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beer reviews london real ale Somerset

A good pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord

postll.gifA while back, I moaned that it had been a while since I’d had a good pint of Timothy Taylor Landlord. Well, I’ve broken my run of bad luck — the Nag’s Head in Walthamstow, east London, served me a beauty this week. It was fresh, full of flavour and, just as important, bursting with exciting aromas.

The ale in the Nag’s Head hasn’t always been on great form, but  in the last year or so has seemed to be much more reliable. And we’ve never had anything but a cheery “thanks” when we’ve taken a dodgy pint back.

There are usually four or five cask ales on offer, including Mighty Oak Oscar Wilde Mild and Sharpe’s Cornish Coaster and/or Eden.

This comes hot on the heels of my parents excitedly reporting that they’d enjoyed TTL at the Vintage in Wellington in Somerset a couple of weekends ago. My Mum isn’t a big fan of real ale, but she says a pint that good could win her over. My Dad is a fan of ale and a former pub landlord. He says it was in perfect condition — “perfect temperature, long lasting head, a really good pint of beer”.

So maybe it does travel after all.

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Generalisations about beer culture pubs real ale Somerset

Small town blues

bridgwater.jpgI’ve just come back from my home town (Bridgwater, in Somerset) where the pubs are having something of a crisis. For years, it’s been one of those towns that claims to have more pubs per head than any other. I don’t know if that’s true, but there are a lot of pubs. And, for almost as many years, those pubs have managed to make their way, despite the heavy competition.

Sadly, in recent years, a couple of big (and, crucially, cheap) chain pubs have opened in the town centre, leaving many of the smaller “locals” all but empty, even on Boxing Day (traditionally a very busy day).

Big business and the council are partly to blame here, but I have to say that some of the pubs are doing themselves no favours. In the face of stiff competition, they should be rising to the challenge and making the local the place to be. Instead, the pub nearest my parents house has decided that:

1. the best way to make the pub feel more lively is to put Radio 1 on at full volume and turn off the juke box

2. they’re too depressed to greet people when they enter the pub, or smile at them during service

3. it doesn’t matter if the excellent local bitter — Butcombe, on which more later — is stale or off

4. there’s no need to wash the glasses

5. that currying favour with five grumpy regulars is more important than making newcomers feel welcome.

This is typical, sadly. So, in my home town, the local pubs are now less friendly, more expensive, dirtier, less atmospheric, and have worse beer than Wetherspoons. And that’s saying something. My Dad, who has been drinking in Bridgwater pubs since he was old enough to lie to a barman about his age, got so depressed we had to leave.

I suspect that in Bridgwater, and many other towns across the UK, we’re going to see an end to the days when a population of 36,000 can support almost 200 pubs. Bad pubs are going to die. Cheap chain pubs will prosper. But good pubs — pubs that keep a small range of ales in good condition, which make their customers feel welcome, that create atmosphere, and that make you feel like a regular, or even a friend, when you’ve been twice in a month — will survive.

I’ll name names: the Bower Manor is a fairly unassuming restaurant/hotel, with a small bar. It, too, was quiet on Boxing Day, but the landlady was friendly; there was one fresh, well-kept real ale (Sharp’s Doom Bar — the best pint of this I’ve ever had); a roaring fire; and a Christmas Tree. It was hard to leave!

Oh, and I promised to say something about Butcombe Bitter: it’s a great beer. One of my favourites (my judgement being partly clouded by homesickness, I’ll admit). At its best, it’s very bitter, very satisfying, and slightly sulphurous on the nose. I can’t vouch for how it will taste if you see it on tap outside the West Country, but try a half and let me know what you think.

Bailey

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Beer history Somerset

Starkey, Knight and Ford — follow up

westquay.jpg

A while ago, I wrote about Starkey, Knight and Ford, who once ran almost all the pubs in my home town. I was intrigued, but a bit frustrated at the dearth of information. Well, once again, Westminster City Archive (which I’m always on about) has come through for me, and I now know almost everything I need to about SKF.

I was browsing the Archive’s bookshelves when I came across a copy of The Brewing Industry: a guide to historical records, edited by Lesley Richmond and Alison Turton. It has an entry for almost every major brewery in Britain, with very detailed information about where each company’s records can be found. This is the kind of thing Ron probably has multiple copies of.

It says that SKF were based in Bridgwater, Somerset (not Tiverton, Devon, as some sources suggested). The brewery was founded in 1840 by George Knight. Thomas Starkey started a brewery in nearby North Petherton around the same time. They merged at some point in the late 19th century, and then took over Ford & Son, who were based in Tiverton (hence the confusion, I guess).

They seem to have been incredibly acquisitive — the biography is just one takeover after another, all over the West Country, until they themselves were taken over by Whitbread in 1962. Whitbread ceased production in Bridgwater (all those beers my Dad recalls must have disappeared then) and changed the brewery’s name to “Whitbread Devon Ltd”. It ceased brewing in Tiverton in the early 1970s.

Present day regional behemoth breweries with acquisitive tendencies, take note…

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Beer history breweries Somerset

Starkey, Knight and Ford — defunct brewery

forestreet.jpg
Living in London, I’m used to seeing the ghostly indications of defunct breweries everywhere I look — Taylor Walker; Truman Hanbury and Buxton; and, yes, Barclay Perkins. But the whole time I was growing up in Somerset, I didn’t once notice the arguably more subtle remains of the big regional brewery, Starkey, Knight and Ford.

Nowadays, you can spot their old pub buildings — many of which are now shops — by their black horse plaques.

tauntonroad.jpgFrom what I can tell, SKF were established in Bridgwater (or possibly Tiverton, in Devon) but then expanded aggressively into the surrounding towns (notably Taunton — this pamphlet is excellent). Googling them reveals very little other than a trail of takeovers of smaller breweries throughout the 20th century, until they themselves were subsumed by the colossal Whitbread empire in the early 1960s.

My Dad: “They had a big range of beers. There was double X at about 3.2%; triple X at about 3.8%; and four X at around 4.1%. Triple X was the best — sort of nutty, from what I remember.

westquay.jpg“There was one called Lighthouse, named after the lighthouse on the beach at Burnham-on-Sea, and a stout, but I can’t remember the name. The brewery was right in the centre of town, behind where the swimming pool is now. I was drinking their beer right up until about 1966, when they started getting replaced in the pubs by Whitbread’s own beers.”

You can see the remains of SKF pubs on Fore Street (pic 1), Taunton Road (pic 2) and West Quay (pic 3) in Bridgwater, and on the Knowle Inn, Bawdrip (pic 4). For more details of remaining SKF livery, see the excellent defunct brewery history site.knowle.jpg