Love Good Beer

London Pub Guide

Thursday, November 10th, 2011 | Beer | No Comments

When I moved to London I expected to arrive in a beer nirvana, where cask ale rains from the sky and everyone is happily just a little bit drunk all the time.  While my expectations may have been lofty, I was generally surprised at how few good pubs, from a beer perspective, I could find in London.  Sure, there are pubs everywhere and the majority of the English population is drunk a lot of the time (though not exactly happily), but where are all the good pubs?  Over time I managed to find a few here and there, no thanks to terrible pub finding websites like Fancyapint and Beer in the Evening.

It’s not like I wasn’t trying to find good pubs in London, I’m ever diligent. I even downloaded the CAMRA Good Beer Guide iPhone app, which is great for finding pubs serving cask ale.  CAMRA, however, fails to distinguish between a pub serving nicely conditioned cask ale and a nice place to hang out.  CAMRA highly recommends the Wenlock Arms in Islington, which I decided to check out.  When I walked in, I found the place full of dishevelled looking regulars staring at me like I didn’t belong there.  Though the beer was some of the best I’d drank in London to that point, I found the atmosphere to be very disconcerting.  Lucky for them, their beer gets them on the list.

Lucky for me, I eventually started working in the same office as a fellow beer enthusiast.  The list below comes courtesy of Lee Bacon aka Baconator, who I kindly thank for his good advice.  The best two places I’ve visited on hist list are The Euston Tap and Craft, which are both fantastic beer bars that, in my humble opinion, stack up with the best in the world.

North London:

• Euston Tap
• Brewdog Camden
• Southhampton Arms

London Bridge:

• The Rake
• The Market Porter
• Draft House

Old Street:

• The Eagle
• The Wenlock Arms
• The Old Fountain

Chancery Lane / Holborn:

• Craft
• Princess Louise
• Ye Old Mitre
• Cittie of Yorke
• Jerusalem Tavern
• Fox and Anchor

Covent Garden:

• The Harp
• The Porterhouse

West London:

• The White Horse

If you have any other suggestions for me, I’d love to hear them.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: camra iphone app, craft, euston tap, london, pub guide

Why we started a blog about loving beer

Thursday, December 11th, 2008 | Beer | No Comments

Earlier this year in September Erik and I took a beer trip to Victoria, BC with our Dads.  We visited breweries and brewpubs and drank a lot of good beer.  It was one of the coolest things I have ever done, not because of the itinerary, but because I got to bond with my father, father-in-law, and brother-in-law and make some great memories (good stories coming in another post).  I love the taste of beer, but what I love most about beer is how it can bring people together.  The times that I drink beer, after soccer games with the team, Friday at five with coworkers, and on weekends with friends and family, are generally the most enjoyable times of my life.  Such is my passion for beer.

We started this blog because we love beer and we want to learn more about it.  I have Erik to thank for kicking my interest in beer up a notch.  Erik brews his own beer and is very dedicated to his craft.  Spending an entire weekend carefully monitoring a boiling mash and then suffering through the rigorous cleaning of his brewing equipment is his idea of fun.  I am already tired thinking about it; I think I need a beer.  I on the other hand, being the inquisitive engineering type, love learning about how beer is made, that and drinking it.

I love drinking the beer Erik makes. I once asked him why his beer tastes so much better than the typical liquor store varietals.  Turns out he uses high quality ingredients and puts a lot of care into it, which seemed quite obviously like a good way to go about brewing to me.  He told me that Anheuser-Busch brews Budweiser using a percentage of rice, which, if you know anything about beer, is blasphemy.  Quality beer is supposed to only contain water, barley, hops and yeast.  Rice is used because it is cheaper than barley, ferments more quickly, and imparts very little flavor, which basically translates to cheap, flavorless beer.  You may not have noticed, but Budweiser has started advertising that it is now brewed with six-row barley, letting it be known that they no longer use rice.  The funny thing here is that six-row barley is the less preferred (cheaper, less suited for beer making) kind of barley that craft brewers try to avoid (two-row barley is where it’s at).  King of beers my ass.  Hearing of this opened my eyes to the disparity that exists in beer and got me much more interested in drinking good beer.

I always knew that I loved drinking beer with my friends, but now I find myself really excited about beer in general, excited enough to start a blog.  My goal in starting this blog is to learn more about beer, find better beer to drink, and hopefully help the people who care to read this blog drink better beer too.  We plan to blog about:

• beer we drink
• places to drink beer
• making your own beer
• beer events
• beer recipes
• breweries we visit
• anything else beer related that pops up

If anyone has any suggestions for us, we’d love to hear about them.  Please comment on any of our posts or email us.  Also, don’t drink and drive; it totally sucks.  Also, please feel free to send us free beer.

Cheers,

Chris

Tags: barley, bc, Beer, budweiser, craft, good beer, good times, love, rice, victoria