That's world renowned wine expert, Oz Clarke.
And that's Hugh Dennis.
At last - a drinker is born.
We're on a mission to find the best of independent British drinks,
and open a pub at the end of it all for one night only.
ALL: Slainte Mhor!
We'll go head to head with two bars,
each stocked with our own personal favourites.
That's tremendous. That's very, very good.
So far our tour of the nation has been hugely rewarding.
In the south, a miracle - a beer Oz didn't like.
It's jellyfish! Jellyfish!
And some knockout west country cider.
I'm hoping Oz is going to drink quite a lot, because if he goes to sleep he might stop talking.
And then to Scotland, where we sampled some single malts you dare not have as a double.
This is actually between 65% and 70% alcohol.
Happy days. Happy days, yeah, well.
We've braved the elements.
My pants have just got slightly wet, because it's gone over the top of my waders.
And now we're heading to the north of England in a half timbered camper.
Things are about to get lively
when a real ale tasting gets completely out of hand.
Do you want another?
Oz the oracle fails again.
Have you been making cider here
since the Benedictines arrived in 1802?
I'm afraid we haven't. We only started about ten years ago.
And we go incognito on a pub crawl with some thirsty students.
ALL: Put it on! Put it on!
Today our quest to find Britain's drink high points
brings us to tranquil Cheshire.
Every time that I leave London for the north,
I feel good, I feel excited.
The people in London feel delighted as well. Yes!
I normally see parties at Euston Station, standing at Euston Station.
Brass bands and banners waving.
We're on our way to the village of Waverton
and a farm brewery where they grow and make their own ingredients.
We're going to see a man with hives. Sounds nasty.
Is he going to show me his hives?
He will have to, he'll give you special clothing.
Oh you mean "hives"!
Do you feel you're about to deal with a nuclear disaster of some sort?
But what's all this got to do with beer? You'll see.
Push that forward so your nose doesn't come in contact.
It's up there, my nose. But if your nose gets in contact the bees can...
Yeah, well my nose isn't in contact.
All right, but it's just in case. Whereas by contrast... Stop it!
All will soon be revealed by master brewer and apiarist extraordinaire, Mathew Whalley.
Right, we'll give the bees a little puff of smoke,
to settle them and let them know we're here, that's the entrance.
I've read Winnie the Pooh so I know roughly how to do this.
Oh, excellent. Bees communicate a lot using pheromones,
so the smoke is... It subdues them by being slightly unpleasant,
but also breaks up the communication to a certain degree. Lid off.
Aren't they getting a bit lively?
Do you think they smelt my pheromones?
Have you been communicating with them?
I've been doing my best.
There are thousands of bees in these hives
making hundreds of jars of honey every year,
some of which goes into every barrel of Mathew's special beer.
So that hive's back together now, the bees will settle down quickly,
so we'll take this super full of honey away and extract it.
Oh, I get it. He makes honey and beer and then mixes them together.
Into a delicious golden ale he calls Honeytrap.
Favourite drink of the Russian secret service.
The stuff's pouring off now, you'll be delighted to hear.
It's flying out, you can see it running down the sides.
Flying out. In great torrents.
You're very good at that. I should think that should do us.
It sounds like a big tumble drier. Sort of salad drier.
Yeah. Do you have a salad spinner?
You don't have a salad spinner. Tell me you don't dry your salads.
Please tell me you don't dry salads.
I'm going to leave that till later.
And finally the key ingredient is ready.
Hopefully you'll agree with me it's absolutely delicious.
It is. I'll agree with you. It's absolutely delicious. Excellent.
I love honey. It's got acid as well, that's what I love about good honey.
It's so sweet, but if it....
It's full strength. If it didn't have acidity with it, it wouldn't work. That's right.
And now for the wondrous alchemical moment
when the fresh, homemade honey is added to the fermentation process.
It contains quite a lot of enzymes,
which could potentially give trouble in the beer.
So it's important we put it into the boiling liquid
to expose it to that heat and de-nature the enzymes
that are present, and then it all dissolve and then...
Ah! Got me, got me, got me, that one.
What beastly rotten luck! It was a wasp.
Well there was the culprit, he just fell out.
Would you like to suck out the poison? Because I don't want you to.
I'll do that, I'll bite. I don't want you to suck. I'll bite and suck.
You're just making a massive amount of fuss about nothing.
Well shall we get out the brewery and leave these wasps alone?
Do you hear that? Wasps.
As it happens Matthew's Spitting Feathers brewery
has its own very popular bar in a barn.
Time for a tasting.
Want a beer I think. I want some of the stuff we've just been doing.
Two pints of Honeytrap. Which is that Honeytrap, please.
Honeytrap please. Cheers. Cheers. Let me know what you think.
Cheers, lovely.
Mmm. Tastes like beer to me.
Well in that case, I'm having it for my bar.
That's nice, that's good, isn't it?
What can you smell? Intensely nutty?
You can taste something, but it's a completely dry beer.
97%, 98% of the sugar in honey is fermentable.
It will ferment right down and give you a dry, slightly stronger beer.
Can you get that 3%.
I wasn't really listening to you.
I was just drinking my beer.
We should probably be going, you know. Are you driving?
No, you're driving.
You drive, I can't drive. Nor can I.
You said you'd drive.
I may have done.
You said you'd drive. I take it back.
We won't drive. We're not going anywhere.
Two more pints?
We're not going anywhere.
