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Thread: Disappointment of the week

  1. #241
    I'll stay on me own Gann's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Bucking Fastard View Post
    trainman enjoys a good game of darts,maybe one for him
    And me and we utilise the one in Victoria at regular intervals. And I can recommend them for a jolly hour or so of team arrow chucking fun.

    You can rent an oche by the hour or half hour and the darts playing areas are well designed so that they are quite separate from each other and far away from the main bar serving area, so you don’t have to suffer the cocktail swilling city knob heads, sorry personalities, depicted in the video playing on the one next to you.

    The computer systems are top notch with an extensive range of darts games to select from outside of the standard 301, 501 and killer, with all the scoring and team placing shown on a large screen above the board, also with the quirky feature of a camera system which provides replays of you throwing the winning arrow.

    Six or eight of us usually go along for an hour and half and it works out a reasonably cheap session when there is that many of you. You have to factor in the beer prices on top though. Obviously no real ale in these establishments, but they do all have Beavertown on the taps and I can suffer a couple of pints of Neck Oil or Gamma Ray before moving on. And moving on you will because the negative is the price levels in the Flight club sting more than getting a dart in your foot.
    And that’s the benefit of the One in Victoria as there are several strong ale pubs a short distance.

    So I can confirm that you don’t go to a Flight club just for a beer assuming their normal pubs, but for a group game of darts they are actually quite a good set up.
    Work is the curse of the drinking Class - Oscar Wilde

  2. #242
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gann View Post
    And me and we utilise the one in Victoria at regular intervals. And I can recommend them for a jolly hour or so of team arrow chucking fun.

    You can rent an oche by the hour or half hour and the darts playing areas are well designed so that they are quite separate from each other and far away from the main bar serving area, so you don’t have to suffer the cocktail swilling city knob heads, sorry personalities, depicted in the video playing on the one next to you.

    The computer systems are top notch with an extensive range of darts games to select from outside of the standard 301, 501 and killer, with all the scoring and team placing shown on a large screen above the board, also with the quirky feature of a camera system which provides replays of you throwing the winning arrow.

    Six or eight of us usually go along for an hour and half and it works out a reasonably cheap session when there is that many of you. You have to factor in the beer prices on top though. Obviously no real ale in these establishments, but they do all have Beavertown on the taps and I can suffer a couple of pints of Neck Oil or Gamma Ray before moving on. And moving on you will because the negative is the price levels in the Flight club sting more than getting a dart in your foot.
    And that’s the benefit of the One in Victoria as there are several strong ale pubs a short distance.

    So I can confirm that you don’t go to a Flight club just for a beer assuming their normal pubs, but for a group game of darts they are actually quite a good set up.
    Yes. I did catch sight of my reflection in the mirror at the N1 branch on leaving and noted that I was sporting a slight smile, so for an hour of fun I'd give it a go, but as a place to drink - especially with the music levels - I think I'll stick to the Crown round the back and N1 in general has some very good pubs if you avoid Upper Street.

  3. #243
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    Stay Puft - Amplified Imperial Marshmallow Stout. I didn't like the normal one, never liked anything by them, but £4.50/half of this at 13%ish seemed a good companion to my parmo. It wasn't. God help the bar staff at Hope and Union when the punters latch on to it tonight

  4. #244
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spinko View Post
    Stay Puft - Amplified Imperial Marshmallow Stout. I didn't like the normal one, never liked anything by them, but £4.50/half of this at 13%ish seemed a good companion to my parmo. It wasn't. God help the bar staff at Hope and Union when the punters latch on to it tonight
    Having done some research I realise Stay Puft is not the brewery but Tiny Rebel. Which I rate and visited in their first few weeks in Newport. What an amateur...

  5. #245
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    Quote Originally Posted by Spinko View Post
    Having done some research I realise Stay Puft is not the brewery but Tiny Rebel. What an amateur...
    It's easy to be fooled by some of these modern pump clips. I had an imperial stout on keg at the Devonshire Cat this week, which was written up on their blackboard as Gift Boundary. Looking at the roundel on the font, it looked more like Boundary Gift to me, but it was incredibly dark so really it could have been almost anything. But indeed it is Gift imperial stout by Boundary brewery of Northern Ireland (I wonder how many customs forms they'll have to fill in after Brexit?).
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  6. #246
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    Disappointment of the week for me was a drink of Conkers by Kelham Island, a brewery I consider to be quite well respected. Described as a hazelnut stout on the pump clip, the aroma was indeed a lovely hazelnut with perhaps caramel, almost like the flavoured coffees you can get. The taste, however, was something quite different, and actually tasted of mouldy conkers. It reminded me of when, as a kid, I had been out collecting conkers and stashed them in an old ice cream tub then forgot about them until February by which point they were covered in mould. If you can translate that into a taste, that's exactly what this beer was.

