Every little helps

I’ve just drunk – in fact, I’ve just made a small detour in order to drink – a pint of Burning Sky Plateau. Burning Sky is a brewery I’ve got a lot of time for. I don’t know all the ins and outs of their relationship with AsahiFuller’sDark Star but I understand that there are some song lyrics which offer a bit of background.

Now, Plateau is a pale ale – a very pale ale – and it used to go out at 3.5%; it’s currently 3.4%. Which you wouldn’t think would make much odds, but I wonder. I remember it being hoppy; I remember it being very hoppy. When I first encountered Magic Rock‘s 3.8% pale, which at the time was going out under the name of Curious, I wrote that it was not so much “hop-forward in the modern style” as “hops smacking you about the face, in the style of a demented alcoholic Tango advert”. I don’t think Plateau was ever quite that full-on – a commenter on this 2016 blog post nominates it as an example of a style “somewhere in between” the full-on hop-monster and the old-school bitter (It tastes zesty, fruity, fresh and very bitter, but it’s not ‘Like drinking bloody grapefruit juice’.) It used to be quite an assertive beer, though, in a good way. What I had today was just a pale ale; in fact I’d go so far as to say it was a golden ale. It’s a big change, and I can’t help wondering if that drop in gravity – even if it is only 0.1% – has something to do with it.

I know why they have dropped the gravity – I know exactly why they’ve done it – and I sympathise. (Marble have done something similar with Pint, with a similar dulling effect on what was previously quite a bold flavour.) But if that’s going to be the effect on the beer, I can’t really approve. It’s a difficult one. A brewery’s got to do what a brewery’s got to do, and as a beer drinker I certainly don’t want to live in a world where breweries like Burning Sky can’t make ends meet. But at the end of the day, as a beer drinker I want to drink good beer – and I’m afraid that Plateau seems to have gone from being a great beer to being… fine. It’s worth mentioning that Marble recently trialled a 3.8% pale ale called Draft; I can’t say what it’s like, though, because by the time I got to the Beer House it had all gone.

I guess my only conclusion is that breweries need to be very careful they don’t saw off the branch that they’re sitting on. Perhaps the answer is to take advantage of the new duty rate by formulating new beers for the below-3.5% slot. Which reminds me, aren’t we about due for a mild revival?

Do you have a favourite bar…

Do you have a favourite bar…
…where you can play pool with strangers
Maybe wear some lipstick and not be in danger
Of getting beat up in the men’s room

Feeling safe is important in a pub. (Being safe is, too, but in the nature of things you only generally find out if that’s not the case a lot later.) I generally do feel safe in pubs these days, but then (a) I’m White, male and middle-aged and (b) I very rarely go anywhere even slightly rough (Holt’s pubs in the suburbs, on CAMRA crawls, are probably as close as I get). I can remember being in a few places where I felt it would be inadvisable to stay for another, but this is going back a bit – I think at the time my youth was as much a factor as being a posh Southerner. I also think one effect of the general decline in pub-going – and the broader decline in all-male socialising – is that it’s harder to find pubs that are likely to get seriously lairy, or at least easier to avoid them.

But of course, safety in general isn’t what those lines are about. I’ve never felt any desire to wear lipstick, or been in any real danger of being queer-bashed (although as a kid obviously I was called ‘queer’ a few times, what with the long hair and the book-reading and so on). All the same, my favourite bar for a few years in the early 1990s was Manto. This was partly because of the decor, which was ‘café bar’ at a time when café bars were places you went to in France – a decorative tiled floor, small tables, plate glass for natural light – and partly because of the atmosphere, which was chilled (as we didn’t say at the time). This in turn was largely down to the door policy, which was ‘mixed’.

Yes, Manchester’s first overtly gay bar… wasn’t overtly gay. However that policy came about, in that time and place it was a stroke of genius: this was a bar you could go to if you were gay or if you weren’t. As indeed I weren’twasn’t – but I’d spent some time in Brighton and got used to the feeling of being in a venue where it wouldn’t have mattered if I had been, and I’d found I rather liked it. Ironically, as time went on and Canal Street turned into what we know now, Manto got less inclusive – viz. more gay – and I guess it was always heading that way. (I first got this message, ironically, from a flyer advertising a lesbian night and featuring a full-length nude – which I guess was the kind of thing you’d find in a pub that welcomed straight blokes at one time, but looked a bit different in that context.) On the other hand, pubs in general are a lot more inclusive now – society is much more inclusive now – and I’d find it hard to specify exactly how your average 1990s Manchester boozer exuded compulsory heterosexuality, or indeed exactly how it bugged me. An inclusive venue just felt better.

I do not play pool with strangers, though, or indeed with anyone else. The last time I was prevailed on to pick up a cue (“I’m terrible at it!” “Ah, go on – I’m terrible, we’re all terrible, it’ll be fun!”) my prowess at pool reduced first my opponents and then my partner to helpless laughter. Well, I did warn them.

Do you have a favourite bar…
…the bartender’s German
He only understands the names of liquors and the German language
Doesn’t watch the TV, ’cause it’s over his head
But he was in the Olympics
You can ask him

I’ll have to pass on this one. “The landlord’s a real character” is a phrase that for me inspires dread rather than enthusiasm, tending as it does to be followed by “doesn’t suffer fools” or words to that effect. As I wrote back here about “Pub Landlord Humour”, it’s “a combination of hearty welcome, assertive jokiness and veiled menace”,  often with the emphasis on the third rather than the first of these; it’s interesting that by 2023 the pub I was writing about  – the Maltings in York – was “proudly referred to as the ‘strictest’ pub in the UK”. At the risk of overthinking this, I wonder if what’s going on here is that we know at the back of our minds that running a pub is a tough and unrewarding job, so that we have a sneaking sympathy with anyone who takes it out on the punters – especially if they do it in a witty and showmanlike way, and if the particular punters they take it out on aren’t us. Not really my thing, anyway (although to be fair I did have some excellent beer at the Maltings).

As for bartenders like the one in the song – someone who actually is a ‘character’, in the sense of needing a paragraph to describe him – I’m coming up blank. I could name any number who do or did a great job, from Dom at the Beech to Alex at the Beer House, but nobody with European origins and an international athletic record, or anything so exotic. At least, as far as I know – it may be my ignorance talking.

Do you have a favourite bar…
where you can drink yourself under the table
And they know you’re there, so they won’t lock you in
They won’t take all your money
When you’re completely insensible
They leave you your dignity
You can play The 5th Dimension on the jukebox

One mark of a ‘favourite bar’ is – as the song says – that you can get absolutely mortal without any fear for your safety, possessions or dignity; another is that you like the place (and its beers) enough to want to, from time to time. So I suppose I’d better own up. Have I ever drunk myself under the table? No. But have I ever reached the state of the guy I saw in rather a nice bar in Edinburgh once, who drank up and then quietly folded his arms on the table, laid his head down and went to sleep? No, although I can’t say I’ve never been tempted. (The bartender came over and woke him up. He tried to persuade her that he was fine – and, to be fair, he wasn’t disturbing anyone – but she wasn’t having it.) OK then, have I ever left a pub in a state where walking in a straight line requires concentration, while Radiohead on headphones sounds like the meaning of life? More particularly – since the song clearly isn’t talking about visiting multiple bars – have I ever left a pub in the aforesaid state, having gone in sober?

Well, all right, yes, once or twice. OK, five or six times. Seven or eight, maybe. Ten at the very outside. And on all, or very nearly all, of those occasions, the bar has been the Petersgate Tap, noted hereabouts for its tap takeovers and tastings – both of which frequently involve beers that are very strong, very dark or very both. Which works for me.

