Hartley's Fellrunners - by Gazza 

Brains MA - by Gazza

Valhalla White Wife - by Gazza

Aldchlappie 1707 - by Gazza

gain, this one was one of the Holy grails of the beer world.  It never went anywhere, the entire production was sold in the hotel to the guests.  How we scored it was a spur of the moment decision brought on by some Traquair beers....

We were at the Traquair beer fest.  It was my first time there, and although I had scored a few beers, I was gutted that the festival ale wasn't on - infection or something, although in my opinion that could apply to all their beers!  The trip was running a bit "off the cuff", and we had nowhere booked for doss that night when somehow the subject of Aldchlappie came up, and an idea manifested itself; what about staying at the rarest brewpub in the UK?

Steve rang the pub, but bad news was heading our way; they only had one room left and we decided that it would be a bit rude to blag 3 in it.  I even toyed with the idea of sleeping in my car outside, but I decided this was too much beyond the call of duty - looking back now, maybe it would have been worth it! Despite the bad news on the doss, there was better news on the beer front - there was a beer on! The lure of this huge winner was now irresistible, so off we went on the long trek to the Highlands.

When I think of the daft moves I used to do driving over 100 miles for 1 winner must come pretty high on the list, but these were the days when I was desperate and to be honest I'm glad we did - not many people had any beers at all from Aldchlappie.  We decided to break the journey at Moulin, about 10 miles short of target, just in case they had done anything new.  To my amazement Moulin Light was on the bar, only a few weeks old! Scoring a beer here was the icing on the cake.

The road from Moulin to Kirkmichael is very windy and very hilly as the few who have travelled it will know; It breaks free of civilisation just past the Moulin brewpub and heads up into the surrounding mountains.  This is golfing and shooting area, which was why the Aldchlappie was full up as we found later.  My resentment of the "shooting set" grew even more when I found out I'd been deprived of doss by a bunch of toffee nosed wildlife murderers; cheers then!

Just when I was thinking we must have missed it, there it was; a pale grey building with a hint of fairytale Gothicism about it, and nothing else in sight.  It was nothing like I'd imagined it but it looked superb; it really felt like this was the remotest brewpub in Britain, and after this even Moulin seemed distinctly bustling.  Outside the car, the silence of the Highlands lay thick all around. 

We hardly dared to enter the pub in case the journey had been in vain.  The bar was surrounded by pumpclips, and the familiar throng of single malts crowded the shelves but all this was just a distraction as there, on the pumps, was Aldchlappie 1707, 5%.  Caley Deuchars was also on, but at this point this was about as irrelevant as you could get; there was only one thing we were here for, and I honestly couldn't believe it was still on.  We ordered 3 pints and I fully expected the pump to splutter and cough out a few drops and the clip to be turned round with the familiar "sorry, it's gone. Would you like anything else?".

The gods were smiling on us that day.  A winner at Moulin, then Aldchlappie 1707 drunk at source.  To be honest, it tasted like malt extract homebrew, and poor stuff at that, but to grade the beer by this simple method would be missing the point; we had driven over 100 miles to the Scottish Highlands to sample one of the UK's hugest beers that just happened to taste like bad homebrew and I think our dedication to the cause should have deserved a better beer, but just being there drinking it in the bar knowing that we were some of the first - if not the only - scoopers to drink it was something special.

Aldchlappie beers never got about very much, and although the landlord planned to expand the brewery, I seem to remember he grew Ill and sold up and brewing ceased.  I know a few people who have trekked up that lonely lane from Moulin to be confronted by a blank handpump, and know few scoopers who actually had any beer from here.  It's a safe bet that in any scooper's list of huge beers or elusive breweries Aldchlappie will rear it's head, which is why I'm just happy that we were there and, more importantly, so was the beer!

We went to Aldchlappie again, in August 98, and had the same beer but at a lower gravity and new recipe. It was still a special place, but I don't think anything could beat the feeling of scoring the beer that first time at the brewpub in the middle of the Highlands and I feel sorry for anyone who never went; it was an experience that is lacking in scooping today. 

