Weekend Report

Back in Bristol for a short time having had a lovely, relaxing weekend in Hitchin.

As predicted the weekend started with me arriving at the station carrying two and a half hours of travel...and quite thirsty.  Thence to the Nightingale where we had a pint of Brewsters golden beer...which might have been Decadence or it might have been something else...(beer memory fail).  Our second pint was a nice surprise - A Hogsback Brew that I've never tried before:  Ripsnorter which was like an oomphy version of the beer of theirs I know best - TEA.  Even though we were going to leave it there...we had to have another pint of it before staggering back home for take out Chinese and a decadent evening on the sofa.

Saturday was a day we planned to go shopping - we're both pretty rubbish at this task, and it's really just a thinly veiled half-hearted attempt to buy stuff (in this case, some birthday presents and some black lentils) followed by a spell in the pub.
Unsurprisingly, the only thing we bought was a newspaper...errr...to read in the pub.
So we ventured into a relative newcomer in Hitchin's real ale stakes...The Bricklayer's Arms in Queen Street.  It's recently been taken over and completely refurbished and now sells local Banks and Taylor beers plus a few guest beers.
It has a good solid range of decent beers - even if nothing blew my socks off this time.  To be honest, the only beer I can remember was Nottingham Brewery's Supreme Bitter.

On and off over the weekend we've mused on the type of pub we visit...and we ended up categorising them by the number of pints we might drink in them, as a rule.

A one pint pub is a perfectly fine place to go - it might be somewhere that has one really good beer, or something otherwise interesting about it, but we never feel quite ready to linger there for a second pint.

A good example of a two-pint pub is the Nightingale.  The staff are pleasant, we go there often; the beer's usually well kept and it's usually beer we like.  It's just that it's not a place we could stay all evening without some external force (a football match being show, meeting other folk there...that sort of thing).  At the moment, we'd typify the Bricklayers as a two-pint pub - it could change over time as it settles down and we get used to it.

Then there are the other pubs...the 3+ pint pubs.  That was our second visit on Saturday...to the Half Moon.  It didn't disappoint.  I had a pint and a half of Oakham Inferno - I'd had enough experimenting for the day so I craved something I knew would hit the spot.  It did (of course). S drank wider than me, as usual, but my memory fails me as to what he experimented with.
We could have stayed all evening, but we dragged ourselves away.

Sunday saw us take a walk for a couple of miles and we bypassed The Highlander which is more of an eating than a drinking pub..and we hadn't really built up a thirst yet.  But we ended up at the Half Moon end of town and it would have been rude not to...
There had been quite a change over of beers since Saturday evening - Maldon Gold had been added, Citra had replaced Inferno and then a stronger Brewsters beer - I think it was a "Pale Ale" which was about 5% and was delicious.
Meanwhile S had a pint of mild (brewery unknown) which nice, but a little bitterer than you might expect, followed by an Olivers Perry (that's right, the pub also sells good ciders and perries, too) and then he joined me in the new Brewsters pint.
Added to the good beer, was the cheery greeting by one of the bar staff and a pleasant generally beery conversation with Howard the Landlord.

Yep, good times, indeed.