More cliches

In light of the conversation regarding cliches in writing about beer, which appeared here, and with some time on my hands I knocked up this quick review of a pub I recently went to in Derby. I’ve not been too punctilious in the hunt for cliches and have probably let several slip. All part of the fun of writing, perhaps?

The Falstaff, Derby

A caricature of jolly Sir John Falstaff sits in the middle of a beer mat on the table at which I sit. It’s a crude (as in not very well drawn rather than Donald McGill) representation of the man, but his red-faced, pot-bellied jolliness still shines even though he usually sang the praises of sack rather than ale.

However, I’m sure if he was to saunter into this comfortable neighbourhood corner pub, Sir John would be all too happy to sink a pint of beer, especially as not only is the pub named after him but also the brewery at the back.

I am in the lounge of the Falstaff, whose décor could be described as a symphony in brown allied to a lime-green colour scheme on the wall. Think robust settles and time-smoothed banquette seating alongside sanded and scuffed wooden flooring, while the walls are home to a variety of bric-a-brac including barometers and various labels for the beers that the Falstaff’s brewery has made in its 11-year history.

I continue to look about and the interior of the lounge starts to reveal more artefacts, as if it were an onion being peeled. As well as the barometers, there is a selection of brass bits and pieces used for looking after casks in the cellar, a brace of fireguards with ‘Take Courage’ embossed on their surface and a old hand-carved wooden ornament at the heart of which sits a clock.

Meanwhile Sir John’s modern (and less corpulent) equivalents are enjoying themselves in the public bar. As the pints are pulled, I am aware of the drifting smoke of conversation: someone is complaining about the time it takes to send a parcel to Scotland, while another mentions King Lear. When a reedy voice describes his time at Bayreuth and Wagner’s Ring Cycle it feels like a game of pub one-upmanship. The conversation stops and a dog barks gruffly as if to say ‘carry on’.

So I take the dog’s advice and order another pint of A Fist Full of Hops and a packet of crisps (there’s no food here, this is one of those rare foodless pubs). I suspect the brewer has a Clint Eastwood thing going as another one of his beers is called The Good, The Bad and The Drunk but as it’s 6.2% it’s probably just as well it’s not on at the moment.

The beer in my glass is a pipsqueak at 4.5%, very easy to drink and another pint soon looms. Whilst back at the bar I catch the eye of a poster on the wall advertising the brewery’s bottled barley wine called Hades. At the Leviathan-like strength of 15.4% this is only available in bottles and sensibly only sold off sale: I expect the morning after would be hell, even for Sir John.

Beer and books

I’m in the middle of Bologna and on the top floor of the Ambassadors building at Librarie Coop, which advertises itself as a library but also seems to sell books; whatever its function it’s a place that seems like a pretty decent bookstore (think Barnes & Noble) — however on the top floor of the building there are shelves and shelves of beer, some of which I am familiar with in the UK, Belgium and the US, others are the aristocrats of the Italian beer scene. It’s pretty cool. The whole building is in what was once a church and there are the remains of the nave (perhaps it’s the nave or maybe I’ve lapsed on the lapse as I’m rather hazy on church architecture) at the end of one mighty wall. This space also did time as a porn theatre but now it’s only right that it’s dispensing all sorts of knowledge over three floors with the three tiered book store, a café and artisanal foods on the second floor and right at the top the bar and accompanying restaurant (the eating and drinking places going under the name of EatItaly), where are there beers that make me warm and fuzzy and rather glad I am where I am. I order a draft Forst Sixtus, a review of which I had edited in 1001 (an Italian copy of which I found downstairs); it’s a doppelbock that I had always wanted to try — I like its toasty, chocolaty character and a finish of (more toastiness) dryness. I then ordered a glass of the same brewery’s Heller Bock, pale and strong, fragrant and glasslike in its fragile dose of malt sweetness and hop bitterness. There is a clear explanation of the beers on draught on the wall, colour, strength, ingredients etc, and I just feel that this is so right — it’s a gratifying experience, a flying buttress of gastronomic joy that combines books and beer (and wine as well) in a way that only a book-burning teetotaller with no room in their heart for good food could turn their face against. As I watch the woman who served me my glass of Sixtus bend her elbow to the cutting, the sawing into chunks, of the evening’s bread for the diners to come, I was aware that my glass was empty. And waited until she had finished. Another please. Beer and books: would it be too much to ask for this to catch on in the UK?

The Three Tuns in Bristol

Three Tuns Bristol. Good little pub this, belongs to Arbor Ales, good brewery, coming up with some excellent beers, one of which I had last week in the Red Lion in Cricklade, good pub that as well, frontage festooned with hanging baskets, that’s what you get for being in a town that wins Britain in Bloom. Back to Bristol though, great city for drinking at the moment, good breweries in the shape of Arbor, BBF and Bath Ales (confusing that they are called Bath but based in Bristol, think there might be a case for pedants to raise merry hell). Back to the Three Tuns though, you can read what I think about it in Saturday’s DT or just go straight to the link here. Cheers. 

I ♥ beer

Monday afternoon in the pub. Sun shines on the passage of people in the street, rays reach me at the table at the end of the bar. Two men next to me, old friends I think, meeting up again after a while. Sharing a bottle of something from Mikkeller, ‘this is beer, beer without all the bullshit,’ says one. ‘The other declares, ‘it’s as strong as a glass of wine but it’s not rough and not Special Brew.’ They purr and pour praise on the beer from a great height. Treacle says one, port says the other. Another? And as I tune in and out, contemplating a glass of Hofbrau’s Munchen Oktoberfest (delighted with its strong bitter finish), I once again realise how much I love sitting quietly and studying beer, in Craft Beer Co, far away from all concerns about what beer is, who it is for, what round or square hole it falls into. I simply adore beer and all that comes with it — and Craft Beer Co is one of those great bars that I drink beer in, as you can read in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph here.

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.

Queens Head, Glanwydden

Good grub and a decent drop of ale (Adnams, Great Orme) are righteously available at the Queens Head in the North Wales village of Glanwydden — so if you’re anywhere near you might want to drop in, after reading my review in today’s Daily Telegraph (if I remember rightly my primary school beat Glanwydden school 3-0 when we played them at football when I was a kid. I think I scored a couple — and once you’ve had your fill here a mile away in the village of Penrhynside is the Penrhyn Arms, where beer and cider are drank with studied determination, the grumbling farmer at the bar is my old mate Mark). 


North Wales beers are very much on my mind at the moment as fellow beer writer Tim Hampson and myself are doing a collaborative beer tasting at the Hay Ale and Literature Festival next month. A kind of ‘he says North Wales and he says South Wales’, sort of.  With some readings of Welsh literature — I’ve picked George Borrow on the ales of Llangollen and I might even try a poem in Welsh (or maybe not).

Ghosts wanted, or maybe not

Prestbury is on the edge of Cheltenham and supposedly has one of the most haunted streets in England — one of its pubs is the glorious Royal Oak, which oddly enough is spook free. You can read what I think of it here in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph.
Apropos of an earlier post I’ve decided on St Austell for tomorrow.

Pub time if you’re out and about in Sheffield

Sheffield is one of the best beer cities in the country at the moment and the Kelham Island Tavern is one of the best pubs; if you want you can read what I think of it in tomorrow’s Daily Telegraph here (and don’t forget the Fat Cat round the corner and the Hillsborough about ten minutes up the road and if you want to go further and more rural Thornbridge’s Cricket Inn in Totley on the outskirts of town). Back from my local Woods (you can read my DT review here) having enjoyed several pints of Proper Job.