Ennui

Contemplating the "beer scene" in Eastbourne doesn't make me smile.

Our lovely cask-ale local is a bit of an oasis of quality - but not necessarily of  huge variety.  This not a criticism but a reflection of pragmatism in the landlord who knows what he can sell reliably both in terms of quantity and style.  This is how it needs to be, for sure.

Beerarama has variety but no cask.

The Tiger and Bohemian are pretty good on cask quality, a little bit of variety - but pricey.

The Lamb has good quality Harveys but that's all.

Ninkasi usually has great beer but can be oddly quiet at the times we want to go in - and excessively crowded at other times.

Belgian bar is...well, unique.

We haven't been to The Hurst, The Vic (both Harveys), The Eagle, the Dewdrop or the Dolphin (limited cask options) for ages.

There are a load of pubs we simply don't and wouldn't go to for a variety of reasons.

Then there are the little outliers...

"Bibendum" wanna be chic restaurant/bar, where a cosy corner to sit in is in short supply because the bar area feels like the waiting space for the restaurant.  

"Frontier" half record shop, half bar is definitely a compromise venue usually has decent beer. If you're with coffee-drinking pals then the coffee-beer crossover time threshold can be painlessly managed.

So, when I got off my train on Wednesday having been a little traumatised by a 'spoons at lunchtime (has to be said the beer was really well kept) I wanted to hunker down in my "depeopling" mode.  We stood there wondering where to go.  Himself said that Ninkasi would probably be too quiet, suggest Belgian Bar - but I said I wanted to go there after work on Thursday (with pizza in prospect afterwards).  Beerarama chaps were on holiday.  So we ummmed for a bit.

Eventually I tentatively suggested "Frontier" because we'd not been there for ages, it was close and, well - you know where else????

They had three good beers on (two from a Welsh brewery, one from Pollys), there were sufficient, mostly young, people in evidence to make it perfectly peopled.  It's true that it wasn't cosy but, on the other hand it was comfy enough for us to stay for all the beers before grabbing a bus home...and we agreed that we'd really enjoyed it.  

Then old school friend of Beer Buddy got in touch to ask for recommendations for meeting up in Eastbourne over the weekend.  Much agonising ensued and it's highly likely these two old men will spend a lot of time on Sunday grumbling over the "not as good as they used to be" pubs of their youth,

 

Down South

 We're back in Eastbourne.

It was a painless journey back on Tuesday and we were blessed by a bus arriving just outside the station as we emerged.   We were home in just a few minutes.

The house seemed to be in order and even the garden hadn't suffered too much in the heat.

On Wednesday I had to go to Hastings so when I got back and needed to chill with the Beer Buddy, we went to Beerarama, had a catch-up with Jamie and came down from the after-effects of the work I'd been doing.

Thursday, the Crown's Easter Beer festival started so we made haste to try the first beers.  It was lovely to be there but we've noticed that our absolute beer capacity continues to reduce.  We managed 5 pints between us.  Same on Saturday, too. 

Easter Sunday was dull and cool, contrasted with the beautiful gardening weather of Saturday so we did a few jobs around the house, and then played boardgames with fridge-beer.

Both of us are a bit discombobulated at the excess of weekend - even though we were tinkering at "work" on Friday.  Today we have to go to the Wish Tower to meet with a member/builder who is going to help with some renovations we have secured funding for.  Undoubtedly there will be beer after that - possibly the Bohemian which is now - if not a regular haunt - then certainly an acceptable place to go in this town with few venues for us, at least, to choose from.

Betwixt

 We've been in the Bristol residence for nearly 3 weeks, now and heading back in a couple of days.

It's Saturday morning and I'm going to try and take most of the day off work - like the BBB says, when the "work" is as much hobby/volunteering as it is Work it's not so bad to tinker a bit at the weekend.

We've not been anywhere new, particularly, but we did make the pilgrimage to Arbor Brewery Tap - I'm so glad it's now regularly open on Fridays and Saturdays.  The day we walked over there, there was even a cracking impy stout on offer.

 On Wednesday this week we thought it would be safe to head to King Street and sit in the sun, surely it wouldn't be that busy at 4.30pm.  Boy, were we wrong.  As much as we generally avoid crowds, we actually both enjoyed sharing space on the outside benches with about another 150 people.  We won't be doing it again any time soon - but as a once-in-a-while thing, it made us smile.  It was followed by a quieter drink in Small Bar and then Potato Tikki Chat in Dhamaka-  yeah, it was fun.

Yesterday, I wanted to sit outside drinking beer for a bit...but I also wanted it to be fairly quiet.  A tricky one on a Friday.  So we strolled around to the LHG Taproom with its multitude of tables on tarmac.  We had a cracking pale cask beer (not overly generous in the poured pint, but delicious) and a signature NEIPA (two different ones, actually, but very similar in character).

Today, it's record shop day and the BBB has suggested a nod to the day by popping up to Plastic Wax and seeing what pre-loved 45's might be available.  I predict a taproom on the walk home...

Small Changes

There's been a subtle change at The Crown.

Andy has always had really well-kept beer. The first time we went in, the BBB is sure we had a pint of Harveys Best on gravity.  It was the day we first viewed the house we now live in we thought we'd check out a local pub and chat about what we thought of the house.

It was several months later we actually bought it and moved in.

Naturally, we revisited very quickly (I can't remember if it was the day we moved in or the next day) and found to our delight that it was Dark Star Hophead on gravity, along with 6X, Harveys Best and something like Spitfire.  Bit by bit a different guest would appear at weekends, and Andy ran beer festivals 3 times a year (he still does).

