A Saturday Session before and at Innis & Gunn: 25th April 2015

Even before Saturday's trip to Edinburgh I'd been to some interesting beery events during the week (really unusual for me) - Paisley Beer Festival had continued to raise the bar for Scottish beer festivals in terms of the best selection of beer around (and had further expanded upstairs in Paisley Town Hall with another bar & lots of seating), I'd popped in to chat with James Watt at the BrewDog EFPIV Scottish Launch at BrewDog Glasgow, and now I was heading to another 'craft beer' event in Edinburgh - an Innis & Gunn Saturday Session which seemed as if it was going to be... well, I wasn't quite sure... part tutored beer tasting, part social gathering and perhaps a bit of marketing.

Outward travel was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Queen St. to Edinburgh Waverley (every 15 minutes)

I got into Edinburgh around 12noon and this meant I could head out to a couple of places in the centre of Edinburgh before walking up to the Innis & Gunn West End HQ for the scheduled 2:00pm kick-off. I first of all headed out from the rear exit of Waverley Station, along Market Street, up and over the Royal Mile, and eventually into the subterranean narrows of the Cowgate. There are still a number of stag and hen orientated venues along here, but also quite a few more interesting places, the newest of which is the large, two-storey premises of OX184, the latest venture from the Fuller-Thomson people.

The exterior is by no means classical or elegant (resembling a modern University dormitory), but at least there are some huge high windows, they've put flowering plants in the outside window boxes, and there is also some excellent minotaur-style artwork on the outside wood panelling (which can open up on sunny days).

The first thing that hit me when I walked inside was the smoke, not foggy, impenetrable smoke, but a lovely aroma of slightly peaty, wood-fired smoked food, which brought old-fashioned campfires to mind, and that's got to be a great help when going into anywhere for something to eat. Downstairs is a large, high space and has a lot of the industrial chic that is prevalent nowadays - red painted girders, aged panelled wood, a number of long benches & tables, more seats & coloured tables similar to Dukes in Dundee, hanging downlights & larger globelights, shiny air conditioning ducts and combined red heaters/lights which reflect & twinkle in the row of large hanging glass bottles over the bar. And slightly away from the bar are shelves full of whiskies and other spirits barricaded off behind a grid of metal latticework.

There is an array of shiny taps well-spaced behind the bar, today consisting of number of 'house brewer' Tempest beers - Easy Livin' Pils, Long White Cloud, Unforgiven, Armadillo and the fantastic Red Eye Flight cocoa stout, as well as Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Fyne/Siren Saudade, Six°North Table Beer and Brewdog Alice Porter - all keg beers, but all excellent beers in their own right. I took a schooner of the Easy Livin' Pils (smooth and bitter) and sat down to peruse the menu sheet which consisted of a number of brunch specialities (served until 3pm) and also mains, mostly grilled/smoked meat-based, but also a fair few veggie options. Selection made, I was able to wander up the winding metal staircase to the first floor where there is a row of high-backed, almost cage-like, booth tables as well as a smaller bar and a collection of high-tech, shiny coffee-making equipment.

Behind the bar is one of the grills, looking a bit under-used at this early time in the afternoon (although they do food until 2:30am (and are open until 3:00am), hoping to cater for the post-pub/bar trade).

I headed back downstairs and it wasn't long before my lunch arrived, a Waffle Sandwich of Fried Smoked Chicken with a heaped mass of savoury fries. I wasn't sure if the slightly sweet waffle would actually work with the chicken, but there was a lot of smoky BBQ sauce in there which actually held it all together really well (and the fries were outstanding, with mayo of course).

Lunch was very tasty (and good value for Edinburgh), the service was excellent and with a great beer choice (all that Tempest!) I'm hoping that OX184 will go from strength-to-strength. Leaving OX184 I continued further along the Cowgate, past BrewDog Edinburgh and then up the cobbles of West Bow to the always inviting frontage of The Bow Bar.

Today was the 100th Anniversary of ANZAC Day, and the Bow Bar was commemorating this with a beer from resident Antipodeans Elixir Brew Co. called (unsurprisingly enough) ANZAC. This has been an annual occurrence since 2013 and I'm ashamed to say that I'd never tried it before, but today I was happy to remedy that by taking a pint, accepting one of the home-made oaty biscuits on offer, and putting all my change into the box on the bar for the Edinburgh ANZAC Memorial Fund. The ANZAC beer is brewed with similar ingredients to the biscuits sent to ANZAC soldiers who were fighting in World War I, oats, golden syrup & coconut, and so was very sweet & smooth but then a mass of Australian & New Zealand hops (I could certainly get the Nelson Sauvin) helped to balance it all - it was a lovely, boozy treat.

