Tag Archive for: Bars

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The Book of Pintxos – inside story of Basque small plates

In a recent The Rest Is History, on the build-up to the Great War, podcast pals Tom and Dominic reached a quirky consensus on their dislike of Russian Salad… a view I share. You’ll have to listen to episode 3 to discover the context. Clue – a Serbian ultimatum that was hard to stomach,


This digression just happened to coincide with my perusal of The Book of Pintxos (Artisan, £30), Marti Buckley’s wonderful, San Sebastián-heavy follow-up to Basque Country, her indispensable guide to that great foodie region. I have to believe her when she writes: “Ensaladilla rusa is, after tortilla española, the most ubiquitous and popular pintxo in Spain.” For pintxo also read tapa, that small plate rival across the rest of the Iberian peninsula. Indeed it remains a restaurant mainstay in (its disputed birthplace) Russia and in old school diners across the globe.

Russian salad – a mutual bete noire

Marti, raised in Alabama, schooled in Louisiana, has spent well over a decade as the adopted daughter of Donastia (local name for San Sebastián). She’s the go-to gal to message the States that Italian and French are not innately superior cuisines to Spanish and her beloved Basque. But, as witness for the defence, Russian salad? Albeit, it HAS to be made with home-made mayo and hopefully the tuna might be canned ventresca in escabeche. Which still doesn’t in my eyes excuse a salad combining cooked potatoes, carrots and canned peas.
The author adapts her recipe from one of San Sebastián’s most acclaimed pintxos spots, the Bar Ezkurra, dating back to 1933 and physically little changed. It shifts, from its dark wooden counter, 175 pounds of rusa on busy days.

The joy of The Book of Pintxos is its depth of historical research, and pen pictures of the folk who keep the legacy alive, some by radically ‘elevating it’. A spin-off perhaps from a region boasting the highest per capita concentration of Michelin-star restaurants in the world. There’s a place for many approaches.
What unites many dishes is the toothpick. Pintxos was first promoted properly in North West England by Ramsbottom’s sadly missed Baratxuri, where at the end of a night full of bar snacks they tallied the bill according to the number of little sticks collected.
Before pintxos evolved to knife and fork this was the standard serving of simple snacks such as my old favourite to accompany a glass of tzakoli wine – Gilda. Arguably the original pintxo, this is just an anchovy fillet, pitted manzanilla olives and sharp pickled guindilla peppers threaded onto a toothpick. Hardly molecular gastronomy but at its core pintxos remain bar food.

The simple guilda
Burnt Basque cheesecake

Some of the 70 recipes are more complex as Marti traces the historical evolution, interviewing all the key players. Take Santi Rivera. In 1988 he took over the kitchen at his parent’s San Sebastián Old Town bar, La Viña, and perfected the one Donostian dish recognisable worldwide – Burnt Basque Cheesecake. Since then he has won a Pintxos Oscar’ in 1998 for his anchovy and cheese stuffed cone, but it is the cheesecake that shifts in vast numbers to this day – pan-burn crust on the outside transitioning into the creamiest of soft cheese custards, “the interior all jiggly and loose” in Marti’s words.
The author spreads her net beyond San Sebastián (or Donastia as the Basques call it) and covers my favourite places in Bilbao, a city I know better and have more affection for. One of my home page images was taken in Bilbao’s Plaza Nueva.

Certainly the Gure Toki’s truffled eggs and mi-cuit foie gras nougat are a step up from th humble guilda. Quality of ingredients has a role to play in the bar scene. La Vina Del Ensanche in Bilbao’s Old Town offers not just an encyclopaedic wine list but majors in the the world’s best jamon, Joselito Bellota.

