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The Old Town Ale House in Chicago (219 W. North Avenue, tel 312 944 7020) was within walking distance of the hotel used by the White Beer Travels Beer Hunters on a trip to Chicago, for the city's Real Ale Festival (www.realalefestival.com (stopped working in September, 2006, see the Chicago Beer Society's website, www.chibeer.org)), see below.

The USA: forget Bud, there is World-Class Craft Beer Available

The following is an index to Beer Hunts and recce trips undertaken in the USA. The Beer Hunts featured Chicago and New Orleans, and, thus, also had a music flavour to them. The recce trip was to Colorado, the USA's premier Speciality (Craft) Beer State. Clicking on the titles takes one to the appropriate parts of this page.

• 2001 New Orleans Jazz Fest, Abita Brewery, Brew-Pubs, Craft Beer Bars
• 2000 Chicago Real Ale Festival, Craft Beer Bars and Brew-Pubs, Blues/Jazz
• 1996 Denver, Golden City Brewery, Wynkoop & Many Other Brew-Pubs
  
  

2001: Trip to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, including a stretch limo visit to the Abita Brewery, in Abita Springs, Louisiana

Using scheduled air travel, we flew to New Orleans at the time of its unparalleled Jazz and Heritage Festival, which, despite its title, covers all forms of popular music, with Louisiana particularly well featured. The website, www.nojazzfest.com, provides superb information on the festival, including the artist schedules for its twelve stages and full details of the great food on offer, etc, etc. The music at the festival was stunning, as it was in venues in the city each night.

Many of the artists who appear in front of huge crowds can be seen the same evening in clubs. For example, Irma Thomas (www.irmathomas.com), the Soul Queen of New Orleans, was superlative on the festival's main stage and in her Lion's Den club (2655 Gravier Street, tel 504 821 3745). At the festival she said she would be on at her club that night, so I could not resist going along. Interestingly, in his book, Chronicles Volume One, (Simon & Schuster, 2004), Bob Dylan (1941-) (www.bobdylan.com), who performed at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, in 1993, heaps much praise on Irma, and tells, on page 214, of the time that he went to her club on spec to see her whilst he was recording his "Oh Mercy" album, with Daniel Lanois (www.daniellanois.com), in New Orleans, in 1989; Irma was away that night! If you are a Dylan fan, Chronicles Volume One is essential; you can get it from www.amazon.com or www.amazon.co.uk. Below are photos featuring Ernie K-Doe (www.k-doe.com), both at the Jazz Festival on the afternoon of the 6th of May, 2001, and in his Mother-in-Law Lounge (1500 N. Claiborne Avenue, tel 504 821 3745), the same evening. His club is named after his biggest hit, which he sang along to behind the bar, on the night of the White Beer Travels visit, when we put it on the Juke Box. He performed it with the house band later in the evening. Two months after these pictures were taken, Ernie died, so these photos are a memorial to this great New Orleans R&B artist.

Ernest Kador. Jr.    22nd February, 1936 - 5th July, 2001
Ernie at the New Orleans Jazz Fest	Ernie with John White, in the Mother-in-Law Lounge	Ernie performing in his Mother-in-Law Lounge
Photos by John, Joyce & John White respectively, 6th May, 2001

We got to our hotel from the airport by stretch limo. see below, which had cabinets full of the local Abita beers for us to sample! A limo also took us on a trip to Abita Springs, Louisiana, for the marvellous Abita Brewery that brews these excellent beers, see their website: www.abita.com. Getting there involved a spectacular drive across Lake Pontchartrain on a 23.6 mile (37.8 kilometre) bridge.

This May, 2001 photo above, in the Abita Brewery's tasting room, is by White Beer Travels Beer Hunt and recce trip regular and "Second Petal", Sylvia Clow. In the picture, from left to right, are: Dr Eric Clow; John White; David Spencer; Charlie King, the brewer; and John Edwards. Note that Abita have a brew-pub fairly close to the brewery which features both its own and the main brewery's beers. The White Beer Travels Beer Hunters had a really excellent meal in the brew-pub. Note that in the photo above, on John White's T-shirt, there is a reproduction of a photo, by Sylvia, taken in the Budweiser Budvar (Budějovický Budvar) Brewery (www.budvar.cz), in, České Budějovice (Budweis) , in 1993. Click here for the White Beer Travels Web page covering České Budějovice. In August, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and Mississippi , the Abita Brewery was fairly lucky and was quickly able to resume production. To help with the relief effort, it produced a special beer called "Fleur-de-lis Restoration Ale", the Fleur-de-lis being a symbol of New Orleans , where the damage was at its worst. A dollar from the sale of every six pack and all the profit from the sale of special merchandise (see the Abita website for details) go direct to the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation (LDRF).