So tonight we sleep in the field.
There are all sorts of bees in a hive.
Joiner bees, to bee or not to bees, wannabees.
Hammurabees.
THUMP
Ooh, ow.
SHEEP BLEATS
Why have you got your foot in the sink? Your foot's in the sink!
# When I wake up
# Well, I know I'm gonna be
# I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you
# When I go out
# Yeah, I know I'm gonna be
# I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you
# If I get drunk
# Well, I know I'm gonna be
# I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you
# And if I haver
# Well, I know I'm gonna be
# I'm gonna be the man whose havering to you
# But I would walk 500 miles... #
Coffee. Do you feel the van moving?
It's the sheep. The sheep?
The sheep under the van. BLEATING AND THUMPING
That is the noise of the sheep under the van. What are they doing?
I don't know. They're rock hard those sheep though,
they're a bit scary actually.
That one's got three ears.
They're very northern, these sheep.
They're gritty. Well, what are they doing?
I don't know! They'd be scared of you though, I think, looking at you.
You look like a cardinal who's kind of been fired for various offences.
BLEAT Did you make that noise?
How did you do that? Because you're not moving your lips or anything.
# I would walk 500 miles
# And I would walk 500 more... #
Right, we've got one pub and two bars to stock.
We're going to need more beer, more proper English beer.
Excellent, Manchester! A city and some beers I recognise.
Not where we're going.
Ever heard of Bishop's Finger, Fiddlers Elbow, Dogfish Head?
I think that last one was by The Smiths.
They're all fabulously tasty, passionately brewed beers,
and they're all in one place.
I'm going to show you the fantastic variety of different beers that we can actually have.
Ah lovely, thank you. Thank you.
Yes, here we are look, 300 casked ales, all under one roof.
To be honest I've never been to a beer festival.
This is a great opportunity to learn about different beers.
And they make me a little nervous. Everyone's got a beard.
No they haven't. Everyone looks like that, they're walking in like that.
It suits you very well actually. How many months is it, dear?
But actually it's a bit like being in the back of the camper.
It's got the same distinctive smell.
There are hundreds of versions of my travelling companion and it's packed full of beer.
So many pumps in fact it looks like the inside of an enormous piano.
300, that's the minimum of 150 pints each.
What I'm going to do, there's so many beers around,
I really want to try as many as I can.
I'll see you later, I'll pick you up from accident and emergency.
Oz is going to find so many friends here,
but I decided to pace myself.
If I stand here and I look like this,
I won't have to drink very much.
But I would love to trip up Oz.
All I need is a real ale expert. Now who are you?
We were judging the beers yesterday for the competition.
We? "We were"? You're a judge?
Oh yeah, yeah, I judge a lot of these beer competitions.
Brilliant, a festival judge. Now for my cunning plan.
So, if you took ten beers or something, would you be able to tell which were the top three?
It would be quite tough.
If you had one of the world's finest palates, for example, like Oz...
Like your friend, Oz. Yeah.
That should be easy, is it? That would be a good challenge.
Fantastic. A co-conspirator.
I've bought some beer for my friend, Hugh,
which he presumably drank, I haven't seen him since.
Frothingham. Frothingham. So where can we put them then?
On this table over here I think. Is this going to be really difficult?
So what have you go there? Beer. Got Sheffield Mild.
Shall I try it? Yes, please do.
Thank you very much. Yes, of course. OK, you find him, I'll lay them out.
Now Oz loves a game, especially a drinking game.
Oz. OK. Over there they've lined up ten beers.
Three of them are award winning.
If you can't pick the three award winning beers,
you will drink the yard of ale.
I got this from the same people who supply my Viagra.
All right. Very nice like that. Give the palate a go.
So challenge accepted, but if he does pick the three award winning beers,
I have to drink the yard of ale.
Cleverer than you.
So off we go.
So what have I got to do? Pick three award winning beers.
And seven others didn't win an award.
Seven others didn't win an award, three did. Got it.
Taste buds don't fail me now!
All right, I mean it's a perfectly nice beer,
but I like a little more hops.
Much richer on the palate. He seems very sure of himself.
I like it, it's milling around, much more bitter at the back than the other two.
So you're halfway through now. You feeling confident? Yeah.
Six. Really nice that, quite full.
A little bit of smokiness, but not much.
Slightly milky.
Ooh, I'm quite worried now.
Better than 8, richer, more sugar left in it,
more sweetness, but actually it's a cleaner beer.
A touch of coal, getting sort of coal smoke,
as if though you're at the bottom of a...of a coal...
A mine? Coal mine? Coal, coal bunker?
Coal, coal... Coal fire? Coal...
Cole Porter? Cole, ha-ha-ha!
OK, let's go. Now my first one is that one. That's an award-winner.
Number one. Number one, my second one is number six.
Number six, right.
My third one is number nine.
The moment of truth.
3, 9, and 10.
3, 9 and 10. They're the award-winners.
As opposed to 1, 6, and 9.
Oh what a relief, super nose has scored only one. I'm safe.
Which, to me, adds up to a drink, doesn't it? Adds up to a drink?
A long, a rather long drink.
Come on Oz a yard isn't far, unless you're drinking it.
I'd stand back if I were you!
That's the weirdest way of taking your temperature I've ever seen.
Oh, well done. I'm not finished yet.
You try it then.
You're a very bad man.
Right, do you want another?
I'd like another shirt. Perfect.
