retiredmartin

6th May 2023. Coronation Day.

I’d made a bid mistake, huge, and left myself with three hours before kick-off in Manchester.

What on earth can you do in Manchester for three hours before a nervy fixture against Dirty Leeds ?

Loads of things, but none you want to read about, so let’s pop in the Crown & Kettle, shall we ?

Who can resist a Coronation themed beer festival, particularly with all cask priced at £3.75 a pint. I think that £3.75 is what it costs to park per minute in Windsor.

Top bloke Chris Dyson had also been pubbing Manchester that day; I hope we left him some beer. Chris calls the Crown & Kettle “ever-reliable”, which is my take, but it’s a pub that’s had rather mixed reports over the years.

Surely it’s not the ceiling falling in your beer ?

Nope, there’s a net up.

As before, I thought the young staff here were smiley and cheerful, a delight of a public house.

Good range of beer styles, but as usual I pick the one I can see, and NZ Pale from Shiny.

The glass is cool to the touch, the beer rich and foamy (NBSS 3.5), the company intelligent and well-attired.

It wasn’t packed with City (and shy Leeds) fans at 12:30, though Chris says it was heaving later, so I was able to take my pint for a little tour of the rooms before settling on the middle one where there was a lot of table and chair moving going on.

I’d have moved on after the one, sensibly, but then this came on;

And I suddenly felt obliged to stay for another, particularly when I saw they had a Wylam beer.

OK, in a Vocation glass, but it tasted like Wylam tastes in Newcastle.

And, just as Chris is honest about beer quality, so am I. And this was a rare 4, the sort of beer you want to hand to Mrs RM and say “Taste this Mrs RM. THIS is the pinnacle of the brewers art”.

Except Mrs RM was in that posh shop off Deansgate buying Fjällräven Kanken bags.