A quick half at the Wellington.

After leaving the Harlequin, my drinking companion had a need for a pale hoppy number from the Little Ale Cart Brewery. So off we scampered to the Wellington at Shalesmoor, where they make these fine ales on the premises.

This is perhaps my favourite pub in Sheffield. It is at the other end of the spectrum to the likes of the Harlequin. The Wellie is a cosy pub where one can have some of the finest beer in the country in intimate surroundings. I was really pleased to see they had a Blue Monkey ale on tap, which I felt compelled to order.

Blue Monkey brewery Nuts (4.6%). A dark mahogany coloured best bitter with a thin head. This tasty beer has a slightly fruity nose – tones of prunes and lovely full bodied character. Nuts has a complex flavour with great length and a lovely woody flavours. A smashing beer from one of my favourite breweries – 7/10  

Little Ale Cart Brewery Hertfordshire (4%). There is a very fruity nose from this pale ale. Grapefruit and apricot flavours make this a really easy drinking and pleasurable ale. 6.5/10

Lunch at the Harlequin pub in Sheffield.

For lunch on New Year’s Eve I decided to go to the Harlequin on Nursery Street which is near some of the other fine ale house in the Kelham Island area.

Upon arrival the pub was busy with a wide range of clientele. This ale house is not just for the CAMRA real ale types, but is also very approachable to people looking for a nice drink or some good simple homemade food. The pub is quite bright and airy inside with a long bar where food and drinks are ordered. The pub is perhaps lacking in a particularly strong identity which is often associated with the real ale style of pubs. This is no bad thing, as it is very clean and presentable, and is somewhere where no one would be put off from going.

The bar staff are very friendly and are more than happy for me to try a few beers before I make my selection. There are probably about 10 real ales and 10 real ciders available, plus a host of specialist bottled beers. Simple and very reasonably priced food is also served. I opted for their homemade steak pie with chips and a half pint of Porter.

The pie with hand-cut chips, peas and carrots is priced at £4.00 and is a real bargain. Naturally, it is served with the proverbial Henderson’s Relish. The pie is very good, and the hand-cut chips are some of the best I have had for a very long time. I also saw some lovely looking sandwiches and chip butties leaving the kitchen, which looked equally tasty. For home made well priced food, it does not come much better.

The first beer I chose was Revolutions brewery, the Original 45 Porter (4.5%). It is obviously a very dark beer with a medium head to it. On the nose roasted coffee tones dominate. Upon tasting, flavours of chestnut combine with the coffee to make it a tasty easy drinking porter. 6/10.

Whilst at the Harlequin I also tried a pale ale called Cougar from the Fat Cat brewery. This golden beer has an excellent citrusy nose coming from the American hops used in its production. Sadly the flavour didn’t quite live up to the wonderful nose, but it is still a nice beer. 6/10.

Cock and Magpie, Chesterfield

Ask most people what they know about Chesterfield, and you will likely be regaled with an account of the ‘Crooked Spire’ – the twisted and warped spire of the parish church, which looms over eastern edge of the town centre. Chesterfield’s fame, it seems, is owed entirely to its incompetent church-builders. Had those artisans constructed the spire with properly dried-out wood, the resulting edifice would have pointed straight into the air; but the little Derbyshire town would have been robbed of what little notoriety it now possesses.

In point of fact, Chesterfield has a handful of ancient buildings, some of which have interesting historical associations. Chief amongst those is Revolution House, situated in the suburb of Old Whittington Moor. At that little cottage, in 1688, a few English aristocrats hatched the plan to invite a Dutch prince, William of Orange, to invade England, and depose the reigning monarch James II.

Next door to Revolution House is the Cock and Magpie. I visited that establishment on a cold, overcast, weekday in October. To my surprise, I found that the place was packed to the rafters. At every table, in every snug corner, and throughout the conservatory, silver-haired diners were tucking in to their lunch. As you may have gathered, the reason for the pub’s popularity was its ‘senior menu’, which offered pensioners a two or three course meal at a discount price

My companion and I did manage to find a table, opposite the bar. The smartly dressed staff were very polite and attentive, and our food was quickly served to our table, despite the ubiquity of other diners. I washed down my roast turkey sandwich and chips with a pint of Jennings Sneck Lifter – though I do not recall the nuances of its flavour, as my mind was elsewhere, distracted by the Toby Jugs, brasses, and other pseudo-antique paraphernalia with which the pub was decorated.