There is a brewpub even more remote than Aldchlappie now, near Thurso at the far North of Scotland, but the magic of going there and scoring the beer has been ruined by it appearing at the Smithfield's festivals several times.  I know that now I'd probably never get round to going there, but that's not the point; there should be some holy grails to aspire to, and this one is tarnished.  At least Aldchlappie never went to a festival; you had to be hardcore and actually go there!

hen I was getting into beer scooping at University this was one of the first house beers available in the UK and, so, a very desirable scoop for anyone's book.  Maybe it showed the way for brewers to mix whatever beer they felt fit to create the multitude of house beers which now infest pubs up and down the land but, whatever it's widespread repercussions might be, in 1992 it was a massive winner that was only served in one Brains pub - the Crown at Skewen, near Swansea - and if you wanted to scoop it you had to go there; that was the only way.  The pub had this beer as the locals, being more used to Buckley’s bitter, complained the Brains Light on sale was too pale and somehow the landlord persuaded the brewery to mix it for him… or did he just do it himself?  Perhaps we’ll never know.

It might seem strange to those of, shall we say, the "modern era" who expect to see every beer at a beer festival near them some time soon that to scoop a beer you needed to go to the place it was served.  Well, in those days, there were some beers that wouldn't come to you; you just had to go to them! Examples were Brains MA, Min Pin Inn and many more which have mostly long since closed the doors of their brewhouses for the last time leaving the beers only a memory for a few old-guard scoopers and as entries in faded, dusty old GBG's.  A few survive from those days but not many.

I was getting more into drinking new beers whilst at the Polytechnic of Wales, ten miles to the North of Cardiff, but the problem I had will certainly raise a chorus of "yeahs" and "I know what you mean" from a lot of readers - it was difficult finding pubs which sold guest beers in the Valleys.  Even when you did find one, the beer was more than often Brains Bitter than not!  I was struggling to find winners even though my scoops total was under 500; this was what it was like in the dark old days my friends! (Although I suppose that being in a bit of a real-ale desert didn't help either) but frequent trips away enabled me to edge my total slowly towards the magical 1,000... (this would come in 1993 in the King's Arms, Salford, and would be Dobbin's Old Soporific but that's another story).

Anyway, back to the tale.  It was a miserable Saturday night as only miserable Saturday nights in the Welsh valleys can be and I was killing time in my house, doing nothing in particular, when Fletch appeared at the front door looking very agitated.  Could it be a daisy working the "all-line" diagram, I thought to myself, as I trudged down the stairs and opened the door.  Fletch was indeed agitated but it turned out with very good reason - a friend from our days in the halls of residence had called round and he was now working locally and had that magical thing which, at the time, none of us had - a car!  Well, when I say a car, I use the word in it's loosest possible sense; it was really a shitty old works van with a most amusing attachment, a flashing orange light on the roof!  Fletch and I grinned - with this vehicle we could do some serious scooping... all we needed was a self-sacrificing driver…and it looked like we had one in the form of Glenn!

"Well then lads!" said Glenn, "What do you feel like doing then?  Is there anywhere you want to go, like?" (He was a Geordie!).  Fletch and I, funnily enough, had been talking about the massive beer Brains MA the previous day and how much we’d love to get it in the book as we’d had all their other beers (this was the time before breweries did special beers, remember!) and this seemed like too good an invitation to turn down – maybe Bacchus, the god of beer, had heard us bemoaning our empty scoops books and, in a spirit of munificence, was smiling on us and had sent Glenn with his crusty white van (complete with flashing orange scoops-alert light) by way of answering our prayers?

Whatever the explanation, we couldn’t turn this gift down - this was one move that just had to be done. 

“How about a little trip over to the the Swansea Valleys?” Fletch suggested with trepidation, but we needn’t have worried as Glenn was up for the move wholeheartedly. 

“Sounds like a top move, lads!” he enthused.  “I canna drink much as I’m driving, but I’ve never been there!  Let’s Guuur!” 

As we made for the door, my housemate Parry appeared in the entrance looking curious.

“Where you off to, boys?” he asked, “and whose is that shitty old van outside?” he continued, eyeing Glenns’ van with a look of unmitigated distaste.  “It’s fucking minging, mun!” (He was Welsh if you hadn’t guessed).  Before Glenn could take umbrage with these comments, I introduced my mate and asked if he could come too.  “Course he can!” beamed Glenn, “but he’s in the back with you!” 

We all piled into the van and off we went.  Fletch sat in the front with Glenn, whilst me and Parry did our best to perch in the back which was, as Parry had said, “minging” and full of all sorts of tools and bits of wood which were presumably used for whatever job Glenn did – I can’t remember if I even asked him but if I did I can’t remember now!  As we growled onto the M4 westbound I felt as if Bacchus was indeed grinning down on us and we’d soon have the full complement of Brains beers in our books.  Glenn wasn’t a scooper and neither was Parry although, being acquainted with Fletch and myself, they had heard all about it ad nausea and knew exactly why we wanted this particular beer so badly.

