Beer-aeth

Plenty of 'craft beer bars' *eurgh...* have opened in vacant retail units or gentrified market halls. I'm sure that I'll write about many more, good and bad. I'm not sure however, many have opened in derelict Victorian lean-tos on inauspicious gyratories of provincial Welsh market towns which are the polar opposite of gentrified. I would guess few. Being somewhat au fait with the locale, I am sure the building in question has been out of use for at least thirty years, and was probably in its heyday at roughly the same time that the canal was. I assume that the name wasn't plucked out of the ether, and that this was indeed a bakery in the olden times, but for everybody in Pool barring the most ancient it has always been a boarded up red brick abutment which has drawn the eye of absolutely nobody. How it used to look I'm pleased to say that things have changed. Actually, I'm not pleased to say that. It;s a lot more fun to slag off places, but this is due t...

It's been a while, but here's the rub. I only come to learn of things that pubs are doing wrong by going to shit pubs. This is something I try my hardest to avoid. Money is tight and life is short. I prefer to spend my time and money in fantastic pubs that are doing little wrong (I type this from The Snowdrop in Lewes) and therefore examples of terrible pub etiquette will become scarce. But, I am pleased to say that since my last update I have been dragged against my will to hostelries that have done nothing to prevent stoking my ire - a pub I went to in Vienna last summer might be an all time low - and at least we can learn something. 21. What are you supposed to do about that loud, overbearing, tedious cunt with no self-awareness? Have a word. They are probably ruining your pub for some people. If they take offence and never return, your patronage might improve! 22. Toilet ratio. This has always been an issue, but is especially pronounced in the new 'Craft Bee...

I say Walton, it could be Endor. In fact, it almost certainly would have improved Return of the Jedi if there'd been an incongruous red brick pub instead of the fucking Sylvanian Families. And it would have been a shit tonne better for the party when the Death Star blows up. Downside, trickier to flog lucrative merch to impressionable demanding children. I know what the cast would have rathered, most of them were off their tits. Whilst I'm on the subject - isn't this an odd way to start a write up of an excellent pub? - how did they always manage to land on exactly the right spot on an entire Earth sized planet or moon? I know they were Earth sized because the gravity was always exactly 1g. It's a life ruining pain in the arse if you mistakenly go to Carmarthen rather than Caernarfon, imagine if you landed on Dagobar's equivalent of Lapland only to find that Yoda was busy sunning themself in Tuvalu? There were no such issues whilst navigating the forest ...

  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...