Once again BadPoo has gone on the Real Ale investigation trail – much like Dustin Hoffman (short, dark hair, writing in italics, Richard) and Robert Redford (tall, ginger, Matt) in ‘All The President’s Men’ – to investigate the burning issues at the heart of the beer-quaffing community. This week’s fearless expose: what’s Lytham like for a session?

Our guide for the day’s activities would be a leaflet printed for the 2008 Lytham Beer Festival which suggests an Ale Trail round the place – intriguingly highlighting many features in the listed pubs and mostly seeming to focus on a) whether the establishments have hardwood floors and b) the prevelance of ‘raised seating areas’. Obviously, consumption at altitude and an ease of brushing is what really matters to the drinkers in this posh land between Preston and Blackpool.

The original plan was simple – get into Lytham at about 11.20 then have a bit of a wander around to get to know the place while we wait for the pubs to open. This plan was immediately spoiled/improved by the Station Tavern already being open as we step off the platform. Now, chances are you’ve porbably been to plenty of pubs that were built next to a station or, indeed, in a little part of the station but Lytham goes one better. The Station Tavern is the station. All of it. Clearly there’s no need for a ticket office and a waiting area in this town any more so they’ve replaced the lot with a spacious pub.

The Station Tavern- enough to make you want to lick Dr Beeching's face

It’s quiet when we get there and, disappointingly, the only ales on offer are Deuchars IPA and Theakstons Mild which at least represents a safe start to the day. With a couple of pints of the Scottish stuff on the go, it’s time for us to settle in with a titanic tussle on the pool table (Richard on the black) and, with this being one of those places that has a music channel on the widescreens, the first heated debate of the day unfolds as an attempt is made to categorise the music of the Black Eyed Peas (manufactured pop vs opportunistic genre chancers vs the Fugees but more Euro-dance). This proves frustratingly inconclusive but, our hearts lifted by what is a very nice opening place to drink, it’s on to the next pub.

[In an attempt at a spot of freestyle beer reportage, Richard now takes the writing reins.] Armed with nothing but an A5 pamphlet and a burning desire to quaff ale, we moved on from the Tavern to The Hastings, only a few minutes walk around the corner. This is an imposing building, looking like the backdrop for an am-dram about a Victorian murder. Large wooden benches litter the front yard until you hit the steps up into the building, which is when you realise that if a Victorian were to be murdered in here he’d have to have had a soft spot for olives and houmous. Most telling of all is the quote on their website: “Hastings restaurant in central Lytham is both inclusive and exclusive.” I think that essentially means they just want everybody’s money.

Despite the different colours, both of these beers taste of hair.

We tried a pint each of Hastings Bitter and Lancaster Blonde. The Lancaster Brewery should be noted for their superbly simplistic naming convention – blonde,black, ruby and so on. Unfortunately both beers tasted of nothing much at all. The Bitter had a hint of hair to it, while the Blonde reminded me of one of those posh bottles of water you get that taste very vaguely of some kind of generic fruit. I could have drunk four pints of this in an hour and thought it was tap water.

Fortunately, it was a glorious day in Lytham and we took full advantage by sitting outside in the blazing sun. Old dears met up for lunch, debonair elderly gentlemen strolled by with a wave and a smile, and we discussed the pro’s and con’s of the European football fixture system. Pints finished, on we moved.

The County Hotel is a bit of what we’d term a plastic pub (generic menus bellowing ’2 for £10!’ at you, numbered tables, that kind of thing) but there’s plenty of nice raised seating areas and a couple of intriguing beers available on the bar. We have a pop at the Amber from the local Lytham Brewery and the much further travelled Golden Hind from the Coastal Brewery in Cornwall. The Lytham beer is all very nice and pleasant but the Cornish tipple is the frankly extraordinary taste of insanity in a glass. Contrasting both sweet, biscuity flavours and odd, plant-based notes it’s bizarrely similar (we imagine) to eating a pudding made entirely out of leaves. Wierd.

After this there’s a brief inerlude for some fish and chips on the seafront. The food was bought from Seniors Fish Bar which is on the main high street and should really have a stamp dedicated in it’s honour. It’s that good. Even with the normal 20% taste bonus that fish and chips get from being eaten by the sea, it’s clear to see that the batter is light and crispy, the fish is moist and chunky and the chips are massive and golden. This is as close as eating battered, fried animals gets to being a spiritual experience. The first few drinks are duly soaked up and it’s on to the next pub.