We were soon roaring along the M4 with, on my request, the orange scoop-alert light flashing away.  Soon we passed Briton Ferry with the huge Port Talbot steelworks festooned with lights and the sky above turned orange by the blazing furnaces inside; even inside the van the pungent reek of acrid sulphur crept in through the many dodgy seals and made us all cough.  I don’t know if the steelworks is even there nowadays, but this summed up south Wales for me; heavy industry, coal and steel, was the heartbeat of the land and now it’s almost all gone.  When I started Polytechnic in 1988 there were still ten “proper” deep pit coal mines in the Welsh Valleys – when I left there was only one, the last mine in Wales.  I saw villages turn into ghost towns as all who could get out departed and those who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, leave turned to drugs and drink for something to do.  A friend of a good mate hung himself out of depression in one of these once proud pit villages.  Thatcher has a lot to answer for.

We were soon turning off the M4 into Skewen and as we pulled up outside the pub I was buzzing – all this way without checking if the beer was even on – were we mad?  As we entered the pub I craned my neck to see the pumpclips and a huge wave of disappointment crept over me as I saw only Dark, Light and SA clips on the pumps.  “Bollocks!” I cursed to Fletch, “Do you see what I see?”  Fletch had already seen the bad news, but we were here now and a beer seemed much in order despite there being no winners on although thinking back I’m not sure why I expected there to be a pumpclip; after all, this was just a mix done for one pub so why should there be a special clip made just for this one outlet?

I approached the bar, resigned to no winners.  “Do you sell MA?” I asked the barman. 

“Sell what?” he replied, looking very confused.  Bollocks, I thought, are we in the right place here? 

“Brains MA, the mixed beer?” I implored desperately and then, to my elation, I saw a spark of understanding and the barman’s face crack into a smile.  “Ah, you mean our special bitter!” he explained, “The one Brains make just for us!” and indicated the Brains Bitter pump.  “That’s it!”

“That’s it, the dark bitter!” I almost shouted with exhilaration, “Four pints please!”  We were soon each in possession of a pint of this most prized beer and we admired it almost reverently.  It was indeed darker than the very pale Brains bitter and we sipped the brew deferentially – and it was pretty good too, with the gentle hop taste of the light but with the chocolatey, nutty character of the Dark.  And, best of all, we’d scooped it – and not many other tickers we’d met (admittedly not many at that point) had!

On the way home we visited a few more pubs – the White Horse in Coychurch which was apparently the home of Brains’ top cellarman – well, on the evidence of our visit it was his week off, as the Dark was rather like a well-known brand of fermented malt condiment.  The Tynant at Morganstown was better with a decent pint of bitter but there was only one beer of the night – the excellent MA in Skewen.

I vaguely remember both Parry and myself having rather bad flatulence on the way back and the rancid effluence we emitted rendered us incapacitated with fits of laughter on the floor of the van whilst all windows were wound right down in a feeble attempt to expel the appalling smell from the vehicle.  I think Parry attempted to help by opening the back doors to create a through draught – but when we looked at the M4 shooting past at 90mph we soon closed it again and the van was consigned to reek the rest of the way back to Treforest.  To quote Fletch “I can’t say what the beer was like as my senses were dead due to horrendous farts” just about sums it all up; that and scooping one of the rarest beers in the UK sums up one surreal night in a crappy old van with a flashing orange light.

As a postscript to this story, three years later I visited the Evening Star in Brighton where, as soon as I’d walked through the door, Geoff handed me a half pint of beer with a smug look on his face.

“What’s that, then?” I enquired, taking off my coat.  “It must be rare for you not to ask me!”

“You’ll need it” stated Geoff as if it were an incontrovertible fact writ in stone.

“Yeah, but what is it?  I need to know what it is first!” I pried, getting a bit tetchy.  I’d just travelled an hour and a half to get here and Geoff was playing games with me!

“You’ll need it – just drink it and I’ll tell you after.  Everyone who’s been in has needed it” Geoff replied with finality, watching to see what I’d say about it.  “That’s 80p, please”.

“I’m not paying nowt until you tell me what the bloody hell it is!” I shouted.  “Just tell me!”

