Dave Wickett died today.

It's hard to describe in short sentences just how influential he was to English brewing. I could fill this blog post with tales of how this academic, publican, brewery owner, entrepreneur and Blades fan quietly revolutionised the beer scene in Sheffield.

He was a can-do character. Sheffield stands testament to both his direct intervention and his near-invisible guiding hand. Beyond the city there are bars and breweries, academic courses and exchange schemes, here in the UK and over in the US, that are all part of his legacy. Because he encouraged others to do likewise.

Dave Wickett died today. But his spirit lives on. Not only through pub brick and brewery stainless, but in so many people who took on new challenges and broke boundaries because of how he inspired them.

RIP DW. My next beer's raised to you.







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I've never sat inside at the Lord Nelson in Southwold. As a pub in a cul-de-sac by the sea, it feels right to be stood outside in the ebbing light as the rising tide tickles the beach beneath. A bloke will lose his footing on the kerb and spill bitter down his all-too-new fishermen's jumper, one that's only ever been close to the tilapia fillets at Waitrose. Someone's cousin will discover that pashmina isn't as warm as she thought. The chink of empty glasses on window ledges and pavements counterpoints the braying conversations.

Standing outside there last summer with Adnams' head brewer, Fergus Fitzgerald, we enjoyed a pint or two of what was then a seasonal special.  Ghost Ship had something about it that I just couldn't put my finger on at the time. Something greater than its ingredients. I'll let Fergus tell you about those:



My scribbled tasting notes from the next day had one word underlined: moreish. Yes, it used the hop du jour - Citra - but the aroma wasn't like snogging a bowl of fruit salad. Yes, there was rye crystal and Caramalt but they didn't stick sweetly in your clack. It really was moreish: it was a beer that stopped my inner geek from over-analysing and wanting to pester its brewer about fermentation statistics and... just have another one. To enjoy the balance.

Balance. Seen by some vociferous beer enthusiasts as A Bad Thing. By the ones who mistake balance for blandness. Well, I'm not sure I could spend all night excoriating my tastebuds with hop-bombs or coating them into a malty slumber. Whereas I'd have happily stood in the street for much longer, sipping on a pint that was just-so.

So I was sad to leave Southwold and that beer behind. It was brewed for a few more months more, but I never saw it again. Until now. Ghost Ship has been added to Adnams' permanent portfolio on cask and in bottle, one of which I've just been enjoying courtesy of the brewery. Out of the bottle, to be fair, I found it akin to a panoramic postcard; something that looked lovely and reminded you of a wonderful holiday experience but still lacked a certain dimension.

Maybe it's hard to recapture the spirit of alfresco drinking on a Southwold summer night when I'm sat in front of a laptop on a wet and windy May day, waiting for the bubbles to settle. Maybe I ought to pick up some of the minicasks, pull on some chunky knitwear and share the beer with my neighbours.

Maybe I've just worked out what I can contribute to the Jubilee street party...


Adnams beers can be bought online from their store, Cellar & Kitchen. And the video below is from the beer's recent relaunch. The building being projected onto is the brewery - and I've got to say, for a regional brewer this is stunning marketing.






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1) Go to a beer festival and drink the same beer four times

Yes, I used to plan festival attendance as if it were a campaign. Highlighted beer lists, a ranked order of imbibation, pencil, bottle of water, pencil sharpener, spare halfpint glass, spare pencil. Then I became reluctant. Nowadays, I'm louche to the point of insouciance. The Organ Grinder in Nottingham had a stack of beers on for the elongated weekend; I went, without a clue of what to do when I got there.

"What have you got worth drinking amongst this muck?", I enquired of the ever-patient Chris Sherratt. He poured me Sunlander by Stonehouse Brewery, so riven with passion-fruity goodness from a Galaxy hop addition that I had to drink it another three times. Just to be sure it was as gob-smackingly gorgeous as I first thought. It was. I was glad.

2) Sit at the back, attempt the crossword and people-watch

Hipsters play Guess Who ("Does the person wear glasses with no glass in them? Do they wear purple leggings? Is their name Tarquin?"). Couples aged fifty-something go from bemused to keg-curious to second-round-satiated within twenty minutes. Lads with wide teeth and hungover egos may or may not be off to the station to catch or not catch their train, depending on many factors but in particular whether one of them does or doesn't remember to pick his jacket up.