For the limos, White Beer Travels used Golden Dragon Limousine; Bill Borchert and his team provided the group of Beer Hunters exceptional service. The booking was made on-line from their website: www.limoneworleans.com (stopped working in September, 2005, probably as a consequence of Hurricane Katrina). The photo to the left is of White Beer Travels Beer Hunters outside the Abita Brewery, in Louisiana, in May, 2001. It was taken with John's camera by Mark Holley, the chauffeur of the limo. Abita beers are available throughout New Orleans, in unlikely places such as the bar of the chain hotel used by White Beer Travels.

As well as its obvious music and food venues, there is excellent beer throughout New Orleans, which was sampled on visits to its outstanding Speciality Beer bars, such as Cooter Brown's, www.cooterbrowns.com, which has an excellent, very large world-wide beer list, and d.b.a. (www.drinkgoodstuff.com), another place with a great beer list, and brew-pubs, such as the Crescent City Brewhouse, www.crescentcitybrewhouse.com.

Should you be looking for a hotel in New Orleans, a good place to start is the New Orleans Hotel Service website, www.neworleanshotelservice.com.

2000: Trip to the Chicago Real Ale Festival

Also greatly enjoyed were the city's many wonderful Speciality (Craft) Beer bars, such as the exceptional Map Room (www.maproom.com), and brew-pubs, including those owned by the city's Goose Island Brewery (www.gooseisland.com), in particular, the one in Wrigleyville (www.gooseisland.com/pubs/wrigleyville.asp), this being the Real Ale (Cask Beer) Festival venue at this time. Note that, in 2003, the festival was held in a new, much bigger venue: the old Finkel Foundry Building. This proves to be an excellent choice and was going to be the venue in 2004 (4th to 6th of March). However, because of licensing problems, the festival did not take place in 2004 and venue problems mean that there was also no festival in 2005, see www.realalefestival.com (stopped working in September, 2006, see the Chicago Beer Society's website, www.chibeer.org). The Chicago Beer Society's website is maintained by Steve Hamburg. It has an extensive list of links to Chicago Breweries, Brew-Pubs and Craft Beer Outlets, along with outline information on them; it is an essential website. Chicago is also a great place to visit in its own right: for its world-class museums, such as the Art Institute of Chicago (www.artic.edu), and great Jazz and Blues venues and festivals, etc.

Visits were arranged to places such as Buddy Guy's Legends (www.buddyguy.com), a renowned venue for the city's most famed music style: Blues. It is owned by Blues Legend, Buddy Guy, who is second right in the photo to the left. A feature of such establishments is that, unlike equivalent places in the UK, they invariably serve some Speciality (Craft) Beers, this one having the city's Goose Island beers. The chain hotel used had five draught Craft Beers, including the great Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, see www.sierra-nevada.com.

With Buddy Guy in the photo above are White Beer Travels Beer Hunters and Blues fans, John White, on the right, next to Buddy, and Graeme Walster. Graeme runs the "Blues of the Month Club" (beehive.thisisgrimsby.co.uk/bluesofthemonthclub), in Cleethorpes, the adjoining town to where John lives: Grimsby. Graeme is next to one of the evening's performers, Willie Smith, the superlative drummer for the biggest ever name in Chicago blues, Muddy Waters, in the 1960s and 1970s. Check out their credentials in the superb All Music Guide website: www.allmusic.com. The picture was taken by Joyce White, in March, 2000.

July/August, 1996: Visit to Colorado

Denver, Colorado, the "Mile High City"

Denver was a base for this visit to Colorado. This city, close to the foot of the Rocky Mountains, is a marvellous tourist centre, with the usual things that discerning tourists expect of a big city in such a location. However, it is also the epicentre of American Speciality Beer, which the Americans call Craft Beer. It has what many regard as the USA's finest Brew Pub, Wynkoop (www.wynkoop.com). This is one of the White Beer Travels Pubs of the Month. The write-up for Wynkoop also covers Denver in general (tourist attractions and its other beer attractions, including the world's biggest beer festival, the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) (www.beertown.org/events/gabf/index.htm). Click here to see this page on Wynkoop and Denver.