A couple of clowns in the Clifton Arms, looking truly paggered.

Heading back from the sea front across the wide grassy patch between there and town, it seemed sensible to make our next port of call the Clifton Arms Hotel. There are instant images of Poirot and Miss Marple, of a bygone age when the gentry strolled along the sea front arm in arm, hotel porters were murdered in lifts and half of the population lived in grinding poverty. Simple times.

Taking a seat at the bar, staffed by a well-spoken continental barman in the true vein of Poirot, we tried a half of Titanic’s Clifton Arms and a half of Festival Amber. The brew made specially for the hotel was like a poorly administered but ultimately successful sex act. As Matt spoke those words, the well-spoken heavily-made up table of MILFs to our side gave more than one glance our way – presumably a show of interest in a four-way sex act. I found the Amber to be yet another inoffensive, bland beer – not bad in any way, shape or form, but totally unremarkable and without merit. As the beers were quaffed conversation turned back to Poirot and the QCU (Quaint Crimes Unit) was born – two elite coppers running their own department, dealing solely with quaint crimes. The victims must be poor, the villains must be dastardly, and we must be in the pub drinking real ale for 50 minutes until the answer finally dawns on us.

“Bloody hell, I tell you, it’s got me stumped this one.”
“Aye, it bloody has that. Another round?”
“Aye, why not. A pint of Directors and a pint of Did It For The Insurance please.”
*slowly turn heads to look at each other*

With the QCU born, we moved on.

Beer goggles.

Next, the Mother Lode. Actually, it’s called The Taps but dear Christ this place is heaven for the ale drinker. Fittingly, it would appear to have won more awards than Ricky Gervias did for The Office. An executive decision is called for and we decide to stay here for a couple- first round up is Thatcher’s Somerset Scrumpy and Shropshire Gold from the Salopian Brewery. The scrumps is, simply, scrumpalicious; a little bit tart, a little bit sweet, a little bit bitter and supremely refreshing. On a day as unseasonally warm as this one was, I could easily have fallen into the scrumpy trap I’ve mentioned before and sunk pint after quenching pint of this 6% stuff until my head started spinning without ever really noticing anything was up. The Shropshire Gold meanwhile, continues our disappointing run of beers that don’t really taste of much.

Moving outside into the covered L-shaped yard at the back, we tried another Salopian brew, this time Darwin’s Engine. It was treacly, like being forced to suck on a lump of the foul sugary objects pensioners survive off when their digestive systems give up the fight and anything more solid than watered-down Smash presents a challenge. There were hints of peanut brittle, again, a sweet and heavy taste. Matt tried a Funnel Blower from Box Steam brewery, which had a roasted chocolate taste like being landed on by a 14-ton Malteser.

Time for a pint on Lytham’s seafront next at the Queen’s Hotel. From our vantage point in the front beer garden we can gaze upon a heart-warmingly British scene stretched out across the town’s lovely green. Gaggles of teenagers lol about necking Magners; shirtless men play football to impress dis-interested ladies who are, curiously, all dressed in summery outfits apart from the Arctic beating warmth of Ugg boots; the guests of a wedding wander past toasting the luck that the couple have got with the weather; dogs are walked, joggers jog, the beer garden is bustling.

Richard gets stuck into some Theakston’s Black Bull which he describes as smelling like beer did before you’ve drunk beer for the first time and tasting nice and malty- good in most circumstances but like a Mardi Gras of taste compared to most of the stuff we’ve drunk today. I, meanwhile, have gone for a wheat beer- Flying Dutchman from Caledonian though, yet again, the taste is slight. At best, this is a beer that’s been breifly shown a picture of wheat and asked to describe it some weeks later.

Next stop was the Ship & Royal, a pub which in a trillion years time when an as-yet unknown species rediscovers the ashes of humanity, the Encyclopaedia Galactica will feature a photo of under the section “UK chain pubs of the early 2000s”. It’s all there: lightly varnished wood, mirrors on every wall, a carpet that clearly looked astonishing when it was first laid but has since been trampled into submission by the endless pattering of pensioners and children throwing food around. The beers were disappointing: we didn’t catch the names of the two unusual ones but noted that Directors and Bombardier were the two standards. Mine tasted like walking into a freshly-painted room: exhilerating and fresh at first, but then slightly nauseating when you breath in too deeply. Matt’s was a Hobnob in liquid form.

