Beers Enjoyed By Me In April 2024

With a Bus to the pub tour of central Lancashire, and a visit to Manchester, covered quite a lot of beers new to me this month. 

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Black Lodge – Dark Rum 4.8% **** Porter with dashes of coffee, liquorice and rum, mercifully the coffee is not too detectable and this is quite a satisfying light porter within session ale range. Real ale – The Guild Ale House, city centre, Preston.

Beer clip – Chapter Brewing – Dead Man’s Fist

Brixton Brewery – Reliance Pale Ale – 4.2% **** An above average keg beer, malty, biscuity with a touch of citrus.  A good option when true ale are not available Keg ale – The Adelphi – Preston city centre.

Buxton Brewery – King Slayer 8% ***** Double IPA which tastes like concentrated pineapple juice and hard to tell the strength of without reading the can. Hazy golden look, quite sweet and one to sip gently, but very enjoyable.  Canned Ale.

Beer clip – Brixton Reliance Ale

Chapter Brewing – Dead Man’s Fist 5.5% ***** Award winning (understandably) A smoked finish strong poe=rter with cracked pepper add-ins, creating a formidable taste texture.  Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston.

Electric Bear – For Ruck’s Sake 4% **** A traditional copper coloured session ale with a hint of tea which mars it a touch for me, but otherwise a pleasant benchmark beer. Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston.

Escape Brewery – Tom, Dick And Harry – 4.5% **** Unfined amber coloured vegan friendly pale ale, pleasingly malty taste – nothing wrong with it but nowt outstanding either. Real ale – The Guild Ale House, city centre, Preston

Forged Brewery – Forged Irish Stout 4% ** Disappointing overchilled pale imitation of a Guinness in nitro keg presentation.  Real ale – The Black Horse, Preston

Pub sign – Bull And Dog, Burscough

Green Jack Brewing Company LGM1 – Little Green Man One 4.2% **** Not named after science fiction or UFO sighting aliens but the first pulsar signal received on Earth, back in 1967.  The beer is a quite hoppy, rather tangy citrussy ale and quite pleasant, with a lingering aftertaste.  Real ale – The Black Horse, Preston

Hawkshead – Thirsty Duck 3.7% *****– Named for the very pub serving this, and an excellent hazy dry golden ale that was sadly snatched from me in the pub beer garden by a fierce surge in the breeze.  Real ale Thirsty Duck, Burscough.

Hopwood Brewery – Best Bitter 3.8% *** Hopwood have certainly made better bitters than this, but it is a pleasant light strength session ale Real ale – The Hop Vine Burscough.

Pub Sign – Vinyl Tap, Preston

Kirby Lonsdale – Devil’s Bridge – 5.2% **** Light copper coloured dry hoppy ale, but over-citrussed. Deceptivly strong. Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston.

Kirby Lonsdale – Jubilee 5.5% ***** Strong creamy choco-liquorice stout that really commands respect.  Very tasty. Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston.

Kirby Lonsdale –  Vinyl Pale Ale 3.8 **** A very aptly named beer for the Vinyl Tap, for who it seems specially brewed and a fine very session pale traditional ale.  Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston.

Lancaster – Junction 34 3.4% **** Nice ‘coincidence’ matching number in the name to gravity. This is very light strength session ale with pride in its Northern roots – a pleasant tipple after stronger ales when you need to come down a little. Real ale – The Guild Ale House, city centre, Preston

Leeds Brewery – Midnight Bell 4.8***** Excellent chocolate stout, and a great pick me up after a draining afternoon of hospital visiting.  A very welcome ale.  Real ale – Piccadilly Tap, City Centre, Manchester

Little Brewing Company – Lone Ranger Series; Simcoe 4% **** Oddly named beer range with this one being a fairy traditional golden number with a classic bitter taste but nothing distinctive about it. Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston

Lune Brew –  LB- 904 Blackberry Pale Ale 4% ***** Pointless code numbering in the name aside this is a very pleasant experimental ale with, as the name promises, blackberries blended to a traditional pale ale – worth giving this one a go. Real ale – The Guild Ale House, city centre, Preston

Moorhouses – On The Buses 4.2% ***** Specially blended for the Scarisbrook pub, with a name and beer clip drawn from the 1970’s sit com. Quite a decent malty traditional ale – not funny, just does its job well, unlike the bus drivers on the show. Real ale – Heaton’s Bridge Scarisbrook.

