Going East

Just a quick reminder for DAFTS heading to our game at Dagenham and Redbridge on Saturday that we'll be meeting in the Black Lion at Plaistow before the game.

The pub opens at 11am and since it's my local real-ale pub of note, I should be there as the doors open - we may sit in the quiet bar this time to avoid the racket from the TVs (televisions, not blokes in dresses) in the main bar.

After the game, we'll either head to the Palm Tree at Mile End or go a little further along the District line to the Black Bull at Whitechapel and sample some Nethergate - if it's the latter it's fair to say a curry may be on the cards at Tayyabs or the Lahore Kebab House.

Not that we're predictable or anything...

Home Alone

I was spared the frustration of the defeat by Shrewsbury as I had to be at home so I could remotely support some system testing - the latest in what have been a few weekends of this - not that I was ultra-upset as I'd not made plans to visit Shrewsbury.

I've enjoyed previous visits to the town - there are some lovely pubs there and it was nice to be able to stay in them until just before 3pm before wandering down the hill and over the bridge to Gay Meadow. Now you have to get a shuttle bus by 2:15 to get to the new stadium which is just a bit too regimented for my liking.

A lot of people don't mind this sort of thing but the older I get, the more I want to get out of my pre-match session - it's often as important and enjoyable as the games themselves - and so I'm getting choosier about which grounds I'm going to.

As it was, instead of having a nice pint in Loggerheads chewing the fat with Lance and Steve, I took a swift break from work to pop in Duncan's for some excellent pie and mash.

The woman who worked there was telling regulars about the West Ham fan who'd been given a ticket to their cup game at Hartlepool.

It seems he wasn't sure how to get there and somehow ended driving to Cambridge before giving up on his quest! I don't know if that says more about the intelligence level of Premiership fans or his subconcious saving him from the clutches of the Monkeyhangers...

Goal Frenzy

Up before the lark for a 7am train to Darlo - none of my favourite caffs are open at this time of day so I head over to St Pancras for a Cafe Maya from ATM - I'm not one of those with a cup of coffee permanently in my hand but this concoction of chocolate, double expresso and whipped cream seems to be the best breakfast substitute on offer.

St Pancras is lovely at this time of the day - it's fairly quiet with hardly anyone on the upper level to spoil the view - the huge roof looks stunning with John Betjeman looking out over it all.

I wander over to King's Cross - very much the ugly sister now - and meet John Wilson on-board - we have a decent journey north other than the fact that the price of the a cop of tea has gone up again and we arrive 25 mins late - but thanks to the early start my lunchtime session is not compromised.

On the platform at Bank Top I bump into my old mates Paul Walker and Ken Toase - Paul is meeting one of his work colleagues, Carl, who is being treated to a day out at the football Darlo-style. Lucky boy!

I join them for their visit to the Three Squares cafe on Skinnergate - a traditional cafe with a bargain-priced English breakfast, £3.95. You have to time it right to get a table as it's very popular but the service is brisk and the tea is strong.

Next it's just a it's a short stroll to Taylors to get some pies for the return leg whilst Paul and co. wandered ahead to the Quaker Cafe. My opener was Pirate's Gold, a pale bitter from the Wooden Hand brewery - there was a slightly odd taste to this but not sure what.

After that I stuck to a tried and tested favourite brewery with a pint of Dark Knight from Hambleton - not as dark as I'd expected given the name - more of an amber beer with a good mixture of hops and malt.

The pub soon starts filling up with Luton fans who seem to be searching out the real ale pubs of Darlo and it's a bit more crowded than usual.

John Wilson re-joined us and then we're treated to the grand entrance of Neil Johnson who was over from Norway for the weekend. Notable absentees though are Tony and Brian who have opted for the ale-pots of York and a trip to see the Minstermen play Lewes (though it later transpires that they never actually made it to Kit Kat Crescent).

After a few points, we wander up to Number Twenty-2 - the Milestone SPA taking my fancy for a while before we settled on the porter - a stand-in for the stout of the week - unfortunately I've forgotten the name of it but it was very drinkable.

