Bath’s best pub beer gardens

It is an official sanctioned bank holiday, the Met Office has promised a sunny summer and we live in a nation where the ‘retail experience’ passes for high culture and our national pastime is panicking about the forthcoming aporkalypse. So what is there left to do for those of us whose spare time hangs heavily like a whore’s guilt? Get drunk, obviously, but with the twist of getting drunk outside.

But where to can you go to enjoy the cool breeze against your skin and the cold sting of real ale against your liver? Because while Bath is a beautiful city with its narrow cobbled streets, widescreen Georgian vistas and even wider tourists, the choice of beer gardens is still distinctly small.

Most of Bath’s great pubs are what could euphemistically be called ‘winter pubs’. From the dark wood dominated Star and the gloomy Salamander to the almost windowless Old Green Tree, they only make sense as a retreat from the outside world, not a place to embrace it.

Instead to find a good pint and a beer garden in Bath you need to do something the tourist never do and most of the locals will rarely attempt – to leave the city centre.

The Hop Pole
Hidden between the greenery of Victoria park and the equally green River Avon, this Bath Ale pub’s secluded beer garden is far and away the best in the city. The problem is that most of the other residents know that too.

Instead of being a converted car park or adjunct to a busy junction, it is a designed and planted blend of greenery and gravel. Pergolas and flowering climbers contort with patio heaters and wrought iron furniture to persuade that it you are in the formal garden of a country house, and that a jelly in Laura Ashley is about to approach you about the wellbeing of her Tricky Woo.

Except that your peace and quiet has as much chance of remaining unbroken as a Frenchman's wedding vows because its swing and slide proximity means that The Hop Pole is where parents drag their beloved for regular Nutrasweet re-ups.

And what a delight it is to see Jocaster and Lexmark, kids whose free-spirited nature sorely needs a few boundaries imposing primarily through the medium of a clenched fist. However, you can mostly ignore them since the beer is good, if predictable, and the food is decent, if pricey.

The Royal Oak
It might only be the other side of the bridge from The Hop Pole but The Royal Oak is a world away from its sedate seclusion. For this is a pub for drinking in, not really using the toilet in or eating in. But while it’s rougher around the edges, with bench seating and the odd weed poking between the paving stones; it’s also far more innovative and interesting.

Here the ten beers on offer are all from SIBA breweries, ensuring a selection of some of the most exciting and strange ales from around Britain, along with Budvar light and dark and four local ciders. It’s also home to the fledgling Art Brew of North Chideock in Devon.

Despite the garden being only a fence’s thickness from a busy road where Novas with neons drown in seismic bass, it still manages to be quiet - primarily because the pub remains mostly child-free. That isn’t because this slightly scruffy freehouse isn’t nipper-friendly, more because it is a less pretentious pub created, for and by, people who love beer.

The White Hart
Instead of a thousand words, here is a picture and they are meant to be interchangeable after all - unless you attempt that substitution during an A-Level English exam. It is one of the pub's own pictures too, with all their rights reserved and such.

Like the rest of Widcombe this former locals’ pub has been scrubbed and bleached to fit into a street newly filled with Aga shops, piano merchants and an organic-coffee house. And it is solid and pleasant, much like the Butcombe they serve.

The Bell
If The Royal Oak is worn, The Bell has spent most of its harrowing life stuffing purloined cans of White Ace into its string-supported trousers. Favoured by multi-coloured bowler mad-hatter drinking Westons Organic, its narrow collection of benches attracts all social classes from street drinkers to upper-middle class trustafarians playing at being street drinkers.

The beer is as varied as the conditions it is kept it. Otter, Gem and Pitchfork are among the seven regulars but everything from the green Sign Of Spring to Spingo have appeared alongside a good selection of very strong Belgian bottles.

Everything about this pub is bohemian, so if you are looking to get served quickly the best way is to strike up a decade long friendship with the staff before attempting to order.

Coeur De Lion
With no greenery, no space and no actual garden, the Coeur De Lion’s strip of pavement probably doesn’t tick many of the boxes you might look for in outdoor drinking. But if you can get one of the eight or so seats on offer it can be a wonderful place to spend an evening.

For with this tiny pub, concealed just metres from both the Guildhall and the Abbey, you get all the benefit of the glorious architecture of the city centre - and views of the stained glass front window - all in a location that many residents still struggle to find. And if all the seats are taken, try the almost as diminutive Volunteer Rifleman’s Arms for a similar effect.

Anyway it is probably better to spend your time outside as this one-room pub, as it is far too small to actually go in, except to order from one of the well kept Abbey ales.