The Petersgate Tap does not have a jukebox, however (not that I’d put on The 5th Dimension if it did). The thought of jukeboxes takes me to other bars: the New Oxford and the Friendship, whose otherwise unremarkable machines introduced me (respectively) to the later work of Steely Dan and the Pet Shop Boys’ Introspective; Keg and Cask, whose jukebox’s default selection was so good that nobody ever put any money in, which unfortunately led to it being taken out; and, head and shoulders above the rest, the Crescent. What a pub that was, back when I was doing my doctorate at the University of Salford in the 00s: four rooms, two bars, 8-10 cask beers, one real fire, one cat, and one excellent jukebox. I used to visit in the afternoon and try and get as much music out of a quid as I could manage; the jukebox had both Astral Weeks and Let it Bleed, so the five tracks I selected generally included “Madame George” (or “Astral Weeks” itself) and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. Happy days.

Do I have a favourite bar? The Crescent and Manto are out of consideration (and they’d both changed for the worse some time before they closed). I had a definite fondness for the Hillary Step for a while, but under the new management – specifically, with the new, darker, decor – not so much. (Something similar goes for the Beech, only not so much ‘darker’ as ‘open-plan with TVs everywhere’.) I’ve been going to the Beer House since it opened – which must be getting on for 25 years – and I still find it a comfortable and welcoming place to drink, most times of the day or night; I still wish they’d put on a few more dark beers, mind you. (Bring back McKenna’s Revenge!)

But my current favourite has to be the Petersgate Tap. It’s just a shame it’s hidden away in Stockport – it’s not on the tram, you know…

 

Winter, warmer (3)

This is the third of three posts about this year’s Winter Warmer Wander, CAMRA’s annual celebration of strong ‘winter’ beers. This one covers two trips – one to Cheadle and Cheadle Hulme, the other to Stalybridge – and ends with a round-up.

I always welcome the opportunity of a beer-ticking trip to Stalybridge, as much for the bars I visit along the way as for the inevitable last stop, the Buffet Bar. As I usually do these days, I started at Droylsden’s Silly Country, where – to my surprise – no qualifying beers were to be had. I had a half of something pale (Millstone Citra to be precise) and was given a sticker, but it was a bit of a disappointing start to the trip.

I got off the tram again a few stops down to visit the Sheldon Arms: a new pub to me, although not one I’ll be rushing back to. It’s a J.W. Lees house and a “modern restaurant pub” (WhatPub), and you can find it between a garden centre and a Travelodge in an otherwise deserted area about a mile outside Ashton-under-Lyne. Unlike the urban wasteland surrounding it, it was absolutely buzzing – although (at least on that lunchtime) it wasn’t at all clear to me that it was a “restaurant pub“, as opposed to a restaurant with beers on the bar. I stood at the said bar, thereby taking the count of non-seated punters up to 1, and got through a (rather nice) half of Plum Pudding as quickly as I reasonably could.

In Ashton itself I headed for  Tapster’s, where I had the usual, curious sensation of being transported to a high-end rock club, at about 2.30 a.m., on a weeknight, in 1982. No accounting for tastes – and their judgment where beer’s concerned is pretty good, as they serve Bridge beers from Staly ditto. The Dark Matter vanilla stout was pretty good, and would have been even better if I liked vanilla stout.

It was all getting a bit nearly-but-not-quite; fortunately, things looked up a bit when I hit the covered market for my usual lunch (one small pork pie, one cheese and onion pie), and looked up further when I got to Stalybridge. The Society Rooms (JDW) had nothing travelling as a stout, porter or old ale, but did have Bradfield Farmers Belgian Blue. I’m still not entirely sure what kind of beer this is – and what’s Belgian about it – but it’s marketed as a ‘Christmas’ beer; more to the point, it’s dark, malty and fruity, and really rather good. No problem here (or anywhere else so far) with stickers. In fact they may have been erring on the side of liberality on that front; I had a brief chat with a fellow collector, who was evidently completing his friend’s sheet as well as his own, as he’d collected two stickers for two pints. Both pints were pale, though, and I’m pretty sure one of them was lager. (To be fair, the less fizzy one could have been Coach House‘s ‘cranberry pale’, which they also had on; I guess that would qualify as seasonal.)

There were no stickers at Bridge Beers, just a natty rubber stamp; I don’t know if this is because they’d run out of stickers or if the rubber stamp is just their thing. They certainly do things differently at Bridge Beers; they were still operating the system of “listing all [the] draught beers on the blackboard whether they’re available or not, and having a bartender tell each customer in turn which ones are on” which I commented on in June. It’s a shame the cherry stout was in the “not on” half of the board, but Dark Matter on gravity was at least as good as it had been on hand pull, and a collection of SPBW newsletters passed the time nicely.

And so to the Buffet Bar, where I had a half of Titanic Plum Porter Reserve (see previous posts) and followed it with a third of something very silly indeed, particularly at this end of the trip: Vocation May Contain Sixpence, a ‘Christmas pudding imperial stout’ at a no-messing 12.5%. No stickers here either, although in this case I’m pretty sure they will have run out. Still one of my favourite venues, even when it’s busy with the pre-Christmas crowd – but then, a 12.5% stout has a knack of making the rest of the world go away.

Another trip out – heading South rather than East – took me to the Church Inn, a Robinson’s pub on the road out of Cheadle Hulme, heading towards Bramhall. This was a very different pub, in a very different area, from the Sheldon Arms, but they had one thing in common: a laserlike focus on the dining trade, resulting in a complete lack of seating for the non-dining drinker. (WhatPub: “The rear of the lounge is where excellent food is served”. And the rest (of the pub)!) On the plus side, they served a very nice half of (sparkled) Old Tom, even if I didn’t feel able to linger over it as long as I’d have liked.

I got the bus back into Cheadle Hulme proper, got a sandwich (from Waitrose, where else?) and promptly discovered not one but two of my new favourite bars. Archive was empty but had quite a nice vibe to it nevertheless; lots of greebling. They also had Titanic Plum Porter Reserve on the bar and… wait just a minute… RedWillow Festive Treat on the bar next to it. I had never heard of RedWillow Festive Treat, and was somewhat inclined to disapprove of it on the grounds of the terrible name – they surely haven’t run out of “-less”es? But I wasn’t going to turn my nose up at a 5.5% old ale from RW; and, sure enough, it was terrific.

The Chiverton Tap, a couple of doors down, was more austere in terms of decor but had regulars drifting in and out the whole time I was there, which made it rather a good place to linger over a beer; atmosphere’s what you make it, I guess. The beer in question took a bit of lingering, as it was RedWillow Blueberry, Maple and Pecan Stout (8.4%). I’m not saying RedWillow can do no wrong, but their pre-Christmas offer to bars in Cheadle Hulme was pretty much impeccable.

But I couldn’t stay in the Chiverton Tap all afternoon – not even after I’d had a chat with one of the regulars and worked out for myself where the loos are; not even with an 11% Trium imperial stout on the bar; I had stickers to collect, and miles to go etc. The bus took me back to Cheadle and the Red Lion, a Robinson’s house but not one of those serving Old Tom. Still, that was probably just as well after what I’d had already – and it gave me a chance to try Tom and Berry, which was rather fruit-cordial-ish but basically fine.

For my final half and – drum roll please – my 36th bar, it was down the road to the Wobbly Stamp. The qualifying beer here was our old friend Titanic Plum Porter, which I think I like a bit better than the ‘reserve’ version. I considered having a half of something else to celebrate finishing the Wander, but couldn’t see anything on the bar I fancied; a bottle of something Belgian, which to be fair was also an option, would have been a bit OTT on the alcohol front. So in the end I just went home. Note to self: future route end Chiv Tap.

11 pubs/bars, 10 qualifying beers, 9 stickers, one signature and one rubber stamp (two white, seven blue and two gold); two stouts, two porters, two old ales and three ‘Christmas’ beers. For the Wander as a whole, I’ve had eight stouts, ten porters, three old ales and three ‘Christmas’ beers. Like the first two, this third leg saw a really gratifying level of availability of stickers and (more importantly) of qualifying beers.