If you must – Ensaladilla rusa recipe from The Book of Pintxos

Ingredients
Salt
3 large Yukon Gold potatoes peeled
1 medium peeled carrot, ends trimmed
7 large eggs
3 cups mayonnaise, preferably homemade*, divided
¼ cup drained canned green peas
¼ cup drained canned tuna ventresca in escabeche, or any good-quality oil-packed tuna, flaked
1 baguette, sliced on the bias into 15 pieces

Method
Bring a large pot of generously salted water to a boil. Add the potatoes and carrot and cook for eight minutes, then add the eggs and boil for 12 minutes more. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the eggs to an ice bath. Pierce one of the potatoes with a fork; if it slides in easily, drain along with the carrot and transfer to a cutting board. (Alternatively, continue boiling until the potatoes are fork-tender.) 
Peel the eggs and finely chop five of them (set aside the remaining two whole eggs). Cut the potatoes into ½-inch pieces and the carrot into ¼-inch pieces; transfer the chopped eggs, potatoes, and carrots to a large bowl. Add 1½ cups of the mayonnaise, the peas, tuna, and ½ teaspoon of salt and use a silicone spatula to gently combine. Fold in more mayonnaise (up to ½ cup) until the mixture is creamy and soft. Season to taste with more salt if needed. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. 
To serve, scoop generous portions of the salad atop the baguette slices, using a butter knife to form little mountains. Remove the yolks from the remaining two eggs (reserve them for another use), then use the small holes of a box grater to grate the whites over the pintxos. Using a pastry bag fitted with a decorative tip or a zip-top bag with a corner snipped off, squeeze a generous teaspoon of mayonnaise onto each pintxo.  

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Summer in the city… and I’m cradling a Hawksmoor Green Snapper

We went for dinner to Hawksmoor Manchester the other night. It’s been a while. We avoided Monday because that’s BYOB day with just £5 corkage to pay, so I guessed it might be rammed. ‘Slowish’ Tuesday it was then and, to our amazement, there wasn’t a table to be had by mid-evening… or a dry glass in the house. We were in the roaring dining room by 6.30pm and the last sharing porterhouse had already been snaffled 20 minutes before. Damn you, carnivores of impeccable taste.

If you associate Hawksmoor only with steaks think again and settle down in the Manchester bar

No regrets, though, that we’d been detained in the penumbral clutches of the bar to sample the five fresh cocktails that constitute the upmarket steakhouse’s Summer Collection. You wouldn’t consider Miller & Carter or even Gaucho (and definitely not your local Toby Carvery) on the strength of the mixology team. At Hawksmoor it’s different. Quick flashback to a vanished age before vegans roamed the high street. Seven years ago I joined a charm offensive press pack ferried to London to gauge what all the fuss was about on the eve of this critically acclaimed outfit’s arrival in Manchester. Their latest conquest has been New York but no plane tickets in the mail, as yet, alas.

The food quality blew us away, especially the meat, with wines that made a splendid match. We visited four of their venues in the day. Somewhere along the line, probably in the Spitalfields original (above), we encountered the cocktail list that was an integral part of the Hawksmoor experience. The original list was created back in 2006 by the legendary Nick Strangeway and Liam Davy, who is still going strong as Head of Bars (his son Jack is now manager  of the Deansgate Manchester venue). Check out the Hawksmoor classics and you’ll find the hardy perennial, Shaky Pete’s Ginger Brew, the ultimate gin-fuelled ‘power shandy’ and the Fuller-Fat Old Fashioned, which I explored in a recent blog.

For the Father’s Day just past Liam devised Midsummer Old Fashioned, mixing Johnnie Walker Blue Label, salted Oxfordshire honey and cold brew camomile tea, topped with a cube of white chocolate fudge. 

That’s now off the menu because it’s not really seasonal. So how did the Summery Five –  launched at the same time and available until mid-September – fare?

• Green Snapper is a verdant riff on Bloody Mary. Five a day in a glass almost to send chlorophyll coursing through my veins. Forgive any nutritional, botanical inaccuracies;  this is a zinger. Beefeater Gin’s the base, muddled with green tomato, jalapeno, lime, cucumber and lovage.

• Factor 50 Fizz pales in comparison, but then I’m not a spritz fan. It hardly feels alcoholic this mix of Lillet Rose, strawberry, cucumber and sparkling coconut water.

