Brewdog for Cheap Cats

My morning email from Groupon have the offer for the tasting evenings at Brewdog bar in Camden, instead of the usual £20 with this offer it will be £12.

I've not done one of these cheese and beer evenings because whilst I like the bar it is a bugger to get there after work but for your money you get five Brewdog beers and cheese to munch on, whats not to like?

If you are interested I would head over to Groupon and bag a voucher.

Bear and Billet Pub

Just out the road from the Brewery Tap and the Crossed Keys  so not far to wander should you wish to try out another set of beers in an evening. To be honest Lower Bridge street in Chester has a fair few pubs on it!

Again is is another pub which takes pride in its bar and wares, five pumps all with well kept beers and the usual keg lagers plus wines and spirits. The Bear fills up fast in the evenings with most wanting to be downstairs although there is an upstairs area not many seem to want to sit up there despite the fact it looked nice. Like most of the pubs in Chester, the Bear and Billet does do food, we only tried the lunchtime ones which were nice and filling, especially for our first lunch in Chester and being absolutely starved as the only food before was breakfast and one bar of chocolate on the train.

We got to try a fair few beers from Titanic, which were all very nice indeed, I had tried the Plum Porter at a beer festival and remember being not very impressed as in it was ok, but here it was gorgeous. Dark coffee porter with a slightly sweet plummy overtone. Maybe it was a duff barrel at the festival but this beer seemed totally different here.

The pub itself is a lovely period building and was one of the pubs in the Heritage week leaflet we picked up. I wish I could claim there was a historical angle to my pub visits but to be honest it was more wanting to try good beer in lovely surroundings. The pub does become very noisy in the evenings so not a place for a quiet chat but that was down to the usual problems of folks trying to talk over each other than loud music.

I did see that they do music folk evenings on a Friday but it wasn't on when we were there, but when they are, it is upstairs. A lot of the pubs seemed to advertise music nights which is something I don't seen a lot of down here unless you count karaoke, which I don't.

Another lovely place to go!

Albion Ale House - Conwy

Yep, we took a day trip out to Wales as someone wanted to climb a castle. The weather was windy, cold and rainy.... It was nice the rest of the week according to folks there though..typical.

However the draw here to shelter out of the awful weather was this lovely pub, owned by four breweries, one of which is the Purple Moose Brewery, it is a really nice place. It is apparently one of the best examples of a 1920 public house, frankly it is a stunning building. There are lots of beers on the ten pumps with two extra pumps for local cider, including the tasty but lethal Black Dragon cider.

All the beers were in tip top conditions and they also have changing lagers, from either the uk or Europe applying the same common sense for their beers to the 'evil' that is lager. As we all should know there is a wealth of difference between a good lager say from Freedom to one by a multinational flogger of yellow fizzy water.

There was also a good selection of wines which the local wine merchant helps them with in the main street, also the shop sells the breweries beers in bottle for those of us who would like to take a little bit of Wales home in our suitcases. So three beers in a bag plus a branded pint glass for someone. :)

The idea for this pub was to have a drinks lead pub so no food other than the pork pie, nuts, crisps or other various bar snacks. After a long walk around the castle this place is a welcome sight for sore eyes, it is a warm pub both in physical building and also in the greeting you get from the staff.  I really would like to say this is the future for drinks lead pubs, if they make that effort with the local community and also bring in beer tourists then I think they will be there for a long time.

The fact that four small breweries had the common sense to realise whilst they couldn't own their own place outright but as a forward thinking group they could end up with a lovely and original place like this, is amazing.

Ten out of ten guys!

Stonehouse Beers

Thanks to the handy local CAMRA magazine I picked up on our first day here in Chester, I found out about the Marlborough Arms in St John Street and their range of Stonehouse beers. These are all rather good, albeit the pub itself is not to my taste, the beers are well kept and four stocked pumps is not a bad thing at all.

Sunlander 3.7% abv was my first beer, if you like well hopped citrusy beers then you will love this one, it is very drinkable but for me it was a little bit too hoppy but still very enjoyable. My partner really liked this one and it would be a very nice pint to have in a sunny pub garden.

