1933-2011

Hard to know where to start with John Barry, isn't it?

Yeastender

So, here's the result of my first-ever go at homebrew - the Brubox 'London Bitter' Our Lad got me for Christmas. I followed the (somewhat vague) instructions to the letter, especially the bit about the dangers of the bag bursting through over-pressurisation, which was no empty threat. Had a look the morning after I charged the brew with sugar and found the bag blown up to the size and shape of a beach ball and climbing out of the box. We were perhaps seconds from disaster. As I er, released gas I felt just like Jack Bauer.

But what does it taste like? Despite being opaque (at this stage anyway), it's pretty good. Malty, fruity and bitter - if a tad 'yeasty' - and miles better than it looks.

The Lion In Winter

A big sign (hoho) that things are at last progressing for Leytonstone landmark The Red Lion (ex Zulus). Rumour has it that a lot more work is needed refurbishing the old place than was first thought, which may have put the reopening back a few weeks - so it'll be spring at the earliest. New owners Antic have set up a holding page for the pubs website, showing how it was in (I presume) about 1900 and hopefully how it might look again. Can't wait.

American Friends

Mrs TIW's uncle and auntie are spending their retirement touring the US in a Fifth Wheel - or the world's poshest caravan, as it's also known. You can read about their escapades here. They've got an uncanny knack of bringing me over some superb and fairly hard-to-find American beers, like this Stone Ruination IPA, one of a brace that they got me for Christmas. I've only seen it for sale at Utobeer, and for about eight quid, though it might also be in those ur-fridges at the Euston Tap.

Stone claim that 'Ruination' is what's going to happen to your taste buds after drinking this. Well, my mouth recovered after about an hour but it's definitely not a beer for food matching. Unless you're eating handfuls of hops. It's massively, heftily, grandly, bitterly hoppy this beer. Despite that it was an easy drink once I'd got over that big hop punch, and settled into citrus and sort of walk-in-the woods pine notes, all somehow balanced with those intense, 100+ IBU shovelfuls of Columbus and Centennial. After swigging nothing but meh* beers over Christmas in Devon, this was like being plugged into the mains. Beer as a primary colour. And in the States you can get it on draught. Sorry - "draft". Lucky Yanks.

* (TIW passim) honourable exception: Hartland Beers at the White Hart, Bideford.

A King At Night

The original Tron was baffling for the thirteen-year-old TIW sat in Keighley Picture House. But Our Lad and me were there for the computer animation rather than the confusing but lame storyline. All done on the Foonly supercomputer with its astonishing two megabyte memory. There'd been nothing like it before - but of course, there's been a lot like it since. Last night I saw Tron: Legacy. Not without its moments - though every time the CGI 'young' Jeff Bridges came on screen I couldn't help but think "why have they made him look like Gary Barlow?".


After that a drink was needed, so we nipped round the corner to The Kings Arms. The pub's on Roupell Street SE1, part of a conservation area of early Victorian terraces which looks like it belongs on the cover of a book by Valerie Wood called something like 'The Ragged Princess' ("she was the daughter of a jellied eel seller, he was the Fifth Duke Of Witney").

The King's Arms is a multi-room boozer, modernised a bit but still retaining a lot of character and original features. When I worked nearby, I came here a lot, but i've not been in for months. Back then the beer could be a bit inconsistent, but last night the Adnam's bitter was in prime nick, unlike the Doom Bar I kicked off with which just about OK. Out the back there's what looks like a converted courtyard where you can be brusquely served Thai food. The bar staff are pretty brusque too. I don't expect a high five when I order a round, but some verbal communication would be nice. And please, do something about the rickety bar stools. Sat swaying three feet in the air does not make for a relaxing visit. It was nice and warm though - old fashioned iron radiators and a real fire crackling away in the tap room. Good atmosphere too, and pleasingly busy for a chilly monday a week into the new year. Bit of a curate's egg for me, this pub - it ticks a lot of my boxes but I didn't find myself wishing I could still nip in after work. Hmm.

Photo by Lars Plougmann

Git Yer Brew On

When I were but a nipper, my dad was a full-grain homebrewer, boiling the mash in a huge, copper jampot. The aromas of his small-scale efforts filled our street and mingled with those from Timothy Taylor 200 yards down the road. Along with golf, dad's primary hobby these days is researching the family tree, which has thrown up several ancestors running pubs and brewhouses in Leeds.


