PDA

View Full Version : Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog - The thrill of the new



Blog Tracker
24-06-2019, 08:24
Visit the Boak and Bailey's Beer Blog site (https://boakandbailey.com/2019/06/the-thrill-of-the-new/)

For ages, we’ve thought the trick to showing Ray’s parents a good time was taking them to proper pubs. It turns out we should have been going to craft beer bars.Now, we’ve had some bloody good fun with them in places like the Merchant’s Arms and the Annexe, playing euchre and sharing bags of pork scratchings over pints of Butcombe or London Pride.
The other weekend, though, as we crawled around central Bristol with them, we were inspired to take them to Small Bar.
The specific trigger was a round of awful, buttery Sam Smith’s Old Brewery Bitter at the William IV – a pub which rarely has any atmosphere at all but does at least usually have cheap, decent beer.
We left feeling down in the dumps, the session in jeopardy, and Small Bar, Bristol’s craft beer central, seemed as if it might be the antidote – a short, sharp shock to jolt us all back to life.
“You might not like it,” we got in, preemptively.
Ray tried to identify something vaguely like Dad’s usual bitter and the staff reacted rather wearily, as if they get asked this all the time. In the end, it was two-thirds of Lost & Grounded Kellerpils that did the job. Ray’s Mum, who drinks lager when she’s not on whisky, got a murky pale ale – the kind of thing we don’t really enjoy, as a rule. And do you know what? She loved it.
In fact, they both thought Small Bar was great. It had a vibe, a bit of a crowd, and despite being the oldest people there by some stretch, they didn’t get looked at twice.
After that we thought we’d try them on BrewDog, which they also liked a lot: Punk IPA, it turns out, is a decent substitute for Butcombe. (Not sure BrewDog will be pleased to hear this, mind.)
They’re now planning to bring a couple of friends up for a craft beer crawl later in the summer.
For our part, we’ve learned a lesson: don’t make assumptions about what people will enjoy based on what they’ve enjoyed in the past, or based on their age.
Next time, we might take them on a taproom crawl – they’re probably cool enough to enjoy it, unlike us.
The thrill of the new (https://boakandbailey.com/2019/06/the-thrill-of-the-new/) originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog (https://boakandbailey.com)


More... (https://boakandbailey.com/2019/06/the-thrill-of-the-new/)