National Winter Ales Festival – Strike One
I have a confession to make. I completely failed in my mission to get down to the National Winter Ales Festival, although a token effort was made: my mate Howard and I met up in the city centre on Friday night and wandered on down to the New Century Hall. We got as far as the 7.00 p.m. Queue of Doom outside the venue: out the door, round the corner and a couple of hundred yards up the street.
We overheard the bloke in the yellow jacket saying to someone who’d just joined the line “about an hour, mate”. I reckoned he was being optimistic, it looked like they were operating a one-out, one-in system. And who the hell was going to be leaving the place with the evening still so young? It didn’t take us long to reach a mutually acceptable verdict on the situation: sod this for a game of soldiers. Stand outside in the cold for an hour, not drinking? When Manchester is full of great boozers… not a chance. To the pub crawl!
We started out at the legendary Marble Arch, home of the Marble Brewery. The place was packed (most probably with fellow refugees from the NWAF queue) but we managed to squeeze our way through to the bar. Howard’s eye was immediately caught by the Pictish Porter which, despite the Scottish-sounding name, is brewed just up the road in Rochdale. And it was fantastic: rich, thick (almost chewy) with a lovely deep, deep brown-black colour and a creamy white head, bursting with chocolate and coffee flavours. Highly recommendable and a great pint to start the evening with.
Indeed, I could have happily stayed on that one all evening, but my eye had in turn been caught by the Marble’s own Port Stout and I’m very, very glad it was. Wow. What a beer! Deep black with a tantalising aroma, a rich, creamy mouth-feel and bursting with flavour again. Unlike some port-flavoured beers I’ve had in the past I could really taste the rich, fortified wine flavours, and even detected a few tannins, perhaps? Once again, I could have happily stayed on that one all night, but by now the pub was absolutely hammered with NWAF refugees, so we decided to stick to the original pub-crawl plan and head off.
(On the way out through the crowd, I squeezed by a bloke dressed up in a foam-rubber beer bottle costume. “Nice jacket,” I said. “Cheers,” he said. “Just tell him he looks like a bloody idiot,” said his mate on the other side of me. “We’ve been doing it all night.”)
Next stop was The Angel, another highly-regarded boozer that used to be called the Beer House, which was rescued from demolition and converted into something of a gastro-pub. Although it was standing-room only, at least we could get to the bar. We ordered a pint each of the pub’s own Angel bitter, which turned out to be very nice indeed. Tangy and fresh-tasting, lots of hops and citrus. Didn’t take us long to sup those (whilst listening to Mark Lanegan and Isobel Campbell duetting on their ‘Ballad of the Broken Seas’ on the stereo, which was a definite bonus) but by that time a couple of mates of Howard’s from work had been in touch to say they were installed in the Hare & Hounds down the way, if we fancied joining them.
We did, although we came close to regretting it. Yes, we got a seat, but the place only had a choice of Holt’s bitter or the usual cooking lager options. Howard asked if they had the Holt’s beer-of-the-month on and got a blank look for his trouble, so the Holt’s bitter it was. Which is alright, if you like that sort of thing, or in an any-port-in-a-storm situation like this one. But luckily everyone agreed that a move round the corner to the English Lounge was in order.
Cue waves of reminiscence from yours truly: Jo and me and all our mates used to drink in that boozer every Friday and Saturday night back when we were students, back in the days when it was called the Hog’s Head, they had four or five real ales on tap and another five or six gravity-dispensed straight from the barrels behind the bar. Oh, and a bar-billiards table, which was probably the major attraction. Happy days… oh, yeah, I had a pint of Hobgoblin in there. As Tim said recently, it’s one of those reliable old favourites that you can seldom go wrong with, and was a definite improvement on the Holt’s.
After that, Howard’s mates decided to call it a night (they’d been out since five p.m. and were beginning to feel the effects) but we I decided there was definitely time for one more. So we headed down to the Bull’s Head, opposite Manchester Piccadilly station. I’d not been in there before either, although I’d heard good things from several friends. We both had a pint of Ringwood XXXX Porter, which although not quite as intense and interestingly-flavoured as either the Port Stout or the Pictish Porter earlier in the evening, was still a very good pint indeed.
And it was certainly good enough for a repeat visit. So when Jo and I went out with our mates Andy and Dawn on Saturday night and we ended up in the Bull’s Head after a quick Thai meal, I started with another pint of XXXX and then stayed on that one for the entire evening (via a quick swig of Wychwood January’Sale for research purposes – not bad, would be worth re-visiting), with Andy and Jo keeping me company for the duration. Taking a bit more care to sample the flavours this time around, I was sure I detected a tang of blackcurrant or blueberry in there, as well as a more traditional nutty-malt finish. A very nice drop indeed and a good session beer. Well worth dropping in the Bull’s Head for a jar if you’re in the vicinity of Manchester Piccadilly any time soon.
As for the beer festival failure… next time I’ll just have to get my strategy right: book an afternoon off work and go down for an after-lunch session. Either that or put my name down as a volunteer and lug some furniture around or something. I’m sure that must get you an evening pass or two to put to good use, eh? Tandleman? Eh?
