Tag: Wetherspoons

| Uncategorised

Why J D Wetherspoon’s is fast becoming my favourite craft beer bar

In eight years of blogging and writing articles and columns about beer, I think everything I’ve written about JD Wetherspoon splits pretty evenly between “This is amazing” and “This is absolutely appalling.”

Wetherspoons is a mixed bag. Remarkably, nothing about it is simply OK – that mixed bag contains both the best and worst of British pubs. But recently, the balance for me is shifting. I’m becoming a ‘Spoons denizen.

Now is the time to make your jokes about being pissed by 10am and shouting randomly at strangers. Done that? Good, let’s carry on.

It started in the summer, when ‘Spoons started selling cans of craft beer imported from the US at the ridiculous price of £1.99 each.

Sixpoint is a good brewery, and Bengali Tiger in particular hit the spot over a long, hot summer. But ‘Spoons remained a distress purchase, a bedraggled, sad pub chain without soul that just happened to sell a few good beers.
But the chink in my anti-‘Spoons armour had been opened. ‘Spoons was now a place I would consider going. And the more I’ve been, the more I’ve liked it. 
There was a day back in October when I needed to get out of the house with a manuscript and a red pen to try to sort out a sample chunk of a new book I’m writing. I like doing this kind of work in pubs – it focuses me and, perhaps counter-intuitively, gets rid of distractions. I went to a local craft beer pub – the kind of place I still remain overjoyed about, in theory, counting myself lucky that I live within walking distance of several such places. 
I ordered a pint of cask beer and it wasn’t good. I hate these situations. It wasn’t that the beer was off; it wasn’t displaying any recognisable faults, it just hadn’t been kept with love and care and simply wasn’t pleasant. So I thought that for my next pint, I’d move on to keg. BrewDog Dead Pony Club – perfect at 3.8%, an increasingly mainstream beer that wasn’t strong enough to make me lose focus on my work – £5.20 a pint. They also had Beavertown Gamma Ray IPA, one of my beers of the year, brewed just a couple of miles from where I was standing – £6.50 a pint. And I just thought, that’s too much for those beers. I don’t like the quality of the cask, and I’m not prepared to pay that for a keg beer, and so I left.
Stuck for where to go next, I ended up in my local Wetherspoon’s, the Rochester Castle on Stoke Newington High Street. And there, I found Devil’s Backbone – an American IPA from a celebrated brewer – brewed under license in the UK, admittedly – for less than three quid a pint.

And so I asked myself, why should I pay £6.50 a pint for something I can get yards away for less than £3?

The arguments in answer to this came pretty quickly. But I found myself knocking each one of them back.

Yes, but it’s a one off, this isn’t a ‘proper’ craft beer bar.
Oh no? I’ll admit the range will always consist of what is becoming known as ‘mainstream craft’, but those are the kinds of beers I prefer to drink anyway. As well as Devil’s Backbone, there’s a range of bottled craft beers including BrewDog, Goose Island and Lagunitas. They’ll keep me happy for a session, at half the price of the nearby craft beer bar.

But Wetherspoons outlets are so soulless. There’s no atmosphere there.
Yes, Wetherspoons are often big, echoey hangars, and the lack of music gives the air an odd hue. But most craft beer bars are sparse and spartan and echoey too, and the music they play is often shit, chosen by the staff to show how hip they are rather than to create the appropriate atmosphere for the space. Some of the buildings Wetherspoons have taken over and preserved are beautiful, and there’s always a nod to its history in the decorations on the walls.

Wetherspoons aren’t ‘proper’ pubs. They’re managed outlets just like a McDonald’s.
So are most craft beer pubs I know, whether they’re part of a small branded chain or not.

The staff don’t know what they’re doing. They’re disinterested.
I beg to differ. Wetherspoons staff may be trained to be just like their counterparts in chain restaurants, but in the Roch at least, I find the service to be polite and professional, with none of the sneering attitude I sometimes (to be fair, rarely) encounter in hip bars. I’m used to having to argue with the bar staff if I have to take a pint of beer back because it’s off. In Spoons, I’ve had the best service I’ve ever encountered in this situation.

The quality of the beer is shit/they buy short-dated stock.
Wrong. Most Spoons pubs have Cask Marque. Their cellar standards are excellent. And I have it on very good authority that the short-dated thing is an urban myth.

