Your FREE guide to real ale and pubs in South Oxfordshire
Winter 2014
Issue 24 |www.soxoncamra.org.uk
Tutts Clump – the award-winning local cider maker
Also Inside:
SOX out drinking in London, again SOX members sampling beer in Belgium, again Christmas drinks down the ages Local and national news
LOCAL NEWS Running a pub is hard work and it’s not getting any easier; as a result, licensees tend to move on more quickly than they used to. So it’s great to see a team like Curly and Jean Chandler recently celebrating 20 successful years running the Rainbow at Middle Assendon. Curly originally worked selling agricultural machinery, but he swapped that for the licensed trade when he and Jean took over the (long-since closed) Coach and Horses at Binfield Heath which they ran for five years before moving into the Rainbow. They’ve now completed a quarter of a century as Brakspear tenants. Only a few weeks ago the Rainbow won Brakspear’s pub garden of the year award so it gave the SOX Branch great pleasure to present them with a CAMRA certificate to mark their 20-year achievement. www.rainbowinnhenley.co.uk Four times a year the SOX Branch makes a Pub of the Season award. This is often, though not exclusively, to recognise licensees who have been making an effort to improve pubs that previously may have been underperforming a bit. The 2014 Autumn Pub of the Season went to the Reformation, Gallowstree Common. The award was made on 24th October at the party to celebrate the first year anniversary at the pub for Samantha Murray and Richard Grant. Sam and Rich had previously run the Crown at Nuffield for a few months. This was not easy for them: the pub had been in decline for some years and Brakspear would only give them very short leases. After a few months Brakspear called time on the Crown, but was sufficiently impressed with Sam and Rich to offer them a proper tenancy at the Reformation. Both have worked around pubs for some time. Rich is an experienced chef and grew up in a pub environment (his parents used to run the Red Lion, Rotherfield Peppard) and Continued on page 4
Published every three months by the South Oxfordshire branch of the Campaign for Real Ale © CAMRA 2014 SoxonAle is produced and distributed by members of the branch in their own time. Views expressed in SoxonAle are not necessarily those of the editor, publisher or of CAMRA. Edited by: Paul Dixon Email: contact@soxoncamra.org.uk. Design & Production: Daniel Speed - Orchard House Media Ltd 01733 211933 Email: info@orchardhousemedia.co.uk Advertising: For advertising enquiries please contact Jane Michelson on: 07732 393 621 01733 211410 jane@orchardhousemedia.co.uk Distribution: 3,000 copies / four times a year Got a short pint? If you believe that you have been treated unfairly in a pub, club or bar, you should contact the Trading Standards service by writing to them at Oxfordshire Trading Standards, Graham Hill House, Electric Avenue, Ferry Hinksey Rd, Oxford OX2 0BY or call them on 0845 051 0845. A wide range of consumer information and advice is also available online from the Consumer Direct website at www.consumerdirect.gov.uk
CAMRA, the Campaign for Real Ale is an independent, voluntary organisation campaigning for real ale, community pubs and consumer rights.