And funnily enough, when I turned around and looked at whom else was in the bar, there were Benj and Sevare from Elixir Brew Co. with a few friends (I think the plan was to stay there all day, but I believe the 2 casks of ANZAC were finished off by 9pm, wow!). Benj was kind enough to invite me over and then explain how the ANZAC had dropped in strength from its original incarnation (up at 7.4% to a (vaguely) more sessionable 5.9% this year) and that the home-made biscuits should definitely be eaten with the beer. After chatting away for a bit (we somehow managed to get onto 80's metal-rock bands and blue beer) I had to leave to make my way to the Innis & Gunn HQ just off the very west end of Princes Street. This meant braving the heaving hordes of people in The Grassmarket but then a more sedate wander through Princes St. Gardens.

The Innis & Gunn West End HQ is at 6 Randolph Crescent and looks as if it is a converted townhouse; apart from the small Innis & Gunn nameplate there isn't too much to distinguish it from the surrounding apartments.

I knocked on the door, pushed it open (since it was unlocked) and entered into the main hallway where I was met by a huge, brightly coloured Innis & Gunn logo and a whisky barrel, with founder/brewer Douglas Sharp's welcome words writ large on the other wall.

There's also a brewing and, in particular, an Innis & Gunn illustrated timeline on the ground floor wall...

...which leads up a fantastic spiral staircase to the skylight in the roof. It's a very impressive building indeed.

I was then met by the lovely Claire and shown into the, well, drawing/sitting room I guess, where we were given a choice of Innis & Gunn beer from the well-stocked fridge (I went for the new White Oak Wheat beer) and then just relaxed for a bit in one of the numerous comfy armchairs whilst waiting for everyone else to arrive.

This gave me the chance to chat to some of the other attendees about Innis & Gunn beers and also have a think about my own attitude to them. I definitely really liked them at first (in particular the Original, the Blonde and the Rum Finish), and even though I found them quite sweet (and in some cases extremely so) that didn't bother me too much because they were so different. However at some point either my own tastes changed or the recipe and/or body of the beers changed slightly when they switched from barrel-ageing their core beers to instead using oak chips in 'oakerators', and I pretty well stopped drinking them for a time. It didn't help that I just didn't like their Lager (too corn sweet) or the Melville-branded fruit beers (almost artificially sweet) at all, but now it seems that they have been developing some interesting and innovative smaller batch beers, so I was happy to go into the tasting with an open mind and give them another try. We therefore finished our beers and followed Claire into the tasting room next door.

There were 4 beers to try and Claire let us pour the first one (the Original, which I found to be virtually all vanilla in the aroma with a sweet vanilla taste, but just a tad thin) whilst giving us a brief overview of the history of Innis & Gunn and how the oak-aged beers came into being back in 2002/03. This is pretty well explained on their own web-pages and in other places so I won't go into detail here, but there were a few interesting snippets that Claire told us about. In particular that the amount of 'thrown-away' beer that was being consumed by the William Grant employees in Girvan after being used for the original Grant's Ale Cask Finish Whisky was somewhat higher than reported, that Douglas Sharp had thought about calling the beer something seriously over-the-top (Double Scotch Tartan Ale was mentioned!) before opting for Innis & Gunn, that they use their own Innis & Gunn specified Golden Promise pale ale malt, and that they had now changed over to low-weight brown bottles to replace the clear bottles that they had previously used for most of their core beers - definitely a good decision. We then moved onto the 2nd beer of the day, the new White Oak Wheat beer that I'd had in the sitting room. This was something that one of their brewers, Rachel Sutherland, had wanted to try for a while, but Claire indicated that it had simply taken a long time to acquire all the Bergamot Oranges that they needed for a full brew - the majority of the crop from Italy's Amalfi coast is pre-allocated for Twinings who use it in their Earl Grey Tea. When the shipment finally arrived (all 300KG of it!) into the Innis & Gunn HQ last December the 2000 or so oranges had to be hand peeled (mainly by Rachel) over the course of 4 days - I like the dedication of all of this.

