It’s nearly Christmas, and what could be nicer than to celebrate with a pint of Brodies’ Hoppy Ho Ho Ho?

That’s just one of over a hundred beers available at the Pig’s Ear Beer Festival, which opens tomorrow at Ocean in Hackney.

It’s the twenty-fifth Pig’s Ear – organised by the East London and City branch of the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), and devoted to showcasing the best of real ale.

Winter ales always make a strong showing here with a good selection of porters, stouts, and old ales – a rare but lovely English beer style. There’ll be a few spiced beers too; Hoppy Ho Ho Ho is flavoured with cinnamon and ginger, a real Christmas pudding in a glass.

By the way, if you like your Cockney Rhyming Slang, you might be interested to know that the apparently strange ‘Pig’s Ear’ name of the festival has a very simple explanation.

For a Cockney, Pig’s Ear = Beer.

When: 2-6 December: Tues–Thur: 1200–2230. Fri:–Sat: 1200 – 2300

Where: OCEAN, 270 Mare Street, Hackney (Hackney Downs or Hackney Central rail)

Picture credit: Gordon Joly on flickr

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However, the Market Porter  in Borough Market will help stave off beer boredom. It has an adventurous menu of real ales with ten usually on the pump. I’ve seen Dark Star, O’Hanlon’s,  Phoenix, Titanic, Everards and Kelham Island – some pretty good names (and excellent beers) in that list.  You can even see what beer’s on from the website!

Borough Market, of course, is a wonderful place to visit anyway for its food market. That does mean Fridays and Saturdays, when the market’s open, are likely to be very busy – early evenings are also a time that the pub is a little too full for comfort.

And this is a nice traditional style pub. The Georgian style frontage implies you might find some nice wooden panellin inside, and it’s not misleading. A recent refurb has kept the pub’s comfortable, old style atmosphere unchanged.

If you’re peckish, there’s a restaurant upstairs.  But for me, it’s the beer that is the big draw here. If you’re fed up with drinking in the City, consider crossing the river for your pint – you won’t regret it.

Where: 9 Stoney Street, SW1 (Borough or London Bridge tube stations)

Photo credit by Bob Walker (rjw1) on Flickr

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Leadenhall Market, the finest complete Victorian market building in London, is worth a visit anyway. It’s a superb space, though not what it was. I remember when it had a faded little supermarket in the middle – a shop that seemed to have come through from the 1950s without ever changing – with a confectionery section where you could get yoghurt cashews and chocolate brazils. And there used to be many more fishmongers and gamedealers; pheasants and grouse hanging up, or rabbits, and the stink of fish. Nowadays, the boutiques have moved in, and the chain stores, and the market’s lost a bit of its character.
Still, the Lamb Tavern remains. It’s a proper old pub, on three floors, with a rickety iron spiral staircase leading up from the main bar (don’t wear stilettos if you’re aiming for the top!). The main bar is just a place to perch with your pint – standing room only on most summer lunchtimes. The architecture and decor is magnificent; this is a palace of beer, one for the lover of Victoriana. (Oh yes, there’s a picture of the Queen Mother pulling a pint here, too.)

When I worked nearby with a team of analysts, we quite often used to pop in on Fridays for a pint with a hot beef sandwich, and as much horseradish sauce as we could stand. (That was quite a lot; but go easy if you’re not used to it – horseradish is the nearest traditional English cooking ever comes to jalapenos!)

And the beer is excellent – this is a Young’s pub, so you’d expect it to be. Try the honeyed ‘Waggledance’ if you don’t want the standard bitter, or (in season) ‘Winter warmer’, a strong beer that really will warm the cockles of your heart. If you’ve a sweet tooth, Double Chocolate Stout is the one for you – and I’m going to lay down a little challenge here. I have never managed to drink more than a pint of it, despite being a seasoned beer drinker. Anyone that can manage two has my heartfelt admiration!

This used to be the market porters’ tavern. Now, it’s full of city workers. But it’s still one of my favourite period pubs – a real delight. Try it for yourself!

Photo credit: Todd Huffmann on Flickr

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First of all; ale, beer, lager. What’s the difference?

Ale and beer – they’re the same for most purposes. Back in the old days, beer had hops in it, and ale didn’t, but nowadays they’re pretty much the same thing. And they come in pints and half pints – no litres, centilitres or millilitres for us.

Lager is different. Technically, the fermentation happens a different way, with a different yeast. And ‘real’ lager should be ‘lagered’ – that is, matured for several months before being served up. I doubt that many of the big brands still do that, though.

As for ‘real’ ale, the difference here is that instead of being pasteurised, filtered, and then served in a keg with gas added to make it fizz, it’s left alive, put in a cask (‘barrel’ to the uninitiated) and sent out to the pub while the yeast is still doing its work fermenting the beer. The yeast should make the beer lively, but you won’t get the sort of fizz in it that comes with a keg beer.

You can usually tell real ale because it’s served from a hand pump that has to be pulled back to make the beer come out – from from one of the little taps. Sometimes, you may also see it served ‘on gravity’ – that is, from a cask which has just had a tap put in it to serve it up. That’s commoner outside London and in ‘beer pubs’ – pubs which put the needs of the drinker ahead of the desire to serve sandwiches, fish and chips, Thai food or tapas.

You can also get real ale in a bottle – that simply means, again, that the yeast has been left to do its work.

Of course serving real ale is not easy, precisely because it is a living thing. A cask of ale has a limited shelf life once it has been tapped – just a few days for the weaker beers. That means the pub has to have enough footfall to shift the beer. If not, it’s likely to go off – to taste stale and unappetising. A busy pub where you see lots of people drinking real ale will be the best place to taste it – if everyone else is drinking lager and keg beer, or shots, that might mean the real ale is past its best.

Now you’re ready to order a pint – or a half. Or even a third – which is something new! Wetherspoons introduced third-pint glasses recently for one of its pub beer festivals, giving drinkers a great way of trying out all the different beers without getting too inebriated. Some beer festivals, too, provide third pint glasses – ignore the comments about ‘for the ladies’, and drink thirds, and you’ll be able to taste many more beers for your money!

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