My partner on the other hand picked the one I was going to go for which was Off the Rails 4.8% abv, which turned out to be a rich almost chocolately strong bitter. This one was to my taste so I had to kept distracting my partner get a sip now and then, despite it's strength being under 5% it still packed a punch with flavour and was a half to enjoy and savour.

My next beer was Station Bitter 3.9% abv, this is the beer in the picture. Lovely golden carmel colour and was a lovely bitter which had rum overtones in the taste, certainly a beer for a session I felt, as it's finish was subtle and morish. The other beer in the round was Cumbrian Gold 4.2% abv, this was hoppy like the Sunlander before it but less punchy and more rounded with hops being more fruity then citrus.

All in all we were very impressed by Stonehouse and their beers, with four pumps we got to try most of their range. I will be keeping an eye out for their beers in the future.

The Brewery Tap - Chester

This was about the only pub which was recommended to us for our stay in Chester by friends, owned by the Spitting Feathers Brewery in Waverton it is a unusual looking pub set in Gamul House. It is a grade 2 listed building so the interior being kept as a high vaulted ceiling hall is probably not a shock to lovers of old buildings. The street level rooms are shut to the public and used as storage by the pub for barrels, you have to wander upstairs for the bar.

The Spitting Feathers beers are always on cask here, lovely to go with the food that comes out of the kitchen which includes some interesting vegetarian dishes as well as steak and ale pie. This variety means that it appeals to a broad cross section of people which can only help to keep the pub as busy as it is. Other beers are mainly from the local area although they also had two different Tring beers on during our stay. Seven pumps are always on, one for cider and six for beer, smooth operation means that once a beer is done a new one is soon pulled though and ready for drinking.

This pub has very good staff, I'm guessing a lot of training goes on in this pub as the service you get is smooth, friendly but above all very professional. They reminded me more of the staff in a high class restaurant than a pub, some may not like this approach but it works well here. I only had one bad beer here, which on pointing it out was tipped away, another beer given, pump clip turned around and different beer shortly back on that pump. As I said smooth.

Apart from that one time, all the other beers have been in fine condition. Favourites from the Spitting Feathers were Wavertonian Stout and the Thirstquencher, the stout was lovely to have in the pie as well as a pint by the side! 

I would easily recommend this pub myself, as somewhere for a good meal and a drink with friends. It's not the sort of place that I would go for a drink on my own as the tables are all designed for larger groups and the bar stools seem to have regulars on them but for couples and larger groups it is a cracking place.

Falcon - Chester

Upstairs bar open but downstairs still restoring so this is a full deal.

Still could have told the heritage week folks.

Crossed Keys - Chester

Before coming to Chester I had never heard of the Joules Brewery in Shropshire and after reading about them on their website I wouldn't have done either. They are that rare type of brewery who control their beer supply to keep the quality as they want it served to the customer, as such they don't sell via wholesalers and prefer to sell their beers direct to the pubs in the nearby areas and deliver it too. Sadly this means I won't be getting a pint of Slumbering Monk in London or Essex any time soon.

The Crossed Keys is their tap in Chester and on redoing up the pub they commissioned stain glass windows to represent all of their other taps. So in one window is a Crossed keys, another has a red lion, another has a white horse and so on and forth. This makes this pub a very attractive place to come for a pint, they state outside that there is no football on the tv or machines in the pub so all in all you get folks in who want to enjoy a drink and talk to friends and colleagues. This pub was always busy, not mega busy but always ticking over which means its customers are a loyal sort and not going to ebb and flow with what's the most fashionable place to be seen.

All the beers on cask are the Joule's own with lagers and ciders also available, the beer was in perfect tip top condition each time we came in. The Slumbering Monk my favourite although my partner prefered the Pale instead.

Unfortunately we won't be here in October which is when this pub arranges a coach tour to go to the brewery, we watched as one bloke came in for a pint, saw the sign, quickly phoned a few people on his mobile then promptly booked 14 tickets for this. Apparently accordingly to the bar man when they first did this tour idea they booked a small hopper coach not expecting to get much interest but they could filled in three times over so now they book a big coach. Shows how popular a brewery can be with good beers, lovely pubs and excellent staff to promote them!

If you are coming to Chester this is definitely a pub you have to try. It is again a fantastic pub.