Geoff looked hurt.  “Well, if you don’t want it I’ll just take it away” he said, removing the glass to the back shelf.  When he returned, he wore a smirk.  “You need Brains MA, don’t you? Everyone does.  It’s only sold in one pub near Swansea, you know…”

 © Gazza 3/10/05.  V1.0

ery early in my scooping career I suddenly realised that breweries were subject to takeover and closure when Robinsons, a brewery which I respected at the time (told you it was a long while ago), announced they were to close the Hartley’s brewery in Ulverston which they’d bought a good few years previously.  Hartley’s were famous for their “beers from the wood”; all their production was dispatched to the trade in oak casks and didn’t travel that well so, to catch it in peak condition, a trip to Ulverston was required – consequently in September 1991, just a few months before the big wooden brewery gates were due to close for the last time, I set out for the lake district knowing that this would be my one and only chance to scoop their rare brews.

At the risk of stating the obvious – as I’d only been scooping for a couple of years at this point – my scoops book was somewhat empty and as a result I’d accept anything reasonably worth drinking; at that point I wasn't particularly militant and therefore the category of “worth drinking” encompassed just about every beer available in cask form!  My scoops tally in 1991 could be numbered in the hundreds rather than thousands and so I was well whipped up for a few scoops before I reached Ulverston, just to get me in the mood, and the old traditional brewery of Mitchells in Lancaster, where I conveniently had to change trains, sounded just the ticket to get the day’s scooping underway.

Having graduated – like many “old skool” scoopers – to beer from the extreme railway hobby of “diesel bashing” I’d visited Lancaster previously and so knew the rough lie of the land, and this saw me walking into the Slip Inn bang on opening time.  Two beers were available, and as a result Mitchells Best Bitter (3.5%) and Fortress (4.2%) were duly imbibed and scribed into the book; the day was off to a good start!  Wandering back to the station for my train to Ulverston I risked a quick peek into the Three Mariners where I was presented with a beer which is one of those which, had I the powers of some supreme deity, I’d not hesitate to bring back without a thought of upsetting the future of the earth: Mitchell’s Dark Mild (3.3%).  I returned to this pub many times through the years to sup this gorgeously nutty, toasty brew, but sadly Mitchell’s went bankrupt in the late 1990’s and this glorious beer is now no more.

Sorry, I digress; the Mitchell’s mild was delicious and added another notch to the day’s tally, but it was Hartley’s beer I’d come all this way for and so boarded the rattling old class 108 DMU (another thing that’s no longer with us) for the short trundle along the coast to Ulverston past the scenic hotspot of Grange-over-Slime and other less glamorous places.  Half an hour later, with no gen to speak of except what was in my Good beer Guide, I was on the streets of Ulverston and heading for my first Hartley scoop.  As an aside here, it’s difficult to believe that times existed when you couldn’t just fire up the internet and draw down street maps of anywhere in the world and then google for a list of possibly decent pubs to visit; no, in those days the GBG was the word and the word was the GBG.  It seems a different age now and I know some readers won’t remember it – well, it happened, that's how scooping was back then!  I honestly can’t remember the last time I carried a GBG around or believed what it said…

My first call was, prosaically, the first Hartley’s pub I encountered on my trudge into town from the station and so in I went.  I wasn't sure what to expect, knowing that the brewery produced four beers, but it certainly wasn't a single handpump dispensing XB!  Ah well, that was my Hartley’s account off the mark, and I supped the deep amber brew with it's malt and oak tastes noticing the nutty and sweet flavours that the oak cask had imbued the beer with and, even then at the tender age of 21, I realised that I was seeing the passing of an age of brewing history where little local breweries supplied beers in wooden casks for local palates in favour of yet another wave of consolidation and closures, although I couldn’t have predicted the size of the imminent boom in micro-brewers in my wildest dreams!

“You tried t’brewery tap?” he asked.

“No, not yet” I confirmed, “Where’s that, then?”

“Union Inn, just by’t brewery, along the way” came his reply.  “If they’re not in there then ah’ve no idea where you’ll find ‘em” he concluded.

He laughed; that wasn’t a good start.

“Fellrunners?” he guffawed, “You’ll be bloody lucky, lad!  It’s only sold in a couple o’pubs up in’tlakes and nowhere here in town” he informed me with what seemed to me to be a unnecessary amount of pleasure.

My spirits sank; this was my one and only chance to get the beer but now it seemed as if it may as well be a million miles away as twenty miles up in the undulating hills which I’d seen from the train just an hour ago.

