Up the Cut

Oh dear, has it really been five months or so since I last posted on here?  Well, it would appear so.

Is this because I have taken the pledge and given up beer?  Don't be silly, just rather too busy with other things (including drinking beer) to sit down and write about it.

Now, the clue about where I've been is in this picture - a brewery I'd never heard of.

A little while back some friends who had never narrow-boated (I realise I'm verbising a noun but it's the easiest way to describe it, trust me) expressed an interest in a canal holiday.  Both S and myself had spent many a holiday on a boat in our respective pasts, but had never holidayed on a boat together so we were pretty keen on the idea.

Before we knew it we'd booked a week on a boat to attempt the Four Counties Ring.  This is a route that S and I both know pretty well - it's one of those trips that shows you most of what a canal holiday can offer (locks, bridges, tunnels, aqueducts, cuttings, embankments, lovely countryside and industrial heritage...) and it's pretty easy to stop each night near civilisation (ie a pub and co-op for tomorrow's milk and bacon) to make catering, etc pretty unstressful.  The slight downside is that it does require you to boat for 8 hours each day (or thereabouts) to make sure you can complete the route.  For the beer-drinkers amongst us, this limits the number of pubs you can visit which always feels a little like an opportunity missed.

The last time I did this trip - 2006 if memory serves - I wasn't that whelmed by the beer choice (I remember some very tired Spitfire at Norbury junction) but since the beer scene around the country has improved, and since I've become much more fussy about what I consider to be good beer it was going to be a bit of a toss-up as to whether beer would be great, awful, or somewhere in between.

The first night we stopped at Stone which is a nice town just south of Stoke and we went into a pub (The Star?) which is right next to a lock and is an ancient place, with no two rooms in the pub on the same level.  We had (I think) a golden Banks's beer - Sunbeam, possibly and given we'd had a sunny start to our holiday, it seemed to suit us very well.  Definitely a Midlands beer but nicely kept, a good temperature and it hit the spot quite nicely.

The second evening's place of rest was Stoke on Trent.  In the past, this has been very beer deficient, in my experience but from our mooring in Westport Lake, and with an electronic GBG and a little persistence, we were able to find the Duke William pub which seemed perfect, albeit up quite a big hill.  It did food, really good beer and welcomed dogs.  Sadly, they failed to tell us they didn't do all three in the same place.  Still, we had a couple of pints of decent independent beer...including Oakham Citra...and we should remember that for next time.

Wheelock was the place of our next overnight but it proved to be a disappointment.  Despite checking three sources that said "The Cheshire Cheese", which was close to the canal, served food on a Sunday until 7pm...we arrived at about 6pm to be told they weren't serving food at all.  Sadface.
Instead we sat outside a waterside pasta/pizza joint and shared a litre of house red and pizzas.  Nice, but not beer.

We made an unscheduled stop in Middlewich for lunch the next day and went to the White Bear which was a trendy modern kind of a place (at least for Middlewich) with good beer, good food and a landlord who bristled everso-slightly when asked how good his Guinness was (it was good, we discovered).

That evening we arrived at Barbridge Junction to find one of the pubs that had always been there (the Jolly Roger) had become the latest victim of pub closures/demolition-to-make-way-for-housing and was no more.  Thankfully the Barbridge Inn was still there and the beer was much better than I remember, it being a local brewery "Woodlands".  Their beer wasn't amazing but it was local, new to us and well kept so it was well received.

Bypassing the Shroppie Fly which I remembered fondly (so many pubs, so little time) we hacked on through the Audlem and Adderly locks the next day to arrive at Market Drayton.  We went to the Joules brewery (The Red Lion) to eat and drink and very much enjoyed the experience.  Elsewhere in the town, a little disappointing - the Clive and Coffyne having recently departed to be replaced by some hotel bar and clueless staff.  So we went to the Sandbrook Vaults which also served Joules and we sort of wished we'd stayed in the Red Lion.  Joules beers are pretty good stuff and I'd look forward to trying some again.

Wednesday evening we planned on staying in Brewood which I remembered as a really nice, but quite sleepy, village. It's changed a little bit in the intervening years, having almost all the space in the centre of the village replaced by new housing (none too cheap too, I would imagine).  Nevertheless, the Bridge Inn right next to the...well, bridge...is a Martson's chain pub but the golden beer they had on offer was well kept and pleasant and the curry we had to go with it was excellent.  After dinner we wandered into the village and tried the Swan Hotel which had, probably, my favourite beer of the trip.  Lemon Dream by Salopian.  S had something like Stairway to Heaven (can't remember the brewery) and very much enjoyed it...so much so we had another pint before wending our way back to the boat.

