In a time honoured tradition, the Beer Viking crew recently had their annual Christmas Cracker.  Sometimes we get more organised and arrange a pub crawl and send out invites and sometimes it’s just the two captains, Doc and Tank, trying as many quality beers as possible.  On that point, it really is about enjoying beer for what it is, a great beverage.  At the end of year of hard tasting, one’s palate and desire to enjoy a beer can get a bit jaded and so this is the kind of line under the year kind of thing.

2009 was along the unorganised, if you like unplanning line and as you’ll see below we had some incredible beers.

Doc had recently been on a mini-raid of California, where he managed to hit up some sweet spots and uncover a great joint near Los Angeles.  I got a text from him on the way to the airport and it was such a delight to read.  One bottle of Pliny the Elder is coming back for us to share.  We discussed various options and then went for a landmark shot, which you can see a picture of below.  It meant that the drinking conditions were sub-optimal but for such a rare treat as a fresh Pliny the Elder in the UK, it was worth it.

From here, we walked through the wet and cold night to the Rake, with full intentions of carrying on from there.  It turned out Borough Market was having a bit of cheese night and so it was a slightly different crowd than normal.  A couple of nights previous the Otley brewers were in, with a special they had brewed with Glyn Davies Roberts, the Rake manager.  Most of the beer had been drunk but lucky for us the Otley O Ho H was on cask.  I’m a big fan of this beer and Doc D was quick to give his thumbs up.

This was soon followed by bottles of the Anchor Christmas ‘09 (angled for by Doc due to his excitement of his Anchor Brewery Tour the week before) and the Sierra Nevada Celebration ‘08.  Which reminded me that on my previous days visit, I had been told that a couple of kegs of ‘09 were downstairs.  A quick word with Tom and at the first opportunity this was on and soon we were having some pints of this tasty seasonal brew.

Next was the Brooklyn Winter and Great Divide Hibernation, during which we had some more conversations with Tom and soon the decision was made to share some further bounty raided in NORCAL.  Some choice cans, yes you read that right, CANS of beers.  Soon we had set up camp on by the brewers signature wall and were making our way through 21st Ammendment IPA, 21st Ammendment Monks Blood and Big Sky Brewing Co. Moose Drool.

It was at this point things started to go off the boil but we all agreed that it was a pleasant surprise to have just tasty beers out of cans.  Reminders of teenage kicks, thankfully Doc had ignored my earlier suggestion on first viewing the cans as an opportunity to do a couple of shotguns.  We followed this up with the Great Divide Denver Pale Ale, which is the point where all brewrank scores stopped for the night.

We made our way through the rare treat to most, even more special in Europe, Moonlight Death & Taxes.  We then had to taste one of my favourite Christmas beers of all time, De Dolle Stille Nacht.  Then onto the Great Divide Fresh Hop ‘09 and finishing with the Goose Island Christmas.

There may have been a few more to round out the night, like I’m thinking the Dark Star Imperial on cask but can’t be sure as this is where the notes and the memory stopped.  All in all, a wonderful and solid Christmas Cracker ‘09.  Hope you can join us next year but for now, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

The list in full:

1. Pliny the Elder
2. Otley O Ho Ho
3. Anchor Chrismtas ‘09
4. Sierra Nevada Celebration ‘08
5. Sierra Nevada Celebration ‘09
6. Brooklyn Winter
7. Great Divide Hibernation
8. 21st Ammendment IPA
9. 21st Ammendment Monks Blood
10. Big Sky Brewing Co. Moose Drool
11. Great Divide Denver Pale
12. Moonlight Death & Taxes
13. Stille Nacht
14. Great Divide Harvest 09
15. Goose Island Christmas

What a gem of a book! Thank you to Pollard & McGinn for putting this together. You can order your copy here on Books About Beer website.

The premise is simple enough – a guide to 80 pubs in London with 80 recommended beers to try at each pub when you visit. The selection of pubs and bars and restaurants (even a bookstore) is diverse. One might call it eclectic but as someone who has been drinking beer in London for over a decade this is a great mix.

