Cambridge and District CAMRA award winners 2013

Last night the Hopbine was host to the annual Cambridge and District CAMRA awards. Beers on during the evening included Blackbar Triple Hopped Blonde and Moonshine’s new Pale Ale.

Pub of the Year – Flying Pig

The Pub of the Year was awarded to the Flying Pig, a pub that dates back to the 1830s but is now under threat of demolition and ‘redevelopment’. Licensees Matt and Justine Hatfield hope the award will strengthen the case against demolition but admit the fate of the pub is out of their hands.

Flying Pig “reaching new heights”

A Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Lawrence Dixon who has spent the last twelve years at the Champion of the Thames, recently took on the Clarendon Arms and is considering taking on a third pub. His speech was the most entertaining of the night, recounting how in his former career as a bookmaker, arriving back from the races late at night, they often didn’t have anywhere to drink – “so I bought the pub”! The Champion of the Thames is now a pub at the heart of the community, he said, a place anyone was welcome to visit for “good beer and a good chat”.

Thanks to Cambridge CAMRA and to the Hopbine for hosting the awards. Here’s a full list of the winners:

Cambridge and District CAMRA award winners 2013:

Pub of the Year 2013	Flying Pig
Locale Pub of the Year (Rural)	Crown Inn, Linton
Locale Pub of the Year (City)	Cambridge Blue
Community Pub of the Year (Rural)	Plough and Fleece, Horningsea
Community Pub of the Year (City)	Elm Tree
Dark Ale/ Mild Pub of the Year	Maypole
Most Improved Pub of the Year (City)	Mill
Most Improved Pub of the Year (Rural)	Chestnut Tree, West Wratting
Cider Pub of the Year	St Radegund
Real Ale Champion	Richard Naisby, Milton Brewery
CAMRA Lifetime Achievement Award	Lawrence Dixon, Champion of the Thames & Clarendon Arms

Fuego in the Fens

My first taste of a beer from Bexar County Brewery was at the Letter B in Whittlesey during the Straw Bear Festival. On a bitterly cold day in January, I ordered a porter, what I hoped might be a winter warmer, but I wasn’t expecting the warmth to come from the creeping heat of chilis!

Brewer Steve Saldana, who came over from Texas and established the brewery with the aim of brewing “aggressive American styled beers”, happened to be in the pub at the time and confirmed the beer was dry hopped with chilis. La Perla Negra En Fuego. It warmed up a cold winter day, a bit too much chili afterburn for my tastes, but Steve later admitted it was too subtle for his tastes. “I really wanted to put twice as many chilis in”.

It turns out that the term ‘aggressive’ doesn’t really do justice to the range of brews, all unfined ‘natural’ beers. Take Vaquero, a 3.7% pale ale with meadowy hops and soft pineapple flavours that’s creamy and sessionable, not so much ‘in yer face’ as ‘down yer neck’. Apparently though, this is down to pulling the punches again – “It’s barely stronger than water” says Steve.

We visited the brewery, housed in a unit on an industrial estate in Peterborough, on a grey, rainy Sunday in March. It’s hardly an inspiring location for inspired beers to originate from. I almost expected we’d find it in a patch of piney woods and prairie that beers like ‘San Jacinto’ and ‘Seis-Banderas’ evoke.

“We’ve got work to do” he said, handing us empty pint glasses. It turned out the ‘work’ involved pouring beer, drinking beer and talking about beer. The most enjoyable was ‘Come And Take It’, a strong, bitter, hop forward IPA, hazy with Apollo hops and bursting with juicy grapefruit and sherbet.

Then came another chili challenge, taking a base beer and adding first Cascavel and then Hatch chilis, each addition lifting the beer and lingering longer on the tongue. Experimenting is at the heart of this brewery; stressing yeast to get the banana flavours in the Chocolate Covered Banana Strong Mild, investing in a smoker for the forthcoming mesquite smoked beers. There are hits and misses, such is the nature of experimentation, but this is preferable to playing it safe.

The biggest challenge seems to be convincing other people to drink these unfined beers, because unfined beers can be cloudy, and cloudy beer is apparently not always well received. This is understandable given that it can indicate bad beer, or point to poor cellarmanship. But what about beer that’s intentionally cloudy, unfined and therefore naturally hazy? To change the perception that cloudy beer is bad beer, ideally the brewer would be there at the point of sale, or at the point where a dubious looking beer is returned to the bar, to step in and explain why the beer looks like that. Which is exactly what Steve sometimes finds himself doing, overhearing feedback on his beer at festivals and in pubs, and offering an explanation as to the merits of misty beer.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Seis Banderas, a strong, chocolatey stout with vinous, dark berry flavours emerging from the depths might appear murky, but therein lies the magic.

