“If you could go back in time to visit any pub in history, where would you go?” Catherine asked.
We were, inevitably, in a pub at this point. Well. In a pub’s beer garden anyway.
It was an interesting question. Any time in history. The possibilities! Some sort of Medieval tavern perhaps? A Victorian Gin Palace in their absolute hey-day. Some sort of rural travellers inn where the menu consisted of a bit of meat, some gravy and a massive hunk of bread. I could go back in time and see what one of my favourite pubs was like in the past. What would the Red Lion in Ealing have been like when it first opened? Or the Hatters in Marple? Fascinating! The possibilities! The questions!
All these thoughts were swirling through my mind. And I couldn’t choose.
And then it came to me.
I’d go back to the 1920s or 1930s and visit two, very similar pubs. One in Carlisle. And one not in Carlisle. And I’d compare the differences.
I can imagine a puzzled look on most peoples faces on reading that. But there’s a reason. See, in 1916 the brewing, distribution and sale of alcohol in three areas of the country was nationalised. Commonly known as the Carlisle Experiment, it saw the state take control of pubs, brewing and more. And though Carlisle’s the headline name and the biggest area affected, it also happened in Gretna, Cromarty Firth and Enfield.
It was, inevitably, related to World War I. Armament factories were built in Gretna to supply ammunition to the British Army. Workers flooded to Carlisle and many partook in binge drinking. This resulted in wild drinking and people working with explosives who had big hangovers.
The wild drinking isn’t what I would be interested in seeing. More the aftermath.
The State Management Scheme saw the government step in. Pubs and office licences were nationalised. The Carlisle Old Brewery, founded in 1756, found itself run by the state.
The Enfield scheme ended in 1922, but – amazingly – it took until 1973 for the State Management Scheme in Carlisle to end. The pubs and off licences were sold off. The brewery was similarly privatised, ending up in the hands of Theakstons in 1974. Theakstons later got taken over by Matthew Brown & Co. of Blackburn, and the Carlisle brewery was closed for good in 1989.
The state running pubs and breweries? Why go back in time and view this clear dystopian nightmare, you may wonder.
Simple. As part of the scheme, a number of policies were introduced. The biggest was the concept of “disinterested management”. Under this, the pub managers had no incentive to sell alcohol. Indeed, one of the goals of the whole project was to reduce alcohol consumption. Managers were, therefore, civil servants who received a wage. They got no bonuses for selling alcohol. But they did have incentives to do other things like increasing food sales.
And that was not all. Pubs were refurbished to make them more welcoming. Dark and gloomy spaces were opened up. Pubs became more leisure spaces rather than just somewhere to drink alcohol. And the pubs were not to be just the preserve of men. Comfortable spaces for women were introduced, encouraging a wider clientele.
Something started changing under the State Management Scheme. It was something that was eventually picked up by the breweries who – at that time – owned most of the pubs in Britain. To me, it sounds very much like the birth of the modern pub.
To see all this at the start, well that feels like it would be fascinating. As would going back to see the comparison. What were other pubs at that time doing? What was the experience like? How did the beer differ? Yes, that would be interesting all right.
If you’d like to know more about the Carlisle State Management Scheme, there is an excellent website created by the Carlisle City Centre Business Group called The State Management Story. It includes a full history of the scheme, details of the pubs, and recollections from people involved.
The photograph at the top of this piece is of the Bridge End Inn pub in Dalston, one of the pubs that was taken over by the State Management Scheme. By complete coincidence, and unaware of its history, I passed it in 2009 whilst doing the Cumbria Way. Sadly for this article, I didn’t actually go inside.
]]>We’re currently having our kitchen redone. Originally planned for 2020, it’s quite major work. An unused chimney breast has been removed to make more space, and simplify the layout.
Along the way, we’ve discovered lots of interesting things. Not least that the previous kitchen was installed about 22 years ago. That the wiring of the kitchen lights was a complete mess. That at some point the ceiling had some dreadful polystyrene tiles on it (some of them are still there, although now boxed in and well hidden away.) That half the ‘insulated’ roof to the single story kitchen extension was in fact insulated with 3cm deep polystyrene, and the other half not insulated at all (it’s now VERY insulated.) And that a built in cupboard that was next to the chimney breast and that had been boarded over, held a French glass chicken shaped egg cup.
What’s fascinated me most has been the paint that’s been uncovered. As the house was built in 1884 it must have had many layers of paint applied in the kitchen over the years.
At some point the wall was skimmed with new plaster, then papered over, with the paper painted. the kitchen was painted a the medium, slightly dull blue here. But we’ve found four other different paint colours, hidden underneath.
This terra cotta colour paint must have been pretty old because it was found above the line of the old suspended ceiling. Our house is Victorian with high ceilings, but at some point the ceiling was lowered probably because the roof of the extension slopes down. By lowering the ceiling, it would run mostly flat all the way across the length of the room, and hide the girder that would have been put in when the extension was done. We don’t know when the extension was done, but best guess is 70s or 80s. This shade will remain hidden away for some future owners to admire as it’s still there under the new suspended ceiling.
With so many modern houses being beige and cream, it’s easy to forget that bold colours once reigned supreme. Although I’m less than convinced that lilac was a good colour for a kitchen. Some of this will also survive as it’s going to be hidden behind new wall cabinets.
