Nice place, Sowerby Bridge. A touch of Hebden quirkiness set alongside the grittiness of west Halifax, and a proper canal town.
Any town with a passageway like this one from the station can’t be bad.
You emerge to the market, and this gem, which has been selling WKDs and Woo-Woos to the youth of Sowerby since 1915, apparently.
Pubwise, there’s an Osset house, a station cafe bar, and a gastro place in the Guide, but plenty of Friendly (pun intended) boozers that’ll sell you Black Sheep as well.
And now there’s a fancy brew pub.
In sharp contrast with your normal “Brew Tap in a dark industrial estate“, Hog’s Head have gone Shiny and really made a feature of the brewing equipment. It’s a destination Brew Pub to rival Nene Valley in Oundle.
Scary cellar.
They needed the perspex over that hole; there were children running all over the place, much to the horror of their grandparents. It could have been a Brewsters, if there had been a bored teen in a bear outfit and S Club 7 rather than Scrabble boards, The Clash and Double Diamond adverts to entertain them.
Whatever the merits of a pub-crèche, the investment is paying off. And despite alternate views elsewhere, and the apparent dominance of Moretti in the pub, I really liked the beer.
The Old Schnozzler Dark Porter was cool, rich and complex (albeit not very dark), an easy NBSS 4. And the friendly staff gave an automatic top up. And only £3.
It Mrs RM had been there and seen the craft board (however old fashioned it will look to some) I’d never have got her into the Spoons…
Good to see one of the brewers hasn’t let the side down in the beard department.
I like the look of that gaff.
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It’s open plan, and wouldn’t look out of place in Vegas or LA, but it was cheery, cheap and served good beer, unusually for homebrew. Better than that Brewhouse & Kitchen place.
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Your Growlers are a bit different from ours. Around here it’s $12 for a Growler (64oz) and $7 for a Squealer (32oz). That’s the refill price. You have to buy the jug initially (forget how much), but all brewpubs will refill any Growler/Squealer with their own beer, regardless of whose logo is on it. And they’ll rinse them before filling and capping. 😎
Cheers
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I guess it’s a much bigger thing in North America as take-home market that much greater. Drinking at home would come with a life sentence if I were Trudeau or Trump.
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“Drinking at home would come with a life sentence if I were Trudeau or Trump.”
You could be on to something there. Maybe it should be illegal to run for head of state if your last name starts with ‘Tru’. 😉
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Well I guess “Truth” isn’t allowed anywhere.
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Love that “Private Road”– makes you wonder about the history of such passageways.
I gather Mrs RM is a devout fan of the craft IPAs. Does she have love for any of the old-school “boring brown bitters”?
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If I said she’ll drink anything she might hit me, Mark !
She’ll drink my Bass or 6X once she’s drunk her Brew Dog. It’s the cooler temperature of craft she likes. She can’t abide flavoured beers. Can you ?
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Not a huge fan of flavored beers, but I like to think I’m open minded and willing to give unusual brews a try. When I see the Samuel Smiths big bottles of apricot beer and so forth, I’m not at all tempted I must say, not least because the price is always pretty ridiculous!
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I did try the Sam Smiths fruit beer once, really liked it but as you note very expensive (a 330ml bottle was £4.55 from memory, must cost a fortune in US).
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“It’s the cooler temperature of craft she likes.”
I can understand that. 🙂
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“I did try the Sam Smiths fruit beer once, really liked it but as you note very expensive (a 330ml bottle was £4.55 from memory, must cost a fortune in US).”
Are we talking apricot, peach and the like? Some of the smaller craft ones can be a tad on the expensive side but you can shop around. For example:
http://www.bcliquorstores.com/product/691113
Above is a six pack of apricot wheat.
http://www.bcliquorstores.com/product/922450
An oatmeal stout above from the same company in Quebec that makes the apricot wheat. Note they are the same price.
A smaller BC brewery has this:
http://www.bcliquorstores.com/product/944116
Price wise that is almost 50% more per ml than buying the six pack.
That £4.55 for 330ml would be about 5 times the cost of the six pack above.
Cheers
PS – Over the holidays I got my wife to try the Lindemans peach lambic from Belgium and she rather likes it. It’s about the same cost per ml as her usual bottle of white wine but at less than a quarter of the ABV so it doesn’t give her a headache like the wine sometimes does.*
* – she’s 1/2 Native so it’s the old firewater thing (LOL)
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Yes we’re talking the organic cherry/apricot etc beers Sam produces under Melbourne Bros brand at Stamford.
That £4.55 was charged in one of their upmarket pubs in Gloucester (£3 for the OBB), I think you’d pay £2.50 from an off licensee.
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“That £4.55 was charged in one of their upmarket pubs in Gloucester (£3 for the OBB), I think you’d pay £2.50 from an off licensee.”
Whoops, my bad.
I forget you you talk pub prices while I talk off licence prices. 😊
Cheers
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I believe those private alleyways were built to allow 19th century BRAPAs to escape via the back door without being lynched when they drew unflattering pictures of the barmaids for their pub reports.
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I wasn’t clear at all, Russ. Though you must know my views on drinking at home by now 😉
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What’s a woo woo? I’m down enough with the kids to have drunk WKD but not a woo woo!! Great looking pub 👍
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A Woo Woo is an alcoholic beverage made of vodka, peach schnapps, and cranberry juice.
I guessed it was a regular half-time beverage under Lou Macari !
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Always informative ! Lou a fervent teetotaler so strictly orange woo woo lucozade 😀
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I thought Lou had a pub outside Old Trafford but apparently it was a chippie named after him…
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That’s right a chippy in a prime location…he loved a bet but booze was a massive no no
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Sowerby is on my bucket list – I keep going past it on the train, but never get off. Always reminds me of a lad I used to share digs with when I first joined up. After 12 months I told the landlady I was moving out as I was getting married and moving into a house. She said she was really happy and it would give her an excuse to ask the other guy to leave as she was fed up of him swamping his bed! Not long after he threw his ticket in and went back to Soweby Bridge, I was told he ended up being a milk man and then he got locked up for drink driving the milk float! I think that probably explained the swamping? I bet he was sat in that there Wetherspoons you went in on his 3rd pint at 11am.
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