Winter draws on ...

 

With Christmas approaching, many brewers will soon be launching their themed winter ales – mostly dark, usually ‘heavy’, quite often sweet, sometimes spicy and likely to feature Santa and/or his reindeer on the pump-clip. This will have special appeal for many but will NOT suit everybody’s taste !. Nevertheless, it is one way in which to introduce CAMRA’s National Winter Ales Festival.

 

The National Winter Ales Festival takes place in January each year and for the first time Vron and I visited it. We had both been a little unsure as to whether it would consist mainly of strong dark ales so it was reassuring to find straightaway that all styles were very well represented. The only difference from any other festival was that more beers than usual were dark and strong and fewer beers than usual were less than 4% abv. However plenty of milds, bitters, pale and golden ales were still to be found among over 250 cask ales in the programme.

 

The festival was held at the Sheridan Suite on Oldham Road in Manchester, not far from the city centre and well served by buses. Besides the impressive tally of British cask ales, there were also over 30 ciders plus 13 perries and 55 real ales in a bottle. Foreign beers were well represented by an impressive list of 45 Belgian beers with 3 on draught and 45 German beers with 27 of them on draught and up to 12 available at any one time. There were also Czech, Dutch and American beers.

 

Milds, which I enjoy, included two dark beers from Merseyside brewer George Wright – Black Swan (3.8%) with a creamy, malty flavour and George Wright’s Mild (4.0%) with toffee and chocolate notes. Stronger ones were Isle of Skye Black Cuillin (4.5%), Leeds Midnight Bell (4.8%) and Beartown Black Bear (5.0%), whilst Holt’s Mild (3.2%) and Moorhouse’s Black Cat (3.4%) can always be relied on to punch above their respective weights.

 

The golden ales and bitters included Acorn Blonde (4.0%), Arran Sunset (4.4%), Dark Star Hophead (3.8%), Kelham Island Pale Rider (4.3%) and the stronger Easy Rider (5.2%), Millstone True Grit (5.0%) and Okells IPA (4.5%). Dark ales, porters and stouts included Dark Star Espresso (4.2%) which was a favourite of Vron’s, Grainstore Rutland Beast (5.3%) and the newly-launched Robinson’s Chocolate Tom (6.0%) which I enjoyed along with Thornbridge’s Saint Petersburg which at 7.7% was a sweet, dark ale with chocolatey malt flavours and a coffee finish.

 

Among those classed as barley wines and not for the faint-hearted were Black Isle Hibernator (7.0%), Coniston No. 9 (8.5%), Goacher’s Old 1066 (6.7%), Holden’s Old Ale (7.2%) and Hyde’s XXXX (6.8%). The only reservation I had was a strong bias towards breweries based in the north west which was presumably on account of the venue, and noticeably there were no beers from Durham or Northumberland breweries along with the absence of at least two excellent stouts brewed all-year round by Big Lamp and Jarrow.

 

The 2012 National Winter Ales Festival will be take place at the Sheridan Suite from Wednesday 18th January to Saturday 21st January. It will again be held there in 2013 before moving onto Derby in 2014.

 

Any visit to Manchester, even for such a huge event as the National Winter Ales Festival should ideally include a visit to at least a few of the city’s pubs. The proximity of the venue meant that there was time to check in at the Smithfield Hotel on Swan Street - one of the city’s oldest pubs and it once served the long-vanished Smithfield Market. It had a varied selection of real ales including one from Robinson’s, a house beer brewed by Facer’s and up to 7 guest ales.

 

A short distance from the Smithfield Hotel is the Marble Arch situated on Rochdale Road and has a grand exterior and interior. It is home to the Marble Brewery with most of its products on the bar including the award-winning Chocolate and also offers organic and vegetarian beers as well. Finally, a walk back along Oldham Street to catch the bus allows a stop at the Castle Hotel, a Grade II-listed building with a crowded front bar serving most of the Robinson’s beers on its seven handpumps, but there is ample seating in its spacious interior.

   

    

Mike Burningham