The voyage to Belfast Beer Club and beyond...

Aaaahhh - the joys of good company, good beer and a warm train. Yes, a posse of Lacadians ventured forth on Wednesday to the Belfast Beer Club at the Sunflower and a good co-operative time was had by all. The first port of call, however, was the fabled Crown Bar, well, it is unavoidable isn’t it? We come out of the station at Great Victoria St and there lies the Crown, plumb in the middle of your vision. So, a short time later, we were happy sitting in a snug with a trilogy of “Nicholson’s Pale Ale” (the house beer made by St. Austell Brewery) “American Pale Ale” from Sonnet 43 and “Chilli and Chocolate Porter” from Wadworth Brewery in Devizes, Wiltshire. All three beers were served via a trio of 1/3 pint glasses sitting snugly in a wooden trencher, a great way to try 3 different beers for the price of a pint.

The Nicholson’s PA was a decent swally and the APA from Sonnet caused some brow furrowing and questions such as "is this an APA?"  But the Chilli and Chocolate Porter was a peculiar delight.  First you get a super nose, then the chocolate runs over your tongue and last of all there is the chilli burn at the back of your throat. And that was the same for every mouthful. Why it didn’t mix up in your mouth and eventually give you chilli burn all over and only chocolate in your throat is a complete mystery. That was until Phil started explaining about taste receptors on your tongue being variegated.

A quick dash to Wetherspoons on Dublin Rd and some Butcombe Bitter followed; this was very nice and does what it says on the pump clip. A pint of Elland 1872 Porter was purloined and by the wonders of 3G we discovered that this beer had, that very day, been awarded Champion Beer at Camra’s Winter Ales Festival. We were delighted to discover that this is so far the only porter that matches up to Lacada’s. Yes, yes, we know... conceit, unsubstantiated claims of greatness, b*llsh*t detector on full. Well, if you don’t shout no-one will hear, but we DO have a damn fine porter recipe that we have honed and tinkered and we know it’s good.

Onwards to the Sunflower, a bright spot in a dark street somewhere. Lovely place - lovely people & lovely atmosphere. We quickly ordered a pint of Hilden Twisted Hop from the cask and went upstairs to the Belfast Beer Club where we had a good old fraternal time of it with our Boundary Brewing amigos, some of whom are also co-owners in Lacada! It’s a great thing to have two new local co-operative ventures working together and having strong links through people. Matt Dick was full of greetings and helpful information and it was clear from his MC role that the man is much loved (yes, I don’t think that is too strong a word) by the people present. It felt like a room full of friends... and it was full with approximately 40 people.

The beers were from Wild Beer Company from Somerset, they of the antlers on their labels. Now, these are beers Jim, but not as you may know it. I’ll ‘fess up and say I did stir a bit of controversy by suggesting they were just the beer side of vinegar but that was really only to see how lively the locals were. It worked and ‘man at the door’ (Hi Michael) wasn’t having any of it, and quite right too. It was great to see the love of a good beer ran deep with these people. Wild Beer Company love to do beer that is beyond the Kuiper Belt as far as voyages into the unknown go. Many of the beers are brewed with wild yeasts that are culled from the locality (think orchards of Somerset). Not content with that, the brewers also use numerous additions that are clearly not run of the mill e.g. Hibiscus, cucumber and mint. I think the best description was from Matt himself who, after asking the audience to shout out what tastes they could detect, announced that really with these type of beers you were entering a ‘dark void’ of taste experiences. In other words, you could get lost... somewhere wild.

Unfortunately, we could not stay for the whole voyage because of the need to catch the train up. So it was a quick goodbye to Matt and also to Pedro the friendly landlord of the Sunflower, and we departed a super evening with the floating notes of the downstairs music session in our ears.

Cheers!
Laurie