Session Notes: The Marble Arch, Manchester, 01.01.12

There we were, sitting in the Marble Arch on Christmas Eve, supping our halves of Stouter Port Stout when Jo spotted a posted adversing the MA’s New Year’s Day opening times. Which gave her an idea…

Eight days later we were back again, for dinner (venison loin for Jo, pheasant for me, both delicious) and our first session of 2012, which covered the following bases:

Moor Amoor Porter 4.5% ABV
A rather delicious glassful of mocha sundae & toasted hazelnut flavors with a lingering dry finish. Great mouth-feel, too. Very pleasant indeed.

Marble Trial Lagonda No. 6 (IPA) 6% ABV
I’m guessing the Marble folks are testing out a few alternate hop-combinations for their Lagonda IPA? No.6 is blessed with bountiful big IPA flavors: predominantly a grapefruit dry-sourness, with a hint of honey keeping it all in check. Well-balanced and easy-drinking but with definite bite.

Marble Draft No.9 (golden ale) 3.9% ABV
Another example of the sort of sharp, hoppy session beers that Marble do so well. Pale gold in colour, hop-led, with dry citrus notes throughout. Similar to Pint, but with more of a biscuit malt character.

Marble Stouter Stout 4.7% ABV
A classic on the Marble list and with good reason. Stouter Stout is a classic bone-dry black beer with an almost charcoal-like character, off-set by just a hint of dark chocolate. One of the driest, tastiest stouts around.

Dark Star Festival (bitter) 5.0% ABV
Jo’s a huge fan of Dark Star Original and was happy to re-visit a half of its label-mate Festival: as last time, it was quite savoury and dry, with a spicy-nuttiness leading the flavour-charge. Very tasty, very drinkable indeed.

Marble Pint (golden ale) 3.9% ABV
The aforementioned king of the Marble session beers – indeed, one of the best session beers around, IMHO, right up there with the likes of Fyne Avalanche or Hawkshead Lakeland Gold – Pint was on top form on Sunday: light, refreshing, hoppy-sharp but with a softer, fruitier finish than some of Marble’s other session brews. Lovely stuff.

Marble Chocolate (stout/mild) 5.5% ABV
Marble’s show-stopping stout/mild (they describe it in their beer menu as possessing characteristics of both rather than being a blend of the two) was as tasty and more-ish as ever. Rich, malty, packed with just the selection-box array of flavors that you’d expect from the name. Not too bitter, not too sweet, a well-balanced, full-flavoured dark winter warmer. Rather fabulous.

How’s that for a cracking start to the year? Not to mention the birth of a new annual tradition, with any luck.

Jo suggested we have dinner and a couple of pints at the Marble Arch on Saturday and it didn’t take much to get me to agree (she had me at ‘dinner’, to be honest, ‘pints’ and ‘Marble Arch’ were icing on the cake). We were hoping to get there early enough to bump into MyBreweryTap.com‘s Richard Burhouse (@MyBreweryTap) and Rob Derbyshire (@BGRTRob) of Hopzine.com fame, but alas they got there earlier than we did and had already supped their fill and moved on before we’d managed to get into town.

So instead we ended up chatting to half a dozen complete strangers over the course of the evening (topics of conversation ranging from bondage trousers and Stiff Little Fingers, to the relative acoustic merits of the Bridgewater Hall and the Lowry, via the best way to get to the Palace Theatre by car whilst avoiding the gas-main works that have buggered up the city centre for months) and had a bloody good time doing so.

There was ale involved, of course. And oh, my word, what ale there was…

On arrival, I headed for the bar to get Jo her customary half of Marble Stouter Stout and made a b-line for the Thornbridge Raven, which Rob D had mentioned was on earlier in the day. As it weighs in at 6% ABV I thought I’d just go for a half to start with, so I got myself a pint of Marble Pint at the same time, to ease myself in. But Jo finished up her stout and sent me back to the bar for another (along with our food order) and the Raven was so damn good – a dark, smoky, delicious black IPA with a lingering hop-bite – that I couldn’t resist a second. And that pretty much set the tone for the session…

Our food arrived just as we’d both gotten a pint of Marble Chocolate in and we feasted on char-grilled belly pork and black pudding (actually, the best damn black pudding I’ve ever tasted) with duck’s egg for starters, followed by sea bass served with creamed crab meat and spinach for Jo and turbot poached in red wine on creamed polenta with salsify sticks for me, and some lightly steamed greens on the side. Fantastic food, as always in the Marble Arch – we’ve eaten there a few times now and have never been anything less than blown away by whatever we’ve ordered – and it all went extremely well with the rich, tasty Marble Chocolate. Perhaps a dark ale or stout might not the obvious choice for a with-food beer, but the bitter-sweetness of the chocolate and roasted malts were very complimentary indeed to the satisfyingly meaty, beautifully cooked fish dishes.