Now it's my turn. Our Lad got me this for Christmas. It's a Brubox, a sort of one-pot homebrew system. Very straightforward. Sterilise, boil up the 'teabag' of hops and grain, add the malt extract, fill with water and add yeast when the temperature gets down to 18 degrees. Actually, that was the hard bit. The temp went from 22 degrees and settled at 16, which was a bit cold for the yeast to get its mojo working. A bit of wandering around with a thermometer showed that the dining room was the best bet, so after bunging in the yeast that's where I left it, wrapped in old blankets. Stand back, light your pipe. And that's that. Came down this morning to find the airlock blooping away and a satisfyingly crusty 'krauesen' forming on the top. There's a lurid warning in the instructions about venting off gas if the fermentation gets carried away and causes the bag to burst.

So, in about a month I'll know if I've got 20 pints of 'London Bitter' or 20 pints of vinegar. Or a dining room freshly decorated with malt extract and a supremely angry Mrs TIW.

A Deep And Dark December

There’s a Yorkshire dialect song that we used to sing at school. I can’t remember the title, or much else – just the line “Nivver bin warm sin ah left me bed” – ‘warm’ pronounced to rhyme with ‘calm’, obviously. This line kept appearing in my head during my recent, pre-christmas visit home. It was cold. So very, very cold. One day we took a walk to the top of the Five Rise Locks, looking at the ghostly, frozen valley below us. Nothing moved except woodsmoke lazily curling up from chimneys, and a group of kids sledging down an iron-hard field.



In the five days I was up in Keighley, the temperature never got above minus 4. One shocking night it was minus 15. It’s the sort of weather where you never feel entirely, properly warm – except in about three places: My mam and dad's house, my grandma’s living room (hotter, in fact, than a nuclear reactor) and sat in front of the fireplace in the Boltmaker’s Arms, where I took this short film while supping Ram Tam - Taylor's famous winter warmer - with my dad and my uncle. I hope it captures a little of the welcoming banter of this very special pub.

Happy Christmas, and many thanks for reading my humble blog - see you next year!

Bob Crow's Nightmare

This is amazing. A tube map showing the real-time positions of actual tube trains. Very clever computer geekery. Or magic. Or the proof of alien intelligence. Or something. It's what the internet's for, anyway. Been around since June, apparently. Your TIW - always first with the news.

Trampagne

This is the St Pancras Station Christmas 'tree', made from champagne bottles. I doubt the Strongbow tin was part of the artist's vision - but this is London, and you never know.

LocAle

"Don't have that. It's horrible." Said the the friendly James May lookalike behind the bar. He was right. The sampler of Brodie's Kosher Rye Ale he gave me smelt like gloss paint, and tasted like grass clippings. His recommendation of Old Hopper was right on the money though.

It was saturday evening and pouring with icy rain. Mrs TIW, my brother and I were warm and snug in the William The IV in Leyton. This is the tap of the prolific Brodie brewery, which produces its beer in what looks like a big stone shed round the back. The pub is a large former gin palace, with original mirrors for Truman and Charrington on the walls. It looks and feels like a mash-up of the Cross Keys* in Covent Garden and former TIW saturday night favourite The Old George (AKA Kempys) in Bethnal Green, and the place was bustling. There was some sort of fraternal organisation having a black tie do in the back room, footy was showing unobtrusively on an enormous projector screen, watched by leather-jacketed geezers. The other punters were a mixed salad of East End hipsters, couples, locals and beard-stroking beer-o-nauts. Staff were zipping around clearing glasses and wiping tables, and one of the barmen kept interrupting his roast dinner to leap up and help out on the pumps, which were everywhere you looked - about twenty of them.

Brodie's are very active, as anyone who follows them on Twitter will know. They currently produce about 12 regular beers, as well as seasonals and what seem to be experiments, like the Kosher Rye. We only tried two out of the battalion of pumps - the smooth and bitter Amarilla and the Old Hopper, brewed with hops from Cable Street down in Whitechapel. Both beers tasted rather green and young - like they often do at beer festivals. Still perfectly enjoyable, especially the Hopper which was miles better than the version served at another Brodie outlet, the Old Coffee House in Soho, home of the most miserable barman in London.