Our visits were too early and late in the trip for food, but maybe next time...

Finally (apart from a cheeky there’s-15-minutes-till-the-train-comes-what-should-we-do? short in the Station Tavern) there’s a return to the posh confines of The Hastings Bistro for a couple more of their Moorhouse beers- Blonde Witch and Pendle Witches Brew. The former is alluringly described by Richard as ‘like a Twix’ while the former gives me a nice hint of honey. Both of these are refreshing but weigh in at over 5% so, much like the Jaipur and Kipling from Thornbridge, these have to now be officially labelled as BadPoo Danger Beers- and heartily deserving of the award they are too.

And from there it was a few seconds walk round the corner and a minute’s wait for the train home. It had been another classic day on the sauce in the vein of the Rail Ale Trail – civilized, gentlemanly and with some beers that make your eyes bleed in anticipation. Lytham gets a solid thumbs up for a few reasons – it’s easy to get to from anywhere near Preston, in theory as far East as York and Scarborough on the transpennine line. The pubs we visited were all in a few minutes walk of each other, roughly fitting into a small circle no more than half a mile across. Add to this the Victorian-esque splendour of Lytham itself, on a sunny day, and it gets a BadPoo silver medal.

Black Bull · Caledonian · CAMRA · Clifton Arms Hotel · Coastal brewery · Deuchars · Fylde · Golden Hind · IPA · Lancaster Blonde · Lytham · Lytham brewery · Mild · Moorhouses · Quaint Crimes Unit · Queen's Hotel · Salopian brewery · Seniors Fish Bar · Ship & Royal · Shropshire Gold · Somerset Scrumpy · Station Tavern · Thatchers · The County Hotel · The Hastings · The Taps · Theakstons

Wigan’s beer festival is just getting underway as I write this, and I’ll be over there tomorrow afternoon to see what it’s like these days. I haven’t been for a good six or seven years, when I went with a few of my uncles, we all fell out and ended up making a frankly bizarre attempt to con our way in with an out of date CAMRA card. That it was about 50p to get in didn’t seem to matter to us after five pints around Wigan beforehand.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a little less stupid as I’m just over for the afternoon session with my sister. Oh yes – the afternoon “quiet session”, my second favourite piece of beer terminology (behind “drinking career” but just ahead of “session beer”). Having been to quite a few afternoon sessions now, I have found that it really is quite a good description for the atmosphere, a blend of studious beer appreciation with banter without the din of a blues band in the background.

I’ll report back on how it goes, along with a look back at Wednesday’s day out with Matt along the Transpennine Real Ale Trail.

Beer festival · Beers · CAMRA · Transpennine Real Ale Trail · Wigan

Here’s a weekend to keep free: East Lancs CAMRA will again be holding a beer festival at the St Mary’s Centre in Clitheroe on May 14th and 15th 2010.

Men undertaking the noble pursuit of standing around getting pissed on a Saturday afternoon.

Last year it coincided with a 1940s theme weekend but I haven’t seen any mention of that yet so perhaps that was a one-off. Either way it’s still a decent festival for the weekend as Clitheroe’s a nice town and it’s easy to reach from anywhere on the Manchester line – you could even change at Blackburn and reach it from Preston, Burnley and beyond.

The St Mary’s Centre is quite small but sometimes that adds to a festival. The dull roar of 300 drunk men in an old building with terrible acoustics is second only to standing in a busy Wetherspoons at 9pm on a Saturday night and feeling drowned out by mindless noise. You can rest assured though that the Clitheroe festival is on a much more intimate scale.

While in the town I would also recommend a visit to the New Inn, which normally has around six beers on and is a fantastic old pub. In summer, wind through the low-beamed rooms out into the beer garden with a great view over the town – one of my all time top five beer gardens without a doubt. The Grand is also worth a look if open – the bar had a good choice of bottled beers on last time I went.

I’ll update here if I hear any more news but I do recommend this as one for a good Saturday out, especially if the weather is pleasant.

Beer festival · Beers · CAMRA · Clitheroe · New Inn · St Mary's Centre · The Grand

Fleetwood: home of pissed-up sailors.