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Local News - continued
Sam had worked in the Crown since she was a 13-year old. The Reformation is now a lively thriving pub, as evidenced by the enthusiastic crowd who turned out on 24th. A pub speciality is tractor-runs which feature through the summer. http://www.therefpub. The visit to the Reformation was a good chance for the SOX Branch to meet with some of the Woodcote Rally committee again. The Branch provides the beer tent at the Rally every year, and a large chunk of the surplus takings goes to the Rally’s charities. (The remainder goes into CAMRA’s campaigning funds.) The photo shows our Festival Treasurer, Derek Graham (left), handing a cheque to Rally stalwart Peter Solomons. The Woodcote Rally will run again in 2015, and SOX will be supplying the usual range of excellent ales. A note for the diary: the 52nd Woodcote Rally will be held over the weekend 11th and 12th July 2015. On a sadder note, the demise of the Sprat, Didcot, looms ever closer. South Oxfordshire District Council (SODC) has approved a planning application from Wantage-based building company BJP to demolish the pub and build six single-storey homes. As we’ve remarked previously, the Sprat has seen little investment for years and became badly run-down. The Four Horseshoes, Checkendon, has also gone for good; though not in quite such an emphatic style. SODC has approved a planning application from Brakspear for change of use to a combined cafe and post office. The Henley Brew House has featured several times on these pages in the past. It was opened in November 2012 in what used to be the police station and served some rather good ale from the in-house micro-brewery as well as a number of guest beers. As a consequence it was entered into this year’s Good Beer Guide. The owners, the City Pub Company, recently sold it to Brakspear. Unfortunately, the brewery does not feature in Brakspear’s plans and at the time of writing it is being removed. In the previous edition of SoxonAle we gave a detailed account of the long-running saga of attempts by the current owner of the White Lion, Cray’s Pond, to get planning permission to change it to a house. At the time of going to press we await the outcome of his appeal to SODC. Both the original planning application and the appeal have been vigorously opposed by local residents, and we remain hopeful that the appeal will be turned down too. Last year, Brakspear sold the Sun, Whitchurch Hill, to businessman Richard Hazell but hung on to the adjacent plot of land. Brakspear then submitted a planning application to SODC to build a five- bedroom detached house on it. The locals objected on the grounds that the area is regularly used for community events. SODC turned down the application on the grounds that it would spoil the rural feel of the area and the company’s appeal was rejected on the same grounds. The locals plan to approach Brakspear with a view to restoring the garden to its original use. 4
Local News - continued
A recent report in the Didcot Herald claimed that SODC has approached Green King with the intention of buying and then demolishing the Prince of Wales, Didcot, in order to make way for planned development of the land opposite the railway station. Greene King denies that this has happened and says it has no plans to sell what is undeniably a popular and thriving pub. Hook Norton brewery is restoring its Grade II-listed chimney as part of a £200,000 project to make the brewery and museum available for brewery tours. This has been part-funded to the tune of £90,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The building has two chimneys which were made redundant in the 1970s when an oilfired boiler was installed. MD James Clarke said: “The brewery complex is one of the finest examples in the country of a Victorian tower brewery still being used for its original purpose. The tower has a high-cost maintenance. It hadn’t been used and was becoming unstable.” The SOX Branch holds a meeting on the first Wednesday of each month and a social evening on the third Thursday. We vary the venues to cover as much of the Branch’s (quite extensive) territory. For news and events take a look at the Branch website: www.soxoncamra.org.uk. Alternatively email us at contact@soxoncamra.org.uk.
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NATIONAL NEWS Cask Report – the popularity of real ale continues to climb Cask Report is an annual review of the UK’s beer market that is supported by Cask Marque, CAMRA, SIBA and real ale producers. The 2014 edition was released a few weeks ago, and some of the key points are: •Sales of cask beer, the number of people who drink it, breweries which make it and festivals that celebrate it - are all increasing. • Cask ale, in volume growth, is outperforming the on-trade beer market by 4.5% • We are drinking 634 million pints of it every year, with one in six pints of beer served in pubs now being real ale. The report notes that while people may be going to the pub less often, when they do go they’re looking for something different and better than discounted supermarket lager brands. In most parts of the country and most places where beer is sold, the outdated image of the real ale drinker is steadily fading. In particular, women and younger drinkers continue to convert to cask beer. Keg sales are declining sharply, whereas more than 60% of beer sold in pubs is now cask. The research does not try to define “craft beer”, but does say its most meaningful characteristics are not related to format, style or origin – it’s more about beer brewed by small brewers or beer brewed in small batches. The report says that some pubs are failing to take full advantage of the public’s increasing understanding of real ale as a crafted product. But it also warns that if publicans want to continue to grow sales they must train their staff so they know how to look after beer and can talk knowledgably about it. Steady growth for new breweries The 2015 Good Beer Guide was published in September, just as the previous SoxonAle went to print. It includes the amazing news, taken up by the mainstream news media, that the UK now has more breweries per head than any other country! The GBG lists 1,285 breweries in Britain – one for every 50,000 people and the largest number since the 1930s and 1940s. During the previous year 170 breweries opened in the UK, maintaining an annual growth of more than 10%. Nearly all these new breweries are producing cask ales as their core products. Once, when there was still manufacturing industry there and before various property booms priced many people out, London was one of the world’s great brewing centres. Now it’s starting to pick up again as last year the number of London breweries doubled. This growth has been maintained in the first half of this year with seven start-ups so far. GBG editor Roger Protz notes: “Real ale is the only success story in a declining beer market. New breweries continue to come on stream while many long-standing regional and family breweries are expanding with new equipment and brands. Real ale has almost doubled its market share over the past decade.”
