Mostly talking about when I’ve had a drink
If you read my posts about trying to get to twelve pubs which have been acredited with cask marques, you will know that I have been waiting for a t-shirt now for some time. If you didn’t know about this, you can read about it here, hear and heere.
Well, finally it arrived. Email after email came through apologising for delays and problems with printers. But now it’s here. I checked Jay also got his t-shirt as well. Thanks to all at cask marque. It was fun.
My job sends me all over the country. Now you would have thought that this would mean that I would be able to visit loads of different pubs, with all there different beers to try and I would be busy keeping this blog fresh with new and exciting beers to try. As you can tell, this not so.
The problem is this. We don’t want to end up spending the night in some dodgy b&b with no heating, no hot water, a shower that would be more effective if you were to use a pipette and a mattress that would be more comfortable sleeping on the floor (I’m looking at you Saxon Holme Hotel, Stockport). So as a result we generally stay at one of the major chains of hotels that we are all familiar with, particularly Premier Inn. At Premier Inn the beds are always warm and soft, the shower is usual adequate and there is always a restaurant on-site to get some food and a pint after a long days work.
The trouble is that when you go up to the bar it’s nearly always the same few mainstream lagers, Guinness and the tasteless Smoothflow ales. Only if you are very lucky do you ever get a proper pint of cask ale, and even then it is normally one of the big names, Marston’s Pedegree, Wychwood’s Hobgoblin and the like. Now I’m not complaining about that. I just wan’t a little more variety when I drink out.
I’m going to be going up to Burnley, Lancashire, on Monday and I know that the Premier Inn there has got no ale choice at all. Infact, the most exciting thing they have is Magner’s Pear and Ginger, which I am yet to try.
I don’t want to seem like I’m having a downer on Premier Inn, I’m not. Holiday Inn and Travelodge are far worse. They NEVER have any beers bar a few bottles of lager in a fridge behind a bar where you can order something which I would define as a snack but they insist on charging for it as if it were a full meal.
If we are lucky we can sometimes stay in one of these and there will be a local pub down the road. This is not often the case though. Most of the large chain hotels are built on the outskirts of the towns where land is cheaper, nowhere near walking distance from any pubs.
A few weeks ago I was working within spitting distance of the regions “CAMRA pub of the year”. There is bound to be some good beers in there, but I can’t tell you that for sure because our hotel was two miles away on the ringroad, with a pub attached to it that, to be fair, did have a Greene King IPA tap on. We were there for a week and they didn’t have any IPA in all week, so again we were having to settle for Guinness.
I think mostly that it is a shame because Premier Inn is part of Whitbread. A company which started out in the brewing business has turned its back on beer and makes its money now out of hotels and coffee.
By the way, can anyone suggest a pub/hotel/restaurant that has some good beers, good beds, good showers, secure off-road , home cooked food and preferably a TV with at least full freeview channel listings. It’s not much to ask for is it?
People who know me know that I’m not a huge fan of lager and also I’m not all that mad on football. So when we decided to go to see England play San Marino it was obvious that I was going to drink anything but lager wasn’t it?
To make a day of it we decided to go into London for the day before heading for Wembley that evening. We each had places we wanted to go to, pubs we wanted to visit, things we wanted to do while we were in the capital. This is how things went.
We started off with a quick visit to the Science museum. Having all been there before, we didn’t stay for long. We then made for our first pub of the day. The Zetland Arms, South Kensington. A nice traditional pub, kept fresh and clean, but in essence still how to my mind a pub should look. I had a pint of London Pride. While we were in here we got our only cask marque scan of the day for the worlds biggest ale trail app.
I wanted to go for a ride on the new cable car that goes over the Thames near Greenwich. We therefore left Kensington and made our way to the O₂. We had our second drink in the O₂ before we got onto the cable car. We stopped in the Slug and Lettuce which is inside. I had a Samuel Adams Lager. I had heard about this beer before and the read the fuss which is made about it on beer blogs. I thought I’d better try it. I must say that I did quite enjoy it. I’m glad it was only in a small bottle because I couldn’t drink much of it though. Also, being in the O₂, the price tag was enough to make a man weep, god only knows what a big bottle would cost.