I'm installed on a long table at the back of Brewdog Nottingham with a pint of Punk IPA, another half-scrawled crossword and a wandering eye. The glint in the hipster's eye suggests he wants more this afternoon than a game of CSI: Cartoonface with the sylph-like lady in the Laura Ashley dress who smells of Refreshers. The couples are now eagerly sampling singled hopped IPAs, when they came in and were asked what they usually drink, one said, "um.... bitter?". The Man With The Unfeasibly Large Teeth forgets his jacket then comes back to pick it up. I drank more Punk and struggle with "Light ale brewed at that place inside (8)".

3) Watch the football

You walk into this pub and you're at the bar. Well, you're behind the bloke and his dog who are stood at the bar. His dog nuzzles me in a way that suggests that it's only a slight chemical imbalance away from attempting to detach my gentleman vegetables. Other blokes, with or without unstable dogs, clutter the bar around both sides. I break out my Grobbelaar spaghetti legs to duck and dart around the pumpclips before ordering a pint of Whim Arbor Light.

As the second half has just started, I'm fairly sure that no-one is sat at the only empty table and I can sit there without being stared down. Particularly by the double-denim clad rat-tail next to me. Who may or may not have Lov and Hat tattooed on knuckles. Who may or may not have lost fingers to an industrial injury or a bet that went too far. Any which way, she's happy to let me sit down.

Manchester City exhibit brooding confidence. Newcastle United exemplify nervy optimism. Thirty-ish drinkers of varying ages, genders, waistlines and medication requirements spend forty-five minutes sucking teeth, waving at the screen dismissively, uttering oaths and downing tip-top ale. Yaya Toure scores the kind of goal that marks out champions from also-rans. Mancini is on his feet. "Sit down, teaboy!", gruffs the salt-and-pepper haired curmudgeon on the far side of the bar. The final whistle blows. Pints are drained. Rounds are bought. Man U are on next. I tiptoe past a now-sleeping dog, knowing where I'll be watching Sunday matches next season.

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This month's Session on the topic of 'The Beer Moment' is hosted by Pete Brown.

Doesn't matter what beer, where I am, when I'm drinking, why I want one, how I'm feeling, who I'm with; the first time I pull that glass away from my lips and let a beer past my teeth and I... stop thinking so much. And then start thinking about something else.

It's this:





















You know how to have a beer moment, don't you, reader? You just put your lips together and swallow.

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The venue where I saw The Stone Roses for the first time has certainly changed. Back in the day, Byron House was home to your typical sweaty-polytechnic-student union. Today, it's all more open plan. As in, a pile of rubble being ridden by a JCB. Students of Nottingham Trent University are looking forward to a new, improved union building. I bet they won't stand for sticky snakebite on the dancefloor anymore.

Cities evolve. Show me a city without a crane on its skyline and I'll show you a city that lacks ambition. I was back in Nottingham to visit two places in particular, ones that have been instrumental to my upbringing. One of those was just around the corner from where Byron House once stood. That place had changed, too, although I don't remember anything of it from the first time around.

On Peel Street stood the Nottingham Women's Hospital, better known to locals by the name of the street it stood on. Like thousands of others from the city and its suburbs, I was born here. New generations are now hatched down at the Queen's Medical Centre; Peel Street closed in 1981. Part of the site was cleared and, fronting the street, there's now a pub. The Gooseberry Bush.


It's a comfortable and comforting place. Low ceilinged but still feeling airy thanks to skylights and picture windows, there's a warmth to the wood around the bar. Throughout the long room, knots of people find their own space to enjoy a late breakfast or an early drink. It's by far and away the best Wetherspoons I've visited, more like a hotel bar than a bargain beer hall. I supped my Thornbridge Jaipur slowly and tried not to think too hard about waters breaking.

Rather than hotfoot it to the next planned pub, I fancied a bimble about. Through the Arboretum, with its rescue bird aviary and the cannons captured from Sebastopol. To the Lincolnshire Poacher, ensconced in a corner with a quiet pint of Adnams Lighthouse before the lunchtime rush. Shopping for a spork. Lunching at the Kean's Head with a sublime goat's cheese, Nottingham asparagus and Parma ham turnover. Afternooning in Brewdog for the likes of Stone Oaked Arrogant Bastard, which I may have described on Twitter as "a big fat spicy jockstrap of a beer".