Well who's going to drive now?
Well, not me, look at me. You can drive.
I can't drive, can I? I've had from there to there, I can't drive.
Pathetic. All right, we stay here then, I don't care.
Well Hugh Dennis with a yard of good British ale,
even a half empty one, some kind of progress.
No, a foreign lager, about 5% proof, 100% certain to irritate Oz.
What are you doing?
I'm having a drink. That?!
There's 300 fantastic beers downstairs
and you're drinking that muck.
It's a very successful international beer. Do you want one?
No, I do not!
If I'm going to share a room with that heathen
I'm going to need something more reassuringly fortifying.
Can I have a pint of Mad Monk please? Thank you very, very much.
Ah, that's better. Beautiful Lancashire stout, perfect night cap.
Perfect for my bar.
On the road again and I've found more examples of Oz's wine wisdom.
I've found another leaflet in the Tonka.
This is a useful one though, because this is about wine tasting.
These are words that you used.
"Aromatic."
Aromatic is not just, "it smells",
because it might smell of, might smell of a cowpat.
It's particularly pungent and spicy.
A cowpat is pungent, rarely spicy.
Chewy. Chewy. Yeah, I mean you chew your, well you chew your lamb chop,
you chew your broccoli, why can't you chew your wine?
If you're chewing your wine
then there's something seriously wrong with that wine.
Idiot!
Anyway, where are we going?
We're off to Morecambe Bay in Lancashire,
and the most northerly vineyard in England.
Michael Graham established it 12 years ago
and he now produces up to 400 bottles a year.
Wow, this is a completely new experience for me,
a vineyard this far north, it's just fantastic.
Looks so healthy. Unlike either of us.
Hello, I'm Oz and this is Hugh.
Hi, nice to meet you. Hello, nice to meet you both.
I'm so excited to be here. I've been reading about your wonderful
Mount Pleasant place for years
and I've never got here, and I thought, "What's it like?" Well it's fantastic.
I'm glad you think so, it's been, an awful lot of work,
building up, a lot of trial and error. But you love it, though?
Yes and it's not too bad growing the vines, that's not too difficult,
it's the making the wine afterwards where the star turn comes in.
But you're saying it's not too difficult growing the vines in Lancashire?
Morecambe Bay's just over there!
Well that's one help, from Morecambe Bay,
the nice Gulf Stream round Morecambe Bay,
keeps this place not free of frost, but very little frost.
Historic moment for me, this.
My most northerly ever English wine.
The secret of Michael's success lies in his selection of grape varieties
that thrive in colder climates,
such as Rondo for his red and Madeleine Angevine for the white.
It is so pale, Michael, almost no colour at all. It's gorgeous.
If it tastes all right, that's the main thing.
Testing time.
It's almost as though you've got the green fruit
and you've got a little bit of the bark off an apple tree or something.
Well I think it's great. It's almost as though someone
had dipped a bit of bark of a tree into the vat.
You're so sharp. I mean, you're right. That's the answer.
You'll cut yourself! Well you are actually right, actually.
It's not at all what I expected, actually. Could we try the red?
Certainly, yes.
That is a serious colour, Michael.
You really do get a good colour with this.
And the smell, delicious. In a blind tasting if you gave me that,
on the smell I, I would be saying, somewhere in France, not sure where.
Would never be saying Bolton-le-Sands,
just off the Morecambe Bay.
That's a pretty decent glass of red wine, Michael.
I swallowed it a bit too quickly.
That is one thing about the Rondo, it's got some body in.
Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and what have you
would never ripen here, so we couldn't grow them.
Michael, you've told me about three times as much
as I got from your leaflet,
and just in the last minute, maybe you should write another one.
So, who gets Michael's Mount Pleasant wines for their side of the bar?
Don't spoil the moment Hugh, we'll decide later,
for now let's just raise a glass
to the unlikely wonders of Lancashire wine.
Lovely vineyard up there, you can see it, look, there, on the crest of that hill.
You can actually see the wall where the vines are up against.
You know what's great about this trip though?
Is that almost everyone we've met has been incredibly enthusiastic and committed to what they do.
And nice.
Yeah and really, really pleasant.
And also, what appeals to me about it is the rhythm of making beer
or the rhythm of making wine and all that kind of stuff.
It sort of imposes a rhythm on your life which isn't the rhythm
I have in my life, but it's made me think that I just rush around
like a maniac most of the time. So do I.
That's because you are a maniac.
But we've got lots more, that's what I love about this.
We've got a whole summer ahead of us
and we're going to find lots more of these places.
Thank you very much for giving me some more wine, by the way.
Oh, do you want some? Charming of you. Your manners.
I thought you would have said.
I'm sitting here with my friend, watching the sun go down
over Morecambe Sands, I would have expected you to offer me some.
I was just beginning to get used to you and starting to like you
and now it's all off, it's all over.
Ah, look at that! A stunning view over magnificent Lake Windermere!
You see where that single space is there?
A bubble car wouldn't fit in that single space.
No, no, but it'll be all right.
Yes, but we're in a car park and you're at the wheel.
Yeah, got it.
If you can get out and see whether I'm at the back or not...
I can't get out, can I? Because essentially...
I'm in a hedge.
I'm actually in this beech hedge. What about that, is that better?
Just stop now. Oh, can you get out? Yeah.
You make a lot of fusses.
Now what have you lined up for my drinks education today?
