In his recent trip to the US with partner Symone, John took in whale watching, the opportunity to sample some ESB and he even got to extol the virtue of Fuller’s beers to the great and good of Washington state.

I was going to call this article travels with my aunt, but she wouldn’t come. I know! An old joke. Well, I am old.

With a little trepidation we set off for the United States. Why the trepidation and why the United States, I nearly hear you say? Well, the US is the spiritual home of craft beer and a jolly interesting place to visit. But it was at the height of all the flight problems and British Airways was not immune to them, hence the trepidation. Even I, a seasoned traveller, was not immune to that.

We were to firstly visit Boston and then onto Seattle. Symone loves whales and both cities advertise whale watching tours so she would be happy, and I was just there for the beer. Both of these cities are famous for their bars and breweries. 

First stop was Boston. Now I had not planned any visits to breweries because I wanted to just do normal touristy things. However, I could not resist a little visit to the Red Hook taproom and brewery. The reason behind this was the beer ESB. Now, people know that ESB was first brewed by Fuller’s in 1971 and then was exported to the USA from about 1978.

The craft brewers in America not only enjoyed this beer but thought that ESB was a style of beer and not just a name, and they wanted to brew their own versions. One of the first was Red Hook and their version brought them great success.

So, I popped in the brewery and talked to the bar staff about ESB and asked if any one of their brewers was available for a brief chat. But sadly, none were. I managed to get a picture of me with bottles of their ESB which I tweeted which also went under their radar. Nevermind…

We went whale watching the next day which was out of this world. It was the best tour I have ever been on, and Symone was so delighted she gave me a kiss. We had a great time in Boston with the only downside being the heat which made walking around difficult.

We then flew on to Seattle where I did have one big beer function at Foggy Noggin Brewery. The plan was to do a ‘taste off’ between Foggy Noggin and Fuller’s. The Fuller’s beers were to be Vintage Ale, ESB, 1845 and London Porter. Foggy Noggin would supply a beer to taste against it and we would then have a vote to find out what the audience preferred. Unfortunately, Foggy had great difficulty finding these beers so Asahi jumped in and supplied four cases of each. 

Now, Foggy had already had two tastings from Ron Pattinson so I knew I had to be on my mettle. Luckily, I did know quite a bit about Fuller’s and the beers having been present for the first brew of three of the beers and brewing the other one for 38 years. The day arrived and I started by doing a short introduction on Fuller’s (short by my standard anyway) and then we moved onto the tasting.

There were quite a few questions from the audience which contained several home brewers, but I managed to bluff my way through. Who won? Well, let’s just say I still had a smile on my face in the taxi on my way home. It was really fun and I’m glad I still get asked to do these events. 

We also enjoyed travelling around Seattle too, it is another great American city. Plenty of things to do (including whale watching). Like all good holidays it was over to soon and we were on the flight back to London. To cap things off my bag was first off the carousel after a mere 10 minutes of waiting. Well I have always been a lucky person.