Yearning for More British Ales

That's great news on Young's Ordinary and Special! I plan on drinking my fill.

Is there any beer/pub/brewery you recommend I look for when I cross the pond in April? I'll be mostly in London for about 2 week. I've got a list of beer options going, but I'd rather follow the advice of a beer-drinking native if there's advice to be had.

 

For sure. It will take some genuine trans-Atlantic ingenuity to get out of this pickle. And maybe some of Vlad's video and such.

 

Imagine if back in the 80s Greg Noonan had been influenced by Alen Pugsley to use Ringworm instead of Conan and the other English strains inoculating with at VP&B? We’d have Heady Butter instead of Heady Topper....

 

Don't know where you are staying, or how easy it will be to get here. Been to London once, worked mostly in Scotland on and off for a while. The one time I was in London, visited The Churchill Arms. Which is Fuller's owned, thought it was great. 4 Fuller's casks in an awesome building, and pretty damn good Thai kitchen.

 

Scott, I recognize that you are not a fan of Ringwood. Brewing beers with the Ringwood yeast strain does not have to result in a 'butter bomb'. I have a brewpub near me and their house ale yeast strain is the Ringwood yeast and the beers brewed with Ringwood taste very good. I had a conversation with the brewer on this and he informed me that the 'trick' (not really a trick) is that if you provide sufficient yeast contact time after the FG is reached the Ringwood yeast will process the diacetyl and the resulting beer will have non-perceptible levels of diacetyl. They simply leave their ales in the tank and after a couple of days whereby there is no perceptible diacetyl (i.e., taste testing) the put the beer on tap.

The brewer then went on to state that they choose the Ringwood yeast strain since it drops bright for their ales and they can serve the beer directly with zero filtering. In contrast they choose to filter their lager beers.

Cheers!

P.S. For some reason part of the Pugsley 'system' is to conduct a shortened primary fermentation such that perceptible diacetyl exists in the beers.

 

The Churchill Arms is about a 10-minute walk from my first hotel. And I love Fuller's. *And* both I and my travel buddy love Thai! Somehow I hadn't discovered this pub yet, so thanks for the heads' up! You're a hero.

 

Yes, and the method that the "system" uses is to cold crash the fermentation at a specified gravity rather than allow it to finish on its own. Yet people still blame the yeast strain.

 

While it hasn't been updated in almost 3 years, this thread:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/visiting-london-guide-summer-2014-update.200464/

has lots and lots of useful things in it for a beer fan visiting London.

While it's been a few years since I was last there, if you want to visit a really traditional pub check out Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/13168/

One of the times I was there the guy instructing servers as to who was to get which food said to a server, "That goes to the gentlemen in Dr. Johnson's seat." When the server brought that plate of food and set it down in front of me was when I discovered whose place by the fireside I was sitting in for that visit.

 

Michael, I think you and I have discussed this topic before?

My recollection is that the rationale for shortening the primary is for production reasons - getting the time from pitching the yeast to serving the beer to be as short as possible.

Cheers!

 

To my palate, the unfiltered had less crystal character, less caramel, not quite as sweet...and to that end, the mouthfeel was slightly thinner. However, as I anticipated with the unfiltered, I could taste the yeast more, ever so slightly more tart in a fruity way. Side by side, they were definitely different beers, but more shades of each other, rather than significantly different from each other.

 

If you pitch enough yeast and have a healthy, vigorous fermentation, even this step may be unnecessary. A moot point, however, as if you are dry hopping an NEIPA made with Ringwood, you'd be leaving it in the fermenter for that additional time anyway.

 

Thx Jack — Agree that proper brewing techniques can diminish the butter/diacetal/butterscotch characteristic of ‘worm beers— but what’s left is still a flavor that is very unique to other common English/American ale strains. I’ve consumed many hundreds of pints of Ringwood ales between ~87 and ~05 at Martha’s Exchange, Gritty McDuffs, Seadog Camden, Long Trail, Portsmouth Brewery, Noho Brewery, Magic Hat, Shipyard, Sebago etc etc. My palate has told me “no mas” —they don’t taste very good to me —and it’s not a stretch to say stagnant sales and growth at all of the above establishments is directly related to the beer that is being brewed there in comparison to other options in the marketplace. Also — for our pending trade — make sure to let me know if any of your brews were made w that dastardly strain!!

 

Cool story ... and thanks for all of that! I had Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese saved on my master map but hadn't taken a close look at it.

I may need more than two weeks just to take in the London beer scene highlights. Talk about your good problems.

 

Plus you can probably visit all the places you pick just using the Tube and short walks.

BTW, since this is your first visit to London, two additional things to think about.

1. Check out the various London Hop-on Hop-off bus tours. Pick one that suits your fancy. Gives you something to do the first day while still jet lagged and not have to worry about navigating yourself. That type of tour can also allow you to get oriented to the major landmarks and you may find you have less need for maps, etc.

2. Check/coordinate between a map of the city and the Tube Map. The Tube is great for getting to lots of places but sometimes you can just go up to the ground and walk a short distance whereas geting to the same place using the Tube will actually take longer because of the route(s) the various lines follow, etc..

 

Yup, two sides of the same coin, really. They are supposed to go from grain to glass in under a week, and cold crashing is integral to the process.

 

No worries, I do not brew with the Ringwood yeast strain.

Cheers!

 

There is a really nice London transit app called - appropriately - TubeMap that is super intuitive and allows you to type in from/to info and the app gives you the best route including walking/tube/rail. It’s synced w/real time tube service status and does all the thinking for you. I used it last fall during a pub crawl and it worked awesome — replaces the old process of comparing tube map to street map and eyeballing best route. Cheers and good luck.

 

Now that's a great idea for an app for use in London! Definitely new since my last trip to the UK and it is both focused and solves a useful problem.

@Premo88

 

For PA people - besides Yard's Brawler (English Mild) and Boddington's Pub Ale (English Bitter), are there any other English Mild/Bitters that are canned or bottle and available in PA?

 

I've seen Wells Bombardier in cans in PA before, if that helps.