    It almost makes you wonder if something went horribly wrong with it in the brewing process and instead of ditching it they decided to flog the lot dirt cheap to Wetherspoons just to get shut of it.

    A mate of mine who I was with also had it, and said this was actually better than the previous drink of the same beer he had had elsewhere. Well, I use the term mate loosely for not warning me off that beer after his previous experience, but I am the forgiving type.

  7. #247
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    Default Disappointments of the week - part 1

    On a trip to the East Riding of Yorkshire this week. I stayed just outside Beverley and had been looking forward to doing some of their interesting pubs again after quite a gap. First off was the Tiger Inn, which I had only ever put my head around the door, never had a drink. This was on my list to do because it was in the Yorkshire edition of Camra's Real Heritage Pubs, which I've been ticking since 2017. The reason I didn't have a drink on my previous visit was because they had run out of beer! I can't remember if it was a Bank Holiday, or a race day, or a failed delivery or a combination of all three, but the outcome was a trip to the Monks Walk instead. Anyway, it's changed hands since then...

    My first hint that something was wrong was seeing the hanging sign. No longer featuring, as you might expect, a picture of a Tiger, there was now a picture of the pub hanging outside the pub. The front door was open but a sign said that this was not the way in - this was over a week after the Covid restrictions were lifted, but they were still operating a one-way system. I went round the back, through the car park and the seating area at the back of the pub. This took me to the back door, which I could see led to a corridor leading directly to the front door (from which I remembered another door went into the front bar), so I thought, I won't go that way because they'll think I've come in through the front door despite the notice.

    So I turned left and went past the semi-open snug, featuring old benches, and round the corner to approach the bar from the opposite end to the front door. (The pub was quite busy and there was a strong smell of fried fish.) There was no one behind the bar, which was protected by two big perspex screens that had the same picture of the building as the hanging sign outside. In a few moments the licensee appeared and immediately asked me if I had come in the front door. I told him, no, I came through the back door as instructed. So, had I come through to the door beside the front door? No, I said, I came round the other way. So, have you made a booking, was the next question. No, I just wanted a beer - well, take a seat over there while I fill these orders, he said. So, no service at the bar? Table service only, he said. Will it be all right if I take my beer round to the snug? No, it's booked out, I'm expecting a party of six any minute.

    I was a hair's breadth away from just walking out at this point, but I remembered the tick I had been waiting four years for, and I settled on one of the small seats against the front wall. The Timothy Taylor Landlord, when it came, was in very good nick - so, a plus point at last. I asked the boss about ventilation, as the strong smell of fish indicated to me that it was not very effective, and good ventilation is the best way to avoid Covid-19 infection. (In fact about 100 times more effective than perspex screens, I could have told him; but I felt I'd already irritated him as much as he had irritated me, so I forbore.) The windows are all open already, I was informed.

    This man's determination to continue to provide table service was a sight to see - he was literally pouring every drink himself in response to orders written by three waiting staff, entering everything in the till himself, and working at least twice as hard as he needed to. To be fair, he found the time to make me a non-apology - "We seem to have got off on the wrong foot" - and made an unaccustomed effort to make small talk. But he clearly wasn't used to beer drinkers. If I wasn't in a group of four to six people ordering loads of food and wine, he didn't know what to say to me. When I said something about how this used to be a nice pub, he came back with "this is what a food pub is like".

    Don't worry, I'm not going to write all of this in a review. Maybe I should go back another time either in the afternoon or after 9:30pm. I might get a better reception.
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  8. #248
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    Default Disappointments of the week - part 2

    After the disappointment of the Tiger Inn, I made my way through Beverley to the White Horse, also known as Nellie's, in memory of a long departed licensee. This is a Sam Smiths pub, a very old building with the distinction of still having gas lighting - in the old sense of the words, rather than "gaslighting". There is a maze of rooms as is often the case in Sam Smiths pubs that occupy old buildings - in the case of the Eagle in Leeds they even created a multi-roomed pub out of what had been just two large rooms before.