Thursday evening should have seen us at Tixall Wide near our boatyard, with the aim of going to the pub in the village.  Unfortunately some mechanical problems put paid to that so instead we opted for lunch near Penkridge (nice enough beer and food) and boating as long as we could into the evening and then mooring in farming country which was as nice an end to a holiday as you could imagine.

So - the beer was much better than I feared but not as great as I secretly hoped...and it's left me with a yearning to do the trip again over two weeks to allow for more off-canal exploration.

*thumbs through canal brochure for 2017*

Festive Drinking

The festive season is something that doesn't really fill me with excitement, I'm a run away and hide kinda gal and S kindly indulges me in this.

So this year our running stopped at Weymouth.

It's an interesting place with historical bits, and watery bits, and wildlifey bits and beachy bits.  Unfortunately its beery bits were a bit less...ummm...interesting than I would have liked.

We went to lots of different pubs in the town, and none of them were bad.  A couple of them were interesting and one I really liked.  The beer, though...well-kept, for sure; well brewed, definitely...just not enough distinctiveness for my taste.

We drank a reasonable range of DBS, Ringwood and other brown beers - mostly from big to medium-sized breweries - with a good balance of malt and hops.  20 years ago I would have been in veritable beer heaven...but not now.  It was nice, but lacked a wow factor.

Then, on our last day we decided to take a walk to a local nature reserve, and whilst walking we released we were within striking distance of a brew-pub just outside of the main town.  We took the opportunity to walk to the Royal Standard in Upwey (via a muddy fall and a sprained wrist, for me).  Only one interesting beer on (and not one of their own) but what a beer - from the Sixpenny Brewery.

This was definitely the high beer point of our holiday (even taking into account the wrecked wrist).

After Weymouth, we traveled home via our place in Bristol.  I know I keep harking on about how good the beer is there...but it really, really is.  And it's not just the beer per se - it's the wide variety of lovely places of different character where you can enjoy it that continues to thrill.

We explored the neighbourhood around our flat only to find that a couple of pubs we tend to get to by train are easily walkable...and then we tried a new pub - the Plough which is a pretty basic place where OSB is the decor of choice with stacks of old speakers making partitions in the space.  Nice place and I suspect we'll go back.

Then on Sunday we took ourselves to Bristol's first micro-pub:  The Drapers' Arms.  It's an old drapery shop taken over and turned into a small, but beautifully formed pub by Bristol and District CAMRA stalwart and founder of the Ashley Down Brewery and a mate.  Now I'm going to come clean and say that Vince's beer isn't to my taste - but one of the things I like about beer is that there are many styles and you don't have to enjoy all of them to appreciate something that's well-made.

What we did love was a comfy seat a couple of nice pints and the chance to have a good old natter with Vince about all matters beer.

Yeah - Bristol's beer scene isn't all about hipster bars and 1/3 measures...whatever it is that you like in beer, you'll probably find it and that's pretty amazing.

The Delights of Sharing Beer

S & I are generally drinkers as a couple...with the occasional pal thrown in for good measure.

We very rarely initiate a wider social gathering although neither of us completely shun them, either.

However, when The Crown (our esteemed local) gave us a little advanced warning of its autumn beer festival, we felt the need to share with our colleagues.

So it was, that the Saturday evening saw 7 of us crowd around a table and drink far, far too much fantastically kept real ale.
A couple of the guys had never been to the pub; one young lady (a colleague's daughter) had never really been introduced to good beer;and some knew the pub, knew the beer but don't spend enough time there as a rule.
Andy had about 8 beers in perfect nick and I think between us we tried them all.

It was a fun evening (as evidenced by a slight hangover the next morning).

I seem to remember spending most of the evening trying to persuade A, who co-produces a great magazine/paper on beer, that cask ale is the pinnacle of good beer and the rest are pale imitations to whom we run when the real stuff isn't available.
Obviously I didn't actually convince him.  He humours me by smiling and saying he likes to hear me rant on the subject and happily drinks both cask and good keg beer during the evening.
This is entirely right and proper, of course.