Rimini Iced Tea – Fellini’s home town (Amarcord in the movie of the name) is the tenuous inspiration for this cooler because of the reputation of its peaches. That fruit, basil and sparkling Darjeellng tea make a refreshing  match with ultra-sustainable Avallen Calvados.

• R.A.C. Aviation is a classic rhubarb & custard combo. Made with Bombay Sapphire 1er Cru, rhubarb cordial, vanilla, lemon and maraschino. Surprisingly tart, it’s properly summery.

• Moselle Martini is my favourite of the five, mellow and approachable with an indefinable complexity. It’s made with Fords gin, cucumber, Riesling vermouth and pear eau de vie.

No Porterhouse – how did we pull through?

Our daughter’s dog Toro gnawed our doggie bag T-bone with great gusto. We adored the steak that was once attached in the company of a soft, summery Pinot Noir from the Loire. Creamed spinach, anchovy hollandaise, triple-cooked chips, heritage tomato salad. To start we shared beef carpaccio and scallops cooked in the shell with White Port. Never lets you down.

Hawksmoor Manchester, 184-186 Deansgate, M3 3WB. 0161 836 6980.

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Lead me down Bourbon Street… I’m an Old Fashioned kinda guy

Platinum pandemonium on the streets of Manchester. We have half an hour to spare between engagements and definitely need a refuge from Saturday afternoon’s ‘jubilant’ crowds thronging Spinningfields. SCHOFIELDS Bar, of course… and a sublime Old Fashioned hits the spot.

Inside, the art deco space is quiet, both bar stools and deep blue leather banquettes sparsely occupied. Which is unusual. Since its arrival barely a year ago Joe and Daniel Schofield’s ‘instant classic’ has become an irresistible magnet for cocktail lovers and industry awards. Recently it won New Bar of the Year and overall UK Bar of the Year at the Class Bar Awards. In the separate Top 50 Cocktail Bars List it ran in at number 16 behind nearby Speak in Code, ranked 10th in the UK. 

On Deansgate, equidistant to both, is the atmospheric Hawksmoor restaurant bar, no strange to accolades, while on the fringe of the Northern Quarter Mecanica (above) is also a real contender (Ellie Wright was named Emerging Bartender of the Year in the Class awards).

Completing what I consider Manchester centre’s Fab Five is classy newcomer Blinker up on Spring Gardens. Like the Schofields (Bury) its creator Dan Berger (Heaton Mersey) is a local lad come home. Like Joe Schofield and Phil Aldridge, Dan honed his cocktail craft in Australia. He was also bar head honcho for Gordon Ramsay Holdings.

All of which brings us by a roundabout route back to arguably the oldest cocktail in the book, the Old Fashioned, its recent global appeal boosted by Dan Draper’s obsessive consumption in Sixties homage Mad Men. He would have been in his element at Blinker, which offers a complete page of Old Fashioned variants (The Martini gets a similar menu tribute)…

I’ve tried four out of the five OFs and am particularly smitten with the Sandalwood Old Fashioned (£12) which mixes Chivas Mizunara with a sandalwood and cherry Old Fashioned reduction. Purists, of course, might shy away from using the Chivas, the first Scotch whisky to be selectively finished in Japanese mizunara oak casks, but in general – like SCHOFIELDS – one Blinker emphasis is is on the stone cold classics with perfection the aim. Manhattan, Negroni, Sazerac, Vodka Martini territory.

This sits alongside Dan’ commitment to seasonality in his ingredients: “For the first menu, we’re going to focus on British mint, stone fruits and nectarines. We’re also looking at rhubarb that is grown in Cheshire, as well as pomegranate as a back-up fruit while we wait for more strawberries to come into season.”

Mecanica and SIC pursue more innovative cocktail trails with strong bartender contributions, yet just request and they’ll mix you up a pretty mean Old Fashioned. During pre-Christmas lockdown the latter sold a trio of pre-bottled versions for the Mad Man in your life.