Plans are afoot for Bexar County Brewery beers to be served at the Alexandra Arms and other Cambridge pubs. In the meantime, they’re due to feature at the following events:

29 March – 1 April: Green Man, Grantchester – Easter Beer Festival (Come and Take It, Chocolate Covered Banana Mild)
17 April: Meet the Brewer at The Mill, Cambridge
20-25 May: Cambridge Beer Festival

The Session #73 Roundup

Hosting this month’s Session, on the topic of a Beer Audit, gave me an excuse to indulge in beer voyeurism, drooling over photos showing boxes of beer, shelves of beer, beds of beer and Alcofrolic Chap’s wonderful home bar.

It turns out I’m not alone in hoarding beer and taking some sort of beer audit, with responses covering varying degrees of accountancy, and ‘cellars’ with volumes ranging from Beer Runner’s three bottles or Booze, Beats & Bites pack of Carling in the fridge, through to Brookston Beer Bulletin‘s purpose built cellar “cut into the side of a hill, with a gravel floor, with a raised brick floor running around the four walls.” It seems most people at least took this month’s session as an excuse to take stock of the beers they store, even if this was simply looking at what they had and, as Appellation Beer says, “just thinking about it”.

Three Horseshoes, Stapleford

The Three Horseshoes in Stapleford reopened last week. Jethro and Terry from the Cambridge Blue have taken it on as a second pub and are aiming to turn the freehouse into a ‘real ale paradise’.

When we visited, there were seven real ales on including Oakham/RCH Light Porter, along with draught Duvel and Köstritzer Black Lager among others. There’s also a range of bottled beers with plenty of Belgian beer and glassware. The refurbished pub has a large room to the right of the main bar and a smaller darts room to the left.

The Three Horseshoes has been here since at least the 1840s, possibly as early as 1815. After alterations in 1976 it was renamed the Longbow, “a completely new pub, only the exterior of the building remains the same”. Initially it stocked ‘Truman’s Crown, Whitbread Trophy and Whitbread mild on draught’. The Longbow closed last May after some trouble. Reverting to its former name, the Three Horseshoes is now a welcoming place, serves good beer and is easily reached from Cambridge – by the Citi 7 bus, a short cycle along the Shelford cycleway, or by train to Stapleford railway station followed by a ten minute walk.

Church Street, Stapleford, Cambridgeshire CB22 5DS

Sources:
Stapleford village website
Deans & Stapleford pubs
Cambridge CAMRA

The Session #73 Announcement: Beer Audit

The Session, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday, is an opportunity once a month for beer bloggers from around the world to get together and write from their own unique perspective on a single topic. Each month, a different beer blogger hosts the Session, chooses a topic and creates a round-up listing all of the participants. The next session takes place on March 1st and I get to host it. Here’s the topic…

Beer audit

Once or twice a year I take a beer audit. I open cupboards and boxes and just have a good look at what’s there. Some beers get moved about, some make it from a box into the fridge, others get pushed further to the back of the cupboard for another day. Often I just stare at the bottles for a while and think about when I’ll drink them. Apart from the enjoyment of just looking at a hoard of beer, It tells me something about my drinking habits.

• I store too many bottles – over 150 at the last count, which would keep me in beer for over a month, compared to less than a week’s worth of food – but evidently that’s still not enough bottles as I return with more every time I leave the house.
• I have a tendency to hoard strong, dark beers – great for a winter evening, not so great when a lazy sunny afternoon starts with a 9% imperial stout and then gets stronger
• My cellaring could be improved. I found three beers from breweries that closed last year. I found these, not hidden away in a box under the stairs, but in the fridge. The fridge!!!
• My attempts to age beer usually just result in beer that’s past its best
• The oldest beer in my cupboard is probably an infant compared to the aged beers people must have in their cellars

So, I’m interested to know if you take stock of the beers you have, what’s in your cellar, and what does it tell you about your drinking habits. This could include a mention of the oldest, strongest, wildest beers you have stored away, the ratio of dark to light, strong to sessionable, or musings on your beer buying habits and the results of your cellaring. I look forward to reading your posts on Friday March 1st, leave a comment here when you do.

Cheers!

Cambridge Brew House

The Cambridge Brew House, King Street

The Cambridge Brew house opened on Wednesday 6th February.

Brewing will soon return to Cambridge as the Brew House opens this coming week with a brewery launch to follow next month. Head brewer James Godman was formerly senior brewer at the Hop Back Brewery in Wiltshire, where he brewed Hop Back Entire Stout, Champion Winter Beer of Britain 2011. Last year he launched the Henley Brewing Company and this year returns to Cambridge, his former home, to launch the Cambridge Brewing Company.

