Looks like it might be my round
Spent the weekend down at the in-laws’ in Bridgnorth, Shropshire. I was hoping to nip into Tanner’s, the town’s quality wine emporium, as they usually have a good selection of local bottled beers, but alas (and probably, all-too predictably) they were closed when I was in town on the Sunday afternoon and yes, they did have a couple of interesting-looking ones, right there in the window (memo to self: plan a trip into town on a Saturday next time.)
Luckily though, we’d stopped off at a small branch of Wine Rack on the way through the back end of Wolverhampton, and there I looked along the shelves and found four new beers to try:
- Highgate Old Ale
- River Cottage Stinger (an organic nettle-flavoured beer – intriguing!)
- Davenport Original Bitter
- Marston’s Firestoker
And Jo and I did spend a very pleasant Friday evening in the King’s Head, in the company of her brother and his girlfriend. And with the Bridgnorth Brewery quite literally in the back yard, there was really no excuse not to sample a couple of their beers – tasting notes to follow when I clear my existing backlog.
Then, when I was doing the weekly shop in Sainsbury’s this evening, I discovered that their August beer promotion has started. Although three of the fifteen selected ales weren’t on the shelves quite yet one of which, it turns out, is Highgate Old Ale and one (Sharp’s Honey Spice Wheat Beer) I passed on for dietary-issues reasons. But I did manage to grab no fewer than eleven that were all-new to me:
- Arundel Prize Fighter
- Greene King Sun Dance
- High & Mighty Beer of the Gods (you just can tell from the name that it’s an American brewery)
- St Peter’s Amarillo Ale (which looks like a scrumpy cider in the bottle)
- Robinson’s Ginger Tom (at 6% not as evil as its regular 8.5% sibling, but I’ll bet it has a kick)
- Bath Ales Barnstormer (which has the ghost-rabbit from the Watership Down cartoon on the label, for some reason)
- Williams Bros Harvest Sun
- Williams Bros Good Times
- Doctor Okell’s IPA
- Harden’s Golden Glow
- Hampshire Brewery Arthur Pendragon S.A
From DM’s list it looks like I’m missing the Red Rat Crazy Day Dog Stout (I have got to get me some of that) and the Copper Dragon 1816, both of which I’ll be back for on Wednesday. Add those to the Meantime IPA and Meantime London Porter I picked up the other week (plus the bottle of Skull Splitter still lurking in the cupboard) and it looks like I’ll have a busy couple of weekends coming up in the near future.