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National News - continued
Greene King sells off a large part of its pub estate Just under a year ago, in a curiously low-key process, Greene King sold 275 of its pubs to Hawthorn Leisure for £75.6m. This leaves around 890 pubs remaining in the Greene King estate. Hawthorne Leisure was created in November 2013 as a private limited company: it’s backed by two investment companies and run by ex-Punch Taverns MD Gerry Carroll. Hawthorne’s aim is to pick off so-called non-core wet-led pubs from pubcos and to run them in a more “flexible” way. Hopefully this will mean a wider selection of beers will be available, though the sale did include a three-year deal for Greene King to continue supplying drinks so changes may not be immediately apparent. South Oxfordshire of course has a high proportion of Greene King pubs in its western half – a consequence of the Morland years. How many of these pubs were part of the sale is unclear, but it will be very interesting to see how this rearrangement plays out. Cuts in beer duty create jobs and boost beer sales Regular SoxonAle readers will remember the articles deploring the “Beer Duty Escalator” – the year-on-year increases that lead to duty rising by 40% between 2008 and 2012. CAMRA’s campaign was one of the main reasons for it being scrapped in 2013. Evidence is now appearing that shows the campaign is reaping results. Research carried out by Oxford Economics, and reported in Cheers 2014, shows that the duty cuts resulted in 6,987 new jobs in 2013-14. This climbed to 14,410 the next year, with 16,783 predicted by 2015/2016. None of this would have happened if the Escalator had remained in place. Beer sales have been given a boost with an extra £44 million in capital investment into the brewing and pub sector, and more than £400 million planned. This includes increasing brewing capacity, buying new equipment, employing new staff, opening pubs and moving into export. The hope now is that the Chancellor will keep his sensible head on and cut duty for the third year running. Dark delights lined up for winter warmer celebration With two months to go, preparations are well under way for that celebration of all strong, dark brews: the National Winter Ales Festival (NWAF). This is one of the country’s biggest festivals and a showcase of styles favoured in the winter months: barley wine, old ales, porters and stouts featuring a huge selection of British and foreign beers, real ale in a bottle, mead, ciders and perries. This year the festival returns to the Roundhouse, Derby close to the Pride Park exit of the city railway station. NWAF opens its doors Wednesday 11th February and runs until Saturday 14th. There are no advanced tickets: just pay on the door. The journey to find the 2015 Champion Beer of Britain starts at NWAF, with the Champion Winter Beer of Britain. The Winter Beer finalists go forward to compete in the finals of the main event in the summer at the Great British Beer Festival. Just because that’s held in summer doesn’t mean that winter beers can’t hold their own. Both Coniston’s No. 9 Barley Wine (2012) and Elland’s 1872 Porter (2013) won both crowns. For event details go to www.nwaf.org.uk, which includes details on how to get there.
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Traditional Christmas Drinks
Christmas beers have started to appear now – they are typically darker and stronger than at other times of the year. And not surprisingly, this tradition has been going on for centuries. The winter solstice is the shortest, darkest day of the year and there is evidence that this has been known and marked by people for thousands of years. In ancient Rome it was known as Saturnalia and friends exchanged gifts, schools were closed and quarrels suspended. The solstice itself, on December 21st, is the turning point to longer, brighter days and was celebrated as the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, the return of light to the world. The Romans weren’t noted beer drinkers (they still aren’t really). But the Vikings were and they enjoyed a strong, malty beer during their jul (or Yule) celebrations. This involved them drinking jul, with drafts offered up to the Norse gods. In 597, Pope Gregory sent Augustine to England to re-establish Christianity following the collapse of the Roman Empire. Because sacred feasts were (understandably) popular among these worshipers of Odin, Gregory advised Augustine to incorporate pagan traditions rather than suppress them. In particular, Yuletide feastings were to be re-hallowed as ‘Christ Mass’ and Yule beers became Christmas beers. In the Saxon villages of England, strong ale was reserved for holidays because people didn't have to work and could devote themselves to drinking and its less enjoyable consequences. Ales brewed during colder weather were brewed to a higher alcohol content as ‘winter warmers’. In the Middle Ages, monasteries did much to encourage the brewing of special beers for special occasions. Outside of the monasteries, most beer was made in the home and it was natural to make a special brew for the holidays, just as we would bake a birthday cake today.