North – Another World 6% *** Heavily citrussed hazy IPA that is quite bitter with its lime and, (blah) grapefruit and other fruits that are rather over-powering and self cancelling.  Stronger than it tastes.  Canned

Pub sign – The Black Horse, Preston

Northern Monk – Pumpkin Spice Latte Porter 5% **** Nobly brewed to give pumpkins a life beyond Halloween after which many pumpkins are simply destroyed rather than being used in foods, pies or beers.   The porter is quite sweet, spoilt for me only by the coffee mix added as well as the pumpkin.  Canned Beer.

Purity – Mad Goose 4.3% **** Golden ale that is mildly citrussy, perfectly palatable. Real Ale, Bull And Dog – Burscough.

Rivington – Greenlight 10.2% ***** Relieved to have only ordered half of this as I didn’t realize it’s strength until I tasted the syrupy thickness of it took a fresh look at the beer clip. A mint chocolate ale that is really delicious. Imagine liquidizing a box of After eights, injecting heavy levels of alcohol in and then serving. One to savour and sip but well worth a go for the brave or naïve.   Real ale Thirsty Duck, Burscough.

Southport Brewery National Hero 4% **** Apt for the day of the Grand National horse race to find an ale celebrating the event – quite an ordinary ale that feels needlessly livened up with mild added spiciness. Real Ale – Kicking Donkey – Scarisbrick

Thwaites’s English Old Ale 5% ***** Lovely dry tasting amber ale, hoppy and as traditional as you can get, a true benchmark brew. Real ale – Cock And Bottle – Tarlatan.

Tiny Rebel – Chocaholic 5% ***** Death by chocolate in a porter – possibly the most chocolately ale ever – delicious, Moorish and strong – a definite favourite.  Real ale, Vinyl Tap Preston.

Beer glass

Tooth And Claw – Barley Quin 4% *** Dark golden or light copper ale with a lemony touch. Pleasantly refreshing but kind of average. Real ale – The Black Horse, Preston

Wigan Brewhouse – California 3.8% *** Decent enough golden ale and just short of dry, but unmemorable given its pretentions of Americana should make it more exciting. Real ale – The Bridge – Burscough.

Photos taken by me.

Arthur Chappell

Day Out Review – Bus To The Pub.

On Saturday 13^th April 2024, I was among many passengers participating in the Merseyside Transport Trust’s Lancashire Beer And Buses day excursion, with vintage buses circling a route taking in 22 pubs, (including starting and finishing points for feeder services). I was able to get to try 11 ales in 9 of them. (I drank halves to maximize the different opportunities to hand).

Bus used during the excursion.

There were three routes, of which I completed on and a sizable portion of a second.  I got photos of several of the others. 

Base camp and starting/finishing point – The Guild Ale House Bar, Preston.

My chosen point of departure was The Guild Ale House, in Preston City Centre, a firm favourite with CAMRA and a superb live entertainment venue where I often get involved with open mic events, being a performance poet.

Event programme

Here I got my first ale, and the programme of events, transport routes and timetables.  Sales of the programme raised to help restore more vintage transport for museums and for events like this.

The first, plus the later buses used for the pub circuit were lovely and way more comfortable than current Preston Bus and Stagecoach stock. The passengers were all in great spirits (no pun intended) and there was a sense of good old fashioned charabanc in the air all day.  There was never any sign of trouble. 

First pub stop for me.

After a few other pick ups, our first potential alighting point was Tarlatan Village with three pubs close to one another to choose from. I went for The Cock And Bottle where staff were very welcoming and the décor delightfully eclectic. 

It was a little confusing at first working out where the bus would stop to collect me and others for the next phase of the journey.  I headed on to the Rufford village’s Hesketh Arms, which like other village bars on the route(s) was too isolated to head for on conventional public transport or as part of my pub sign studies. The pub had the finest sign I saw all day, a colourful heraldic presentation, though it looked like its frame was splitting.

