Hornblower closes again

The Hornblower pub on Commercial Street, Newport has closed again after a brief period being open. The Admiral Taverns-owned pub was once famed for its good real ales but after a succession of bad landlords, most of whom had problems with their own personal hygiene, let alone managing to keep their pub clean; customers drank elsewhere. Although according to a regular in the pub this time the closure was due to the tenants buying drinks from companies other than Admiral Taverns. So another closed pub in Newport City Centre. The City Centre is looking quite dire at the moment with the Windsor Castle closed for most of the time and the freehold up for sale. Close to the Hornblower, the Prince of Wales is also closed as is the King Billy (William IV). The shops are empty and being used as art installations and the local council seem to be counting on the forthcoming Ryder Cup to boost the City when it comes to the Celtic Manor Hotel later in the year, although given the state of the City Centre I cannot see any tourists wanting to spend much time here.

Not that you would want tourists spending time in the Hornblower,where staff had the greatest difficulty in keeping glasses clean and even told a customer to F off when he asked for a clean glass. Nice.
Right: The boarded up King William IV

 Below: High standards of hygiene were always present in the Hornblower

  And that mould-ridden area was behind the bar.

Historic pub closes for refurbishment

Above: The Hanbury Arms, Caerleon as it is this week. Below: a few years ago

One of Caerleon's most historic pubs has closed, only for a much needed refurbishment though, the Hanbury Arms on the River Usk has been closed by brewers SA Brain for a major refurbishment ahead of the Ryder Cup which is being held nearby later this year. In recent years I have taken a liking to Brains pubs refurbishments - the Halfway, Pontcanna and the Maltings, Llandaff, both in Cardiff along with the Greenhouse, Llantarnam, are all stunning examples of what can happen if the effort and money is put into refurbishing a pub. So I look forward to a trip to Caerleon in the near future to check out the newly refurbished Hanbury Arms.

Goat Major, High Street, Cardiff

Situated close to the entrance gate of Cardiff Castle, the Goat Major is a three-story building decorated with black timber beams and white plaster in the style known as Brewers' Tudor. In the summer hanging baskets bloom above the pub name and help make this part of the High Street look attractive.

The pub was originally known as the Bluebell and dates from 1813, it was renamed the Goat Major in 1995. The name is taken from the corporal in charge of the mascot of the Royal Welsh Regiment, formed by the amalgamation of the Royal Welch Fusiliers and the Royal Regiment of Wales in 2006. The tradition of having a goat as a regimental mascot occurred during the Crimea War.

The central doorway leads to an entrance hall and a long, curving bar room leads off here. The bar is impressive with dark wood and gleaming brass foot and hand rails contrasting nicely. This is matched by an equally impressive tilled floor with red, black and cream vitreous tiles shining in the light. The Goat Major is wood-panelled throughout, with dark-green leather seating arranged along the sides of the pub. Photos of the Regimental mascot adorn the walls.

Being a Brains pub, the beer range is Dark, SA, Bitter and SA Gold as well as a guest beer such as Timothy Taylor Landlord or Fullers. The previous guest beers have their pumpclips displayed behind the bar and include Brewdog, Brewster's, Springhead and Cameron's, to name a few. It comes as no surprise that the Goat Major is in the CAMRA Good Beer Guide and has also achieved the Cask Marque award. Bottled cider from Gwynt Y Ddraig is also available. The pub is shortly to have fitted a stillage behind the bar so customers can have a pint served straight from the barrel if they wish.

The pub has an innovative and changing menu, with homemade food available 12-6 Monday-Saturday and 12-4 on Sunday. Last year the Goat Major pub won an award during British Pie Week for one of its pies. Other items on the menu include rustic cobs with Welsh cheese, wild game pie and homemade lamb cawl.

The Goat Major is well worth rediscovering, a centuries-old city centre pub that offers a good choice of real ales and good pub food, in a traditional atmosphere. 

