A Poet & Hack Christmas

The wise men of the pub blogging world tell us that it is most unwise to venture into the public house at this time of year, when the 'once a year' brigade, take over the place with their loud Christmas jumpers and competitive conversations comparing the size of their Christmas bonuses...

...when admission on Christmas and New Years Eves is by ticket only, for the customer's 'elf and safety' of course, and most of your beer is spilled down your (or someone else's) front in the rugby scrum at the bar....

...by the look of their most recent pre-Christmas posts, the wise pub men know what they're talking about...

What better antidote to this could there be, than to take a short walk down the garden path from the hermitage to the pub shed local, The Poet & Hack...

...one day all micro-pubs will look like this...

The peace and tranquility of the snug, is a rare atmosphere, very much in keeping with the true meaning of Christmas (no it's not a stable), but not often found in the noise of Christmas' modern interpretation.

The traditional bench seats are provided for the comfort of the locals, with essential cushion accessories...

...proper bench seat with cushion

...the beer tray on the corner table declares the past triumphs of Wards Ales...

Sheffield's finest...

...the old mantel clock ticks quietly until it's gongs split the silence on the half hour and hour...

...silence...about to be split....

...the quiet fizz as the vintage cast bottle opener is applied to the cap of Furze Dale Brewery's Christmas Ale...with its warming spices and 8% of alcohol by volume, which gives the locals a healthy glow and steams the windows of the snug...

...scandal inevitable as Shepherd Neame claim credit for Christmas Ale...

...and classic reading material is available to while away an hour or two...

...pub shed essential reading...

...the Christmas shelf decorations give a tasteful nod to the season and the old Christmas traditions...

...just an average York street scene at Christmas...

...as the toy seller tells the father what a fine present the wooden steam engine will make for his son...

...it'll do Edinburgh to London in 4 hours, Guv...

...and the chestnut seller hands his bag of steaming hot nuts to the young boy....

...before Piper's crisps were invented...

...and people rush for home with Christmas presents....

Si (in Hull City scarf) rushes home with his Christmas present of green highlighters....

...and the lights flicker in the little 'putz house' church and the sound of carols waft out over the cold night air...

putz church...

...some fine examples of the 'Spirit of Life' tempt the locals to have a nightcap (or two), before setting off home...

not an optical illusion...

...and the 35 year old bottle of Yugoslavian Sljivovica, still waits patiently for the opportunity to sear the throat of the unwary/reckless...

...throat stripper...

...and no snug bar would be 'albright' without it's red triangle...

...red triangle...all bright ain't it....

...and the Poet & Hack spares no effort to bring you the finest bar snacks (though the local squirrel population may have a hard winter this year)...

...squirrel's emergency rations...

...Sir John's 1954 poem of Christmas with 'gels in slacks' and 'oafish louts', and the true meaning of Christmas, springs to mind as he looks down from his photo collage approvingly, on this little piece of eccentric old England...

Sir John...'poet and hack'...

...the last drop of Christmas Ale is drained...

...and all is well with the world...

Merry Christmas from The Poet & Hack

Brunellian Beer Moment...

On a final visit (probably) before I retire (definitely) to the company office in Reading, I let the train take the strain...
... which enabled me to partake in a couple of beers at the team Christmas lunch (no silly hats, jumpers, or other Christmas tat in evidence by the way).

While the restaurant didn't do cask, it did offer smaller containers of quality craft.  The Wild Beer Co. Millionaire - salted caramel chocolate stout was a very good example of the craft art, and though the Beavertown Neck Oil was only slightly behind on taste, the entertaining artwork on the can made up for it.

Setting off home after the lunch, with my retirement rose bush in 5 litre pot in tow (just one of the lovely presents from my lovely colleagues), I was in plenty of time for my train at Reading station - so couldn't resist popping into the station pub The Three Guineas.

IKB's magnificence...

This magnificent grade 2 listed building was built in 1840, by the Great Western Railway (GWR) man himself Isambard Kingdom Brunel, not as a pub or a railway hotel - it was originally the railway's central ticket office.

Fullers, the pub owner, explain that the name is a reference to the prize money offered in a 1904 competition held by the GWR to name an express train, which ran 245 miles non-stop from London to Plymouth, quite a feat in those days (as well as today).

For you railway history buffs, the winning name was 'The Riviera Express' and the winner was a Mr A. Norack, of Gayton Engine, Lincolnshire
(ok, only part of that is true)....

Despite the new modern station having been redeveloped around it in recent years, the building still manages to look imposing despite the less than sympathetic modernist station architecture...

Brunellian versus Grimshawlian architecture....(image Wikipedia)

...not to mention one or two other bits of classic street art which have sprung up on the station plaza recently, like the gigantic screen - adventurously named 'Reading Light', (which may be a play on words depending on how you 'read' it)...

...turkey you've been waiting for...

...and the giant squid on a stick...celebrating Reading's historic association with the sea, before it receded in the last ice age (the sea that is, not Reading - possibly)...

...is this the way to Brighton Sea Life...?

The Three Guineas, sits sensibly and calmly amongst  all this modern madness.   The grand front entrance is adorned with a classic station canopy which now shelters customers using the outside tables, and still displays signs that direct the way to railway related locations that no longer exist...

Signs of old railways....

Inside, the elegance of the old Great Western continues, high ceilings with plaster friezes, fluted square columns, and a wooden cased four-sided GWR clock hanging from the ceiling...

Elegance from a past age...'Gods Wonderful Railway' just visible on the tiled area behind the bar...

There were quite a few customers on this late Wednesday afternoon, all undoubtedly railway travellers, luggage in tow, grabbing a drink or bite to eat, passing the time reading a book, before it was time for their train.  Despite the ebb and flow of travelling customers, the sheer scale of the pub made it feel quite empty.