Fine, but look at the kinds of people you have to drink with. They’re awful!
My local Spoons has some dodgy characters, it’s true. Especially the guys who sit by the window. They’re casualties of life, the people who do turn up and start drinking at breakfast time, the people who have been forced out of the pubs they used to drink in by gentrification and £6.50 a pint. Some of them are shouty. Some of them smell a little ripe. There’s no getting away from that. But inside, my local Spoons is a true community pub. It’s where all the local posties gather when they’ve finished their shifts. There are always big tables of council workers and teachers, and a smattering of students. And no hipsters. None. I’m not having a go at hipsters, but I live in a multicultural, multifaceted community, and Spoons is one of the only pubs that reflects that. Some of the negative attitude about ‘Spoons drinkers is snobbery, pure and simple.

Add to this the free wifi, cheap meals (with calorific content of each dish clearly displayed – where else does that?) the bi-annual real ale and cider festivals that include unique collaborations with craft brewers from around the world flying to the UK to brew here, and you have a proposition that would be celebrated by every beer writer and craft beer geek in the country if it wasn’t ‘Spoons doing it.

I’m not going to defend everything about the place, and I’ll accept that standards vary across the estate an I just might have a good one on my manor, but increasingly, in many areas, J D Wetherspoon is setting standards for more ‘serious’ bars to live up to.

I never thought I’d see the day.

*Amended at 10am – I previously said that Devil’s Backbone was imported. It isn’t, and JDW don’t make that clear. Thanks to Boak and Bailey for the clarification. Read their take on the crafting of ‘Spoons here.

| Uncategorised

The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s

“Oh.  Did you know that pub’s about to become a Wetherspoons?”

We’re in town on the cider trail.  The microbrewery tap we’re drinking in doesn’t have rooms, but another pub just round the corner does B&B for thirty quid a night.  We’ve just told the regulars in the microbrewery tap that we’re staying there.  It’s impossible to tell whether they think it’s a good thing or a bad thing that the pub we’re staying in is about to become a Wetherspoon’s.  Either way, they’re very keen to tell us.

“There’s a notice in the window,” they say, nodding, and indeed there is – a Notice of Application for a New Premises Licence, on behalf of J D Wetherspoon plc.

The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s is bigger than it looks.  There’s only one bar open and the rest is in darkness, but it you were to explore you’d find another bar on the other side, that’s set up to cater for diners who never come.  And then, through a glass door at the back, there’s another room as big as these two bars put together, where there is (or was) a carvery at weekends.  The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s will make a perfectly good Wetherspoon’s.

The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s is festooned with small plastic flags – Union Jacks and Welsh dragons hang from every beam.  “They’re left over from the festival,” says one of the regulars at the bar.  On every flat surface, and glued to every wall, there are posters offering you a free pair of sunglasses if you drink a certain quantity of Strongbow.

The barmaid in the pub that’s going to become a Wetherspoon’s is the reason people come here.  Still very attractive, she was obviously stunning ten years ago.  She’s sexy enough to draw men in, and approachable enough to make them think that maybe – just maybe – they might have a chance with her. There’s a story doing the rounds that one of the regulars once took her home with him to meet his wife. Someone pointed out to him that this may have gone down better if it had been the other way round.  But the pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s doesn’t feel like the kind of pub you take the wife to.  It’s not that it’s unwelcoming to women – it’s as welcoming to them as it is to anyone – it’s just that it’s obviously a place men come to get away from their wives.

The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s is close to the place where a five year old girl just went missing.  Posters are everywhere – the ones you’ve seen on the news, and others featuring different photos of the little girl.  It’s on people’s minds.  Maybe it’s one reason the town we’re in feels like a ghost town.  No one feels like going out.  There’s a depressed tension in the air.

“I’m going to go up there tomorrow to see if I can be of any help,” says the attractive barmaid.

“What can you do?” asks one of the regulars.

“I don’t know, but you’ve got to show willing, haven’t you?” says the barmaid.

The 63 year-old retired property developer is one of the regulars who thinks he stands a chance with the attractive barmaid.  He offers to accompany her to the cellar to change a barrel.  He makes it sound sinister rather than flirtatious, but he doesn’t mean to.

He tells us about the house clearance he just did where the tenant had been a chronic hoarder.  He kept his own bodily fluids in bottles.  Even kept his own shit.  “We haven’t found his nail clippings yet, but they must be there somewhere,” he says.

