First Beer

Whew! I finally managed to get out to get some beer. On Thursday we took the Harlaxton-Grantham shuttle into town, which dropped us off right near the local supermarket. Morrisons is like a Giant or a Vons in the States. We walked up the street a bit (look right, then left, when crossing the street!), and a made a quick stop at the "local."



The Tollemache is just outside of the Morrison's shopping center, and is part of the Wetherspoon chain of pubs. It's a CAMRA-certified pub with four hand-pulled ales and a few chilled beers on tap. In what may be a marketing ploy designed to appeal to younger drinkers, the hand-pulled beers were labelled "cellar chilled," which is a bit amusing I suppose.

Anyway, for my first beer in England in a few years I had a hand-pulled Greene King Ruddles County. Ruddles was an independent brewery in Langham, Rutland County, with roots going back to 1858. After passing through various ownership it ended up in the hands of the Greene King brewery. They closed Ruddles in 2000 and now use the Ruddles only as a brand name. That's a bit of an unfortunate story because, as with many beers in England, the local water contributed a great deal to the unique character of the beer. So when that brewery closed a unique English beer went with it. However, the old head brewer from Ruddles, Tony Davis, has opened a new brewery called the Grainstore Brewery in Rutland using the original Ruddles recipes, which have a kind of protected status much like a building might get a "Historic Places" designation in the US. I'll have to look for that new beer, which is called Rutland Bitter.

Anyway, the Greene King brewery, which is in Bury St. Edmunds and which my class will tour in a few weeks, makes some of my favorite British beers. Their Ruddles County is a true session beer. It's an English Ale, and to an American palate it's fairly mild. They use a hops called "Bramling Cross," which is an English variety clocking in at between 5 - 7%AA. That hop gives it a mild bitterness with a touch of fruit. The mouthfeel is classic cask ale—soft on the palate, somewhat dry, and easy to drink. At 4.3% ABV it's also a great session beer—you could drink two of these on your way home from work and not notice much effect.

Heading back to Morrison's, I picked up one or two each of the following favorites: Brains SA, Wells Bombardier, Greene King Abbot, Greene King IPA, and Wells Bombardier. Because there was a small gathering of faculty and families for wine, I also picked up a few bottles of wine, and a bottle of Balvenie 12 year old Signature series and didn't get a chance to have any of the beer. More on the wine-fest in another post. For now, those were the first beers.