Tag: devon

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pubs

Vessel makes Plymouth a beer destination

The exterior of Vessel with a dark grey awning and tables outside.

Vessel Beer Shop in Plymouth has the range of a craft beer bar with the atmosphere of a friendly local pub.

It was opened in 2017, when we wrote about it for Devon Life:

“Katie and Sam Congdon are from Cornwall and Devon respectively but have spent the last half-decade immersed in the craft beer scene in Leeds. Now they’re back in Plymouth and ready to spread the word in their native West Country… For now, it’s a shop with some limited facilities and hours for drinking on the premises, but the plan is to make it something more like a bar in the near future. To start with, there are more than a hundred bottled beers, six keg lines, and a new innovation for Plymouth: a growler machine…”

Back then, we’ll confess, though we were rooting for them, we were a bit worried.

Plymouth, and Devon more generally, seemed resistant to anything with a whiff of up-country hipness.

Would Vessel, a little out of town, in a former cooker showroom, find enough business to stay afloat?

Then came COVID-19, putting hospitality businesses everywhere under additional pressure. We could see from social media that Vessel was still going, but struggling.

We were delighted, then, to bump into Katie and Sam at a pub in Bristol in November 2022. They were in town on beer-related business and taking the opportunity to enjoy a session on the other side of the bar.

What was clear from that conversation was that Vessel had not only survived the pandemic but to some extent found its feet, and its people.

How to describe Katie and Sam? They’re the kind of people who default to smiling. They are optimistic by nature, and full of ideas and energy.

They’d made it through the pandemic with a mix of deliveries, takeaway, events over zoom, and sheer enthusiasm.

That challenge out of the way, they told us about plans for expansion, for a brewery, for more trips and tastings.

They talked about their customers with evident affection, and with none of the too-cool-for-school frostiness that sometimes comes with craft beer culture.

As we waved goodbye on that autumn evening we decided we needed to go back to Vessel and see for ourselves how it has matured in five (challenging) years.

Sunlight through the window casts the shadow of the Vessel logo onto the wall.

Return to Plymouth

When we lived in Penzance, Plymouth was where we went for big city thrills, especially out of season. It often frustrated us, though – where was there to drink, or eat?

Sure, we enjoyed pints of perfect Bass in old school maritime pubs. And, yes, there was at least one pub where we could drink Belgian beer.

But Bristol it was not. Hell, even Falmouth had more going on in terms of food and drink.

Now, even though the city centre looks more ragged than ever (the trees!) there are signs of change. It’s a crude barometer but there are now multiple places to get a decent cup of coffee, or an aspirational breakfast.

Vessel feels like part of this change. Though its surroundings remain down-to-earth, the bar itself – smartly decorated, neat as you like – could be picked up and dropped into any city in Britain, including London.

You might not like the sound of this – when you’re in Plymouth, don’t you want to feel as if you’re in Devon? But if you live way out west, rather than being there on holiday, your attitude will be different.

In that context, you just want good places to drink, where you can find beer from elsewhere, instead of the same old same old.

As it is, Katie and Sam, and their engaged customers, provide plenty of local flavour. Listen to the conversation over the counter and you’ll be in no doubt where in the world you are.

On our visit last weekend we enjoyed Sierra Nevada beer on draught, with some highly competitive pricing: £6.60 for a pint of 7.2% IPA is pretty good going in 2023.

We were also impressed by the range of bottled and canned beers in the fridges, from German classics to fascinating products from UK ‘blenderies’ and farmhouse breweries.

The tap list in chalk on the wall, including Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at £2.80 a half, Torpedo IPA at £3.30 a half and Bigfoot Barley Wine at £5 a half.

It makes Plymouth worth a visit

If beer is the deciding factor in where you spend your weekend city breaks, Vessel changes the equation.

You could spend three nights in the city, go to Vessel every evening, and never drink the same beer twice.

Add to the mix those previously mentioned old skool pubs, and the potential for day trips to brewery taprooms and micropubs across the border in Cornwall, and you’ve got more than enough to keep you busy.

Vessel is at 184 Exeter St, Plymouth PL4 0NQ, and online at vesselbeer.co.uk

Categories
20th Century Pub pubs

Notable Pubs: The Milestone, Exeter, 1985-1988

"Pub with no beer"

There have been repeated attempts to test the idea that the identity of the pub need not be tied to alcohol. The Milestone, which opened in Exeter in 1985, was one such experiment.