Is this bright blue any better? Alas future generations may not get to puzzle over this one as it’s due to be re-skimmed and then painted.
There’s been traces of this one visible for a while, revealed by chips in the blue. It must have been the colour of the kitchen before the dull blue. But blimey, this is a bold colour for a kitchen. I can’t say I’m convinced at all.
What will future generations think of our choice I wonder? Well the ceiling’s going to be an off-white, and the walls ‘Jasmin White’. Dull, staid and boring? Don’t worry, there will be colour. The new kitchen cabinets are going to be green.
]]>At the time I worked out there was 104 hours of radio schedules with Tony Dibbin’s name next to them. Since then, there’s been some changes. Tony’s no longer on weekend overnights on Greatest Hits Radio. Nor Easy Radio UK because that doesn’t exist any more. But that’s not to say Tony’s taking a breather. Oh no.
Nope. There’s now 107 hours of shows with his name next to them. I did a chart to prove it. Each weekday has 19 hours, so that’s a total of 95. Then six on Saturdays and another six on Sundays.
What will 2024 bring? Personally I’m hedging my bets on the launch of Radio Dibbin.
Look, I knew my Dibbin schedule would be out of date at some point. But Nation Radio changing all their schedules just TWO weeks after this post was published, well it makes me wonder if they did it deliberately.
Still, now we can do a Dibbin Change Analysis. Dragon Radio show pushed back an hour. Nation Radio show extended by an hour and pushed back to Drivetime (although the show is no longer broadcast in Wales.) Nation 80s changed to run 2-6pm instead. No longer in the morning have you a choice of three different shows.
Still, an extra five hours of Dibbin a week. But what’s this? No more Tony on Nation Radio at weekends? Well that’s ten hours less a week. So overall now there’s 102 hours of Radio Dibbin.
No doubt it will all change again in January…
]]>Warning. There may be spoilers about TV episodes broadcast forty years ago. Proceed at your own risk.
Television programmes don’t tend to last long enough for you to have watched it as a child, and still be watching it decades later. But then most television programmes aren’t Doctor Who.
In case you haven’t noticed, 2023 is the year we get to celebrate 60 years of Doctor Who. Especially 23 November, the exact day of the very first episode.
Whilst Doctor Who has not been on continuously over those years, it’s still been a big part of my life in television.
To celebrate, the BBC recently unleashed a whole host of Doctor Who content on iPlayer. For the first time, scores of Classic Doctor Who was made available on the service. Along with spin-offs like the Sarah Jane Adventures, Torchwood, Class and, of course, K-9 and Company.
And, of course, I’ll be watching some of it. I have been watching some of it. Especially Classic Doctor Who. But where to jump in? Probably some of the earliest episodes I remember watching when I was young. Ones I haven’t seen since I watched them all those years ago.
This got me thinking. What were those episodes? Just what were my earliest Doctor Who memories? And how old was I at the time?
I have vague recollections of Peter Davison era episodes. Seeing the Fifth Doctor in his odd Edwardian cricketer outfit. But did I actually watch them at the time, or am I remembering them from some later repeat? I simply don’t know.
However there are two very vivid Doctor Who memories I have from my childhood. Ones from specific stories, that allow me to be far more confident on what I watched.
Two are Dalek related. Possibly my first encounter with the Daleks. It’s of Davros’s disembodied head in a glass tube. Turning round to look at things. I wouldn’t have known of Davros at the time. But there was something rather sinister about it. Especially when it was revealed that the head was simply a clone of Davros, not the real one.
And then, there was a disembodied head, being integrated into the shell of a glass Dalek frame. A head that spoke. It looked so creepy. Still does, to me.
Both these memories came from Revelation of the Daleks. Davros has set himself up on the Planet Necros as ‘The Great Healer’, in a funeral home called Tranquil Repose. The galaxy is in famine, and Davros is busy secretly converting humans into food, or into new Daleks.
Some years ago I got Revelation of the Daleks on DVD, I think as a gift. I remember watching it afresh, not really remembering the episode. And then suddenly getting the flashbacks to those two memories. At that point, I’d rather assumed those episodes were Peter Davison era, but actually they’re from the end of Series 22 with Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor.
The first episode of Revelation of the Daleks was broadcast on BBC One Saturday 23 March 1985. At 5:20 in the evening. The second, a week later. I would have been 7½ at the time.
According to BBC Genome (a website that includes Radio Times listings up to 2009), the two 45 minute episodes were later split into four 25 minute episodes, and broadcast again in 1993 on BBC Two on Friday evenings in March
The obvious question is, which did I watch? It’s quite possible I watched both. But So vivid is the memory that I’m pretty sure I watched the 1985 edition. I doubt it would have had the same impact when I was 15. But I can’t be sure from this alone.
However, the third Doctor Who memory, well that helps determine it even more.
This is from a Cyberman episode. There’s a point when the Cybermen are in some ship or control room or something. And in the background, on the walls, are human beings in the process of being converted into Cybermen.
Hmm. I sense a theme.
Unlike Revelation of the Daleks, this wasn’t a story I knew much about. Nor had I thought much about it since. At least not until recently. But poking around in iPlayer, I found it. Attack of the Cybermen. A story where the Cybermen are holed up plotting things in the sewers of London. And other complicated stuff that simply reading Wikipedia’s description, doesn’t really help understanding of.
