Ten perfect pints in a year
In his weekly The Bar Man feature, Jeff Hoyle discusses the best beer he drank in 2023...
Some traditions take hundreds of years to become established, while others spring into life almost overnight. We have always tried to meet up with the Bar Wife’s sister in the days preceding Christmas for a general catch-up and exchange of presents and for many years this seemed to involve us going down to Windsor, probably after Bury FC had played a game at Barnet, Aldershot or somewhere in the vague area.
Lockdown and the collapse of Bury FC put paid to that several years ago and in 2020 we had to meet in a park near Dunstable where we could buy a coffee at a stand, have a walk and sit by the picnic tables. Fortunately, since then we have been able to arrange our annual meetings in rather more comfortable surroundings and recently this has been the Red Lion in Preston, just outside Hitchin.
Why here? Previous experience while judging the pub in the regional round of the CAMRA Pub of the Year competition and then returning for the presentation when it won may have played a part, as might the fact that it was the country’s first community-owned pub and it is still going strong over 40 years later.
Did it live up to expectations? The fact that we were back for the third year last December suggests that it did. Venison chilli con carne was good as was the conversation, service and atmosphere, but what made it stand out in my mind was the beer. My pint (OK, two pints) of Redemption Pale Ale may well have been the best beer I tasted all the year, though that could be because it is fresh in the memory.
So which other ales have been outstanding in the past 12 months? A pint of North Riding brewery US Session ale at the ever-reliable White Hart in Ashill, a Cheeky Jack from Moon Gazer at the Lattice House and one of the same at the Live and Let Live in Lynn. Another Moon Gazer, this time Pintail, at Sculthorpe Mill takes us back to the summer, when I had another top-class pint of Redemption Pale in the Queen’s Head somewhere close to Kings Cross in London, while over in Norwich the Bob Carter Centre repaid my faith in taking out a £1 membership with an excellent pint of Humpty Dumpty Swallowtail.
The Lordship Arms in Bennington, near Stevenage, the subject of many positive comments from one of our Norfolk Nips subscribers, came up with an unbeatable pint of Crouch Vale Brewers Gold and Rumburgh Buck did the trick with yet more Moon Gazer beer, this time Jumper. One more completes the year. A pint of Tonbridge Blond ambition in the Hoptimist Tap Room in Dover. That makes a total of ten perfect pints in 12 months?
What can I take from that? My taste clearly veers towards the light and golden style. Moon Gazer features heavily on the list and I must admit that if it is amongst the choices on offer, it is rare that I plump for anything else. Redemption was a surprise. Those were probably the only two pints of it that I drank all year and both made the list. I must look out for it again. Great beer is found in the most random and unexpected places. There are some pubs I go back to again and again that have not made the list, yet I can be almost guaranteed a fine pint. One that I intend to return to is the Red Lion at Preston. Some traditions are worth cultivating.
