You are currently browsing the daily archive for July 27th, 2008.
What a shame. After another challenging week in the office I was looking forward to a day at one of my favourite annual events, the Helston Beer Festival. And come the day, Mrs N stays in bed with stomach pains and I become ICO childcare. Ah well, way of the world (and I did get to see Kung Fu Panda, which was actually a pretty good film!).
Having promised to write some words for The West Briton, I popped along today and chatted to organiser Julian Pinto about how it had gone. And it seems I missed a belter. There were 36 beers on, all Cornish, tasted by about 450 people over three days. First to run dry was Lizard 2000 (4.5%), a golden hoppy brew created by Alan Hinde at Coastal Brewery, Redruth, and named after the organisers of the festival, who formed in Milennium year and raise money for charities and good causes in the Lizard and West Cornwall area. Second to disappear was Skinner’s Cornish Blonde, a 5% wheat beer that’s very popular during those years when we actually have a Cornish summer!
This was also the first beer festival (I think) to feature beers from the Penzance Brewing Company, aka Star Inn, Crowlas, landlord Peter Elvin. PZ Gold (4.3%) and Crowlas Bitter (4%) were both very well received, apparently.
Proving the holiday season is well under way down here (as the empty supermarket shelves also testify) there was even a couple in attendance from New York.
The William IV has been re-opened in Truro after a £700,000 refit, and jolly good it’s looking to. I was lucky enough to be invited along for the ‘private view’, the evening before the official re-opening, and the great and good from owner St Austell Brewery were all there, as well as several of the contractors who had worked on the refurb and some local business people and dignitaries, including Truro mayor Susan Callen, who officially re-opened the premises.
Truro needs more pubs. There are plenty of bars, but very few decent pubs. Admittedly, the William veers more towards restaurant than boozer, but it has a good, comfortable bar area, and excellent beer garden with new stonework and decking.
The beer was on top form. Although there are six handpumps, there was a choice of just three beers, repeated twice. There was, of course, the ubiquitous Tribute (4.2%), but the other two are less often seen in St Austell pubs: the erroneously named IPA at 3.4%, a great, light session beer – a pale ale, yes, but by no means a gutsy, heavily hopped India pale ale; and Proper Job, again another cracking beer, which was more in the proper IPA style before it had its ABV cut from 5.5% to 4.5%. It’s still delightfully hoppy, though, golden and quite robust. I stuck on it all evening and wasn’t disappointed.
Chatting to head brewer Roger Ryman he confirmed what many of us St Austell fans knew already, that he’s been tweaking the flavours of two of the oldest beers in the brewery’s portfolio, Tinners (3.7%) and HSD (5%), in both cases very much for the better. The biggest difference is in the HSD. What was quite a dark and sweet, malty brew is now a bit lighter, with more of the malt creating subtle strawberry fruit flavours, similar to those in the blessed Marston’s, sorry Ringwood, Old Thumper (5.6%).
I’ll be dropping back into the William regularly, firstly because I am a sucker for the Proper Job (even at the reduced ABV), and to see if the very high standard of beer quality on that VIP evening is maintained. If it is the William could prove a jewel in the crown of the St Austell estate.