After a fantastic view over London, on the other side of the river, Jonny took us to one of his London hangouts which he goes to after work, The Fox at ExCeL. They did have Deuchars on the bar but it was off, so instead I had an Amstel, a beer I hadn’t had for a long time, infact it was more than two years ago I had it last, back when I was last in Amsterdam.
After this pint we realised we were behind and if we wanted to get to the game on time we were going to have to hurry up, especially as we wanted to go into Brewdog Camden first. In Camden I had a Brewdog Zeitgeist and Punk IPA before we headed off to the football.
When we arrived and got ourselves into the stadium, we made our way directly to the bar, I couldn’t see anything which I would want to drink, especially as the only beer was Carlsberg. It wasn’t until later that we got talking to a guy who pointed out that selected bars around the stadium did have Tetley’s Smoothflow on offer. My question is why? Why can’t they have both beers on all bars? is it really that much of a logistical challenge?
Several Tetley’s and 5-0 win later and the game is over. Jay and Jonny decide to head for home while myself and Darren head back into Camden. We meet up with Joe, an old school friend, back in the Brewdog bar (he works there). I have a dead pony club. Joe nearly kills us all with some beef jerky which is hotter than the sun. Brewdog closes and we head into The black heart, just around the corner, in there I have a Camden Ink followed by a Camden Hells Lager, which was also really nice.
Following this the Black heart closes. We part company with Joe and Darren and I descend into the Camden night life until even that closes. finishing off the night talking to a French girl, who clearly just wanted to go home, about the problems of getting out of London when there are no trains late at night.
So that was our day out in the big smoke. Many, many beers. Two of them lagers, which I liked. I wasn’t expecting that.
Milton Keynes; a city (well, big town) famed for concrete cows and roundabouts. Horrible place if you ask me. They do, however, put on a good beer festival. Back in October (yes this is another one of those posts I should have written weeks ago), I went with the usual suspects to MK Camra’s Concrete Pint Beer Festival.
As beer festivals go, it’s not a huge affair. It takes place in The Buszy, which as far as I can tell is a glorified youth centre. As venues go it has its good and bad points, on the plus side it is next to the bus and train stations (it is actually above the bus station), which is handy for getting home after a few too many beers. On the down side, it’s not very big. This means that everyone it really packed in tight. I think that perhaps they could have made a little more space by getting rid of the make-your-own-tshirt stand, which took up a large area. I wasn’t there when they had music on and I can’t see where they would put a stage for a band to play, there just wasn’t the room.
The area outside was fenced off for smokers and for people who wanted to escape the crush inside. Out there was also a barbeque which is a nice touch. It makes a change from the usual burgers and pizzas that most beer festivals have. Last year we sat outside with the barbeque and remarked about how much like a post-apocalyptic, “only the children survived” film it all seemed in the cold evening, in the middle of town, and no other people outside the fence.
Back inside the main attraction, the beer, flowed well. I had many different beers, including White Park’s Nightjar. I always have to try any beer which comes from Bedfordshire, and I’m pleased, no proud, to report that it is excellent. Other beers which I enjoyed included Thornbridge’s Jaipur and Concrete Cow Brewery’s Bulldozer. Another good thing about MK beer festival is that they keep updating their website with exactly what is on and what has been sold out. A nice touch I think.
The session. Once a month beer bloggers from around the world take five minutes to all discuss a particular topic. This month, the topic is novelty beers. It was suggested by this months host, Jorge from Brew beer and drink it. The following quote sums up the brief for this month:
The Perfect Beer World… that’s how I picture it…
So with that being said… what is something you would like to see change… something that will take us closer to the Perfect Beer World?