Best pub sign of the day. The Hesketh Arms – Rufford.

As well as drinking in the pubs I was clocking up their histories and inspecting/photographing the inn signs for possible use in my future books on the subject. My first such study is already out,  Watch The Signs! Watch The Signs! (available through Shoreline Of Infinity https://www.shorelineofinfinity.com/product/watch-the-signs-watch-the-signs/  or directly from myself). Book two (independent of the first one) comes out on July 15^th 2024 and hopefully  some of the signs captured on walks like the one described here will make it into future volumes.

The pub that nearly forgot it does sell real ale – The Bull And Dog, Burscough

From Rufford it was onto Burscough, the town with biggest concentration of signs in one area. Buses from all three routes converged on the Hop Vine which became a central hub for all the optional directions I could take. After capturing photos round the town centre and canal wharf area (which hosts several bars and diners)  I started by going out to the far end of Burscough, to the Bull And Dog.  At first I thought they had no real ales on, but when I asked the barman apologized for not putting the promotional clip on the one offered, and hurriedly amended that, producing another fine ale in a bar with a huge beer garden.

Canal View – Burcough

As well as pubs I captured images of other interesting sights like: A, The Canals

B/. Street art like this swan in Burscough.

Street Art Swan, Burscough

From there I went out to the two Scarisbrick bars, starting with The Kicking Donkey.  If not for the bus warden who ushered passengers on and off, I might well have missed this delightful pub entirely. Lacking signage, it is set back from the main road and hidden by hedgerows, approachable through a wooden gate. The weather was warming so much here that many of us sat outside in the beer garden. Our trip coincided with the Grand National Horse Race and this pub served a beer called National Hero which would have been cruel not to indulge in. (worth it too).

Beer clip for National Hero, on Grand National Day.

A few minutes ride up the road we came to Heaton’s Bridge, still is Scarisbrick,  with some eccentric artwork on display, fish swimming in a tank and a specially blended in house ale commemorating a 1970’s TV show, On The Buses.  This was another must to try seeing as we were indeed very much travelling ‘on the buses’. 

On The Buses beer clip

With time pressing on, I swung back round on the buses going widdershins and re-entered Burscough, with time to call in three more bars in close proximity to one another. The first was The Bridge, which was a big sports bar by the railway station.  The Grand National itself was on live on the TV’s so many punters were engaged in that which made getting served easy.

Over now to the canal-side Thirsty Duck (previously called The Blue Mallard), an excellent tap house with a great range of ales, though no true pub sign.  The bar was quite crowded so I went out to the beer garden with my first ale only to find the climate changing severely and a sudden gust of wind swept my barely sipped beer glass to the floor before my eyes. 

Gorgeous tapestry in The Thirsty Duck, Burscough

I went in to reorder and spotted a pump promoting Rivington’s Green Light ale, a chocolate mint porter. I decided to switch to that and stay indoors.  A sip of the beer told me it was not only delicious but that its thick syrupy texture screamed strength. I walked to bar to check what I should have read on the beer clip before ordering. The Green Light was 10.2% in strength. I felt relived to have only ordered a half.

My penultimate port of call was the hub bar itself, the Hop Vine which was extremely crammed, largely as many passengers had the same idea as I did and all the last buses would be departing from close proximity to the pub just over thirty minutes onwards.  I purposely ordered the lightest ale I could see, at less than 4%, after my 10.2% number at the previous pub.

Bus used during the excursion.

The return ride went well and everyone was cheering and tipping the bus crew who had worked incredibly hard to look after us and get us safely from bar to bar with great efficiency.  We dropped various passengers off at points along the route back to our starting pub, The Guild Ale House where I enjoyed my final ale of the day and headed for an ordinary bus home to my flat from the bus station a few minutes walk from the pub.

Thank you so much to the staff of the Guild Ale House, the passengers who I travelled with, the drivers and bus monitors, the staff and patrons of all the bars frequented and I can already not wait for next year’s trip.  Awesome stuff.

All Photos taken by me.

Arthur Chappell