Actually doing the Wander was a reasonably pleasant experience this year (the bits between beers, I mean). I still think the pre-Christmas pub trade doesn’t really need CAMRA’s help (might there be any mileage in moving the WWW to January?), but this time round most places were pleasantly busy rather than rammed; certainly nowhere had anything like the scrum I experienced at the Friendship a few years back. The three-tier sticker system was a bit of a pain when it came to planning routes; still, it did the job of getting me to pubs I’d never visited before, particularly together with the (very welcome) involvement of Holt’s and Lees’. Other than that – and chalking up my non-visit to the Blossoms to experience – I’d only point to only one negative: dining pubs. In three separate places (viz Stockport, Cheadle Hulme and Ashton) I walked into a pub to find that provision for anyone looking for a drink was limited to non-existent. There’s no law against pubs focusing on food to the extent of not having any space dedicated to wet trade during food service, even at the front of the bar; doubtless for some it will make good business sense. But I don’t think those pubs should be enrolled in what’s basically a pub crawl – and if brewers do want to include them, they should make sure drinkers won’t stick out like a sore thumb when they do visit. On three separate occasions I was left feeling isolated and uncomfortably conspicuous, and consequently slugged down a beer that I would rather have savoured (Old Tom in two cases).

Speaking of beers to savour: overall, the ‘winter warmer’ landscape is looking remarkably healthy this year. My 36 ticks have taken in 24 different beers from 19 breweries: eight stouts, ten porters, three old ales and three ‘Christmas’ beers. (A fourth old ale should be mentioned – Dunham‘s single venue meant that it didn’t get a sticker of its own.) As well as Titanic‘s two porters, Vocation offered two different stouts, while Dunham had a porter and an old ale; Robinson’s (of course) offered both an old ale and a ‘Christmas’ beer, and RedWillow went one better by offering a stout, a porter, and an old ale (all of them worth seeking out).

More detail for the completist:

Stout: Black Edge, Bridge, First Chop, Marble, RedWillow*, Stranger Times, Vocation x2
Porter: Bank Top, Bridgehouse, Coach House, Dunham, Kirkstall, RedWillow, Salamander, Thornbridge*, Titanic x2
Old Ale: Holt’s, RedWillow, Robinson’s*
‘Christmas’: Bradfield*, Lees’, Robinson’s

Reviewing that list, I’m reminded that quality has been high as well as variety: I’d put 18 of those 24 beers in the “worth seeking out” bracket (and most of those that didn’t qualify had reasons involving either plums or vanilla). Those flagged with a *, meanwhile, were outstanding examples of their style.

Doubtless a lot of these beers would be on bars anyway at this time of year, but the range and variety of beers I’ve seen recently suggests that operators are really getting into the ‘winter warmer’ spirit. Bars and brewers don’t make this kind of effort unprompted; thanks are due to everyone who helped make it happen!

Winter, warmer (2)

This is the second of three posts about this year’s Winter Warmer Wander, CAMRA’s annual celebration of strong ‘winter’ beers. This one covers central Manchester (again), Sale and Altrincham, the Wilmslow Road corridor and another trip to Stockport.

An early-afternoon trip to Manchester started with a well-kept half of Holt’s Sixex in a pleasantly quiet Ape and Apple – which you probably won’t be able to experience now until some time in January. The beer is worth seeking out, though. The Piccadilly Tap had a couple of dark beers on, one of which was one of Vocation‘s current series of collabs: Vocation vs Adnams’ Coffee Stout. This was a biggish stout, over on the sweet side of coffee-flavoured dark beers and smooth with it. Then I made the trek to the Marble Arch for another biggish but easy-drinking stout – Marble Stout – following it with a third of their Amontillado Barrel-Aged Barleywine. The barrel had put in a lot of work: this was a smooth, easy-drinking 12.4%er, which in no way drank its strength (unless you thought of Benylin, perhaps).

Another lunchtime found me in the J P Joule (JDW) in Sale, where I was very pleasantly surprised to see Thornbridge Market Porter on the bar – a really excellent contemporary porter; I was sorry I was only stopping for a half. But I had places to be, viz. Altrincham. When I got there, sadly, the Unicorn (also JDW) had nothing qualifying on – at least, they had two or three Christmas- or winter-themed beers, but none at 4.4% or above. I thought it was in the spirit of the thing to order Moorhouse‘s recently-revived Xmas Cauldron, which was fine. No such problems at Costello’s, of course: both the excellent Dunham Porter and Dunham Winter Warmer were present and correct. The Winter Warmer was a new one on me, and I can recommend it.

A couple of weeks later the tram took me to Didsbury, where the Head of Steam (in common with a few other places) was serving Titanic Plum Porter Reserve. I can’t say I’m a fan. I’m not opposed to beer with adjuncts – I’ve got fond memories of the same brewery’s damson stout – but in this beer, and perhaps particularly in this higher-strength (6.5%) version, the plum tends to dominate rather than blending in. They also had Blackjack Petal – a ‘brut IPA’ with tea – on keg; I’ve got fond memories of Ticketybrew‘s Jasmine Green Tea Pale, and I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. It was a bit early to be stopping for a second, though.

On to the Railway, pausing only for an invigorating walk down Lapwing Lane (how I forgot that the Railway is at the “Metropolitan and Burton Road tram” end of Lapwing Lane, not the “Wine & Wallop and West Didsbury tram” end, I’m not sure). Holt’s Sixex was on the bar, but sadly that’s where it stayed; the line had just been cleaned and the beer wasn’t going to be on for a while. Instead I had another not-actually-qualifying seasonal, the 4.3% Holt’s bitter A Date With Santa. Which, again, was fine.

From there the bus took me to the Red Lion (JW Lees Plum Pudding) and then on to the Great Central (JDW), where they had the really excellent (and relatively seldom-seen) Bank Top Port O Call (a porter with port, no less). There’s some interesting ordering going on in some parts of the JDW’s empire. No stickers at the Great Central, incidentally, “because somebody foolishly binned ’em”.

Lastly, a repeat trip to Stockport. I’d been mulling this over ever since I heard that the Petersgate Tap had a Torrside old ale on; I thought I could combine that with paying a visit to the Blossoms, which in my experience keeps Old Tom particularly well. I arrived in Stockport on a rainy Sunday afternoon and got a bus down the road. I was glad to see the Blossoms by the time it hove into view: Chorlton to Stockport can be a longish bus journey in itself, and I was beginning to feel the need to use the facilities, let’s say. The building was dark, which initially didn’t put me off – I remembered the decor in the Blossoms being on the eccentric side, so keeping the lights low on a gloomy Sunday seemed like just the kind of thing they would do. Then I reached the front door and read the handwritten notice:

CLOSED DUE TO TECHNOLOGY BEING RUBBISH

Hmm. OK, I thought. Not to panic, I thought. Plenty of buses going back into Stockport. I could get Old Tom at the Arden Arms. And lots of places had… there were lots of places where I could… no, not thinking about that…

Thankfully, the buses back into Stockport were pretty frequent. All that remained was to, effectively, speed-walk from the bus station to the Arden Arms (which turned out to be a really surprisingly long walk). I now have thoroughly favourable memories of the Arden Arms, which had (a) Old Tom well-kept and sparkled (none of that ‘pin on the bar’ malarkey they’ve had in some years) and, crucially, (b) a Gents’ quite close to the entrance. In other respects it was rather unsatisfactory, admittedly – every space big enough to put a chair seemed to have been given over to diners, with drinkers apparently expected to prop up the bar (and squash up against it every time a server went by, which was often). I perched on a bench by an empty table and drank up.

After all that I was glad of a bit of a rest, which I took – albeit with half an eye on bus times – back at the Petersgate Tap. (The old ale I’d come for – Torrside/Durham Spark of Madness – was very nice indeed.) But I wasn’t going straight home. The Beer Shop in Heaton Moor was open; it really is a shop rather than a bar, and as such it’s not somewhere I’d choose to linger, but it was nice to see RedWillow Heritage Porter, and to drink it in good nick. Then a final stop at Ladybarn Social Club, which is a place I’d choose to linger; the qualifying beer here was First Chop POD, a vanilla stout.