Eventually, I ended up in a cave. Just as I'd intended. Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem may or may not be the oldest pub in the world, the beer range may or may not be exciting, the tourist quotient may or may not be high (clue: it's always high). But... I love it. I love the cool sandstone walls in the bar. I love people watching as old boys vie with hipsters for space at the bar. I love the babble of overlapping languages; the almond-eyed Spanish girls drinking pints of bitter, the Americans playing cards and declaring one beer to taste of ass, the Hungarian doctor melding technology by Googling places on his iPhone and then inking details onto a glossy paper map.

It's where I came to skulk as a sixthformer after buying a clutch of vinyl from Selectadisc. To play Ring The Bull with random beery people. To fit in a sneaky lunchtime pint when I worked at an office down the road. And it's where my maternal grandparents met. I often sit by the front door and try to picture a lady with a cold and a man who offered to buy her a medicinal whisky. How chance encounters set the roots of a new family tree.

On Twitter that day; someone said "Nottingham, City Of Surprises! The Castle isn't a castle, The Park isn't a park, The Forest isn't a forest, The Meadows aren't meadows". I'll tell you what, though. Even when they used to be hospitals or factories or caves, Nottingham's pubs are most definitely pubs to love.

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"I think it's closed".

We're in a picturesque village, the kind where gabled cottages nestle beneath a tall church spire. A babbling brook runs through, taking with it most of the mobile phone signal. The side door to the only pub is stubbornly shut. Mrs Scoop looks at me.

"No, really, it's closed," I say. "I'll check round the other side".

Curtains in the rooms facing the road are drawn firmly, even though it's now past noon. Yellowing paper stuck to the inside of the glazed front door carries apologies for the lack of credit card facilities. And no food 'til further notice. That door is locked too.

In hindsight, the huge "To Let" sign hanging off the side of the building should have been a give-away.

The idea is to meet up with friends at a dog-friendly pub. This is - was - a dog friendly pub according to a website they'd consulted. Fortunately, they knew of another pub in the next village. With phone signals steady just long enough to swap texts, the rendezvous is re-arranged.

Ten minutes later, we're in an even-more picturesque village. Solid Georgian brick. Neatly trimmed privet. St George flag flying from the church tower. And a statuesque, timber-framed pub that was most certainly open.


Walking into the bar of The Goat's Head in Abbots Bromley, I drop down through my mental gears. There's something just-so about it; eclectic seating on the right side of comfy, music assertively in the background, a floor almost evenly uneven whose boards show the scuffs of customers long since passed.

Pump clips adorn the walls, whole sets from those brewers clearly favoured by the owners. On the bar, there's reliable bitter immaculately kept. St Austell Tribute couldn't be finer balanced if it were shod in ballet shoes. Timothy Taylor Landlord is in fine form for an exiled Tyke. And the local beer is Marston's Pedigree, whose red-bricked tower brewery is only ten miles away eastwards.

Our friends master their sat-nav and arrive. Their dog, an English pointer, enjoys bounding off the walls and tables and anything else it can find. Old boys read the newspaper at the bar and drink Stella out of chalices. When our food arrives, the table groans a little. Chips are as thick as your thumb. Proper pie, made in a tray in the kitchen from scratch. Service is motherly; "clean plates....good! Now, what are you having for dessert?"


We clearly have the mien of pudding eaters. One portion of sticky toffee pudding and warm toffee sauce later - all home-made, of course - and I'm firmly into Mr Creosote territory. Although I do manage a Drambuie. Which is almost inexplicably the right thing to do: the last drops knocked into my pint, honey and malts and toffee and citrics caress each other in sybaritic fashion.

The bar is filling with locals as we drink up. A framed page on the wall explains the Horn Dance and how Dick Turpin stayed here after stealing Black Bess from the horsefair at nearby Rugeley. There's adverts for their St George's Day quiz with fish and chips served out of newspaper, for a beer festival over the Diamond Jubilee weekend. Everything about the place is effortlessly English.

Our friends are wondering why they didn't phone the first pub to make sure they were actually open. I'm really glad that they didn't.

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Sat in a pub, wanting quiet time, you have to adopt a strategy.

Initially, I poured Anheuser (3)

The thousand-yard stare makes punters jumpy. Twitching on Twitter is too geeky.

Burt changes with a holiday in the sun? (3,5)

A sharpened pencil and folded paper helps.

Takes lane by weir, tottering (6,4)

Because, if in doubt, you can just scrawl some bollocks in the corner of The Times

In the trub, it terminates? Please, Klaus! (6)




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The aroma of hops pervading the air the instant when the brewer opens the mylar bag.

