Author: Jess

london

Searching for pubs in strange towns

Post author By Jess
Post date 18th September 2024
9 Comments on Searching for pubs in strange towns

How do you find a pub via Google that is most likely to meet your specific requirements, in a particular moment?

We were roaming around South East London over the weekend, an area that neither of us know very well, for somewhat psychogeographical reasons. After a few hours, some of it in surprising September sunshine, we decided it was time for a pint.

Ray got out his phone and instinctively Googled “micropub near me”. I thought this was an interesting approach but not one that I usually take.

On the way to the most promising option from his search results, we discussed this.

When Ray is looking for a pub, he says, he wants something that (a) has good beer and (b) is characterful and not corporate.

And these days, in his mind, a micropub is likely to deliver that.

I agree on (a) but not necessarily on (b). I want to be able to relax and enjoy my beer and the difficulty with “characterful” is that it can mean different things.

Maybe it will be the friendliest local you’ve ever been in. Or perhaps it’ll be a weird dump full of silent, glowering men.

Micropubs in particular run the whole gamut of the pub experience and the term increasingly covers a range of different establishments.

We’ve written about them a lot over the years, including in 20th Century Pub, in this blog post from last year about the Dodo, and in this long piece about beer culture from earlier this year.

Our theory is that there can be, and probably is, a micropub for everyone.

That doesn’t necessarily help you if you are in a specific place looking for somewhere to drink.

Usually reading a few reviews then helps to narrow it down (we wrote about this ages ago) and gives a reasonable idea of what you might be walking into. But it’s fair to say my appetite for risk in this game is lower than Ray’s.

It made me reflect on how I usually look for pubs if I’m on my own.

My usual approach is to Google specifically the name of a regional brewer, such as St Austell in Cornwall. I’ll then go to one of their houses. And more often than not it will be quite bland and corporate.

But if I’m on my own, I prioritise beer quality and safety over the risk-reward gamble of a characterful pub.

As we were together, we did a bit of both this weekend. Through Ray’s approach we discovered the excellent Plum Tree Beer Shop in Plumstead. (It’s not obscure, the local CAMRA lot love it.)

The Queen’s Head, Brook Green, London.

My approach, on the other hand, took us to some cute backstreet Fuller’s pubs in the Hammersmith area. They all had excellent London Pride and felt like hidden gems.

On Monday, we decided to try a third approach – one that we tend to resist. That is, buying a guide book and taking someone else’s recommendation.

The latest edition of Des De Moor’s Londons Best Beer Pubs and Bars directed us to a pub not so far from my dad’s house in East London.

Would we have found The Angel of Bow on our own? Maybe, eventually, but Des’s write-up convinced us to go out of our way on the way home after work.

And we found a quirky pub with an excellent selection of beers on cask, keg and in bottles.

The kind of range, in fact, that would have sent us half across London a decade or so ago.

Tags fuller's, micropubs

pubs

Cycling and drinking across Dartmoor

Post author By Jess
Post date 12th September 2024
4 Comments on Cycling and drinking across Dartmoor

The Big Bike Ride is becoming an annual tradition for me – a 3 to 4 day cycle trip on my own, because Ray can’t ride a bike.

This year I did most of the Devon Coast to Coast, which I can heartily recommend, from Barnstaple to Plymouth.

Personally, I don’t ever drink and cycle, even if it’s just a half and I’m on a traffic-free route.

I really notice the drop in cognitive ability and I don’t feel comfortable being less than 100% in control of myself.

However, the itinerary I planned left plenty of time for visiting pubs in the evenings, and everything mentioned in this post was by way of a post-cycling reward and refreshment.

My first observation, based on the seven pubs I visited, was that the Devon preference for brown bitters continues.

All the pubs I visited had an ale selection, most of which were the likes of Dartmoor Best, or similar beers from less-established local breweries.

Nice enough, I suppose, especially if you’re one of those people who thinks “you can’t get bitter anywhere these days”.

