The Ballad of Reading Ale

On Saturday we had a research trip to Reading, something I've been meaning to do for some time. We started at The Ale House, a pub which lived up to its name with plenty of hand pumps. It's a small place, but we managed to find some seats in a cosy little alcove and settled in with pints of Mr Chubb's Lunchtime Bitter, an old favourite. We were waiting for another friend here so we had time for two. The lovely Lisa stuck with Mr Chubb, but as I used to work with Mr Bingham I moved on to his Twyford Tipple, which rather surprisingly had a touch of the Harvey's about it.

Zerodegrees was the next stop, it's part of a small chain of brewpubs. Though having said that it's more a bar than a pub and had loud beepy music playing so it wasn't to my taste. The beer's are some sort of CAMRA kosher keg but my hazy pale ale was fine and the smoked beer and wheat beer seemed to go down well too.

For some strange reason above the urinals they have pictures of women mocking  your manhood, not sure what that's all about.

It was time for a pie after that so we called in at Sweeney and Todd's, a restaurant with four beers on hand pump which mightily impressed me, even if the beer range was on the unexciting side. The food was very reasonably priced too.

Ready for more research after dinner I was delighted to discover another protestant sect as we waddled towards the last pub. This lot were homophobic Anglicans. I've never looked into C of E splits before but I've now got a whole new series of schisms to read up on. 

Our last stop was the Nag's Head, which had an impressive 12 cask beers on.

 
I spied Gadd's Old School Mild, which made the choice easy. Surprisingly hoppy for a dark mild I still enjoyed it even if I didn't get what was Old School about it. The pub was one big room with bare floor boards, which isn't really to my taste but I wasn't fussy by this stage of the proceedings. All that was left after that was to wend our way home, with refreshment from the M&S at the station sustaining us for the train journey.

Woking woking, boing boing!

Has there ever been this much excitement in Woking? Probably not since the martians landed. For the second week in a row my beers have been available on draught.

This time it was at Woking beer festival, surely a highlight of anyone's drinking year. Being held in the leisure centre it may lack the atmosphere of Farnham but on the plus side it's in walking distance of my house. Or maybe more accurately walking distance on the way there and staggering distance on the way back.

The festival glasses had gone back to looking decidedly unrighteous but I didn't let that put me off. When you drink in the ways of righteousness like I do it will take more than that to stop you.
As my beers were handily close to the entrance I checked them out early on to make sure they were on top form. Which indeed they were.

Other delights included the mighty Oscar Wilde mild, Bingham's Old Ale, Dorking Winter Ruby and Fuller's Golden Pride. I only had a sip of the last one as at 8.5% ABV it's a bit much to be knocking back.

I met up with loads of people, including bizarrely enough the bloke who'd been our tour guide when we went round Jennings. I had an interesting discussion with him on the merits of sparklers, but I'll say no more on that matter.

It was an excellent night, and I found out the next day that we'd done rather well in the festival competition, so unusually for the day after a beer festival it's been an excellent day too.

Tonbridge beer festival 2011

I called in at the SIBA SE beer festival in Tonbridge yesterday. As soon as I arrived I got roped into helping with glass cleaning. And once again I was driving, which limited my alcohol intake to halves of Bingham's Twyford Tipple and Westerham's Audit Ale.

But do you know what? It was one of the most enjoyable beer festivals I've been to in ages.