The Rest
With its position beneath the historic Pultney Bridge and next to their weir, The Boater almost has one of the best locations in Bath. However neither are actually visible from its endless rows of tree-shaded tables populated either by rugby thugs or the underage. Like The Boater, The Crystal Palace uses its tourist-trap position and walled garden to entice but its over-priced and often ‘creamy’ beers should repel. For a much better pint try the The Pig And Fiddle but be prepared to drink it sat in the warm backdraft of traffic and the splash-range of warm vomit.

Four Organic Ales To Try, And One To Avoid

I know. No festival has been milked this mercilessly since Vince Power’s Mean Fiddler took over at Reading, but The Royal Oak’s organic beer festival is worthy of more of my words.

You see it is a wonderful thing and it has grown during its three years. So the first surprise to my post-work-spazzed head about this year’s event was how many SIBA members seem to be treading the mulchy path to organic brewing. Because there were more beers on offer than last year with ABC, Bath Ales, Celt, North Curry, Matthews and Bridge Of Allan joining Butts, Spectrum, Marble and the Organic Brewery.

What also chaffed in my limited brain was the range of styles and shades of offer. The increased cost and restricted availability of organic materials doesn’t seem to have dented the diversity or depth of the brewer’s range and reach. So there were hop-powered beers, dark ales, pale beers and just one punchy ginger number. And I tried most of them, except the Bath Ales, which felt like a charity addition.

One Beer To Try
It is tricky to pick which one of Butts’ many lovely beers to select – the darkly rich chocolate Blackguard porter is superb – but Barbus Barbus is one of those beers that I have to have every time it appears. It’s a gently sweet golden with hints of malt and orange marmalade amid the hops. It isn’t a big gaudy whore of a beer but a well balanced one that also packs in plenty of flavour for a 4.6% ale.

Another Beer To Try
The annual appearance of Marble’s Ginger, meant that at least I had to try some, even though starting a drinking session with it would be as likely to invite disaster as playing the 1812 Overture at an outdoor Afghan wedding. For this 5.0% beer delights and punishes in equal measure and I’ve already sung the praises of this fiery pint. Anyway the zest, zingy, utterly fresh 3.9% Pint was my favourite from the Manchester brewery this time.

Two Beers To Try
First in a double header of stouts came the Bridge Of Allan Glencoe Wild Oat Stout, 4.5%, with the Marble ‘Stouter’ Stout, 4.7%, as pudding. Now while the 0.1 megapixel picture above might make you think that this pair of ales are similar in shade, there is actually quite a contrast in flavour.

The Glencoe is actually the more traditional of the two. Beneath its gently beige-shaded head, it has a smooth, almost milky sweetness that probably comes from the oats. Cutting against this is the carbonation – not fizziness - but the burnt, smoky flavours. So there is a little bit of ash, burnt toast and perhaps even liquorice that all combine with a bit of malt to provide a lovely finish. It’s really rather lovely affair.

Obviously the Marble Stout is different, otherwise I wouldn’t have mentioned that fact earlier, but it is very different. For a start it is hoppy and for a palate that has just attuned itself to the mellifluous malt and soft fruit of the Glencoe, that is a shock. So imagine the oily washing-up liquid bite of hops and those hefty citrus flavours fused with roasted malt and chocolate. Does it work? I don’t know, it is pretty interesting though. I understand that blogging is all about rabid, utterly certain opinion over considered thought but this time, opinion fails me.

One Beer To Avoid
Being a West Country lad and keen to embrace almost everything from this corner of the world - bar slave trading, losing the tops of your fingers in a threshing machine and Bristol City - I had to try a pint of ABC’s Gurt Lush. Even though the staff warned me against it, even though the regulars warned me against it, I tried it.

Now I’m told that they are really nice chaps and that their beer is getting better all the time but I really wish I hadn’t. Sorry ABC.

Oh well ‘tis the season for regret. Merry Christmas!

A Soiled Association?

With their preference for taste over branding, flavour in place of price and microbreweries over macroeconomics, you might think that ale drinkers’ desires would mesh neatly with many of the objectives of the organic movement. And let’s be honest, the demographics probably aren’t that divergent either.

But in all the quickly cobbled together, mildly slurred pub-polls I’ve ever conducted, the origin and nature of the ingredients in a beer hardly ever get a mention, even amongst ardent label-searching vegetarians. Beer seems to exist outside the normal rules.

It was largely the same at The Royal Oak’s Organic Beer Festival. Because while the vast numbers of organic ales on the bar, and those served straight from the barrels, attracted plenty of attention, most of the pints were bought without the livers owners’ even knowing about the pesticide-free origins of the hops and malt. Let alone caring.

