Potential Oasis in the Beer Desert

I was brought up in a small town about half way between Bristol and Bath: Keynsham.

People of a certain age will always say "what...K-E-Y-N-S-H-A-M?" when presented with that information. (If you want to know why, Google Horace Batchelor).

It's not a bad small town, but I was pretty eager to leave it as soon as I could.  However, circumstances drew me back to it this week and we'd arranged to meet my big Brother and his wife in town for a beer and a catch up.

There is one pub in Keynsham which is in the Good Beer Guide:  The Lock Keeper and its very near the train station...but no matter how well it's been kept and served, I seldom want to drink Youngs beer these days. 

Now, the last time we all met in Keynsham, we tried The Ship and were pleasantly surprised by its decent food and range of decent (if rather dull) beer, so we'd arranged to meet there since, as far as I could remember there we no other decent sellers of real ale.

So we had a pleasant couple of pints of Butcombe, Ringwood and Sharps beers and the decided to head back to the station to come back to Bristol.  Then S asked "What about that other place further down the High Street that used to be in the guide?"...He meant The Old Bank.  We were a lot less than impressed last time we tried it but we thought we'd pop in and give it a try.

There were four beers on offer so I plumped for "Twisted Oak Sheriff Fatman" and S went for a Porter.  We also saw that the Italy vs England football friendly was being shown so we settled down, having had a brief conversation with the Landlord about the beers (and my previous disappointment with Twisted Oak).

After about a minute, the Landlord came over to the table and asked S how his pint was.  S says "a little bit borderline maybe...but I thought might be the natural sourness of a porter".  Landlord says "it's the bottom of the barrel and I'm not very happy selling it to you - would you mind if I replaced it with a fresh pint of the Coastal Brewery St Piran's Porter straight from the cellar? 

As it happened the replacement beer, whilst in perfect condition, wasn't that interesting but both of us were bowled over by the attention to his beer that the landlord - who introduced himself as Simon - had.

We carried on and had a great conversation with him about beer in general and beer in Keynsham, specifically.

Simon's been at The Old Bank for a little over a year now but I'd like to think that it's a pub on the up again and that next time we come to Bristol we'll want to make a special journey to give it another try.

Definitely one to watch out for..