13 pubs/bars, 11 qualifying beers (and two borderline), 12 stickers and one signature (five white, six blue and two gold): not quite as clean a sweep as the previous post, but not far off. Another good spread of beers, too: three stouts, five porters, two old ales and one ‘other’. And, unless I’ve miscounted, the 23 qualifying beers I’ve had so far include sixteen different beers from fifteen different breweries. Looking good!

Next: I venture into the lands of blue (Cheadle) and gold (Stalybridge)

Winter, warmer (1)

The Winter Warmer Wander, CAMRA’s annual celebration of strong ‘winter’ beers, is on us again. Here are a few notes from central Manchester and beyond.

On an overcast weekday afternoon I made my way to the Briton’s Protection, a landmark pub which is now, sadly, under threat. I had a half of Vocation Naughty and Nice chocolate stout – not my favourite style, but a very good example. I regret to say that the pub was practically empty; I was there early doors, admittedly, but… well, see below.

A few minutes up the road, Rain Bar wasn’t busy, but there was a definite early-evening background hum. One of the nice things about this year’s WWW is that both Holt’s and J. W. Lees have got involved, so there are some relatively unfamiliar pubs to tick off – and indeed beers. In this case I had JWL‘s Plum Pudding – a strong-ish dark bitter (well, 4.8%), which doesn’t taste of Christmas pudding but does, commendably, taste of plums. The fruit flavour is there and it isn’t; it supplies an element of the dark bitter flavour profile that you’d usually get from the malt, but if you stop and think about it it’s still fruit. It’s the kind of trick Ticketybrew used to do a lot, and here it works rather well.

On to the Paramount (JDW), which was buzzing, and where there was only one dark beer on – a stout which presumably hadn’t been shifting, as they were selling it as a ‘Manager’s Special’ at £1.99 a pint. I naturally baulked when charged the standard £1.56 for a half, which attracted a manager – who explained that they couldn’t possibly sell me a half for 99p, “the till wouldn’t let us”. He then turned to the bartender – who had already drawn the half – and said, dismissively, “he doesn’t want it”. I protested that I didn’t mind paying the £1.56, if that was the only way to get a half of the Manager’s Special Stout, but no, the till wouldn’t allow them to do that either: it was a pint or nothing. So nothing it was. (Something similar did happen to me once before in a Spoons’, although that time I was less fussed about sticking to the half.) I ticked off the Paramount on a later visit, when they were serving Coach House Blunderbus (it’s a porter).

On then to the Waterhouse (also JDW and also buzzing), where I was faced with a pump clip for Kirkstall Black Band porter on a pump being energetically jockeyed by a bartender, evidently “pulling through”. Was it not on yet, I asked (not seeing any other dark beers on the bar), and was assured that it was on, just not at this end of the bar; to underscore the point, the bartender swapped the pump clip on the new tap with one for a Bradfield beer, which presumably was the one actually being pulled through. Ah well. Kirkstall Black Band porter is a really good beer, anyway – and they evidently know how to keep it at the Waterhouse, even if they have an odd approach to pump clips.

Out the back and in at the next doorway to the City, which was standing room only (it’s not the biggest pub, but still). I had a half of Stranger Times Revenant – a brewery I’d never heard of, but a pretty good stout. But by now it was getting on for 5.00 and I had places to be.

Another evening I started out at around a quarter to five, at Gulliver’s – another J.W. Lees pub and another half of Plum Pudding. I haven’t been to this pub very often and won’t be hurrying back – but it’s not them, it’s me. Shortly before leaving home I’d noticed that I’d galled the skin under one fingernail, which was gently but persistently oozing blood; there was no pain to speak of, so I only realised what had happened – and applied a plaster – when I saw blood on my phone screen. What I didn’t do, then or at any time till I went to the Gents’ in Gulliver’s, was look in the mirror. It turned out that I’d gone into town on the tram, and ordered at the bar, with what looked like a large bloody scab on my right cheek, and smears of blood on my left temple. Still, at least they served me.

On to the Millstone where – what? Sorry? Can we go outside?

It wasn’t quite 5.00 when I got to the Millstone, but it was already rammed, and the karaoke was in full swing – and very, very loud. I ordered another half of Plum Pudding (partly by sign language) and drank it as quickly as I could.

The Lower Turk’s Head was a veritable haven of tranquillity by comparison, although in absolute terms it was pretty busy. It being a Holt’s pub, I had a half of Sixex. I was a bit sceptical about Sixex qualifying as a ‘winter warmer’ – I’d had it in bottle and not been wildly impressed – but fair play to Joeys’, on draught this time round it was big, dark and punchy, and generally pretty much what you’d expect from an old ale.

As for Stockport, I did originally have a comprehensive (and potentially health-hazardous) crawl planned, but consulting the Winter Warmer Wander card revealed that I was in danger of piling up the easy-to-get “white” stickers while neglecting the more challenging “blue” and “gold”. (That’s another innovation this year, and it makes things a lot more interesting.) This year’s WWW visit to Stockport was therefore more selective than usual, even allowing for the non-availability of the Hope, the Railway, the George and who could forget the Tiviot, if they tried.

Anyway – at the Calverts Court (JDW) I had lunch with the other half and collected a prized blue sticker along with a pint of Salamander Python Porter. I haven’t seen much from Salamander lately, but this was rather a good, full-bodied porter.

Then down the road to the Bakers Vaults, where I perched in a rather ungainly manner on a ridiculously high stool and had a half of (drum-roll please) Robinson’s Old Tom. Mmm, Old Tom.

When on a crawl in Stockport I often finish at the Petersgate Tap, for obvious reasons, but – Stockport’s topography being what it is – this would have involved going down and then up again, and who wants to do that? So the Tap was my next stop. By this time Torrside Grubby Bastard had left the building, sadly, but Black Edge Treacle Stout was a very acceptable substitute. They also had a keg stout – Siren Death by CCC – which was rather good, if you like the idea of a ‘Caribbean chocolate cake’ stout clocking in at 10%. Which – despite my reservations about session-strength chocolate stouts – I rather do.

How to follow that, but with another half of Robinson’s Old Tom, at the Swan with Two Necks on the lower level. It was on hand pump, as at the Bakers Vaults, and as at the Bakers Vaults it was well kept and generally terrific.

12 pubs, 12 qualifying beers, 12 stickers (11 white and 1 blue). A good spread of beers, too: three stouts, three porters, three (count ’em) old ales and three ‘other’ (viz. J W Lees Plum Pudding). Too good to be true? Stay tuned!

 

 

 

In Dorset? I’ve only been once!

A week’s holiday outside term time seemed like an ideal way to capitalise on my retirement from academia and our kids both being adults. What we didn’t factor in, after a long and dry summer, was that once you’re out of term time you’re liable to be getting into autumn.

And so it was that we saw Swanage in the rain for most of the week we were there. Or rather, didn’t see Swanage very much at all, after a shopping trip on the first day led to the realisation that my cagoule was more ‘shower-proof’ than actually, you know, waterproof. A couple of sunny days at the end of the week were both welcome and frustrating – when you make your second sight-seeing trip on the last day of the holiday, you can’t help feeling like the rest of the week’s been wasted. Still, we completed most of the 1000-piece jigsaw we brought, and fitted in a game of Monopoly – which I won, for I think the first time ever – so it could have been worse.

But what about the beer, I hear you yawn. What indeed? Swanage isn’t a big place, but it’s big enough to have a decent selection of pubs  – seven of them within a half-mile walk, plus another couple further out of the centre (which I didn’t get to – so I couldn’t verify that the amenities of the Royal Oak include a “miniature Stonehenge”, sadly). I checked the handpump situation in all of them, and concluded that Swanage has something of an identity problem, beer-wise. We’d settled on Dorset in preference to Cornwall so as to make the drive more manageable, and I’m sure we weren’t the first or last people to make that calculation; still, it was a bit surprising to see so much Cornish beer on sale. It’s not just that there was Doom Bar everywhere – there is Doom Bar everywhere, after all. In Swanage, you could get St Austell Proper Job as well, or Tribute, or even Sharp’s Sea Fury.