Some fruit, some veg, some spirits and a few liqueurs.
And this would be the best of British what?
Pimms. Now, you could buy this ready made branded stuff
and just add lemonade,
or you could go back to the raw ingredients.
This is an archetypical English summer drink.
We're going to make our own Pimms according to the original classic recipe.
OK, off you go, start chopping and I shall prepare What do I chop? That.
What am I chopping? Where am I chopping?
Why am I chopping?
How many, how much advice do you need about chopping a cucumber?
Not much.
Very interesting gin.
Two of these, all right. See that?
Two measures of that.
I'm doing this by memory, but I have a good memory for these kind of things. What's left of it.
Two measures of red vermouth.
Should be nice and bitter. Now, one of these, this is orange Curacao.
Curacao's blue, and that's orange.
Natural Curacao is orange. Then why do they make it blue?
That's not a question that I think I'm going to answer.
What we now need is lemonade.
Oh dear. Now you can make, five parts to one, something like that.
My Pimms going to be one part to one. One to one.
One to one. I have to say, it's a rather fine idea,
but it's not quite as classic as I'd hoped.
Put this in it? Yeah, please.
Now this is a very... Don't just throw it in, have some respect here.
That's enough. It's going all over my trousers, stop it.
This here is the shop one.
Which is, you're saying, the real one. This is the prepared one.
Oh, OK, yeah.
Quite lemonade-y isn't it, that one? Mm, but I don't mind that.
I think, lemonade-y, cos you get a slight bitterness from the herbs and the oranges.
It's quite good that, I think. Now, try this one.
That's quite strong, isn't it? That's genuinely quite strong, isn't it?
I think you could probably use that to get the weeds off paths.
This is an absolute head banger. It doesn't taste like it at all.
Doesn't taste anything like that at all, no,
really doesn't taste anything... It's the same sort of colour.
I hate to admit that I think that the shop bought stuff
is better than my stuff.
How about this then?
Lovely afternoon. I did row, I rowed with seven other men,
all sweaty, but when you've punted
on similar bits of water,
I did hope that this would bring me rich rewards
of the pulchritudinous kind.
And were the girls impressed by that?
I was disappointed.
So were they, by the way!
It's evening on the Otley Road in Leeds,
home to a string of typical English pubs.
And why are we here?
I'm worried that our pubs are beginning
to lose their sense of localness.
I'll tell you what I've done,
I've enrolled us in a thing called the Otley Run
which is one of the most famous pub crawls in Britain
and I bet you that the majority of pubs
won't have more than two local products on sale.
Of course they will. They won't.
I bet you they have more than two.
No. And the forfeit for the loser?
Whoever loses this, you empty the chemical toilet.
Oh!
I think they have more than two. It's a terrible bet. OK then.
I hope to God I win. Who have you enrolled us with?
Oh, just a few locals.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Some locals! Good evening!
We're trying to do a serious review of pubs in this area,
so we look as though we got the right bunch.
First of all you need fancy dress. Oh, really?
Well I'm trying to do a serious survey of the pubs around here.
Put it on, put it on. Oh God!
I'm really enjoying this(!)
You've got it on backwards.
How am I going to explain this to my wife?
That's it?
I need a drink very, very badly.
OK so we're surrounded by Heidi, the Queen of Hearts,
and the Captain from Fantasy Island, but let's not forget the bet.
Does this pub have more than two local products?
Speckled Hen, no that's not.
Moreland. No, no, no, that's in Suffolk or somewhere like that.
Guinness, no, nothing, you see what I mean?
Nothing is going to be local here.
Wharf Bank, yes, Black Sheep, yes, John Smith's - all local.
So Hugh's found three local beers in this pub,
but, like our fellow pub crawlers, the night is young.
Oh, off we go. Well done, boys. Let's go!
I wagered there would be no more than two locally made drinks in each pub, but I kind of hope I'm wrong.
I'm really excited that you've actually got local stuff on here.
Look at this, I've seen it, look at it.
Leeds Pale, beautiful, we don't know what that is.
The point is I'm losing my bet and I'm delighted to be losing my bet,
because I said that the local pubs
would not have more than two local products on,
because we were losing our sense of localness in Britain.
And we're not at all. And he said, "No, no, no."
And look.
Hey Oz, you can get tablets for that.
Careful, I think our evening's about to get even more fruity. Shots?
Yes. Oh no, not shots. Shots.
I'm here on a serious mission.
So are we.
I think I'll leave the shots to the girls and stick with an honest pint.
This is Leeds Pale.
Leeds Pale, I don't know.
But it's local, we're determined to try and do local.
This is a very nice pint of Yorkshire Bitter.
On to the next one. Next one. We do pride ourselves.
So there you go, 2-0 to me.
Looks like the chemical loo's got your name all over it.
Hang on, there's nothing local about this place.
That's just one, one local thing.
Have you got local, other, anything else?
You haven't any Yorkshire spirits?
I'm the Yorkshire spirit!
You win. Unbelievable. 2-1. 2-1.
I could be making a comeback but I'm not sure if I can keep count.
Could you at least keep up though?
THEY CHATTER
No, not in here, they have a "no yellow fruit" rule.
What did I tell you?
What's wrong with being a banana? Why won't they serve me?
Don't you think we just look a bit sad?
No, I'm ecstatic.
I'm still thinking that it's not right that two men in middle age
should be wandering around with a group of second year female students.