Who’s to say what is a definitive Old Fashioned? Take Hawksmoor, whose culinary obsession with animal fats strays over into their continuing enhancement of the basic formula of muddling sugar with bitters and water, adding bourbon or rye whiskey and garnishing with orange slice or zest and maybe a cocktail cherry. Before serving de rigueur in an old-fashioned glass.

Liam Davy and his Hawksmoor bar team added a first tweak with their Full-Fat Old Fashioned, which begat more recently the Fuller-Fat Old Fashioned – “which still requires a painstaking process of infusing butter into bourbon in a water bath, but now has the added luxury of beurre noisette and a hint of the cigar box courtesy of sandalwood and cedar oil.”

For Father’s Day Liam has devised Midsummer Old Fashioned, mixing Johnnie Walker Blue Label, salted Oxfordshire honey and cold brew camomile tea, topped with a cube of white chocolate fudge. Available for a limited period from Monday, June 13 to to Sunday 19.

Hawksmoor’s not really one for the vegans then. They might turn to plant-based Speak In Code, who have their own way of adding savoury oomph to a bourbon-based cocktail. ‘Track 5’ is an old favourite: Shiitake & plant butter washed bourbon; toasted sunflower sweet vermouth; corn purée, foamer; mushroom jerky

“Bourbon is infused with dried shiitake mushrooms for 24 hours, strained and then melted plant butter is added before blast chilling. You’re left with a savoury, slightly sweet and salt bourbon with a creamy mouthfeel. Toasted sunflower seeds are added to a sweet vermouth, for their oil and fat properties. 

“The strained sunflower seeds are rehydrated as part of the garnish. The house corn purée is citrus boosted to add bite, and tastes like pineapples and passionfruit. The bourbon soaked shiitake mushrooms are blended down with dark soy, maple syrup, apple cider vinegar, salt and smoked paprika, then spread out on baking paper and dried out to make a bourbon mushroom jerky to garnish with the sunflower seeds. It’s a mad tropical meets umami experience.”

Old Fashioned – the Morgenthaler way

I was fortunate enough during a trip to Portland, Oregon to run into the legendry Jeffrey Morgenthaler, author of my cocktail bible, The Bar Book: Elements of Cocktail Technique. He was and still is managing the bars Clyde Common and Pépé Le Moko in the Ace Hotel, where I was staying. I went seeking his barrel-aged Negronis but the most requested drink there happens to be the Old Fashioned – what back in the 19th century was th kind of drink you were given if you asked for a cocktail. 

Morgenthaler tells new bartenders that this is one drink that is very easy to make well, but very easy to screw up. Here’s his advice, extracted from Food Republic magazine, on how to make one at home…

“You really only need a small handful of ingredients: a spirit, some sugar, some bitters, ice and a little citrus peel. Notice that you’re not required to have, or even like, whiskey to have yourself an Old Fashioned. If we look at a recipe from 1806 the drink is “composed of spirits of any kind,” which is great news for drinkers, as we can tailor our Old Fashioned to our particular taste without bastardizing the original intent of the drink.

“A note about sugar: you’ll want to make a simple syrup and have it on hand. I always keep a few simple syrups in my fridge at home for use in cocktails. I make mine at a ratio of two parts sugar to one part water, both measured by weight, and heated over low heat on the stovetop and stirred constantly until the sugar is dissolved. But which sugar to use? “Well, that’s the beautiful thing about the Old Fashioned — you can match your sugar syrup to match your spirit. How about a tequila Old Fashioned made with agave syrup? Or a rum Old Fashioned made with Demerara sugar syrup?

Experiment with the recipe below and tailor it to your own personal preference, and soon you’ll be able to regale your guests with the best Old Fashioned they’ll have ever tried. I guarantee it.

