On Being Mansplained to...

...on the subject of murky beer.

So I've remarked before that Eastbourne is a bit behind the beer times in terms of modern beer styles.

Even at beer festivals, they have a bit of tendency to go with beer styles they know and love (lots of emphasis on trad bitters and nice, but unremarkable golden beers).

This week our local's beer festival was being set up and a new beer was set up and ready to go.  I ordered a pint of it for the boy.  It was described as a "bitter" by a local good, but not very adventurous brewery.

When it came out it was about the same colour as Hophead but was a tiny bit hazy.  I looked quizzically at it and said "you're sure that's it?" - what I meant was that I expected it to be browner.  She looked and seemed concerned.  "Actually, I'm not sure it's ready yet - it's a bit hazy.

I smiled and said, "I'm used to cloudy beer...it might just be unfined"

Then the bloke next to me chirped up "Oh, it looks OK I think.  It's a bit murky but perhaps that's just condensation on the glass and then proceeded to rub his finger down the glass (WTF?).  Girl behnd the bar still looked worried.  So I said "it'll just be easier for me to try it..." and did.  It was fine.

It was probably a beer designed to drop clear but it didn't seem any the worse for its haze.

"Ah yes", the bloke said "I told you it was OK".

Now, here's the thing.  I get a bit annoyed when blokes tell me that they think they know more about beer than I do.  But it's expontetially worse when the know-all in question had just bought a pint of Fosters for his mate and a pint of nitro-Guinness for himself.  In a pub with 5 cask beers on.

I didn't say anything else to him.  I couldn't.

Still, on Friday when the festival proper started I particularly enjoyed the pint of (unfined) Holler which was as murky as a perfect pint from Tapstone.  Maybe Eastbourne's starting to catch up.

Nice place, this...

One of our neighbouring towns held a four-pub tap-takeover this week.

I was supposed to be attending a meeting in the town so we planned to slaughter multiple ornithoids...however, events overtook and the meeting was moved.  So we went to Lewes, anyway.

Four pubs were in the tap-takeover:  The Patch, Elephant and Castle, Brewers Arms and the Black Horse.

We don't drink in Lewes often, but we're reasonably familiar with it and its pubs.  That said, we started with The Patch which is a cafe/micropub which we didn't know at all.

They had Tiny Rebel and Siren beers on keg lines.  We grabbed one each and sat in the closest thing we could manage to be a corner and enjoyed them.  Best Beer buddy suggested moving on to the Elephant and Castle after the first one.  On the walk around he confessed he didn't really feel comfortable in The Patch. It's true that, as a longish, thin space it felt like we were in a corridor.

So, we hoofed it around to the Elephant and Castle; a place we've been to a few times - none of which were wholly satisfactory (though I couldn't tell you why).
They had Great Heck brews on.

We grabbed a couple of pints and sat (in a corner).

The beer was good (if not as cool as I'd like) but, again we only stayed for one pint and moved on.

We landed in the Brewers' arms which had Loch Lomond beers (the brewery I least wanted to try).  It was busy in the notionally posher front bar.  I went to the bar to get a couple of pints and the boy headed to the back room to find a seat.

A bloke at the bar made a well-meaning (but annoying) "ladies first" comment at the bar which had me sighing an potentially writing this pub off as "not my sort of place"...but I carried our beers to the public/locals/sport bar and sat down.

We both relaxed a bit more.

We had a second pint and headed out for food and skipped the Black Horse.

I'm not sure I'll ever really be able to predict what pubs and bars we'll find comfortable and those we won't but I guess we just keep trying!

As a footnote - in the italian chain we ate in I ordered beer, he ordered a glass of wine.  The waiter (who had taken the order) returned and tried to give me the wine.  Plus ca change...

Wetherspoons: Beer Weathervane?

We mused, as we walked to Hailsham on the Cuckoo Trail, whether there would be decent beer to be had when we got there.

There was an indication that one place (which we'd never previously heard of) that appeared to be promising in terms of interesting beer - so that's where we headed when we arrived.

There was one sorry pump of Doom Bar in evidence so we performed our best disappointed about-face and went to the place that is consistently in the GBG:  a Wetherspoons.

As we went through the door, I have to admit my heart sank a little since it was the usual range of clientele and cheap food cooking smells.

The beers on the front bar were not familiar and yet I kinda knew that they wouldn't be exciting.  We saw more pumps around the other side so we crept around with hope in our hearts to be met by ... Abbot Ale and Ruddles (there may have been a token Doom Bar as well for full effect).

So I went with the more interesting of the other beers (Sadlers, something or other) and the boy stuck to cider (which was, thankfully, proper bag in a box sort of a thing).  The Sadlers was a good rendition of a premium bitter and in very good nick, at a good temperature.  But it wasn't really what I wanted, was it?

As we sat in the pleasant garden we both recounted tales of the days we (separately) enjoyed Wetherspoons for its ability to showcase beers we hadn't heard of and supply interesting styles.

We wondered whether this is, in fact, that the beer/brewery scene in the UK has improved so much and excites so often that it's no longer possible for the chain to acquire really interesting beers from young breweries and sell them at the ridiculously low prices that is their USP.

I hope so.

And far from deingrating them as an organisation (political leanings of the owner aside) - they do a thing and they do it to a specific standard.  It's not my bag of spanners but I get to choose whether I use their services and so does everyone else.