After dinner we ordered dessert: another Marble Chocolate for Jo, whilst I decided to try a pint of Marble Brew 14. This one was a completely new to me (although apparently it went down rather well on the first #twissup pub crawl / blogger outing in Sheffield back in January. Brew 14 turned out to be a feisty session bitter that was all about the bitter oranges and big hops with a long, dry finish. Very, very good indeed and one I’d definitely have again.

At this point, Jo and I were thinking about winding down and heading home, so I opted for a quick half of Marble Dobber for the road. But of course, one half of Dobber is never enough and as I was heading back to the bar for another top-up, I spotted a new pump clip nestled among the array of Marbles: Thornbridge St Petersburg! I’ve been trying to track down and try this 7.7% ABV Imperial Stout for a while now, so this was just too good an opportunity to miss. And it was delicious: rich, smoky malt, chocolate and coffee, blended to perfection. A top-up of that one was absolutely compulsory, it would have been the very height of rudeness not to.

That really did finish the evening off for us and we weaved our way out the door to find a tram and head home for a nice cup of tea and a kip. Lovely, lovely evening and a fuzzy, fuzzy head the next day, but absolutely, totally worth it. I tell you what, it’s a good job we don’t live just round the corner from the Marble Arch, we’d never be out of the place.

In the last Around the Beerblogosphere piece I mentioned finding the recipe for an Xmas cocktail that I was quite tempted by: the port and stout mull-it. On closer inspection though, it turns out you have to boil a jar of sweet mince-meat and strain out the lumpy bits until you end up with a spicy syrup… dear me, that sounds like far too much effort and mess!

Then I remembered something that Reluctant Scooper said ages ago, about making a DIY cocktail during a visit to the Marble Arch… I realised that we actually had all the necessary ingredients in the beer cupboard already, so Jo and I rolled up our bar-sleeves and got to work.

Here’s how we did it:

Step 1: Gather the ingredients

For this recipe, you will need the following (see fig. 1):

fig. 1 – Assemble the Ingredients

1. A bottle of Marble Chocolate (a rather superb 5.5%ABV “stout(ish)” dark ale)
2. A bottle of Marble Ginger (we used the 6%ABV variety – a.k.a. “Big Ginger”)
3. A suitable cocktail glass (or “pint pot” as they’re more commonly known)

Step 2: Pour half the Marble Chocolate into your cocktail glass (see fig. 2):

fig. 2 – Pour the Marble Chocolate…

WARNING! At this stage you will be sorely tempted to guzzle the delicious, chocolatey liquid, spurred on by those fabulous cocoa-aromas and the sight of all that gorgeous dark beer sitting there, calling out to you… but you must resist! Or at least, you must resist unless you’re only planning on making one measure of delicious cocktail mixture, in which case you can sup half of each bottle au naturel if you prefer. But bear with us, we promise the end result is well worth it…

Step 3: Pour (carefully!) half the Marble Ginger into the same glass (see fig 3):

fig. 3 – Merge the Marble Ginger…

Jo was obviously the glamorous hand-model for this stage of the process (hers are frankly much lovelier hands than mine – nobody needs to see my gnarled and keyboard-scarred digits interrupting the visual delights of Marble Chocoginge).

Step 4: The end result

fig. 1 – The finished article… Cheers!

I believe the phrase we’re looking for is: “Ta-daaaa!”

Assuming you haven’t already supped the remaining beer, you can then prepare a second measure for your glamorous hand-model, before she kicksyouinnanuts and steals yours.