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Traditional Christmas Drinks
A drink with a particular Christmas resonance is ‘wassail’. This word comes from the Middle English expression wæs hæl or ‘be healthy’. It was a Saxon custom that during the festivities at the start of each year the lord of the manor would shout ‘waes hail’, and the assembled crowd would reply ‘drinc hail’, ‘drink and be healthy’. The drink wassail is essentially an alcoholic punch flavoured with spices, sugar, toast and roasted apples. (Most European countries have a similar warmed spiced drink; for example the German glühwein.) The toast component is quite interesting since it is the origin of the use of the word to ‘toast’ a person or event. In England the drink would use ale, mead or, frequently in the south, cider. Drinking wassail made you a wassailer, and off you went wassailing: that is, singing Christmas songs from house to house. There are aspects of wassailing that are clearly much older and of pagan origin. In the cider-producing counties in the south-west and south-east wassailing also includes a ceremony that involves singing and drinking the health of trees on the Twelfth Night, hoping that they will be encouraged to fruit well in the coming year. The intention is to wake up the cider apple trees and to scare away evil spirits. The ceremonies of each wassail vary but have some common features. Typically, the wassail king and queen lead the singing and procession from one orchard to the next. The biggest and best tree has cider poured over its roots. The wassail queen is lifted into the boughs of a tree where she places toast soaked in wassail as a gift to the tree spirits and to show off the fruits created the previous year. Whistles, drums and sometimes guns are used to frighten away evil spirits. Lamb's wool or lambswool is a variety of wassail made from ale, baked apples, sugar and spices – so-called because of the frothy appearance of the apples on the surface. Actually, wassail is easy to make – there’s no set recipe and you can pretty much invent your own. The following one is typical and serves 4-6 people: 6 small apples, washed, cores removed 1 litre beer or cider 2 crushed cinnamon sticks 2 pinches ground cloves Freshly grated nutmeg, to taste 1 lemon, sliced To sweeten it, add up to 500g of sugar before heating. Score each apple around the middle using a sharp knife. Roast them in a preheated oven to 190°C/Gas 5 for 45-50 minutes, or until they have softened and the skins begin to split. Meanwhile, heat the beer or cider in a saucepan over a low heat. Add the spices, stir well, and continue to heat through until the surface of the liquid starts to foam. Add the lemon slices and roasted apples and serve hot in a large bowl. Wassailing is alive and well in South Oxfordshire – notably in Brightwell cum Sotwell. On 5th January the wassailers will meet at 3.30pm by the War Memorial. Five orchards will be visited where trees will be blessed, good spirits welcomed and evil spirits driven away. The procession will finish at the Red Lion for lambswool mulled cider and more music, singing and dancing. Entertainment will be provided by Armaleggan – previously seen at the Wallingford Bunk Fest. Paul Dixon 11
BROADWAYS “A popular town centre establishment with a range of keenly priced ales. Food prices are extremely reasonable as well.” - Whatpub.com
Opening Hours 10am - 11pm (1am Thu; 3am Fri & Sat); 11am-10pm Sunday
103 Broadway, Didcot OX11 8RG Tel: 01235 814924
The Argyll Pub & Kitchen
Serving fine ales and home cooked food for 250 years. Come and visit our famous pub where two episodes of the tv series ‘Midsomer Murders’ have been filmed. Join our friendly locals for a drink or enjoy a fantastic meal. On offer is top quality home cooked food, including fillet, rib eye and sirloin steaks, old English sausage and mash along with homemade vegetarian options, sea bass, salmon and traditional fish and chips. Sunday roasts are a specialty.
