Fwd: (Planned) Emergency Social - Friday 20th March, 6pm, Wenlock Arms

[Peter Corlett]

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 01:02:06PM +0000, James Laver wrote:
> Tony Kennick wrote:
[...]
>> That might be true for your branch, but not for CAMRA as a whole, this
>> can be clearly demonstrated if you look at the newly crowned National Pub
>> of the Year in Sheffield (my branch).
> Everything about beer runs smoothly in Yorkshire.

Let's just not mention the Tetley-Carlsberg brewery in central Leeds. The
rather aromatic River Aire passes, and I assume that they take in river
water, filter out the larger lumps, and then ship it out again.

But yes, almost all drinking in Yorkshire is good drinking, and often
*cheap* drinking as well. The Angel in Leeds is a Sam Smiths and so cheap
you wonder if they bother with things like duty and VAT. Then there's the
special cider sold in the Maltings in York. I challenge you to walk in a
straight line after a pint of it. Ahh, happy days.

[...]
> Cask Marque auditors won't go behind the bar, they're only there to taste
> the beer as a customer would.[1]

I assume that Cask Marque auditors do a good job here, but where it falls
down is that the plaque doesn't seem to get removed from pubs that have
taken a turn for the worse. Comptons in Soho have one, for example, and
their alleged beer is like brown piss with Bitrex stirred in.

A Cask Marque plaque merely shows that it was a good pub some time in its
history. Looking for a sticker stating the place is in this year's Good Beer
Guide is a much better bet.