But it seems a pity that my standout beer of the weekend was St Austell Proper Job from Cornwall.

A related observation: St Austell is saturating ever more of Devon and seems to have brought the quality control with them. I had Proper Job in three pubs and it was excellent every time.

It was also really interesting being in Devon and observing hospitality businesses at the changeover point between summer holidays and the autumn ‘shoulder’ season. Menus were being changed, and opening hours reduced.

Finally, perhaps for the reasons above, I didn’t actually discover a standout pub on this visit – one that made me think “I must bring Ray here.”

This isn’t to say I didn’t like any of them. I had some very nice sessions, and few complaints.

It’s just that pubs in this part of the world – and, indeed, anywhere sparsely populated but also dependent on tourism – have to work hard to appeal to everybody.

So, you end up with a fairly inoffensive but unexciting offer. This applies to food, booze selection, and decor.

We’re still in faux-half-timbering and by-the-kilo horse brasses territory here.

I’m sounding rather negative about the whole thing and that isn’t my intention.

I think if you didn’t overthink beer and pubs like we tend to, you would have been utterly charmed by all of the pubs.

I observed groups of German and American tourists who were absolutely delighted by what they’d found. You will certainly find plenty to eat and drink, and the ale will be decent.

Anyway, I did get to fulfil a long held ambition and do a crawl (on foot) between the twin pubs of Mary Tavy and Peter Tavy.

I read about these two villages decades ago and was intrigued. They’re about a 25 to 30 minute walk apart through a beautiful wooded valley.

The Mary Tavy Inn is slightly away from the village, on an A road, and would be an excellent pitstop with its enormous garden and view across the moor.

It’s also quite down to earth with football screens everywhere. That felt quite unusual for this part of the world.

I got in five minutes before closing – the reducing opening hours I mentioned earlier – which gave me enough time for a quick half of Jail Ale and no more.

In contrast, The Peter Tavy Inn is up a dirt track in the middle of the village, and leans heavily into rustic charm, with a fancier menu.

While I enjoyed both pubs, it’s the walk between them that will linger with me, with the first brown leaves and a late summer breeze between the trees.

Tags devon

bristol pubs

Graffiti and ale: 3 alternative pubs in East Bristol

Post author By Jess
Post date 8th May 2024
6 Comments on Graffiti and ale: 3 alternative pubs in East Bristol

I’m a bit of a hippy and I like hippy pubs. There – I’ve said it. It’s just a shame Ray doesn’t.

He posted recently about a session in the pub with his dad, including his commentary about the feel of the pub:

We’re going to take Jess sometime, and play euchre, though I doubt she’ll feel quite as at home as Mum and Dad, or as me. It’s the kind of pub I grew up in, and around, and doesn’t have a hint of London about it… But then there are pubs Jess likes where I don’t feel completely at ease, which I believe she’s going to write about soon.

While Ray was on his session, I was drinking in three pubs which are more to my taste than Ray’s.

The occasion was the CAMRA Bristol and District Ladies (BAD Ladies) pub crawl around St Werburghs.

St Werburghs is a fascinating area of Bristol, cut off geographically from the rest of the city by a combination of cliffs, motorways and allotments.

It’s been known for many years as a haven for alternative lifestyles and includes a self-built cooperative housing estate and a city farm.

The crawl took us to three of the four pubs in St Werburghs: The Farm, The Miners’s Arms and The Duke of York. All of them have hippy vibes of varying degrees and make me feel nostalgic for my early drinking days – while leaving Ray a little on edge. He’s such a clean boy!

The Farm has an enormous beer garden and several of my drinking companions told me it was more of a family pub than an alternative one these days, especially on Sundays.

Last time Ray and I visited someone was trying to persuade the bar staff to give them the beer slops from the drip trays, allegedly to keep slugs off their plants in their allotment.