Actually, are you happy? What I think is, I've actually forgotten that I'm dressed as a banana.
'I'm not sure I will ever forget.
'But I thought this was about proving a point! It is.'
Here's another pub without a local tipple in sight.
We found zero.
So is that 2-all or 3-all? No idea. Next pub.
Everyone keeps pulling my banana.
And you've won again, 4-3. Good.
I was 3-1 up and now you're 4-3, OK.
I want to lose this bet because I want a decent drink.
'But you don't want to empty the chemical loo, which you will be.
'I won't. Yes, you will. The night is young.
'I remain confident that tomorrow morning, I will
'be inside the caravan and you will be battling with that thing.'
"Push the container a bit backwards and at the same time push the yellow handle upwards."
I can't believe I lost last night.
I'm trying to tell you how this... I was 3-1 up at one point.
"The container will be removed with the help of a spring."
The worst thing is that you were loving it.
You didn't care about the competition. You would happily have lost it.
You were loving it, dressed as a banana with girls who could easily...
You're old enough... I'm old enough to be their father -
you could be their grandfather.
I was dressed as a whoopee cushion. Deeply embarrassing. I spent most
of the time thinking, "How will I explain this to my family? How will I do that?"
It was perfectly natural.
Didn't you find it a bit odd, the age gap? Slightly embarrassing?
Not at all? Not a bit.
Right, how do I do this anyway?
I've just told you.
Ugh.
Oh, God... Ugh... Ugh, God!
You're ruining my coffee. Put that back.
It's a disgusting smell.
Put your nose in that bit, put your nose in.
No, don't. Stop it, stop it, stop it.
What are you getting off that?
Nutty, intense? I'm getting massive amounts of hydrogen sulphide
implying there's been a serious defect in the wine-making process.
Oh!
Absolutely disgusting.
I've been telling Oz that we need some non-alcoholic drinks for our pubs.
And I've ignored you, until now.
I thought what we'd do today is briefly have a sort of look at the
kind of world of... What do you call them? Adult soft drinks, you know.
What do you mean an adult? Like mixers, you mean? Yeah.
And you are subjecting yourself to going to a non-alcoholic beverage manufacturing plant.
Yeah.
'Well, no actually.
You see Fentimans the soft drinks maker is based in a brewery
and not just any old brewery but the makers of the very first pint I ever drank.
I knew there had to be a catch.
You're Chris?
Chris. Fantastic. This is Hugh. This is Robinson's brewer.
We're meant to be at Fentimans, not Robinson's.
I know that. I'm confused.
I'm Eldon from Fentimans. Pleased to meet you.
Nice to meet you. Oh, hello. Why are you here?
We've been using Robinson's for 15 years, to get our
products made and I pop down every now and again and just have a word with Chris, the head brewer.
We ought to go and look in Fentimans cos that's why we're here.
Yes, I'll be one second.
Can I just try a...
'Oh, I get it. You want me to take the factory tour...
'While I take a trip down memory lane! Now which one was it?'
So here we go.
No, I think the one I had was a little hoppier.
It turns out that these soft drinks aren't completely, well, soft.
They're actually half a percent alcohol by volume.
See what you think of that.
I've worked out that I'll have to drink twenty pints of this to not be allowed to drive the Tonka. Yeah.
So I'll be all right. Yeah, yeah, I think you'll be perfectly safe.
Oh, that's lovely.
That's properly gingery, isn't it?
Oh, yes, certainly is, yeah.
Could this be the long-lost taste of my first ever bitter?
We've got our second product here, a Victorian lemonade which is made with Sicilian lemon juice.
There we are, try that. Tell us what you think.
This is what Oz does when he tastes, so I... Yeah.
Oh, that's good as well. My grandmother used to make lemonade.
Yeah. And that's very like that.
Oz isn't here so I suppose I get all this stuff.
I love ginger beer and I love the lemonade. Yeah. And tonic.
Oz and I are having a pub at the end.
Are you? We're going to need mixers for our drinks, so would I be able to try some of that?
Certainly, yes. We've cut down on the quinine and put lemongrass in there.
Where's the sugar come from in this, what do you put in for that?
We just use natural sucrose.
That's very good tonic. And a natural tonic flavour.
I can't remember.
I think you'll have to fill them and try again.
You're my kind of brewer!
What about a little Yorkshire cider for our pub?
I thought cider came from Somerset.
Not necessarily.
We're off to a see a monk who's been keeping alive an ancient tradition.
These Benedictines are a great bunch of good Yorkshire monks.
When they started out in 800 and something,
they were allowed what worked out at about four litres of ale a day.
But the nuns nearby were allowed seven litres.
That's astonishing.
The first person ever to write about the use of the hop, anywhere,
was St Hildegard of Bingen and she was an abbess.
She also was the first person to write about the female orgasm.
I bet that's after seven pints of... After seven pints of ale.
However, it's not beer they make in these parts, it's cider.
So this cider is completely British, is it? Utterly British.
Cider-making by monks in England, 1,000 years, because they came over with William the Conqueror.
Hello. Good morning.
Very nice to see you. I'm Father Rainer, welcome to Ampleforth Abbey.
So, we follow you? You follow me.
Cool. OK. So, Father Rainer, the all-British cider-making monk.
They're good at ciders though, the Germans, aren't they?
No, they're not. Aren't they? I've never heard of a German cider.
