Southern Beer

you are a regionalist

shame on you

Harveys of Lewes.

Harvey's Best Bitter is the absolute nuts.

Used to go to the Royal Oak in Tabard Street every Sunday and have a session on the Harvey's and a nice roast.

Dark Star, Partridge Green, Sussex.

Lovely stuff.

Dark Star make the odd potable beer, but by and large their output is rancid imo

Hophead, for instance, is about as drinkable as washing-up water.

watneys was nice

We have the Young's brewery not far from me in Wandsworth, they do decent beers T.D. A local pub that I go to, the Dulwich Wood House sell their brews and they are all pretty good.

https://www.thewoodhousedulwich.co.uk/

The food is really nice as well, for anyone in my neck of the woods I'd give it a very positive recommendation.

https://www.thewoodhousedulwich.co.uk/menus/

Someone will be on here lamenting Fuller's buying out Gales and how HSB has never been the same since

Jed at 3.8% wtf do you expect?!

Festival and the Original are most agreeable. Both 5%

Abbot Ale is a good drink, where's that brewed?

Suffolk

The only good southern beer is from Cornwall imo.

Slippy .. More than a few bods must of made there way to Dulwich looking for that boozer.. pre sat navs

Greetings from Sussex

Message for Jed - Dark Star is a weird Brewery.   I agree with you about Hophead, and many ale drinkers will, BUT it remains their single best selling beer. Which when you think they make fine beers such as Festival and Sunburst is somewhat strange. It is said that Hophead was the main reason Fullers bought them out earlier this year.

To return to the subject, Harveys of Lewes make very fine beer.  The Sussex best is one of the countries best bitters and the Old is legendary - this years launch is 5th October.  Long Man Brewery is good, and Bedlam (next door to me, or was until the very fine vineyard on which they sat needed more space) make some excellent beer.

For the Cider drinkers among you, try to get hold of Silly Moo from Cowfold (geddit!!) - They feed their cattle on the apple press residue, hence the "silly". Their beef is amazingly good as is available on line (Trenchmore Farm)

In the dark and distant past I seem to recall it was de riguer to order light and bitter in order to put a bit of life in with a light ale.

But good days cooperman, when bitters were dark and didn't taste of Oranges and Elderflower.

Today: Fullers ESB Chiswick. Pure nectar when kept right.

The past:  Dogbolter Bruce's Brewery Firkin pubs.  A lovely strong 6% dark beer.

Fullers 1865 is a great beer, but then again their standard London Pride is a lovely beer if kept properly and with care - so many places in and around London serve it as their token ale offering and don't bother taking proper care of it, so people assume it's vinegary filth everywhere it's served.

Yes a poor beer well kept always beats a good beer that isn't.

The majority of commercial beers are decent, it's the way they're kept that makes the difference between a good drink and a disgusting pint of cloudy slop.

That Dogbolter was a bit lively.. firkin pub in Lewisham

When I used to drink around the pubs in Bath, I was always struck how dirty some of the glasses where.
I always complained.
Yet back in the Midlands I've never been served beer in a dirty glass at all.
I concluded that many of the landlords in Bath were unfit for the job.

Is that a southern trait - serving beer in dirty glasses?

If bubbles stick to the inside of the glass, it's dirty.

For many years I considered Timothy Taylor’s Landlord to be a tremendous beer, full of flavour and something to be sought out whenever possible. The last few pints of it however have been so disappointing. At their flagship pub in Skipton, The Woolly Sheep, they served it far too cold and at a couple of other places I found it so bland and tasteless.
The other one they do, boltmaker, I think, was quite good but really not up to the standard of beers that got me drinking real ales.
My guess is that it’s down to mass production and hop pellets being used.
Oh, for those first few pints of Sam Smiths old brewery that I had way back when. Bateman’s and Wards too. Beers that you would go out of your way for.
Strangely one of the best pints I’ve hah in the last few years was in the wAiting room at Manchester’s Victoria Station, a pint of speckled hen. It tasted like proper beer.

Aug 30, 2018 -- 10:47PM, woundedknee wrote:

Slippy .. More than a few bods must of made there way to Dulwich looking for that boozer.. pre sat navs

Yes indeed, very true! As regards to dogbolter I could drink about 3 or 4 pints and that really was quite enough of that, we used to go to the Phoenix and Firkin in Denmark Hill, it was always very lively at the weekends and plenty of nurses from King's in there so that was never a bad thing

Saddo, talking of Cornwall, have you had spingo fro the blue anchor in Heston. Had a great night there on holiday a few years back.

Proper Job is a lovely pint, just spent a week in cornwall trying all the local beers.

I drink in the midlands and in the sarf

loads of good beer every where and of all sorts of outstanding flavours and ways of presentation

Siren Craft's Broken Dream - Champion Beer of Britain 2018 - slurp