“Tell you where else you’ll get it, though” he added, suddenly remembering some nugget of gen he’d neglected to tell me, “Black Horse in Preston has it – it’s a Robbies’ pub near’t centre of town”.

Now this was an unexpected lifeline! I knew that I could easily call in at Preston on my way home and a quick check of the time told me that the day was still young and I had plenty of time to play with so, indulging in the spirit of the moment of being in a new place with beers which would cease to exist in a couple of months time, I had another half of both ales… well, it would be my last chance, and anyway they were both stunning examples of what is now almost an extinct part of British beer culture – standard low-gravity mild and bitter beers brewed for the immediate area around the brewery and sent out in wooden casks.  As with a time before the internet, this age now seems a very long time ago…

My scooping in Ulverston at an end, I thanked the landlord for his help and trudged off towards the station for the next train to Lancaster where I could change for a Preston-bound service in order – I hoped – to clear up my last Hartley’s beer and thence off home.  All seemed easy; I’d get off at Preston, find a map to locate the pub, amble along to it where the beer would be available and in perfect condition, I’d drink a pint to celebrate clearing my Hartley’s beers and then I’d walk back to the station for a train home.  What could possibly go wrong?

As we left Preston I noticed that the train lights suddenly came on; there were no tunnels en-route, so why – at four o’clock in September – had they been turned on?  The answer came within seconds as the sky grew dark and huge raindrops began slapping into the window: great, I was off for a walk around a town I didn’t know in the middle of a monsoon!  Had I been a religious man I’d no doubt have been fervently praying for the inclement weather to ease off by the time we reached Preston but, with no weather-controlling divinity to help me, I’d just have to take whatever the skies threw at me… after all, this was a massive scoop…

By the time I’d reached Preston the rain had settled into a steady downpour and so, taking my trusty portable umbrella from my bag, I waded out into the raging torrent which passed for a road towards the siren-like call of my final Hartley’s beer.  Back in those days Preston didn’t have many scooping pubs – very few places did, come to that – so there was no Bitter Suite or New Brit to help me out with a few choice ticks; there wasn't even that many micro breweries around, 1991 being in the middle of the lean micro-brewery spell from 1988 to 1993, so I’d have to make do with the Black Horse or nowt.  Gastons, the town’s free house, was closed as I passed and anyway the Little Avenham brewery there wouldn’t exist for another six months.

Through the steady torrent I sloshed, rainwater gleefully finding it’s way into my shoes and down my neck, towards my target of the Black Horse.  Imagine then, given the prevailing climatic conditions, my mood when I finally reached the pub and found the door securely bolted – afternoon closing, I’d not considered that, and it was still only twenty past four!  I now faced a stark choice; stay and wait for the pub to open and scoop my final Hartley’s beer, or cut my losses and get the next train home.  You may think this is what’s nowadays termed a “no-brainer” but, as I stood outside that locked door with only a flimsy umbrella and porch roof for shelter in the full fury of wind and driving rain, the latter option suddenly seemed very appealing!

Thankfully, I soon came to my senses; there was no point in getting even more sodden traipsing back to the station with nothing accomplished when I could shelter the best I could under the pub’s porch - and my permeable umbrella - for around forty minutes until my winner was available for scooping and, anyway, this was my one and only chance to scoop Fellrunners!  I pressed my dripping face against the glass and saw - with a vast surge of delight - the Hartley’s pumpclip adorning one of the handpulls and, delirious with rain madness, it was as if I could almost hear it entreating me not to give up…”If Hilary had come back down Everest at the first sign of snow he’d not have scooped the mountain” whispered the pumpclip, and I agreed with it; if he could put up with some discomfort for his cause then I was confident that a strapping young lad of 21 such as myself could too…

Half an hour later this train of thought rang very hollow as I shivered in the rain under the pub’s tiny porch roof; what the hell was I doing standing here, getting soaked to the skin, when I could easily have come back a week later?  Convinced that I was catching hypothermia I pressed myself closer into the doorway in an attempt to avoid the worst of the lashing torrent which still hurled itself in my direction, whilst my watch seemed to have slowed to a crawl or, maybe, gone into reverse… Suddenly, the pub’s lights came on and I heard a key rattling in the lock behind me – this was it, all that water absorption had better have been worth it!

The landlord obviously wasn’t used to opening the door to a queue, never mind a sodden young beer scooper, but he graciously offered me a bartowel to dry myself as he busied himself with pulling the beers through.  For one horrifying, stomach-churning second I thought the Fellrunners was off as it spluttered and spat it’s way from the pump, but the flow soon settled down into a gleaming jet of amber as it filled my pint glass with one of the hardest-won scoops I’ve ever had and so I stood at the bar, still dripping surplus rainwater onto the carpet, with my final Hartley’s beer in my hand.