(pic from Innis & Gunn twitter page)

Only the green zest was needed for the beer (which was then dried by a local firm), but that left the problem of a huge amount of Bergamot Orange pulp. Some of this was used in the Innis & Gunn kitchen for the Christmas-time beer & food matching events but Claire also headed around a number of Edinburgh restaurants with a taxi full of free Bergamot Orange pulp which eventually ended up in courses such as a Bergamot Orange Tart with Vanilla Yogurt Sorbet at The Pompadour.

(pic from The Pompadour twitter page)

The dried bergamot zest was then infused into the beer and blood orange juice was also added during maturation. It's a Kristallweizen and so is fairly robustly filtered and therefore poured pretty clear, but there was a nice spicy orange flavour to it, some wheat/biscuit tones and a long, dry tannin-like finish. It's still fairly sweet (it has gone through bourbon-infused oak chips in the oakerators) but I have to admit I really quite liked it (a naturally cloudy Hefeweizen would be great in the future!). Next we tried the Rare Oak Pale Ale which had probably the lowest abv of the beers today (at 5.6%). This had a more biscuity-lemon citrus flavour, not too much sweetness, and then a slight honey-sweet almost herbal-bitter finish. Claire indicated that this could be from the sweet gale that is added and also since Scottish oak is used in the maturation process the full-on oak-sweetness is reduced quite a bit. Finally we tried the Bourbon Cask Dark Ale which was the only beer which hadn't been matured in the oakerators. This is the process that Innis & Gunn developed back in 2010 to head-off a possible barrel shortage at Grant’s and which puts dried oak chips cured with the alcoholic spirit into the maturation tanks (or oakerators) to attempt to replicate barrel-ageing. I'm not 100% convinced about this, but it does mean that for the large full-size brews at Tennent’s Wellpark brewery they can use the oakerators without having to use a quite massive amount of barrels (as an indication Goose Island had 30,000 barrels in their warehouse for Bourbon Country Stout before the AB-InBev takeover). The Dark Ale tasted of mellow-vanilla bourbon, almost some coconut and then had nice burnt bitter finish - it just seemed to be a bit more intense (and a bit more balanced) than the other beers we'd tried that afternoon. Tasting done we then headed downstairs to the small basement bar where there were a few keg lines setup with the Original, Irish Whisky Finish and the Lager available to buy (there's even a hand-pull there, but it's been unused since the Toasted Oak IPA that was brewed for the Wetherspoon Beer Festival back in October 2013).

I instead went for something I hadn't tried before, a bottle of the Scotch Whisky Porter. This had some almost Auchentoshan Three-Wood-like dried fruit-sweetness, more vanilla, and ended in a bitter, sticky-toffee finish (OK, still sweet), and actually this seemed a bit more like the Original that I remembered from pre-oakerator days. Chatting away to Claire and other attendees I realised that I'd had a really fun, interesting and informative couple of hours (high abv beer definitely helps!) and that it was certainly worth the £15 that I'd paid for it. Claire had shown me how enthusiastic, meticulous and hard-working the Innis & Gunn people are and she even dropped a few hints about an Innis & Gunn brewery (plans for which de-cloaked the same week) and we talked about some of the smaller, innovative batch beers. One of these, Hot Rocks, was brewed with no hops (instead sweet gale, meadowsweet, mugwort horehound, pink heather flowers and heather honey were used) and to a supposed 'ancient' process in which the grains are caramelised over hot granite rocks (there's a limited batch of only 120 bottles for this so I can't see it having been brewed at Wellpark, even the Craft Beer Kitchen could do that batch size). It's a really innovative concept, but when I left the Innis & Gunn townhouse I dropped into Cloisters on the (slightly circuitous) way back to Haymarket Station and as a bit of an antidote/balance to some of the sweet beers I'd tried at Innis & Gunn I picked up this - an Elixir beer made with caramelised onions, Indian spices and aji chilis. If I ever find something like coming out of Innis & Gunn I'd be quite amazed (but more than happy!).

