As our regular readers will know, we have been out hunting London based craft brewers over the last fortnight or so, and this is the first real evidence of our efforts. Paul, the manager at the Seven Stars, asked if it was possible for us to find them 22 London beers for their monthly 'beeriodical', so we set to work.
Although there has been a major resurgence of brewing in the Capital, there where a few obstacles in our way, not least that the two largest and possibly best known brewers on that list, Camden Town Brewery and Meantime, don't actually do a lot of cask beer. Camden Town only produce cask products for their own pub estate, prefering to concerntrate their efforts in the market on their excellent keg products, and Meantime are focused on keg and bottled products, so it was a challenge to obtain something from each of those producers, although we are happy to say that we suceeded.
The other thing is that some of the brewerys that are most talked about in the beer blogs and online are actually incredibly small. For instance we would dearly have loved to have supplied some beer from the excellent Kernel brewery in South London, but at the moment they are still working off a 4BBL plant, and have sold every drop they can produce well ahead of our time frame. You'll have to wait until the new year if you want some of Kernel's beer on your bar, but once they have sorted out their new facillity it will be available from liberty.
But enough of the can't, what about the things we did do?
We put together a list of 22 fantastic ales from 9 different breweries (would have been ten, but one let us down at the very last minute.) By the horns, a brand new brewer from South West London came up with three really interesting beers for us, 'Bobby on the Wheat' is a crisp and refreshing wheat beer that has a subtle citrus edge and a good finish, whereas their Christmas Porter was a big powerfull bag of fruit with a pronounced hint of Cloves for a real nod toward the festive mulled wine. East London Brewery weighed in with three beers, including their new baby, 'Nightwatchman' a beer that until the begining of this week was only known at 'the 4.5% ruby red'. We even managed to beat them to the launch of their own beer by bringing it down to Bristol before they launch it in London this weekend.
Ha'Penny provided their excellent and very moorish 'London Stone' and the marvellously named 'Spring Heel Jack' Porter which although I didn't get the chance to try, was very popular with the other punters. But perhaps my favourite of the evening, should I allow myself the indulgence of having a favourite from such a great list, was the big hopped monster of an amber ale from Redempion, 'Big Chief'. Andy at Redemption did us proud, with a list of 5 great ales all of which flew off the bar.
Finally, a mention has to go to Paddy at Windsor and Eton. we cheated slightly and slipped outside the cordon of the M25 to bring down some of their beer, and it was definitely worth the effort. Any brewery who brews a 7.4% Black IPA like their Conqueror 1075 has to be worth including, even if it bends the rules a little. It's also on at The Gryphon up behind the Colston Hall if you are in Bristol, well worth checking out.
There we go then, December's beeriodical well underway, and we are proud to have brought so many new beers to Bristol for the locals to try. One fella told me that he had added no less than 8 beers to his 1200 beer list of 'stuff i've drunk' which made me smile.
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