So, was it worth it?  If you consider the satisfaction in drinking all the beers from a brewery in one day, then yes; if you consider the soaking I’d endured to have this last beer then yes, but in the flavour stakes I’m not so sure: mellow and malty say my tasting notes, which puts it firmly in fourth place of the four Hartley’s beers I supped that day.  Saying that, very few scoopers I know had Fellrunners, the rarest of the rare Hartley’s beers, and so - looking back sixteen years - I’m very glad that I shivered outside the Black Horse in the pouring rain for almost an hour to get it… and so yes, just for the rareness value alone, it was very, very worth it.

And yes I did catch a cold from my soaking – but, again, it was worth it…

There are some huge beery winners in the Czech Republic including some remote brewpubs which can only realistically be visited by car and then only if you’ve got a Sat-Nav with Czech minor roads installed and/or a local guide, but they don’t really bother me in that they’re akin to Lois Griffin from Family Guy: unattainable and not really worth thinking about as the odds I’ll get my hands on them are remote in the extreme… the beers, that is, for sadly Lois is a cartoon character and therefore even more unattainable on account of her not being real, although she’s still worth thinking about; If you don’t understand this, I’ll suffice it to say that, apparently, I’m a cartoon pervert!

Right, back to business. It was February 2008 and I was due to visit Prague for the first time in four years and it seemed, from all then gen I’d read, as if a full-scale pivo revolution was in progress in the city with new brewpubs springing up all around the place and beers which had, for years, only been available in a pasteurised, industrial form all of a sudden on sale in their natural unpasteurised (nepasterované) and/or yeasty (kvasnicové) state; this trip was looking like it was going to be a full-on scoopfest alright!

Amongst all the various brewpubs and rare beers, however, one brewery in particular caught my eye with it’s sheer massiveness and “gotta score that whopper” aura. This brewery was situated to the North of the city centre in a food science and agricultural university (the Česká Zemědělská Univerzita) in the village of Suchdol and run by the university as part of a brewing course with the resulting beer being sold at the university’s various bars on an “as and when available” basis. Now there might have been better beer and there might have been better venues to drink beer in Prague but nowhere and nothing tickled my scooping gene as much as a student-brewed beer from out of the city sold only in potentially verboten bars!

Blending right in.

Dean and I had arrived in Prague on the early flight from Bournemouth and we’d only got as far as the Dejvická metro stop before we both felt in need of a tick and, with the buses to Suchdol leaving from there, it seemed a perfect time to begin our weekend’s scooping with the hugest beer in town, Sucholdský Jeník. We followed signs for the Suchdol buses along a very long and very Czech underpass with all the requisite tiny bars, shops, kiosks, parek stands and portable trestle tables selling assorted hats which that entails, although we certainly weren’t prepared for one of the bars to be selling Rychtář beers from Hlinsko; these would have to wait, however, as despite the bar being open we only had one beer in mind at that moment.

We soon found the bus stops and it was obvious which one we required owing to the enormous chattering, screeching throng of students milling around it, the immediate area and spilling out into the road itself. A 147 bus soon arrived, forcing those loitering around in the road to reluctantly skulk back onto the pavement, and whilst the massed throng queued at the front door Dean and I slipped through the back doors with the cunning of a pair of foxes (or, at least, more than your average food science student) and bagged a pair of seats; result!

I’d acquired some gen from the Internet before our departure, as is my wont, and consequently we knew that the university was some five kilometres north of the city and I was pretty confident that we would work out which stop we required despite the best efforts of the notoriously unreliable displays inside the bus; I mean, how difficult could it be to miss a big fuck-off university and, even if we were to somehow fail to see it, we’d simply have to follow the mass exodus of shuffling students with bad haircuts who would, presumably, lead us to our goal.

The bus ground up a ferocious hill and then turned down a very residential road whereupon it trundled along, stopping every few metres, to allow yet more sullen youths aboard. Just as we were beginning to wonder if this was the correct bus there came a unified movement from the passengers and, as we stopped outside a row of nondescript shops, there began a mass exodus as the students disgorged themselves from the vehicle, although it was only when enough had got off to allow us a clear view of our location that we realised we were there and our hunch about following the crowd had been correct – we were just lucky that there wasn’t a sullen youths with bad clothes sense convention at a different stop or we’d have been well snookered!