The first episode of Attack of the Cybermen hit BBC One at 5:20 on 5 January 1985. And according to BBC Genome, never got a repeat. Nope, not once. Assuming Genome is correct, there’s only one point in my life I can ever have seen that episode. In January 1985 when I was aged 7¼.
I was THAT young? I think to my own children. As I type, the youngest is almost 7½. Would I want her watching the forthcoming 60th anniversary Doctor Who specials, at her age? The age I was when I definitely watched Doctor Who.
And that’s where it was. Except that it wasn’t. Because I wrote this and left it unpublished for a short while, due to wanting to get some screenshots. Which I promptly failed to get.
It was during this time I realised there was an even earlier memory. One of regeneration.
Of the Doctor lying on the floor. Of heads spinning round him telling him not to die. Don’t die Doctor. Don’t die.
And then another face appears. That of the Master. Saying Die Doctor, Die.
Again I didn’t know which episode it was from until now. I couldn’t even remember the Doctor involved. It was only when I re-watched the regeneration from Colin Baker to Sylvester McCoy that I realised I’d remembered the Fifth Doctor’s demise. (And yes I know it was McCoy in a wig.)
Part four of The Caves of Androzani was broadcast on Friday 16 March 1984.
It was repeated in 1993, as well. But again, given the impact it had, and the fact I remember Peter Davison, I’m pretty sure it would have been the original I would have remembered. When I was six and a half.
It’s a strange thought. Yet, of course, we all know that the foundation of Doctor Who is as a family show, watched by many, many eight year olds. And often, some much, much younger. Just as it always has been.
One thing I never did though was hide behind the sofa. That never happened in our house. I do know that absolutely for sure. Why? Because it wasn’t a huge living room, and as such, the sofa (or settee as it was always referred to) was always right up against the wall…
]]>In the Spring of 2021 new residents appeared in our garden. Four chickens.
Each was a different breed making identification quite easy. There was Raisin with her elegant black and emerald green feathers. Bluebell, large and dominating, with her grey and black body. Bronzey, your classic brown hen. And Snowy, all white. Yes, the children named them. And Bluebell is a Bluebell breed in case you’re wondering.
Chickens are very hierarchical, and everyone in a flock has to have their rank. It’s called the Pecking Order. Yes it is. And it really does involve pecking. When a flock comes together, they’ll peck each other to establish dominance. The other bird will either fight back and challenge the peck, or will submit to it. Eventually everything calms down but it can get a little fraught.
Raisin, being a bit of a grumpy and aggressive hen, took the highest spot. Bluebell, a rather gentle giant, took number two pretty much (as far as we can tell) on her size. She towered over all of them, and Raisin was the only one to try to take her on. Snowy was a bit timid so ended up at the bottom, leaving Bronzey in number 3.
Snowy always seemed to be a bit of a sickly bird. She’d rest a lot more than the others, and seem to get more ill. In hindsight she may have had some underlying health conditions we didn’t know about. Although we took her to the vets, it’s difficult to diagnose chicken illnesses. The vets have to try things and see what works. Sadly Snowy started in a downward spiral, and died almost two years after she’d arrived with us.
Three months later, Raisin came down with something – possibly a virus. There’s a lot of weird chicken viruses. Unlike Snowy’s slower descent, Raisin’s went rapidly downhill. Despite our best efforts to help her, she died, resting in our garden.
And then there were too. You can imagine how things felt when – a month or so later – Bronzey fell ill. Thankfully she pulled through, although I wouldn’t say she made a full recovery. She’s been a bit less energetic since.
Thankfully Bronzey and Bluebell have always been very close friends, spending a lot of time with each other. But with just two chickens left happily pottering around our garden, we decided to look into bringing in some new hens. The idea was to adopt some rescue hens. These are hens from farms that lay eggs we buy and eat. Hens are most prolific layers in their first 18-24 months of age, and farms will regularly refresh their flocks. Which leaves a lot of hens suddenly homeless.
Many go to slaughter. But there are also several organisations that take the hens and seek to re-home them. It seemed the least we could do to give a nice retirement to some hens. We got ours from the British Hen Welfare Trust, and as it turned out, the next re-homing day was for a batch of birds who had lived all their lives in cages.
Yes, cages still exist in egg farming in Britain. Not battery cages. They were banned. These are “enriched cages”. But they’re still cages, the hens still live their lives densely packed into barns, and have very little space. They never see soil and grass. They never see sun. And then when they’ve outlived their productive working lives, they head to the chop. Unless they’re lucky enough to be re-homed in a nice garden. I didn’t know cages were still used in egg farming in Britain, but it made me want to re-home these hens even more.
Now you can’t just plonk three new chickens in with two existing chickens and expect everything to be fine. Well, imagine if three strangers suddenly moved into your house without warning. There’s various ways of integrating everyone, but as we had space, we decided to initially keep the new hens apart from the originals so they could get to each other. For the first day, Bronzey and Bluebell seemed very stressed, cawking and crowing a lot. The new ones were a bit stressed by their lives being upended. By having space. A new home. By seeing the sky. But they quickly settled in, established their own pecking order. As I type, they still haven’t been formally named, so the names are provisional. They’re all brown which makes life harder. But Big Wattles (for she has big wattles) quickly took dominance. Number 2 took the number 2 position. And Tiny came in at the bottom. Tiny’s a little smaller than the others, funnily enough.