The other high point of the last couple of weeks has been the presence of my very favourite Harvey's beer:  Star of Eastbourne.
Its very seasonality - like asparagus and proper strawberries - is part of its attraction, but the main story is the complex, well balanced hoppy deliciousness of it.

I have to admit when I entered The Victoria and saw it on the bar, I actually let out a bit of a squeal. The pub ended up with two or three casks of it, which we helped consume over the course of October.  And now it's gone for another year.  Sigh.

What I'm lusting after right now  (not right now, it's a tad early) is a really, really good black IPA.  This would match the grim weather and the subject of a theatrical event that I'm helping to staff at the Wish Tower.  Highly unlikely to get one in Eastbourne, sadly...but I'll keep looking.

Wanderer Returns

Working more-or-less full time for a spell, and a week's "Let's get away from everything" holiday last week have both prevented me from having much to say...and having any time to say anything on line: about beer, at least, of late.

Much of our beer drinking has been from the usual haunts although we've added the Crown & Anchor on Eastbourne's seafront to our list of frequently frequented places.

It's a Greene King house which would normally have me running for the hills but, of late, they've been putting on guest beers - in summer there was Hopback Summer Lightning which is one of the first golden beers I ever had and it still tastes great, and last night after a return to work for the evening there was Twickenham Naked Ladies which was just what we wanted - light and hoppy without being too in your face.

Anyhow, where have we been for the last week?  Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour.  Some might think it's a strange sort of venue for us, having no pub (there's a private hotel bar but our one attempt to go in there didn't yield any staff in the bar...or confidence there'd be any any time soon) and no practical way of leaving the island of an evening.

So we'd planned to go off the island every day to try the pubs of Poole, Studland and Bournemouth.  In the event, we found ourselves not wanting to leave this tiny (1.5 miles by 0.75 miles) paradise of woodland, bird hides and waders and the odd beach.

We made two trips over to Poole for the collection and delivery of a houseguest and to provision up (there's no shop on the island, either).  The first time we went we found the pubs a little lack lustre - although we missed seeing that there's a branch of "The Stable" with it's brilliant pizzas and real cider.  When we returned we went into the Poole Arms (not in the GBG) purely on the strength of its fishy lunch menu and we weren't disappointed.  The beer was fine (Ringwood 49er) but not its selling point.  Then, after shopping and whilst awaiting the ferry we tried "The Drift" which is a microbar on the quay front which you can easily overlook.

Wow!

In Bristol, it probably wouldn't even hit the radar - three cask beers on pump and a fridge full of interesting bottles. But in Poole it was a breath of fresh air (and a mouthful of great beer).  The owner, Alex, is a genial chap and engaged us in conversation and giggles about certain sorts of CAMRA members whilst chatting about beers we liked (and didn't).  His three beers were a mix of styles and breweries and we had a stunningly good pint of Black IPA (whose brewery I can't remember).
The place is quirky and charming (although with the most uncomfortable stools I've ever experienced...although S didn't find them so bad, so maybe it's my anatomy) and deserves to succeed.  Well done, Alex.

Back on the island we made do with Oakham Citra and Scarlet Maccaw and Harbour IPA in bottles (and some wine).  Not a patch on the real thing and goes a long way to explain the findings in the 2015 real ale report that cask ale drinkers go to the pub more often, and spend more when they do.  It's simply because cask conditioned ale is only available via a pub.

So now we've left the red squirrels behind (that's Sid in the picture at the top) and returned home to pints of Hophead at the Crown (still great).

Now all we have to do is to find a way of setting up a pub and/or a brewery on Brownsea and the place would absolutely perfect.

Nice surprises

Little time to write about beer of late.  Still some time to drink the stuff, but that is most definitely the priority over writing about it.

So, we're spending most of our time in Eastbourne these days, and mostly we tinker with computers, code, electronic and other geek-gear in the furtherance of TechResort CIC. But when the working day is over, we still like to seek out a good pint, and (try to) chill out a bit over some nice beer.

We've been pleasantly surprised by some pubs in town of late:

The Victoria in Latimer Road has definitely upped its game of late - from perfect seller of Harvey's beers through a bit of a spell of lack-lustreness and back to good form albeit with a smaller range of beer on at any one time.
So, this is frequently our "I'm thirsty" after work venue.  Olympia is my current favourite offering (athough Waterloo gets an honourable mention).

