Beer Compurgation

For a few months Manchester has sounded like Salad Fingers with its constant repetition of the word Tap. There’s going to be a Tap. There’s going to be two Taps. There’s already a Taps that has nothing to do with these Taps. One Tap is owned by those that brought you other Taps and Tapped but the other Tap isn’t related to other Taps except that one Tap in London. TAPS. Friday 20 th March finally saw the launch of one of these Taps – the Piccadilly Tap on Station Approach – albeit a soft launch. My understanding is this is the Bloomsbury Leisure Tap , not the Pivovar one that was set to launch in Ancoats, but honestly my head is so full of taps I stopped caring weeks ago.  I’d read a few criticisms by Tweet of the Piccadilly Taps feeling unfinished, which is rather pointless considering it is unfinished and they have been very honest about that fact. It wasn't until Thursday though that I made my inaugural entrance to the place. It's fairly easy to walk past t

New Zealand became the new U.S.A. for a fortnight. A large shipment of Kiwi beer to our country led to talk from every bottle outlet here talking about one nation's beer for a couple of weeks. One beer was talked about more than others. There were Tweets. There were mentions. There was what is now often referred to as "hype." There was a fire of discussion around the arrival of a  Double I.P.A. on our shores that I hadn't expected.  I was surprised because Epic Brewery's Hop Zombie came to Britain last year - or at the very least to the Beermoth in Manchester - with comparitively little fanfare. Beermoth tweeted about it and exclaimed it's virtues, but not so much as to suggest it was so different to the next big imported double IPA. By the time I arrived at the shop last year, the beer had sold out and I left with an excellent Port Brewing Hop-15 Ale without grudge.  This is where I lost my footing. With such little celebration, I didn't di

When I wrote some musings last week about my pub and its link but distance from the more modern craft beer bar, I wasn’t planning a follow up post, hence the lack of pictures for this one. But then, I went out with my Uncle Dave and a few others of his generation in Dewsbury last Friday.  I’ve written about my Uncle Dave before; attacked him even, in a post in 2012 where he was the scapegoat of a post about old attitudes to new beer. The post was rash but necessary, as it was an infuriating evening of drinking with people with negative attitudes to beer dev elopment. I’ve come a long way since then. Beer has come a long way too. And, in his own way, my Uncle Dave has too.  Dave is approaching 60 and is a lifelong ale enthusiast. He’s been involved with his local CAMRA branch for twenty years, helping to arrange beer festivals and was even branch chairman for a while. He also has a very old school attitude to the Beer world. He doesn’t like many of the new bars or new br

I imagine people are bored of me writing about Stalybridge Buffet Bar now. I imagine the staff there are very bored of me. But it’s my regular haunt. I’m not a city dweller because of it, like many of my blogging compatriots, and because of that I see a very different side to the modern beer scene.  For those that don’t know, Stalybridge is a town approximately 10 miles from Manchester City Centre and the Buffet Bar is the long standing pub on the train station.  Stalybridge Buffet Bar is well known for its cask beer. After a bit of a decline (beer-wise) a few years ago, it has found improvement by joining the Beerhouses company  around 2012. It is the ideal, what some might call, “CAMRA” pub in many ways. It permanently has 8 cask ale pumps and 2 real cider pumps.  One cask ale pump is always devoted to a stout, one to a mild and one to Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. One is also devoted to local unsung hero brewery Millstone – a favourite of mine since I first started drinking.