Over the course of the week, there were a few battles and attempted pecks from Bronzey through the fencing. But the fencing kept the hens far enough apart that nothing could be achieved. Bluebell, in contrast, did her giant act. Casually wandering around, staring at the new hens, making herself look big, but doing nothing in particular. She’d never been particularly aggressive. During one of Snowy’s sick phases, there was some aggression from Bronzey and Raisin. Flocks try to push out ill birds to protect the rest. And whilst Bluebell would sometimes joined in, she never initiated it herself. We found we could put Bluebell with Snowy and the two would be fine.
After a week it was time to try and get the two flocks to mix – initially for an hour just before sunset. We nervously watched as the new and originals, rather expecting the worst. There was a bit more pecking from Bronzey but nothing too bad, and everything seemed reasonably calm. Truthfully we’d been expecting Big Wattles and Bronzey to clash, but the two kept away from each other. Mostly the two flocks kept away from each other.
The next night we tried again. This time Bluebell deliberately close to the others, and “casually” ate amongst them. Just ate whilst showing her huge size. The new ones were wary but didn’t do anything. Bluebell’s position at the top seemed secure.
That just left Bronzey’s position. And it seemed she was going to go in for the “kill”. She started stalking the new hens round the garden. Quietly, casually walking up to then, then rapidly pouncing and pecking. Around human’s she’s an incredibly docile chicken. Happy to be picked up and cuddled. With other hens, she can be merciless. Twice she took on two at once. At one point she was holding down one of the new hens, her foot holding down the other’s neck.
We’d expected Big Wattles to really challenge Bronzey’s position – she’d seemed by far the most dominating of the new three. But she didn’t even try to take on Bronzey. Bronzey’s dominance seemed absolutely secure.
And then she just wandered off to the coup, and went to bed. Bluebell then followed her, as if to check she was all right and provide some moral support.
Over the next week, things slowly calmed down. Bronzey slowly calmed down. Eventually we could let them all mingle all the time, without being concerned that we might wake up to a chicken bloodbath. But for a short while at least, it seemed like we’d created a brutal, silent, killer of a chicken.
Bringing three former caged birds into our home has, without a doubt, caused some disruption. But it’s not been without its rewards. Three chickens who had lived all their lives in dimly lit barns, stuck in small cages, now have freedom. Chickens who have never seen the sun, don’t know what rain is, have never pecked at grass and soil, can now do all that. We’ve seen them stare at rain in wonder. Enjoy scratching at the ground looking for food. Basically doing what chickens should always be able to do. It’s wonderful to have given them that chance.
There are several organisations that rehome chickens from farms – from free range farms, barn chickens, and, of course, caged hens. Our rescue chickens came via the British Hen Welfare Trust who have a nationwide network of rehoming sites.
]]>Last year I made a batch of Boddingtons Bitter following a recipe from 1945. And for good measure, I wanted to compare it to modern Boddies. To do that, I needed to buy some of the stuff.
At one time I might have been able to walk into an off-licence and buy a single can of Boddingtons. In London there were loads of little corner stores that would sell individual cans. But where I live now, most of the convenience stores are off-shoots of the big supermarkets. And if they stock a beer like Boddies at all, they only do so by selling a pack of four. I didn’t need four, but there was no real choice.
So what to do with four cans of Boddies that, to be honest, I didn’t really want? Well one was used to sample the brew before doing my comparison test. Just to get an idea of what modern Boddingtons tasted like. A second was used to do the comparison between my 1945 era recreation, and the modern version. A third was drunk later just to check my feelings about the modern version were as I thought they were. They were.
That left one can left. What to do with one can of Boddingtons?
Why, brew up another historical version of Boddingtons and do another comparison, of course!
As I mentioned in my post about the 1945 recreation, there was a time when Boddingtons was held in very high regard in the Manchester area. That it was a classic ale, loved by all. But that something changed in the 70s. Or 80s. Or even 90s, depending who you spoke to. Whatever way, it was before my time. So when I came across a recipe called Tony’s Pre-1970 Boddington’s Clone, I thought I’d have to give it a go.
The recipe was devised by Tony Leach, a homebrewer in Stockport, and apparently thrashed out with advice and information from members of a message board. And the goal of it was to get the thumbs up from local drinkers who remembered Boddingtons at its apparent hayday.
Slavish historical accuracy in the recipe wasn’t part of the success criteria. But a few years after Tony’s recipe was published on the Boak and Bailey website, Ron Pattinson published a recipe from 1971 for Boddingtons IP (as the beer was known internally) based on historical brewing records. And there are definitely similarities between the brewhouse version and Tony’s clone two.
There’s one interesting difference and that’s the yeast. It’s widely believed that Boddington’s house yeast (or a version of it) is available commercially in the form of Wyeast 1318 London Ale III. Even if the manufacturer says it came from a traditional London brewery. Anyway most Boddingtons clone recipes use this yeast. It’s a liquid yeast and a bit pricy.
But based on the advice of someone who used to work at the Boddingtons brewery, Tony’s recipe goes for a dried yeast called Nottingham.
Now here I’m going to take a tiny detour into the world of yeast. Because I find yeast fascinating.
There are hundreds of commercial yeasts out there on the market. Yeasts for baking. Yeasts for wine making. Yeasts for brewing beer. Yeasts for cider. And more. They all have one thing in common. If you trace them back far enough, each one started off as a wild yeast. Micro-organisms that are in the air all around us.
