Beer-aeth

  I am so fucking massively disappointed, and I only have myself to blame. For some reason, having discovered this pub on a widely used online mapping site, and cased the joint using its street viewing tool, I didn't actually bother clicking on the accompanying link to the pub's website. Had I done so, I would have discovered that the Cricketers is a Stonegate pub. Whilst not being an immediate red flag, it is certainly a grey flag, and I would tempered my expectations accordingly. Let's discuss those expectations.  The quintessentially English pub overlooks a green. Always. This will be used for cricket, or bowls, or croquet, or dancing around maypoles, or burning heretics, or morris dancing (hopefully not), or jousting or some shit. The pub sign will not be affixed to the pub but hanging from a pylon on the green itself. Nearby will be a pond for dangling ones feet in when cooling off in the summer months. The building will be of a nonsensical layout, with various additio...

  I have of late come to realise that the thing above all others that really inspires me to put pen to paper is having my expectations utterly confounded.  I have begun writing a review of The Friendship in Borth, yet to be completed, but there was a bizarre, cold, deserted husk of a pub that over the course of three hours became one of my favourite ever. And the opposite can happen too. I love cider. It has a hard time. I barely ever drink it when I'm out because it's almost impossible to get a good pint of cider anywhere. Even in Zummerzet, as I discovered earlier this year. But in London you can get anything! If you want really good Korean food, you can get it. If you want to go to a specialist Belgian beer bar that makes you feel like you're in Ghent, you're sorted. If you want the latest faddy Instagrammable food trends that cost an absolute fucking fortune and are 'curated' by someone whose Dad is a major shareholder in BAE then there's Borough Market....

Since my first visit to The Hope I have now visited in the region of roughly a million times. I’ve struggled to pick up a pen and add to my missive because I do bore of writing something so wholly positive. It’s a great strain. Such is the lot of the beer writer. I now feel restored enough to write some more complimentary paragraphs and have even had time to think up a handful of negatives which can be firmly labelled and placed within a category marked ‘pedantic nitpicking by a tedious arsehole with too much time on her hands.’ I will suffer for my art. Volume One left off around the back of the L-shaped bar. Continuing around we arrive at the newer half of the pub, which is sadly open plan and therefore fills up as a last resort, once the older front half is at capacity. What’s missing up here is some banquettes, and instead we find tables with individual chairs which gives it a f eeling more like a gastropub. Yes, The Hope does hearty well-priced food, but the gastropub aestheti...

What a shit fucking day. The existential dread of the morning was slowly replaced by the anxiety palpitations of the afternoon, only to then give way to the existential dread that comes from the knowledge that there's an identical day yet to come. I need a treat. Getting on the stopper train by mistake could have tipped me over the edge, but as cunts always say, the Chinese word for crisis is the same as opportunity. No idea of it's even true. Like swans breaking mens arms. Or that story about Grant Shapps. It's been repeated so many times there must be a kernel of truth in it, right? My opportunity was the opportunity to make a long anticipated visit to The Belleville Brewing Company, visible to me on each journey through Wandsworth Common station. Part of the reason I think that it has been so tempting was probably simply because it's west facing, and therefore as I crawled past on a sweaty commuter train I could see a throng of people with better lives than me soakin...

    I’ll never forget the first time I saw The Hope, but there were no external indications that the place might become one of my favourite pubs of all time. It’s found on quite a busy road on the outskirts of the delightful Carshalton village, with a narrow strip of pavement in front, meaning you never see the building from the frontal aspect. It’s mostly red brick, and perhaps even a little bit nondescript. There was one clue as to its general excellentness outside though: an enormous number of empty casks, stacked and ready for collection. It’s not a smoking gun of course. It could be that the clientele just really fucking like D**mb*r. Once inside I warmed to the hostelry, based purely at this stage on the ale selection. There were four keg taps for the more exotic pale ales (usually Verdant, Drop Project, DEYA etc.), four further keg taps that contained some very decent imported lager and some atrocious cider ( de rigueur ), followed by two more keg taps for sours. I ...

  Rule 97. Don't be a note-fold-cock I'm certain that you will be tumescent with excitement to hear that I have been to several more pubs. Further reviews are on their way, along with my much ruminate upon treatise on cider and a thorough critique on the ephemera that coalesce to create the perfect pub. In the meantime, these visits have given me even deeper insight into the rules of the pub. Waving a tenner at the bartender will not get you served any quicker. It's not the first time they've seen one. Other people have them. You just look like a tit. 11.  Don't underestimate the importance of the correct level and hue of lighting. Electric light should be used sparingly. People who are drinking together don't necessarily want to see each other clearly. 12. Never, ever, ever, ever, fucking ever, demand payment for a drink before you have begun pouring it. That's what Wetherspoons do. 13. None of those oversized stupid keg taps. Guinness tend to be the worst ...

I have always looked favourably upon pubs with glazed tiles affixed to the frontage. I assume that there was a time in the mid twentieth century that they were all ripped off and replaced with pebble-dash, and those few pubs that retained them were completely stubborn and wanted to retain a bit of their history and their culture and their truth.  In a lot of ways, I was wrong. The tiles were just popular with some breweries as a way of signifying their ownership. Not being remotely familiar with London I didn't realise that a pub plastered with beautiful glossy forest green tiles was not a signifier that the establishment was the last bastion against either gentrification and seven percent NEIPAs or soulless corporate PubCo hell holes serving microwave CTM. I've been informed subsequently that green tiles are a signifier of a Young's pub, though this may be incorrect. The gentleman informing me of this also maintained that a metal band around his wrist had cured his chronic...