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.

Cock Hotel, Welington

This is a fine pub situated in Wellington (Postcode TF1 2DL) on the historic Roman route of Watling Street.
Although the new town of Telford has swallowed up Wellington it retains a small town feel.

 

Although the pub itself is older it retains features from the early part of the 20th century. The partition between the bar and parlour has been opened up but the two area retain their distinctiveness. The entrance and reception has kept its original panelling and acts as an overspill drinking area. The comfortable lounge has a large end window giving panoramic views of the passing traffic. This room has now been designated as ‘Bar de Haan’ and stocks a range of forty foreign beers, mostly from Belgium. There is an outside drinking area which is quite a sun trap.

 

One wall of the bar is covered with award certificates and this CAMRA Regional Pub of the Year for 2009 deserves the plaudits. There are eight handpumps in use, one of which is reserved for real cider from Moles. On the day of my visit all the beers available were sourced locally and comprised Hobson’s Bitter and Mild, Ironbridge Centennial, Holden’s Golden Glow, Three Tuns’ Cleric’s Cure, Wood’s Shropshire Lad and Titanic Stout.

 

I sampled four of these all of which were in excellent condition. The price of each beer is clearly displayed on the handpumps which is good to see. There is no hot food but superb cold pork pies from Paddy Ryan in Much Wenlock were in heavy demand.

 

The Cock is a short stroll from AFC Telford’s football ground and should be on any visiting supporters’ list for a pre-match drink. It is about 15 minutes walk from Wellington railway station. It has letting rooms so why not stay the night?

Price of beer

According to data from the Office for National Statistics the declining value of money (i.e. inflation) means that a pint of beer could cost £8 by 2060.

I would find it more believable if they'd said £8 a pint by 2016, and even that may be a generous target.