I’m not quite sure where I’m going to go with this one. The world is already such a great place when it comes to beer. There are so many different brewers, each with their own style and as a result different beers. A smorgasbord of different beers to suit every taste and mood. So what would I want to do to change it? Well, I’d like to have more choice available to me. I’d love it if the supermarkets stocked bottles of the most obscure ales from around the world, and the pubs all kept casks of ales that always changed, instead of just the same old GK IPA all the time.
Of course I know its not financially viable and could never happen, so perhaps we need to get rid of money? Wouldn’t that be nice? Just walk to the bar and have what you want regardless of what you can afford. You could drink to taste and not to budget. How long would the big commercial lagers last then? Apart from that, which is unlikely to happen in the near future, I don’t think I can complain about the beer world. I try many different beers, some good, some not so good, but without the bad you can’t appreciate the good. All in all I think we should leave it all alone, it’s not that bad.
I know, this was weeks ago, I’m a terrible blogger. Yes, this is my musings on what happened on Saturday 6th October, the main gist of which was to go to the Bedford Beer Festival. Bedford’s was the first beer festival that I ever went to and so it’s from their example I base my opinion of all other events. Organised every year by North Beds CAMRA, the event is now in its 35th year.
OK, so you know that earlier in the week me and Jay had been on a mini tour of Bedford trying to find cask marque pubs. We were also joined by Daz and Jonny for the festival. We thought though, that we’d show them some of our favourite newly found pubs on the way first. This meant a quick stop in The Foresters Arms to see if they had received their cask marque in the post yet. They hadn’t.
We then moved on to The Wellington Arms, where Jay was very disappointed to find that they didn’t have any Fruit Bat, which was, for him at least, half the reason we went back there. Everyone approved of the pub. I particualrly like the sign on the outside of “The Wellie” as it is called by the locals.
The third pub we went to was The Cricketers. We had tried to get in here earlier in the week but couldn’t because it was shut. I since did my research and found it’s only open during the day if there is a rugby match on, which there was. I had also found that because it was cask ale week we could print off a free pint voucher from the cask marque website. While we were in here we talked to the landlord. He was telling us that he no longer gets a cask marque because he feels that they do not do enough to warrant the money he would have to pay.
Free pint down and we headed for the beer festival. Bedford is quite a large festival. It takes up the entire of the Corn Exchange, including the upstairs bar and balcony area. In total this year they had 110 real ales, 44 ciders as well as a foriegn beer bar. On top of that all the usual games, tombola, food, live music and book sale that you usually expect at a CAMRA organised event. The bumpf recon that over the weekend 18,000 pints will be consumed. That’s quite a lot.
So how was it? Well I always enjoy these sort of things. This year was no exception. I didn’t have any beers that I didn’t like. The food was good, if a little over priced and everyone was friendly, which is always nice. Later on, when the band came on everyone was having a great time, which really set the mood for the rest of the evening. For me the stand-out beers of the evening were T’owd Navigation, Nightwatch Porter, and Rampart.
Every year we go to Bedford beer festival and there is always something which happens which makes that year stand out from all of the others. Sometimes it’s meeting someone you weren’t expecting, other years its lesbians being over friendly with each other on the bar. This year it was a grumpy old man throwing my salad over the table. It was very funny.
After we left we had one more drink in town before making our way back to the train station. We missed the last train and had to get an extortionate taxi. All in all, fun times though.
From the previous two posts: Town and Locals, you will know that me and my friend Jay are trying to get twelve cask marque certificates scanned by the end of cask ale week, an event promoted by cask marque to showcase cask ale. If we get to twelve, we get a t-shirt. As things stood we were at nine.
We had exhausted all of our local pubs and had a good stab at the pubs in Bedford. Now we had to start looking a bit further afield, and when I say field, I mean field. Jay and I planned to complete our challenge via country walk. It’s well known that country walking works well with pubs, there are enough pub walking books to prove that.