So Father Rainer may be a German, but mark my words, his orchards will
be English and ancient and filled with the very best cider apples.
So which cider apples do you have?
I'm afraid we have got none.
We've got eating and cooking apples, no cider apples whatsoever.
Hmm, no cider apples.
Have you been making cider here since the Benedictines arrived in 1802?
I'm afraid we haven't. We only started about ten years ago.
We realised that apples and the favour of people were sort of two different things and we ended up
in having a lot of apples which were not meeting the criteria of people wanting to buy them and what do you
do with large, huge quantities of apples which are unwanted?
You make cider.
I was told you can't make cider from these apples and, well, if you
tell me I can't do something, it's probably a good incentive to try.
So we tried. From there on we took courage and produced more and more and now we're using all our apples.
Can we try some? Can we make some? Let's go, yes, try some.
So are you, are you an English cider, even though you're German?
I get that and I'm delighted to see you, but you are an English cider, aren't you?
No, we're making Yorkshire cider.
Ah ha!
(Three things wrong.)
Father Rainer's commercial enterprise may be recent,
but he makes his cider in the traditional way.
'Apparently I'm scratting over 40 varieties of apples from 2,000 trees.'
Here's your spoon. What, straight on?
Yeah.
I'm rather good at this. In any particular way?
No. Until it's just full.
'The scratted apples are then stacked and wrapped in muslin for pressing. This is called a cheese.'
Everything gets heavier and heavier all of a sudden.
Does it fit? It does, yes.
This is a 12-ton hydraulic bottle jack. Yes.
There's... Oh, here, here he comes.
There we are, it works.
Hang on, let's have a look. My apple juice coming out.
Isn't that rewarding? It's very rewarding.
It's a wonderful moment, Father. Nothing happens and then suddenly
beads of it start to appear and then the whole thing comes out like an avalanche, fantastic.
It looks a bit brown now, because it has got all the oxidation.
Once you get the yeast working on it, that disappears.
'The result is a strong, dry cider, where the final
'phase of fermentation often takes place in the bottle.
'Like the off milk you have as a student?
'Oh, stop it.'
Come, now, and have some.
Oh, yeah. You can't have anything.
I'm the one who hasn't got the cider.
I've never tasted cider.
Taste it now then and stop mucking about.
Say something intelligent now.
That tastes fantastic. It's very, very good.
I'll have that. All right.
It smells wonderfully cider-y.
No cider apples in this? No.
So, cider apples would make it sweeter?
No, they would add some tannin.
Did you say, yes, then?
I think you went "mmm".
I was just so excited by the flavour.
Oh, so you say. I think you went yes, cider apples would make it sweeter.
I said nothing of the kind. This is absolutely tremendous.
I would never have guessed you weren't making a cider full of cider apples.
The cider really only gains its tannin from cider apples.
The taste itself comes from the apples
and the wider the varieties of the apples,
the more flavour you have in there, the more flavour you'll find in the cider.
And what does tannin give you?
It makes the cider more safe.
It kills off bacteria and fungi.
So this tastes very good but we might die?
Not at all, of course the alcohol in there and the carbon dioxide keeps all the other guys checked.
I said, say something intelligent.
OK.
This is top-notch. If someone had said this comes from somewhere like Somerset, I'd have said absolutely.
Yorkshire. You'd say "No, Yorkshire!" Yorkshire.
Goodbye, Ampleforth.
Yet another lovely bloke.
Passionate about his cider.
I asked him what he did with the spent apples, the crushed apples.
And he said that they went to a local farm where the cattle ate them, but the cattle particularly liked them
when they start fermenting and the cattle broke into a shed apparently to get hold of the fermenting apples.
You're not serious? Presumably they get slightly drunk.
Slightly pissed cows.
The only species that we've discovered so far which is not affected by alcohol is
the sparrow and the sparrow has an enzyme that deals with alcohol
which is 14 times stronger than the enzyme that human beings have.
Do you think a sparrow knows that it's unaffected by alcohol? Do you think sparrows go around
thinking, "Oh..."
I think that sparrows go around thinking, "Why's everyone having a better time than I am?"
'You know what we haven't done? Divide up the drinks and decide who gets what for their bar.
'All right. Where shall we do that?
'Where do you think? The pub.'
We are actually both in this together to see what we like,
to make sure that one or other of us, at the end of the series, has a pub that the general public prefer.
Honey beer, do you like that?
No, cos I got stung by a wasp when we went to get that. That's bad memories.
If you can't tell the difference between a bee and a wasp, I'll have the honey beer.
'It was a wasp!'
What else? Ginger beer.. Ginger beer and Victorian lemonade,
which, I would suggest, is beyond its sell-by date if it is genuinely Victorian.
I'll have the Victorian lemonade. Ah. No, I'll have this cider.
You can't possibly have that because you thought it was
completely British and you thought they'd been making it for 200 years.
It turned out to be made by a German man, who started making it in the 80s. I want that.
I don't mind, you have it. You have it.
Now, what about these?
Coming from the most northerly...
Registered vineyard...
In? England.
Yeah, well done. Thanks.
What do you think about that? Did you like them?
Well, I like wine. What worries me about this isn't the wine,
or the bottle, it's not the taste or anything. It's the fact that, to me, coming from London, Mount Pleasant
- lovely name - but to me that means Europe's largest post office.
Mount Pleasant is a perfectly nice name.