Old Fashioned

2 ounces spirit (I most often reach for bourbon, but nearly anything will do), 1 teaspoon of 2:1 simple syrup. 2 dashes bitters (I prefer Angostura bitters, but again, experiment with your favourites)

1. Stir ingredients with ice cubes for 20-30 seconds or until well chilled.

2. Strain over fresh ice in an Old Fashioned glass and garnish with a large swath of citrus peel. I typically use orange peel, but other citrus can make for interesting flavour.

Schofield’s Bar, Sunlight House, 3 Little Quay St, Manchester M3 3JZ. 07311 777606. They also have a side project, Atomeca, at the city’s Deansgate Square and will open Sterling in the Stock Exchange Hotel this summer. Speak in Code, 7 Jackson’s Row Manchester M2 5ND. 07767 658690. Hawksmoor, 184-186 Deansgate, Manchester, M3 3WB. 0161 836 6980. Mecanica, 1-3 Swan Street, Manchester M4 5JJ. 0161 806 1492. Blinker 64-72 Spring Gardens, Manchester M2 2BQ. 0161 236 8225.

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Mecanica lobbies for our affection with a cocktail homage to hotel bars

I’ve been contemplating ice this week. No, not the hazardous stuff that comes with the wind chill factor and a chance of compound fracture. More the gleaming pure lozenge enveloped by a Negroni.

I’m greeted by one on my arrival at Mecanica, our server Ellie embellishing with “We’ve heard you’re partial to one”. Two or three actually, but I’m at the bar to sample a range of the creative house cocktails, not a stone cold classic. Though like any cocktail bar worth its salt they’ll rustle up whatever you request.

Wine was the selling point of the previous occupant of this site on the busy corner of Oldham Street and Swan Street, but The Quick Brown Fox was never busy and shut all too quickly. I can see Mecanica having a less transitory shelf life – as one of Manchester’s key cocktail destinations. Which bring us to the nice ice touch.

It was such a sparkling snug fit I assumed my Negroni (Martin MIller gin, Campari, Cocchi) was sharing the tumbler with one of those bought-in designer ice cubes. Arch rivals Schofield’s Bar source theirs from Chas Ayres’ cutting edge Black Ice CPD Ltd.

No, like Speak In Code bar, another of the city’s cocktail elite, Mecanica make their own. General manager Phil Aldridge (pictured above) explained: “We use a process known as ‘directional freezing’ where we take a container thats insulated on all sides apart from one, this means the ice freezes from the top down forcing the impurities to the bottom (as the more impurities in the water the lower the freezing point).

“We then remove this from the freezer, dispose of the unclear ice and then break down the clear ice into smaller more manageable pieces by hand. These are then hand chipped down into the perfect size for our rocks glass. Its time consuming and takes a lot of keeping on top of, but it’s cheaper than buying it in and infinitely more rewarding.”

The same attention to detail goes into the in-house preparation of most of the cocktail ingredients (of which more later). It takes a dedicated, trained staff to make this work and all six bartenders get a picture testimonial in the Team section of the website. This add-on always reminds me of those movies where the closing credits incorporate snapshot epilogues of what  will happen to all the characters in the future.

But instead of ‘died in Vietnam’ or ‘became an itinerant preacher man’ it namechecks each’s favourite cocktail. Zombie is Ellie’s, which is appropriately cineaste, since two concoctions she has created for the Mecanica list are film-themed. We also tried tipples from Dom, Jack and Adam (Phil and Rory, promise we’ll sample your contributions next time).

See You in Half an Hour (£9.50) is a fruity mix of Suze Aperitif, St Germain, Chazalettes bianco vermouth, with a red wine float and and almond mist for their aromatic qualities. “Reproducing the visual aesthetic of Wes Anderson’s 2007 short Hotel Chevalier, the drink makes multiple references to the characters’ fleeting romance in the titular backdrop.” Phew.

Well, it has put Hotel Chevalier on my streaming bucket list and I’m glad to confirm Ellie and I are devotees of Anderson’s Grand Hotel Budapest and Ralph Fiennes’ comic tour de force but agree to differ on Isle of Dogs. Not the kind of conversation sparked by 2-4-1 happy hour service in Slug and Lettuce.