The dull clang of unattached pipework hitting the painted floor. The satisfying snap of valves twisted and fixed into position. The deep-set rumble of hot liquids forcing their way between tanks.

The sweet steam belching from the mash tun as you pull out another spade-load of spent malt.

The feel of said spent malt between your fingers. Ditto for sticky whole cone Simcoe.

The strained ggrruuuuh of an incontinent pump.

The silent, nodded approval as a beer is sipped and passed around the table.

The chatter about final gravities, chased invoices, upcoming festivals, pallet packaging.

Brewers do this every day. For barflys like me, it's a privilege to sit in the corner sometimes.

To make that connection between the beer in your glass and the process - part art, part science: part craft, part industry; part predicable, part curveball - that conjures it there in the first place.


Thanks to the Magic Rock brew crew for a splendid day out. They're off to Norway's first craft beer festival at Haand Brewery and are taking their intensely great imperial stout Bourbon Barrel Bearded Lady with them. Some of it will be around on keg in the UK. My advice? Drink it like you stole it if you find it. 

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There's a long version and a short version.

The long version has been binned.

The short version goes: be under threat of redundancy for fifteen months, try to carry on being my ebullient beery self and almost succeed, flirt with the idea of working in the beer industry but get mixed messages, finally be made redundant last Thursday night, get a job offer a little later that same night.

Which is why I'm spending today doing three things:

- reading up on the illustrious history of my new employer, Derby County Football Club
- having a couple of lagers
- planning an onslaught of blog posts, both here and at my mostly-non-beery blog

I'll be catching up on all the stuff I've been meaning to write about and trying to kickstart some (hopefully) exciting projects. Over the next two weeks, I'll try to get around to a few pubs and breweries for, ahem, networking opportunities with occasional cellar work / mash tun digging as required.

Rumours that my new role is as Derby's mascot, Rammie (pictured above) are unsubstantiated. Although if I get the offer to dress up in my lunch hour and at weekends, who knows...

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When I wor a lad, when television was sometimes black & white, when petrol cost less than a pound Sterling for an Imperial gallon, when cross-country running over the clay pits was still an option for afternoon games rather than certifiable child abuse, I knew this much.

I wanted to write.

My junior school was what is now called 'progressive'. Which is shorthand for what happens when idealistic Oxbridge graduates take on the 'challenge' of a soon-to-be-ex-mining-town new school and decide that Beatles songs sang in the round and maths taught using Cuisinaire rods would take us to places that academia could only dream of.

Well, they were right there. It took me to to a prefab classroom at North Staffordshire Polytechnic.

But in the meantime, they let me write. Lots.

One day, we had to write a short story of no more than a hundred words. I wrote a chapter. And a synopsis for the rest of the novel.

And they let me carry on. Once a week, for two terms, until I'd spilt myself and a huge dash of Ian Fleming / Alistair MacLean inspiration over my jotter.

At the same time, we also had a weekly newspaper to prepare.

Individually.

The idea was that you brought in newspapers from home, took the key stories, summarised them on pieces of lined A5, cut & pasted in bits of the paper for photos etc and presented a four-page newspaper.

My first copy ran to sixteen pages. When I was told it was cheating to cut and paste crosswords and cartoons in, I designed my own crosswords instead. And got Chris Markham to draw cartoons that I'd then narrate.

And so it goes.

The sixth form magazine - my first editorial post - which I fucked up to such a degree that I am eternally grateful that there was no such thing as the Internet to record it. The great thing about bander copy is that it burned quickly.

The poetry magazines - oh, my, the poetry. Because wearing a pastel yellow cardigan and a paisley yellow shirt was nothing without un-rhyming a shit ton of teenage angst into a fifth-rate magazine driven by whoever you were forced to study for English A level.

The fanzines. The days of sniffing glue as you cut and pasted. The mornings when you sent postcards to bands with interview questions and they posted it back to you with crayon answers. The afternoons when you bunked off to go to Selectadisc to meet a band, only to find the lead singer was fucked up on brandy somewhere else. As a teenage muso, this was infuriating. Later in life, you realised this behaviour was laudatory.

And now; this. Blogging. Where me and every other arsehole can pass an opinion.

Where so many say so little to so few followers.


So why do I write about beer?

I used to kid myself that it was all about the Reithian values of being able to educate, inform and entertain.

Probably I do. In parts. But that's after-effect, not intention.

It has its roots in sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, political purpose.

But writing for me is a baser need than all that jazz.


