Another list

Here’s my top 10 ales and some memories and comments as recently reported to CAMRA:

1) Young’s Special. We moved down south in 1974 and my place of work was Devonshire House, which was directly above Green Park tube station. We were on the 5th floor and had magnificent views across Piccadilly to Green Park with Buckingham Palace beyond. At lunchtimes, however, I would head in the opposite direction towards Berkeley Square and in a side street on the north east corner of the square, amongst a number of fine mews properties, lies the Guinea Grill. It had a very fine restaurant to the rear, but the public bar was fairly small and, on a typical summer’s day, the punters would spill out on to the lane with their pints of Young’s Special which would wash down the fabulous “Desperate Dan” steak pies which was my standard lunch fare on perhaps more occasions than I should have.

2) McMullen’s AK Bitter – again another fond memory from our spell down in the South East. We lived in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire and our nearest local was the Bull, which was a McMullen’s pub. Sunday lunchtimes sitting in the pub garden with the kids free to run around and me supping a couple of pints of bitter – magic!

3) Bridgeport bottle conditioned IPA – this is my standard tipple when we go to Oregon each summer to visit our grandchildren. On our first supermarket shopping trip, I head for the beer section to stock up with Bridgeport’s IPA for supping back at our daughter’s home. It’s my favourite bottle conditioned beer and is great in the early evening as the sun goes down and the temperature starts to drop a little, whilst our son-in-law barbeques some of the spoils from his winter hunting season. We’re hoping to return to Bridgeport’s brewery in Portland this summer where we can usually get a couple of their cask conditioned ales on handpump.

4) Betty Stogs – a wonderful Cornish beer from Skinner’s. I guess I grew to love this one initially when our other daughter moved down to Cornwall a couple of years ago, but, strangely, I’ve probably drunk more of it in our golf club at Banchory where it was a very popular and fairly regular feature last summer.

5) Pitchfork – no specific memories – just an excellent ale.

6) Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – another American beer – superb in bottle and pretty good in “draft” – even if it’s keg.

7) Porterhouse Oyster Stout – memories of a trip to Dublin and getting fed up looking for a tasty alternative to G******s, then coming across the Porterhouse brewpub and specifically their Oyster Stout – creamy!

8) Gunner’s Daughter from the Old Cannon brewpub, Bury St Edmunds. Another trip to a wonderful brewpub – we stayed for the weekend and tried all their ales, but this one sticks in the memory. The only slightly sour point of the weekend was when the proprietor cancelled our planned demonstration of brewing on the Monday morning at short notice, leaving us in some doubt whether the beers were actually brewed in the pristine surroundings of the pub or whether this was just a marketing front and the ales were brewed elsewhere.

9) Devanha – had to mention Dixie’s early attempt at establishing a brewery in Aberdeenshire – perhaps ahead of its time, but I still have fond memories of drinking the beer while staying at the Tor-na-Coille hotel in Banchory prior to moving my family up.

10) Really hard to choose a 10th one – there’s so many beers I like that haven’t had a mention so far. Maybe I’ll stay on the nostalgia kick and evoke fond memories of Lorimer’s 80/- drunk in the Marchmont Hotel, Balerno in the late 70’s/early 80’s.