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Christmas at The Gunmakers
I don't normally regurgitate press releases on this blog, but Thornbridge is a brewery I lurve unreservedly. Jaipur IPA is one of this country's finest beers (here's my review from 2007). The team there have the down-to-earth enthusiasm that's almost universal among British microbrewers, yet they've also got the marketing savvy that's woefully uncommon among their peers. After four years at their start-up site, they've moved to a larger brewery in Bakewell (home of the tart, one would presume). It's got three times the capacity of their old kit. Here's a photo:
 I'll say this, though: such a fine brewery deserves a shop window in London. Just as St Peter's have improved their standing immeasurably via The Jerusalem Tavern, Thornbridge could step things up by opening a pub in the capital. If only there was a young and ambitious pub entrepreneur in situ that they could team up with. That would be sweet.
Truly, it was. Those of you who visit The Gunmakers might recognise John O' (left). Those who sup in The Jerusalem Tavern will delight in seeing Dave (right), the manager there. I'd like to think you'll all clock me (centre) because, when all's said and done, I'm the star of the whole fucking show. The photo was taken by the irrepressible Dr. Robbles in 't Brugs Beertje, considered by most who have an opinion on such matters to be Bruges' premier beer bar. It recalls seriously good times.
 There's more to come on our lads' trip to Belgium last weekend. If you just want the executive summary, here it is: we drank lots of good beer and Robbles got soaked by a high pressure hose.
I've discovered I can updated the pub's Twitter feed via a text message from my mobile phone (thanks Ashok). I've set my account up to do so. I'll be updating it every time a new guest beer comes on. Hopefully that will be useful for those of you who've become regulars here. You can follow the feed here: http://twitter.com/thegunmakers. It's also embedded on the bottom left of the pub's website (still very much a work in progress), and on the side bar of this site below the sponsors' ads.
In 2003, I ran into Suggs on three separate occasion in the space of a single week. I'd never seen him previously, and I've never seen him since. I just shared that with the lads at the end of the bar downstairs. So I thought I'd share it with you.
I've come upstairs to the flat for a piss so I've stopped by the computer to post on the blog, you see. I'm on the Landlord tonight. It's orgasmatastic. The stars of Keighley and Clerkenwell are in alignment.
This morning I found a signed copy of Hops & Glory, Pete Brown's newly published book, stuffed down the back of the stereo. I silently cursed Francesca and John O', the unlikely pair who minded the shop for me last night as I sat chortling at Rob Brydon down on Shaftesbury Avenue. I assume the man himself (Pete Brown, not Rob Brydon) dropped it off in person. So, thanks to Pete for his kind donation to my library, and no thanks to my staff for failing to mention it to me as I came back to lock up. (You forgot to drain the glasswasher and switch off the lights in the cellar too, you pair of numbnuts).
 You can see out latest guest beers in the photo: Mordue Workie Ticket and York Constantine. Both of them are excellent. In the background, on the back bar, you can see an old Whitbread Bitter ceramic keg font. I got it for 99p on Ebay. The girls think it looks stupid and I suspect one of them will "accidentally" break it before long.
Throughout Saturday night, the name "Courage" jumped out from among the open tabs on the till. When the customer came to settle up he seemed suitably posh, so I asked whether he was any relation to the Courage family. "Direct line", he replied.
We had a chat about the fate of his family's beers, now brewed by brand owners Wells & Youngs (an acquisition from S&N that I wrote about back in January 2007). He seemed rather pleased that Courage Best and Directors Bitter are now in the hands of a proper British ale brewer. His father - as head of the Courage family - had been invited to the Eagle Brewery in Bedford to oversee production of the first batch there. Apparently the recipes are now closer to what they were in the beers' heyday.
I haven't drunk a single drop of either of the Courage beers since Wells & Young's started brewing them, despite both turning up in my favourite Young's pubs in London. So I couldn't comment, which - in the context of our conversation and my attempt to big myself up as some kind of beer aficionado - was a bit embarrassing, really.
If I ran a pub for thirty years, perhaps I'd grow tired of some elements of the lifestyle. (As it goes, I jump out of bed every morning eager to get on with the day, something I haven't done since teachers invented homework). One thing I think I'd always love is the joy people of all ages take when they pitch up in your pub for the first time - so often by accident rather than design - and find you enjoy cask ale as much as they do, and consequently give it the attention it deserves. There's real warmth in those eagerly proffered compliments, those raised glasses, those smiles, and those promises to return soon.
I think all of us seek validation and a sense of self-worth from what we do. Although my latest calling in life might be a little pedestrian for some, it does make me very happy.
I've never had a guest that sold so easily. Yesterday, I put on a new beer: Triple fff's Alton's Pride. Even on a sleepy Tuesday afternoon - never a busy session - we sold the best part of a firkin, with the beer running out in the evening. The reason? It's the reigning Champion Beer of Britain, and a deserving winner at that. It was chosen by CAMRA folks in a blind tasting at 2008's Great British Beer Festival at Earl's Court.
Alton's Pride is wonderfully flavoursome for a humble bitter of just 3.8% abv. It's got a tremendously satisfying bite, yet it's also terribly moreish. One pint leads to another all too easily. Through the day I must have had at least half a dozen jars myself, yet I feel bloody brilliant today. That's the best thing about British brewing - great session beers.
Triple fff brewery has an inexcusably shit website. It's so bad, I almost didn't link to it. The brewery is based in Alton, Hampshire. It's a small market town. If it's like any of the other market towns I've visited, it'll be haunted by bored toughs on a Saturday night and will be home to a really, really shit kebab van.
