Next up, a Bristol micro. Yes, another one. Micros aren’t just for run down seaside towns, you know.
Chums is in the heart of gentrified Redland, Bristol’s Gwydir Street . Stockport has no equivalent, though “Where The Light Gets In” may be the equivalent of Redland’s famed “hunter gatherer” restaurant Wilsons.
I love this area; hilly, colourful and packed with pubs. Chums even has a floral display in lieu of a sign, and a window that says “Welcome“. I liked that.
Clearly you need a bit more than a few mates sipping halves of homebrew to pay the rent in Redland, so here you get Guinness, live music and cockles. You could almost have been in Margate.
It was nice to see that alongside the beers that Bristolians would have heard of (Animal Raccoon and Arbor) there was also some exotica like Palmers (sadly off on my visit).
The most noticeable thing is the distance between yourself and the pumps, a good two feet.
The phone rang, and the cheery barman excused himself to take the call.
“Hello Chums” It seemed to be a wrong number
“I bet you love saying that !”
“I have to say Chums, so people know who they’re speaking to“.
Oddly, it seemed about as funny to him as it does to you now.
He gave me an exclusive tour of the room, including the cartoon from which the pub takes its name. I’m afraid I wasn’t actually listening; I’d been distracted by the baked beans photo.
Oh, and the beer (HPA I guess) was above average too, a good NBSS 3.5. But you can see why so many micros don’t open ’till 4pm. The black coffee next door at the Rubicon was worth crossing for.
A hilly walk to the Lansdown, one of Clifton’s premier pubs, on the basis it serves Otter. This would have been a great place to finish Gloucestershire, I thought.
The brewery (no idea which) was delivering, Mums were pushing toddlers around in £550 pushchairs, I bounded to the door.
Closed for a week at the height of Summer, just to annoy GBG tickers. It’s a good job I’d had my Stoicism training recently.
I swore*, under my breath, and plotted the course to St Pauls. Onward, GBG pilgrim.
*”Donnington”
retiredmartin 
You’ll know it’s the End Of Time when you see Donnington being delivered to a micro.
Intrigued as to what beer range the new micro sports bar in Sheffield will offer.
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When’s that open, Scott ?
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Next month some time – https://www.facebook.com/SportShackSheffield/
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Hmm, Butty Bach, HPA and Palmers IPA is a very mainstream range for a micro – I wonder if it’s resulting in existential terror amongst local hipsters.
Are those “Chums” meant to be anthropomorphic animals, or humans being furries?
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Is the micro market now at the stage where they can merely be small, inexpensive to run buildings where the beer range is not aimed at the obsessive any more? Merely a smaller version of a traditional pub?
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Palmers? Exotica? You don’t have to go and stay down there every summer. Okay, the brewery is pretty and a heritage gem, but essentially they use the Marston’s & ‘Big 6’ business model – buy everyone out and monopolise the market, at least on the pub landscape. To my taste Palmers is a slightly more brassy OBB variant and all their beers are simple variants of the same recipe, apart from the summer ale (relatively recent addition) and the Tally Ho (NB the breweries both started in the same century). If on good form their beers are fine, but if not they are dire. They send a lot of pins out to maintain a range on the bar, but it doesn’t work in a lot of quieter pubs. Many locals despise the Palmer family as they are buying up everything, essentially land/property banking and then just sitting on empty premises. Sounds very much like a well known Tadcaster family to me.
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“One of Britain’s best bits of urbanity”
Cheek to cheek as it were. Even HMP has houses right across the road (and a primary school just down the road). 🙂
“live music”
Ah. I saw ‘Watermelon Jam’ on the sign and thought it was a fancy condiment. 😉
“Binoculars needed to read the clips”
It seems off for a ‘micro’ pub to have such a bloody large counter. It’s *cough* ‘counter’ intuitive. 🙂
“I’d been distracted by the baked beans photo.”
My tummy started to rumble when I saw that photo.
“The black coffee next door at the Rubicon was worth crossing for.”
(slow golf clap)
“Closed for a week at the height of Summer, ”
Bloody hell. That’s right up there with doing roadworks on a long weekend.
“It’s a good job I’d had my Stoicism training recently.”
Too bad they didn’t hold their staff training at the same time. 🙂
Cheers
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Heinz all day long.
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That choice of thirty-six brands of baked beans.
Was that much different to a ‘choice’ of 2000 brewers today ?
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“live music and cockles” but not cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh ?
“Closed for staff training Monday 30th July until Tuesday 7th August inclusive” – yes, I could name a high street barn or two where the staff could do with eight days training.
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They should do staff training over Christmas when proper Pub Men avoid pubs like the plague.
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I’m not sure about that.
The in laws or a proper pub – which would you prefer at Christmas ?
But, yes, a proper pub is for life, not just Christmas.
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I am playing catch up here Martin as appear to have missed a week’s worth of blogs, which is around 45 at your prolific rate!!! Quite like the look of Bristol
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Stick to craft keg and you’ll be fine….
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