I passed on all of those, and skipped a few pubs where they were all that was on offer. In the Black Swan – a food-led pub with a really good menu, for what it’s worth – I had a pint of Dorset Brewing Company Dorset Knob, a darkish, full-bodied bitter that tasted stronger than its 3.9%. (Not really local, but Dorchester’s a lot closer than St Austell.) I was rather more impressed by the Isle of Purbeck Fossil Fuel at the White Swan; this was another dark bitter but stronger and with a lot more depth and complexity. (Nice pub, too; very ‘pubby’, giving the air of pitching mainly to locals – which, speaking as a tourist but not one who was always in the market for a sit-down meal, I rather appreciated.)

As those familiar with Dorset geography will realise, the Isle of Purbeck brewery actually is local to Swanage; so too is Hattie Brown, whose Moonlite I had with a meal at the Ship. The meal was fine, but the beer was excellent – a light, pale yellow, loose-headed hopmonster that reminded me of nothing so much as Hophead. A general store on the front was selling a range of Hattie Brown‘s beers, which I stocked up on to bring home; tasting notes to follow!

The only other pub I went into was the Red Lion, which I’d walked past several times before finally venturing in; they appeared to have Proper Job and Landlord on hand pump, but they also appeared to have menus permanently propped up against the said handpumps, giving the strong impression that they weren’t in use. As, it turned out, they weren’t: when I ordered a pint of Landlord, the bartender disappeared into the back room and came back with a full pint glass. There were three cask beers, it turned out – Proper Job, Landlord and Siren Lumina, of all things – and seemingly they were all on stillage. Unless there was a back bar that I didn’t notice, but that doesn’t seem likely: I looked quite hard for somewhere to sit and don’t think I would have overlooked it. The Red Lion was evidently trying to split the difference between the two main customer sectors in the town, as most of the space that wasn’t given over to tables for dining was taken up with a pool table. But I found a seat and got myself comfortable, and would probably have stayed there for some time with my pint of Landlord (which was in good nick), if it hadn’t been for the arrival of a second bartender. She was the chatty type, and marked her entrance by doing the rounds of the bar area, saying hallo to all her friends and telling the entertaining story of how that morning she’d woken up really really hot and sweaty, I mean really hot, then I went out in the garden and I was just really cold, shivering and everything, I think I must have a really high temperature, worst I’ve ever had, I think, but apart from that I’m absolutely fine, no, I’m not going to take the day off, I feel fine… I sunk my Landlord before she had the chance to breathe in my direction.

And that was it for the beers of Swanage, although not quite it for Dorset. On our penultimate day the sun shone and we took the steam train to Corfe Castle – a ridiculous way to travel, which I recommend unreservedly. The castle was quite something, too, although I was a bit disappointed at how Royalist the National Trust signage was; I guess the Parliamentarians did wreck the place, to be fair. Corfe Castle (the town) gave a distinct impression of long memories and old grudges; there’s a prominent plaque in the main square that was put up in 1978, commemorating the assassination of “Edward, King and Martyr” by his mother Queen Elfrida (or Ælfthryth), at Corfe Castle in 978. Justice for Eadweard! (I do feel a bit sorry for the kid – he was only 16.)

In among all the history, we paid a visit to the Bankes Arms, where we found the service disconcertingly, well, servile – an impression made all the more unsettling when I chanced to look straight at the guy who’d just been giving us the Sir and Madam treatment: a colder and more hostile stare you never saw. So I wouldn’t entirely recommend the pub on that basis. More importantly, they serve beer from Palmer’s of Bridport, a little way down the coast. I had a pint of the Pale Ale – a great example of an old-school English PA (which is to say, neither hoppy nor indeed pale) – and one of the strong bitter, 200, which was excellent.

So that’s Swanage: not really a beer destination. (Or a cider destination; I noticed that the White Swan was advertising a ‘cider festival’, but on closer inspection this amounted to six bag-in-box ciders, four Lilley’s and two Thatcher’s.) There is some nice beer to be found, though, as the forthcoming Hattie Brown bottle review will hopefully demonstrate.

Update 28th November

The Hattie Brown bottled beers were… fine. Really, they were fine; there wasn’t anything wrong with any of them, although the fierce bittering of the session pale, Moonlite (see above) did come close to making me wince. There were some more, less aggressive, pales – Kirrin Island, Mustang Sally and Herkules (at all of 5%); there was a full-bodied, caramel-heavy stout (Crow Black); and there was a strong traditional bitter (6%) called Dog on the Roof (“Named after our dog – full of character, irresistible and often to be found on the roof”). They were good, I’d get them again; nice label art, too. They just didn’t quite rise to the level of deserving their own post.

Niche/Chain

Always nice to hear from Melt Banana, and that particular waxing goes by the name of Niche oblique stroke Chain, good heavens…

At the end of a working day there’s not much I like better than stopping for a pint, or else a half of something silly, on my way home. And if by ‘working day’ you mean ‘those hours that I’m obliged to spend in the workplace, before sodding off home to get on with my day’ – meaning that the timing of the ‘after-work’ drink comes forward to 3.00 or 4.00 – well, so much the better. Day-time pubs are quiet pubs, and (as I said here) there’s something I particularly like about the atmosphere in a quiet pub – especially a pub that feels as if it’s going to get busy later. (Incidentally, I think that feeling – that there is a buzz here, just not right now – is the key to the ‘dead vs quiet’ question. To turn it round, a ‘dead’ pub is a quiet pub that feels as if it won’t get busy – later on, or in some cases ever again.)

But I am a CAMRA member – and generally in favour of small and independent bars and breweries – and I realised recently that my after-work stops weren’t taking me to real ale pubs, or even to anywhere truly independent. I confess: I’d got into the habit of stopping for an after-work drink at BrewDog. Reasons not to drink at BrewDog are legion; I promptly resolved to break the habit, and go to an independent bar for my next daytime drink. I won’t name the bar, because (spoiler) the comparison wasn’t entirely in its favour.

Still, going somewhere that isn’t plastered with corporate signage, and offers cask beer, seemed like a good idea in principle; the first question I asked myself was why I hadn’t done this before. The answer that came back was, because this place wasn’t open the last time I was passing at this time of day. At the moment I’m sometimes in the market for a homeward-bound drink around 3.30 on a Friday and sometimes at the same time on a Monday, and the bar I was in – like a lot of independent pubs and bars – rations its daytime openings in the early part of the week, when people generally are more likely to use it.

That day was a Friday, though, so no issue there. After I’d sat down the room started to fill up, and soon it was clear that POETS day was in full swing (ask your Dad). The sound of the background music soon mingled with the sound of conversation and the sound of the bartender explaining something to a punter (he seemed to like explaining things; perhaps he’d been on his own all day). It all combined to produce an atmosphere in which… in which it was quite hard to concentrate on my LRB, actually. Some like people-watching, some like striking up conversation with strangers, but when I go to bars on my own I go for two things, apart from the beer: (a) to read and (b) to zone out and let my mind wander. The problem, I realised – or, if not a problem, the area where this bar was getting outperformed by those nouveau-corporate Scots gits – was that the music wasn’t loud enough: it was at ‘polite background for when conversation flags’ level, rather than the level of ‘unignorable bordering on in-your-face’. There are those who prefer silence by way of background, but personally I like a bit of background music, as long as it’s not a genre I particularly dislike (gangsta rap, hair metal…). Whatever it is, though, it does have to be loud enough. Not too loud – certainly not loud enough that people have to shout (hello, Society! HELLO! I said… oh, never mind). Just loud enough to be unignorable, and to put up a bit of a barrier to the other ambient sounds (Friday evening crowd chatting, bartender explaining things, etc) – because then it’s also loud enough to create an atmosphere in which the solitary punter can lose him- or herself.