The game proved to be one of those that take you totally by surprise - 4 goals in the first 28 minutes had us all reeling from shock - and we should have had more! To be fair Luton helped to make it a good game for us - they appear to believe that attack is the best form of defence - it probably has to be if their defence plays like that every week.

The second-half was a relatively quiet affair where both teams went through the motions - they should have just declared a TKO and let us all go back to the pub.

It was good to see our token Scouse git, Greg Blundell, get the fifth goal - not the most skillful or prolific of players but he has a great attitude - like Neil Wainwright he runs at people and keeps the pressure on the opposition - to my mind this is an overlooked virtue.

For the return leg home, I'm joined by Howard and Martin - the 7am departure was too early for their delicate constitutions - and we had an incident-free journey south. Except that I'd mislaid the pies somewhere between the pub and the ground - I think the taxi-driver got a free tea out of me.

At Doncaster, the London Millers - three of them including Liz - joined the train but kept themselves to a separate carriage. Nice to see they know their place...

Sussex Supping

I had rail tickets to go to our game in Accrington but decided to not bother - uncertainty about the weather, the fact I hate using the West Coast mainline unless I really absolutely have to plus the need to work at various anti-social times over the weekend all convincing me to stay down south.

The correct decision as it turned out following a mid-morning pitch inspection decided their pitch was not fit. Despite this I still had to get to Euston by 8:30am to give Martin Deans his rail tickets.

That did at least offer me the chance to pop into the Double Six for breakfast which was up to it's usual standard. I was joined there by Chris Stockdale who had just arrived from a week snow-boarding in Switzerland - getting a baldy sprained elbow for his troubles - and who was getting the next train to Accrington.

With Rotherham's match being postponed on the Friday, frenzied discussions took place with members of the London Millers to decide on somewhere to go for a pub crawl instead - these guys didn't want their pass-outs wasted!

It was Brighton that got the nod over St Albans and I was the first to arrive there just after 11am. I headed to our first port of call, the well-known Evening Star, but found it doesn't open until 11:30am on Saturdays. Cue idle thumb twiddling...

(left) Evening Star - not usually this quiet!

No difficulty in deciding on the first beer - it's got to be Dark Star Hophead - a very nice pint elsewhere but here it was in beautiful condition, the perfect first pint.

I then went onto Dark Star's American IPA which upped the ante significantly - according to their website it is supposed to be available between March and May - but I wasn't complaining.

As I was getting stuck in, the Millers arrived in the shape of Paul, Chris, Andy and Andy's mate Mike.

There was a great range of beers on offer - further beers from Dark Star of course plus local guests from Wolf and the Rectory brewery. They also had Brigand IPA and one of the Stone brews on tap as well.

Much as we were loath to, this was a crawl and we had to move on (after another couple of pints) and probably the next best pub to go to is the Lord Nelson.

This was my first visit here despite previous good reports from John and Bev.

On arrival, we bumped into the Fast Show's Mark Williams who was making short shrift of a pint of (real) cider. Apparently the Fast Show star is a regular in the real ale pubs of Brighton.

(left) Chris and Paul enter the Lord Nelson

This place is a Harvey's pub and I went for the Old Ale and what a cracking pint it was - a beautiful black pint, lovely and smooth, just the thing to complement the pork scratchings.

From here, Andy and I made an early move on the Basketmakers Arms leaving the others in the Lord Nelson for a bit longer as we were going to meet Martin Duffy, Steve's brother.

The Basketmakers Arms is a former Gales house, now a Fullers pub but it does have some decent guests - today Castle Rock Harvest Pale was one of them, not dissimilar to Hophead so we settled for that.

Whilst Andy quizzed Martin on whatever happened to 80s indie outfit Felt and whether they'd ever reform, the rest of the gang joined us, including Clarkey who decided that football or not, he wasn't missing out on the crawl.

Mr Martin had been shopping - the search for a pair of large yellow loons for his slightly fuller figure proved to be fruitless but he did manage to find an item of headgear that appeared to be a little on the tight side. Perhaps these Peruvians have small skulls?

(right) Paul Martin tries it on

When we left the Basketmakers after several pints, I made the wise decision to curtail my drinking and head for home - I was due to be working in the small hours of Sunday morning and didn't really want to do so with a hangover - whilst the others headed off for more.

