Into the home strait now, and along lovely St Giles for the pub I’d have recommended to any visitor before today.
I know the detail is important to you, so I should add that before that Mrs RM headed for a flat white in Blackwell’s Café Nero. It’s a good place to people watch.
Like everywhere else on Saturday, Café Nero was heaving. It was inevitable that the Lamb & Flag would be packed, but also that our group would somehow find a table for seven (unreserved, of course).
Having captured someone seemingly from the 18th century on camera (above), it’s inevitable that my shots of folk from 2018 are so blurry.
Not just dark, but also so busy I struggled to read the handpumps in both bars. But Paul Mudge knows his BBBs, and told me to go for the Palmers IPA.
As with the 6X earlier, this was a classic but overlooked family brewer beer in top condition (NBSS 3.5). What could Oxford have done with an Arkells, or Batemans, or Harveys ?
Cool and fruity, and also very cheap, say my notes. I suspect “very cheap” means £3.30 rather than £2.70, mind.
And the pub is a proper drinkers pub, free of table reservations and other fads. I’d still come here if I could go to just one pub in town.
Pub Curmudgeon has posted an excellent summary on the Oxford trip here.
As he notes, all the pubs were full, and with plenty of younger people. And they seemed quite happy with traditional pubs serving a range of cask beers not a lot wider than I remember from trips to away games at Oxford United 20 years ago.
And the keg didn’t seem much different either, unless I’d missed a crafty white back board somewhere. On the keg font facing me I noted Guinness, Becks, Peroni, Fosters Kronenberg. Which of those is craft ?
retiredmartin 
You obviously didn’t spot my cunning table-grabbing manouevre. A large table had just become vacant, and a tourist couple were headed for it at the same time as me and one of our party. “Go ahead,” they said, “there’s room for all of us there.” Then seven of us piled on, leaving no room for them 😉
There were more seats at the front, fortunately.
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Oh, well played Sir. Without real-time blogging, little details like that do get lost.
You don’t get drama like that reviewing a bottle of Wiper & True Sour IPA at home, do you ?
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“You don’t get drama like that reviewing a bottle of Wiper & True Sour IPA at home, do you?”
Depends on what your family are like. Sunday lunches can always be interesting.
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You drink Wiper & True thru straws from a mobility scooter too ?
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I thought that was the only way to do it. I’m waiting intently for slurpees.
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The book isn’t Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities is it ?
Not many people know that it was original serialised in two local newspapers before being printed.
It was the Bicester Times,it was the Worcester Times.
Wahaay !
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Well that reminds me, with Greene King now owning the Turf Tavern, that the Westgate Brewery, always prominent in Cambridge, does An Ale Of Two Ancient University Cities.
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No response is good enough to follow that.
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Arkell’s have in fact two pubs in Oxford, the nearest to the Lamb and Flag being The Rickety Press in Jericho. BBB forever !
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BB forever indeed.
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Three, if you include “The Original Swan” at Cowley.
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“Three, if you include “The Original Swan” at Cowley.”
Is that in reference to the third B that RM forgot to add? 😉
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Brown Bitter isn’t boring, how very dare you etc etc.
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Michael,
it would have been nice doing an Arkells pub or two, even though they no longer brew the 2B, but they’re a bit out of town, and I don’t think we knew about them !
Maybe a weekend, not just a day, next time.
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Paul, if I could have made the trip I would have suggested them 🙂
Michael, (aka Hardy)
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Michael,
Just as there are two Mudges are there two Hardys ?
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They don’t brew 2B anymore ? Did I miss the Swindon CAMRA march to the brewery ?
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What’s the keg font with the elephant on it?
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That’s a Wiper & True logo that they use for all their IPA’s, so I assume it’s an Indian heffalump. If not then I haven’t a clue why.
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keg filth, probably
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“On the keg font facing me I noted Guinness, Becks, Peroni, Fosters Kronenberg. Which of those is craft ?”
Talking about a different pub?
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No, those were the options in the Lamb & Flag where I sat with my pint of Palmers IPA. Obviously exercising some form of craft beer segregation.
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An elephant always meant Fremlins but that was fifty and more years ago.
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Definitely Fremlins as it has the India style rug on it.
Otherwise it could be Carlsberg, Delerium or Chang (Tusker or Twin Elephant if it was just a head shot).
Cheers
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A bit of a Wattie Buchan Exploited title …I like it! Foster’s is definitely the craft option there… Some great looking boozers there
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Yes, Fosters is craft. It’s the only one I’ve had so it must be.
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Nice piece, you’ve reminded me I went to Oxford many years ago, how long I don’t remember but we started off in the Magdalen Arms with some Stinking Bishop and then went on a tour of indeed very full pubs, sampling what seemed like and endless supply of varieties of (unsurprisingly) Breakspeare beers.
Then we were that drunk, don’t tell Mudgie, that I ended up in Jamie’s Italian. It was shit and everything was overly salted – so at least I have a basis for not liking that chap, even if I did line his pockets.
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Mudgie will never know you went to Jamie’s (has it ben going that long ?). I’d forgot we didn’t see any Brakspears, shame really.
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You’ve learned your lesson there, then 😛
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That’d be Foster’s Swan Brewery in Berkhamstead with nine pubs, except that it closed in about 1901.
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“Name the book”
The heck with the book; what type of bloody makeup does she have on?
“Lads. And ghost”
Just noticing (not judging) but the blokes at that table look like they’re from Oxford, and ready to solve the riddle of the double helix. 🙂
Cheers
PS – “a proper drinkers pub,”
I’m sure they’re should be an apostrophe in there somewhere. 🙂
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Cambridge solved the double helix, ,ate, but I’m not sure we can solve the riddle of the apostrophe. Genuinely not sure on that one, may ask Twitter.
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“Cambridge solved the double helix,”
I was just being a tosser there. 🙂
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