Open every day through Xmas and New Year The Argyll Public House 15 Market Place, Henley-on-Thames, RG9 2AA.
For bookings call: 01491 573 400 www.theargyllhenley.co.uk
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The Argyll Pub & Kitchen
Traditional Family Run Village Pub Four Cask Marque Beers Award Winning Restaurant 7 Station Road, Lower Shiplake, Henley on Thames, Oxon. RG9 3NY Tel: 01189 403332 enquiries@thebaskerville.com www.thebaskerville.com
Tutts Clump Cider local, and popular In October, local cider-maker Tutts Clump held its first open-day. The occasion was marked with the presentation of two certificates by our colleagues in Reading CAMRA. These were awarded following CAMRA’s South of England regional cider competition: first place for Farmhouse Perry, and second place for the Farmhouse Cider. This marks another milestone along a road that has seen Tutts rise from producing a couple of gallons of home-made cider in 2006 to a remarkable 65,000 litres in 2014. All this is testament to Tutts’ owner Tim Wale’s skill and hard work – and is more remarkable still, because he is self-taught. Before it achieved fame as a centre for cider-making, Tutts Clump was a hamlet near Bradfield, West Berkshire, roughly halfway between Reading and Newbury. Tim was born and grew up there, and it’s where he started his original motor repair business. That’s still going but now shares the site with the production and storage facilities where Tim, assisted by his wife and five daughters, make their award-winning cider. The crowd that turned up for the open-day were treated to a demonstration of the cider-making process. Tutts uses a combination mill and press, made by Voran. The washed apples are loaded into a small hopper on the side of the unit where the mincer rapidly reduces them to pulp. This is picked up manually in a plastic scoop and placed under the press between layers of thick polyester cloth. The layers start off around 40 mm thick, but the fruit is so juicy Continued on page 15 13
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Tutts Clump cider - continued
that it starts to run off without any pressure being applied. When about eight layers have been built up the press is started and applies a steady pressure to the pulp. This forces out 70-80% of the juice which runs off into a small open tank before being pumped into the fermenters. These are vertical cylinders whose lids are fitted with S-shaped bubble airlocks similar to those used by home wine-makers. The apple juice ferments to cider in around five weeks, but Tim stores it for a year to mature it properly. The de-juiced pulp, now resembling a soggy doormat, is mostly used as pig-feed. Milling and pressing require a lot of manual effort. When in full swing Tim expects to process 2000 kg of apples a day, which will result in around 1500 litres of juice. In his early days Tim would add yeast to get the fermentation going. This isn’t needed any more: enough yeast has accumulated around the place for the juice to ferment spontaneously. This year’s apple crop wasn’t as abundant as 2013. Tim usually sources them locally, but this year has had to buy some in from Kent. Hopefully this will be less of a problem in future since he planted a small orchard of his own in 2009. On the open-day there were large wooden crates in the yard: some filled with Bramley cooking apples and others with Gala, which are eaters. Because of the dissolved natural sugars the freshly-pressed juice is denser than water, but its specific gravity drops as the sugar is fermented into alcohol. This year’s crop is, on the open day at least, also a little light on sugar; an original gravity with 1040 was measured. This will ferment out to give a cider with around 5%ABV. Generally one would expect an original gravity of nearer 1050, giving 6%ABV. Tim does produce a cider that is a little less of a heavy-hitter, with an ABV of 3.5%. This is called Repress. As the name implies, it’s made by taking squeezed pulp, soaking it in water for 24 hours and putting it through the press again. Less sugar comes out, resulting in a lighter, lower-alcohol cider. Tutts Clump cider is becoming steadily more widely-available, and can now be found in pubs, local stores and farmers’ markets, and even Waitrose. It is also available from the farm shop in various quantities from 500 ml bottles to five gallon barrels. For details see www.tuttsclumpcider.co.uk. It was particularly reassuring to see all the tanks of fresh and fermenting juice around because Tutts Clump is the main supplier of cider to the SOX beer tent at the Woodcote Festival, held each July. This year we sold 800 pints of Tim’s cider – and hope to so the same again in 2015! Paul Dixon 15