Lucky, lucky bastards...

Lack Of Dutch Courage

Liz had been dropping hints about going out somewhere nice to celebrate her birthday and for once I took heed. Unfortunately on the day itself I was at our home game against Barnet so we settled for a visit to one of old haunts the following day instead.

We'd been going to the Lowlander on Drury Lane for many years and have always enjoyed our visits there. It serves a mixture of bottled and draught beers are drawn from Belgium and the Netherlands and offer a choice of hearty food with food.

It's a venue where you can't really stand at the bar but sit at the tables - not normally my cup of tea but when you're savouring the higher percentage brews, it's probably wisest.

Not surprisingly the place was very quiet when we arrived more or less on opening time - most other folk would be Xmas shopping just up the road in Covent Garden.

Normally I start off with an Ij Pilzen or an Ij Wit as a quick opener whilst I peruse the beer menu. However the blank look on the waiter's face suggested things had changed. No Ij beers at all!

I had a quick look at the draught beers and opted for the Brigand IPA, a 6.5% beer, which was OK but nothing outstanding - some hoppy overtones but not as hoppy as I like it.

The persual of the beer menu suggested that the management have rationalised the list somewhat and whilst the lion's share of the beers on offer have always been Belgian, there were now 52 Belgian beers compared to a paltry 8 Dutch brews!

Now as any visitor to the Arendsnest in Amsterdam will tell you, there are a lot of Dutch breweries these days and some are excellent - De Molen, De Prael, Jopen and Scheldebrouwerij come to mind. See Ron Pattinson's excellent site for more information.

Luckily they had bottles of Strandgaper (from Schedebrouwerij) in stock and I decided to stay on this for the remainder of the day. I was going to try the excellent Hercule Stout but they'd run out.

The food was as good as ever - pan-European hearty fare - I tend to opt for their steak as they do it nice and bloody.

If you're in the Covent Garden area the Lowlander is well worth a visit - I just wish they'd be a bit more adventurous in their choice of Dutch beers - at least get Ij brews back on the menu - but I suspect I'm in a minority here as most will opt for the well-known Belgian beers.

Battersea Brewing

I had first seen mention of London's newest brewery on the informative BeerJustice blog a few weeks ago and once I saw that they were doing a series of open nights, I popped down to south London with Chris and Roger.

Before going to the brewery, we decided to whet our whistle at the nearby Castle on Battersea High Street. Quite a light airy pub with a roaring wood fire - the Youngs Special was on top form so we had a few pints to limber up.

The Sambrook Brewery is one of a set of industrial units and the open night was in full flow when we got there.

Brewer Duncan Sambrook was giving a tour of the brewery to a group of people whilst various familiar CAMRA faces, including John Cryne from North London CAMRA, seemed content to simply drink the beer - like us, they've probably had their fill of brewery tours over the years.

There was just the one beer on offer - the 3.8% Wandle - named after the river that flows beneath Battersea.

The Wandle was a bit chilly for my taste and it looked as if it had a protein haze but it tasted fine - quite an easy drinking beer.

Roger really took a shine to it and kept going back for refills - well we only had half-pint glasses!

We had a brief chat with Duncan once he finished his tour and he explained that he'd been working in the City but decided to return to his roots as a chemist and try his hand at brewing professionally. Whilst he only has this one beer in production at the moment, he'll be looking to produce seasonal beers once the Wandle is fully up and running.

Although Duncan has started off at quite a large scale, he has the advantage of being in partnership with David Welsh, a former MD at Ringwoods, which will hopefully stand the business in good stead, especially in today's tricky trading environment.

Apparently there are a few local outlets already, including the Westbridge Public House and Dining Rooms, but they hope to extend further in 2009 and I'm sure we'll see their wares at the Battersea beer festival in February.

Good luck to Duncan and his team.

Can'tbearsedness

It's been about a month since my last post - did anyone miss me?

Blame it on lethargy brought on by a cold, compounded by pre-Xmas festivities and topped off by a general malaise over Xmas itself.

I'll try and do better in 2009...