Over time different strains of wild yeasts became cultivated, with breweries having their own “house strain”.
When companies started selling yeast commercially, they obviously had to get a source for their yeast. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they got beer yeast from different breweries. Every commercial yeast on sale comes from a brewery somewhere.
The source of many is known, or, at least, a highly educated guess has been made. Both Wyeast and White Labs sell Whitbread and Ringwood branded yeasts, where the yeast directly maps to the name of a brewery. Given there’s only major brewery in Southwold, it’s pretty much a given that “Southwold Ale Yeast” came ultimately from the Adnams brewery. And “Yorkshire Square Yeast” refers to a way of brewing beer using a two storey fermentation system called a Yorkshire Square. Only a handful of breweries still use this technique.
Even if the source of the yeast is a bit vaguer, you often get an rough idea of where it came from. Irish Ale Yeast is from Ireland for example. And if there’s no geographical hint on the name, then there’s usually a clue on what it is normally used for. Cream Ale yeast. Heffe Weizen yeast. And so on.
But not Nottingham.
Aha, you’re going to say. Nottingham! That’s in the East Midlands! It’ll be a brewery there, surely! C’mon Bowden, sort your stuff out!
Well it’s more complicated like that. The source of Nottingham is completely unknown. Apparently if you ask Lallemand, the company who manufacturer it, they were approached by a company wanting a dry yeast to put in their new range of home brew beer kits. They gave the scientists a multi-strain yeast culture, from which four strains were isolated, and then manufactured. Three of those yeasts are still made today. London, Windsor, and Nottingham. Where that culture of yeast came from, has been completely lost in the midst of time.
Where the names of the yeasts came from is another mystery. Well besides one. The company making the homebrew kits had – and still does – its headquarters in Nottingham. That company was Boots.
Who knows where the yeast came from, but the reason we can buy Nottingham yeast is all because of a chain of chemists. Strange world, eh?
Anyway, back to the Boddingtons recipe. Why Nottingham? Has it all the right qualities? Or, at least, is close enough? Or was it the only homebrew yeast that ex-brewery member of staff had ever heard of. Don’t know, but if that person reckoned Nottingham was the way to go, I wasn’t going to argue. Especially because it’s a dried yeast and about half the price of the Wyeast version used in most Boddies clone.
As with my 1945 Boddingtons, my plan was to taste test against modern Boddies. This coming from a can with a widget to give it that creamy head. My own beer was served from a pressure barrel, which hopefully gives a similar result.
Pouring out the beer there was again a difference in colour. My home-brewed version is lighter; the “real” stuff more golden. A similar thing happened with the 1945 clone, and again I suspect an element of colouring went into the beer in the past.
Aroma? Canned modern Boddies has a stronger whiff going up the nose, but I would say mine has a bit more of a delicate, fruity flavour whereas modern Boddies smells more, well I’m not sure I can describe it. So I’ll say bitter.
On to taste shortly, but before we get there we’ll do a quick mention of mouth feel. Because here’s a noticeable difference. There’s a slight sparkle in my beer, whereas the canned beer feels smooth and a bit flat. This is no doubt related to the fact that my beer has yeast in the barrel so is a living drink. The yeast continually reacts over time, producing carbon dioxide and giving that, well, sparkle. In contrast the Boddingtons feels smoother, a little creamier. But ultimately flat.
And then there’s the taste. And whilst I don’t have any of the 1945 version left to compare, there’s definitely a difference between that, Tony’s recipe, and the modern version. The 1945 one was more floral and delicate. Tony’s Clone recipe is drier. It’s curiously dry. Makes you want to drink some more almost immediately. And has a more bitter taste. This will be related to hops I’m sure. The hops are very different between the two. Reading some comments about old style Boddingtons, it seems the dryness is something really loved. And it’s also completely absent from the modern version.
Tony’s Clone really hits the inside of your mouth when you drink it. Really makes itself noticeable. There’s an intense aftertaste. And that dryness. Whereas Modern Boddies does, well, not very much at all. It simply goes down.
When I compared Modern Boddies with the 1945 version, I mentioned about how the ingredients seemed to fighting against each other. With the older one, they flowed. Comparing the Tony recipe with the current one, I don’t get that seem feeling. In some respects they are a lot closer together. But Tony’s clone really has the edge. It makes an impact when you drink it. You notice it. And that’s simply not the case with the modern version.
This may be controversial, maybe even heretical, to say though, but if I had to guess out of the two which would be one of the most popular bitters in the country, I know which it would it would be. Modern Boddingtons is pretty inoffensive. Mind, in a world where IPAs are really popular, the Tony’s recipe arguably could have a lot of fans too. I can see why many people loved that old school Boddies. It would have been very different to what else was out there, yet would be familiar today to anyone who wants a really hoppy IPA.
I know what I prefer out of the two. I’ll be quite happy never to have a can of Boddingtons in my life after this. But equally I’m not sure I’ll ever brew Tony’s Clone ever again. It was an interesting experiment, but it’s not the best of the beers I’ve brewed. I’m glad I did it. But ultimately it’s far from the favourite beer I’ve ever brewed. I’d rather move on to something else, preferably a bit less dry.
That 1945 version though? That I definitely will do again. Because that was stunning.
