More great places to have a pint

A while ago (http://danishwhiskyblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/great-places-to-have-pint.html) I mentioned some pubs I have particular enjoyed when I am on holiday. I always try to seek out places where better than average beers and whiskies are served. Good beverage is usually followed by good food as well.

Here is a few recent favourites

1. Christian Firtal - Odense

A cozy pub right in the city center of Odense, Denmarks thirdlargest city and the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen. This pub is named after the danish king Christian IV. Here's a selection on a tuesday night :

The turnaround is great, there's often a new beer on every night, and especially the "Humlehaner" section is being hit a lot (it means "hoppy taps"). Great atmossphere, and the place can be very busy on weekdays as well!. The staff is knowledgeable and they got a great selection of whiskies as well. Even the whiskybar has a great turnaround, so there's often new bottles on this shelf as well. Cadenhead is the main bottler on the shelf 

An example of a fantastic beer I had here : St. Austell's Proper Job

2. Park Way Tavern - Tacoma, Washington

Beer Randall

A very cozy tavern, with very friendly staff and guests. Around 20-30 taps, of which one is american cask ale. Every monday at 5 PM they do a Randall. A Randall is basically infusing a beer with extra flavours. The day I was there, they had the tube filled with a few extra hop varieties and some orange and citrus zest. The latter had the biggest impact on the new beer. This is the kind of pub I wish I had in MY neighbourhood

3. Russian River - Santa Rosa, California

On a my holidyas in the US I so far managed to visit around 20 craft breweries, ranging from the excellent and very big Sierra Nevada to a range of small microbreweries and brew-restaurants. The latter is a very common thing to find on the west coast US. Russian River is my favourite so far. Their restaurant is located in Santa Rosa just north of the Bay Area in California.

Left blackboard at Russian River. RR IPA was my favourite

Right Blackboard

A tasting set, this is done by all the craft breweries

Russian River is an outstanding brewery. I've been visiting around 15 in a week, and they were all nice encounters with a range of tasty beers, but the Russian River brews just blew my mind away. This is a world class brewery. As you can see, they have something for everybody, and a few friends that are into the stronger, belgian ale style kind of beers, possible wood aged tell me that the right side has a range of world class beers as well. I was stuck on the left blackboard, as I was driving, but I do like hoppy, fresh, lower ABV IPA's and the varieties made at Russian River was a delightfull way to spend an hour for lunch break. And the pizza was good as well-

4. Black Ox, Prague

If you are walking around Prague, visiting the major tourist attractions, don't forget to pop into the Black Ox. Or as it's called in Czech : U Cerneho Vola. It's one of the few remaining traditional czech pubs left in the castle area in Prague

Pivnice U Cerneho Vola on Loretta Square

On tap is FRESH Kozel and maybe also Pilsner Urquell, what more can you ask for. Don't forget to taste some of the local food snacks, like marinated camembert (hermelin) or topinky, which is a czech version of bruschetta (and a lot better)

5. Brew Dog, Edinburgh and Glasgow

Edinburgh and Glasgow is an abundance of great pubs. If you fancy something a wee bit different, why not try the excellent Brew Dog Pubs. In Edinburgh is very close to the Royal Mile, and in Glasgow is just opposite Kelvingrove art Museum. There's 5-6 Brewdog beers on tap, and a few guest beers, like Mikkeler. Great food is served as well

Great places to have a pint

At home I like to drink whisky. In bars I usually drink beers.

Here's a few places that I felt was worth the trip by itself

Prague:

1. U Zlateho Tygra (The Golden Tiger)
Located in the city center. In the area where thousands of tourists pass every day, but they probably pass without noticing. The front and entrance is very anonymous, and even if you open the door you might still wonder if you're at the right place. Flip the curtain aside then you know you are!

Here Pilsner Urquell is served. Not the usual stuff by keg, but from tanks. Unpasteurized. This is beer from heaven. Beer as it should be. Fresh and tasty. How come we can send people to the moon and so few places in the world have beer like this. Worth the trip to Prague wherever you are from!

This is where Havel took Bill Clinton when he was on a state visit. You sit at long wooden tables on benches and wheneever you're out of beer a new glass (full!) is placed in front of you (politely!). No time needed queueing for a new beer

2. Pivovarsky Dum (Home brew)
A mile or two southeast of the city center. A microbrew restaurant with a wide selection of own brews, from czech classics like pale lager and dark lager to more exotic sour cherry, nettle, coffee or banana beer, but also a weiss. Monthly special brews and traditional czech food

The beer is cheap, magnificient and having your own tube of 4 liter of beers at the table is a great way to share. Tasting sets possible. My favourite is the pale lager

http://www.gastroinfo.cz/pivodum/

Scotland:

3. Bon Accord, Glasgow
Real Ale. Brittains own style of ale. Less alcohol, less carbondioxide, more flavour. And the taste of "freshness" (like The Golden Tiger in Prague). Once you get acquainted with the taste of fresh beer, you'll love it. It takes a great deal of work to serve the perfect real ale. The serving system must be 100% clean (the reason your average draught lager sometimes tastes a little sour isn't always the brewery's fault).