I write for me. For no-one else.


What drives me is the occasional compunction to spill stuff out my head and put it to bed somewhere. Sometimes, it's here.

You really want to know why it's here?

Reader, it's not for you. It's for me.

I have to write, when I need to write. If you read it, it's a bonus. If you comment... I'm sorry, I really don't care.

All I know is that I spill my occasionally splenetic frenetic heart out here. It's not in hope that you get a warm fuzzy feeling from it. It's for my release.

Anyone who wants a refund, please queue by the back door.

Something drives me. Sometimes it's beer. Sometimes it's architecture or pottery or archery or orchids or recalcitrant trout or Roger McGough.

Most times it's the beating of a heart that sounds like a fucked clock. A ticking that forgets to tock.

*I* drive me. Over the cliff singing ho-de-doo-dah-dey. I play to the wings. If you happen to be sat in the stalls and take in the full enchilada, bully for you.


1) Today's Session was brought to you by Brewpublic. Cheers and beers to them for actually making me stop and think about a Session blog.


2 What literally drives me is the Little Blue Beer Taxi, driven by Mrs Scoop. Actually, it's what picks me up when I fuck up and get lost some place. The Little Blue Beer Taxi is about to become the Little Mars Red Beer Taxi. We'll need a better name than that. Thinking caps on...












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Plenty of harrumphing going on at the moment as it's reported that James Bond will be drinking Heineken in Skyfall, the next instalment of the interminable franchise.

Lest we forget:

- Product placement has been ever present in the world of Bond, both books and films.
- Heineken have been involved with the Bond franchise for fifteen years.
- Bond does actually drink beer in the novels.

Let's take those one at a time.

It may not have been an explicit tactic of Ian Fleming to use the name of luxury goods in his novels for the purposes of marketing placement or financial reward. He may have just been following the lead of Dennis Wheatley in that regard. Fleming certainly followed Wheatley's work in many ways. But product placement has been ever-present in the Bond movie adaptations and franchised scripts. It makes money for the film company. Films cost money to make. Simple maths.

Placement seems to have grown at a pace during the Pierce Brosnan / Daniel Craig era. Heineken have been involved in five films so far and have great plans for Skyfall, including Craig's direct involvement. As Alexis Nasard, Chief Commercial Officer of Heineken says so eloquently; "We are confident our activation plan will ignite the conversation with our consumers and film viewers".

But Bond and beer? That can't be right?

Wrong.

I had vague memories of Bond drinking beer on the odd occasion; thankfully, someone has already documented the where-and-what's. Step forward Jay Brooks, who wrote about this back in 2006 when there was a similar kerfuffle over the reports of Bond to drink Heineken in Casino Royale.

- Miller High Life in Saratoga, Diamonds Are Forever
- Löwenbräu in Geneva, Goldfinger
- Red Stripe in Jamaica, The Man With The Golden Gun
- Franziskaner (four steins, no less) in Munich, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

So Bond is not only a beer drinker but also a lager drinker.

Would he be a Heineken drinker, though? It seems that he prefers to drink something local/regional to wherever he is at the time. But Heineken is a global brand and Bond is a global player.

Frankly if I'd spent the day killing double agents by the most circuitous method possible followed by a bout of athletic shagging, I'd rather reach for a lager than a Martini.

And as far as I know, the rumours that previous films are to be re-made with a beery angle are false. So there will be no Double Diamonds Are Forever, The Man With The Golden Ale nor For Your IPAs Only...

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Not my usual style, perhaps, but I wanted to mention several events and happenings.

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Truth be told, the lawns don't seem to need that much mowing.

But that first cut is the deepest. Raking out the moss and leaf crap. Running down that stubborn stuff with the Flymo. Seemingly endless trips to the recycle bin with yet another bucket of cuttings.

Gardeners have a word for it. Bastard.

Yet, when it's done... the foldy chair comes out the garage and a chilled bottle and fluted glass come out the fridge. To sit back, relax and enjoy the First Geuze Of Spring.

Somewhere on the rear lawn, there's the caged cork from a Boon Oude Geuze Mariage Parfait 2005. Somewhere, in the back of a stable, a lemon got stabbed and dragged through an apple-ridden hay bale before out-funking James Brown. And ending up in this bottle.

The sun's dipping below the fence. Time to head inside and savour the last drops. There's a tuft of grass lurking due North-North-East.

Gardeners have a word for it...


huge thanks to Martin Ridge for the Boon.

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