]]>A few miles from my house, in the heart of Stockport, sits the Robinsons Brewery. It’s a pretty large regional brewery, brewing beer and running pubs across the north west of England and the north of Wales. They’ve been around a long time with a history dating back to 1838. Not surprisingly then, they own a lot of the pubs in the town of Marple that I live in.
One of my favourites is the Hatters Arms. It’s a small stone built pub, created in the 1920s at the end of an older , split into three rooms. Two were original, the third the result of an extension. There’s loads of wood panelling, and a bar in the corridor. One of the rooms includes old bell pushes on the wall that customers would have used to get served without going to the main bar. The Hatters has been extended and refurbished over the years, yet the more modern decor in some parts seem to feel thoroughly in keeping with the heritage elements. And its partitioned nature is a reminder of what pubs used to be like. It’s also surprisingly quiet at times, even on a Saturday night. I never quite understand why. It’s lovely.
Recently I was in said pub on a Saturday night. It was getting close to home time, but I had time for one more drink. And staring at the bar I spotted the bottles of Old Tom. Old Tom’s a barley wine. A strong ale (8.5%) that comes in 330ml bottles, first brewed in 1899.
On their website, Robinsons describe it like this:
Old Tom is almost as old as the brewery itself. Dubbed ‘The original craft beer’ this dangerously drinkable legend was born in 1899, when Tom, the old brewery cat, was sketched into immortality by the head brewer.
This superior dark ale is recognised, nationally and internationally, as one of the premier strong ales. It has won some of the industry’s most prestigious awards, including World’s Best Ale and Champion Beer of Britain.
Robinsons’s page on Old Tom
It’s not the best selling of Robinson’s beers, but it’s definitely a flagship having won many awards. And it’s a lovely drop. But I couldn’t help but wonder about the name. Old Tom?
It’s named after the cat? Okay, you can buy that. Except in beer history, it’s far from the only beer there’s ever been called Old Tom. In fact there’s been many.
A few miles away, the Oldham Brewery also brewed an Old Tom. It’s long gone now, but not forgotten. In fact, if you watch Craig Cash and Phil Mealey’s excellent pub-based comedy Early Doors, there’s an Oldham Brewery Old Tom poster in the background. It’s in the kitchen of the pub where two dodgy police officers sup beer, whisky and more. You can just about see it in this still from the programme.
And that’s not all. The Gartside Brewery of Ashton-under-Lyne also brewed an Old Tom. It was “revived” a few years ago by an artist although not using the original recipe which is believed lost. And if you search the Alamy website, there’s a picture of a beer label from the Bent’s Brewery of Liverpool for their Old Tom. And the Cornbrook brewery of Manchester also had a beer called Old Tom, as I found out whilst reading an article about watering down of beer.
Now I don’t know the history of those beers. I couldn’t find out. Maybe they came after the Robinsons version and traded on that success. They’re all from breweries not far from Robinsons after all.
But Old Tom wasn’t only a northern name. I know that from a historical beer recipe book published by the Durden Park Beer Club. In it there’s a recipe from 1854 from the Chelmsford Brewery for a strong ale. The name? Old Tom. I brewed it earlier this year so will be trying it out myself when it’s ready this Christmas.
Whilst Robinsons’ version could certainly be related to the brewery cat, the name certainly seems to predate Robinsons using it. And it certainly seems somehow along the way that Old Tom became synonymous with strong ales and barley wines. The question I can’t answer is… why? There must be an answer. But what it is, I have yet to find out. They can’t all have been named after cats, surely?
One thing is for sure though now. When it comes to Old Tom beers, Robinson’s is the last one standing.
]]>We have two plum trees in our garden. And between them, they produce a lot of plums. And when I say a lot of plums, I mean a LOT of plums.
Every year we have the challenge of finding a use for them all. Since we moved here, I’ve made plum wine, at least two different kinds of plum brandy, and plum ketchup. There’s been plum jam. And a heck of a lot of plum crumbles have been made. Oh, and of course, we’ve eaten quite a lot of plums straight off the tree.
One year I was discussing the annual plum usage conundrum with some friends. One of them’s a real dark beer lover. When it comes to porters and stouts, she’s in heaven. And knowing I’m a homebrewer, she suggested using some in a batch of Plum Porter.
I put it on the back-burner for a long time, but finally in 2022 I have it a go. Plum porter. Titantic Brewery make a rather famous version of it, so I went hunting for a clone of the recipe. The one I found was hosted by a homebrew shop’s website. They posted the recipe up, and also sell a kit of all the ingredients. Titanic Plum Porter Style Recipe Kit, they call it. Seems a pretty good indication that it should be a close match. I duly ordered all the relevant ingredients, stewed a big batch of plums, and got brewing.
Well, I say all the relevant ingredients. There was one that I couldn’t get hold of. The recipe calls for 75 drops (yes, 75), of plum extract. Could I find plum extract? Well yes, I could. Could I find plum extract for a price that was affordable? Err. No. It was either out of stock in the places I tried, or prohibitively expensive. I found one place where a small bottle plus delivery would have cost almost twice as much as the rest of the ingredients put together.
It seemed crazy. So I compromised, stewed a few more plums, and hoped for the best.
One beer brewed, I got got hold of a bottle of the original stuff to do a bit of a comparison.
So, how did it go?