The Crown and Anchor - on the seafront (more or less) which is even closer to the office has started offering more than the normal Greene King beers.  We both dislike Green King beer - even when it is really well kept (which it is at the Crown and Anchor) and would usually walk out of a pub that doesn't offer a guest.  So, imagine our excitement when S passed the door one day on his way into the office and said "They've got Hopback Summer Lightning".  It's been on a few times since so we're crossing our fingers that they'll continue to offer a decent alternative to GK beers.  Their food is also good stuff.

And a little out of town is The Sussex Ox which we went to last night for a birthday treat for the man of the house.  We were expecting Longman beers which, although definitely improving over time, are not something we usually get excited about.  But instead (or rather, in addition to) last night there was an Arbor Ales beer from Bristol.  Food was nice and the surroundings were fantastic.  If we can find a way of putting the Ox into a weekend walk, I'll wager it'll happen.

So, whilst Eastbourne still really needs a killer real ale pub...there are pockets of goodness which, for the good of the team, we'll continue to explore just so's you don't have to.

Conspiracy Theory

We continue to be hopeful that the general quality of beer continues to improve here, in Eastbourne.  I think there's still a fair way to go, though.

Last night we stopped in at the beautiful Tally Ho pub in Old Town.  It's a building from 1912 or so...and still advertises itself as a Kemp Town Brewery pub in its leaded lights (just like the Dolphin, as it happens).

The interior has been lovingly refitted and the leather seats compliment the barrel-vaulted ceiling and its decorative plasterwork.

They are also advertising themselves as serving Real Ale...so we thought it was just about time we checked it out.

It appeared to have Timmy Taylor Boltmaker on...which excited us greatly...but we were disappointed when it turned out it wasn't in fact on at all (at least they didn't try and sell us some nasty old stuff).  So we had the Eastbourne standard pint of Harveys which was nicely kept and reasonably priced.  Then the guys behind the bar started to tell us how this was their first evening open (seems like a change of hands has happened).  They have reasonable plans (although I think they confused Craft and Real Ale terms a couple of times...) so we're hopeful.

Still, I can't help think that they'll revert to just Harveys...and some keg stuff before too long.

Maybe Eastbourne doesn't really like their beer all that much and someone has just told them that Harveys is the only taste a beer should have...maybe it's all an East Sussex conspiracy.  Just like this cartoon.

It's not you, it's me

I've been wondering for quite a long while whether old favourites in the beer world are getting worse, or has my taste changed.

Back when I started drinking beer (ooh, now that was nearly 30 years ago, I guess) I would have been in paroxysms of joy if I'd found a pub with four handpumps of well kept real ale of ANY stripe.  Finding Marston's Pedigree, Bass, Sharp's Doom Bar, Wadworths 6X, Fuller's London Pride, or Timothy Taylor Landlord would have seen me squealing in a very uncool fashion.

I can even list some of my favourite "rarer" beers that I used to get a polypin of at Christmas from the Off License (called the Brown Jug) around the corner from my first house:

Archer's Golden
Exmoor Stag
Exmoor Gold
Ringwood 49er

Add in a whole bunch of localish brewers' beers (to the West Country, that is) - Otter, Butcombe, Bath Ales, Abbey Ales and I can honestly say I've liked a lot of beers in my time.

Thing is, with few exceptions, these are not the beers I drink now if I have any choice in the matter.

We've remarked for a while that whilst Harvey's is a really good old fashioned brewer - there's only so much of it we want to drink these days.

Even Everards (which used to be something I really liked when travelling in the Midlands) has fallen into that category.  It was on at the Buccaneer at the weekend and S had a pint - and he was in the Midlands last night and tried some in its homeland but just wasn't keen so switched to something a bit newer.

It can't possibly be that all these perfectly good breweries have become rubbish over the last 20 years or so.  So - it would seem that even us dyed-in-the-wool real ale drinkers whose drinking spans far longer than the age of some of the newest members of the non-lager-drinking society are not quite as "traditional" as we might think.

I can't pin down precisely what it is about newer style beers that usually appeal more to us.  They're not all gold and hopped to f*ck and back - there are some really well balanced darker and deep beers we've tried in the last few years that have really urged us to drink more.

Whatever it is, we have exciting times to enjoy - it's almost like rediscovering beer all over again.  How fantastic is that?

Mind you - if you offered me a pint of Timmy's right now...I'd bite your hand off