Return travel:-
  Train: Edinburgh Haymarket to Glasgow Queen St. (every 15 minutes)

Edinburgh Independent Beer Festival 2013 Crawl #2: 13th July 2013

After a couple of day's rest from my first foray to the Edinburgh Independent Beer Festival (EIBF) of 2013 it was time to head back to Edinburgh on the Saturday (my 4th weekend in a row to the Capital City, I was starting recognise some of the staff and passengers on the same train out of Queen Street). This time I hoped to take in the bars I'd missed on Wednesday as well as engage in a fairly lightning strike on the Scottish Real Ale Festival (SRAF) as there were only so many hours available in the afternoon.


View EIBF2 in a larger map

Outward transport was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Queen St to Edinburgh Haymarket

On leaving Haymarket I decided that a walk out to the venue of the SRAF, the Edinburgh Corn Exchange, approx. a mile & a 1/2 south-west of the station would be a good idea before the full effects of a Scottish summer's sun unfolded (incredibly I say that without a hint of sarcasm this year). Thankfully one of the EIBF bars was pretty well on the way, The Caley Sample Room on Angle Park Terrace - I like it when these things work out.

The Caley had opened at 11:00am for the odd breakfast or coffee person, but it was completely empty when I reached it at just past 11:15am, although everything was spic-and-span on the lounge side of the bar and all the tables had been set for lunch on the dining side. They had held a Meet-the-Brewer event with Harbour Brewing from Cornwall as part of the EIBF on Wednesday so the hand-pulls and keg taps were still full of Harbour beers.

Morning was the not time to try some full-on barrel-aged 7%+ beers so I settled for a Harbour Antipodean Rye, a spicy rye ale with a blast of bitter hops in the finish - an nice beer, but it did seem to be served a tad too warm (I'll blame it on being the first drink of the day). The Harbour Pale Ale #5 was far better - a lovely bitter pale ale with some citra sweet grapefruit (almost pineappley) bitterness. I did manage to cage a couple of samples of both the Harbour Special B (aged in Appleton rum casks) and the Tiny Rebel Grand Regal Stout (Canadian Bourbon Barrel), many thanks to the barman for this, but both are definitely night-cap beers for me.

First beers of the day done (well before noon, gads!) I headed further along Slateford Road towards the Corn Exchange. When in this part of the city and with the wind in the right direction the scent from the Caledonian Brewery is fantastic - a full-on aroma of sweet toffee malt. And the building still looks fantastic as well.

Further along Slateford Road I came across what used to be the Slateford Maltings; these closed quite some time ago and instead there is now a gated entranceway to an almost fully enclosed 6-storey U-shaped apartment complex complete with tree-lined inner courtyard - it's a large, impressive structure which thankfully still retains a lot of its original shape & form.

A walk of only a few minutes more then took me to the Corn Exchange complex. I arrived just as the queue of thirsty drinkers had been let in; good timing on my part.

After a chat with Graeme from CAMRA Ayrshire (and fellow Laurieston Bar fan) I entered the spacious main hall of the Corn Exchange. There were still 125 beers available, not bad at all for a Saturday (they were also opening on the Sunday for the first time), but obviously a lot of the more interesting and/or newly released beers has disappeared. What was still fully available to Saturday attendees was the Golden Beer challenge - 8 golden beers from 8 different breweries all at 5% abv to be tried and rated as part of a blind tasting - a really good idea indeed (and won by Stewart Brewing - see the results on the SRAF Facebook page here)

There were also some more than decent beers with actual real names available - I tried my first ever beers from both Stonehaven's six°north (Old School, a lovely Belgian Wit) and also Windswept's APA (not bad, a bit too sweet & malty for me). However my favourite was probably Loch Ness's madNESS (One Hop Beyond), an initially well balanced amber ale which then finished with a real blast of bitter green hops (and the pump-clip showed a nice bit of imagination at work as well).

I think I stayed at the SRAF for only about an hour and a 1/2; it would have been very easy to stay for most of the afternoon but I had a number of pubs to visit before my late afternoon curfew. First of all I had to get the bus back into the city centre which (again thankfully) picks up almost opposite the Corn Exchange building. Although I managed to miss this by about 15 seconds, it was easy enough to catch it at the next stop around the corner due to the non-synchronisation of traffic lights around the Corn Exchange junction - phew! This dropped me off at Lothian Road and from here it was not exactly a hard decision to head to the sanctuary (ouch!) of Cloisters for lunch and more EIBF beer.