The William's certainly had its ups and downs in recent years. Never quite knowing if it was on an up or a down is the reason that i've never taken the short journey to visit until now. Brodie's is in fact the resurrection of the pub's old Sweet William micro, brought back to life in 2008 by James and Lizzie Brodie, and the pub's new ascendency is clearly down to their hard work (and maybe helped by their £1.99 a pint pricing). We certainly felt instantly at home - it's that kind of place - and I'm looking forward to going back.

Disclaimer: Our lad and me had spent a good chunk of the afternoon in the Euston Tap getting acquainted with Fyne Ales' Vital Spark. So don't take my word for it, go and have a look. Leyton's really not that far from Zone 1.

*I've heard the Cross Keys and the Old Coffee House is are run by the owners of the William IV. Can anyone confirm?

Paper View

It's got a lot of potential, Leytonstone High Road, and it's about to get two million quid's worth of 'improvements'. I've no doubt that this will amount to the railway bridge getting a touch-up and loads of new signs telling us how great our local council are.

My favourite building on the High Road has always been the Cuthbert-Dibble-and-Grubb fire station, now available as this marvellous tabletop version from Kingsway Models, just one of a range of unashamedly nostalgic card kits, which also includes Ferodo bridges, Great Yarmouth bus garage, Chadwell Heath Odeon and even Walford East Tube Station.



It won't be like this much longer, though - the fire station is no longer considered fit for 21st century purposes and is to be largely replaced by a 'predominantly glazed' building (it says here). I'm sure that'll look just lovely.

Eastern Promise

Some pictures from a foot-stampingly cold tour around part of the Olympic site's perimeter on the Stratford/Bow frontier. It doesn't look it, but Europe's biggest building site is nearly finished, ahead of schedule and under budget. I've not always been kind about Stratford, Leytonstone's neighbour. According to our enthusiastic Blue Badge guide Stan, Stratty is being transformed from shabby (and let's be honest, scary) inner-London suburb to a glowing retail-and-sport Manhattan. And it really is starting to look the part. There's a long way to go, but I must say - I'm becoming a believer.

1926-2010

My first visit to London was in 1981, on a school trip to see England Schoolboys play their Irish counterparts at a disappointingly shabby Wembley. After a fish-and-chip tea we were taken to see Airplane! at the Curzon on Shaftesbury Avenue. Waiting for the coach afterwards, we milltown naifs stood goggling at the Soho peacocks and quoting lines from the classic we'd just seen. Still makes me laugh, almost thirty years on. RIP.

Rail Ale

Never thought I'd look forward to visiting a pub near a train station. Finally got to the Euston Tap for a late-afternoon visit on monday. At first, the place was empty, except for an extremely posh young man who appeared baffled by the beer menu ("Um, what's a nice beer?") and a grizzled CAMRA vet in a faded beer festival shirt stretched over an impressive belly. Twenty odd-beers on the blackboards, reasonably priced and numbered like a Chinese restaurant*. Two fridgezillas creaking with bottles. We liked the place instantly.



No sign of Boak and Bailey's snooty barmaid, thankfully - the lad behind the bar was smiley enthusiasm personified. Mate had a Bristol Stout ("excellent") while I settled for a Lagonda, the first Marble beer I've really enjoyed. My pint was none the worse for a slight haze, something that seemed to affect the other light-coloured ales we saw served up. Our only real complaint was that the place was freezing. Even though the barman was in a t-shirt - everyone else had their coats on. Another gripe was that we'd left it too late to stay for more than one before we had to go and meet the wives.

The Euston Tap is full of potential and deserves to do well - and might even prove to be something of a kick up the arse for the capital's beer 'scene'. Range+decent prices = happiness. More of this sort of thing, please.

*You're meant to order by number, apparently. We were ignorant of this, but the barman didn't mind. Perhaps just as well - I even get baffled by the ordering system in Nando's.

Slight Return

Well, whaddya know? Rumours have been circulating for months, but it looks like Piaggio really are going to start manufacturing the much-loved and much-missed Vespa PX again, in all its air-cooled, manual-gearboxed glory.

The last PXs were made by Piaggio in 2007. Officially, their demise was brought about by the engines not meeting emissions legislation. Apparently, the new incarnation will still have a two-stroke motor, with all the famous blue smoke (and particulates) kept in check by a new catalyser. There's also a mention in some of the press that the new scoot will have 'dual rear shocks', which might at last stop 'Vespa arse' on rides longer than half an hour.

