Thursday : Artefact Brewing at the Leopard in Norwich

Back in Norwich and so an uneventful day other than for a couple of highlights that I’ll briefly mention.

OK, there are no shortage of photo from Lucy’s on Norwich Market on this blog, but this is really rather lovely food. Those meaty butcher sausages, topped with rich curry sauce and heaps of scraps. What a healthy treat! James and I should really go to other locations for lunch more often, but this quality keeps on calling and we’re not very adventurous.

I thought I’d take myself to the Leopard pub in the evening as they had a little bit of a tap takeover from Artefact Brewing from Bury St. Edmunds. I really like concepts like this, although being away so much I miss a fair few of them. They had four different beers on cask and so as I couldn’t decide, I had a third of each. I can sometimes make rapid and sensible decisions like that. They also had three or so keg options, I came back on a different day to try one of those, I think the only one that was left. I had already eaten, and was still full from my delicious chips earlier on in the day, but they had the Mr Ragu food truck type thing outside for those who wanted to pair their beer with some snacks.

From left to right (in both photos), these are the Amber Haze IPA, the Ixworth Blonde, the Session Pale and the Dark Mild. All perhaps inevitably tasting fresh, well-kept and at the appropriate temperature, they were all very delightful. Looking back at my Untappd scores, as I can’t remember everything (people like Nathan can tell me without checking what beer they had in 2017 and what condition it was in), I liked the Ixworth, Session Pale and Dark Mild equally, with my 3.75 scores. The Amber Haze IPA was for me the best of the lot, a 6.4% which had a richness of taste to it and a caramel aftertaste, all as good as this type of real ale is going to get for me.