All my post came through Mount Pleasant,
only a third of it arrived ever, so actually I'll have the red.
OK, I'll have the white.
There is one other drink.
Who's going to have that?
What is that? Where did you get that? It came from the minibar.
The whole point, Hugh, is we're trying to go around Britain, to actually seek out
the fantastic variety of drinks that this, our own nation, makes and try to put them forward and say,
look, isn't Britain fantastic? You can get whatever you want from inside the British borders.
You don't have to go to some foreign place...
I didn't have to go to a foreign place. I went to the minibar.
This is local, the minibar, literally,
if you're lying in bed, the minibar is about there.
All right Oz, look, I'm sorry.
What's your theory about the local beer where we're heading?
Don't ask me, what do I know?
Ask a Yorkshire man.
They're always going on about the fact that Yorkshire beer
is stronger than southern beer which is complete and utter tosh.
Yorkshire beer, a lot of it, is basically coal miners' beer and steel workers' beer
and the last thing someone coming up from coal mining wants
is ten pints of powerful tasting beer.
They want ten pints of very light, easily drinkable beer. That's what they want.
Would you say to a Yorkshire man's face, "Your beer is tosh."
Yeah, definitely and I would also say that it's tosh that
they say that their beer is better than southern beer. Absolute tosh.
Later tonight, would you mind if I got a Yorkshire man and you said that to him?
Probably a really big Yorkshire man who was quite angry anyway.
Preferably not a big Yorkshire man. Preferably a small Yorkshire man with a mellow personality.
'A man like Tony Gartland for example.
'A brewer in Saltaire, West Yorkshire who's invited us
'to taste his extraordinary flavoured beers.'
We take some of our base beers then we add to it a whole range of syrups
or essences, or it could be
sort of fresh or dried herbs and we can create things which are really just quite different.
On this plate, we've got galangal and black cardamom.
Here we've got lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves.
I've ground this up in a pestle and mortar, boiled it in a little beer
to get a really good strong infusion and then basically casked it.
'So, it's a sort of beer vindaloo?'
That's tremendous. Full of flavour.
You sort of lose a bit of the old American hops in it, don't you?
They can't stand up to these. Very nice.
'I know that beer goes with curry but this is absurd.
'Not as absurd as the challenge Tony's about to set us.'
I've got 60 members of our beer club turning up. We're going to do a beer each.
We've got the cherry mix here and then we've got, on the dark side,
the stout and the chocolate and the treacle here.
They'll taste the result of this, what you've made and they'll give you marks.
Be careful with your dosing.
These are a mix of syringes of different sizes.
Not going to tell you which one to use, but I'll give you the clue - little is more with this stuff.
If you want to make a cow pregnant, that's the one to use.
I'm not turning my back on you while we're doing this.
OK, gents, you have five minutes to do your beers,
then we'll take them downstairs to the critical beer club. Good. That's what I'm worried about.
Honour amongst thieves. Less is more.
Let's get going.
Have you tasted your base beer yet?
I think it's the same as the base beer we tasted before, isn't it?
I recommend you taste it again and see what you're working with.
I know what I'm working with. Unless you've got a very good taste memory.
Taste your beer! Well, if you don't want to...
I haven't got a glass to pour it into. Hang on. You don't have to.
Are you trying to delay me?
Just trying to be helpful, but why do I bother?
Down below our audience awaits - 60 Northern real ale drinkers.
Three minutes, guys. Hang on.
'Chocolate and stout - perfect bedfellows.'
Two minutes to go.
'I know people like lime in lager, but can this be right?'
One minute left, you better get moving.
I was going to do it with a certain element of quality control,
but now... Let it all go in, I think.
I might balance it a bit now.
Some liquorice, all gone in. I'll count you down now.
Ten, nine... Chocolate. Eight...
Loads of that. Seven, six, five...
A bit of that in there. Four, three, two, one...
That's it. Let's go.
That is some beer. Look at that.
Right... Right, guys.
Oz and Hugh have made a beer each upstairs. I'm not telling you who made which one.
Have a taste, see what you think.
Score it out of ten, write truthful and honest comments.
'Let the people choose between my quintuple chocolate death by stout and Hugh's very merry cherry beer.'
You'll never have had anything like this.
By the way, before you try that, I'd put the other one down, otherwise you'll drop it.
'One could make you sick, the other one might kill you.
'Let's hope they've got time to vote me the winner.'
I thought the dark one's very nice. Hangs on the palate, goes down smooth. Oh.
I wasn't very impressed. It was far too sweet and sickly.
Just tasted like a strong cappuccino, if I'm honest.
I loved it. Very chocolate-y, I love the chocolate.
The dark beer was very nice. I liked that one.
The red one was actually even worse.
It's a bit tarty.
Your red one's like bad medicine.
Like a fruity tea.
Which, when you're drinking beer, you don't want that, do you?
I really like this one, but the dark one, bit too much for me.
Right, the results are in. The first result is for the dark beer.
Couple of comments on the dark beer.
"Bloody awful, tosh..."
and the score was 121.
OK, the next one is the red beer.
"Lacked taste. Looked more like something you'd put in your car engine..."
"Also repels mosquitoes."
And the result on that one, points, 163.
CHEERING
'Good grief I seem to have won by making a beer
'marginally less revolting than Oz's.'
My lips are sealed...
..by the corrosive pink stuff I've just been drinking.
The key thing is that neither of them were anywhere near as good as this man's beer.