SInce the last PXs were sold, anyone wanting a traditional scooter has been forced to get an Indian clone, the LML star*, which must surely have taken a significant chunk of Piaggio's market. No doubt this was a major factor in the decision to re-introduce the much-loved scooter, but whatever the reason - it's good to see it back. The new PX will be on sale next year - this is one of the new ones. Nice flares.



* one of LMLs main UK dealers is Eddy Bullet. They have the worst website you'll ever see. Go on, have a look.

Playing The 'Spoons

I've been offered some bad pints in my time, and i've even had to bat off the infamous "It's meant to taste like that" cliché on a couple of occasions. But this is the worst example yet, encountered last friday at the (usually reliable) Crosse Keys as we caught the tail end of Wetherspoon's real ale festival. Wasn't even a full pint. Changed with no drama, but still - it shouldn't have made it to the civilian side of the bar. It was meant to be a Marston's Old Empire, but looked and smelled exactly like the residue in the bottom of the fish tank one of my housemates had back when I was a student. I think the correct term is 'mulm'.

David Vs Goliath Vs Valuev

This is one of Marks And Spencers British beer range; Yorkshire Bitter. Not a bad drop - bottle conditioned, a chewy, fruity mouthful. It's made for M&S by Cropton, currently undergoing legal proddings from eccentric Tadcaster brewer Samuel Smith. I don't know about you, but the first thing I notice about this bottle is that large white rose. It's the white rose on Cropton's Yorkshire Warrior labels (which actually show the Yorkshire Regiment's cap badge) that caused Samuel Smith to get in touch with their learned friends. I wonder if one of Europe's largest companies - who presumably have a correspondingly large legal department and very deep pockets - can expect a letter from a Tadcaster solicitor?

Ghentish Town

One of the many things I like about Belgium is that the towns there are so photogentically grungy once you wander off the tourist offices' map.

Central Brussels and Ghent feel like cities as lived by their citizens. Graffiti, litter and in Brussels' case - the stench of urine (yes, I know we have all these in London too, but that doesn't count). These images were taken within a stones-throw of Ghent's visitor honeypots. As I clicked away, I was conscious of being watched. Old ladies peeping at me from behind slightly tatty net curtains and grubby art-nouveau windows. A codger in a trilby putting on glasses and squinting down from his dormer window. This is something you'd never see in the West End and seldom in the central arrondissements of Paris. The British and French capitals are becoming cities where huge areas are given over solely for the gratification of tourists and global chain stores; the central zones are increasingly lived in only by the rich.

Hopeful

Central Keighley must be one of the few places to escape the decimation of its pubs. In recent years the town has permanently lost the Eastwood Tavern, The Masons Arms and The Market Arms - and that's about it, although a number of pubs in outlying villages are said to be struggling and just lately The New Inn at Crossroads has become an ironmongers.

Several pubs have closed and reopened - one example is the Hope and Anchor freehouse on the outskirts of the centre, just round the corner from Timothy Taylor's new site. I've only been in once, several years ago. It was like walking into an episode of the Likely Lads, a 1960s time capsule complete with redundant buttons to summon a waiter and tin ashtrays for defunct brewers like Whitakers of Halifax.

Whitakers - founded in 1848 - had the usual post-war trajectory of mergers and takeovers before having their own brewery (trademark - 'Cock O' The North') demolished by Whitbread in 1969. Their ales became nothing more than a proprietory name on a pump, made elsewhere in Whitbread's empire. They faded away sometime in the early 70s. A similar thing happened to fellow Halifaxoneans Websters - closed by S&N in 1996 - and whose beer is now brewed by John Smiths for the club trade. I always associate Websters with bleak, wind-blasted Calderdale villages where there wasn't much more than one of their mid-Victorian pubs, a silent mill, a few houses and a dripping-damp Wesleyan chapel. Their Pennine Bitter had a few fans but to be fair, I don't ever recall anyone saying they could murder a Websters.


This sign was found in the Hope and Anchor's cellar during the refurbishment and fixed to the pub's back wall where it was photographed by my mum and dad on a recent visit. "Pretty good. Irish and friendly" was their verdict. The pub that is, not the sign.