The attractive barmaid rolls her eyes.  “He tells that story to everyone who comes in,” she says.  “We had a nice couple in the other night who’d just had their dinner, and they turned round and walked out again.”

The 63 year-old retired property developer doesn’t realise that one reason he will never stand a chance with the barmaid is that he keeps telling his house clearance stories.

The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s has a font on the bar with taps for draught wine.  There are also branded taps for Strongbow, Blackthorn, Cobra, Carlsberg, Tetley’s Cask, Worthington Creamflow, Tetley’s Smooth, Pepsi, and a naked handpump with ‘Bank’s Sunbeam’ written in biro on a fluorescent yellow starburst sellotaped to it.

The Carlsberg is undrinkable, but the attractive barmaid happily swaps it for a Cobra.

“My nose got split last Friday,” says the attractive barmaid.  “I’ve had my lip split before.  They don’t realise when they do it that they’ve just earned a criminal record and lost their jobs.”

The 63 year-old retired property developer says he can’t go home because his wife has guests round, and she doesn’t want him embarrassing her because he’s drunk.  So he stays here, talking politics.  The elderly man who goes to the microbrewery tap first and then comes here and sits alone, smart in his suit and tie, every night at the same time in the same seat, disagrees scornfully with everything the drunk property developer says, like a call and response catechism.

“These two do that every night,” says the barmaid.

There’s still a jukebox in the pub  that’s about to become a Wetherspoon’s.  Not enough pubs have jukeboxes these days.  But tonight the jukebox is switched off, because the TV in the corner is on.  It’s switched to BBC4, which is showing a programme about the life and work of Norman Wisdom.  Clips of him pratfalling, clips of him meeting the Queen, interspersed with ageing comedians and TV executives talking about what a gifted comic he was.

“Whass’on the tellee?” asks one of the regulars.

“Norman Wisdom,” replies the attractive barmaid.  She stares at the screen for a while, then asks, “What was he, a philosopher?”

“No, he was a comedian,” replies the regular.

“Well ‘e can’t have been that funny, I’ve never heard of him,” says the attractive barmaid.

The pub that’s about to become a Wetherspoons stays open late.  When the property developer and the smartly dressed elderly man leave, we’re the only customers in the bar.  The attractive barmaid takes a seat and chats to us, and then three young guys come in for last orders, ans she tells them how long they have to drink up.

It’s late, and I call it a night.  And as I go upstairs to my room, I wonder if – when Wetherspoon’s finally do take over this pub, and they change some things and leave other things the same – I wonder if they’ll rename it the ‘Moon Under Water’?

| Uncategorised

Hold the front page – Daily Mail twists truth to scare people over drink

It’s like shooting fish in a barrel these days I know, but after being alerted to this by a fellow blogger, I couldn’t let it pass without comment.

The Mail this week ran a story titled ‘Beer for breakfast? Pub chain Wetherspoon to open at 7am‘.

It’s one of those classic weasels whereby if you read to the end of the piece, you eventually get the true facts. But journos know that most people read the headline and the first paragraph. If you did that here, you could only come away with the very clear impression that Wetherspoons is going to start serving – as the headline says – ‘beer for breakfast’, from 7am.

The only trouble is, that’s not true:
  • Wetherspoons will NOT be serving alcohol when they open at 7am – they won’t be serving alcohol till 9am – meaning the headline is factually inaccurate:
  • Wetherspoons ALREADY serve alcohol from 9am – so this is not news – in terms of pursuing its anti-drink agenda, there is actually no story here. Wetherspoons is NOT extending the hours during which it serves alcohol, even though the story is desperately trying to make you think they are.

So far, so Daily Mail. But the reason I had to write this piece was the following sentence:

“The new early hours are one result of the controversial shift to 24-hour licensing laws that has also coincided with a rise in concern about under-age drinking.”

Even by the Mail’s standards, this is a masterclass in deceit and distortion, and deserves to be dissected and studied carefully.

