December 2024. Cambridge.
I had to run to catch the 13:03 back from Baldock to Cambridge, a pint of NBSS 5 Abbot and a plate of pie sloshing up and down in my tummy. Safer than curry and mango lassi, but not by much.
The train skilfully dawdles to a halt just in time for me to miss the 13:35 to Waterbeach, the next departure is cancelled, and I find myself with at least an hour to kill.
Which is what pubs were invented for, I guess.
You’ll be counting down the minutes to Retired Martin Day (22/12) as you read this, and my actual birthplace is on that map extract, just above the Salisbury Arms.
It’s not a top Cambridge pub, but it was an actual CAMRA pub once, and I know you desperately want to know how Wells/Brewpoint’s Christmas ale compares to Sheps and Everards.
At the bar, some young people on their Christmas lunch are daring each other to try the Santa Banter.
“Go on ! Just a half !”
“No, I couldn’t !”
CAMRAs believe that the Great Guinness Shortage of 2024 is an opportunity to get drinkers to try small brewers attempts at a stout, and you have to admire Wells/Brewpoint’s attempt at mimicry,
but no-one is buying copies. It’s all about splitting the G, not the taste.
The Salisbury has clearly had a frantic lunch session,
the pizza oven taking a breather,
and 2pm finds it winding down over a soundtrack of Taylor, Phoebe and Pavement.
A good time to appreciate the walls of this old skool bare boards student pub.
“Over 20 real ales” says the poster from the year Elvis died (I think), a time when festival goers would drink 20 pints in a session, rather than the 1.86 averaged now.
Because you ask, this was the beer list.
Anyhow, Santa Banter, a rather tame 4.8%, and again a Christmas beer that improved with time,
though clearly not a fast mover and not especially festive (NBSS 3). In truth, the overpowering aroma was of boiled cabbage. Or perhaps it was brussel sprout pizza.
retiredmartin 
Very interesting list from (I guess) 1977. Burton Ale would have been new then, and I suspect the Hoskins would also have been well in demand. So many of those beers were regionals where the drinker often had to search them out, not just wait for them to turn up at the local JDW.
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Yes, DBA quite “new then” having been launched by Allied during the summer of 1976.
And yes, what fun we had travelling far and wide “to search them out”.
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Agreed Paul, and the travelling far and wide was certainly part of the whole experience. Hoskins, was the only one of those beers I never managed to track down, although I never got to sample Tolly’s Cardinal/Jubilee. (Possibly brewed for Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee). Were the abv figures deliberately omitted from the list?
Presumably the CAMRA connection at the Salisbury, relates to its brief period of ownership by CAMRA (Real Ale Investments Ltd), a venture that wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring success for the Campaign?
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Paul,
Yes, “relates to its brief period of ownership by CAMRA (Real Ale Investments Ltd), a venture that wasn’t exactly a rip-roaring success for the Campaign”.
Yes, launched fifty years ago last month, and last month I happened to be be drinking with Chris Hutt and the late Neil Kellett who were significantly involved in the venture.
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Don’t they bring the bicycle inside for the winter ?
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