Johnson Arms Beer Festival Day 1.

I trundled down to the Johnson Arms with three friends in tow for the first day of their beer festival. The first days beers focussed on the Blue Monkey brewery, which is one of my favourite breweries. It was good to see that the Johnson Arms was very busy including a large contingent of the University of Nottingham Real Ale society.

Here is my brief review of the Blue Monkey beers that were available.

Blue Monkey Original (3.6%). It is a dark amber/copper coloured ale with a thin head and sweet nose. Fruity chestnut flavours can be tasted in this smooth drinking beer, which finishes with some tobacco. It is perhaps a bit too sweet to drink lots of and I would like a bit more bitterness at the end. A nice beer, but usually I expect more from Original - 6/10

Blue Monkey BG Sips (4%). BG sips is a pale golden beer with a thick creamy head. It is a lovely hoppy ale with very nice floral and citrus (grapefruit) flavours. The body is light and it is very easy drinking. 8/10

Blue Monkey Evolution (4.3%). Light amber colour with a malty nose. Grassy flavours can be tasted as can floral tones. It has a good bitterness, but is not as complex as the batch I tried at the Notts beer festival. 6.5/10

Blue Monkey 99 Red Baboons (4.2%). Dark ale with malty gingerbread, and slight coffee flavours. It is a very smooth beer which has a warming character. 7/10

October Beer Festival at the Victoria, Beeston.

I went on the first day of the Victoria’s October beer festival to try some of the ales they had to offer. The theme of the festival was CAMRA Champion Beers of Britain (and runners up) plus Local Favourites. In total about 60 different ales would be available over the weekend.

After a brisk walk to Victoria I was after something refreshing to start me off.

Kelham Island Brewery Pale Rider (5.2%). This infamous Sheffield beer was an obvious starting point for me. My history with this ale goes back many years and was my drink of choice in my days based in the city of Steel. This batch of Pale Rider is quite different from what I would normally expect. It has a nice floral nose, but it has a heavy malty finish. Flavours of caramel can be tasted, but it is lacking bitterness at the end. It is also missing the citrus flavours normally associated with Pale Rider. This is a very full bodied malty version of Pale Rider lacking in bitterness, and it is much poorer than I would expect. 6.5/10

York Brewery Yorkshire Terrier (4.2%). Dark Amber beer with a very unusual nose – cream like tones. It has a malty flavour but is lacking in hops and character. 5/10

Castle Rock Meadow Brown (4.8%). Light Brown ale with a coffee nose. For an ale of this colour, it has the strongest flavour of coffee I have ever come across. It is very smooth drinking, but too much coffee dominated for me. 6/10

Dark Star American Pale Ale (4.7%). Golden beer with a thin head. Very very hoppy with slightly floral and grassy flavours. 6.5/10

Oakham Attila (7.5%). Golden beer with a slightly floral nose. Very sweet flavours which make this beer too rich and sickly. Extra sugar must be added, making it too sweet. 4/10

Amber Ales Chocolate Orange Stout (4.0%).  A very black ale. The first half of the flavour is orange fruit (a bit like Terry’s Chocolate Orange) that then goes to chestnut and coffee flavours. It is quite hard to drink a pint of it. 6/10

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, London,

As a rule, establishments that prefix their name with ‘Ye Olde’ are anything but old. Who but the most gullible – or the most irony loving – tourist would fall for the charms of ‘Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe’ or ‘Ye Olde Pizza Parlour’? Yet, for all our sophistication, there is one institution that owes at least some of its popularity to its penchant for anachronism and bogus antiquity: the English pub. Unsurprisingly, therefore, many a landlord has attempted to bolster the historic credentials of his alehouse by adopting a cliché of pseudo-archaic language.

