EuropBEERan

My wife and I took a quick week-long trip to Europe after Christmas visiting England, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain. I was able to a sample a good amount of new-to-me beer during the trip especially in England where in the couple of days we were there we were able to visit four different pubs - three in London and one in the small village of Lacock.

In London we went to three different pubs: The Lyceum Tavern and The Wellington in the theatre district near our hotel, and The Stanhope Arms in the Gloucester Road district.
The three pubs that I visited in London had a good selection of draught beer to choose from including some great cask ales. Two of them were loyal to national brands (Samuel Smith Brewing in Yorkshire for The Lyceum and Fuller Brewing of London for The Stanhope). There are also "free houses" in England which serve a variety of different brews from competing breweries. The Wellington is a free house.

I had the cask-conditioned Old Brewery Pale Ale at The Lyceum. It was good and quite inexpensive. We spent more time at The Wellington the first night we were there and I had four of their offerings that were on tap. They were White Shield IPA (considered a microbrewery but under the Coors-Molson umbrella), Vicious IPA (an American wheat IPA that I was skeptical about but was actually really good), Sharp's Christmas Ale (a nice seasonal brew) and Sharp's Doom Bar Ale (a popular bitter from Sharp's brewing on the west coast of England). My wife also discovered a bottled alcoholic ginger beer called Crabbie's from Scotland that she really liked. I tried it and thought it was OK, but ginger beer has never been my thing. Interestingly, it is served with a glass of ice which is surprising since most beer in Europe isn't served or advertised as "ice cold" at all and you usually have to ask for ice in colas, water, etc. if you want it.

On a day-trip excursion out from London to see Windsor Castle, Stonehenge and the city of Bath, we stopped for lunch at The George Inn pub in the medieval village of Lacock. The George is a beautiful old pub and was loyal to Wadworth Brewing. a regional southern England brewery started back in 1875. I was able to order a pint of their famous 6X Cask Ale with lunch. It was delicious with my fish and chips.

We we got back to London we were dropped off in the Gloucester Road district and we happened upon the Stanhope Arms for dinner. They had a strong collection of cask ales on tap as well and I had three more of from under the Fuller Brewing umbrella. I saved the names of them on our international cell phone, but have yet to retrieve them (dead battery). When I do, I will update this blog entry. BLOG UPDATE (1/17/11): The international cell phone is alive again, and the names of the three beers I had here were: Fullers Spitfire (a bitter), John Smith's Extra Cold (i.e. Extra Smooth) is a bitter as well, and Timothy Taylor's Landlord Pale Ale. Obviously, if I couldn't remember the names, they must not have been too great, but actually they were all good for the most part and I would definitely remember if I didn't like one of them.

The best thing about the beer in England was that it was, surprisngly to me, VERY GOOD...I was very skeptical since many "English" brands sold here in the U.S. are definitely not my favorites, but perhaps it's like Australia where they send Foster's over here because it's awful and keep the good beer for themselves? Either way, I can't wait to come back and check out more pubs and more English beer on tap!

Moving on to Lisbon, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain, was a great experience and each city/country is beautiful and vibrant in its own way. However, beer is not the biggest forte in Iberia. In fact, "cervaza" is "cervaza", pretty much wherever you go. Light, fairly tasteless beer with weak color and body. Now, I enjoy a good cervaza on a hot day in say, the Caribbean, and while the winter temps were mild in Portugal and Spain, it was far from hot. Lisbon's main beer was Super Bock, which is a deceptive name since it was neither "super" nor a "bock" which I associate with a much stronger lager. I guess "So-So Cerveza" doesn't having the selling punch. I had another bottled beer on a pub crawl we did, but didn't catch the name of it, but trust me, it was a cervaza and it could have been Super Bock for all I know. The photo above was taken in a club during our pub crawl and you can see your choices are limited no matter how many taps they present to you.

Again, things did not improve in Barcelona, although I did see a few more names of beer including Estrelle Damm which is pretty good and you can get it here. It's always fun to order "another Damm beer." The only one I partook of in Barcelona was San Miguel and as you can see in the photo above that my wife took, they serve 'em big in Barcelona. It reminds me of a quote from my high school chum, Kim, who once said at an Atlanta Braves game..."Baseball is kind of boring, but at least they serve really big beers!!"

Epilogue: I was able to have another great English beer at Heathrow Airport on the way home during a layover coming back from Barcelona. It was Stone Cold Ale from Lymestone Brewing. a new, small, independent brewery located in Staffordshire. It didn't go real well with my Asian dish I ordered (my fault), but it was a great beer nonetheless.