The brewing vessels arrived just a few weeks ago and aren’t yet fully installed so the new beers are currently being brewed at Henley. The new beers for Cambridge are:
King’s Parade 3.8% ABV ‘best bitter’
Night Porter 4.8% ABV ‘stout porter’
Misty River 4.7% ABV ‘hoppy ale’

They’ll also serve guest ales, mainly from local breweries, and hope to soon have beers from Bexar County Brewery, a new Peterborough brewery that has already released some cracking beers, ‘robust porters’ and ‘aggressive American styled’ IPAs amongst them.

The pub has been completely refurbished with the lower bars opened out into one large room with two main areas – a pub lounge side with views through to the brewery and a side aimed more at dining, joined by a long wooden bar. Lucas the opening manager kindly showed me the upstairs function room that also has views of the brewery, and the ‘Locker Room’, a bar with a smaller beer selection and a screen to show sports. This room has perhaps seen the biggest change with the former low ceiling removed to reveal a much higher ceiling, creating a light and airy space in what was once a fairly dimly lit room. It leads to an outdoor terrace at the rear of the building. There are lots of different styles of furniture and lighting throughout but it all works well together and there are some really nice touches.

We were lucky enough to go along pre-launch for a vegetarian Sunday Roast and really enjoyed the food, including a sample of their own smoked cheddar and an Eton Mess for dessert. We washed it down with a pint of King’s Parade, a biscuity best bitter using East Kent Goldings & Styrian Goldings hops, and a Freedom Organic Lager. Adnams Broadside was also on.

The 1970s building doesn’t look like a place that would have much of a history – a 1974 pub guide says “It is all too easy to be deterred by the stark modernity of the brick exterior, but the inside is in fact quite pleasant” – yet there has been a pub here since at least 1839 and brewing in this area of Cambridge goes back centuries…

History

Brewing

The Cambridge Brew House is the only brewery in the city, the first since Moonshine moved from Radegund Road to Fulbourn in 2008, the City of Cambridge Brewery ceased brewing at Cheddars Lane in 2001, and the first brewpub in Cambridge since the Ancient Druids (now China City restaurant) and the Fresher Firkin (now the Tivoli) ceased brewing in the late 1990s.

King Street has been home to a brewery before; in 1866 George Scales founded the Cambridge Brewery behind what is now d’Arry’s restaurant, opposite the Cambridge Brew house. Much of the former Cambridge Brewery buildings and memorabilia remained until the late 1990s when Greene King stripped the heritage out and threw it away when they turned it into the failed ‘Rattle and Hum’ theme pub. The remaining brewery buildings can best be seen from above street level:

Cambridge Brewery © David Purchase, under Creative Commons Licence

Brewing on King Street goes back much further. The Charters of the Radegund Priory, which existed from the 12th century to the end of the 15th century, record in 1446 the lease of a building on Walls Lane, now King Street, to

John Chapman, brewer, and Margaret his wife, a vacant plot in Walls Lane, in the parish of Holy Trinity, lying between the wall of the Friars Minor to the west and a tenement of the nuns in the tenure of Thomas Thorne to the east, the Lane to the south, and a garden of the nuns occupied by John Heyward to the north.

The lease was for 26 years at 2 shillings, with a covenant to “build and maintain a house on the said site”. Beer was also brewed at the nearby Benedictine Priory, now Jesus College on Jesus Lane which runs paralel to King Street, and the Franciscan Friary established in 1266 on land bordered by Walls Lane, now the site of Sidney Sussex College. One of the only buildings mentioned in the Nunnery accounts was the Priory’s ‘Hospicium’ where brewing was carried out (Gray, 1898) and the Franciscan Friary buildings included a brew house (Porter, 1958).

Former pubs on this site

King’s Arms. Several pubs have stood on this site previously. The King’s Arms is recorded from as early as 1839 with the publican James Creek. As Queen Victoria reigned from 1837, the King’s Arms could well have existed before then. As early as 1688 (Loggan’s map) buildings are shown on the site. King Street itself was formerly Wales lane, later Walls Lane until as late as 1804 (Cole’s) becoming King Street by 1830 (Baker’s). This would suggest it was named King Street sometime during the reign of George III (likely, since the Royal Arms of George III appear in the Cambridge Arms), George IV or even the year King William IV ascended to the throne.

Glazier’s Arms is recorded here or adjacent to it from at least the 1850s to 1887. William Austin was recorded as a beer retailer on King Street in 1839. A glazier by profession, he is later recorded as the publican of the Glazier’s Arms, so it seems possible he gave the pub its name.

Royal Arms is then recorded here from at least 1895 to 1970, after which the building was demolished and the area redeveloped.