On the bookshelf at the Drapers lurks a yellowing copy of the Wordsworth Dictionary of Pub Names, a cheap 1990s reprint of a book by Leslie Dunkling and Gordon Wright first published in 1987. The naming of pubs is an area of study requiring more pinches of salt than most, and the book is not without its inaccuracies, but flipping through it over our Sunday night pints, we often find some nugget or other, and that’s how we first heard of the Milestone:

The pub sells only soft drinks, non-alcoholic beers and wines. It was set up in 1985 by the Devon Council on Alcoholism and the Exeter Community Alcohol team to help people with a drink problem. It is in the basement of an office block, and those who named it clearly see it as a highly significant step.

A contemporary report from the Liverpool Echo (20/11/1985) offers more information:

Mr Murray French, chairman of Exeter District Health Authority, will pull the first pint — or rather pour the first soft drink — at noon [today].

The pub, complete with pool table, dart board and the usual bar fittings, is the brain child of Exeter Community Alcohol Team.

Mr Stan Ford, executive director of Devon Council on Alcoholism, said: “The main aim is to provide an environment where people can get the atmosphere of a pub without alcohol.

“A lot of my clients have asked where they could go if they stopped drinking. There was nowhere. Now there is.”

Laudable as this might sound, it’s hard to imagine anyone convincing friends who are still drinking (possibly heavily) to come to a teetotal pub, and however convincing the facsimile, there’s no denying that an air of merriness is an essential part of the pleasure of the pub.

Without booze, it will just feel like a youth club, won’t it?

There’s a certain inevitability to the next mention we can find in the newspaper archives, from the same newspaper for 25 October 1988:

MILLSTONE

Britain’s first alcohol-free pub, the Milestone in Exeter, Devon, is to close next month after three years. It failed to attract enough custom.

This feels like the kind of thing that might have generated the odd academic paper or official study but, if so, we can’t find them online, on this side of a paywall.

It would certainly be interesting to see pictures of the Milestone, or to hear from anyone who remembers (not) drinking there.

Categories
Beer history Beer styles

Ashburton Pop: What We Know

Illustration: a cork flies out of a stone bottle.

This lost Devon beer style came to our attention flipping through A Scrapbook of Inns a few weeks ago and we’ve since done a bit more digging. Here’s what we’ve got so far.

The best single description of Ashburton Pop comes from John Cooke, born in Ashburton in 1765, whose autobiographical pamphlet England Forever was published in 1819. We can’t find a copy of the original but fortunately is quoted at length in William Hone’s Table Book from 1827. Cooke wrote:

I recollect its sharp feeding good taste, far richer than the best small beer, more of the champagne taste, and what was termed a good sharp bottle. When you untied and hand-drew the cork it gave a report louder than a pop-gun, to which I attribute its name; its contents would fly up to the ceiling if you did not mind to keep the mouth of the stone bottle into the white quart cup; it filled it with froth, but not over a pint of clear liquor. Three old cronies would sit an afternoon six hours, smoke and drink a dozen bottles, their reckoning bit eight-pence each, and a penny for tobacco. The pop was but twopence a bottle.

A footnote to the 1817 edition of Sir John Sinclair’s The Code of Health confirms that high carbonation was a defining feature:

There is a particular kind of beer brewed at Ashburton in Devonshire, very full of fixed air, and therefore known by the name of Ashburton pop, which is supposed to be as efficacious in consumptions as even the air of Devonshire itself.

For what it’s worth J. Henry Harris speculated in 1907 that “it was probably some concoction intended to rival white-ale”, another famous Devon oddity.

Our attempt at Cornish swanky beer, which we reckon is in the same family.

Ashburton Pop was said to have died out between 1785 (Cooke, via Hone) and 1804, the latter date being given by an 1816 source. Cooke also says that the recipe was lost with the death of the brewer. Later sources mention surviving Ashburton Pop bottles bearing the name of what was probably the brewer, Richard Halse, and dates of 1771 or 1773. It was apparently revived in some form by William Michelmore, landlord of The Royal Oak at Ashburton, no later than 1835. He died in September 1846 aged 68. (Western Times, 12/09/1846.)

In the later 19th century references to Ashburton Pop only turn up in political commentary, like this from the Western Times for 03/06/1881…

Sir Stafford Northcote delivered his long-bottled speech at Manchester on Wednesday…. [He] was primed accordingly; but a more flat and vapid effusion was never poured forth in public than the oration of the Conservative Leader, on Wednesday. “Ashburton Pop” is a brisk potation, taken at the right moment, but a brief exposure to the air takes all the life out of it. Sir Stafford’s “pop” won’t stand the open air of public utterance.

