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).