Another Beer Tour in Flanders A smooth journey: just 35 minutes with the car on the Eurotunnel at Folkestone, an hour’s drive and there we were - parked up, checked-in and relaxing in our hotel bar with a glass or four of Hommelbier van t’ vat [from the tap] from the Van Eecke brewery round the corner! For this trip, our group of Mike and Lesley Scott (recently relocated to North Oxon Branch) and yours truly and Julia decided to stay in the small town of Watou, just over the French border into the West Flanders region of Belgium. Watou, population around 2,000, is a smaller version of our favourite town in the region, Poperinge – but it’s still in the middle of Belgium’s main hop growing territory with a pleasant cobbled square dotted with bars, cafes and restaurants plus, of course, a couple of outstanding breweries nearby. During the First World War Watou and its surroundings were a quiet resting area behind the British lines and it was fortunate that no armed conflicts took place here; hence the 12th century St. Bavo church only saw a few war funerals between April 1915 (Second Battle of Ypres) and the end of the war. Today, one of Watou’s principal claims to fame is the famous gastronomic restaurant ‘t Hommelhof (www.hommelhof.be) where cuisine a là biere originated. Here you can still delight in a feast in which each course is prepared with a different local beer and served with the same beer – well worth treating yourself every once in a while! 16
Flanders Beer Tour
Even though this was early October it was a scorching Friday afternoon - perfect for sitting outside soaking up the rays and the deceptively strong and hoppy pale ale that is Hommelbier (7.5% ABV). This was enjoyed together with an excellent late lunch of the house speciality, hop galets - delicious beer-infused savoury pancakes. Then we headed around the corner to the Van Eecke brewery where head brewer Peter Craeymeersch had offered to give us a short unofficial tour. To be honest, although acknowledged by the experts as one of the best breweries in Belgium, we’ve been to others that appear more interesting and attractive-looking. However, the brewing kit was impressive and the abbey-style beer Tripel Abt (a full bodied, dark gold dessert beer that comes in at a whopping 10% ABV) was busy fermenting and evolving huge volumes of carbon dioxide that you certainly noticed when you sniffed too closely! Unfortunately, the cask and bottling lines are rusting relics, last used 20 or so years ago. The beers are now shipped off to the nearby Leroy brewery in Boezinge for the final packaging. The brewery is also noted for its Watou’s Witbier, a 5% ABV lemony and cloudy refreshing wheat beer. Compared to the ubiquitous Hoegaarden this is a more superior brew and much preferred by the locals in this part of the world. (Since falling under the umbrella of AB-InBev Hoegaarden is now a pale shadow of its former self.) Also look out for the Kapittel range of abbey-style beers, including the Pater, Blond, Dubbel, Prior and the above mentioned Tripel Abt. Following the visit around the brewery it was into the brewery tap, the Brouwershof, for a further sampling of Van Eecke’s finest. A short distance outside Watou lies the Sint Bernadous Brewery (www.sintbernardous.be), a more modern and extensive brewery founded in 1946. It came to prominence in 1962 when it was granted a licence to brew the Trappist beer from the nearby St. Sixtus abbey. These were sold under the St. Sixtus name until 1992, when legislation dictated that the name Trappistenbier could only be applied to beer brewed inside the walls of a Trappist Monastery. Thus since 1992 the brewery has sold its abbey-style beers under the brand name of St. Bernardous. The beers (particularly the Pater 6, Prior 8, Abt 12 and Tripel) are rated amongst the best brews in Flanders and are still considered a close match in recipe and style to the St Sixtus beers, which are themselves nearly impossible to obtain outside the Monastery. The brewery hosts well-organised trips for €12.50, including a gift pack of the four beers noted above and the authentic badged glass.
