Pints West 80, Winter 2008 - Bristol & District CAMRA

Bath & Borders CAMRAPINTS WEST......................................................................................................................................................worrying sign is the recent erection of metal shutters over doors andwindows suggesting a long-term or permanent closure.Organ Inn, 49 High Street, WarminsterThe Organ Inn, which was re-opened as a pub after 93 years ofclosure in 2006, held its first beer festival over the weekend of Friday12th September. It was on a modest scale, with around a dozen beersand a half dozen ciders, but none-the-less was well attended and asuccessful event – the first, we hope, of many.Charlie’s Bar, Market Place, WestburyThis Grade II listed town-centre wine bar/bistro-style pub, whichclosed for refurbishment in the spring of 2007 and re-opened January, isbidding to attract more custom with a coffee menu and outside cafeteria-styleseating. The extensive refurbishment included excavation workon the cellar, restructuring the cellar walls and a complete refit of thebar. Inside there are exposed stone walls alongside wood panelling.Pictures on the walls include olden-day images of Westbury and thetown’s football team. The bar features a juke box, fruit and gamesmachines, pool table, darts, cribbage, karaoke nights and live televisedsport.Red Lion, off A36, WoolvertonThis Wadworth-owned roadside pub, which was extensivelyrefurbished and extended earlier this year, was recently visited by abranch member who found its new open-plan design to be very smartindeed.Stephen HuntForthcoming eventsBath and Borders Socials and Meetings Diary Tuesday 2nd December, 8:30 pm.A social at the Foresters Arms in Beckington, near Frome. A lovelyAbbey Ales pub in a pretty village. Thursday 11th December, 8:30 pm.A social at the Bell in Buckland Dinham. A great pub with a good rangeof beers and an enthusiastic landlord. Thursday 18th December, 8:30 pm.A social at the Rising Sun in Grove Street in Bath. Highly recommendedby our local experts! Tuesday 23rd December, 8:30 pm.A mini crawl of Holt in Wiltshire, starting at the Tollgate and thengoing on to the Old Ham Tree, just down the road.Also...Friday 21st to Sunday 23rd January 2009Fifth Bradford-on-Avon RFC Winter Warmer Weekend . . . at the RFCClub House, Winsley, near Bradford-on-Avon, only three hundredmetres from the number 264/265 bus stop.Opening times: Friday 7pm - 11pm, Saturday 1pm – 11pm, Sunday 1pm- 4pm.A dozen seasonal beers and four ciders/perries available. Free entry.No live music – quiet and relaxed throughout all sessions(although things might get busier around 4pm to 7pm on the Saturday asthere are two home games during the afternoon!).More details on our web site – www.bathandborderscamra.org.ukBranch contact (for all non-socials matters):James Honey - 01373 822794Branch socials contact:Denis Rahilly - 01225 791399 or 07711 004501Email: denis.rahilly@virgin.netIT must say something when a beer festival gets its own entry onWikipedia. In this respect Bath joins the illustrious likes of Cambridge,which hosts the longest-running annual event in the country, and theGreat British Beer Festival, now held each August in London’s EarlsCourt. Perhaps it has something to with the passing of thirty years.In all that time the venue of the Bath Beer Festival has been thePavilion. Originally, though, the festival was a spring event, held everyApril until 1989, then the following year it switched to autumn and hasbeen held on the middle weekend of October ever since.This year, as in previous years, we aimed for a beer selection tobalance local with the far and wide whilst endeavouring to showcase asmany brewing styles as possible. With a range of over eighty beers thiswas not too difficult to achieve.Among the “locals” was the branch’s newest brewery. In fact theArt Brewery is located in Dorset, but was set up by John and BeckyWhinnerah, landlords of the Royal Oak in Twerton. On offer at thefestival were the Art Nouveau, a hoppy session beer, and i-Beer, slightlystronger and with a distinct flavour of vanilla, both in tip-top condition.Keener-eyed punters may have noticed a distinctly Halloweentheme to this year’s beer festival (not actually intentional; it simplyturned out that way) with beers such as Abbeydale’s Last Rites, which at11% was the strongest beer available, Blackwater Possession,Hambleton Nightmare, Harviestoun Number of the Beast, Hop DaemonIncubus and Leeds Brewery’s Gathering Storm.This year’s festival also featured an expanded range of cider andperry, whilst on the foreign beer bar we had for the first time some beersserved on draught.Attendance was down this year, especially on the Saturday eveningsession. In the end this was inevitable. On top of the credit crunch wehad the added nuisance of weekend engineering work on the local railnetwork with no trains at all stopping at Bath on Saturday, and replacementbuses running to and from Bristol, Swindon and Westbury.We had noticed in the last few years that customers were tending todrift away at around 10pm on the Saturday evening session. (Weassumed that they were off to have a night-cap or two in the manyexcellent pubs in central Bath and taking advantage of the fact thatmany of these close late on Saturday.) By 10:30 our staff would findthemselves standing around selling very little beer and getting bored. Sothis year we closed at 10:30 on Saturday. Bad move! Sod’s law dictatedthat at 10:30 this year we still had plenty of thirsty customers in the hall.So next year we’ll probably stay open to 11pm.The Pavilion is already booked for next year and, credit crunchchaos and the rail network allowing, the thirty-second Bath BeerFestival will be held on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th October.Stephen Hunt, Denis Rahillywww.camrabristol.org.uk21