There are, nevertheless, a few genuinely ancient pubs that may use the term with impunity. One such place is Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, of 145 Fleet Street. Situated a few yards from Dr Johnson’s House in Gough Square, the pub occupies a seventeenth-century building and some even older vaults. There is one bar upstairs, in a dingy flagstoned room with antiquated wooden panelling. Downstairs through the gloomy vaults is another bar, which is host to most of the establishment’s seating. Naturally, it is decorated with engravings of the various venerable historic personages who ‘may’ have drunk in the place at one time or another.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is owned by Samuel Smith’s, the brewery from Tadcaster in Yorkshire, and serves a large selection of lagers, stouts, beers, and ales. However, real ale fanatics should be warned that, aside from the perfectly respectable Best Bitter, nothing is served from the cask. As with all Samuel Smith’s pubs, the prices are extremely reasonable, and the beverages are tasty and attractively branded.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese can be proud of the fact that it sells pint of decent bitter for £1.99 in a historic pub with a central London location. However, it ought to be ashamed of its food. All meals are microwaved or fried, and the pie I ordered was almost as good as those served at football grounds around the country.

Nottingham Beer Festival day 2

Thinking it would be very busy at the beer festival tonight, we decided to go early to ensure we could try some of the ales on our wish list. It was 4.30pm when we arrived and it was busy! By 6.30pm it was extremely busy with everyone packed together like sardines. Of the two days I preferred the Thursday as it was less hectic.

Here are some of the beers I tried:

Fyfe Nagnum IPA (4.5%). This Scottish IPA had a pretty poor nose of sweaty socks and the taste was no better as although it was quite malty it was bland and dull. 3/10

Blue Monkey Infinity (4.6%). So it was then that I went to one of my favourite breweries. Infinity is a very light golden beer.  It has a floral nose and lovely citrusy flavours, which combine with a nice bitterness to make this a great easy drinking ale. 7.5/10

Blue Monkey Evolution (4.3%). Evolution is darker than Infinity and has a subtle nose to it with hints of grapefruit. It is more malty compared to Infinity and has a lovely complex flavour with great length. Slight caramel and violet flavours make this a perfectly rounded ale. 9/10

Blue Monkey Infinity (Left) and Evolution (Right)



Poachers Lincoln Best (4.2%). This is a dark brown bitter with lots of roasted malt and coffee flavours. It is easy drinking and would be nice on a winters day. 6/10

Allgates Motueka Gold (4.2%). Light golden colour with a thin head. The New Zealand hops used make this a really refreshing beer with citrus and floral flavours and a nice bitterness. 7.5/10

Vale VPA (Vale Pale Ale) (4.2%). A well balanced golden beer with a citrus nose, good body and nice bitterness to it. 7.5/10

Strathaven Aleberry (4.6%). This Scottish beer is infused with damsons and you can really tell as it has a very fruity taste. It is easy drinking, but it is a bit too dominated by the fruit. 5.5/10

Backyard Brewhouse Nipin (4.6%). Light golden American style pale ale. It has a slight citrus nose and almost vegetable flavours. Initially it seems a sweet beer, but it is bitter at the finish. 5.5/10

Botley Gringo’s Gold (4.5%). Light golden beer with a thin frothy head. It has a sweet nose with flavours of nectarine. It is very easy drinking due to the sweetness, but it is not complex enough. 5.5/10

Hogswood Broken Piston (4.2%). A nice brown beer with sweet coffee flavours. It is easy drinking and settles nicely in the stomach. 6.5/10

Loddon Ferrymans Gold (4.4%).This amber beer has a floral nose/taste and a good length. 6.5/10

Great Oakley Tailshaker (5%). Another amber ale with a frothy head. It has nice malty and floral flavours and is very smooth to drink. 7/10

Green Mill Zenith (4.5%). Golden ale with a complex nose and hoppy citrus taste. It is a well balanced drinkable ale with good length. 7/10

Blue Monkey 99 Red Baboons (4.2%). This very dark beer has a slightly sweet nose and raisin like flavour. An unusual and really tasty beer. 8/10

Once again the beers had been superb. The highlights had to be the fantastic beers from Blue Monkey. Well done to them.