At the bar there was the full range of traditional Fullers beers, plus one or two of their new ones...so I had one of those...

Dark Star Hophead - new Fullers beer...

The Dark Star Hophead was a good pint...

Marble effect table tops free of beer mat clutter...

I spent a very pleasant half hour drinking my beer in this calming  environment from a past age, and, looking through the window on to the station platforms,  could just imagine the smoking and hissing Great Western steam locomotives standing there in earlier times...

Window onto the station platform...

....but probably not like this one...

Not the Riviera Express....

I could have happily stayed longer, and was in two minds whether to have another beer as I returned to the bar with my empty glass, but then I saw that the departure screen was showing a train for Southampton departing from platform 3 in a few minutes time...

...so leaving the past glories of the GWR behind...I ran for it....

Pub photo - another busy day as the delivery of Bass casks arrives in the GWR goods shed...

Brew It Like Conner...

It’s good to get back to normal after my fantasy Enid Blyton-esque adventure on the lost island...

...though I may have aged considerably.

But if you thought that 'back to normal' means we can return to the comfortable mundaneness of posts about Hampshire dining pubs, I have some bad news...

...this week we have a brief departure into 'micro-brew-pub' life...

Brewing stuff...

I’ve posted on this pub before in 'another place' (not the House of Lords) - from an ordinary pub-goers perspective.

This time however I arrived at 10am on Saturday morning at one of RetiredMartin's favourite brewpub chains, Brewhouse and Kitchen - this pub being in Highfield, Southampton.

At this hour the pub was closed to normal punters, but I was here for a Brewery Experience Day (BED)...which promised the opportunity to help brew one of their beers, with food and beer thrown in for the day...(though it did involve a significant sum to grease their palms) - great 60th birthday present eh..?

Anyhow - the blurb for the BED said that I might want to turn up in waterproof shoes - or wellies would be fine - and when I saw a group of guys with beards, psychedelic tracksuits and wellies stood outside the pub - I was bound to ask them if they were here for the BED.

It turned out they weren’t - and I didn't venture to ask them what they were doing standing outside a closed pub in their weird gear...(sadly - neither did I have the courage to take their photo)...

One of the pub staff was busy wheeling a wheelbarrow full of logs into the pub and he asked if he could help me.  When I mentioned the BED he invited me into the pub brewery area...

B&K Micro brewery

 and introduced me to the pubs head brewer - Connor Higgins...

Photogenic thumbs up...

...this is Connor’s standard pose for all the adoring photos his brewery day assistants take of him.

Me and two brothers from Southampton, made up the brewing assistant contingent today - all of us as it happened, receiving our assignment as a birthday treat...
....oh - and a member of staff from the pub who was along for the ‘experience’ too...

Brewing team prepare for action...

We kicked off with a cup of tea/coffee (not in the same mug) and the safety briefing, and then signed to form to say we’d had it (the safety briefing) and if we drowned in a fermenting vessel it was our fault (or something like that).

Then Connor announced that we were going to brew about 350 litres of Christmas Porter today.  He had popped into his local Sainsburys on the way to work to empty their shelves of cinnamon sticks...

Sainsburys total stock of jars of cinnamon sticks..

...so we got on with the brewing...

Brewery assistant mashing-in, while Connor concentrates on his standard pose...

In went a sack and half of pale malt, some caramalt and chocolate malt (approximate quantities only) and mashing proceeded for the next hour while we had a bacon butty and our first beer...

A B&K murky beer...very good...

... I’m not going to give you a running list of the beers we tried during the day (too busy brewing and drinking to write them all down), suffice is to say we tried the entire range and they were all good/very good and included:

Onletisse (named after a footballer apparently)...

Toilet door description of Onletisse...

Hampton (named after a city that begins with 'South'... apparently)
Walk the Line - an IPA
...and others...

(Warning - the following includes the excessive use of brewery technical terms....)

After mashing and sparging...

Sparging (technical term for a hot rinse)...

...our Christmas Porter wort, moved on through the pipework to the boiler where it was boiled to within an inch of its life, and Columbus hops added, together with lashings of cinnamon sticks...

Connor still manages his 'thumbs up' with his hands full of hops and cinnamon sticks...

Meanwhile we put our backs into the job of shovelling out the spent grain from the mash tun...
...which was then bagged up for the local pigs - (to give them a nice beer flavour)...

Grain shovelling...

Then it was time for a burger and chips lunch, and another couple of beers, while Connor regaled us with all sorts of brewing tales, and we kept an eye on the loop of adverts for top quality beers on the TV in the corner...

A bit trickier to say than Carling....

Finally, the boil was over and the cooled Christmas Porter beer was pumped into the fermenter, while Connor made a few scientific checks and calculations and then added water, to make sure his brew wasn't too strong...

Connor shines his torch to show that lovely Porter hue...

Then the yeast was added to start the fermentation...

GH (accomplished home brewer) adds his jug of yeast...

Brew day successfully completed, all that was left to do was clean out the brewing kit (Connor's job)...

Quality murk in the bottom of the boiler...

...and drink a final complementary pint of a beer of our choice...

Connor gets stuck into cleaning while his assistants take a well earned beer break...

...and pick a 5 litre mini-keg of our favourite B&K beer to take home (Hampton for me - a 4.8% American Pale Ale).

All in all - a thoroughly enjoyable day which I would definitely recommend.

The expertly brewed Christmas Porter (pump clip name not decided at the time) will apparently be on sale at B&K Southampton from the 29th November (that's what Connor said anyway)...

...it's bound to be popular so hurry over there...!