A Night in Nottingham

Last month I travelled to England with a plan to spend an evening walking around Nottingham.  Nottingham has some great pubs, and I’ve become acquainted with the streets and I’m comfortable walking around the town at night.  However, it was awfully cold on my last trip and the farthest I was able to go was the comfortable Victoria Hotel in Beeston.  Now it was a month later, a bit warmer, and I was dying to show off the town to Dave who was on his first visit to the area.  So we took the train over (less traffic, more leisurely, less concerns for pub crawling) and headed into town.

We stopped at two pubs along the canal, Fellows, Morton & Clayton and the Canalhouse (http://www.thecanalhouse.co.uk/).  Fellows is CAMRA approved, and I enjoyed a Lincoln Green Sherwood on cask, while the Canalhouse is a Castle Rock pub offering good food and a great feel with a canal boat in the center of the pub and a huge outdoor section down by the water.  I enjoyed a Bouncing Bomb (hell of a name for a beer) while chatting with the wait staff.

 

Dave and I were getting hungry, so we headed over to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem (http://www.triptojerusalem.com/) for dinner.  This place claims to be the oldest pub in England, operating for over 800 years, and has been a constant destination for new visitors.  I got a Milestone St. George’s Legend and a Pig Board; a combination of a Scotch Egg, an Old Spot sausage roll, belly bites and Gloucester sausages.  Tasty, but their normal Ploughman’s is better.  Now with our bellies full, we had more places to go.

Our next sets of stops were all CAMRA recommended, and they were conveniently located in the heart of the city.  Up the street from the Trip is the Salutation Inn, a bit more rough and tumble than I’m typically used to with actual bikers and headbangers inside.  The beer list was limited, but I did find a Welsh cider, Gwent Y DDraig Ancient Warrior that was quite nice. We next went up the street to a place that my buddy Robin had taken me before, the Malt Cross (http://www.maltcross.com/).  The Malt Cross features real ale and music, and has a fantastic platform up on the wall where each floor has a fantastic view (my dream would be to see Jenn singing up there someday).  I enjoyed a Brewster Music Hall (an appropriate name for a beer here at the Malt Cross), before heading past the Bell Inn and on to the Dragon.  Now this was a spit and sawdust pub, ratty at the entrance and on the inside.  However, I did enjoy a Adnams Southwold Bitter while talking to a couple of the local regulars.

Now these were all great pubs, and by themselves worth a trip to Nottingham, but I made the trip specifically to visit Brew Dog (http://www.brewdog.com/beer).  Brew Dog is a Scottish craft brew pioneer that recently opened up a pub in Nottingham.  They specialize in flavor, whether it is pushing the envelope for high alcohol, hops, or different aging combinations.  I started off with a pair of IPAs, one from their IPA is Dead series using Waimea hops which was tasty, and then a De Molen Vuur and Vlam (Fire and Flames) brewed with a variety of hop varieties.  My favorite was a low alcohol collaboration with Brodies brewing in London, a Tayberry (a Scottish cross between a blackberry and a red raspberry) Berlinner Weisse weighing in at 5.2% with the perfect tart aftertaste that is typical for the style.  Finally, I got some bottles to go, including their Paradox Imperial Stout aged in Grain barrels, a Barleywine collaboration with Three Floyds called Bitch Please that was aged in Islay casks, and their latest beer in their Abstrakt series that was a Black Belgian IPA, brewed with Scottish Berries (Tayberries?) and aged in Oak Casks.  The staff is well versed in the beer scene and knowledgeable on the beers in stock, and it has always been a pleasure to pop in to see what is new (tonight was no exception). 

Dave and I both had enough for the evening and headed back to the train station.  We stopped at the Cross Keys on the way out (yes, there was another ½ pint to fortify ourselves for the 20 minute train ride back to Derby).  It was a great evening, sharing a new place with a friend, meeting new people and exploring some more top rated pubs. - 6324/13946

 
“A meal of bread, cheese and beer constitutes the perfect food.” - Queen Elizabeth I