So there I am contemplating pub porn

So there I am sitting in the controlled hubbub of the lounge bar at the Vine in Brierley Hill, the brewery tap for Bathams. Saturday lunchtime, voices engaged, discussing the odds, dissecting this, deconstructing that and constructing an occasion of the other. Through a corridor, pale green tiles on both sides, Victoriana, waist high I remember, and to my right, turn right into the snug bar (a den of dark wood, framed photos and old newspaper cuttings, I’m conscious of intruding into a meeting of village elders), a pint of mild please, plus a cheese cob. Brummie voices: it takes time to tune the wavelength of the dialect into the English an anglophile Welshman like myself understands.

The pub has the feel of a house filled with various members of a family, all of who know and like and dislikes each other in equal measures. Parlour-like in the front lounge, my youthful memories return of visiting aged grandparents in cramped terraces where a lifetime’s collection of brasses or pictures or even pottery was on show — do people still have parlour-like parlours these days? Pub porn in a more modern vernacular. The Mild is marvellous, light, sprightly on the palate, creamy but also crisp, not a big assaulter of the palate but it’s lunchtime and I like it. I also love the pub’s exterior with its creamy colouring of an early 19th century building and the Shakespearian quote crossing its brow.

Later on, 50 miles or so north, the Bhurtpore Inn (above) at Aston, NE of Nantwich, SW of Whitchurch, drive-by village, redbrick terraced cottages sharing space with bungalows, big factory to the right on the way in (I’m in from the south). Opposite a black-and-white house with the date 1667 stamped on its forehead, done up and done over some many times with a variety of architectural botoxes that it looks like some pouty porn star who cannot believe she’s 40. On the other hand the Bhurtpore is light and airy, a long established village pub (late 19th century perhaps) that has had additions but the core of the bar seems to be very much of the now whilst holding onto its history.

I reckon there were several bars once, probably opened up in the great pub slaughters of the 1960s, but it remains the very model of a post-modern pub that majors in both beer and great food (12 cask beers, Budvar, Morvaka and an awesome bottled selection, great curries) without turning into some sort of tickers’ morgue. Saturday afternoon: quiet and reflective, a half of Summer Wine’s Heretic. The whispers of a couple of drinkers, but all the time the Bhurtpore awaits Saturday night’s febrile crowd. Can someone get on with developing a sci-fi gizmo that can get me going on an evening’s pub crawl that would stretch the whole country (beam me up Notty perhaps?).

Two pubs, two places, and two different communities — as I look through my notes, I’m in one of those reflective, slightly self-indulgent moods: what is beer writing? Is it in its purest sense writing about beer (ie tasting notes), or is it just a pier or jetty from which anyone with any interest in beer can push off and discover new lands. As I’m doing a spot of travel writing these days I would go for the latter description; sure sit at home and rate your beers without interacting with your fellow men and women but writing about beer is more than codifying and tabulating the liquid in your glass. It’s about the beer (of course), the pubs (most definite), the men and women who drink and brew the stuff, the breweries, the history, the country and customs. It’s also about spending a short bit of time in someone else’s pub, which is their community, their home, and gives them the all embracing sense of identity that a pub can only do (clubs and churches used to do that once). Pubs by their very nature are not cafes or restaurants; they — well the good ones — are part of the heart of a community, whether on a street corner, country road or suburban hub — they are also community centres and different countries in a sense that anyone, who fancies themselves the pub world’s Bruce Chatwin but cannot afford to travel around the world, should consider them as a much more valuable and affordable alternative. It’s about the beer, yes, but it’s also about the people.

Why Orval is the best beer in the world at a certain moment in one’s life

I’m in a restaurant in Wallonia, not a beer restaurant, just the sort of well-run place that caters both for visitors like myself and locals who fancy something different. As it happens I am the only one in there that night, having dashed in from a long rain shower and — shaking myself like a terrier who has been just been hauled out of an Exmoor river — I explain in my kindergarten French that the tourist board has reserved a table for me. I am offered the run of the house, were would I like to sit? Remembering that Wild Bill Hickock met his fate because he sat at a table that faced away from the door, I choose one that faces the door. Would I like wine I am asked by a young lad with spiky hair? No thanks a beer please, this is saison country after all. Carlsberg comes the reply. Even here in Tournai, it’s depressing that I am being offered a beer that I would be offered throughout most of Western Europe whatever the beer culture. No thanks, any Belgium beer I say, dreading Leffe, whose Tripel was a mainstay on a southwest France holiday in 2005, but whose blonde I find a Demerera-sugared irritation. He comes back with a tray on which sit bottles of Orval (ideal shapes for West Country skittles), Chimay Bleu, Stella and possibly Leffe, but as soon as I saw Orval my mind was made up. Orval it was — I love that beer, a beer that has the influence of Brett, a beer that is both so satisfyingly complex, moreish, creamy, bittersweet, palate refreshingly citrusy and as this restaurant shows quite commonplace. I am served turbot in a creamy shrimp sauce which is bossed over by the Orval, bringing out the creamy and citrusy notes of the beer and also cutting through the cream of the sauce. It is delicious. I remember that this is not haute cuisine, biere cuisine or even good gastro-pub stuff, it’s just ordinary for this part of the world. I sat there wondering where in the UK in an ordinary restaurant, you know the small town high street gaff with French cuisine pretensions, would you get such a wonderful and complex beer. In the UK some might have the local ale, a bitter or a golden ale, pasteurised to high heaven, but this is the local ale. No one else comes into the restaurant while I eat, which is fine — and besides I wouldn’t have noticed, so engrossed was I in contemplating and considering the Orval. Another thing that occurred to me, later on, in another bar, with more people about, well-fed and well-watered, as I enjoyed the rich orange liqueur-like character of Triple Karmeliet, was that there is no such thing as the best beer in the world — just the best beer at the right moment and in this case Orval in a touristy restaurant in the town of Tournay fitted that bill as snug as a bug in a very snug rug.