Firstly, its place in the article seems odd. Why are we suddenly talking about underage drinking when we were just talking about breakfast in Spoons? Read it quickly – as most of us do – and you’ll think that Spoons opening for breakfast is going to encourage underage drinking. This is not what the sentence says, and it wouldn’t make sense of it did now we’ve established alcohol won’t even be served at breakfast time. But if it’s not trying to do that, why is it here? It’s actually irrelevant in this story – it’s part of an entirely different story. Given that alcohol is not being served, the whole area of licensing laws and ’24 hour drinking’ is irrelevant to the story – this breakfast move has nothing to do with liberalised licensing hours whatsoever. This point is only here to create an entirely false association between Wetherspoons and under-age drinking.

Secondly, look carefully at the sentence itself – it links two entirely separate concepts – 24 hour licensing laws and underage drinking. It cleverly uses the word ‘coincided’ because there is no evidence whatsoever that what they refer to as “24 hour licensing laws” have had any impact on underage drinking, but still, the link is forged.

And finally, there’s that beautiful weasel of ‘a rise in concern about underage drinking’
What’s that you say? Under-age drinking is rising? Oh hang on, no, that’s not what you said is it? Because under age drinking is not rising, and you know it’s not rising. In fact every single survey conducted since the new licensing laws were introduced, such as those surveys discussed here and here, shows that underage drinking is FALLING.

But you say ‘concern’ over underage drinking is rising? It is, is it? Among whom? And why? Wouldn’t have anything to do with the Daily Mail creating a scare story where none exists, would it?

Take a bow Sean Poulter. Even by the standards of your colleagues, this is a brilliant piece of shit smearing. If it weren’t so evil, I could almost admire it.

Fortunately, most of the commenters on the article have seen through your spin. Apart from some vile, bigoted comments about people on benefits, no one can really see what the supposed problem is in this (non) story – and this is Daily Mail readers we’re talking about. Maybe there’s some hope for us after all…

| Uncategorised

Bank Holiday Pub Fun Part One

I’m working on a new book (my first that’s not directly beer-related!) which involved me visiting several seaside resorts last bank holiday weekend.

The good bit was that I finally got to sample Pub du Vin in Brighton, which I’ll review when I’m back home after the weekend cos I came away without my bleedin’ notebook.  Suffice to say they have a little library that has a copy of Man Walks into a Pub in it, so I was favourably disposed.
But two days later we found ourselves in Clacton-on-Sea.  Now I want you to picture this very carefully.  Close your eyes.  Ah – you’d better open them again or you won’t be able to read the rest of the post.  Imagine a Wetherspoon’s pub, with its curious mix of a good range of beers that are often well-kept, but with a less-than-savoury clientele featuring a large proportion of elderly shouting Irishmen.  Now, delete the wide range of beers and replace it with just one – Ruddles County.  And imagine what a handpull looks like when it has not been pulled or handled in a very long time.  Got that?  Good.  Now, delete the mad Irishmen and  replace them with forty or so families from Essex with screaming bored children.  It’s dark outside, three hours before sunset, which may have something to do with the bad weather warning that’s just flashed up on the plasma screen.
Yep, this is the worst Wetherspoon’s pub you have ever been in.
Not just a Wetherspoon’s pub.  But the worst.  Wetherspoon’s.  Ever.
And do you want to hear the most terrifying thing of all?  
It’s still the best pub in Clacton-on-Sea.  By a considerable margin.

| Uncategorised

The Yin and Yang of JD Wetherspoons, part 3

My first post about JDW was a glowing account of their last national real ale festival. My second post about the chain was a scathing attack on one pub’s out-of-control security thugs. For a brand that is supposedly consistent (whether you like it or not) across its 600-odd outlets, Wethersopoons really does offer both extremes of the pub-going experience.

Yesterday we see-sawed back to the good end. I went in my local branch, The Rochester Castle, for a quick pint, saw a beer from the Orkney Brewery (whose Dark Island Reserve is the past beer I’ve tasted in years) and tried a pint. It tasted like it had been diluted with tonic water and lemon, and had a very odd texture. Knowing how experimental Scottish brewers are just now, I had another sip. An assertive summer beer? No. If it was meant to taste like this it was a foul beer, and I didn’t think Orkney capable of that.

I hate taking pints back to the bar. Eight times out of ten some newly-arrived adolsecnet antipodean barman will take a swig, say, “tastes alright to me,” and you’re in a battle of wills then. It’s worse for me now, because a little demon pops up and suggests I point out that I’m a beer expert – which I am – but I still sound like an utter wanker if I say so.