Cloisters were showcasing Scottish beers during EIBF and the day before they had held the launch of the newest Edinburgh area microbrewery, Top Out Brewery. I'd had their Staple at SRAF, a nice citrusy pale ale (maybe a tad sweet), but this gave me the chance to try their Smoked Porter and wow was this smoky, some bitter chocolate at the start but it was blitzed by the smoky malts and probably headed way out into deep fried smoked sausage supper territory - I quite liked it!

I ordered lunch and chatted to the staff about the Wild Beer/Fyne Ales collaboration beer, Cool as a Cucumber, which I'd had during FyneFest. The comments on twitter were suggesting that it went incredibly well with a shot of Botanist Islay gin, and the staff agreed with some knowing nods of their heads; obviously lethal stuff (I'm not sure if it's a blessing that I really dislike gin or not!). Lunch was one of Cloisters' celebrated salads, this time Chicken & Chorizo with chunky chips - with the Top Out Smoked Porter this is definite contender for Food & Beer pairing of the year so far.

Again it would have been easy to stay in Cloisters for an hour (or 2 or 3), but I needed to start walking back down Lothian Road towards some of the other EIBF pubs. First off was EIBF Central, The Hanging Bat.

I thought they were due to have a hands-on brewing demonstration in the afternoon, but it had been cancelled (although the Meet-the-Brewer with Redchurch & Summer Wine was still happening later on in the afternoon). This was probably just as well since it 'forced' me to choose only a single beer from their great selection and I went for Saison 14 from Weird Beard Brewing, a lovely light, dry & hoppy Saison. The 14 supposedly comes from when the original homebrew beer scored 14/50 in a national competition, i.e. almost 'undrinkable'. That certainly wasn't the case for the beer I had today, I'd have given it 41/50!

The next EIBF bar on my list was The Cambridge Bar, so this meant a walk to the west-end of Princes Street and then down Charlotte Street until the relative quiet of Young Street (it's amazing how much quieter things become just one additional street further away from Rose Street and George Street).

Even mid-afternoon the place was fairly busy with people having a late lunch, so most of the tables both at the bar area and further in towards the dining area were taken, but they do have a number of standing tables around the beam supports which I quite like. The Cambridge Bar was showcasing Wild Beer Company beers so I took a half of the Redwood, one of the most red-wine tasting beers I think I've ever had with an almost red wine vinegar sour after-taste. It was quite OK for a 1/2 but I don't think I could really have much more of it than that.

On leaving the Cambridge I headed into the lanes, lush foliage, mews apartments and steep steps of Stockbridge, probably one of the most affluent parts of the the city.

Located at the very start of busy Raeburn Place is the Stockbridge Tap.

They were showcasing Beavertown, Weird Beard and Tiny Rebel beers as well as having some of their standards from Scottish breweries and a very nice selection it was indeed.

I started off with the Tiny Rebel Cwtch, a slightly maltier & more fruity version of the Flux that I'd had on Wednesday; Cwtch is Welsh for 'Affectionate Hug' and I could well believe that on a cold night a pint of this would be like a 'hug in a glass'. Next I steeled myself to try the Beavertown Bloody 'Ell, a Blood Orange IPA at 7.9%. It seemed as if an orange tree had died to make this beer since there was so much orange aroma & taste, a blast of dry citrus & some red berries and then more orange in the finish - it was very nice indeed (and did I say it was orangey ?). And finally I tried the Beavertown 8-Ball, a murky rye beer with a dry citrus after-taste. Beavertown, Weird Beard & Tiny Rebel are certainly making some good beers and these were a more than acceptable way to while a hour or so away in the fabulous front room of the Stockbridge Tap.

I didn't really fancy the 30 degree climb back up Gloucester Street so took the bus from almost outside the Tap to Princes Street. This allowed me to walk through Princes Street Gardens and it's not too that often that I stop and think how fortunate it is to have a 'green space' on the other side of a main shopping street, complete with great views of a World Heritage Site (i.e. Edinburgh Castle).

I was then able to walk through the massed throng populating the Grassmarket...

... until reaching my final EIBF destination, the wonderful single-roomed traditional alehouse of The Bow Bar.

As always the beer selection in the Bow was pretty impressive, both on the magnificent Aitken tall fonts and the keg taps.

