A few weeks ago an
email popped up in my inbox suggesting I attend a beer and food matching /
tasting event in my hood, Clapham. It
wasn’t a hard decision to make.
Honky Tonk (our hosts for the evening) has
been in Clapham a wee while now, but I’m pretty sure until this event I hadn’t
been in – ashamed as I am to admit that.
As far as I can recall, it started life as People’s Republic, and
offshoot from the guys that once upon a time brought us Iniquity and
Establishment down on Northcote Road – both now, sadly, departed. Incidentally, they’re also the brains behind
the awesome Venn Street Records and Northcote Records. So the pedigree’s pretty good; even if Honky
Tonk is utterly divorced from its predecessor, there’s plenty of reflected
glory to bathe in.
The theme of the
evening was USA – American craft beer served up with a five course American
tasting menu. As I’ve written elsewhere,
American beer is not what it used to be.
Thanks to president Carter’s relaxation of homebrewing regulation in
1978, following the extreme exclusion of prohibition, craft beers have been
popping up across the Land of the Free.
That they’re only just catching up now to European standards I think is
testament to how damaging prohibition was to that industry. But catching up they are: the popularity of
brews like Sierra Nevada, Blue Moon and Brooklyn bear witness to that.
All of our beers
heralded from the same brewery: Fordhams, of Delaware. If I was going to have a criticism of the
evening, it might be this. Nice as it
was to sample the complete range of one brewery, it might have been nicer still
to try beers from across different outlets and states, to compare and contrast.
Kicking off
proceedings was the Wisteria Wheat. I
love a wheat beer, actually. I recognize
it’s an acquired taste, sure, but I love it.
This example was no let down. It
comes in at 4% it won’t knock you down (not always a negative, to my mind),
with a sweet banana and soft fruit nose.
Bloody lovely.
Matching it were crab
cakes. The idea behind the match was
that the sweetness of the crabmeat would be balanced out by the sharpness and
fruitiness of the ale. The result? Pretty damn good.
Next up was the
Copperhead Amber Ale. A slightly longer
barley roast leaves this ale golden with caramelly, burnt sugar overtones. Again, malted barley and German style. Served up with a cheeseburger, this was
Americana at its most overt – even if this was probably my least favourite brew
(which is not to say it was bad one bit).
This was followed by
Hop Moutain. As the name suggests, this
was straight in at the deep end of American craft beer – that is to say, out
come the hops and all the pungency that goes with it. This was a very aromatic number, with red
fruits and floral, hoppy scents evading everything about it. I can still taste it writing this. As with many American craft beers, it wasn’t
mucking about at a potent 6.3%.
Its match was hot
wings, which were sadly not hot enough, the idea being that the sweet, aromatic
nature of the beer would counteract the fire of the spice. I can see the combo working, but the wings
really do have to be hot to hit it off right.
Beer 5 was Ram’s Head,
a West Coast IPA. Now, IPAs back in the
day (I learned from our beer sommelier) was originally brewed by the East India
Company as a much stronger brew that would last the six month long, pre-Suez
Canal, voyage to India from Britain.
Following the introduction of tax per percentage, IPAs were scaled right
back to the (comparatively) insipid brews we now drink down the pub. The Ram’s Head tries to recapture that
original strength, something reflected by its 7.5% alcohol volume.
It was matched up with
BBQ ribs, something I have a particular soft spot for in any event, and it was
a masterly match. The beer itself, with
a slightly lower roast, is incredibly pungent and hoppy, with all the sharpness
that entails. The upside is that it is
the perfect antidote to rich, sticky, sweet, fatty ribs.
By this stage I was
feeling pretty full, I won’t lie. But I
wasn’t to be deterred – because the very best had been saved for last. Dominion is an oak barrelled stout, meaning
that it has been aged in oak following the brewing process and picked up a lot
of lovely flavours as a result. It’s
also been treated with vanilla seeds, which adds to the sweet, sticky feel of
this perfect pudding beer. Like any
great pudding, though, its not all sugar and sweetness, possession in addition
a long, bitter-chocolate flavour. Truly scrummy.
Matching the stout was
a divine chocolate brownie and ice cream
The evening was run by
Phil Harding of Boutique Beer Brands, and was a
lot of fun. It was the first time it had been run, which showed a little as the timings were out – the food arrived before the beer a couple of times, meaning it wasn’t hot when we got to eat it. Other than that, no complaints – and, at £25, absolutely fantastic value.
Hoky Tonk are keen to do more of these events. And they should – as the boss said when I spoke to him afterwards, local bars should be about more than getting hammered on a Saturday night. Agreed. Events like this make a place, so I hope to see a lot more in future.
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| Picture from Honky Tonk's Facebook page |
Oh, and the interior décor
rocks.
- GrubsterBoy -
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