Our plan was originally to go to the Pulloxhill and then Barton, but after looking at the last pub on our list it turned out that the “other pub” in Barton was a football club, and guessing that it wouldn’t be open, we decided on Silsoe and then Clophill instead. The Map below shows what we did, thanks to Bing Maps for not being aware that I ripped off their OS mapping feature. The Red dots are the three pubs we visited, although there are other PH signs which we missed off.
It took us about an hour to get to The Cross Keys in Pulloxhill. Since I had last walked that way the footpaths had changed slightly but it was still fairly similar. None of the hills in these parts are particularly demanding, really anyone with legs can get around in the countryside round here. We got to The Cross Keys just as they were opening. They found us the Cask Marque, which had just arrived in the post the other day, our luck was in. I had an Adnams Broadside, as did Jay.
The walk from there took us down paths I had never used before. Again, it was all easy going footpaths round the edge of fields. The paths linked us from Pulloxhill to Silsoe very quickly and we soon found ourselves in the new development on the edge of Silsoe. From there we made our way through the village to get to The George. The cask marque was on the wall, which was scanned easily but the poor phone reception made it difficult to log our scan with the app, we got there in the end though. We both had a Greene King XX Mild.
To get to our last pub we walked out of the other side of the village and turned north, we followed a footpath towards the ever loudening sounds of the A507 and the A6. A short wooded section of the footpath confirmed to us that we were getting close. It was then just a dash across a bypass, a small housing estate and a footbridge that took us onto The Green in the middle of Clophill village, where our final pub was: The Flying Horse.
We walked in and asked for our beers and where the certificate was. The bar maid didn’t know but she was enthusiastic and thought the whole thing was a brilliant idea. She went off to find the manager. A short while later she came back “I’m sorry boys…” our hearts sank, this was the last one! “Only joking” as she revealed the certificate from behind her back. All we had to do was scan it and the t-shirt would be ours. I scanned mine, and then Jays phone broke. He restarted it, and then the app wasn’t installed. Jay got into a bit of a panic, eventually it sorted itself out and Jay scanned it, but then he lost his internet connection. In the end he had to piggyback his phone through mine and we did get him there. Now all we had to do was walk back so Jay could get to work. Oh, and we had a Brakspear Bitter each in the Flying Horse.
Following on from the last post. It was Cask Ale Week a little while ago and I’m on a mission with my friend Jay to visit different pubs to that we can scan their cask marque certificates. If we get to twelve by the end of the week we get a t-shirt. After visiting the town we got half way there. Now we thought we’d try something a little closer to home.
We are quite lucky, some people live in a village where there are no pubs left. We live in a small town where there are four pubs and within walking distance is another small town of seven pubs. Of those eleven pubs five of them supposedly have cask marques. If you’ve read the previous post you’ll know why I say supposedly.
I know some of my posts can be like trying to get through war and peace so here is the short version of what happened.
AMPTHILL:
Engine & Tender – Cask Marque on the wall, found easily. We had a Boundary by Wadworth.
The Old Sun – Cask Marque behind the bar. Barman was very helpful. We had a Tiger by Everards.
The Albion – Doesn’t have a cask marque, we never thought it did, we just poped in because the beers are so good. I had a Merry Maidens Mild by Coastal Brewery. Working from memory I think Jay had a porter of some kind.
FLITWICK:
The Blackbirds – I’ve already got the cask marque in there and we’re in there so often it didn’t seem necessary.
The Crown – We had a St. Edmunds. Asking for the location of a certificate felt more like asking if I could set the bar maid on fire. No one knew where it was, although they confirm that it was there in the past.
The Swan – Landlord and landlady were very helpful, cask marque was behind the bar. We had a Youngs Bitter.
This brings the tally up to nine. A few more to go yet then.
I know Cask Ale Week was a while ago but I’ve been busy. Deal with it. For those of you who don’t know cask ale week is an event set up and organised by Cask Marque. It is a promotion of good cask ales for a week (that is actually ten days) with different events and offers at pubs up and down the country.
