13th April 2011 - Burton

April meeting for the Burton Beer Circle finds us at the usual venue.

Commercial beers from the bar sampled tonight were

• Rudyard Ruby Mild


• Joules Slimbering Monk


• Bass

In addition to the various brews from the members, LL has also promised to bring samples of some very old beers he had recently been party to the discovery of. These 33 year beers had apparantly been stored away at some local brewery / warehouse and lonmg since forgotten till someone came accross them (many hundreds of bottles by all accounts.) These beers were Skol Lager, Silver Jubilee and Easter ales from Ind Coope. There were is suprisingly good condition but had changed over the years so were now quite dark (even the lager) and had taken on an old ale type character. Tests have shown that beer doesn't get stronger over time and these were still known to be around the 5.5% mark they were oginally brewed at.

1st April 2011 - Burton

Quick trip over to Burton and a visit to the Old Cottage (Stout and Oak Ale) and thence the Devonshire (Burton Bridge Porter)

25th March 2011 - Stafford

Out with RG this evening and for a change we opted for Stafford. This is a place we used to come out to quite a lot 20 or so years ago so it was a sort of trip down memory lave.

The evening commenced with food courtesy of the Windmill Chippy after which we headed to the Sun. Quite different these days to how we used to remember it. Owned by Titanic Brewery now so a good selection of their beers and some guests available. For me it was Last Porter Call.

Across to thePicture House next as there was the JDW Beer Festival taking place. This was a cinema last time we visited here but these days its an excellent pub conversion. Wolf Pairie Gold was first followed by Budweisser Budvar.

Swan Hotel next where the only real choice was Freedom Lager.

Final port of call in Stafford was the Bird in Hand. We sat in the empty front room drinking Deuchers IPA with the mixed sounds from a reggie disco and some heavy / thrash metal outfit in theback room.

On arrival back in Tamworth we headed up to the Aspen Bar in the Snowdome drinking Tetley Bitter.

11th March 2011 - Aston

The friday night boys outing finds DP at the helm. We (only 3 tonight) met at the Joint Stock (Fuller s Chiswick.)

DP mentioned he'd found there was a beer festival taking place over towards the Uni at Aston so we agreed to give it a go and soon found ourselves in the Sack of Potatoes. A nice selection of 12 or so beers greeted us some on a temporary stillage and some from the bar. we agreed to take it in turns selecting the beers and this lead to the following:

• Rudgates Spring Elixir


• Meantime IPA


• Springhead Drop o the Blackboard stuff


• York's First Light


• Slater's Chocolate Orange


• Brains Reverend James (the only beer from the bar and merely chosen as it wouldn't be a Friday without James!)

Tiem to leave and so over the road to the Gosta Green. A large venue with an obvious student bias. I went for the Becks Vier (no real ale available). We noticed what we assumed were a student party with tee shirts specially printed for their crawl that evening.

We moved on to the Bull close to the Dentists Hospital and the old fire station. A large collection of jugs adorned the ceiling, etc and a good choice of stews was on the menu. My choice was Hook Norton's Hooky Bitter.

Next was the Jeckyl and Hyde and Purity Mad Goose.

The Crown suggested next till we saw the queue, not helped by the sight that our 12 student friends from earlier would be ahead of us to get served so we moved onto the Square Peg where I opted for a short (Jim Beam) and finally the Shakesphere where alas I forgot to note which beer I sampled (might have been Land Lord from Timothy Taylor?)