What about the beer, though? The bar I was in certainly had the jump on BrewDog in terms of cask beers, but everything on handpump was in the same kind of area (pale and around 4%) – and that afternoon I was in the market for the aforementioned half of something silly: an imperial stout, a barleywine, a tripel, a quad… This is an area in which the bar owned by the dodgy plastic punks excels, frequently offering a choice between two or three of the above styles. The bar I was in had a number of interesting-looking keg offerings, including an impy stout at a fairly daunting ABV; however, they also had a strong NEIPA produced by everyone’s favourite Finnish brewery, Pöhjala, in collaboration with a Bulgarian brewery. I’m not crazy about NEIPA as a style, but I am a bit of a Pöhjala fan – and besides, I was intrigued to find out what a Finnish/Bulgarian take on NEIPA would taste like. So I ordered that. It turned out to taste like a mango and passionfruit smoothie with added yeast-bite, or in other words like every other NEIPA. (But I could have had the 12% pastry stout, so really that one’s on me.)

In short, the bar owned by the CAMRA-baiting headline-chasers in bed with private equity delivered a better, more reliable and more consistent experience than the independent bar which I’m not going to name, and it did so precisely because it was a larger-scale operation with a more ‘corporate’ style: longer opening hours, multiple lines devoted to ‘silly’ options, in-your-face music, staff who keep shtum when they’re not trying to sell you something. My experience reminds me, to my embarrassment, of the South Park episode where the residents boycott a new chain coffee bar in favour of the longstanding independent coffee shop, only to find out when they actually try “Harbucks” that its coffee is far better (“Hey, this doesn’t taste like mud!”). There are some things that a chain bar (and let’s not kid ourselves that the bars owned by those staff-abusing fake rebel millionaires are anything other than a chain) can actually do better than an indie, and filling a particular, oddly-shaped niche is one of them. JDW’s (for all their flaws) are the real ale pubs where you can always get a cheap meal with your kids, should that be what you want; BD are the craft beer bar where you can always get a half of something silly, with musical accompaniment by the White Stripes or Fat Freddy’s Drop, on a weekday afternoon, if that‘s what you’re in the market for.

(Starbucks coffee is rank, though.)

 

 

 

Toil and trouble

Ten years ago, I wrote:

My local Spoons … [currently has] six decent guest beers, plus the usual suspects. On my way to the Spoons’ I stuck my nose in every pub or bar I passed, making a mental note of how many beers were available & which breweries were featured. And I can report that the [four] places I passed on that ten-minute walk were serving 22 cask beers from 15 different breweries … This evening I tried the experiment of walking ten minutes the other way, to find another three bars and another eight beers [from as many breweries] … I think this has to be a bubble, speaking economically (as well as culturally) … Realistically you’d have to bet that we’re going to lose one of those bars and/or two of those breweries over the next year.

The other day I tried the experiment again. The Sedge Lynn is still there, and currently (according to the app) has five decent cask beers from four breweries – not a huge change from ten years ago. On the way there, though, I passed four bars, which between them offered seven cask beers from five breweries; “22 cask beers from 15 different breweries” seems like a very distant memory. Ten minutes the other way took me past the same three bars as ten years ago, now offering seven cask beers from six breweries (instead of 8 from 8). Putting it all together, if you’d walked from the Nip and Tipple to the Beer House (the last stop before the Sedge Lynn) ten years ago, you could have had the choice of 30 cask beers from 22 different breweries; if you did it last weekend, the choice would be half that, 14 cask beers from 11 breweries. I didn’t include the Beagle on either occasion, because (a) it’s just past the Sedge Lynn and (b) you’ve got to stop somewhere, but it wouldn’t have helped the comparison – at the weekend they had all of one handpump operational, and it was serving one of the (two) cask beers that were on at the Font.

What’s changed? Well, many things have changed – I’m comparing April with June, apart from anything else, so it may possibly be that some of those bars were running dry due to warm-weather demand. Other than that, I was expecting to see little change among the (seven) bars of 2013 – six of them still are bars, after all – and carnage among the (22) breweries, but if anything it was the other way round. As far as I can make out, only three of the 22 breweries have closed outright, even after ten years (Bristol Beer Company, Hornbeam and Liverpool Organic) – although both Dark Star and Magic Rock have been taken over, twice. Three breweries – Brightside, Marble and RedWillow – wereon both lists. That leaves another 14 breweries whose cask beers you could find in that run of bars in 2013, vs. 8 that were there at the weekend:

2013: Art Brew, Beartown, Bollington, Buxton, Green Mill, Mobberley, Phoenix, Pictish, Redemption, Robinson’s, Salamander, Tatton, Thwaites and XT (plus Brightside, Marble and RedWillow)

2023: Arbor, Blackjack, Brewsmith, Hophurst, Neon Raptor, Settle, Squawk and Thornbridge (plus Brightside, Marble and RedWillow)

So that’s two breweries on both lists and five that aren’t on the second list because they’ve closed or been taken over, plus another fourteen that featured in 2013 only and eight in 2023 only. Adding the three on both lists back in, that’s 17 in 2013 vs 11 in 2023 – which is certainly a drop, but I’d call it substantial rather than dramatic. Put it this way, there doesn’t seem any obvious reason why we shouldn’t be seeing beers from Beartown, Pictish and Tatton on handpumps in Chorlton, bar space allowing.

But that’s the catch. The scale of the change is much clearer if you look at the bars involved and at which, or how many, cask beers they’re serving. (‘Beers’ in this table refers to cask beer.)

2013		2023
Name	Beers	Name	Beers
Nip & Tipple	2		2
Hillary Step	4+	(new owners)	4+
Jam Street Café	2	Jam Street	none
De Nada	2	closed	–
	–	Mary and Archie	none
Font	4+		2
Pi	2+	99 Reasons	none
Beer House	4+	(new owners)	4+

On the plus side, both the Beer House and the Hillary Step have changed hands without much change to the character of the bar, and in particular while continuing to offer a good cask range – and the Nip and Tipple has carried on doing whatever it is they do, complete with a couple of interesting cask beers. (Never go in, I must admit. Bit middle-class for me.) That’s about it for positives, though. De Nada turned into Keg and Cask, then closed, and eventually re-emerged as a Korean restaurant; I didn’t think the Thirsty Korean would last either, but it’s weathered the pandemic and is starting to look like a fixture. Not really a bar, though. Whether Jam Street has had a change of owner or just a change of decor I’m not sure, but either way it now seems to be managing without cask beer; there are three handpumps on the bar, but nothing on any of them (although WhatPub still lists it as having two cask beers). Pi was a real loss; 99 Reasons, in its place, has a nice café-bar vibe and a decent range of keg, but no cask beer (I think they had a couple on when they first opened, but I may be imagining it). Not sure if I’ve ever had real ale at the frankly-not-really-aimed-at-me Mary and Archie’s (don’t know why people go there, it’s so crowded!), but they certainly don’t do it now.

And then there’s Font (the Font?), which had a really impressive lineup of eight cask beers, sixteen kegs and eight real ciders back in 2013. That range was scaled down over the years, and they’ve currently got five handpumps, one of which is dedicated to cider. On reopening after lockdown the cask beer selection was minimal (i.e. 1), but subsequently they’ve built it back up again. Or so I thought – recent visits suggest that two cask beers is the current maximum. (I don’t know whether this has anything to do with the recent unexpected closure, after which the bar first reopened without any alcohol on the menu and then disabled the ‘ordering’ section of its app – all very odd.)

Seven bars in 2013, seven in 2023, but in 2013 three were serving four or more cask beers and the other four were serving two; now there are two with 4+ cask beers, two with two of them and three not serving any at all. I think we’re looking at two factors, one of them a long-term process and the other a short-term change – or rather, at a long-term process accelerated by a short-term factor. The long-term process is the mainstreaming of ‘craft’ in general, and the consequent fraying of any ties with a smaller community of drinkers with concerns about beer condition and brewery ownership: it’s become increasingly clear that you can do the craft thing without doing the CAMRA thing, in other words. (As for the awkward business of selling a perishable product to punters who are half connoisseur and half cheapskate, leave it to those bars that have a reputation for it (and/or are run by real ale geeks).) I don’t need to name the short-term factor, except to say that a lot of pubs poured away a lot of beer towards the end of March 2020; on re-opening, a lot of people must have found the keg-only option looking more attractive.

