Shalesmoor and Kelham pub crawl

Evening,

  this post in essence follows on from my Shakespeares beer festival post earlier, as that was the first place I went on my night out with Mr C. Here's the details of where we got to next, and a new pub opening...

Kelham Island Tavern

Here I had a very nice pint of porter from the new Blackjack brewery in Manchester, who have already won a prize for their ale at the Stockport beer festival last weekend. Despite detailed notes ("blackjack porter") I remember the pumpclip very well, with a white background and a circle of images, which caught my eye. I am looking forward to this being precisely nothing like the actual pumpclip, and instead being something I dreamt. If not dreamy perhaps, the porter was certainly a good beer, which we supped in the back room which was, understandably, a little quieter than normal.

Ship Inn

More pale beers for me (no dark on last two visits, humph!) whilst Mr C stuck to Carling I had a pint of the excellent Spire Diamond Jubilee ale. Being the only customers in having recklessly arrived at about 20.00, we got chatting to the barman, and before we knew it, round 2 was on the cards.

Enjoying the beer and some rather eclectic tunes on the haunted jukebox (we spent ages trying to work out what buzzword alerted the spiritual realm to our need to hear the jukebox, because it was certainly on a random setting!) it was soon time to have yet more beer. All in all we had three in the Ship, in what was one of the most enjoyable sessions I've had for ages. Come to think of it, its probably ages since I had an actual session on just one beer. Not that it was necessarily sessionable strength.

Caskington

Our final port of call was the excellent Wellington, where I had a pint of Stout, which may have been from a Manchester based brewery such as Boggart, or may not. All I know is it was a stout and it was jolly tasty. Mr C somehow managed to find a beer to drink given his lager fondness (it may even have been a bottle?) but this didn't impinge our enjoyment, and a fine finish to the evening was had, including a most excellent misremembering a persons name event, which I won. Sorry Mr S!

New pub opening soon....

To finish here's a smidgen of news from Chesterfield. Walking past the Cathedral towards the train station yesterday (report on my adventures coming soon) I noticed a sign proclaiming that Raw Brewery were opening a new pub selling real ales, food and something that my phone has decided is called puag. No,  I have no idea what I was typing either, but the pub is the White Swan and its on St Mary's Gate in Chesterfield. Couldn't find any info on Raw's website and the pub is listed on the closed pubs website but no info on there either.

You'll just have to wait and see!

Wee Beefy