But this one had to go back. I explained to the barmaid that it simply didn’t taste right. She didn’t ask for any explanation. She didn’t taste the beer herself. She didn’t say “well no-one else has complained”, or any other of those passive-aggressive, anyone-who-says-the-customer-is-always-right-must-be-an-arse phrases. She took my pint off me, set it carefully aside, and immediately took off the pump clip of the beer in question, taking it off sale. She asked me what I’d prefer instead, served me a fresh pint, then took my dodgy one to the bar manager.

This is only what you’d expect from any decent pub. But I confess it’s not what I expected from Wetherspoons. Deeply impressive. To redress the schizophrenic karmic balance they seem to maintain in the market, this probably means I’ll be murdered next time I go in.

| Uncategorised

24 hour drinking: the truth

Who’s calling me a twat?
To Camden last night, to see My Bloody Valentine.
“Hey Pete, was it a good gig?”

PARDON?

“I said was it a good gig?”

CAN’T HEAR WHAT YOU’RE SAYING! IT WAS A REALLY GOOD GIG BUT THE TWENTY MINUTE FULL-ON DRONE IN THE FINALE, YOU MADE ME REALISE, WAS SO FULL-ON CONFRONTATIONALLY LOUD IT MADE MY TROUSERS SHAKE, I FEARED A NOSEBLEED, PEOPLE WERE RUNNING FOR THE EXIT HOLDING THEIR EARS, AND THE WHOLE THING HAS LEFT ME A BIT MUTTON!

(If you’re feeling like you want to challenge your perceptions of reality, turn the sound on your computer up to FULL and imagine this lasting twenty minutes. This one is not as well shot, but gives a better sense of the PANIC and RAPTURE evoked by the full piece).

Anyway, with our ears ringing, Chris and I, via sign language, decided to go for a swift pint. It was 11.05pm in Camden, one of the most happening, cool parts of Swinging London – sorry, that should have read Swinging London – a city that prides itself on giving New York a run for its money as a fun-filled carnival that never sleeps.

The first six pubs we passed were closed.

Obviously, no restaurants were open. It was a Tuesday night for God’s sake! People have to WORK tomorrow! Were we MAD?

Eventually we came to Camden Lock, and The Ice Wharf, a Lloyd’s No.1 (Posh Wetherspoons) pub. Stencilled on every window (there are a lot of windows) were the words OPEN TILL MIDNIGHT. Hey, we thought, we’re in luck.

On the door of an almost empty pub on a Tuesday night were two black-clad bouncers. They stopped us as we tried to go in.

“Sorry, you’re too late,” I lipread one of them saying.

“You’re open till midnight,” I replied.

“No we’re not.”

“Yes, you are, it says on all the windows, very clearly, open till midnight.”

“Yes, but only for people who are already in here.”

“It doesn’t say that, it says open till midnight.”

“Well, it’s very late now.”

It was 11.18pm.

“I know what time it is. We want one pint and then we want to go home.”

“Well, you won’t have enough time to finish your drinks.”

“Yes we will! Forty minutes for one pint is plenty of time!”

We were sober and reasonable. he really didn;t want to let us in, but eventually he relented. If I wasn’t cool enough to get into a Wetherspoons pub then things were clearly looking grim. But I soon realised it was the bouncers, rather than us, who were the fucking twats of the piece.

We got our tasty pints of ale and sat down. At a table near us were four studenty looking lads. OK, they were sharing a big pitcher of WKD, but that’s a crime against taste, not a crime against humanity, and anyway, the pub had just served it to them. One lad went to the toilet, and while he was away his mate slid down along the banquette seat they were occupying, till he was half-sitting, half lying back. He wasn’t collapsed. His eyes were open. He was carrying on a quiet, lucid conversation with his friends. His feet were not on the seat.

When his friend came back, the recumbent lad sat upright again to allow him to sit down. But the bouncer wasn’t far behind. As Toilet Boy sat down, the bouncer told them both to leave. Toilet Boy had “spent too long” in the toilet, and his mate had “been lying down”. Against the fact that the lads were not slurring, swearing, or behaving anti-socially in any way whatsoever, these crimes apparently constituted behaviour not befitting a Wetherspoon’s pub. The boys were indignant, but not violent, threatening or abusive. They protested, and asked to see the manager. Eventually a boy of about fifteen appeared and claimed that he was the manager. When the lads put their case to him, he refused to listen. His words were “I’m in charge on that side of the bar, he [the bouncer] is on charge on this side. It’s nothing to do with me.”