At the time The Crown was an Enterprise Inns pub and we asked Andy how he managed to get different cask beers in.  "I get a bit of latitude" he said.

A couple of years ago, we noticed that 6X was no longer a regular on the bar - "...only two blokes drank it and they died..." 

More recently Timmy Taylor started to appear - first intermittently, now as a regular beer.  Always well kept (obviously) good in a pinch for us but not really what we want to drink.

We learned that EI had sold on some of their estate to Heineken.  The craft beers on offer changed from Shipyard IPA to Gamma Ray and new keg ciders are available.

Then a couple of months ago, we noticed that now there's nearly always a nice "new" 4% or so pale beer on - and they're often ones we've not seen before.  Typically they'll be fairly local - but not always.  At the weekends there are typically two or more interesting beers on.

I read quite a lot of beer news from various sources and I'm guessing that, with shift in uber brands, seems to come a culling of cask beers so I'm guessing that Heineken pub estates now care much less about what cask is on the bar but probably don't allow much flexibility in the keg offering.

This would definitely explain the subtle shift (with its attendant improvement) in the cask offering for landlords(/ladies) who have a genuine interest in cask.

 I hate that once significant brewers no longer brew but if it means a bit more interest on cask from places we might not always expect - then for me it might be a price worth playing. 

Work, work, work

 Yeah, really busy of late.  Loads to do and far too little time in which to do it.

Last Sunday we ventured out for a properly old stroll.  The nice thing about living within spitting distance of the South Downs is that it's quick and easy to get onto a nice grassy hill with a good view.  

From our house it's about a 20minute, quite robust walk up a steep hill to "the top" (of course on downland there isn't a single "top" but you know what I mean).  Now that spring is starting to poke it's head up, it's the perfect time to get out there but I admit with some shame that after over ten years of doing the immediate walks near to home, I've got a little bit bored with them.

So when the BBB said "could we get out for a proper walk?" I suggested we do the other way of getting out onto the Downs...the Sunday "Beachy Head" bus that goes from the end of our road and takes about 10 minutes to get there.  It can feel like a bit of a cheat since the first part of the slog of the hill is done by diesel.  But, like I say, there's more than one "Top".

We got the bus to the foot of "Belle Tout" which is an oval shaped steep sided hill betwixt main road (with attendant stupid motorbikers riding like lunatics) and cliff edge.  There's a lighthouse on the hill that's already been moved back from the cliff edge once and now there's less than 10m of ground now between the nearest point to the cliff edge.  Time was the South Downs way travelled between the Lighthouse and the cliff edge.  Not now - it's been diverted to the other side of the lighthouse, closer to the road. 

Anyhow - we enjoyed walking the length of Belle Tout to Birling Gap, and we had the option if I didn't feel able to walk onto East Dean to pick up the bus again there.  But it was a good 20 minutes until the next hourly bus was due and about 2 miles (mostly up a gentlish slope) to walk it.  So we walked.

 We arrived at the Tiger Inn in good spirits as the sun was going down and so the temperature was starting to plummet but there were no seats to be had inside.  So we sat outside for a while but we started to get chilly.  We ventured inside and skulked around to see if we could at least share a table but before we need to try, the bar manager who clearly always has his eye on what's going on showed us to a small table at the edge of a room we thought was only for the pub's B&B customers.  Maybe not a table anyone would really choose but, actually, it was warm and comfy and we got to order another couple of pints.

The beer was lovely, even though the cask offering was a bit dull so we'd gone for a local keg beer.   Mind you  at close to £15 for two pints, we were a little taken aback.  But we reminded ourselves that the industry is really struggling so it was hard to truly begrudge it - even in rural East Sussex.

What's lovely about this little area to walk in, is that after you've been to the pub there's a 5 minute walk to the main road where there's a bus to take us home approximately every 10 - 15 minutes...even on a Sunday.

I don't think there will be this sort of walking this weekend I've just written my to do list and it runs to a page and a half of my A5 notebook - much of it with really tight deadlines and two days out and about next week.  Hey ho, down to our local later to watch some rugby, probably (even there cask beer has gone up to £4.60 a pint but at least you can still get two pints for a tenner).

(Wo)man Down

 So we managed a couple of nice pints in the Crown last weekend.  Instantly when you taste beer from Sussex and Kent you get very regionally grounded.

Tuesday, I had to go to a meeting in Hastings and I knew that it might take a while and the BBB had some work to do in our workbase.  So, once I was on the train back - a little later than I had originally anticipated - I suggested we keep it simple and meet in Ninkasi.

It was really nice to step off the train, and stroll directly across the car park and into the bar.  Good beer available as always and then the boy joined me and we were both able to quietly de-people, together.

Wednesday I spent the day writing funding bids...as is my want.  But by the time I'd finished I was cold, tired and rapidly developing a temperature. Great - again.

No beer since then and, truth be told, I didn't even fancy any.

I think I'm on the mend now so I might risk one later - though I'm not quite ready to hike to the pub.  Perhaps some nice fridge-beer.

Back in the Beer Semi-desert

 OK - that's a little harsh.  Let's just say the beer garden is a little less fertile down here.

Nice ol' train journey, followed by a quick visit to work to say hi and pick up a laptop then we high-tailed it home to the house, and raided the fridge for beer, freezer for dinner.

Today, quite a lot of work needed to be done/caught up on and, of course, beer ordered...tomorrow I have to go to St Leonards.  There will probably be beer involved either there, or when I get back.

 Yep, definitely back in Sussex now.