Nemáme.

Fortuitously there was a large map at the university entrance and so we studied it’s directions to the cryptically named “block G” where, so I had been in gathered from my research, the beer was sometimes available in the bar therein. I’d already printed out a map which, before I’d left, had seemed incredibly straightforward but it was only now, stood outside the university gates, that I realised how difficult this was going to be as none of the roads matched in any way what was on my map and it was proving difficult to sync my printout to the large ground plan at which we were staring… not a particularly auspicious beginning, then!

Suddenly, in one of those revelatory moments, I realised that my map had roads marked as paths and vice versa so, with the help of the big diagram, we quickly worked out that we simply needed to follow a straight path just across from our current location until we reached the bar. This proved easier in theory than practice, however, and as we followed a crowd of chain-smoking students up an arrow-straight tarmac path everything began to look the same; most of the buildings were of typically 1960’s Soviet style, all concrete and square, and none of them seemed to have any identification on them to give us even a slight hint we were going in the right direction until we happened upon a path junction which, with a bit of artistic license, looked vaguely like the one my map told us we should have reached… this was then, in all probability, the right way.

We passed a student bar with a rather lame list of Multinational swill on it’s chalkboard before suddenly reaching a corner where we could see, across the car park, our target building G! At this point I feel it only proper to mention that I had no idea if we, two English beer scoopers, had any right to be in the bar or even on the university grounds, but we’d reasoned that we looked suitably scruffy and, anyway, we could always plead innocent on the grounds of undiminished desperation!

We marched into the building, relieved to see no security or code-locked doors, and after a few minutes of wandering the corridors we eventually found, behind a door we’d walked past several times already, the bar… with only Staropramen on tap! After all the time and effort we’d invested in our endeavour to score the beer this came as a crushing disappointment, but just in case it was available “behind the counter”, so to speak, I enquired whether this was the case. The young barmaid was obviously used to being asked by gutted English beer scoopers if Sucholdský Jeník was available and apologised in the nicest way – which almost made us feel that the trek out here had been worthwhile – that the beer wasn’t on and suggested we should try “earlier in the week – that’s best”… shame it was a Friday, then, and we were going home on Sunday!

The trudge back through the Soviet architecture of the university to the bus stop was done in gutted silence and although we still had a great time, scored loads of beers and pubs plus drank some of the best beer I’d had in a very long time during the following couple of days, I know we both really wished we’d started on a high with Sucholdský Jeník …

Take 2.

Eight months later I was back in Prague, this time with Sue, and my burning desire to scoop Sucholdský Jeník hadn’t diminished and had, if anything, been rekindled into a raging inferno of desperation. I’d received gen from a local beer enthusiast (the Pivni Filosof, cheers Max!) that the beer was now available in several more bars around the campus and so, I reasoned, it must be on somewhere… or, at least, that’s what I was hoping!

As we’d arrived so early in the morning we couldn’t check-in to our hotel and consequently Sue readily agreed to a trip out of town to see if the beer was available although I don’t think she realised just how badly I wanted it to be on, and it wasn’t to wither Dean but simply because it was such a massive winner and it had eluded me once already! After our previous visit I knew the script and so we trudged along the underpass and I was secretly pleased to see the little bar was still selling Rychtář beers as I had plans for that to be our final beer of the trip (well, we’d need somewhere to wait for the bus…). This time there was no seething mass of humanity – sorry, sullen youths – waiting so when the bus pulled up we had a free choice of any seat we wanted! As a footnote here, there seems to be a bus (107 or 147) up to Suchdol every ten minutes or so meaning that although it’s a bit of a trek out of the city it’s astonishingly easy to get to as long as you manage to alight at the right stop!

Destiny craps on the scooper who tries too hard.

Half an hour later and we were trudging up the path between the concrete abominations of the University and I was moved to remark that you don’t get much more of a Stalinist’s wet dream than architecture like that! I felt like an old hand at this University after two visits and so was a little unnerved to find that the bar Dean and I had seen the first time seemed to have vanished; either that or we’d gone the wrong way and, with all the buildings and roads looking identical under a thin layer of dirty snow, I wasn’t too convinced we hadn’t…

One chance down, two to go… we soon arrived at Block G where, just as the previous time, no Sucholdský Jeník was available at the expense of Staropramen Granát! I seethed inwardly as, this time, I’d thought it a racing certainty we’d get the beer with it being Tuesday (“earlier in the week” as the recommendation had been) but I couldn’t argue with the facts that it wasn’t available here yet again. With a growing feeling that I was never destined to score this brew I slithered across the snowy grass to the student building, a bizarre round concrete construction, where our final chance of scoring this most elusive of winners lay.