Tasting Notes: Delicious! Marvellous! Gorgeous! Fabulous! All that warm, spicy ginger dances on your tongue, and then a bitter-sweet wave of chocolatey goodness rolls along behind it: flavour, flavour, flavour all the way to your tonsils. Seriously, what could be more Xmas-y than the combination of chocolate and ginger, all wrapped up in a 5.75%ABV (averaging the two, that is) beer-based liquid delivery system? Eggnog? Bailey’s? Advocaat? Bah, humbug! Grab yourself a couple of bottles of Marble’s finest, apply them to a pint pot and you’ll be well on your way to an extremely merry Yuletide indeed, I promise you.

Big thanks to Reluctant Scooper for the inspiration and to the Marble Brewery for the fantastic ingredients!

A good friend of mine came up from London on Saturday, so I thought I’d take him to the best pub in Manchester: the Marble Arch.

If you’re from round these parts then you might scoff at my casual handing out of the ‘best pub…’ accolade; I’m sure you’ll have your own favourite and I’m not intending to denigrate any of our city’s other very fine watering holes. But honestly, if there is a better pub than the Marble Arch around these parts then I haven’t found it yet (and please feel free to leave suggestions in the comments if you think you might have).

My friend (also called Darren) and I got there around four in the afternoon, and a serendipitous table vacancy opened up just as we were arriving, so we settled ourselves in for a few pints and a good catch-up. I went up to the bar and came back with two pints of golden, crystal-clear Marble Pint, one of the tastiest, freshest pale ales you’re ever likely to meet. We started talking – setting the world to rights, as you do – and soon finished off the pint of Pint and decided to move on to Marble J.P. Best; a classic best-bitter that’s not quite as hoppy as the Pint, slightly stronger on the malt and still extremely refreshing. It definitely went down a treat.

T’other Darren is a big Belgian beer fan and haunts a few of London’s Belgian brasseries when he can, so he perused the Marble’s beer menu with an expert eye, picking out a beer he’d heard of but not yet encountered down south. I forget the name now, as they were unfortunately out of stock. Instead, my eye was caught by the Phoenix Thirsty Moon, so we opted for a couple of those instead. Again, it was another quite delicious bitter, but in this one the malt had been turned up a noticeable notch; it was rich, sweet and pleasantly warming.

By now we were feeling distinctly sociable – chatting to the folks on the next table about the demonstrations in the city centre – and we decided that before Jo joined us and we ordered food, we’d have one more go at the Belgian section of the menu. Darren picked out a St Feuillien Tripel and it turned out to be a delicious and extremely drinkable golden Belgian with very rich malt flavours that weren’t at all over-powered by its 8.5% abv.

Jo arrived mid-way through our goblets and we quickly ordered food (Cornish gurnard for Jo, venison for me and the Marble burger and chips for Darren – all absolutely delicious) and then we ordered another round. The time had come for a stout and so we opted for the Marble Chocolate; a rich, warming, dark-cocoa laced beer with a great body and a gorgeous mouth-feel. It’s dangerously more-ish, too at 5.5% abv. Beautiful.

By this point Darren was declaring himself full and happy, but I’d seen one more beer I really wanted to try. Having enjoyed Acorn’s Old Moor Porter recently, I just had to have a drop of their Gorlovka Imperial Stout. It was quite different to the Marble Chocolate, with a much more pronounced coffee and liquorice flavour, but once again it was dangerously drinkable, even at 6% abv. Probably a good job I just had a half, all things considered.

As we departed the Marble Arch I cast a longing over-the-shoulder glance at the Marble Dobber pump, but I’d sampled its ample delights before and – even though it had taken the top prize the Manchester Beer Festival the day before – I knew our paths would cross again, so I was content to let it lie.

The evening wasn’t quite over yet. We headed back to our place and I cracked open one of my precious stash of BrewDog Tokyo and poured it (ever so responsibly) into two glasses. Darren made all the right appreciative noises about this truly terrific beer and then we finished off with a wee dram of cask strength Edradour, just to send us nicely on our way.

The next morning, we (I say ‘we’, I mean ‘Jo’ – I was in no fit state) drove Darren back to Piccadilly station (this time sans riot police thronging the streets), chatting about the previous evening’s beers on the way. Darren’s favourite had been the Phoenix Thirsty Moon. Mine (Tokyo aside) was probably honours even between the Marble Pint, the Thirsty Moon and the Marble Chocolate, although frankly, they were all rather excellent and I wouldn’t hesitate to re-visit any of them.

So, there you go. A pretty much perfect session at the best pub in Manchester? In my opinion, yes. Can’t wait to get back to the Marble Arch for another.