Visit to Golden, Colorado

Golden (www.ingolden.com), which is twenty miles (thirty-two kilometres) West of Denver, is right on the edge of the Rockies; further West than this and you start climbing into spectacular scenery, although the Table Mountain, in Golden itself, is impressive enough.

I got to Golden using the number 16 bus from Denver, the journey only costing 50 cents. For times for this and other routes and transport facilities run by RTD, the Regional Transportation District, see their website, www.rtd-denver.com. I got off the bus right outside the entrance to the Coors Brewery. In Golden, Coors has the biggest single brewing site in the world. Despite its moderate beers, Coors is worth a visit, to have a look at its maltings and its impressive copper brewing vessels. Visits, which run throughout the day are free and do not need to be booked; the website, www.coors.com, has details.

12th Street, Golden, points directly away from Coors. It is a particularly attractive, tree-lined street, known as the Golden Walk. Off it, to the right, one soon reaches the following don't-miss place:

Golden City Brewery
920 12th Street and Arapahoe, tel 303 279 8092

This dubs itself the 2nd Largest Brewery in Golden. Its beers are magnificent. On my visit, in July, 1996, I entered a room that I took to be a bar, as there was a bank of genuine handpumps mounted on a servery. I partook of the entire range, including the Red, the Stout and the Barley Wine. What superb beers they were, all unpasteurised and unfiltered: true Real Ales. When it was time to leave, I asked for my bill and was told that for legal reasons I could not be charged; the pumps were there merely for sampling purposes prior to making purchases to take home with you, which, for me, was not practical! Many people did purchase take-out beer whilst I was at the bar, in what I thought was a slightly unusual pub! As some recompense, I purchased a rather nice T-shirt, with the "2nd Largest…" logo on it.

Since my visit, the place has now got a conventional bar, which is no-smoking inside; there is an outside drinking area.

The Golden City Brewery has an all-day Oktoberfest each year. It will probably be on Saturday, the 13th of October, in 2007.

The products produced by Coors and their main rival use rice in the brew, which imparts no flavour to the beer; it is merely a starch source, an adjunct to the flavoursome, but more expensive Malt. However, there is a place in Golden that does manage to get some flavour from rice brews, but this is probably due to the unusual type of rice and yeast used, the complexity of the process, and the sheer strength of the product: typically 16% to 22% Alcohol by Volume. This product is Saké, which originates from Japan, but which is produced in a number of places in the USA. Hakushika Sake USA, is a Saké Brewing outpost of a 300 year old Japanese company, at 4414 Table Mountain Drive (tel 303 279 7253). Visits, with tastings, are possible. For further information on Saké, particularly in the USA, see the Saké Association of America's website, www.sakeusa.com.

Stopovers en route to and from Denver

En route to Denver, I had a stopover in Chicago, which was the venue for a White Beer Travels Beer Hunt, in 2000, see above. The Beer Lover's Guide to the USA (click here for more information on this book, in the the page covering the Wynkoop in Denver), directed me straight to the top-class John Barleycorn (658 W. Belden, tel 312 348 8899, www.johnbarleycorn.com). This has an outstanding selection of Craft Beers, good food, ambience and décor. Top class. On another stopover, in Houston, Texas, one could not held noticing, in the airport bar, that beers from the Saint Arnold Microbrewery (2522 Fairway Park Drive, tel 713 686 9494, www.saintarnold.com) were available on draught, and superb they were; there are free brewery tours every Saturday at 1pm. Throughout the USA, Craft Beers tend to be readily available in the area where they are brewed, accompanied by some nationally famous ones, such as the great Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, see www.sierra-nevada.com. This is not just in bars that specialise in Craft Beer, but in the bars of chain hotels, national pizza establishments, etc. Oh that it were like this in the UK.

September, 1991: Visit to Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi

The photo, above left, was taken by John White, in September, 1991, in Girard Park, Lafayette, Louisiana, the main venue of the annual "Festivals Acadiens" (www.festivalacadiens.com). On the left, is the late Dewey Balfa (1927-92), who was a very big star in the Louisiana Cajun Music field. Being Cajun, the songs sung at the festival are in French, as are all the announcements at the festival, which also features Cajun food, such as Jambalaya, Gumbo and Crawfish. The food stalls in the "Bayou Food Festival" are run by famous local restaurants and delicatessens.

