Beers of the Year, 2022
A GLASS of Budvar after puffing and panting up a Bohemian hill, sitting with the remarkably spry Adrian Tierney-Jones, waiting for slower writers to catch us up. Cooper’s Sparkling Ale at the Terminus Hotel in Melbourne, very drunk and jetlagged, with some Tasmanians I’d just met. A lager, the name of which I’ve forgotten, in a packed hotel bar in Basel after Fulham’s 3-2 win there in 2009.
What are the elements that make a beer memorable? I’d say there are four: the venue, the moment, the quality of the beer, and the sense that I’ve achieved something in advance (tbf that might just be Protestantism). A beer in foreign climes? All the better.
On the rare occasion I’ve been asked to name my favourite beer, I’m stumped. I’ve drunk many technically excellent beers, and plenty more that are complex/characterful, but they’re just beers until you put them in context. A beer is only as good as the circumstances in which it takes place.
All of which is to say that the best beers I drank in 2022 are a motley collection of fogeyish favourites, a reflection not only of my increasing decrepitude, but also that these are the beers served in the most interesting places - or those that I find most interesting at the moment. Make of that what you will.
Timothy Taylor Boltmaker, at The Fighting Cock, Bradford
The story I enjoyed producing above all others last year was this one for Pellicle. It basically wrote itself, after a day’s yomping around Bradford with the founders of Bundobust - Marko Husak and Mayur Patel - plus David Bailey, Bundo promo head honcho & top-notch illustrator, and Matthew Curtis, Pellicle co-founder. We ate, we walked, we chatted about this and that, some of which made it into the article.
Of the pubs we visited, my favourite was The Corn Dolly, with its scarlet carpet and Bradford City memorabilia, but I was feeling the effects by then. More memorable was Boltmaker at The Fighting Cock, a spartan but charismatic venue adrift amidst the post-industrial jumble of west Bradford. The beer was so good we had two pints when we only had time for one.
Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, at The Beacon Hotel, Sedgley
By the time I reached The Beacon Hotel I’d walked 30 miles in two days, through Netherton and Blackheath and Brierley Hill. There’s no better way of getting to know somewhere quickly than using your feet, and The Black Country is stubbornly unknown to those of us who don’t live in those parts. Neatly, this is reflected in the availability of its tastiest beers, notably Bathams, nigh-on impossible to find elsewhere.
The same is true, largely, of Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild. One of the last things I needed for this story was an interview with some Mild lovers, and I thought The Beacon Hotel, home to Sarah Hughes, would be the perfect place to get it. I was right - the trio of pals quoted at the top of the story were enthusiastic, funny, welcoming and genuinely eccentric. They were as good an advert for the benefits of going to the pub with your pals as you’ll ever find.
Spaten Helles, St Emmeramsmühle, Munich
I had one key objective when I went to Munich in May: to drink all six of the city’s major-brewery Helles in beer gardens. (spoiler: I achieved it, well done me). The most enjoyable moment came on the afternoon of Thursday 19, a day of delightful warmth and sunlight, when every second pedestrian seemed to be gulping from a bottle of Augustiner Helles and young Muncheners lay hugger-mugger on the sandbanks beside the sluggish Isar.
In the morning I’d been to the Stadtmuseum (v good) and interviewed Gregor Fransson, so I decided to celebrate by walking across the river and up a hill to the Hofbraukeller for lunch (Nürnberger Rostbratwurst, Hofbrau Helles). After that, I spent an hour and a half strolling through the Englischer Garten and along the Isar until I reached St Emmeramsmühle, a restaurant and beer garden about four miles north-east of the city centre. It was perfect: semi-rural, great service, chestnut trees, a smattering of other customers, the whole thing knee deep in Bavarian kitsch. Spaten’s Hell was crisp, lemon-bitter and very refreshing, the perfect beer on a perfect day.
Senate Beer, Heurich House Museum, Washington DC
I don’t often go to panel events because I find them dull, but there’s always an exception, and its name is/was ‘The Complexity of Innovation’. This took place at the Heurich House Museum in Washington DC, when I was there in late June. The panelists were black brewers and advocates, and the discussion was a window into a world I knew nothing about.
Afterwards, I spoke to Courtney Rominiyi, one of four founders of DC’s Black Brew Movement, over a beer in Heurich House’s verdant and delightful back garden. Another eye-opener. The beer I drank, Senate, is an adjunct lager, made in DC until the 1950s and revived recently by the Museum and Right Proper Brewing Co, a DC brewery. Like DC itself, it’s way more interesting and enjoyable than it has any right to be.
Bass, Devonshire Arms and Coopers Tavern, Burton-on-Trent
The closure of the National Brewery Centre is not good news, even if it had been looking very threadbare of late. For writers, the (hopefully temporary) disappearance of the archives is a minor disaster: there’s so much good stuff there that shines light not only on Britain's brewing story, but also on the social history of this country.
I was in Burton in April to research a book idea that may/may not see the light of day some time in the not too distant future; afterwards I decided to reward myself for a day’s hard archive-bothering with three pints of Burton’s legendary beer, Bass, in three different pubs. They were: The Devonshire Arms (sparkled, very good); The Roebuck (sparkled, too cold); and the Cooper’s Tavern (gravity, very good). The pint at the Devonshire was the prettier but the one at the Cooper’s was good all the way to the bottom of the glass. And that, I believe, is the sparkler debate settled.
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