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Cider Festival hits Cardiff

Open publication - Free publishing - More wales

An 11-day cider Festival is being hosted by the Buffalo Bar in Cardiff. The Festival will carry on until Sunday 8th August. The festival will be held in the bar's garden witha mini village fete including an outdoor bar and bandstand, stocked with organic and locally sourced Welsh cider including Gwynt y Ddraig, Seidr Dai and Blaengawney Farm. More details are in the booklet above.

Buffalo Bar
11 Windsor Place
Cardiff
CF10 3BY
029 2031 0312


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Maesteg gets a brewery!

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The end-of-the raliway line town of Maesteg finally has a destination worth going to as the Cross Inn has started brewing beer. This is this first brewery in the area since 1898 and landlord Dai Morgan has built the brewery on land adjacent to his pub.The first brew has been named Maiden Ale.

More here frrom the Glamorgan Gazette

Cross Inn
Maesteg Road
Maesteg, 
Mid Glamorgan 
CF34 9LB‎


The Cross Inn is hosting a real ale festival on August 27-28

Scottish brewery brews beer made from dead people

In an attempt to brew the world's strongest beer, Scottish brewers, the Soylent Corporation have announced that they will be harvesting the dead of Glasgow to use in their new beer, Soylent Green, a 60% ABV limited edition brew.

Dickie Martin, spokesman for the brewers said, “We are attempting to push the boundaries for this beer far beyond what anyone else has done before or will attempt ever again. The brewing will be done on the night of a full moon and we have ensured both the malt and hops were also harvested over the period of the full moon so Soylent Green will be a truly bio-dynamic beer. We have chosen Glasgow as our area to source the bodies from as they have an abundance of unwanted dead junkies on the streets and no one will miss a corpse or ten. Also body snatching is still frowned upon in Edinburgh after Burke and Hare attempted to popularise it a couple of hundred years ago.  The bodies will be boiled for 40 hours in order to rid them of the flavour of Buckfast and heroin, the resulting sludge or mush as we prefer to call it in brewing terms will then be mixed with a full grain mash and then returned to the copper for a 15 hour boil with organic hops hand-picked by virgins on the Himalayan Plateau. The resulting brew will then be fermented with a special yeast and put into wooden barrels sourced from ancient bog oak which will then be taken into the Atlantic Ocean by coracle and sunk at the Mid-Atlantic ridge, where they will undergo a secondary fermentation. After six months the barnacle-encrusted barrels will be brought to the surface and the resulting Soylent Green beer will be put into bottle which will then be placed inside the stuffed cadaver of a Glaswegian down-and-out.

The Soylent Green will then be sold at the price of £15,000 each with a limited edition of 6 bottles only ever being made. That is until we brew Soylent Red or some other gimmick.”

Tasting Notes: Soylent Green 60% has a somewhat pretentious nose and tastes faintly of pork. Serve chilled if you have access to a morgue. Goes well with a deep fried Mars bar.

Welsh Winners in Great Taste Awards 2010

Welsh producers have done well again at the Great Taste Awards 2010 with both brewers and a cidermaker being recognised for their products.

For the listings below the * (asterisk) represents  stars awarded by the judges.

 Bottled Beer Category:   
** Otley Brewery O6
** Tudor Brewery Abergavenny Blorenge Golden Ale
** Breconshire Brewery Ramblers Ruin
** Hurns Brewing Company Tomos Watkin Magic Lagyr
* Breconshire Brewery Golden Valley


Bottled Perry Category:
* Wernddu Organic Vineyard Over the Hedge

Full list of winners is available at the Great Taste Awards 2010 site.

Gwynt Cider Launches Cider in a Box

Gwynt Y Ddraig Farmhouse Scrumpy, 5.3% ABV, £5.98/3 litre box in Tesco.

