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Real Ale Home
Welcome to the serious Real Ale part of the site.
This site is not intended to be an ale drinkers index or encyclopaedia. There are plenty of good sites out there on the inter-web-thingy that fulfil that role. Beer Mad for one. It’s more a record of places I’ve visited, observations I’ve made and links to sites I like. Esoteric and personal.
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Erratic though they are:
Festival & Pub reports
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Thursday 1st July - Saturday 3rd July 2004
Stowmarket Beer Festival 2004
Another damned fine festival, despite the rain. It's a sort of outside and inside festival.
My favourite ale of the festival was OULTON - Sunrise (double helpings of that one).
Other beers included:
BATEMANS - Dark Mild
BATEMANS - Portugoal despite the link to fusbal this was good
BUFFY - Bitter
COX & HOLBROOK - Old Mill Bitter
GREEN JACK - Summer Dream
HUMPTY DUMPTY - Swallowtail
KINGS HEAD - NSB
KINGS HEAD - JJ Lemon
KINGS HEAD - First Gold I like Kings Head beer !
MAULDONS - Midsummer Gold don't normally like their beer - this was good
MIGHTY OAK - Simply The Best it wasn't
OLD CHIMNEYS - Wigeon
OULTON - Oulton Bitter
OULTON - Nautilus Oulton have replaced Lidstones* as the best local brew me thinks
UNCLE STUART - Church View enough to turn you religious
VALE - Hadda's Summer Ale
WINTERS - Golden
WOLF - Coyote Wolf - always good beer
*Lidstones have moved to Yorkshire !
Wednesday 21st - Saturday 24th April 2004
East Anglian Beer Festival
I've never drunk so many different beers in such a short space of time. But I suppose as Bury St Edmunds is my home town, and I was
on holiday, it gave me the chance to try a goodly proportion.
I didn't try anything that really made me go wow, but by the same token, there was nothing awful either.
The beers I tried were:
ALEWIFE 2000 - Dark Skies Stout
BANKS AND TAYLOR - Two Brewers Bitter
BLANCHFIELDS - Best Bull
BUFFY'S - Norwich Terrier
CHALK HILL - CHB
CITY OF CAMBRIDGE - Sunset Square
CROUCH VALE - Brewers Gold
EARL SOHAM - Gannet Mild
FENLAND - Osier Cutter
FOX - Red Knocker
GREEN DRAGON - Chaucer
GREEN JACK - Orange Wheat Beer
GREEN TYE - XBF
GREEN TYE - Union Jack
ICENI - It's A Grand Day
KING'S HEAD - First Gold
MALDON - Blue Boar Bitter
MIGHTY OAK - Simply The Best
MIGHTY OAK - Fools Gold
NETHERGATE - Priory Mild
OULTON - Oulton Bitter
OULTON - Beedazzled
POTTON - Night Fighter
SPECTRUM - Light Fantastic
SPECTRUM - Forty Two
TINDALL - Mild
TINDALL - Fuggled Up
WISSEY VALLEY BREWERY - Wild Widow
WOLF - Edith Cavell
Saturday, 14th February 2004
4th Ipswich Winter Beer Festival
Really good festival !
Plenty of room to sit down, and not too crowded in the afternoon. Good selection of ales.
A virtually fault free festival. Only gripe, but not overly important, no printed beer list/programme available for the punters to keep.
Fucking fantastic beer though !
Favourite:
DENT - Ewe 2 (not a beer, or brewery come to that, that I was familiar with)
Others tasted, included:
VALE - Winter Solstice
TINDALL - Lovers Ale
EARL SOHAM - Jowabrugg
ITCHEN VALLEY - Treacle Stout
OULTON ALES - Porter
KINGS HEAD - Stout
DARK STAR - Winter Porter
I'd recommend them all !
Saturday, 31st January 2004
Cambridge Winter Beer Festival
Not a very enjoyable festival.
A long way from the station. In rooms not suited to a beer festival. And as much as I like Fuller's London Pride - Is it really a winter ale ?
All the beer I had was excellent.
Included:
ORKNEY - Dark Island
EXMOOR - Hart
CALEDONIAN - Burns Ale
YOUNGS - Winter Warmer
Saturday, 1st November 2003
Norwich Beer Festival
Bit of a rum do !
Odd opening hours 11.30am to 2.30pm then 7.00pm to 11.30pm. Why ???
Probably the worst organised beer festival I’ve ever been to.
Never mind, all the beer was good.
Strange folk, Norfolk people.
Favourites:
LIDSTONES – Rawalpindi IPA
FENLAND - Prospecters Gold
BUFFYS - Hopleaf
Saturday, 27th September 2003
Ipswich Beer Festival
Attended lunchtime/afternoon. Didn’t seem to be as busy at this time as in previous years. Made it all the more pleasant for that though. The beer selection was varied, geographically widespread and daringly a little quirky – damn near perfect really !
Favourites included:
LIDSTONES – Session Bitter, this is rapidly becoming one of my favourite breweries, although worryingly it mentions a planned move to North Yorkshire in the “Official Programme”. Can’t help thinking the water won’t be right up there !
KINGS HEAD – First Gold.
OKELLS – Bitter.
OULTON ALES – Bitter.
HOOK NORTON – Best Bitter.
Friday, 29th August 2003
Greene King AGM
Being a share-holder in Greene King (it’s not as flash as it sounds – I’ve only got a few) entitles me to turn up to their AGM, and exercise my right to eat from the buffet and drink their ale from the ‘free’ bar, in copious amounts.
IPA, Ruddles County and 1799 all went down a treat, along with the assorted grub, which unfortunately, was heavily biased towards the flesh eaters.
It was an interesting do. The combined ages of most of the old sods (endearing Suffolk term) must have been in mid to high tens of thousands.
It’s not really democracy in action, but I got to vote for my dividend. That’ll be another socialist who’s sold his soul then.
I hope I get to go again next year.
24th August 2003
The Wharf House, Oxford
What a fantastic pub !
Actually it’s more like the pub that time by-passed. Sadly it has a crumbling exterior, hiding an equally crumbling interior.
The dust on the hi-fi, I’m sure, was Victorian, but the glasses were clean and the beer was excellent. I had two pints of Pitchfork. Top quality. The cider, consumed by The Lady and her friend, was Day-Glo orange but I was assured tasted really nice.
I loved it !
Saturday, 9th August 2003
The Bull Inn, New Street, Paisley
This is a pub well worth a visit just for the décor etc.
There’s some very nice stained glass in the front window. There are also a number of cubby-hole rooms, each with their own fireplace. Where meals can be taken.
The menu’s basic pub grub, with a few (not many) offerings suitable for vegetarians. But this is Scotland after all.
The ale was good as well. Deuchars IPA when I was there. It went down a treat.
I hope to return there on our next visit to Paisley
More reports will be included in this section as soon as I can be arsed to type them up.
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