First off, the colour. Well both are dark as you’d expect from a porter. The Titantic version is slightly redder. Mine is blacker. You’d only really tell though if you were looking closely. The head on the Titanic version is also whiter, where as mine is browner.
Aroma? Well that’s probably where the lack of plum extract comes in as the Titantic version is clearly fruitier. The same comes through on the taste as well. The Titanic version is tad sweeter. My home-brew version is darker, richer.
The two are quite different. But tasting them, there’s something about my version that reminds me of another beer. A famous stout in fact. There’s something about the 2kg of stewed plums that I added that gives a slightly sour taste to my beer. Something slightly akin to the Guinness twang. It’s an interesting combination. A little sour, quite dry, and with a definite aftertaste that lingers. I sense similar qualities in the Titanic original, which makes me think that the plum extract they use helps to mellow it out.
One other thing that was definitely a big difference happened on opening the bottle. The Titantic version opened as you’d expect. You could open it. And then pour it. Job done. Unlike mine where as soon as you opened the cap even a crack, beery foam started gushing out of the bottle. Some didn’t. But also some of the bottles spouted liquid into the air a good 10cm when opened.
It’s a problem I’ve had a few times and never worked out why.
I know what’s supposed to be the cause. Bottling the beer before its ready is usually it. When you brew beer you have to be very careful that the yeast has finished its work. During the fermenting stage, the yeast gorges on the beer’s ingredients. And as it does, it creates carbon dioxide. As part of the bottling process you “prime” the beer by adding some sugar. If your fermentation is finished, this is fine. The yeast has a bit of fun with the extra sugar and creates a little carbon dioxide in the bottle. This is why your beer is – let’s say – sparkling. The bubbles in it are carbon dioxide.
But if you bottle before the fermentation is finished, the yeast creates too much carbon dioxide. At best you end up with gushing bottles on opening. At worst, you end up with exploding bottles. I had that once. I was finding bits of glass on the floor for weeks.
Thing is, in this case – and all but one of the other times I’ve had this problem – I’ve been convinced fermentation had completely finished. I couldn’t for the live of me work out why there was a problem. I was only after brewing this beer and going through my records, that I spotted a common factor. Every time I’d had this lively beer problem, I’d used the same brand of yeast – Lallemand’s Lalbrew London Yeast. It’s supposed to be a good yeast for British ales, and was supposed to help bring out the fruitiness. However it turns out every time I’ve used it, the bottled beer has gone crazy when opened it. And the reverse is true. Bar the one occasion with the exploding bottles (where I don’t have the records), every beer I’ve brewed that went a bit crazy was one where I’d used that yeast. I don’t know why. It just did. I’ve not had this problem with any other yeast. But it’s been a consistent problem with the Lalbrew London. Funnily enough have decided not to ever use that yeast again.
It was whilst doing the tasting, that I discovered the clone recipe probably wasn’t the most authentic. See, helpfully, Titanic Brewery spell out the different malt and hop types on their bottle label. A lot of beers put just “malt” and “hops” but Titanic goes to the next level. On malts they use Maris Otter, Dark Crystal, Wheat and Pearl. In contrast this clone recipe includes Munich Light Malt, Amber Malt, Special B, and Carafa II. A strange combination of darker malts, often used in German and Belgian beers rather than an English porter.
On the hops front, Titanic use a mixture of Pilgrim, Herkules, Goldings, and Celeia hops. The recipe was following specified Admiral and Brambling, although I threw in Target instead of Admiral.
And then there’s the plums. Whilst we don’t know how many drops of “Natural Plum Flavouring” Titanic use, they don’t list whole plums as an ingredient. Had I known all this from the outset, I probably wouldn’t even have bothered brewing the beer in the first place. The main exercise was, after all, to use up part of the plum glut.
The differences in malt no doubt accounts for the colour differences, and certainly some of the flavour. The hops, I’m less clear what difference has been made, although I can see why whoever created the recipe went for Brambling Cross as it’s quite a fruity hop.
All in all, there’s obviously some substantial differences between the original and the clone. Indeed, by not being able to include the plum extract, I was always going to end up with a different beer with quite different qualities. In fact it’s quite clear that as a clone it’s a bit of a failure. But as a creation of a tasty beer, it’s worked well.
Would I brew it again? Even if I could get the plum extract? And if I used a different yeast. Well, probably not. Not because it’s not a tasty beer. But more because of the brewing process. The inclusion of the plum in the recipe I used caused various challenges, and clogged up some of my equipment meaning I lost about 5 litres of beer.
However it was interesting to try it out. And I also learned some things about brewing along the way. Namely that Titanic Brewery rock for putting lots of detail on their ingredients on their labels. That you should never trust a recipe you found on the internet to be an authentic clone. And that I would be best avoiding Lalbrew London Yeast if I don’t want to cover the house with beer. Oh, and when a recipe calls for 75 drops of plum extract, and you miss it out, well you’re not going to get anywhere near close to the right beer at all.
Cheers to that then.
]]>Recently I popped into Lidl in Stockport on my way home. I haven’t been in for ages. Months. Perhaps even a year.
I saw a woman blatantly shoplifting. And heard a loudspeaker announcement thanking me for social distancing “in line with government guidance”. I was only in store for about ten minutes but I heard the announcement three times.
Today I went to the dentist. Before going I had to fill in a form online confirming that the NHS haven’t asked me to isolate due to COVID-19. That I wasn’t waiting for the result of a PCR test. That I hadn’t just got back from a country on the government’s red list.