There may be other factors – the cost of living is one, although you wouldn’t think lack of spending power would work in craft beer’s favour. Either way, it looks as if the cask bubble in Chorlton and environs has pretty well burst, with “4+ cask beers” bars moving into the “2” bracket, and “2 cask beer” bars moving to “0”. While the cask/keg split means something very different from what it did back in the 70s – I drink a lot of keg myself, and by choice – it is starting to look as if cask beer may need defending, again.

Could it be Magic? (4)

This is the fourth of four posts about Mild Magic, CAMRA’s annual campaign to promote mild around Manchester.

A trip to Stockport – combining mild ticking on my part with craft-related shopping on my other half’s – got off to a decidedly inauspicious start. We missed the bus from Chorlton by making the rookie error of arriving only a minute or two ahead of the scheduled time, by which point the bus was already moving off. Necessity was the mother of invention: rather than wait for the next bus to Stockport, we decided to get the bus to Levenshulme and start the day’s mild-drinking at Fred’s Ale House. Fred’s was closed, however, and not because we were there too early; a phone call to the number on the hoarding revealed that the manager was ill and that the bar wouldn’t be opening that week, let alone that day. (Best wishes for a speedy recovery to, well, Fred, I guess.)

We soon managed to get a bus for Stockport, although the journey was interrupted by an abortive attempt on my part to make the route more interesting by starting with Romiley. I forget exactly what was wrong with this route, but it looked a lot less attractive once we were waiting for the relevant bus. Eventually we decided to knock it on the head and just go to Stockport, as originally planned. The Crown on Heaton Lane was a welcome sight when we finally got there – I was actually quite thirsty, apart from anything else – but no mild was to be had. The beers that were on weren’t bad at all – I had a half of Pictish Jarrylo – but there weren’t very many; the bar had something like a 1:2 ratio between pumps with anything on and those without. Nor was there much custom to speak of, that sunny weekend lunchtime, apart from a guy making a delivery who stayed for a chat with the bartender. The Crown has a lot of positive memories as well as some sad ones, and I’d love to see it busy again; I can’t see it at the moment, though.

We were on coffee at the Café San Juan, where we had an absolutely stonking lunch at a very reasonable price (even for Stockport). Nothing to do with Mild Magic, but this Colombian café is well worth a visit if you’re in the area.

I made for the Angel next, where the bartender didn’t seem very keen on serving halves, or else he wasn’t very keen on me personally. (Or maybe he’d just bitten his lip.) Anyway, Distant Hills Dark Mild was fine but rather surprising; it was on the malty side for dark milds, but also in the ‘light-textured, fresh-tasting and not particularly dark’ area. If there was such a thing as a light dark bitter, or a mid-brown mild, this would be it. I’d recommend seeking it out if it weren’t for the recent sad news about the brewery.

My itinerary took me next to the Grove Alehouse, the only bar I’ve been to during Mild Magic (or in the last couple of years) that didn’t take card payments. Cash duly located, I settled down in a corner with a half of Elgood’s Black Dog – the first time I’ve seen that one – while the bartender had a chat with some friends; the small scale and laid-back atmosphere of the Grove made this a much more pleasant experience than it had been at the Crown.

Into each life a little rain must fall, and no Mild Magic would be quite complete without one of my very least favourite beers, Coach House Gunpowder Mild. Still, the George and Dragon – one of those rambling open-plan multiple-seating-area pubs with every area dominated by a large screen TV – deserves credit for having a mild on, even if it does taste of liquorice water. The Milliner in Davenport – a small, laidback bar with a playlist somewhere between “contemporary indie” and “Greatest Hits Radio” – couldn’t stretch that far (although I’ve since learned that it had had the Distant Hills dark mild on earlier). And the RedWillow Noble Pale was rather good, to be fair.

Back to town, then – well, back to Stockport – and where better to finish than the Petersgate Tap. Tatton Pennine (light mild) was very nice. RedWillow Double Heritage Porter (yes, on cask) was very nice indeed. And Thornbridge Pardus (Sticky Toffee Pudding) was very silly indeed, and really rather good. After that lot I was back on the bus; I put the lid on the crawl with a half of Steelfish Running With Believers at the Ladybarn Social Club, while watching the end of the City game. I’ve used ‘laid-back’ as a term of approbation a couple of times, and there’s not much more laid-back than the Ladybarn Social Club; it was a really nice way to finish the day. (And I don’t even support City.)

Entering the Grove in Clayton, a week later, I was transported back to Manchester pub-going in the 1980s – old boys sat behind half-empty pints on upholstered benches, obscured by clouds of… steady on, that’s not tobacco smoke, is it? An unexpected aspect of the spread of vaping has been that you very rarely smell tobacco any more; I’d assumed people would want to replicate it, but apparently not. But there evidently is at least one vape liquid out there that produces clouds of tobacco-scented vapour (and double-takes). There was a surprisingly lively discussion going on, on the surprising topic of spelling:

“Course I know how it’s spelt! O, U…”
– Eulogy doesn’t begin with an O, U! I’ve googled it – it’s E, U, L, O, G, Y! It’s not f.ing ougley!
“Will you f.ing shut up?” [this from another part of the room]
– Who?
“You!”

A bit livelier than I was expecting for 12.00 noon.; the pub had been open since half eleven, though. The person shouting the (correct) spelling of ‘eulogy’ across the room (and being told to shut up) was the bartender, I should mention. Anyway, I asked for a half of Holt’s Unmistakably Mild and got one from the standard Mild tap (they had one of each). Since then I’ve heard of pubs putting the Unmistakably on instead of the standard Mild rather than alongside it. The one I had was a fairly big and complex beer (and very nice, I should say), so the chances are it was the Unmistakably.

Further down the tramline, the bartender at the Silly Country wasn’t aware that Mild Magic was still running (it was the final weekend, to be fair). Not seeing anything labelled ‘mild’, I ordered the darkest thing on the bar, which turned out to be a sweetish, full-bodied dark mild with an interesting roasty edge. (It was Lord’s Black Gold, and it was in fact a stout. Nevertheless.)

In previous years I’ve had Bridge beers at the Austin Powers drinking den that is Tapster’s in Ashton-under-Lyne, but the lineup that Saturday was all Settle – and no mild. (The bitter I had was pretty good, though.) Before leaving Ashton I paid a visit to the old market hall for something to eat (viz. a cheese and onion pie), and fitted in a half of Brightside Manchester Magic Mild at the Ash Tree (JDW) while I was waiting for my bus.

Onward to the final stop, Stalybridge. That Saturday afternoon, the streets of Staly were doing their usual impression of the Mary Celeste. (Maybe things pick up in the evening.) I didn’t get a chance to test my theory about Hyde’s 1863; the White House only had Hyde’s Dark Ruby in the way of milds, and the Q Inn (to give it its full name) didn’t even have that. But the best (of the day) was yet to come: at Bridge Beers, Bridge Golden Mild was so good that I stayed for a second half. This is only the third light mild I’ve had this year, and – like the Tatton example – it was excellent; no issues with condition, either, which is impressive in a bar serving multiple beers on stillage. One small negative: listing all your draught beers on the blackboard whether they’re available or not, and having a bartender tell each customer in turn which ones are on, represents excellent customer service with a personal touch, but lacks something in terms of speed and efficiency.

Journey’s end – and, for me, Mild Magic’s end – was the Buffet Bar, where I had a very nice half of RedWillow Dark Ruby Mild. And a very nice half of Zapato Frambozen (on keg). And listened to some very nice music in very nice surroundings while eating a very nice pork pie… It was that stage of the day, let’s face it. And finally Esther, a half of Serious Goldrush (Belgian yeast, it’s the future!).