And yet Britain is reputed to be the third largest market for organic produce in the Europe. Over the last few years the Soil Association have charted double-digit growth for the retail sector. And while that may be slumping now there never seems to have had the same effect in beer or booze generally. The word ‘organic’ and ‘local’ appear on menus all the time, but very rarely on pump clips. Instead the brewing industry seems to target its organic beers at supermarket bottle-buyers. Particularly with sweeter or novelty ales.

Instead the received wisdom, both on the web and in the pub, seems to be that all organic beers are lacking something. That higher costs lead to weaker beers. That the price of organic hops prevents brewers from producing certain style - particularly the bitter-bombs that are so in vogue at the moment. That somehow any brewery that worries about such fripperies couldn’t create an ale worthy of serious consideration anyway.

So in the name of a purely unscientific research the question has to be asked: Do you think about organic beer? Do you even notice if your beer is branded as organic, local or even British? Have you ever knowingly tried an organic ale and is there one you like? And more importantly do you care either way?

Organic Beer Festival

The Royal Oak, Bath

I like you. I must do because I’m going to tell you a secret. The Royal Oak in Twerton, Bath is having a week of organic beers from Monday 8^th of December. You can look on their website, their brewery’s website or even the pub's Facebook group and you won’t see any mention of it or the 30 ales that are set to appear over the week. You also won’t know that along with the ten handpumps there will also be a stillage set up inside the pub allowing you to get your organic ale straight from the barrel. Or if you as frog-stupid as I am, you can make Chris get it for you instead.

An Ambition FulPhilled

I am shamed. A scrolls-distance ago on this wordstring I vomited up a few elongated paragraphs about my booze obsession. I burbled on that my desire to try different beers had rendered me socially maladaptive – or a ‘ticker’. Well, I lied. I have since discovered that my condition isn’t even worthy of a citation in a footnote, in the appendix, of the diagnosis - I met Phill The Pint, a man who has just notched up 5000 unique ales.

I knew him already, of course I did. He was ‘that bloke’. You know how pub acquaintances work. Names are rarely exchanged despite the various eruptions of whinge, bile and wind that pass for human interaction in pubs. And so even after a year of sitting two stools down from him, I thought of him as the chap who sounds like Dr. Phil Hammond.

In fact, didn’t that always strike you as odd in Cheers? So they made the boast in the title song but if the show had any basis in reality the final scene wouldn’t have been Sam flicking off the lights, but Carla checking Cliff’s grey nametag.

Anyway the above comparison to the pathologically unfunny Dr. Phil is unfair. And not just because of the extra L, this Phill’s material has more of a Les Dawson feel to it. Not the final-honed highly affectionate gags creamed over by the cardigans on Britain’s Best Ever Comedians That We’ve Got Clips Of, it is more the sweepings from Channel 4’s 50 Masters Of Misogyny.

But Phill is a proper ticker. And there are three ways of verifying this fact. One is that he always drinks halves. The second is that he will willingly enter a Wetherspoons. Thirdly and finally, he carries around a list of every single draught real-ale he’s ever had.

But it isn’t some pocket book with copperplate script and ornate illumination on the A in Abbey. It is a print out - a cold and unromantic collection of perforated pages seemingly time-warped straight from the wheels of a daisywheel printer. Not for Phill the now BNP-endorsed delights of Excel, because these perforated pages conceal in their six-inch thick folds and 9-point lettering, the immense number British-only draught beers that he has tasted - A heavy testament to one man’s battle against his liver, the Amstrad PCW8256 and LocoScript.

And I mention this not because it makes me feel better that I keep no such dead-tree record, that at least my computer doesn’t have a green-screen or that I’ve done it with a girl. Instead it is because last Wednesday Phill finally broke through the 5000 beer-barrier with the help of Chris from Twerton's The Royal Oak and five West Country brewers who created one-off beers especially for the man himself.

And for that I applaud Phill, while also coughing up an almost inaudible ‘nerd’.

Art For Beer’s Sake

Unless the impeccably ill-conceived logic of a thousand years of homilies and Wikipedia have lied to us: dogs look like their owners and football teams play like their managers once did. So not only does Roy Keane’s canine Trigg has the far away look of killer in his doe-eyes and Bayern Munich go down as easily as their new master, Jurgen Klinsmann. It also meant that I had some pre-conceived ideas about what to expect from the first beers from the Art Brewery.

For this new Axminster brewery is the creation of John and Becky Winnerah, owners of The Royal Oak in Bath who have now relocated to start the complex process of making drinks to make me giddy – instead of the slightly less complex process of selling drinks to make me giddy.