The 1981 comedy, Arthur, is Ellie’s inspiration for Between the Moon and New York City (£9.50), definitely my punchy kind of cocktail, incorporating Bulleit rye whiskey,  Bitter Rose Moonshine, all rosehip and elderberry, Cocchi Rosa vermouth and peach bitters. It’s a line from the theme tune to the movie which follows Dudley Moore as a drunken millionaire who spends his days drinking in the hotel room he calls home.

There’s a further comic backdrop to Jack’s A Touch of Class (£11.50), named after the 1975 pilot episode of Fawlty Towers, and so paying homage to Basil Fawlty and the hapless Manuel. Indeed basil herb dominates in a delightful way, adding  surprisingly savoury bacon note to this blend of Sipsmith London Dry Gin, Cocchi Americano vermouth, clementine and champagne.

I loved it. Just the kind of cocktail you’d never get at a hotel of the calibre of Fawlty Towers. ‘Touch of Class’ alludes to Basil’s snobbish aspirations for it. To quote the script… Basil: If we can attract this class of customer then the sky’s the limit. Sybil: Basil, 22 rooms is the limit. Basil: Have you seen the people in room six. They’ve never sat on chairs before.”

The cannier of you may have twigged by now that a connecting theme in all these cocktails is HOTELS. Mecanica declares itself a ‘No-tel’ bar, promising the hotel bar experience without the hotel and yet inspired by the world’s best hotel bars… in sumptuous surroundings. Certainly the sophisticated interior belies the plain frontage but more importantly for me the slightly random hotel pegging doesn’t feel a distracting  imposition.

The theme is up there with Speak In Code current record sleeve inspired drinks menu and the ambitious ‘Japanese Idioms’ list developed by Gethin Jones at Cottonopolis a few years back. I like lists that tell stories.

Fear and Loathing (£10.50) courtesy of Adam, is a rollercoaster a cocktail ride as you’d expect from its inspiration, Hunter S. Thompson’s novel later adapted into the 1998 film featuring Johnny Depp and various oddballs holed up in a hotel sipping Singapore Slings and Mezcal. This bittersweet homage is appropriately in your face, blending Koch Mezcal, D.O.M Benedictine, passion fruit liqueur, a Sipello and grapefruit shot and, a new one for me, citrus squid ink.

You get a subtler but equally powerful buzz from El Convento (£10). It’s based on an actual hotel in a convent building dating back to 1646, neighbour of the oldest cathedral in Puerto Rico. Has creator Dom been there? Or is the Latin holy trinity of olive oil washed Barsol Pisco, Cocchi Americano and pickled chilli just a tot of inspired cultural appropriation?

Finally, a five star hotel I’ve actually stayed in a couple of times – Ashford Castle at Cong in County Galway. It was home to the Guinness family in the 19th century, so the eponymous dark stout features in Dom’s super smooth Ashford Estate (£10) along with nutmeg, orange and Roe & Co Irish Whiskey, whose creamy texture is enhanced by milk washing.

Not a term you’re acquainted with? Olive oil washed too? Let’ close with dip into the behind the scenes teamwork that makes Mecanica quite special.

Over to Phil again, the ringmaster of this project with a CV that impresses (from  Sokyo, a high-end Japanese bar in Sydney to MIchelin-starred Mana in Ancoats):

“For our home made ingredients we use a number of different methods and techniques, the majority of our ‘fresh’ ingredients are made in a water bath that’s heated using an immersion circulator set to around 54 degrees. This is the perfect temperature to both speed up the process of infusing flavour without exposing the ingredients to direct, intense heat. 

“We’re aiming to stay away from the idea of cooking or caramelising, the maillard reaction or anything that will alter the chemical structure of the amino acids and sugar compounds found in our ingredients (unless on purpose of course), changing the fresh flavour we’re trying so hard to preserve. 