Fourteen pubs, ten milds, ten breweries. Overall, that makes 49 pubs, of which 38 had at least one mild on (nine Holt’s pubs, seven Hyde’s, five Spoon’s and 17 independent or ‘other’), and 22 milds from 19 breweries (viz. Bank Top, Beartown, Blackjack, Bridge, Brightside, Coach House, Distant Hills, Dunham, Elgood’s, Empire, Holt’s, Hyde’s, Only With Love, Peerless, RedWillow, Rudgate, Steelfish, Tatton and Titanic).

I considered listing the places that didn’t have a mild on here, but in many cases I think they genuinely were ‘between milds’ or had under-ordered – or, in the case of JDW’s pubs, had over-ordered on ‘festival’ beers. I will say that one or two places seem to have severely under-ordered (no sightings of mild at Wine and Wallop any later than mid-April), and the mild which visitors to the Famous Crown were repeatedly assured was on order never seems to have arrived – and I didn’t get the impression that those in charge at the Beech had ever had any intention of putting a mild on.

Still, that’s only a handful of refuseniks out of 49 pubs – and they can be set against the successes represented getting milds into places like the Milliner or the Head of Steam. Many thanks to everyone involved in organising this year’s Mild Magic, and to the brewers and publicans who entered into the spirit of it; it was a lot of fun.

Could it be Magic? (3)

This is the third of four posts on the 2023 iteration of Mild Magic, CAMRA’s annual campaign to promote mild around Manchester.

A trip to Sale and Altrincham started out at the J P Joule (JDW), a spit away from the Metrolink, where a survey of the pumps revealed no milds; I wasn’t particularly sorry to settle for an Acorn Gorlovka. (Perhaps the reasons for it aren’t entirely admirable, but I do appreciate JDW’s policy of putting on 6% stouts at the same price as every other guest beer.) When I asked for a sticker the bartender pointed out that they did in fact have a mild on – Titanic Dark Mild was lurking at the top end of the bar along with Ruddles County and Greene King Abbot. There was no objection to giving me a sticker, “but I didn’t want you going away and saying we didn’t have a mild on”. Duly noted.

Down the road, the Volunteer was its familiar big, slightly basic, partially-carpeted self, and not one but two Holt’s milds were on the bar. I ordered the standard mild, and – it being 3.2% as compared to the 4.3% Unmistakably – pushed the boat out and had a pint.

We could see the bus stop across the road from where we were sitting, meaning that we could tell we’d missed the hourly bus to Altrincham without getting up. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the other hourly bus to Altrincham hadn’t been scheduled for all of two minutes later. (Sort it out, Andy!) We trekked back to the Metrolink and headed for Alti that way. The Unicorn (JDW) also had Titanic Dark Mild on, and this time I did order it. It was turning into a bit of a day for pints, unusually for Mild Magic trips; we were eating, and I couldn’t bring myself to order a half to go with my meal. Not only that, but they were for some reason selling off Rudgate Ruby Mild at an MUP-busting 99p per pint, and I could hardly pass that up.

Lastly we went to Costello’s. What is there to say about Costello’s (other than that it’s twice as big as the last time we were there and has a music policy that falls on the right side of eclectic*)? What’s there to say about Dunham Dark, or Dunham Porter, or Lymm Lymm Dam? Great beers, great bar.

*nothing later than the Kaiser Chiefs, earlier than the Sex Pistols** or more mainstream than New Order
**sorry, Matthew

A trip to Salford, Eccles and points beyond might have been in this post, but that I couldn’t work out how to start it from the cathedral area, and it seemed absurd to ‘do’ Salford without the New Oxford. So I just made a trip out from town to the New Oxford on its own. The bartender was in expansive form and told me that I’d just missed the Moorhouse‘s Black Cat Reserve, which he’d hoped would last Mild Magic out. I think he may also have told me that they hadn’t got it in for MM but had had it sitting around for ages (possibly even since before lockdown?), as they didn’t believe in throwing away good beer if they could help it, and if it hadn’t been opened it wasn’t as if it would go off, but it’s possible I misunderstood that bit. (If anyone had the Black Cat Reserve and found it a touch punchier than the advertised strength, though…) Anyway, I had a half of RedWillow Heritage Porter and another of Cloudwater Dusk, a 4.6% stout with cacao and vanilla; I was intrigued to see how a drinking-strength stout coped with additions like that, but the answer turned out to be “by dialling them right down”. The RedWillow porter, on the other hand, was superb; I haven’t been blown away by the HP in cans, but on cask it was something else. As indeed was the New Oxford, whose beer range I’ve been a bit lukewarm about in some previous years; there were some nice-looking beers on the list, and the mid-table sluggers of brewing were much less in evidence. Hopefully I’ll get back there before this time next year.

The Lord Nelson in Urmston is another big, open-plan Holt’s pub, and it also had both milds on the bar. I commented to the bartender that most places only seemed to be selling the Unmistakably Mild; he said, “that’s because most places don’t sell mild,” and walked off to the other bar. The Holt’s Mild was in good nick, and the pub was – if this doesn’t sound too ridiculous – an old man’s pub in the best sense of the word: everything was immaculate, from the wood and leather to the placement of beermats, and on that Saturday afternoon the pub had just enough custom to make you think it was going to be absolutely buzzing later on. This is probably the biggest difference between old-school working men’s pubs and Spoons’, which often look considerably less than immaculate and give the impression that it’s going to be a bit lairy later on. (And yet my wife and daughter consistently prefer them to Holt’s pubs. Must be the menu.)

Enough amateur sociology, and onward to the Prairie Schooner, which was already absolutely buzzing – so much so that I couldn’t find a seat. H’mph. Brightside Manchester Magic Mild (is somebody looking for a sponsorship opportunity?) was a good example of the malty end of the mild spectrum, although I think 5% is a bit top-end for a mild; I didn’t feel like stopping for another, though.

Finally, a trip to Cheadle and environs gave me further data for my theory about Hyde’s 1863. At the Horse and Farrier they seemed to be shifting a lot of it – well, they seemed to be shifting a lot of everything – and it was… fine. Not really my favourite beer, judged from that half – a light, thin-bodied bitter with pronounced bitterness and sharpness and not much else; you’d certainly never take it for a light mild. And then there was the James Watts. Seeing the name, I looked at the Spoons app on my phone to see what they had on, but it’s not a Spoons at all. The pub’s own Web page explains all:

To satisfy an interest in craft ale and for those looking to explore beers from the far flung corners of the globe, the James Watts is the place sample the wares.

With an array of over 100 beers to choose from, we have something to keep you interested as you seek out your new favourite tipple.

Enjoy some time with friends in a laid-back atmosphere with a glass of wine or a masterly crafted beer.

If there’s one thing I like even more than a beer from the far flung corners of the globe, it’s a masterly crafted beer. So I had high hopes when I headed for the James Watts – well, no, to be honest I didn’t have high hopes at all, but I was intrigued; I had no idea what I was going to see on the bar. So it was a complete surprise to see a cask lineup consisting of Hyde’s Original, 1863, Dark Ruby and Hopster. Exactly what Hyde’s are trying to do with that pub, or why they’re trying to do it in Cheadle, I don’t know, but I think they need a rethink. The 1863, on the other hand, was really nice – pleasantly bland, slightly sweet, very much a light mild. Work that out.

My last port of call in the area was a genuine, and rather pleasantly spartan, craft beer bar, the Wobbly Stamp. They were playing Erasure and serving Empire Moonrakers’ Mild – a ‘ten malt mild’ from a brewery in Slaithwaite, and one of the best milds I’ve had this year; I enjoyed both of them.

Ten pubs visited, nine of which were serving seven different milds. Overall, that’s 35 pubs visited and 15 different milds, from 13 breweries. Avanti!

Next: I make it to beer city (Stockport) and reach the end of the road (Stalybridge)