The best pint in town

Good news: London now has more brewers practising their craft within the city limits than at any time since around 1965. Nowadays they are likely to be poets of the wort, visionaries in overalls and wellies, clambering, gibbon-like, about their equipment and producing just enough to quench the thirsts of a restaurant full of chatterers.

One such, Paul Conlin of Mash, in Great Portland Street, threw down a gauntlet. Why not have a competition to find who can brew the best capital pint? Peter Haydon, of the Society of Independent Brewers, agreed to organise it, Mash was the venue and I, along with my colleague Ed Sullivan plus Independent journalist Michael Jackson, publican Mark Dorber, former brewer Peter Ogie and Dylan Jones, editor of GQ, were the judges.

There were three categories: lager, bottled beer and draught ale. The eight entries, with notable absentees, were: Mash, Freedom and Meantime, all microbreweries par excellence; new boys Haggards (from the New King's Road) and Sweet William (from Leyton High Road); plus London grandee Young's. The field was made up by Zerodegrees in Blackheath and Pitfield, from Hoxton. The results, I warn you, were a shock.

If London leads and Britain follows, then the next 20 or 30 years are going to see a radical diversity of styles spreading throughout the country. These include native lagers (well-crafted alternatives to the big, bland brands); keg ales with real depth of flavour, akin to the classic microbrewery ales of Seattle and other north American cities; and experimental styles like red ales and Meantime's Vienna-inspired Union Ale.

I welcome this wholeheartedly, yet one of Britain's greatest failings is a chronic under-confidence about our native drink culture, and it would be a shame if London's small brewers neglected the cask-conditioned bitter ale which is this country's greatest and most intricate gift to the drinking world. Of the draught ales, only three out of the seven were cask-conditioned.

Anyway, back to the shock. When all was revealed, the unfancied Zerodegrees, Blackheath's own microbrewery within a pizza restaurant, won two out of the three categories: Champion London Lager and Champion London Ale. This was a tribute not only to brewer Mike McGuigan, who took over at Blackheath only a bare month ago, but also to Grant Johnston, the Anglophile American who created the beers in the first place, and whose Anglophilia has been rewarded by Britain's refusal to give him a work permit. Just as his beers were declared the best in London he was obliged to leave the country. Champion Bottled Beer of London went to Young's exuberant and multi-layered 6.4 per cent abv Special London Ale.

The win for Zerodegrees underlined another eternal verity of the drinks world, though. Sure, the recipes are good: the Zerodegrees Pilsner has genuinely complex hoppiness in its flavour (Seville orange as well as the more usual floral bitterness), and its Pale Ale is a multilayered beauty whose scents (of peach and Cologne) and fresh, many-fruited flavours made it the outstanding beer in its category for all but one of the judges. Yet there was more than that - quite literally. The Zerodegrees beers were submitted having undergone neither fining nor filtration. In the beer world as in the wine world, fining and filtration are the enemies of flavour and complexity. A little haze (for beer) and copious sediment (for wine) are small prices to pay for scents and flavours which can transport you skywards.

Zerodegrees Pilsner and Pale Ale are available at Zerodegrees, 29-31 Montpelier Vale, Blackheath SE3 (020 8852 5619). Young's Special London Ale is stocked by Safeway (£1.89). If you like great beer, meanwhile, here are two treats: The White Horse on Parson's Green is having a 20th anniversary celebration week from Saturday, with a flotilla of real ales, and the Great British Beer Festival at Olympia starts on 31 July (see www.gbbf.org or ring 0900 525 2525).