“There are processes such as ‘fat washing’, cold infusion and elements of fermentation, shrub and brining included on our menu. We also have access to things like centrifugal juicers and chamber vacuum machines, allowing us to extract flavour from nearly any ingredient we choose to work with, which when you work with the seasons, can be very valuable. 

“We then store everything under vacuum to prevent oxidisation, preserve flavour and cut down on the need for excessive storage space.”

It is not just our restaurants – the likes of Mana, Where The Light Gets In and the Moorcock at Norland – with their foraging, fermenting and passion for ingredients that are the contemporary cutting edge cauldrons. The cocktail scene at Mecanica’s level is equally vibrant.

Mecanica, 1-3 Swan Street, Manchester M4 5JJ. 0161 806 1492. Wednesday and Thursday 3pm-12am; Friday and Saturday 12pm-1am; Sunday 12pm-12am. Bar snacks include handmade flatbreads and cheese and charcuterie from the Butcher’ Quarter. The wine list is better than at mot cocktail bar, too. 

Check out Mecanica’s festive packages HERE. Also every advance booking of four or more this New Year’s Eve will receive a complimentary bottle of Prosecco when purchasing a round of cocktails

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Modern British Beer – through a glass brightly with Matthew Curtis

This is an epic pioneering tale of brave new frontiers versus folk settled in their ways. Of an award-winning beer named after a 2,000 mile trek in search of a new life… or its champion’s own 200 mile switch from Crouch End to Levenshulme and a kind of ale apotheosis.

The day I met beer writer and South Manc ‘incomer’ Matthew Curtis to discuss his new book, Modern British Beer (note the absence of the word Craft), Elusive Brewing’s Oregon Trail West Coast IPA had just been judged country winner in its category at the World Beer Awards and would represent the UK in the world finals. Cue much whooping it up in wild Wokingham, where this modest but progressive brewery is based.

Oregon Trail West Coast IPA uses Chinook, Simcoe and Columbus hops for “a resinous profile with a citrus undertone, the bitterness helping to balance the light caramel flavours of the malts,” according to Elusive. 

Curtis in his book is more hopstruck, and rightly so. “For me this style (West Coast) is all about using malted barley to construct a pillar of caramel sweetness, which is then adorned from plinth to pedestal with the most bitter, resinous and aromatic hops you can find.”

All at a quite reasonable 5.8% ABV, compared with the Elevator IPA at 6.5 I encountered at the Oregon City Brewery once upon a day. I still can’t work out why I was visiting the trailhead of the original 2,000 mile Oregon Trail that brought the settlers’ wagons west from Missouri. Yet the beers I tasted there, far from the hip urban centres, were a further confirmation that the land of Bud and Miller Lite offered a remarkable alternative – one that would be cloned elsewhere. 

The Elevator washed down a helping of Reuben dogs that could easily be on the menu at many of our own brew taps. Let’s call it all the transatlantic symbiosis of hopheads. In Washington State’s Yakima Valley I visited both a hop farm that supplies our own BlackDog and the rather fusty American Hop Museum (exhibit next to Oregon Trail can, above).

New wave UK beer writers such as Mark Dredge have codified the global beer styles that have been clarified/reinvented across America and then taken up over here. Matthew Curtis goes a step further and charts the creative melting pot of our own mash tuns and barrel ageing projects. Modern British Beer proves we are not just brewing lackeys; our own cask ale traditions remain the envy of the world, our own innovations the equal of anywhere. 

The seeds of his own own beer writing career were actually sown in the States, in 2010. “My Dad had just emigrated to Fort Collins in Colorado, which is home to an incredible bunch of breweries”, he recalls. “The Odell Brewing Co IPA just blew me away, after which I became obsessed with researching beer.” A blog followed in 2012 and he went full-time freelance in 2016.

Sign of changing times, Modern British Beer is published by CAMRA Books (£15.99pb). This new open door policy may rankle with the diehard stalwarts for whom cask beer is the only choice on the bar, but the brews they are ‘a changin’. The sheer quality of a new generation’s beers, cask, keykeg or keg, cannot be ignored.