On this occasion it was the First Beer Garden Day Of The Year and my heart sank at the apparent chaos in front of the bar. Veteran pub goers and infrequent flyers went two different ways: the veterans crowding every inch of spare bar, the infrequents forming a queue out of the door.

Which goes to show that looks can be deceiving, as the extremely hard working and friendly staff seemed supernaturally capable of working out which order to serve people in. Bravo.

There were three ale hand pumps, although one was in the process of being changed.

The Miners’ Arms does not have an enormous beer garden but there is a square of grass round the back which the punters pour onto when the weather is nice.

It’s a typical backstreet corner pub on the outside, and inside it’s no-frills from about table level down, with lots of former pump clips around the walls and bar.

It’s a Dawkins pub and now Dawkins isn’t brewing seems to have gone over to New Bristol Brewing, with NBB on three of the four hand pumps.

We got put off coming here a few years back due to a few too many roaming dogs on long strings. But I didn’t spot any on this occasion and, in fact, there is now a sign saying that dogs and babies are welcome “as long as they behave like civilised adults”.

We missed most of The Duke of York the first time we visited. We featured it (and The Farm) in a gallery post on Bristol’s painted pubs, written fairly shortly after moving here.

The high level of decoration continues on the inside with an enormous quantity of arty greebling which could be at home in a Brussels bar.

We noted during our first visit that it was cosy and vaguely hippyish, and didn’t go again –not because it’s bad but because there are lots of similar places in East Bristol and, as previously mentioned, this is not necessarily Ray’s cup of tea.

What we hadn’t noticed on our first visit is that there is a whole separate drinking area round the back.

In fact, it is one of the few pubs in Bristol that still has a working skittle alley – and several different groups actually played skittles during my recent visit.

There’s also a sizeable beer garden and another space upstairs including a pool table and dartboard.

What struck me about the crowd is that there were quite a few younger people who had come in to play games as much as drink.

For those that do like to drink, there were four ales on, all in great condition.

What is the quality of hippyness these pubs share that Ray struggles with?

The pervasive smell of weed, perhaps – which just reminds me of Walthamstow and Leytonstone c.1995. And I’d rather have that than the overwhelming stink of scented candles and bleach.

There’s also the layer of worn-in grot that goes beyond ‘character’. I barely notice it but it makes Ray squirm.

On balance, it’s probably quite nice that there are pubs he likes and I don’t, and vice versa. Because, contrary to what you might have heard, we remain distinct and separate human beings.

Tags East Bristol

Generalisations about beer culture pubs

St Davids in 2024: The Farmers is still The Farmers

Post author By Jess
Post date 14th April 2024
3 Comments on St Davids in 2024: The Farmers is still The Farmers

I visited St Davids in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, after 15 years away, and noticed some changes, and some things that had stayed the same.

The first place I checked in was The Farmers Arms, pictured above, which I wrote about back in 2008, not long after starting this blog:

If I had to choose my favourite pub in the world, it would probably be the Farmers Arms in St Davids, Pembrokeshire. This isn’t because of its beer offerings or even because of the great atmosphere, but because all my early pub memories were formed here. When I was growing up, we went to the Pembrokeshire coast every year for our annual holiday, sometimes as a family, sometimes with a large group of my parents’ friends as well.

It’s strange to go back somewhere you used to know well, which is tangled up with memories of loved ones and happy times, after such a long gap.

In the 2008 post I mentioned going to St Davids every few years. This stopped when we moved to Cornwall, partly because of distance and partly because we found that when you live where other people go on holiday, you like to go on holiday where other people live.

I was delighted to discover that The Farmers still feels like The Farmers. That is, a cosy pub with plenty of locals and lots of interesting chat about who’s doing what, who’s been where, who’s been in lately, and what’s going on in the rugby.

The menu has changed just enough to avoid feeling outdated but yes, you can still get fish and chips and one of my favourite things in the world, pub-grub lasagne.