    The bar is easy to find, and I approached the counter which had three or four signs saying "no standing at the bar". I assumed this meant "order your beer and take it to a table", and I at least got this one right; though the young barman told me there was no need to wear my mask. I said that's ok, I don't mind wearing it as I want to continue the habit and encourage people to protect each other by making it customary. He and his two even younger girl friends, who were standing at the bar in contravention of the only Covid-19 policy the pub possessed, looked at me agape. One of the lasses asked me if I wanted her to put hers on - which was sweet of her, or perhaps she had heard that placating lunatics is the safest way. I declined the offer (it would have smudged her make up, I reckon).

    I took my overcooled pint of Old Brewery Bitter (cask, but keg temperature) to a nearby table. The beer was quite tasty, despite the coldness. The barman, who I would guess from his hairstyle was only just 18, because surely an older man would realise how stupid he looked with a short back and sides with a floppy, curly fringe hanging down to his eyebrows, alternated chatting with the two young girls and looking at his phone. Perhaps he was checking his emails for news of his impending sacking for breaking Humphrey Smith's rule number one. All the time, glasses were piling up on the tables, and two new customers actually cleared a table so that they could sit at it. They didn't get an acknowledgement, never mind a word of thanks.

    Whoever is running this place needs to learn that you can't just give a kid a couple of days training and expect them to run a pub like this, even if it was a quiet Wednesday evening. It was quite disturbing to see an old pub, an old building, like this being insulted by being treated so disdainfully. But then, what do I know?
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  9. #249
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    Default Disappointments of the week - part 3

    Also on Wednesday in Beverley I went to the Dog & Duck for the first time in over a decade. I know some people decry the beer policy (the late lamented Aqualung, for one: "a very dull choice of beers") but I got chatting to the licensee and he clearly knows his stuff. I had Black Sheep Bitter to start with, meaning to move on elsewhere, but when he asked me what my plans were in Beverley I told him I was using it as a base to go to see a Leeds Rhinos game in Hull, and would be going to the Empress there for the best-kept John Smiths Cask you can get. He said he thought he kept a pretty good John Smiths himself, so I had a pint of that too. (The others were Landlord and a Great Newsome beer, plus two ciders on the six hand pumps. The Smiths was good, but coming after the Black Sheep it really would have had a job to seem outstanding.)

    He said he liked John Smiths himself, and he had only recently started stocking Landlord because he's been told good things about it - I said, yes, if you don't mind paying extra and having to keep it longer before putting it on the bar, which some people don't get. I said Landlord (and probably Tetleys) were the best beers (I'm talking traditional English bitters, obviously) in the 1990s, but that Black Sheep was better than most now, while the other two were shadows of their former selves. Partly because of changes to the beer, partly because publicans weren't looking after it properly. He said he knew about how expensive it was, about 20p or more per pint above his other beers, but the bonus was that he'd acquired a new crowd of Landlord fans who'd heard that he's got it on and didn't like to drink anything else. (I'll bet they've drifted up from the Tiger Inn - see Disappointments of the week - part 1 above.)

    Anyway, the next afternoon I made my way to Hull and walked confidently and with joyful anticipation up to the Empress, where I had made an off-piste visit during the Pubs Galore pub crawl of the city in 2016. (You can see what's coming, can't you?) At the time there had been, I think, three or four hand pumps, all with John Smiths Cask on. (What would Aqualung have said?) And the beer had been fantastic. My review: "I have to say this was the best John Smiths I have ever had: it was in superb condition and tasted like a different beer altogether." This was also the case on subsequent visits later the same year by ROBCamra: "If all John Smiths tasted like this I'd be happy drinking it." And jaqptio: "Just John Smith's Cask available on handpump, but this was in notably good condition."

    On this occasion, not so much.

    I only saw one hand pump on the bar, but that wasn't a John Smith's pump clip adorning it. Theakstons Lightfoot. Theakstons Lightfoot? Theakstons (expletive deleted) Lightfoot! I asked the young man at the bar, what about John SMiths? He said oh, we've got rid of it. With a smile. Like it was mice or cockroaches. I said, for the last five years I've been telling anyone who'll listen that the best John Smiths you can get is at the Empress in Hull. And you've replaced it with Theakstons (expletive deleted) Lightfoot? And I went elsewhere. I told him as I left that I'd make up for the disappointment by watching the Rhinos beat Hull FC.

    Which we did, 22-12!
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  10. #250
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    I'm heading up to Yorkshire tomorrow and hope to stop-off in Beverley for a pint or two, so thanks for the heads-up on those two pubs - think I'll save them for some other time!

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