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Award-winning, family Cider makers since 2006 sales@tuttsclumpcider.co.uk www.tuttsclumpcider.co.uk Tel: 0118 974 4649 or 07836 296996
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Flanders Beer Tour - continued
Touring around the area took us to the famous St. Sixtus abbey itself, at Westvleteren, where the sprawling modern café opposite the monastery remains the only bar in the world that the blond (5.8%ABV), the 8 (8% ABV) and the 12 (10.2% ABV) are routinely sold. Details of this wonderful beer-drinking temple were provided in a previous issue of SoxonAle from spring 2014. This time, however, there were no six-packs available to purchase at the shop. Clearly the monks can’t keep up with demand; but then I think that as long as they have enough for themselves, they are fine with that! A mile or so up the road in Krombeke we paid our usual visit to the Nevjan Drankcentralle (www.drankcentralenevejan.be), a beer wholesaler accustomed to visits from UK enthusiasts to purchase their favourite tipple to take home. If you can stretch to buying by the 24bottle crate, the prices are pretty good. For example, the world-famous Duvel will only set you back 97p a bottle compared to £5-plus in a trendy craft beer bar in London. There are many fascinating, unique and often very quirky bars scattered around the Flanders countryside. This trip we discovered Het Mysterie on the road from Watou almost into Poperinge. A weird spooky bar absolutely crammed with all manner of witchy and ghoulish paraphernalia. The landlady and the locals (the ones still breathing anyway) were nonetheless very welcoming and the beer menu had a satisfying array of our favourite beers plus a couple of local abbey-style beers on tap. A very atmospheric bar and a great place to spend an hour or so gawping at the walls whilst supping another ale. The final day brought us a few miles east to the famous WW1 frontline town of Ypres. The horticulturists amongst us were keen to have an hour or so away from the beers to visit Floralux (www.floralux.be). This is probably the largest home and garden centre you’ll ever set foot in; but such a wide range of very high quality plants and again very keen prices compared to the UK. So with a few packs of bulbs and evergreen shrubs wedged into the remaining space between the crates in the car we found ourselves back in the Grote Markt in Ypres, a lovely market town with a population of 35,000 and entirely rebuilt after being totally destroyed in the First World War. Famous of course for the daily 8.00pm Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate and the In Flanders Fields Museum, the town has become ever more popular for visitors in recent years. With a long line of cafes next to each other along the north side of the square, we plumped for De Kollebloeme (www.kollebloeme.be), or “The Poppy” in Flemish. This is a stylish, contemporarily-furnished restaurant where we enjoyed the local speciality of beef carbonnade washed down with a final draught Hommelbier. Then we set off for the short journey home, clinging on to fond memories of another great trip as the next working week loomed just around the corner. Graham Hards
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The SOX Branch has a lengthy tradition of pub-crawling around London. We always put in a good showing at the CAMRA Central Southern Region London crawl in mid-January, which is attended by upwards of 50 people. But we also like to run a Branch one in the autumn. This year’s was held in mid-November and had been carefully designed by SOX veteran beer-hound Roy Denison to make the most use of a one-day Travel Card and to visit some unusual pubs with very different beers. This time the route would avoid central London, circling it instead in a clockwise direction from Richmond to Liverpool Street Station and taking in seven pubs. (Incidentally, three of the pubs have the word ‘tap’ in their name. I think this reflects modern marketing fashion rather than any conscious or unconscious selection policy on Roy’s part.) We had a good turn out too – around a dozen SOX members were joined for most of the day by five representatives of the Brewery History Society. We began by taking an unbelievably crammed train from Reading to Richmond. (England was playing the Springboks at Twickenham.) Then few minutes’ walk took us to the first pub: the Triple Crown [TW9 2SS]. This is a friendly free-house tucked away in a quiet back street across the road from Richmond Rugby Ground, and a very good start to a pub-crawl. There were four ales on handpump. I thought I’d go local and had Autumn Red (4.4%ABV) from Twickenham Fine Ales. The Twickenham was founded in 2004 and claims to be London’s oldest micro. They’ve got a good reputation for their beers – their Sundancer won silver in the 2007 CAMRA Champion beer of Britain. The Autumn Red was excellent – a hearty, malty beer, just right for a chillier day. http://www.thetriplecrownrichmond.co.uk Then it was back to Richmond to catch the London Overground and go one stop to Kew Gardens. The Tap on the Line [TW9 3PZ] is actually in Kew Gardens station and is the only remaining pub to be situated on a London Underground platform, though you do have to exit through the barrier to get to it. The buffet has had a makeover and now sells upmarket food as well as drink. It retains plenty of period charm with white wall tiles and a small atrium. The beers are predominantly from 20