The most striking pump-clip/label was that of the Buxton/To Øl collaboration beer Sky Mountain (or Himmelbjerget), which took over 3 of the keg taps and which 'purported' to display a graph & pie-chart of the dreaming activity of the Danish people - bizzare & quite different to say the least. This was another sour beer, but with lots of bright, zesty citrus bitterness and a tart after-taste, very refreshing indeed on a hot summer's day. I managed to chat with a few other untappd users in the Bow about the EIBF - it was more than evident that everyone was having a great time and the talk was all about the great beers and where they'd had them.

And that was it - EIBF was done for me for another year. My beer of EIBF was probably the Kernel Imperial Brown Stout that I'd had in the Southern on Wednesday, but there really were so many amazing beers to try. Thanks again to A New Wave and all the pubs & bars that I visited - I had a blast!

Return transport:-
  Bus: Corn Exchange to Lothian Road (35, Lothian Buses)
  Bus: Stockbridge to Princes Street (29, Lothian Buses)
  Train: Edinburgh Waverley to Glasgow Queen St

Edinburgh on a 6 Nations Rugby Day: 4th February 2012

I've been going to Scotland's home matches in the 6 Nations (and previously 5 Nations) rugby tournament for close on 2 decades now (scary!). Irrespective of the score and the weather it's still a great day out with friends that I've known for ages. Today it was the Scotland-England Calcutta Cup game in the late afternoon kick-off match and this would let me try a few pubs in Edinburgh city centre, attempt to get a few beers in the packed pubs & bars and then meet up with my pals nearer Murrayfield. On a day like today there was no way I would be able to get the hi-res photos and pub descriptions that I would normally try for, but hopefully these iPhone camera images will suffice.

First off was the problem of trying to get to Edinburgh by train. With four trains an hour from Glasgow Queen Street this is not normally too difficult, but on Rugby Days it can be a real test of patience and endurance. I've seen (and been in) queues which can snake all the way from the Queen Street concourse, around 3 sides of Queen Street car park and then back up North Hannover Street to almost Bath Street - a waiting time of an hour or more. However as of last year there is a 'secret' route if you come from the west of Glasgow - a direct train from Milngavie to Edinburgh through Queen Street low-level on the Airdrie/Bathgate line. It's maybe 15-20 minutes longer than taking 2 trains on a 'normal' day, but today it was by far the best option.


View Edinburgh Rugby in a larger map

Outward transport was as follows:-
  Train: Glasgow Westerton to Edinburgh Waverley (Airdie/Bathgate line)

First stop after leaving the south/rear exit of Waverley Station was the Half Way House, situated approximately 'half-way' up the steep steps of Fleshmarket Close.

It's a really, really small pub, and difficult enough to find elbow space in at the best of times, but today it was nigh on impossible. A group of England fans had encamped on most of the seats since opening time (probably since last night) and were quite happy to get involved in some banter (and some singing - not so good). There's normally a decent selection of Scottish or North-East England beers - today there was Tempest Into the Light, Kelburn Red Smiddy, Inveralmond Independance and Wells Bombardier(!?) - it seemed as if most of the England fans were taking the Bombardier - more fool them with all the other offerings available!

I decided that some sustenance was required to start the day and went for the Cullen Skink - nice and filling with all that cream, tatties and fish. However it was a bit of a pain to eat standing up and almost wedged into the coatstand (only slight exaggeration!).

After this I climbed the rest of the steps, crossed the Royal Mile and descended down to the Cowgate, past tourists waiting for their 'free' walking tour and into Brewdog Edinburgh.

I had high hopes that this might be 'relatively' quiet since there wouldn't be any TV screens for the early 6-Nations game (France v Italy) and it's not really the type of place for throwing masses of pints down your neck, and I was right - it was very quiet - in fact there was almost tumbleweed blowing through some parts of the bar (not likely to be the case come the evening I suspect).

The staff here are still great - dealing informatively with the people who knew what they wanted to drink and more patiently with those who didn't. Say what you want about Brewdog's marketing, occasional crass pronouncements etc... but Mr Bruce Gray really does train the staff well. I was given a sample of the Evil Twin The Talented Mr. Orangutan and then went for a 1/3 pint - a great orange sherbertiness to go with the dark chocolate base stout.

Next I walked along the Cowgate to the start of the Grassmarket and up to the Bow Bar which was almost at the end of its Winter Beer Festival (preview here).

My guess was that the Bow was going to be completely stowed out and that was proved to be completely correct. The 5 minutes or so that it took me to get to the bar meant that I could peruse the beer board and try to make my choices from the great selection available.

