A pub is for life not just for Christmas
Charters
For an old boatman like me,this was always going to be a hit.
"Good people drink good beer" Hunter S Thompson
The Cover Bridge Inn
No contest!
"At that moment I would have given a kingdom, not for champagne or hock and soda, or hot coffee but for a glass of beer" Marquess Curzon of Kedlestone, Viceroy of India.
A few old favourites visited in Edinburgh this month but Halfway House remains one of the best, Mrs B likes it too.
Quite a few options but I'm going to Lancashire for this micropub in Leyland. It had a good range of ales at reasonable prices and a friendly crowd in on a Friday afternoon. Chorley a couple of stops away on the train had more options than I had time to cover. It certainly isn't Grim Up North in these parts. Don't bother with Central Manchester come here.
POTM Market Ale House
The best of a rather threadbare month.
The Rose & Crown
"Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer."
-W.C.Fields
Living in Preston for six months there's still a couple of suburbs I haven't tried fully such as Chorley and Leyland, St Anne's and Lytham. However this weekend holds a trip to the two micropubs of Longridge.
Pub if the month for me in a narrow fairly dry January is Port St Beer House for the first well kept Jaipur I've had for a while. (Fortunately I wasn't paying for that round!)
I'm tempted to go with the Golden Eagle - now a Castle Rock outlet and an excellent start to Saturday's Lincoln mission, great beer and a nice old school feel in the bar to the right of entrance, but Peterborough's Palmerston Arms was in fine fettle a couple of weeks ago, and just pips it.
Ironically the Port St was my worst pub of the year for 2015. I got served a pint of horrible murk in a stupid dimple jug by a disinterested bar person and it was a rip off price.
The Golden Tap micropub in Leyland had Jaipur. I didn't write the price down, I think it was £3.20, it was definitely less than £3.50.
I found the Spoons up there to be better than average apart from Blackpool itself. There's a much smaller price differential between JDWs and "normal" pubs which means they actually have to put some effort into the place. Morecambe was an exception with a standard guest ale price of £1.79 but even that was less than a pound cheaper than the Royal on the seafront. I'm looking forward to seeing what the ones in the Pennine towns are like.
Like Mobes, all gout and no clout with the new pub visits in January, so much so that a previously POTM winner and revisit gets the laurel, and hardy handshake for the month:
POTM: The Land of Liberty, Peace & Plenty
"Breakneck speed we drown ten pints of bitter"