And so having plenty experience of the kind of booze that John buys and sells, I was expecting the booze that he brews to be different. I though they might be more like the man and his tastes. I was expecting something darker, something smoky and strong, perhaps with a hint of bitterness too. Okay, so I wasn’t expecting it to be wearing a green rugby top and listening to The Specials but these two just beers didn’t fit the profile.

For a start, they are both pale and skulk around the 4% mark. First up was 2 AM, a beer that looked pale and coppery and had a zesty sweetness to it. That was followed with the Art Noveau which weighed in at a full .2% more alcohol and reminded me a little of Cheddar Ale’s fantastic Potholer. Which might not be what I expected but who is going to complain about that? Well knowing him, John. Probably.

Bath Pub Review: The Royal Oak

The Royal Oak
Twerton
Bath
www.theroyaloak-bath.co.uk/

Toilets that approach Division Two football ground standards, paintwork that would have to be touched up just to qualify as ‘scuffed’ and beer garden divided from the main road by a few flimsy fence panels. To the undiscerning eye Bath’s The Royal Oak probably isn’t the acme of boozers, it probably isn’t even a passable pub.

And yet this frayed but friendly freehouse is actually one of humanity’s finest creations. Perhaps that is a slight exaggeration but it definitely snuggles somewhere below the eradication of small pox but just above the moon landings. Because during the three years since this boozer first re-opened its slightly ill fitting doors after decades of decay, The Royal Oak has rapidly become the finest in the city.

Now that might be hard to believe for anyone who knows Bath’s magnificent selection of historic pubs with their wood-panelled snugs, warming fires and respect for fine ale. But it has to be remembered that people were happy buying bread in vast-indigestible wedges - before someone came up with the idea of slicing it.

What really separates The Royal Oak from the superb Old Green Tree and the beautifully preserved Star is the variety and the majesty of the beer. There are ten ales and two ciders on offer at any one time, and with no regular pints and no fixed breweries the brews changes on an almost daily basis. So once a barrel is empty, on comes a different beer, from another microbrewery and probably from another part of the country. And while local producers are heavily supported, if you can keep drinking for long enough, pretty much any SIBA-brewed ale will appear in front of you at some stage. Well, what do you expect from the twice Bath CAMRA pub of the year?

The range of ale of offer is simply immense. From gloriously smoky stouts to fragrant pale ales, there are beers of all styles, colours and percentages. From Hopstar to Brewdog and Marble to Arbour, the only thing that unifies this diversity of booze is that every ale will be from a British microbrewery. They aren’t just impeccably looked after though, these beers have been mollycoddled into a state of perfection. Yes, if the sweet lord firstly existed, and secondly, worked in cellar management, he’d fit at the Oak, and not just because of the beard.

But surely such constantly changing ale can be mystifying to minds dulled by a diet of mundane Bests and poorly kept IPAs? Well it could, except for the cleverly positioned glass in front of each pump. For these are examples not samples, and their colour and condition reveals more about the beer than any educated guess based on percentages or pump-clip information. Generous tastes of each drink are offered though, and without the muttering that others pubs often proffer with each mouthful. And if that isn’t enough information, you can also always ask the bar staff’s opinion, because as the sheer amount of facial hair on show demonstrates, these guys know a lot about beer.

If the ever-evolving ale list isn’t to your taste, the Oak can still draw you in; with local artist’s work on the walls, a real fire in winter, two Czech lagers and a Belgian beer on draft. There is also music too. Played by groups of all sizes, styles and standards, it is performed at seemingly random times and on differing days. The Wednesday night Irish free-for-all is the only real fixture, which at least makes the twee twiddlings of the endless jigs and reels easily dodged.

The best way to avoid the repetitive beat of the bodhran or the busy front bar is to venture into that most rare of things in Bath- a beer garden. Where other pubs in the city scatter plastic chairs on a slab of scorched concrete, this is a child-friendly green space with shaded picnic tables and disabled access (another local rarity). Sure, the main road is only the other side of the fence, but once you have a pint in your hand there is still tranquillity to be found even in town.

Despite this being a pub in which you can make a meal of the beer, culinary options are limited to ‘British tapas’: pork pies, pickled eggs and crisps. That hasn’t always been the case though, because over the last few years as the building has been transformed from shell to successful business, menus have come and gone. From fried pub staples to pizza, and even at one stage a beautifully bold offal-led selection, many chefs and style have been tried and many have departed. And food is probably the only thing that The Royal Oak truly lacks, unless you include pretension and sparklingly clean toilets…