One such promotion was tied in with the Cask Finder app for smartphones. The app, which bills itself as “The worlds largest ale trail” includes a section which allows the used to scan the QR codes on cask marque certificates. Usually when someone has visited 25 pubs they are sent a bottle opener, 50: a t-shirt and 100: a whole range of other exciting things. During cask ale week though you have the chance to win a different, limited edition t-shirt by visiting twelve different pubs during the event. Now with no other events going on in my area and fortuitously coinciding with week with no work on, I call that challenge accepted.
My friend Jay is accompanying me on this one. It is his first time using the app, whereas I have had it for a while. He is yet to know the frustrations of trying to find the certificates which are supposed to be displayed. He hasn’t yet experienced the cask marque database and its many inaccuracies. And he hasn’t yet been met with blank faces on the other side of the bar when you enquire about anything relating to cask marque. He shall soon find out…
We meet up on the Tuesday morning in Bedford and after a brief encounter with a friend of a friend of mind-bending odds, we find our first pub. The Pilgrim’s Progress, a Wetherspoon’s pub. Spotting the certificate in here was easy enough because it was so high up behind the bar. When we asked the bar man, he had to stand on a stool to scan the codes for us. When he got back down he asked what it was for, and we explained, I don’t think either of us realised how tedious that was going to become.
I finished my Harvest Moon and we moved on to our next pub, which was a bit of a trek because Jay had some unfinished business and had to go all the way across town first. We spotted a Cask Marque sign on the outside of The Ship on the way back into town. It wasn’t on the map marking the cask marque’d pubs on the phone app but with a sign outside it must have one, right? We went in and had a swift half of Eagle IPA, the bloke behind the bar had absolutely no idea what was going on when we asked him and so we moved on down the road to The Foresters Arms.
At least the landlord, who was behind the bar, knew what we were talking about. They had just received a load of post about their cask marque but hadn’t yet got round to sorting it out. So he goes out of site for a moment, comes back with piles of papers, dumps it on the bar and asks “Is any of that lot it?”. Eventually we find a letter which states that the actual certificate comes later on by recorded delivery. So that’s three pubs and only one scan towards our target of twelve. Things are not looking good.
We then try the other Wetherspoon in Bedford, The Banker’s Draft. As soon as we walked in we could see the certificate, again, its way too high to reach and this time we can see it is out of date too. The queue at the bar is so long we gave up on this one and down the High Street to The Rose. In here the cask marque was right by the bar, easy to get to and could be scanner, finally number two! I had a Jester Jack, I can’t remember what Jay had (Then again, I can’t remember what I had either, I’m looking back through my untappd app).
Moving along we tried The Embankment. The girl behind the bar had no clue, the manager was on the phone and clearly didn’t want to help the likes of us. Again another miss, although I’m not too bothered about this one, last time we were in there the beer was vile. We walked out without even having a drink.
Next on the list was The Devonshire Arms. When we got there it was shut. Our fault entirely, we should have looked up the opening hours, they aren’t open during the day weekdays. Fortunately though the landlord was outside, who was nice, friendly, helpful, understanding, kind and a million other nice things which could be said. This was probably the only time that we met a bar manager or landlord who knew completely everything about what we were doing. He let us in the pub to scan his certificate, which was help pride of place in the front of the pub by the main door. While we were inside he showed of his large selection of cask ales which we could have if we came back later. Getting a pub scanned felt a bit like cheating seaming as we didn’t have a drink but we have been there before on another occasion, so it’s OK in my eyes.
Moving on and we got another Eagle IPA in The Gordon Arms. The landlady didn’t really know why but she did let us behind the bar so we could scan the certificate and she was very friendly as well, talking to us about music venues in the town and other things besides. By now we had come quite a way from the town centre and decided to turn back because Jay had to work later on.
After a sausage roll from the bakery on Castle Street we walked back and found The Three Cups. I had a Farriers Best Bitter while a hunt the certificate game proceeded upstairs with the manager and some of the staff because they knew “it’s around here somewhere”. It was eventually found in a drawer upstairs, we scanned it and it was taken away again. I thought that surely now they know that people might want to see it that they would put it up somewhere, but what do I know?