Gwynt Y Ddraig, the Welsh cider and perry company, have won many awards including best cider at the International Cider Competition in Hereford earlier this year. There bottles are already available in Tesco and now their draught cider is also available. There will also be an open weekend at the farm in Llantwit Fardre over 7^th and 8^th August.

Farmhouse Scrumpy is deep golden yellow in colour with a rich aroma of apples and a smooth puckering flavour that mellows to a sweet aftertaste that lingers around the mouth for some time. Made from a blend of apples including Browns, Breakwell Seedling and Dabinett, this is an easy drinking cider and at 5.3% ABV not too strong, this Scrumpy will be no doubt be flying off the shelves this summer as it is the perfect accompaniment to all barbecues.

Price War hits Newport Pubs

In a battle in which the consumer will be a winner, the pubs of Newport appear to be having a price war between themselves with the Carpenters, run by the JW Bassett Pub Company clearly in the lead for the cheapest pint at £1.75 for Felinfoel beer.
Cheaper than both the JD Chaverspoons pub, the John Wallace Linton and the Page, the dreadful offering from Barracuda Pub Company who seem to have a policy of employing staff who were so bad they were given the push by 'Spoons, the Carpenters has uplifted the pub scene in Newport since it reopened this year after being closed for a couple of years. Also the WiFi in the Carps' is faster and better than the Cloud offering in 'Spoons though a friend of mine did see someone watching what was described as a jiggy jiggy movie on a laptop in the 'Spoons the other day.
Elsewhere in Newport the best pub in the City, the Murenger has Sam Smiths OBB on for £1.99 a pint whilst on Stow Hill, the Pen & Wig is doing guest beers for a promotional price of £2.00 a pint, with Ruddles County and Wadworth 6X being seen on the bar recently.
So all in all it's a good time for the consumer with all this price cutting, just wondering how many pubs will be putting up their prices for the Ryder Cup when it is hosted in Newport later this year?

For those of you not familiar with Newport, here is a promotional video of the City (Cheers Mr Raybould for the link):

Pub is the Hub to help Welsh Pubs

A charity set up be Prince Charles is set to help up to 50 Welsh rural pubs. Pub is the Hub is looking to set up a Welsh office, possibly in an existing brewery (Brains? Felinfoel?) and support from the Prince will fund two employees in Wales for two years allowing the organisation to identify 50 pubs to be regenerated.

The Prince will announce details of the grants to be awarded under his new Countryside Fund on Thursday.

John Longden from Pub is the Hub said, “It's great news for Wales,” he said. “We will use our expertise to lobby government and local authorities for grants to be made available. We will have two part-time project managers that will build up a shopping list of projects and once a “priority list” of 50 pubs was compiled, Pub is the Hub would turn to the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities to fund the projects". He estimated each pub would require around £10,000 to regenerate it.

“This is a positive step forward in seeing if rural pubs in Wales can support community services in a really strong way,”he continued, “It's great to get continued support form the Prince often our funding is patchy.”
Pub is the Hub has undertaken three projects so far in Wales, all of which have been in the Denbighshire area in conjunction with the local authorities.

Elsewhere, in Scouseland, PM David Cameron has launched his 'Big Society' plans which includes giving local communities the chance to save their threatened pub. No more details at the moment and it looks like this will only be trialled in England.