And to the four corners of the land we go in the search for a pint of golden ale. This week: Fleetwood, home of fish, ferries and abandoned gloom. This is a brand of despair unique to forgotten Northern coastal towns, where regular gloom passed through twenty years ago and left behind streets of flat buildings stripped of life.

I went on a recce of Fleetwood at the weekend since I was in the area, and left wondering whether I’d have been better off leaving it to the weekend. I’ve rarely seen any town centre so deserted on a Sunday afternoon. The whole of the main road through town is dug up and fenced off as what looks like tramlines are laid down, the result of which is that you pick your side of the road and then you’re stuck with it for the next 500 metres. When you reach the end, you realise there’s nothing much there and come back down on the other side, a livelier mix of pound shops and two or three pubs.

The number of “TO LET” signs up is an immediate impression when you walk around Fleetwood. One, with a giant mural drawn by kids on the side, advertises food and good beers from a distance, but as you draw close you see the doors are firmly closed. There’s nothing else for a good ten minutes. Coming back down the other side of the road, I passed an interesting place which I’ll try on Saturday; black padded seats wrapped around the walls of a large bar as old men stood outside smoking. My kind of place. Further down the road, and two chain pubs sit on side roads heading into the sea. They’ll be worth a look and at least they’re open. On the way out, “the oldest pub in town” went past view and must be given a tour.

It was not the best time to go, I know – a Sunday afternoon in a forgotten coastal town in winter. Morrissey probably spent half of his teens writing his next twenty years of music round here. It leaves me then wondering what this weekend’s beer festival will be like. I like to have a wander around new towns and check out the pubs, but I’ve built a vague sense of foreboding into myself already. It’s like going on a holiday with people who’ve already been there – you feel drained of choice and free will and the days have an air of finality before they’ve even begun.

Nonetheless, the festival itself will hopefully be a good one and I’ll report back once we’re back.

Beer festival · Beers · Blackpool · CAMRA · Fleetwood · Fylde · wyre

Binge-drinking reaches the polar ice caps

It’s three weeks into the new year and I’ve taken my first step in resolving to stick to beer where beer is good, and not pour any old crap down my neck just because there’s no other choice – I must confess I am capable of drinking John Smiths Smooth if it’s the only beer going. Along with Rich and Shakes I went along to the Manchester winter beer festival at the Sheridan Suite. This is the Wembley of pubs, the Maracana of bars, the Krakatoa of quaffing. Bearded pilgrims made their way down Oldham Road in threes and fours, probably suspecting that any area with a community centre with a brightly painted mural on the wall isn’t going to be the safest. Tower flats loomed on the other side of the road and the manic shopping of central Manchester suddenly seemed a world away.

And then, the Sheridan Suite. From the outside it looks like a 1990s suburban leisure centre, the kind of place where otherwise decent people collect to play badminton badly against one another and Gordon Brittas rules with an iron fist. What a deceptive appearance, though. Passing through the doors you’re met by a group of volunteers taking the £3 entrance (£2 for CAMRA members, more of which later) and then an elevator up to the arena. The noise of a thousand chattering people grows and then the sheer scale of the place hits you. I am sure the Great British Beer Festival is held in a larger space, but this was by far the largest festival I’ve been to. My domain is usually the marquee-tent-in-a-farmer’s-field kind of affair, with 20 barrels hoiked over a bit of scaffolding and a deafening blues band pitched up at one end. This, by comparison, was industrial festivaling.

A view of a man's back.

The sheer size of the bars probably worked in their favour. We were there for the afternoon session so probably didn’t see the busiest of the day, but there was never any trouble getting served. The volunteers had the usual charming absent-mindedness, as if Help The Drinkers had sent a busload of their most regular customers down to help out for the weekend. (And what a charity that would be. Fuck Haiti, text 80450 to donate £1 to victims of Fosters near you.) The Indian food, at £5 a tray, was enough to split between three to keep us going.