Just down the road from this is The Castle. This was another pub where there was a lot of confusion with the staff and eventually the landlord was summoned. He also had no idea what we were talking about. We showed him a leaflet about the ale trail, which he asked if he could keep, we then pointed to the stack of them on his bar. He then didn’t feel the need to keep our leaflet. He did say that he had no idea about any of these things because he had only just moved in and was new to running a pub, and was interested in finding out more. He phoned up cask marque while we were there and got a new certificate ordered. Hopefully, when we are next in town, we can get a scan then. The bar staff suggested that we try The Cricketers and The Wellington Arms.
So we did as they suggested, tried The Cricketers, which was closed and then The Wellington Arms, which was open and FANTASTIC. This pub deserves its own post because there was wall to wall great beer and nothing else. The walls were festooned with CAMRA certificates for pub of the year and the like. I had a Black Squirrel and Jay had a Fruit Bat, both from B&T, a local brewery who’s beers are excellent. Cask marque? That was behind the two locals who didn’t mind moving so we could scan it in.
So, we visited twelve pubs, which all showed some sign either on the app of on the signs on their doors saying they should have a cask marque, of those we only got six scans on our target of twelve. We’ll just have to go to a few more pubs before the week is out. What a shame.
The Flitwick club is a members only social club in Flitwick, which is near where I live. I am infact a member of this club, however you did not need to be last weekend because for two days it was open to the public to allow entry to its beer festival. It was the first beer festival at the club and they have started out small. In fact the choice was only ten beers and two ciders.
The beers which were available were Hogg’s Back’s HBB, W.J King’s Horsham Best, Long Man’s Long Blonde,Long Man’s Best Bitter,Skinner’s Betty Stoggs, Otter’s Amber,Hogg’s Back’s T.E.A, Exmoor’s Wild Cat, Exmoor’s Gold and Adnam’s Ghost Ship. The two ciders available were Weston’s First Quality Cider and Thatcher’s Cheddar Valley. On top of this the standard bar which is always at the club has two constantly rotating real ales, while the festival was on there was Jennings‘ Little Gem and St Austell’s Tribute. Not a huge choice, and some of the beers I have had before, but that’s not a bad thing. I personally would have liked to have a darker beer, a mild or a porter perhaps, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
The small number of beers there meant that I got to try everything which was on offer. I had planned to go down for a little while but as a friend said to me a few days later “Stay for a bit?!?!?!? Looke, You never left all day”. Yeah, oops.
I first arrived just after lunchtime with Darren. We sat down for a few halves, during which time I realised that perhaps my drinking in this town was getting a bit too much. Myself and Darren were sitting at a table with our drinks, paying no attention to the others at the bar when a gentleman in his thirties approached us. In his hand he had a half of what was clearly cheddar valley cider (if you’ve ever seen it you’ll know what I mean, the colour is extraordinary) and in his other he had another glass with a taster in it of the same. “Excuse me, are you the cider drinker”. I looked at my glass and the Adnams Ghost Ship that was in it. I tried to think of something witty to say but ended up saying “errrr… I do drink cider, yes”. The man handed me the taster and asked me if it was “alright”, I explained that it was the dry version of Cheddar Valley and so unlike most commercial cider isn’t sweet and can indeed taste like it did. The man thanked me and left us to continue our drinks. I couldn’t help but think over his choice of words though “the cider drinker”. I didn’t think I drunk that much cider these days but clearly I’ve started to gain a reputation. I know I have had Cheddar valley before , but I’m not sure if that it is a good thing or not.
On the whole I would say that Flitwick beer festival was very good for a small event. I even overcame my trepidation about Betty Stoggs, which I now can only conclude was off at every other pub I’ve drunk it in and is actually rather fine. All the beers were in good condition and all were very good choices to stock. Hopefully they will build on this for next year, can’t wait.