Fullers: on this occasion I tried one of their seasonal beers, Gales Firecracker (4.8%ABV). This is very good indeed: it’s rich and spicey and very much a winter ale. http://www.tapontheline.co.uk No effort then to get back on the London Overground and take the rather longer trip to Gospel Oak. The Southampton Arms [NW5 1LE] claims to be the only pub in London to sell exclusively from small UK independents and there are an impressive 18 handpumps dispensing ale and cider. This is an absolutely first-rate pub and I could have happily stayed there for the rest of the day. Long and narrow, it has the relaxed comfortable feel of a proper town boozer. I started with Tottenham brewery Redemption’s Fellowship Porter (5.1%ABV). This was superb – for me, the best beer of the day. I followed it up with something a bit lower strength – Hobson’s Mild (3.2%ABV). Another excellent beer and in fact Champion Beer of Britain in 2007. I finished off with a drop of Dark Star’s Winter Meltdown (5%ABV), which I hated. This was a big disappointment because normally I’m quite a fan of Dark Star, but this really didn’t do it for me; just a big hit of ginger and not much else. http://www.thesouthamptonarms.co.uk The London Overground took us from Gospel Oak to Hackney Central and the Cock Tavern [E8 1EJ]. The Cock Tavern has to be seen to be believed - it’s like a film set for an East European cold war bar! It is in fact a fine old Truman’s pub. The 16 small handpumps sell draught beers at £3.40 a pint each; the 12 keg craft beers are £3.90 and cider £3.60 a pint. A fantastic pub which proclaims on the front door ‘ONLY REAL MONEY TAKEN’. This is home to Howlin Hops brewery, which apparently lives somewhere in the basement. the Cock Tavern Below: Interior of The Howlin Hops Pale XX (5%ABV) is, not surprisingly, packed with a lot of hops that give it a very strong flowery flavour. Not a bad drop, but I found it hard work towards the end of the pint. http://www.thecocktavern.co.uk Some exercise now as we walked half a mile to the London Fields Brewery Tap [E8 3RR]. The pub frontage is in minimalist black and white and leads into the large open bar which Continued on page 22 21
is very much in the modern shabby-chic style with six handpumps and 12 keg taps for craft beers. The in-house microbrewery is visible off to one side behind glass screens. This is a popular venue and was very crowded, which partly accounts for me losing this page of my notes and being unable to report on the beers. Pretty poor show I know, but these things happen when you’re reporting from the front-line. http://londonfieldsbrewery.co.uk A brisk walk back to Hackney Central station and then the Overground to Stratford. The Tap East [E20 1EE] is located opposite Stratford International station, in the Great Eastern Market at Westfield. The Tap East is a specialist beer bar and yet another microbrewery, with six handpumps. It has a regularly changing range of 16 Tap East and guest draught beers as well as over 100 bottled beers from around the world. Again, its decor is very modern though, compared with the London Fields, rather less shabby and more chic. A current special is their Ubique porter at 4.7%ABV. The name comes from the Royal Artillery’s regimental motto and 40p from every pint sold goes to the RA benevolent fund. An ok porter, but not a great one. http://www.tapeast.co.uk On the home straight now, the remaining revellers took the Underground to Liverpool Street and the nearby Williams Ale and Cider House [E1 7LS]. Part of a small chain of similar pubs owned by the Metropolitan Pub Company it has 14 handpumps or gravity-dispensed ale and cider. Signature Brew is yet another new London micro, dating from 2011, which somehow hatched out of the young owners’ contacts in the music industry. Their Black Vinyl Stout (4.2%ABV) is not at all bad. http://www.metropolitanpubcompany.com/our-pubs/the-williams At the end of a tough pub-crawl you need some food to keep your energy levels up. The Williams is within easy striking distance of Brick Lane and its huge selection of curry houses, and we didn’t try to resist the temptation. But with an excellent two-course meal and complementary wine for only £15 why would we? Roy Denison Paul Dixon
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