EIBF Wednesday – Crosstown Traffic
On paper, the Wednesday of the Edinburgh Independents’ extravaganza was always going to involve the most legwork – with a tri-pubbed Brodies mini-festival-within-a-festival, a Harbour event at the Caley Sample Room, and the (non-EIBF) launch of the new Natural Selection Heriot-Watt beer; it figured to be the night that most resembled last year’s format of bamboozling round the boozers (bamboozering?). Cue a lot of eyes-narrowed peering at chalkboards, and a quick flourish of the smartphone to work out what was what and what was where. Relentlessly, the wondrous weather continues, leaving Edinburghers out enjoying the conditions – a perfect set-up for a pub crawl, then!
First stop, the Caley. Being big fans of Harbour, it was the natural place to start, and would give me a chance to catch-up with Eddie Harbour, who I went to school with*. Surprisingly, upon entering Slateford’s finest it was almost entirely deserted, four people there and a quiet, slow-Sunday vibe going on. After a token Habour beer (the very nice East India Porter) and the always-excellent Cromarty Atlantic Drift, decisions had to be made. With another four pubs to visit, just as the pump-clips were being turned round and the lines cleared, we departed. You can’t catch everything, after all.
*clang shameless name-dropping
At the Hanging Bat, one of the trio of Brodies pubs for the evening, who should we bump into but the man himself, Eddie Harbour, waiting for the word to head over to the Caley to begin. After that catch-up, during which Eddie let it be known what happens when you overload a brewery van and attempt to drive over 500 miles (hint: something abrupt and expensive), it was time to get with the Walthamstow vibe and charge straight into the Brodies wackiness. You certainly know you’re at one of their events when it comes to weighing up whether pulled pork would go better with a blueberry sour or an oyster tea stout. A bit of both, it turns out.
The highlight here, other than the aforementioned sour, was Alpha State’s Neapolitan, a self-styled Sorachi Ace dunkleweiss, rumoured to indeed taste exactly like the three-flavoured ice-cream of Italian chain restaurant fame. You know what? It almost did. Plenty of chocolate, some sweet vanilla edges, and even (for some) a hint of strawberry. I usually tend to get coconut from Sorachi Ace, so that was my third flavour – and not a bad one, as it turns out (something to take note of, frozen dessert marketers). Anyway, after a short but sweet visit, time to head to the mighty Bannerman’s for some Origin, or £2 Jagermeister (your choice).
The third in the series of Stewart Brewing-backed Heriot-Watt student-created beers is a rye saison, and was launched at the brickway-arched metal venue on the Cowgate due to a tie-in with one of Edinburgh’s most promising bands. As with the other two Natural Selection launches (Finch in year one, Anorak in year two), the Origin launch was packed, and they fair flew through the beer. For me, though, it had hugely too much rye involved, which meant it was like chewing through a banana-decked Ryvita – not too bad at first, but something of a struggle later on. Maybe a bit more hop, or less yeast presence could round it out – but as ever with NSB, the process undertaken is far more important than the final product (and plenty of other people liked it, so what do I know?).
After that, a quick Saigon-shuffle along the Cowgate to BrewDog Edinburgh, now bedecked with a huge grinning blue hound on the outside (a party of bemused tourists were standing there looking at it, wondering what it was). More Brodies fun inside, with the massively Nelsoned Kiwi IPA, Hackney Red and the punchy Brodies Brett. A few people mingled about, the Fruits of the Forest sour went from £3.50 a third, to £3.50 for 2/3rds, before finally settling on £3.50 a half, in something equating to that bar which tracks beer prices like the stock exchange, depending on how much other people purchase. “Sell Sour! Sell Sour!”
The final stop was the Cask & Barrel Southside, two-time CAMRA city pub of the year. Walls groaning with old mirrors, posters and memorabilia, stories exchanged underneath; the C&BSS is and always will be a quality pub, for quality locals. The Brodies American Wheat was really rather good, as was the Hackney Red (again). The one take-home point of the evening was that none of the pubs were really busy, easy seat-acquisition, muted conversation in each. Was it the weather? The weekday? Or were we out of synch with the party, forever behind or ahead of everybody else? Crosstown traffic, ships in the night. Moons drifting slowly across the face of a wispy gas-giant. Only with beer, obviously.