I go swimming regularly, and have a membership package for the local leisure centres. Some of the centres have automatic gates at the entrance. Until the start of 2020, members could simply swipe in. Now the gates won’t open unless you’ve queued up at reception, or you have booked on a session online in advance. To book online you have to agree for your details to be passed to NHS Test and Trace if required.
Covid restrictions are long gone. But it seems not everyone has heard the news yet.
]]>For me to review a swimming pool on this blog, I set a couple of simple criteria. Firstly, it needs to be a somewhere I’ve swam in. That should be blindly obvious. Second, it needs to be since April 2015. Arbitrary date but one to keep to. Thirdly, it needs to be publicly accessible, either paying as you go, or through a membership package. Exclusive pools or places where you need to be a resident, don’t count. I want it to be possible for you to visit it. So pools used in holiday complexes don’t get reviewed. That’s why you won’t find anything here about waterparks in campsites in France, or the Sub Tropical Swimming Paradise at Center Parcs.
This may be why I forgot at the time to review the pool at Forest Hills Hotel in Frodsham, Cheshire. I stayed overnight in March 2022 and used their pool. I was on holiday, and put it out of my mind. But like many hotel fitness centres, non-residents Forest Hills is open to the public. You can get an adult monthly membership for £36 as I type. Forest Hills therefore meets the criteria and a review it shall get.
Now hotel swimming pools tend to sit in one of two groups. First there is the tiny ones. Something less than 15m in length that’s designed more for hanging around in, or perhaps children splashing in, than being of any use for swimming. Often they’re smaller than the small pool at your local leisure centre. A token effort, seemingly created more to push the hotel’s star rating up rather than as a serious facility, and so rarely open to anyone other than hotel guests. I once tried to swim in such a pool (in Seattle, USA), and was half way through a length after simply pushing off from the end.
The second camp is a proper pool. Something you can actually swim in. These are rarer, and found in hotels where the on-site leisure centre is open to the public, and akin to the facilities offered by a gym chain. The pool’s often a reasonable size. Some may even get close to being as good as what your local council leisure centre would offer. A few are better.
What you get at Forest Hills is in the second camp. The pool isn’t huge – a mere 20m in length. But that’s just about long enough that you can get a reasonable swim out of it.
The fitness centre sits in a corner of the hotel complex, on top of Frodsham Hill; a location that offers superb views of the Mersey Estuary. Although the best views come from the restaurant, whilst the pool sits at the other side of the building. The large windows on the pool instead offer a great view of the car park.
The changing rooms came looking ever so much like they’d been there since 1988 when the place opened. The pastel pink painted battered metal lockers were an interesting design touch. They locked with a padlock that thankfully I’d had the foresight to bring, along with my goggles. Pink’s was a bit of a theme for the hotel – my room’s toilet suite was also pink. Go figure.
Maybe it’s changed since. There was some refurbishment work going on in the corridor to the pool hall, so it’s possible, but who knows.
Anyway, into the pool hall. Despite the aforementioned big windows, not enough natural light seemed to get in, leaving illumination in the hands of some globe lights on the walls that seemed barely adequate for the job they’d been assigned. For good measure, the roof’s panelled with dark coloured wood, that absorbs the light.
Immediately on the left, the obligatory jacuzzi, because hotels have to have a bit of relaxation space after all. Just beyond, the pool itself.
The pool itself is 20m by 8m, but at one end a section has been cut out to house a small, separated child friendly shallow area. This takes up around half the width of the pool, leaving about two lanes worth of space where you can swim the full length, and the rest allowing a swim of perhaps 16m in length. On my first visit (I may only have stayed at the hotel for one night, but I still managed two swims), a lane was separated off for children’s swimming lessons, with a second lane temporarily added (using what looked like a piece of rope) allowing lane swimming.
For good measure the pool’s designer decided to cut off the corners at two ends of the pool rectangle. Why? Just why? During my second swim, I shared the lane with another swimmer, and if one of us was stopped having a rest, the other had to push off from a diagonal wall. Had the person who designed it ever done any swimming? It was hard to be sure.
The pool itself had been lined in small mosaic tiles which always look lovely, but must surely be a maintenance nightmare. In the deep end several tiles had come lose from the pool floor, exposing the cement underneath. This didn’t detract from the swimming itself, but didn’t give the best of impressions. What was noticeable was that the pool itself seemed too small for the number of people trying to use it. Less of an issue in the lane I was in, but some of the slower swimmers found themselves battling against children. It was a Thursday in March. Hardly peak season.
The pool could have been built longer had it not been for the statutory sauna and steam room, sitting on a raised platform at the far end. Both seemed to be on the small side, but did the job after a good swim. And then it was back to the pinkly decorated single sex changing rooms, to shower. No cubicles – just an open shower area, which is far from desirable from a privacy perspective.
How to conclude? Faded and gloomy, but satisfactory? That probably sums it up. Like other parts of the hotel, the fitness centre felt like it needed a bit of a refurbishment. A re-tile of the pool, some better lighting, and a revamp of the changing facilities would go a long way. Maybe paint the roof white so it reflects the light. And maybe choose a different colour scheme to pastel pink. It’s nowhere near the worst pool I’ve used since April 2015. Although with only being 20m long, it’s never going to be the best. But for what it is, it could definitely be better.
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