… or this coded satire from the Exeter & Plymouth Gazette from 17/07/1852, signed ‘John Barleycorn’ and addressed to the town’s voters ahead of an upcoming election:

By the bye they say, good ale is drunk at Barnstaple, but his Lordship’s brewery turns out tipple too bitter even for his family circle there, and certainly would not suit the taste of you my friends, accustomed to excellent Ashburton Pop, of which with your permission, I will now drink to our next merry meeting, never ceasing to reiterate the common-sense patriotic principle that “England and every English Interest ought to be protected against the rivalry of the rest of the world.”

Assuming that, even referenced jokingly, these are accurate descriptions of the beer itself, we might gather that it (a) foamed quickly but didn’t retain a head; (b) was sweet rather than bitter; and (c) was to some degree still a topical reference, i.e. still in production as late as 1881, or at least generally remembered.

After this references to Ashburton Pop only appear in the context of historical notes and queries columns, often repeating the Cooke quotation above, and sometimes suggesting that it was a precursor to modern bottled beers.

So, for now, we don’t have much solid advice for those wanting to recreate Ashburton Pop, but as none of the sources mention unusual ingredients, e.g. ginger or raisins, you could probably do worse than this:

  1. Brew something along the lines of a fairly basic golden ale.
  2. Then follow the method for Cornish swanky beer given here: ferment with baker’s yeast; allow a short fermentation in a larger vessel before bottling with corks; when the corks start wanting to escape, after a day or two more, drink it, while it’s fresh.
Categories
opinion

Reflecting on Devon Beer

Vintage map of Devon showing Beer Head.

About two years ago, when we still lived in Penzance, we were approached by the editor of Devon Life magazine. He wanted to introduce a monthly beer column and reckoned we were the right people to do it.

We pushed back: we didn’t know Devon well, although Ray spent some time there as a kid and we’ve often visited; and the fee they were offering would barely cover the cost of researching the column. Still, he was insistent, and there was something interesting in the idea of focusing on one county and ferreting out what there was to be ferreted. So we said yes.

Over the course of 20 months we wrote about notable pubs, breweries, bottle shops, nuggets of history, and specific beers. We made special trips to Cockington, Exeter, Exmouth, Newton Abbot, Plymouth, Tavistock, Teignmouth, Tiverton, Topsham and Totnes, and convinced people from various other places to come to us at The Imperial, AKA our Exeter office. We don’t claim this makes us experts — you have to live in a place, ideally for years, before you can really say that — but it did give us a deeper sense of what is going on than we’d otherwise have acquired.

When the column came to an end at Christmas, we took a bit of time to reflect on what we learned, and to draw some conclusions.

Continue reading “Reflecting on Devon Beer”
Categories
beer festivals opinion real ale

Tucker’s Maltings Beer Festival, At Last

Exterior of Tucker's Maltings.

It’s been running for 24 years but we only made it to our first Tucker’s Malting Beer Festival, in Newton Abbot, Devon, last week.

In the last few years when we might have gone, we’ve either been working or on holiday. But maybe we’d have made more effort if we liked beer festivals more, which we don’t, because:

  1. Eight different beers is about the most we can handle between us in one session so 250 is over-facing.
  2. Our two favourite places to drink are (a) the pub and (b) our sofa; hangars, barns, industrial spaces, town halls, churches, and so on, come way down the list.
  3. There’s too much flat beer, not helped by being served in unwashed glasses that get stickier with each passing hour.

Propaganda-style mural at Tucker's Maltings.

Having said that… Tucker’s Maltings was fun. It’s one of those events that isn’t just about beer, and that isn’t just popular with CAMRA members and tickers.

It generates a merry buzz around the town of Newton Abbot, a place which isn’t otherwise on the tourist trail — ‘It’s a funny old place’, as one attendee said to us — much as Walthamstow Village Festival used to in the days before full-on gentrification, or as Bridgwater Carnival does in Bailey’s home town.

There were faces we’d seen at other festivals (for example, a contingent from Cornwall CAMRA), gangs of young lads with sculpted quiffs and muscles on display despite the chill, ageing hippies, ageing rockers, ageing punks, rugby fans, a stag do or two, students from Exeter University, local dignitaries (Newton Abbot’s mayor is a venerable old gent with something of the German burgomaster about him), and teams of brewers from up and down the West Country in branded polo shirts having it corporately large.

People were drunk, in the 18th-century Dutch painting way, and occasional bouts of dancing, particularly that half-walk-half-boogie merry people sometimes do while carrying brimful glasses.

Whatever the spark of life is, the quality that puts the festiv- in festival, Tucker’s Maltings has it. We’ll definitely go again.

Disclosure: we paid for entry to Friday afternoon’s session and for beer tokens; Guy Sheppard of SIBA/Exe Valley, who is on the organising committee, bought us a half each while we interviewed him; and we were given free entry to the first hour of the session that followed.