Having lived in a tourist area for six years we have a better idea of how pubs like this can feel at different times of the year, and also how hard it is to pull off appealing to locals out of season, while still bringing in the tourist money in summer. Locals, especially those working seasonal jobs, aren’t generally loaded with money, and want good value. Whereas tourists on their annual binge can be squeezed a little harder.

Whether it’s the pictures of the lifeboat crew on the wall or the easy conversations at the bar, The Farmers manages to feel like a place that is utterly at the heart of the community.

It’s always interesting to see which brewery’s beers will be on offer. I have a theory that the Farmers Arms is a good bellwether for trends, particularly in real ale. As I wrote in 2009…

Back in the eighties and early nineties, the beers on offer were from one of the ‘big six’ – I think Whitbread, but wouldn’t swear to it. In the nineties, Flowers from Whitbread was still available, but beers from the regional heavyweight, Brains (Cardiff) became more and more popular.. This year’s selection was Felinfoel (Llanelli), Crwr Haf from Tomos Watkins/Hurns Brewing Company, (Swansea) and Rhymney bitter (Rhymney). Smaller local breweries have taken over from the regional giant, just as more local produce has started to appear in the cafes and restaurants.

More than a decade on, Double Dragon by Felinfoel is still a regular, and as we get older and more conservative in our tastes, we tend to appreciate beers like this all the more.

The hip newcomer was Evan Evans whose beers were on in most pubs we visited on this trip. We really enjoyed their WPA (4.1%) which was like a softer version of Hop Back Summer Lightning. It was golden but not intensely hoppy, and was deeply satisfying. A proper same-again beer.

Inside The Bishops.

I knew St Davids as essentially a one-pub town for most of my childhood. My dad has reminded me that there were a couple of hotels with licensed bars but, to my mind, they weren’t pubs. We visited one on this trip and it was utterly dire.

Now, though, there is also The Bishops, occupying a prominent position in the central square and sending out Ye Olde Pub vibes. And we liked it well enough.

The staff were friendly and the beer was decent, too. There was more ale from Evan Evans along with the light-bodied and zingy Whitesands Pale Ale from St Davids Brewery.

The crowd, such as it was, seemed lighter on locals than The Farmers. Here, it was all geeky tourists like us sitting quietly in pairs recovering from their day’s cliff walking.

The exterior of The Smorgasboard on a rainy day.

There is also a craft beer and pizza joint whose opening hours never quite worked for us and intriguingly, The Smorgasboard which was fitted out before our eyes over the course of a few days and opened just before we had to leave.

We’ve spotted this trend but hadn’t expected it to reach places like St Davids just yet.

When he spotted us peering through the window the owner beckoned us in and told us about their plans, including their intention to serve craft beer on draught.

When it did open, with only coffee on offer, we paid £3 per person for a two-hour session.

Even with work still being done, and the tourists still to come, it seemed to attract a lot of attention, and did decent business.

When I was eight, I’d have loved a board game cafe, and would have been constantly pestering my parents to take me – even though my dad insists on calling them “bored family games”.

I suspect it’s going to do well this summer. Even if – or perhaps especially if – it’s as wet as last year.

I will try to get back to St Davids again before another 15 years have passed, if only because it’s a useful indicator of what people are drinking, and where they’re drinking it.

Tags wales

opinion

The Blackhorse Beer Mile at Twixmas

Post author By Jess
Post date 10th January 2024
3 Comments on The Blackhorse Beer Mile at Twixmas

Between Christmas and New Year we finally had chance to do most of the craft beer crawl that has emerged in my home town of Walthamstow, East London.

I say ‘finally’ because one of the last blog posts we published before the COVID lockdowns was about the number of breweries in Waltham Forest. Four years is a long time to leave something like that unexplored.

Before diving in, though, I just want to reflect a bit on how weird it was for me personally to be exploring this part of Walthamstow.

The overlooked island

I grew up in E17 and felt I knew it pretty well but I only came to Blackhorse Lane for the first time on a work trip a year or so ago.

