October 2024. Lincoln.
Some sad news from Wolverhampton last night.
No, it really is. One of very few brewery tours I genuinely enjoyed, mainly due to the wonderful Banks’s tour guide showing us the art of the pull.
Paul Mudge seemed to be taking the news better than I’d expected last night, I guess he saw it coming. We ought to arrange a trip to The Stile before the beers get made somewhere with less brewing provenance, like Burton.
By coincidence, this next post is from a proper Marston boozer,
the Still being Paul’s pick to start last Tuesday’s artisanally curated exploration of public houses, as CAMRA insist on calling these things.
Never heard of it, never in GBG to my knowledge, neither startlingly attractive,
or attractively scruffy, just a town wet-led boozer at the foot of Steep Hill.
Paul, who believes in an early start and early finish, was already on his 3rd pint of the morning, because you don’t save pubs by writing letters.
“Is the Pedi drinking well ?” I ask.
That head suggested otherwise, and I briefly contemplated a coke. But five (5) coffees, a coke and then beer is a terrible idea, and my faith in the sulphur sorcerer was rewarded with a cool pint of some quality (NBSS 3+).
“How come the head on my beer looks SO different to yours, Paul” I ask.
Dick sat in rapt attention.
“It’s because of the packet of scratchings I’ve just had“.
Wow. If scratchings can destroy a head, what is the antidote to scratchings that could bring it back ?
retiredmartin 
Paul has to be correct.
When I was young our neighbour complained that if I played my electric guitar on a Sunday morning, then her Yorkshire puddings wouldn’t rise.
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But you see, this lady was telling the truth.
So fixatedly annoyed was she, that she lost all concentration on her cooking, and either over-salted, over-egged, or made the batter with self-raising instead of plain flour – all fatal to the rising of the sacred dish.
However, the blame – of course – rested with someone else.
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It’s been known to get a bit raucous has the Still, especially around the pool table. Good looking pub though. My pint was bang average to poor last time we were in sadly.
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There had been a reconnaissance to the Still the day before which wasn’t promising, but as so often I seem very lucky with beer quality this year.
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Yes Martin, I handed back by 11.15am pint of Pedigree and a new cask was put on for us.
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Yes, very sad news indeed to one who’s been drinking Banks’s for over three quarters of his life and celebrated his eighteenth birthday in far from his first Banks’s pub. But, yes, it’s not unexpected and last month I called in their Brocton pub which was busy, mainly with diners, but was served their first pint of Banks’s that day at 1.50pm. How different I thought that was from when the Mild and Bitter were served from hogsheads with the metered electric pumps whizzing away almost continually in the then wet led pub. Lager is the normal beer though nowadays and beers such as Banks’s’ failing to be marketed must have hastened their decline.
Little known pubs called the Stile or the Still can be about the best in town.
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Agreed on every word, Paul.
A few years back, after an unpleasant episode, I – to a degree – took leave of my senses, and as part of that, went TT for two years.
When what passes for my sanity finally returned, I decided to have a beer. That beer was a bottle of Banks’s Amber Ale from the Co-op.
I think that I can say without reservation at all, that it was the best thing that I’ve ever tasted in my life.
You don’t forget these things.
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“Went TT for 2 years”. Yes, I’ve always found the Isle of Man hard to leave, even with no interest in bikes.
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In truth I’ve seen volumes of Banks’s drop alarmingly since I first enjoyed Black Country pubs in the ’90s. I recall well regarded CAMRA award winners like the Rising Sun in Tipton selling the Original as the house beer, but I probably only come across it a half dozen times a year and it’s not just GBG pubs.
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Yes Martin, I could name half a dozen Banks’s / Marstons pubs with no cask beer and that would have been unthinkable a dozen or so years ago, but so often nowadays I use pubs, not only theirs, and it looks as if everyone else is on lager.
The alarming drop in cask beer sales is indicated by the group having five breweries ( Banks’s, Marstons, Jennings, Ringwood, Wychwood ) but seven years ago needing to acquire Charles Wells of Bedford for extra capacity, yet by next year only one of the six will have been retained.
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Paul will also know dipping chips in your beer is another no no.
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I don’t doubt, Citra, but spoiling the head wouldn’t quite be No.1 on my list of reasons for not so doing, and each to his own priorities.
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My pint of Pedigree was much better than the one I had the day before. Good move by Paul to force a change!
Dick
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Yours and Dave’s pints looked “good enough”. Pedigree does have a particular taste that only people who write about beer could describe, and they’d take far too many words to get there.
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The matchsmoke note is far less pronounced than it was when I was a regular at the Malt Shovel in Shardlow in the 1970s and 80s.
“Nice pint” is generally a perfectly adequate description.
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