King’s Arms (again). In the early 1970s redevelopment, the present building was erected with the pub name reverting to the King’s Arms. It comprised of three large bars and a restaurant, the bars being named after significant items of the King’s Coat of Arms – the Lion Bar, equivalent to a public bar, the Unicorn Bar and the Rose Bar upstairs next to the restaurant – items which seem to support the ‘King’s Arms’ being a Hanoverian Coat of Arms.

Bun Shop. In the early 1990s the pub was refurbished and took the name of the Bun Shop (a pub of that name originally stood on Downing Street). A CAMRA guide from 1994 called it a “hugely enterprising revamp of the once hapless King’s Arms” which served amongst other beers, a Tolly Cobbold ‘Bun Shop Brew’ house beer. That would have been about the time I first visited the Bun Shop. It comprised of a traditional bar with a snug in the right hand room, a wine bar to the left and a tapas bar and restaurant upstairs that was also used as a function room. By 2002 the ‘Traditional Bar’ advertised “a range of beers from some of Britain’s finest regional breweries, including Youngs, Tetleys, Marstons, Greene King, Shepherds Neame and Adnams.”

(© Kake Pugh / Flickr)

Jolly Scholar
The Bun Shop closed in 2008 and for the past few years the pub had opened only for short periods before closing again, first under the management of D’Arry’s (opposite the pub) who scattered plenty of sawdust all over the floor, and then in 2011 under the management of the Jolly Sailor in Suffolk. It became the Jolly Scholar, with another refurbishment opening up the previous two room layout into one large room. It closed again just a year later and stayed shut until reopening as the present Cambridge Brew House.

King Street pubs

In 1874 twelve pubs are recorded on King Street, today only four remain – Cambridge Brew House, Champion of the Thames, King Street Run (formerly Horse & Groom) and the Saint Radegund. The buildings of several former pubs still stand – the Earl Grey is now Raja Indian Restaurant, the Cambridge Arms and brewery is d’Arry’s restaurant and the Yorkshire Grey is a private dwelling.

In 1881, at least ten pubs were named on King Street:
Boot
Carpenter’s Arms
Champion of the Thames
Earl Grey
Garrick
Glaziers Arms
Horse & Groom
Sebastopol
Town Arms
Yorkshire Grey

An 1888 town plan shows names for eight pubs, with the Garrick demolished and replaced by the Saint Radegund, the Town Arms renamed the Cambridge Ale Stores, and a Millers Arms standing opposite what is now the Cambridge Brew House.

Here’s hoping the future of the Cambridge Brew House is a long and prosperous one.

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Other sources:
Arthur Gray, The Priory of St Radegund, Cambridge (Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1898)
H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958)
The Cambridge Brew House

Black Horse, Rampton

“Some village pubs I’ve been to, everyone stops and looks you up and down as you walk in” said one of the locals. “Not this pub.” Before long another local was trying to persuade us to move to the village, with several houses recommended.

A pub since at least 1851, with two rooms, the left side laid out for dining with several people having Sunday lunch, the right side more the place to drink beer, and good beer it was.

The landlord comes from Tring and beer from Tring Brewery is regularly on. We had a nice drop of Dark Star Partridge Best Bitter before returning to the bar. “I’m just about to put on a new one from Tring, you should wait” he said. After a while the beer was pulled through and several glasses were held up to the light before the clip went on and it was served. It was worth waiting for. He said they visted the brewery the other week, clearly they care about the beer they serve.

Meanwhile, the locals regaled us with stories stretching back over twenty years, of a previous landlady who on her birthday was given the bumps and was swung up into a beam and soon after was taken away in an ambulance, and a ‘lady’ someone brought to the pub who did something that resulted in them “all being barred from the pub”. We couldn’t glean what it was the lady had done, but they were keen to emphasise it occured a long time ago.

I hope we’ll visit this friendly place again soon, drink more good beer and hear more tales, but I’m happy to keep imagining what happened that evening “a long time ago”.

Further back in time, during the Second World War, ‘local Rampton man Arthur Bowness’ recalls that for the village Home Guard, “all the parades and whatnots that used to take place used to mostly start at the Black Horse and finish at the Black Horse.” Nearby is the Giant’s Hill earthwork, an unfinished 12th Century castle that was utilised as a gun emplacement by the Home guard.

Along the High Street, on the opposite side of the road, stands the closed Chequers pub, open c.1765-1917, now a private dwelling.

Rampton is about 7 miles north of Cambridge by road. From the guided busway stop at Longstanton, it’s a four mile round trip along footpaths, or from the Oakington stop it’s a five mile round trip.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA

Other pubs along the Cambridgeshire guided busway