Our stand-in bar maestro John O' has gone missing. He left for Ireland without activating roaming on his mobby two weeks ago, and he's yet to return. Will he disappear for decades, like his countryman Josef Locke, only to make a triumphant comeback?
If you are reading this John, get in touch. You know I hate doing Monday and Tuesday nights myself.
 A beer spawned by a TV documentary just went on sale downstairs. Peter wasn't interested. He was already pissed off at the absence of Batemans XXXB, and preferred to grumble his way through a pint of Landlord. Chicago John - a loveable regular I have on timeshare with Binnie at The Harp - didn't think it was so hot. He prefers more traditional beers. Julia the barmaid took a sip, then paused, a look of intense concentration on her face (a sign that the jury had smashed the windows, jumped out, then run to the pub). She stared at me intensely with those mad, terrifying eyes, said "yeah, nice, really nice", then scuttled away.
Morrissey Fox Blonde was devised last year by Actor Neil Morrissey (famous for Men Behaving Badly, Waterloo Road and cuckolding Les Dennis) and his mate Richard Fox. They think it's a hybrid between a lager and an ale, because the malts used are more traditonally associated with bottom fermented beers. I think it's a brilliant golden ale and I'm very pleased to be selling it as a guest. Come and try it tonight or tomorrow. If you haven't figured it out already, the pub's here.
I'm not a very practical man, but I am creative. Consequently, sometimes I have ideas that don't quite work out. Placing irises between the handpumps on Saturday night created an impenetrable barrier between staff and customers. When it got busy, I bad temperedly removed them, cursing under my breath, and added this to my long mental list of unmitigated failures.
I think great customer service is essential, particularly in the pub trade. On the other hand, you've got to admire this bloke's bullish attitude. I spotted these signs on the door of an antiquarian bookseller on Cecil Court. It was Saturday afternoon, presumably his busiest time of the week for passing trade. Nevertheless, customers were expected to return at 5pm when he'd "briefly" appear. Check out the old biddy's horrified look, reflected on the glass. What spooked her? Was my arse hanging out?
Less than two months after we first starting serving it, Harvey's Sussex Best has almost supplanted Landlord as the pub's bestselling beer. It's been great for the business and drives other sales too. Staff have observed that lots of customers express gratitude when they see it on the bar, order a pint, then find we're doing it properly. After some pretty serious guerrilla action, one of our regulars has managed to secure us one of the proper, old-style pump clips I'd previously appealed to you lot for. He will remain nameless, as will the pub that's ended up with our old two-dimensional, ersatz Harvey's badge.
 Ignore the young chap in the background. He's something of a celebrity in these parts, but we like to help him keep a low profile.
I'm very proud of our menu. I'm proud because for the first time ever I've managed to chalk it up without it looking like it's been scratched out by an angry poltergeist.
Giles Coren once visited the pub and said the oysters were "creditable". But that was before my time. Last year I met Coren at a friend's dinner party. I actually rather liked him. Someone else there suggested to me that I try and plug the pub to him. I didn't dare.
There are certain words, phrases and names that inveigle their way into one's consciousness without permission, repeated by fools insistently until you're forced to assimilate them into your stock of contemporary cultural references. For example, after trying to avoid a monster for so long, I've now given up and googled "Hannah Montana". So now I know all about a toothy child with ironed hair, cruel, empty eyes and a split personality. Similarly, the phenonmenon of "Twitter" has hounded me until I have no option but to give in. So I've started using it - as of today - on behalf of the pub. You can follow here.
If you do sign up to the pub's Twitter feed, you can expect to hear about real world stuff like new guest beers, menu specials, the staff's ruses to wind me up and Peter the Bike's latest pronouncements. Basically, I'll be promoting my business. If that gets your back up and/or you have little prospect of actually visiting the pub, there's clearly no point. Don't say I didn't warn you.
There are people who are determined to establish a causal link between cheap booze prices in supermarkets and the pace of pub closures. Apparently, if cans of lager and bottles of generic voddy are cheap in Lidl, drinkers will forego the social pleasures of the pub and get tanked up in front of the telly. But if that's true, it would suggest that people only use pubs as a way of getting inebriated, in which case surely the pub wouldn't really be worth saving? So those who make a big noise about this subject play into the hands of those who don't care a fig about our pub culture.
Having said that, a TV ad just caught my eye: right now you can buy a 70cl bottle of Absolut - the pouring vodka in my pub - for just £9.99 in Somerfield. I think that's actually a shade cheaper than the discounted wholesale price I get from my (fairly competitive) spirits supplier. It must be a loss leader. Madness.
"Don't care a fig". Brilliant. I do amuse myself sometimes.
There's a myth that Lenin and Stalin first met in The Crown Tavern on Clerkenwell Green. Some old geezer in The Sekforde Arms (a pub full of OAPs) told me about it a few years ago. Although I didn't believe the old bore at the time, I've felt a strange compulsion to pass on this piece of obvious disinformation to gullible fools ever since. Well, yesterday Stalin really was in Clerkenwell - or at least his image was, carried by a host of social misfits. I took this photo at the top of the street on which my pub is situated. As any fule kno, it was May Day, and the marchers were out in force. Hundreds of them trooped through a baffled London. It was a wonderful spectacle on a sunny day, even if they were celebrating totalitarian mass-murderers (alongside random Turkish leftists that nobody's heard of).
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