Cask & Kitchen mark II

Cask Pub & Kitchen licensee Martin Hayes is spreading his wings by opening a second specialist beer bar. The former 'Clockhouse' in Clerkenwell will open in June with a huge range of craft beers.

“It will be the largest selection ever seen in the UK with 16 handpumps for British ales, 21 international beers on keg, and around 300 bottled beers,” said Hayes.

Cottage Loaf, Llandudno

 I made a trip over the border into Wales the other night. The Manic Street Preachers were playing in Llandudno so I took the opportunity to take in a few pints in the Cottage Loaf. This friendly pub is tucked away down a side street (Market Street, LL30 2SR) and has the dubious pleasure of standing next to a Wetherspoon outlet. It a part of a small chain of eight pubs in Wirral and North Wales owned by Stange & Co.

A stone floor, low ceiling and a large fireplace form an inviting welcome for the drinker and diner. To the side of the bar there is a higher level area with a more modern appearance. To the rear is a large outside drinking area which one presumes is very popular with tourists on warm summer days.

There are four handpumps offering two local beers, usually from the Conway brewery. During my visit the other two beers were Courage Directors and Coach House Innkeeper's from Warrington which seemed to me to be an unusual choice for the area. The beers were well kept and selling well. Food from an extensive menu was popular - Welsh Rarebit starter is an unusual offering but one which impressed me.

This is a friendly, well run pub with a good cross section of customers with cask beer of reliable quality.

Gallagher's Pub and Barbers, Birkenhead

Gallagher's (20 Chester Street, CH41 5DQ) is the deserved Wirral CAMRA Pub of the Year for 2011. Frank Gallagher (!) was formerly in the Irish Guards and had recently run two barber's shops in the area. He wanted to run a pub and with wife Sue they decided to juxtaposition a pub and traditional barber's shop on

the same premises.

Originally called the Hamlet, it enjoyed a renaissance under Cain's ownership as the Dispensary until the brewery lost focus following a succession of financial problems. A stone's throw from Woodside where the Ferry Across the Mersey there is an impressive view of the Liverpool waterfront as you enter/leave the pub. Buses stop nearby and Hamilton Square railway station is just around the corner.

The pub has now been fitted out with numerous military artifacts to reflect Frank's background. The emphasis is on cask beer from local breweries. Brimstage Trapper's Hat is de rigeur for any self-respecting cask ale pub in Wirral and impressive sales are clocked up here. Liverpool Organic and p
Gallagher's (20 Chester Street, CH41 5DQ) is the deserved Wirral CAMRA Pub of the Year for 2011. Frank Gallagher (!) was formerly in the Irish Guards and had recently run two barber's shops in the area. He wanted to run a pub and with wife Sue they decided to juxtaposition a pub and traditional barber's shop on the same premises.


Originally called the Hamlet, it enjoyed a renaissance under Cain's ownership as the Dispensary until the brewery lost focus following a succession of financial problems. A stone's throw from Woodside where the Ferry Across the Mersey there is an impressive view of the Liverpool waterfront as you enter/leave the pub. Buses stop nearby and Hamilton Square railway station is just around the corner.

The pub has now been fitted out with numerous military artifacts to reflect Frank's background. The emphasis is on cask beer from local breweries. Brimstage Trapper's Hat is de rigeur for any self-respecting cask ale pub in Wirral and impressive sales are clocked up here.  Liverpool Organic and Peerless beers are also regularly stocked.

The Gallagher's have done an impressive job in reviving this much loved pub and hopefully it will continue to thrive.

Fuller's Vintage Ale in Sainsbury

This is becoming less of a beer blog, more of a public service message board! Anyway, it is worth alerting you that I visited my local Sainsbury branch at lunchtime to do my weekend shop and was surprised to see Fuller's Vintage Ale 2010. This particular branch didn't stock the ale when it was first issued in late autumn. So it may be that further stocks have been supplied to the branches.

 £3.44 a bottle is not bad - it costs more in Fuller's own shop. Sainsbury stock the Meantime 75cl botte conditioned ales in many branches so if you find the Vitnage Ale as well you've got a couple of classy beers.

Thornbridge beers in Waitrose

I'll re-post this one. It was lost in the Blogger problems overnight.

Waitrose have stocks of Thornbridge Jaipur and Kipling at only £1.60 each. The offer may only have few days left so check out your local store PDQ. I got mine from the store on Anglesey frequented by Her Royal Poshness the former Kate Middleton. I'm not sure if she took advantage of the offer.

One long hangover

Sweet Lady Beverages (no, I've never heard of them either) have got themselves a lot of publicity by supposedly carrying out a survey which concludes that the average British drinker spends 5 years of their life with a hangover. As they are producers of non-alcoholic drinks I'm suspicious of their polling methods.

However, it did get me thinking how come the average drinker spends a lot less of their life with a hangover than I do?

Wetherspoons Success Story?

The latest figures from Wetherspoon are pretty good as usual. Turnover up in a difficult market, further expansion planned. Not really newsworthy; it's what we expect from them. One small fact interested me though. Two pubs closed in the last six months, three in the previous year.

If you're like me you've no doubt presumed that a Wetherspoon pub is guaranteed to succeed. They come in, offer good value food and drink, the existing pubs raise the white flag and ker-ching! Delving a little deeper I've found that over 90 Wetherspoon pubs have been closed, demolished or sold. Even deducting some airport bars that were lost due to re-development it still leaves about 80 pubs that were not viable. What I found strange is that the vast majority of failed 'Spoons were in Greater London, just the area where the cheap beer/food model just have had the greatest effect.
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I personally know of one Wetherspoon that failed, in Neston, Wirral. Not all that surprising really. It's a Royston Vasey-like community with  a dislike of outsiders where the middle aged men (and women) still like a gallon of ale and a fight. What about the other closures? I'd like to find out.

Brodie's Beer Festival

It was very good of Brodie's Brewery to schedule their beer festival to coincides with Tranmere Rovers’ visit to (and comprehensive win over) Leyton Orient. Held at the William IV pub which adjoins the brewery it promised up to 16 different beers and most were available at some time during my visit.

Ready for action at 11:00 a.m. opening time we bagged a few tables in the sunny beer garden next to a fine pig roasting on a spit. The excellent weather had continued and the beer garden soon became the busiest area of the pub.



No pigs were harmed while making this blog.

Not belonging to the tickers union I started cautiously with pints of Best and Mild. Good to see a dark mild in London. At that point James Brodie kindly offered an impromptu brewery tour which also included a few  complimentary bottles of 9% wheat beer. Thank you James!

At that point I decided that I would have to switch to half pints if I was going to justice to the beer list. Dragon Weiss, Pink Pride, Red, Amarilla, Special, Slammer, Polska, Old Ardour, Romanov (12.1%!) and Triple (13.3%!!) were consumed washed down with Pork rolls. The only beer that wasn’t on that I wanted to try was the 22% Elizabethan but maybe that was as well. Note all beers were sold at £1.99/pint. Superb value.

 

An excellent session in superb settings. The William IV is an imposing, characterful, spacious, traditional pub with high ceilings and lots of mirrors. Very friendly and all the customers, of whom there were many, seemed to enjoy themselves thoroughly. I look forward to returning soon.

James Brodie hard at work

Tim Anderson

Well done to Tim Anderson who not content with running the superb Euston Tap, found time to win this year's Masterchef competition. He was back serving top class beers at the weekend while receiving a stream of congratulations from the customers.