The photo, above right, was taken by Joyce White, in September, 1991, at the Jam-bal-aya du Musique, in the Acadian Village, in Lafayette, Louisiana. This event was part of the previously mentioned "Festivals Acadiens". In the photo, Johnnie Allan (1938-), the great Swamp Pop artist, is offering me a puff of his cigar, after discovering that I am a non-smoker. Johnnie has recorded many of his own excellent songs, but is most famous for a truly classic cover of Chuck Berry's "Promised Land". We had a marvellous afternoon sitting with Johnnie and his wife, Janet Guillot, on a bench behind the stage, getting a fascinating insight into Louisiana Swamp pop, Cajun Music and Blues. When Lil Alfred started to sing Don Gibson's "I Can't Stop Loving You", Johnnie said: "I don't want to write a hit, I just want to write such a classic." I told him that his recording of "Promised Land" was a classic, that many regard as the best cover version of all time. We both agreed that his version was better than Chuck's original recording; I absolutely love Chuck's records, but his "Promised Land" is not a patch on Johnnie's classic version, which substitutes guitar solos for superb accordion ones. In the photo, I have a T-Shirt from the world-class Cantillon Brewery, in Brussels, Belgium (www.cantillon.be, White Beer Travels Web page), which I got on a visit there in July, 1991. On this USA trip, wearing this T-Shirt was the nearest that I got to beer worth drinking. As can be seen above, my in situ exposure to the great Craft Beers of the USA, came from 1996 onwards.

The photo, above left, was taken by John White, in September, 1991, in a famous Cajun music venue: Fred's Lounge, in Mamou, Louisiana (420 6th Street). In the photo, the sixty year old Tante Sue (Aunt Sue) (Sue Vasseur) is accompanied by the Don Thibodeaux Band. Fred's Lounge opens from 8am to 2pm each Saturday. It does not have any beers of interest, but for great music and atmosphere, it is an absolute don't-miss. In Mamou, we stayed overnight in the atmospheric, Hotel Cazan (www.hotelcazan.com), across from Fred's, at 401 6th Street.

The photo, above right, was taken by Joyce White, in September, 1991. In it, I am standing in front of a classic Louisiana Bayou. A Bayou is slow moving water, alongside which there are trees on which Spanish Moss hangs, as per the photo. This Bayou is an off-shoot of the much wider "Bayou Teche". It is in the Longfellow-Evangeline State Commemorative Area, just North of St Martinsville.

The photo, above left, was taken by Joyce White, in September, 1991, in the "Master-Trak Sound Recorders" recording studios in Crowley, Louisiana (413 North Parkerson Avenue); the studios are now know as MTE Records (www.mterecords.com). I have a Lightnin' Slim LP in my hand, that the man with me has just signed, and added a note stating that Lightnin' was his favourite of the many artists that he recorded in Crowley, such as Slim Harpo, Lonesome Sundown, Lazy Lester, Warren Storm and Katie Webster. The man with me is the late, legendary J. D. "Jay" Miller (1922-96). The LP was amongst a number of LPs and CDs purchased in the adjoining "Modern Music Center" record shop, all of which were signed by Jay, with the addition of appropriate comments. When we got to the studios, Jay's son, Mark Miller, was recording a cow bell for a commercial, but he said that his father would arrive soon!

The photo, above right, was taken by John White, in September, 1991, in the Reddi Room, in Houston, Texas (at the time, 2626 White Oak, but now 5219 Washington Avenue). In the foreground, is Roy Rogers, who is in the band accompanying Joe James, who is in the background with the cowboy hat and check shirt. They were just too good!

The above photos were taken by Joyce White, in September, 1991, outside the entrance to the once infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary, in Angola, Louisiana, USA (www.angolamuseum.org). In 1933, the famous folklorist and musicologist, Alan Lomax (1915-2002) discovered the mega-famous Blues singer, Leadbelly/Ledbelly (Huddie William Ledbetter) (www.leadbelly.org) (c1885-1949) in this prison. The photo on the right features a poster for a Rodeo in which prisoners from Angola Prison take part, each Saturday in April and October.

John White (1945-), .

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