Thinsg were clearly about to get nasty, and we moved to the other side of the large, empty, quiet pub, and took a seat next to a young couple. As soon as the bouncer and his mate had finished ejecting the four lads, he came over and threatened the man in the couple with eviction unless he removed his baseball cap. Maybe there’s a rule about headgear in Wetherspoons pubs – is it so we can all be surveilled properly as we drink? – but to anyone with even half a brain, this bloke sitting with his girlfriend was about as threatening as Kayo Odejayi in front of goal.

I posted on here recently about how you had to give JD Wetherspoon their due. For all their faults, they really do care about cask ale. But here were Wetherspoons bouncers going out of their way to create an atmosphere of tension and incipient violence, spoiling the night of every single person in the pub, not just those they roamed around picking on. And here was a bar manager in charge of a large Wetherspoons pub saying he had no responsibility whatsoever for the well-being or satisfaction of his customers, admitting that this bouncer, who was clearly out of control, was a law unto himself.

If anyone from Wetherspoons reads this blog – sort yourselves out. Get a sense of perspective. Employ people who are going to stop fights rather than start them, and bar managers with a sense of responsibility to their paying customers. Even better – in situations when bouncers are obviously not necessary, don’t have them at all. The boredom turn these small-minded, vicious pricks into the very aggressors they’re supposed to be keeping out.

If anyone else is near a Wetherspoons and fancies one quiet, late night drink – I urge you to find somewhere else instead.

We did eventually get another pint at a pub down the road. They allowed us in and served us without comment. They allowed us to drink in the beer garden till 12.30 . When the beer garden closed, they asked us politely to move inside, where we could carry on drinking if we wished. But like most people, we checked the time, and left quietly. There were no bouncers, and there was no anger, aggression, or trouble.

Go figure.

| Uncategorised

Good reasons to go to Wetherspoons

Is this really a pub? If the beer’s good enough, does it matter?

Wetherspoons fascinates me as a chain. It’s a car crash of the really, really good and the irredeemably shit – there’s nothing just ‘alright’ or ‘not bad’ about it. Someone in the press recently commented that the chain has replaced the working man’s club, which I suppose is true in a functional sense, though it lacks the charm and the sense of belonging and ownership of the old WMCs that were still around when I was growing up. A group of beer aficionados recently told me they didn’t consider Wetherspoons to be pubs, but retail outlets: they don’t have real landlords, there’s no personality behind the bar and no individual character to your local branch. Well, there is – they make a point of making each branch reflect the local area and history – but it’s decoration rather than something in the soul of the pub.
And yet, a higher percentage of Wetherspoons outlets have been accredited with Cask Marque status than any other pub group, there’s always a range of decent real ales and while they may not be kept in as good condition as a top real ale pub, they’re always drinkable.

Anyway, right now the really good outweighs the irredeemably shit by some margin, because the Wetherspoons InternationalReal Ale Festival has started.

“International real ale?”

Yup, as well as nearly fifty beers from around the UK, and a selection of international speciality beers, there are cask-conditined beers from countries you wouldn’t expect.

I went to the launch of the festival on Thursday and met Mitch Steele and Steve Wagner from Stone, who packed a bag of Centennial and Simcoe hops and came to Kent to brew Stone California Double IPA at the Shepherd Neame brewery.

Mitch said it was a privilege to brew at the brewery, and obviously enjoyed matching North American vision and invention with English brewing tradition.

The resulting beer is utterly beguiling: the hoppy punch that you only really taste in North America, countered by the smoothness and depth exclusive to cask-conditioned ale.

It slipped down distressingly easily. After a couple of minutes I noticed I’d sunk half a pint, and casually asked Mitch what strength the beer was. “Well, we had to compromise,” replied the man I suddenly remembered was responsible for beers such as Arrogant Bastard and Ruination, “so it came in just over 7 per cent.”

Not a lunchtime pint then. But this, together with the cask-conditioned Tokyo Black from Japan’s Yo-Ho brewery, brewed a few weeks ago up at Marston’s, makes it worth enduring any number of mad shouting old men to grab a pint.

The festival is on until April 14th – I can’t see the Stone IPA lasting that long.