Inside was obviously an exhibition space and so I wandered around until a guy behind a desk called and asked if I needed any help – didn’t I just! Ascertaining he spoke a smattering of English to go with my smattering of Czech, I asked about the brewery and where I could find the beer to which he pointed downstairs and then towards some low-rise buildings a short distance away where, so he said, the brewery was. Feeling as if we’d been thrown a lifeline, no matter how perilously fragile, I thanked him profusely and went back outside to give Sue the good news that we’d have to meander around the freezing university a little bit longer.

After a quick check down the concrete steps (well, what else would they be made of in a place as Stalinist as this?) which led under the building I found the student’s bar firmly locked with no sign of life or prospect of it opening and so we had one final chance; the brewery itself! We explored the desolate buildings I’d been directed to and despite seeing various things in windows which looked as if they might be used in brewing or maybe other food-related production we didn’t actually see the plant itself or even anyone to ask as to it’s whereabouts and so, having come to a dead-end both physically and metaphorically, we trailed back towards the bus stop in a dejected manner; that was it, I decided, I wasn’t destined to score this beer and I’d forget it ever existed… after all, how many other great beers were there in Prague? Loads, that’s how many…

The school assembly hall.

On our way back to the “straight path” I saw on my map that there was another bar just off our route and so, determined to exhaust all possible avenues of scooping potential, I trotted off down the snow-covered path towards “Klub C”. As I approached things didn’t look good; okay, on the positive side it was open, but the building was adorned with garish Coke signs and looked to be the last place for many miles I’d be likely to find a scoop but, thinking that I’d got as far as the front door so may as well at least stick my nose inside and have a look, I pushed open the white laminate door (which gave the impression of entering a conservatory!) and went inside.

A contented buzz of conversation came from a surprisingly large room to the left which, bizarrely, resembled the kind of hall I remember sitting in as a young kid whilst brainwashing Christian propaganda was read to me, all herringbone wooden floor, plastic tables and scrapy chairs et al! There was a sizeable amount of students sat at tables in the hall working on laptops and/or industriously leafing through mounds of paper although, in a striking contrast to students back home, many had pints of beer in front of them to, presumably, oil their brainpower whilst they learnt!

This meant that there had to be a bar somewhere and – turning 180 degrees – there it was, in a small dark side-room, so I ambled across for a peek at the beers absolutely convinced that it would be all Staropramen and/or Gambač. Upon investigation, and as expected, all the taps had Multinational crud or nothing on the labels but, just as I was about to turn away in abject dejection yet again, I noticed a laminated A4 sheet propped behind some menus and it had three magic words on it; “Dnes se čepuje” (on tap today), and the logo of the University brewery… “Well, fuck me!” I stuttered to myself in disbelief; I’d only gone and found the beer!

At last.

Making my apologies to the confused barman, I scurried back outside and gestured frantically at Sue – who had been loitering at the end of the windy snow-covered path – to come on over; apparently, I looked like a puppy with two cocks as I emerged from the building! Once inside we bagged a table and I returned to the bar where I ordered a glass of Sucholdský Jeník; I was half expecting the barman to shake his head and utter the dreaded word “nemáme” (We don’t have any) but, in the usual manner of taciturn Czech barmen, he simply nodded and commenced pouring from an unmarked tap which, I sincerely hoped, wasn’t dispensing Gambrinus!

I carried my prize back to our table where I gazed at it with reverence; a hazy amber-gold brew (the haze reassured me that I’d got the right beer!) with a lovely mellow malt aroma, it had a rich, full and grainy flavour with the characteristic hint of worty sweetness expected in a proper Czech pivo before some grassy, bitter hops made themselves known in the finish, although the crunchy malt always dominated into the aftertaste where a dry bitterness rounded off this very classy example of brewing, and it was so good I invested in a second one!

If this whole episode shows us anything it’s that scooping beer is a total lottery and winners turn up in the most unexpected places, but above all it proves that I was right in obsessively hunting down this excellent brew that, of the 49 we drank during the next four days, ended up in the top five which, all things considered, is a pretty respectable score for a beer brewed by students on a brewing course… although they drink it all themselves, so maybe that’s why it so good!