I went for the Deeside Talorcan, a great chocolatey, amazingly smooth stout (think they use whey in this) and the Brodies Hoxton IPA, very bitter and almost oily - both were great beers. I managed to persuade a couple of guys to also try the Talorcan - a few pints of their original choice (Profanity Stout @ 7% abv) would have meant they would have probably missed the game! I could have quite happily stayed in the Bow all afternoon, but eventually had to leave, for some fresh air if nothing else, making my way slowly through the very polite clientèle to the door.

I gave the rest of the bars in the Grassmarket area a miss and headed out through the West Port - past guys kicking rugby balls high into the sky, fast food stalls, pipers & drummers busking their trade and (very) confused tourists to Blue Blazer.

It was busy, but not completely packed out, with space in both the main bar and the large adjoining room. They normally have a good selection of Scottish beer and today was no exception with 3x Stewart, Orkney, Cairngorm and 2x Knops Beers on. I chose a half of the Knops 3 Threads, a blend of his first 3 beers in a cool, heavy stemmed 1/2 pint glass and it tasted really smooth up-front, but seemed to have a slightly tart after-taste - it was possibly close to the end of the cask - damn!

I then crossed Lothian Road (somehow managing to resist the temptations of Cloisters up the road) and headed vaguely towards Haymarket and William Street via 4 cash machines (3 having no money). A couple of the pubs in William Street are very good, Bert's Bar (now a Maclays pub) & Teuchters, but I was meeting my friends in The Melville because the place has a child license until 8pm and one of my friends was bring was bringing his son along to the game.

The Meville was really busy due to the 4 large screen TVs and the fact that the France-Italy game had just started. There's only Caledonian Deuchars IPA and 80/- on hand-pull and they go through an incredible amount of it. My friends and I are now well known to the main barman and some of the staff that are in for the 6-Nations games (they coo over my friend's son) so we can normally get served fairly easily when one of us eventually percolates to the front of the bar - not queue jumping, just good non-verbal communication.

On days like today the place is so busy that you're forced to go on a different route to try to get to the tolilets. Instead of elbowing past the mass of people in the main pub it's far easier to go back out the right hand entrance door into William Street and then re-enter the pub by the left hand door and make your way to the toilets at the back. Either that or go down to Bert's Bar and hope that the fire escape door is open on the side of the building.

Between about an hour or 45 minutes to go before kick-off everyone leaves the pubs and heads out to Murrayfield. There were a lot of roadworks to dodge today but it was still like a human wall of people heading out past Haymarket Station and the Donaldson's College building to Roseburn Street. Normally the traffic stops, but sometimes you get a lone car or bus attempting to make it against the pedestrian flow - with panic on the poor driver's face!

Today all the turnstiles were open at the stadium and the crowd flowed in without too much of a problem. I had a quick look at the huge temporary bars in the ground but could only see Carling, Guinness or Caffreys (didn't know this still existed) and some sort of cider - an absolutely stunning choice - not! I went for Bovril because it was a more palatable alternative and because it kept my hands warm for a few milliseconds at a time.

We had seats high, high, high up in the East Stand, but there's still a great atmosphere when the National Anthems are sung and you get involved in the singing between the different supporters. One of my friends also referees the match somewhat differently to the match officials which can cause a few heads to turn!
The result today - well a fairly lucky win for England with some debatable decisions not going Scotland's way (whinge over).

After the game it was even more a crush to get out of the ground and back to the city centre, not helped by the roadworks and diversions today (for the semi-mythical trams).

When we arrived back in William Street the pubs were far busier than earlier and people spilled out onto the street for the best part of a couple of hours.

After a couple of additional Deuchars's (Deuchari ?) I bade my friends farewell and made my way to Haymarket Station (note that the main entrance into the station was closed for over an hour after the game), but had just enough time to drop into the newly revamped Haymarket Bar, now a Mitchells & Butlers pub. The line up of 12 hand-pulls in a row is pretty impressive, but I only had time for one very swift half and went for my first ever Moor beer, the Amoor - a great coffee'n'hazelnuts porter.

I'd definitely recommend this as a day out experience to try at least once - it's expensive (but most 'events' are nowadays), but a great deal of fun and the memories stay for a long time.

Return transport was as follows:-
  Train: Edinburgh Haymarket to Glasgow Queen Street