Bon Accord knows how to serve a real ale and maintain their systems. They got several real ales on tap these days, and a great selection of whiskies. The real ales will change as the casks gets emptied, but expect Deuchar's IPA to be a regular. At 3.8% I find this a nice refreshing session ale, not the most intense IPA, but a good representative of what's popular from scottish brewers these days. It's particular vulnerable to be served from a good clean system so be careful where you order this. It's a great ale after a session of whisky dramming. The low ABV actually makes it possible to freshen up while having a pint. Nothing's like sobering up while getting pished :-)

http://www.bonaccordweb.co.uk/

Have a look at Ralfy's two vlogs about Bon Accord at http://www.whiskyreviews.blogspot.com/

4. Port Charlotte Hotel, Islay
With great food and a selection of around 100 Islay and Jura malts, this isn't the worst place to be for a whisky entusiast. Port Charlotte and the hotel with it, is a stunning scenic place on the shores of Loch Indaal on Islay.
Expect to find Islay Ales on the taps, the local micro brewery. Its a very little microbrewery, located in Bridgend

http://www.portcharlottehotel.co.uk/

http://www.islayales.com/

Now I could really drink a Saligo Ale right now!. I wish I was on Islay



Germany:

5. Hansens Brauerei, Flensburg
This is a small gem, very close to the danish border. A Restaurant with traditional german food, and their own brew. A pilsner, a schwarzbier and a season brew. Fresh bier again :-)
Don't forget to visit one of the neighbouring pubs to try the other local brew, Flensburg Pilsner. A much bigger brewery of regional size, but they brew a classic german lager and a very nice Weissbier

http://www.hansensbrauerei.de/

Denmark:

6. Hugo's Kælder, Køge
One of the best pubs I came across in Denmark, if not the best. Friendly staff, wee whiskyselection. A good selection of beers on tap, ranging from real ale, danish microbrew, american microbrew and so on. And they got a huge temperature differentiated fridge stocked with hundreds of different beers.

http://www.hugos.dk/

USA:


7. Panamint Spring Resorts, California

Isolated, Scenic and a huge selection of american microbrew. Get away from it all here, 30-50 miles to any neighbours, located at the mountains about Panamint Valley, in the outskirts of Death Valley National Park in California

Fantastic view

Fantastic selection

http://www.deathvalley.com/psr/

Belgium

Well, I didnt forget Belgium, but have no recent personal experience there and no place particular to mention. The country itself is worth the trip, and there's great beers to be found every where. I really need to go again

I've put up all my favourites bars and restaurant on a google map, just at the right side of this blogpost

Port Askaig at the Cockney Pub, Århus and a Superb BenRiach

Cockney Pub is an english/scottish pub in Århus with a good selection of bottled beers, beers on tap and malt whisky. There's a good turnaround, so theres always something new to try out. And it's the only place in Århus serving real ale. On the shelves this week were the three Port Askaigs bottled by Speciality Drinks, which is a bottling company within the The Whisky Exchange, one of the worlds leading whiskyshops

1. Port Askaig Cask Strength 57.1%

2. Port Askaig 17yo 45.8%

3. Port Askaig 25yo 45.8%

It was a hot day, and the bar was hot so the malts was served at a relatively high temperature. There's been some short discussions which distillery these are from, and the fact that Caol Ila is located just next to Port Askaig adding that Caol Ila is the biggest distillery on Islay and the distillery that most frequent feeds independent bottlers with peated malts made it an obvious guess. The bartender at the Cockney pub said the salesman from which he bought the whiskies from, had told him that these were from different distilleries. Labels like this might also change distillery from batch to batch, but as far as I know there's been just one batch so far of Port Askaigs. 

From tasting these I can't tell which distillery is the origin, but it tasted like they were from the same distillery as they had a lot in common. Actually they reminded me most of Ardbeg 10, but not really of any other Ardbeg bottlings. I do believe in Caol Ila for the above reasons, and also the fact that if anyone had casks of 25yo Ardbeg it would be worth a lot of £££ to sell it with Ardbeg name on the bottle.
Here's a bit on the whiskies :

The 25yo was delicious lightbodied, apple and pears, with a tobacco smokyness and slightly floral

The 17yo was meaty and more fullbodied but much of the same with the apples and pears being more subtle. This will definetely suit peat fanatics more than the 25yo will

The NAS cask strength version, was a lot more powerful but wellrounded whisky with clear relations to the older bottlings. 

Its a set of good simple classic Islay malts which I'd probably rate around 85, with no particlar favourite, theres a different one for whatever mood you're in

Here's the whiskybar of Cockney

Well I thought I could manage one more dram before heading home so I picked up a

4. Benriach 1984 24yo 49.2% Pedro Ximenez sherry finish

(Bottom shelf, bottle no 5 from the left on the photo above)

When Benriach was bought by the new owners they discovered a range of peated casks in the warehouses, and they have bottled quite a lot of it over the last few years. This includes a few port and sherry finishes, the 1986 Plowed Benriach is also a Pedro Ximenez finish)

This is a magnificient dram. Often the heavy wine finishes can disguise the peat but here the peat and the dark sherry works together very well with neither overpowering the other. It's a sweet mellow kind of peat, the dark sherry is classic dried fruits with underlying vanilla. There's actually a span of peat giving this a playful complexity. I also thought I picked up a tiny bit of wet rubber..latex  (sulphur?) in it, not really unpleasant, I didnt find that when I had the same malt the week before! 

Rating 94

Well, pubs forces me to enjoy myself and be social opposed to be too analytic, but I tried to concentrate a bit on these. When I was about to go home and relax, an old friend from out of town "unfortunately" walked in, which cost me a few extra and not planned hours in the pub and quite a bit of hangovers the next day! 

EDIT summer 2011. After retasting this at home, this is one of my all time favourites!