Greenhouse, Llantarnam

Popped into one of my former regular old haunts for the first time in years and what a change for the better since SA Brain have taken this pub over. I used to work on a nearby business park a few years ago and regularly popped in here for a pint or two afterwards. In those days Greene King owned the pub and the real ale was often hit and miss - too often miss. Luckily Brains bought the pub and have done wonders for it. A refurbishment has knocked the two bars into through into one but this has improved the pub, exposing the old wooden beams and creating a bar servery more suited towards serving the customer. Previously the 2 bar layout did not work as the staff tended to congregate in one bar talking to their mates whilst the customers were in the lounge. The bar was also a bit tatty and I would rather drink in the more comfortable lounge anyway.
The old wooden beams are matched by flagstone and dark wood floors with bar stools, settles and a dining area all giving a choice of seating. The pub is set in extensive grounds with a very large garden out to the rear of the building and a car park to the side. Easily reached by public transport as well as there is a bus stop outside.
There are three handpumps dispensing Brains beers - Brains have used their unique eye-level dispense pumps on this pub, something they reserve for their better quality outlets. Not a bad pint of Brains bitter as well, served in a branded glass. Gwynt Y Ddraig cider is also available in bottles. There are some old photographs of the pub on the walls, taken when it was owned by Phillips Brewery of Newport.
The Greenhouse is situated next to the parish church of St John and is an old building, though has been extended throughout the years.

On the outside is an unique stone pub sign, written in Welsh which says:

The Greenhouse

1719

Good Beer

And Cider for You

Come in you shall taste it

Not a bad pub and a vast improvement on what it was like before.

Greenhouse 

Newport Road

Llantarnam, 

Cwmbran, 

Torfaen, 

NP44 3BP

Google Maps does not show the exact site of the pub so here is the adjacent bus stop:

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Chinese Television interviews Welsh Brewery Boss!

Found this whilst browsing the internet, Tomos Watkin Brewery CEO, Connie Parry is interviewed by New Tang Dynasty Television to celebrate winning Welsh Woman of the Year Award.



                新唐人電視台 http://www.ntdtv.com

Purple Moose Goes to Sea

The award-winning Purple Moose Brewery of Porthmadog has launched a series of monthly brews named after the ships that used to be built in the town.
This month the beer is named after the Evelyn, a brig built in Porthmadog in 1877. She served for many years taking slate from North Wales and picking up phosphates, sugar and cod from around the world. The Evelyn was sadly lost in 1913 after being caught in bad weather for the best part of a month.

At 3.6% ABV this is a deep copper coloured bitter with a full malty body and a slightly dry bitter finish.

These seasonal ales were launched last month with  4.3% ABV Fleetwing,  an amber coloured best bitter with a refreshing bitter finish and citrus aroma.

The Fleetwing was a brig built in Borth-y-Gest in 1874. Working from Porthmadog she sailed to many ports around the world with various cargoes. In 1911 Fleetwing was sold to a company in the Falkland Islands where she spent the rest of her life. Latterly used for storage her remains were only recently destroyed.

More Positive thinking from SA Brain

This picture has been doing the rounds on the internet recently. Somehow I don't think it has official sanction from Wales' largest cask ale brewer but it's good for a laugh!

Locals cry out over pub improvement

From Brew Wales

There was much angst in the Twittersphere and on Facebook last week when pub company Mitchells and Butlers announced that the Pen & Wig in Cardiff was to be refurbished. Knee jerk reactions were in place along with petitions and a statement from a CAMRA source in Cardiff that the current Cardiif CAMRA pub of the year had been sold to a wine bar chain.
Rather than listen to the gossip, Brew Wales decided to do some research and can confirm the Pen & Wig has not been sold but is merely transferring from one division of Mitchells and Butlers to another. At the moment the pub is in the Town Pub portfolio and the plan, after a refurbishment is to transfer it into the Nicholson's chain. Now having been a fan of Nicholson's for years - they run some of the best pub company-owned pubs in London - historic pubs with excellent quality beers - this can only be an improvement for Cardiff. However the NIMBYists disagree and without looking to the facts have all started to sign petitions to stop the improvements to the pub. Don't take my word as to how good Nicholson's are, His Worshipfulness the Official Ale Taster of London also agrees.
Latest word on the improvements to the Pen & Wig is that they are to be delayed for a year due to the outcry of a bunch of small-minded ill-informed customers. In Newport we would welcome any of our pubs being improved in this way, Cardiffians open your eyes and be grateful companies are willing to spend money improving their pubs in your city.