequel Sweet Thursday too if I'd heard about it before. East of Eden, Steinbeck's epic Cain and Abel-based novel set in his native Salinas Valley in Northern California, had long been on my "books I really should get round to reading" list.

Home to Harlem by Claude McKay

A poem by McKay and a short biography of him that I read in a newspaper (a Jamaican-born black Communist in America and Britain in the twenties, he later converted to Catholicism) prompted me to read this, his best known novel.

Red Or Dead by David Peace

Having enjoyed Peace's The Damned Utd about Brian Clough's short reign as manager of Leeds, I pretty much had to read this about another of football's colourful characters, Liverpool manager Bill Shankly.

The Alteration by Kingsley Amis

I spotted this on a top ten of alternate history novels in the Review section of The Guardian. It's set in a still Catholic 70's England in which officials of the Holy Office include Foot and Stansgate.

House of Earth by Woody Guthrie

Not quite the ecosocialist masterpiece some have tried to make it out to be but another book I had to read given that I've been a Woody Guthrie fan since my teens and his music led me to both Dylan and the blues.

The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

I've always been sold on books by TV programmes that dramatise parts of them. This, featured in an edition of BBC2's Culture Show presented by James Runcie about books set in the London Blitz, is the last of Greene's explicitly Catholic novels.



















The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

I know it's been knocked for its length, plot structure and ending but I quite enjoyed this Booker Prize-winning New Zealand Gold Rush-set detective novel.

Golden Pints 2013

Mark Dredge who blogs at Pencil and Spoon is inviting people to nominate their pubs and beers of the year. Below is my, admittedly quite traditionalist,  take on Golden Pints 2013.

Best UK Cask Beer

Holt’s Bitter, the world’s best beer when on top form.

Best UK Keg Beer

Apart from a couple of pints of Heineken at football matches, don't think I’ve drunk any.

Best UK Bottled or Canned Beer

Fuller’s 1845.

Best Overseas Draught Beer

Uerige Alt.

Best Overseas Bottled or Canned Beer

Schlenkerla Rauchmärzen, Guinness Foreign Extra Stout.

Best Collaboration Brew

No idea.

Best Overall Beer

Holt’s Bitter.

Best Branding, Pumpclip or Label

Draught Bass.

Best UK Brewery

Holt’s.

Best Overseas Brewery

Schlenkerla.

Best New Brewery Opening 2013

No idea.

Pub/Bar of the Year

The Lamb and The Grapes in Eccles, The Hare and Hounds and The Unicorn in Manchester, all proper working-class boozers selling cheap, well-kept cask beer.

Best New Pub/Bar Opening 2013

Hope Inn, Stockport’s only brewpub until The Magnet gets its brewing operation off the ground in the New Year.

Beer Festival of the Year

Stockport, Fuller’s ESB in top condition.

Supermarket of the Year

Sainsbury’s for Guinness FES, Tesco's for Fuller’s 1845.

Independent Retailer of the Year

Wouldn’t know.

Online Retailer of the Year

Beers of Europe.

Best Beer Book or Magazine

BEER, despite Roger Protz’s regular howlers.

Best Beer Blog or Website

Shut Up About Barclay Perkins, Zythophile.

Best Beer App

Haven’t a clue.

Simon Johnson Award for Best Beer Twitterer

No idea.

Best Brewery Website/Social media

Im Füchsen and Augustiner are both pretty entertaining.

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year

Pork pie and a pint of bitter, as ever. Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby mild and a cheese cob is a close second though.

Rhineland revisited

This time last week, I was about to board a plane heading for Düsseldorf.

I went to all my favourite pubs in Düsseldorf again (Im Füchschen, Zum Uerige, Brauerei Schumacher and Im Goldenen Kessel) and managed to get to a couple in Cologne I'd not been to before.

When it comes to beer and pubs, I think Düsseldorf beats Cologne hands down, although I wouldn't go as far as the guy in Schumacher who, when I said I'd been to Cologne, said, "That's not beer they drink there, it's water."

Cologne's real draw for the tourist is of course the Cathedral and the morning of the second day saw me heading there on a train. The two pubs I went to the first time were Gaststätte Lommerzheim in the suburb of Deutz and Sünner Im Walfisch in the Altstadt. I knew Lommerzheim was just across the Rhine but hadn't realised that it's just one stop and a very short walk from Heumarkt. On leaving Lommerzheim, I also travelled a few stops on the U-Bahn to Kalk to have a look at Brauerei Sünner.

Lommerzheim is much more of a street corner local than the more touristy spots in the Altstadt. It also serves Päffgen Kölsch, probably the bitterest in Cologne, which I've drunk before in Bierhaus en d'r Salzgass' in the Altstadt and in the brewery itself in Friesenstraße. I've never drunk Sünner Kölsch before though which I found quite spritzy and lemony. I especially liked the panelled taproom as you turn left on entering Im Walfisch with the wooden barrel on the bar.

I rounded off my trip with a couple of Altbier in Zum Uerige before catching the train to the airport. Uerige seems to get slightly darker and hoppier every time I drink it. It's fast approaching Füchschen as my favourite Alt.

The Parcel Yard

I went to London this weekend for the Rugby League World Cup semi-finals at Wembley and popped in Fuller's new pub at King's Cross for a couple of pints.

I liked the Parcel Yard and was particularly impressed by the period features in the Gents which overlooks the platforms of the railway station below. The pub has an impressive range of the brewery's draught beers, including cask London Pride, Chiswick Bitter, ESB, Discovery and Gale's HSB and Seafarers as well as keg London Porter. It's certainly several notches above the Wetherspoons/Yates-type pubs you get in most mainline railway stations.