BEER AND BANGERS, LOVELY

Club Mirror celebrates Cask Ale Week at Dartford Working Men’s Club as manager Nick Byram pulls out all the stops on an amazing beer and food evening. MATTHEW MOGGRIDGE puts his diet on hold

A blue van arrives outside the Dartford Bridge Holiday Inn Express driven by Steve Hooper. We shake hands and make small talk as we head towards the centre of town and the Essex Road, home of the famous Dartford Working Men’s Club, a place renowned for its wide selection of quality real ales.

The last time Club Mirror was here was back in August of last year when, it has to be said, yours truly penned a profile of the club and its industrious manager, Nick Byram, and then proceeded to enjoy the beer a little too much, waking the next day with a sore head and a furry tongue. You can read all about it in Club Mirror’s August 2009 edition, if you have one on your shelves.

It’s been eight months since Club Mirror’s last visit but now we’re back for an event billed, quite simply, as a ‘beer banquet’ - and all in aid of Cask Ale Week.

If you want to know what real ale is all about, go to the Dartford Working Men’s Club where you will find a staggeringly wide selection of ales on the bar. At the risk of being shot down by pub people, I’d go as far as to say that I’ve never heard of a pub with such a range of pumps on its bar top. Add to that four themed beer festivals throughout the year and bar takings in the region of £9,000 per week, and I think you’ll agree that this club is special.

Nick started with just one hand pump 14 years ago and now has 15 and he’s considering brewing his own on the premises, possibly making Dartford Working Men’s Club the first ever ‘brew club’.

There is no brewery tie here and Nick relies upon wholesalers and direct deliveries from breweries throughout the UK. He even treks around the country himself in search of new ales for his members.

Around 60 per cent of wet sales are accounted for by real ale, the beers change on a daily basis and the club rarely has the same beer on twice.

What better place for a beer banquet and Nick didn’t disappoint. In the function room he had arranged two long tables running parallel to one another and then a smaller table joining them together at one end; this was the ‘top table’ and Club Mirror was delighted and honoured to be one of three special guests seated there.

Joining me to my right was John Boyce, the founder and chairman of Mighty Oak, an Essex-based microbrewer and a former subject of Club Mirror’s Small Brewer of the Month (see Club Mirror November 2009) .

While Dartford Working Men’s Club is the King of Clubs when it comes to real ales, there are other clubs out there serving a good selection of ales. One is Leyton Orient FC’s Supporters Club in East London where I first tried a pint of Maldon Gold (3.8 per cent) and fell in love with it. “If we’d produced golden beers years ago, we might not have had lager,” Boyce said as we took our seats.

My other dining companion was Vic Beale, a life member of CAMRA and a self-confessed real ale lover and expert. Vic and I are planning a visit to the Westerham Brewery in Kent shortly and I’ll be writing all about it in a future issue of the magazine.

There were, of course, other people at the banquet and they were all club members, male and female, as you can see from the photographs accompanying this write-up.

Large, thick flickering candles dribbling wax lent a medieval feel to the evening and the food on offer was good and traditional. In total there were three courses and each one was prepared using beer as an ingredient, courtesy of John Boyce and Mighty Oak.

The starter was Simply the Best paté with chutney and melba toast. Simply the Best is a beer produced by Mighty Oak. It is produced using Maris Otter Pale and Crystal malts and Willamette and Progress hops and is described as having a ‘deliciously fragrant nose and a crisp, light, but distinctive bitterness, which is fresh and clean on the palate’.

The starter was accompanied by Marble Pint, produced by the Marble Brewery (www.marblebeers.co.uk) based in Manchester.

The main course was fantastic: pork, lemongrass and ginger ale sausages with mustard mash. The sausages had a special ingredient, Ginger Ale from a Derbyshire brewer called Leatherbritches (http://leatherbritches.co.uk) and gravy made from Mighty Oak’s Oscar Wilde mild, a ‘nutty, moreish dark mild’.

The beer accompanying the main course was Bespoke from the Leatherbritches brewery. Clubs wanting to try this 5.0 per cent abv brew would be well advised to contact Eddy, the man behind the beer, on 07976 279253.

We moved on to dessert and a Black Hole Porter Chocolate Pudding with a raspberry cider jelly. The chocolate pudding was made using Black Hole Porter from Oakham Ales (www.oakhamales.com) based in Peterborough. The cider jelly was made using Magic Bus Cider (www.magicbuscider.co.uk) and the beer accompanying the meal was East Street Cream from the RCH Brewery in West Hewish, near Weston Super Mare in Somerset (www.rchbrewery.com).

Nick’s sister-in-law, Doris Byram was the chef and our waitress for the evening was Debbie Runicle.

Mighty Oak’s John Boyce proved an excellent after dinner speaker and we all stayed for more beer.