At the time, I found it astounding that I had never walked this way before on foot, or explored the wider Higham Hill area at all.

The landscape and architecture are rather striking, with some huge Art Deco factory buildings and acres of post-war housing, alongside the occasional row of pretty Georgian cottages.

It’s an endangered landscape, too, with many 20th century buildings slowly disappearing to be replaced by vast new high-rise housing developments.

But when you look at the geography, it makes sense that I had overlooked it.

The area is bordered by reservoirs on two sides and you don’t go through it on the way to anywhere else. It’s almost an island.

Nor were there any ‘Walthamstow Wetlands’ to visit when I was a kid – only the Marshes, with a few paths, and lots of brambles.

Old industrial buildings plus new residential developments might be the perfect recipe for a beer mile, though.

Just think of all those young professionals itching for something to do at the weekend, and property developers keen to establish that this is A Place rather than a dead end.

The crawl

Our exploratory walk took place on a grey Saturday before New Year, which is always a weird time for hospitality. But there was a surprising amount of life to be found.

We began our crawl at the top with a visit to the Tavern on the Hill rather than the Wildcard Brewery. We do, in theory, prefer pubs after all.

It was quiet but welcoming and we found both cask ales decent enough. (Ray was more critical than me, though.)

We’d be interested to come back when it is a bit busier; it felt like an inviting community space, only without much evidence of the community.

At the Hackney Brewery we had our standout beer of the entire crawl. Millions of Melba (4%) was a wonderful peach-raspberry sour that tasted like a Fruit Salad chewy sweet with a dry champagne-like finish.

The space was small but not busy, and overlooks a much bigger room crammed with brewing equipment.

It’s also a handy place to get a pizza delivered from round the corner – but do remember to use the free delivery discount code in the small print on the menu.

Exale was closed, which seems fair enough.

Beerblefish felt quietest of all – we were the only visitors for most of our mini session, but enjoyed their Rauchbier. It’s cool that lots of breweries seem to be able to turn out decent versions of this style now, which is fun and show-stopping in a different way to pastry stout or super-hoppy IPA.

At the Pretty Decent Beer Company we were charmed by No Not the Buttons, a 5.5% Gingerbread Stout which smelled like a German bakery and tasted like liquid Printen biscuits, even down to a subtle herbal note. It had a proper cake-like finish which felt warming on a miserable day in a fridge-like tap room. You could almost sense crumbs on your tongue. I could Get Better at Tesco – what a great passive-aggressive name! – was a decent standard 4.5% session IPA.

The space had a few more punters than previously, although this was mostly a couple of large families meeting up to coo over each others’ babies, so it felt a bit like we’d crashed a private party. (That’s on us, not the families.)

The Big Penny Social Club (formerly the Truman Social Club) is a hell of a space. It looks as if it ought to have X-Wing fighters parked about getting ready for an assault on the Death Star. But we struggled to work out who actually brewed the beer we were drinking, and where, without Googling. There was a very impressive Table Beer, branded Big Penny, which was a mere 2% and had a zingy sherbet flavour.

This was the busiest venue yet, with exhausted parents trying to entertain their kids with ping pong, arcade machines and various other games. The space is big enough to handle all this and still handle groups of drinkers of various sizes and ages.

Finally, we visited Signature Brew, which is another location where the actual brewing is segregated from the tap room. The latter sits in a temporary-looking cube. It was warm and cleverly lit with fairy lights, and felt the most like a pub of any of the taproom venues.

Black Vinyl Nitro Stout (4.5%) by Signature is clearly designed to fill a Guinness shaped hole in a hipster East London bar and, actually, does that very well – much more so than Camden Stout.

We will be back

The problem with doing a crawl is that you can really only do a couple in each place, and most had pretty lengthy beer lists, so we definitely need to come back.

Ideally in spring when it’s lighter and warmer, and we can enjoy walking around the area rather than rushing with heads down through the drizzle to the next covered space.