So Curtis, region by region, picks an exemplary beer from brewers he deems ‘modern’ according to a manifesto in the front of the book. Some 90 breweries in all feature. Omitted are influential traditionalists such as Harveys and Timothy Taylor, only because they are not ‘modern’. In his opening chapter Curtis dubs the whole contemporary beer scene ‘The Broad Spectrum of Joy’, incidentally the name of his celebratory beer collab with Sussex’s Burning Sky, another brewery fave we share.

We met at Manchester’s own Small Chalet of Joy, Sadler’s Cat, formerly artisan-crafted The Pilcrow, perfect excuse for missing trains from nearby Victoria Station. Now under the aegis of Cloudwater Brewery, it is serving as a guest Track Sonoma on handpull, the stuff of long lockdown dreams. I can’t resist just the three as I quiz Curtis specifically on what makes the Manchester beer scene so enticing he had to relocate last November.

Cloudwater’s Double Hopfenweisse, for a start. How could you not live in a city, which can yoke a German wheat beer style with a modern double IPA? Groundbreaking in  different way is Cloudwater providing a platform for black and LGBTQ+ owned beer brands such as Eko Brewing, Rock Leopard and Queer Brewing via collab IPAs getting a national profile on the shelves of Tesco. Woke, of course, but the beer scene has moved on, hence the need for MBB as well as The Good Beer Guide.

Curtis has been living up here for the past 10 months. “It was a fresh start in a new city, Levenshulme felt like Stoke Newington 10 years ago and the beer scene was a huge draw.” It wasn’t the best time to relocate, he admits, but he has no regrets. His partner Dianne had been the driving force and he eventually acquiesced. As a freelance (check out the online magazine he co-edits, Pellicle) he could work from anywhere – and when they arrived she found a job, appropriately enough, as Cloudwater’s Unit 9 tap room manager. 

Manchester wasn’t new territory for Curtis. IndieManBeerCon, Friends & Family & Beer, CAMRA’s Manchester Beer and Cider Festival, Marble, Manchester Beer Week, had all been ‘magnets for Matt’. 

“Every week in Manchester is Beer Week,” he told me. “IndyMan was the blueprint for all modern beer festivals and I’m fascinated by Beer Nouveau recreating old beer styles. The city has a bit of everything, too. Classic old family breweries such as Lees, Hydes and Holts; incredible traditional pubs such as the Peveril of The Peak, City Arms and the Marble Arch.” 

His own local in Levenshulme is Station Hop, one of the bevy of craft beer bars that have sprung up in the past decade. Witness their shortlist dominance in the pub/beer bar category of this year’s Manchester Food and Drink Awards – the likes of Heaton Hops, Beatnikz Republic NQ bar, Reasons to Be Cheerful and Nordie (another Levy watering hole for Curtis).

If it had re-opened earlier, Sadler’s Cat would surely have been a candidate. The refurb has been a real refresher. It gets its name from the cat that accompanied pioneering 19th century balloonist James on his ascent and is curled away in Sadler’s Yard, off Corporation Street. 

Graeme Brown of Curators of Craft offers a compendium of ‘modern beers’ online

Of course, a major beneficiary of lockdown home drinking has been canning. Home delivery has allowed beer geeks licence (sic) to explore febrile, far-flung corners of the beer scene. With a huge turnover of one-off brews or seasonal specials it is exhausting, thirsty work. In my quest to locate specific beers spotlighted in Modern British Beer I checked out Curators of Craft, which mails out British and Belgian beer nationwide from its Calder Valley base. My order, as a local, came via electric bike. 

Graeme Brown set up the business in November 2019 and has stock from over 60 breweries, including stellar names recommended in the the Curtis book. But of the individual examples representing each brewery only one could I find. Yes, you guessed it, Oregon Trail didn’t prove elusive. And it’s a beer I’d settle for any day.

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