You left me in Dereham, Curry Charles having steered me away from the questionable delights of the “unspoilt” Cherry Tree, so that Kentish Paul can have that exclusive later.
This was a third Dereham trip, and followed the traditional route of cat, cask, curry.
Let’s get the cat out of the way.
I toyed with the idea of a change from “the usual“, but this one looked slightly “challenging”.
Charles made a reservation at “the usual“, despite my protestations that reservations are akin to tasters.
I then paused to admire the fuel dispense near Central Tyre, akin to finding electric Banks’s Mild.
Here’s your Dereham preemptive, Duncan and Si;
The Cock is as close as Dereham has got to exciting since the Royal Standard sold Plum Porter.
It only escaped life as a Spanish restaurant recently, in order to bring Locales to the masses.
The Landlord was pulling through the Landlord, so we had two pints of that, and were ushered through to a nice courtyard with a dozen other folk even younger than us. In Ely, it would be the Prince Albert.
Nice foamy pint, NBSS 3/3.5. Just as with their Suffolk neighbour, the Woodfordes glass does it no favours.
I paid at the table by contactless.
£9.80. Ouch.
Yes, could have had 3 pints of homebrew for less. Probably the right call, then.
Steep, even for Tim Taylor’s, who as Beer Twitter will know have now been cancelled, except by the 99.987 % of drinkers who aren’t Beer Twitter.
Time to use the foot-activated sanitiser and move on to another Proper Pub.
T. Taylor beers have carried a hefty premium at wholesale level for some time. I don’t know who supplies Yorkshire’s finest (?) in deepest Norfolk, but some wholesalers have cut their cask ranges significantly post lockdown, and the ability for even limited price negotiating is significantly reduced. Personally, given the level of choice available from local brewers here in Shropshire, and the widening price gap, I won’t be stocking Taylor’s for the foreseeable future.
In any event there is a definite trend to support local brewers even more since (Limited) reopening.
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But if Landlord has the quality and reputation to merit “a hefty premium” we can’t blame that Timothy for his wholesale prices reflecting that.
Another Tim knows a hefty discount is his only option.
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You’re right about support for local brewers, even if it is because they’re cheaper. As for Landlord, the product that leaves Keighley may justify the premium but the product the drinker gets rarely does. Richard Coldwell used to explain it by insufficient conditioning.
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Fair point, all TT products need longer than average in the cellar, but Landlord more than the others IMHO.
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Yes, Landlord is one of the very few cask beers that can consisently command a price premium. But, as people have said, so often the condition it is served in at the bar doesn’t justify that premium. I tend to avoid it because it generally tends to be disappointingly muddy-tasting.
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Muddy is right.
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But a tasty full bodied beer can mask poor condition when a subtle 3% to 3½% Mild or Bitter couldn’t and that no doubt contributes to Landlord’s success.
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£4.90 for a pint of Landlord will not attract a lot of new drinkers, that is for sure.
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But some “new drinkers” might prefer £4.90 for a pint of Landlord to £8 for a can in a “craft beer bottleshop and taproom” near me.
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Not me.
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Martin,
I never thought of you as a “new drinker”.
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Only in hipster places like Stafford, Paul.
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Going back to my couple of years in Yorkshire (late 70s) I remember that Landlord was rare in Taylors pubs and seemed to be mostly sold in the free trade. Their own pubs varied between some pleasant rural places and some very basic ‘blockhouses’ in town centres. I liked the beer but the only place you could find a full range was the Eagle in Leeds – run by CAMRA Investments when I lived there but it turned out to be ultimately owned by Sam Smith. You couldn’t make it up. [said as a Lancastrian].
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They’re a funny lot in Yorkshire.
Now you might go to that pub in Putney for the full TT range.
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Ian,
Yes, when I were a lad t’Hare and t’Hounds near ‘Ebden Bridge was t’only Timothy Taylors pub t’ave cask Landlord.
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T’other Paul, back in the day a group of us borrowed one of the student union mini-buses, bribed someone to be our “designated driver” and set off over the Pennines, from Salford, for an evening at the Hare & Hounds.
We visited the pub for the same reason as you, which was to drink cask Landlord. It always struck me as strange for just one Tim Taylor’s pub to have the beer on draught, but I never discovered the reason why.
Now of course, the beer is sold all over the country,and yes I did pay £4.90 for a pint of it last week!
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And it was definitely £4.50 3 years ago in the Prince Albert in Ely that time, and that had hardly been a posh pub.
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T’other Paul,
Ah yes, but then more one who’d only drink about three pints than a “designated driver”
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£4.90 is definitely on the higher end of what I would be comfortable paying, even for beer. It would have to be exquisitely good to consider
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You’re right, Eddie, but unfortunately you never know just how good (well kept) that beer is going to be till you taste it. ;-0
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