And on to the beers. Half glasses were in order and they were the best I’ve ever seen with a sturdy base and a handle that made you feel less of a ponce by eliminating that rogue floating finger you get with a usual half glass. Handles were the past and they are the future, I’d say. Shakes started with a Beowulf Grendals Winter Ale at 5.8%, a “sipper”. Rich tried the Boggart 5% Seethy, though the actual name of that one has been lost to the sands of time; damn smudging pens, damn you to hell. I was particularly happy to see a Brewdog beer on the list after so long waiting and reading about them, but to be honest I found the Punk IPA really nothing out of the ordinary. At 6.2% maybe it suffered from its strength as it really isn’t what I’d have called an IPA but for the name.

Three pleasures in one: Cains, the tranny of the ale world.

Distinctly underwhelmed so far, we went on a ramble and found Mecca: the Cains stand. One summer of my life will forever be associated with the unbeatable sheer quaffability of Cains Finest, and considering that summer was spent in a Last Orders pub you can imagine how much the beer had to do. The bogs may stink of piss and forever be associated with the smashed toilet seat during its days as a gay bar, and the regulars may be cocks who live off peanuts, but with Cains on at £1.20 a pint, it seemed alright.

The Cains stand was three pleasures in one. First, that brilliant moment of seeing it in the distance, an unexpected gift from the gods. Second, the anticipation building as we wove our way towards it, still comprehending how this could be here – could it really be here? And third, hitting the bar, a first taste of Cains for a long time. Rich couldn’t say no to the Finest and gave it a 4 for “good memories”. Maybe I was just having an off-day because I normally enjoy IPAs but again, I found their elaborately-named IPA weak and my only note left against it is “naff”. Shakes found the Mild watery and at 3.2% it’s not a surprise. Perhaps it’s a parable, then, to leave good memories where they best belong – in the past.

We took another wander and found the book stalls; I only just resisted a few knocking about down there. The Derwent W & M Pale Ale at 4.4% was a good session beer and my favourite so far. Rich ended up with a Dunham Massey Xmas Ale and at 6.6% it took some drinking. Shakes meanwhile was on a Stewart 80/-, and his run of bad luck continued with all he could muster by comment being “water”. My next was a Humpty Dumpty Reedcutter, at 4.4% a very caramel beer and far too sweet for my taste; at least it wasn’t another of Shakes’ tar-jugs though, and he’d finally hit a bit of luck with a Lymestone Foundation Stone, calling it drinkable and a good change of taste. Rich maybe made a schoolboy error by going for a big name, a J W Lees Coronation St, flatteringly labelled by him as “gas”.

The notes against the programme beer list begin to betray our decaying state of mind around this point as Rich’s next beer is scribbled down as “ALL GUNS BLAZING”, a 4.3% New Moon from his nearby Leeds brewery. This kicked off the heaviest session of the afternoon as we set up camp at the end of a bar and proceeded to work our way down in a chaotic order, fitting in a Marble Pint (Shakes: “grapefruit piss”), a Marston’s Ringwood Best Bitter and a decidedly-average Molson-Coors Red Shield. The wheels were in danger of coming off as Rich, in a display of patriotism, stuck with the Yorkshire beers, describing an 8% Otley 08 as like “fucking nice wine”. Time to reign things in a bit before we became the first people to be ejected from a CAMRA festival for inciting War of the Roses-based racial violence, and we hit the Stewart Copper Cascade which I could taste absolutely nothing of, the Yale Good King Senseless which at 5.2% Shakes simply said was “right good beer” and the Wells & Youngs Youngs Spl, a tame 4.5%. With a quick MOT under his belt Rich was back on top form and finished off with a Yates Yule Be Sorry, described as “smooth (head feels)”. I really don’t know what that means.

The man who took this zoomed in this close and sent it to a global network of naughty men.

The plan for the day was to finish off with a scrumps and so we did, using Rich’s free half vouchers he won by being the 151st person to join CAMRA that weekend. Don’t believe me? I’m sure he has some proof somewhere… I know the git got a bag with a Good Beer Guide in at least. The band were due on soon, but it was time to make our way home. Reflections? A very well organised festival, a perfect number of people (in the afternoon at least) and some good beers on the go. I’d happily go again at the drop of a hat and have told people it’s worth a look. Well done to those concerned and here’s to next year.

Beers · Beowulf · Boggart · BrewDog · Cains · CAMRA · Derwent · Dunham Massey · humpty dumpty · JW Lees · Leeds brewery · Manchester · Marble · Molson-Coors · Otley brewery · Sheridan Suite · Winter Ales Festival · yates