The volume is thin and will fit in your jacket pocket and is 95 pages long. For each pub you get the address, transport info, photos(s), URL and a recommended beer to drink. All the pubs of course serve other brews and additional beers are also highlighted. There are maps at the front.

The book includes well known ‘beer’ pubs such as the Rake (Borough Market) and the White Horse (in Parsons Green), but also less well know places such as The Cove (in Covent Garden – great on a sunny day!) and Project Orange (in Clapham – one we are going to seek out soon).

We recommend this book to anyone interested in visiting London pubs and is a great one for both residents and tourists (and beer geeks). It has inspired the BeerViking crew to venture out to some new venues and to even consider trying to tick off all 80 drinking establishments (and beers) over time.

Of course the next day we headed out on a small raid of the Rake in the hopes we’d get to try Epic with the brew master. Lady luck was on our side and we got to try two Epic’s – the Pale Ale and  season brew the Mayhem. Here’s a brief review and ranking of both…

We are looking forward to the Epic UK mashup brew at the Weatherspoons festival and also to following more adventures of @epicbeer on Twitter. Be sure to visit the Epic website and blog for more info on these great beer from New Zealand.

I will come back later to add more details but wanted to capture initial thoughts:

If this is the plan these guys have for pubs, sign me up as a licensee.

Great to see six casks on pull, all local from Sussex

• Dark Star Hophead
• Dark Star American Pale Ale
• 1648 Winter Warrent
• 1648 Signature
• Harveys Old
• Haveys Best

How many pub loo’s do you know with marble and fittings from Crapper. Actually how many pub loo’s do you know where you want to take a crap.

This isn’t a boozer, a bit sanitised but I know my wife would come here ( a good thing) – now if only they get some country one’s with awesome children’s playgrounds.

The beer is served in tankards – Cool!

The beer is actually a bit warm.  And by that, don’t worry. I might be from Canada but appreciate my beer at cellar temperature but I reckon we’re pushing 15C here.

The interior is a bit odd.  On one hand big brass look, with lots of wood (nothing wrong there) but why the wallpaper that has faux bricks peeking through.

The barkeep couldn’t tell me where 1648 was from.

Surprisingly small collection of bottles (ok, maybe I’ve been spoiled by the White Horse, Rake and Evening Star) but I would have expected some more.

What, a fake fire.

Forthright and free with letting one try samples.

Very yummy food.

End result on first glance. Would visit again and look forward to the development of the concept but there’s a lot of room for improvement. Still, love the tankards and local focus.

Last week some of the Beer Viking crew made a couple of visits to Borough to visit the Rake and Utobeer.  We noticed that through Melissa Cole, who’s Taking the Beard Out of Beer and admin for social networking group lovebeer@borough has joined forces with Scottish craft brewers BrewDog for a take-over of the Rake, including a small scale tasting session.

Doc D broke down and got tickets 1 & 2 for the Saturday session and ahead of that I wanted to do some research into BrewDog.

I only got so far because after reading about the Portman Group taking issue with BrewDog’s labeling I became very distracted.

The Portman group has some sort of labeling code and have the following issues with BrewDog beers:

Rip Tide: “The product is described as a “twisted merciless stout” associating its consumption with anti-social behaviour”

Rocker: “Description of the product includes "nourishing foodstuff" and "magic is still there to be extracted from this drink" implying it could enhance mental or physical capabilities”

Punk IPA:  “This product is described as an “aggressive beer” thus associating its consumption with anti-social behaviour”

It’s not just BrewDog they have issues with, apparently they are also don’t like Skull Splitter, a 8.5% beer produced by the Orkney Brewery.

Roger Protz has a good post on the importance of silly names to beer and then updates this with some thoughts on the conflict of interest here.

Headlines are:  Portman Group is a self-funded “independent” advisory board to the UK drinks industry – who will persecuting craft brewers for silly names are upholding that labeling on alco-pops is fine.

The Tank thinks that this stinks.  Just because your owners make an inferior product and this is being shown at the sales till, don’t blame labeling and try to use lawyers and nuances to take out the competition.

Come on people, let’s rally that blitz spirit and start to vote at the tills and boycott the Portman Group members products.  (Or failing that, sign this petition!)