CHEERING
And the free barrel goes to my friend here.
This is turning into Top Gear.
Strongly-flavoured drinks are a great British tradition,
but somehow in modern times we seem to have lost track of them.
Don't tell me - "until now."
Seemed to me when I looked at that, we probably had the ingredients
for about four centuries' worth of drinking that fashion forsook.
I knew you'd like that. Forgot. Forsook. Is that the same?
I'm making a mediaeval caudle, which is a breakfast dish.
As you can see, it's coming along nicely.
'Add to a pint and a half of wine a tea spoon of ginger.'
What was this one for? 17th century, when they knew how to breakfast.
'A dollop of clear honey.'
Oh, honey, honey.
'Some ground almonds.'
Just have a smell of that.
That's about...
'And a pinch of saffron and, finally, two eggs.'
That's like Chinese soup. It's exactly like Chinese soup, so...
Who lived on this? Knights or peasants?
This'd be, oh, this was... peasants? For goodness' sake.
Peasants? Where are peasants going to get wine from?
How can you get Bulgarian Chardonnay if you're a peasant?
If you're a Bulgarian peasant, probably quite easily.
It's actually a perfectly reasonable drink and I'm rather disappointed by how reasonable that is.
Let's have another one.
Morning Glory Fizz is a Victorian hangover cure.
You start by mixing an egg white in water, add the juice of a lemon,
12 drops of lime juice and - the star of the show - absinthe.
Isn't it really vicious, absinthe?
It's really vicious. The people who actually make absinthe are mostly Czechs.
Yeah, they didn't ban it like everyone else. Why was it banned?
Banned for making people go mad.
'I wonder what caused it in your case.'
'Next in, whisky and a generous dash of bicarbonate of soda.'
That's more like it.
So this is essentially a vicious alcoholic drink and Alka-Seltzer, all in one?
It's a kind of cure to its own problem.
So the more you drink, the better you feel. Look at the head on it.
It's fantastic, isn't it? And that's just some bicarbonate of soda.
That's terrific.
Morning Glory, how do you feel?
Are you still in your own body?
Ah, excellent.
Cos you can actually feel, as the alcohol begins to attack you,
the bicarbonate of soda calms it down, tells it to behave itself, go away.
'Which would be fine if it had dissolved.'
One of your tonsils has just come out.
It's a solid piece of bicarbonate of soda.
Oh, that is so disgusting.
We can't use that in a pub.
Why not? You could sell that to Dyno-Rod or something!
Oh, that is just so... Oh!
Oh!
'Well, let us forsake these foul and forgotten fermentations that fashion hath forsook.
'What say you, Hubert?'
Fancy a pint? God, we've planned ahead.
I love a service station. Don't you? Why?
Well, they've got everything you want here. You could live here.
I could live here.
How many chews do you take on the average mouthful? 48.
This is almost blissful for me.
Just complete silence.
The more you chew, the more you squeeze out all the juices
and essences of what you're eating.
As you get older, and you're only able to eat soft food,
you're going to find that an enormous amount of time is freed up
for doing other interesting things.
Like not eating, for example!
Shall we go?
What? I haven't finished my breakfast!
I'll see you later then.
Don't forget that at some point, probably in a few months,
this programme has to be broadcast.
So it would be nice if you could finish your breakfast by then.
20. Tomatoes are 20.
So 2,513 chews later, and we're finally leaving Yorkshire
for Lincolnshire's finest, Cleethorpes.
And a place I know you're going to like.
Ah, not another hotel with a minibar?
Well, actually, it is a sort of minibar, yeah.
This is what is in Cleethorpes. Look...
The smallest pub on the planet? The smallest pub on the planet.
Big enough for two of us, I hope?
It's tiny! Hi!
How are you doing? I'm very well.
Excuse me, I'm so sorry.
This is really rude. Two pints of XXX beer, please, landlord.
Two pints of XXX coming up.
Right. Here's to you. Here's to Lincolnshire ale. Good health.
Oh, it's good, isn't it?
So this is the smallest pub in the world?
Yes, we were challenged by an American place.
They got their solicitor to send a lovely letter, mentioning the word "litigation".
We had to be measured independently for the floor area. And they did.
Theirs was 108 square feet.
This one is 64.
And do you have regulars? Do lots of people come in?
We have a good clientele, yes, that really support us here.
Not too many at a time.
To have more than say six or eight regulars would be problematic.
It's when we have to use the scaled drinking vessels.
Ah, that's a pint?
That's my size. Yes.
He's a lightweight this one. He's a lightweight.
The smallest pint on the planet. Here's to Hugh Dennis.
With a nice head on it. Thank you very much.
Down in one... What a drink.
Can I have a yard of ale, please?
So what you learned about the north?
Well, that you... That beer is quite difficult to make.
And flavour! Quite proud of that.
Monks are very good at making cider, traditional English cider.
And that you really are going to have to do more driving,
because I'm quite getting into this.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
It's a steam train.
It's a steam train!
Do you know where we're going next, Hugh? Wales!
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
It's that way!
As soon as I get a signal, I'm phoning my agent.
Next time, on the final furlong of our journey...
Ieuan's finest runs amok in a Welsh field.
Oz Clarke, cow whisperer!
He's gone down!
Conclusive proof that Welsh rugby players know how to appreciate fine wine...
CHEERING AND SHOUTING
And the doors finally open on our very own all-British pub.
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk