Drinking my way out of lockdown

Is it safe to go for a pint yet? 

The Brunswick

I guess it's predictable that in the current pandemic a Tory government would introduce access to pubs as one of the first relaxations to lockdown. After all, if you give the plebs their simple pleasures they won't complain so much, will they? 

All the same, I was nervous about visiting my favourite Brighton and Hove watering holes because most of them are extremely small. How on earth were they going to operate safely? The answer has been: surprisingly easily. 

Over the last few weeks I have visited these pubs at least once: the Foghorn, the Watchmakers, Bison Craft House, the Brunswick, Brighton Beer Dispensary, the Evening Star and the Brighton Bier Haus. I felt safe in all of them although it has helped that most have an outside drinking area, and that the weather has been surprisingly equable. I guess that's probably global warming but I'll take my pleasures where I find them.

The first thing that I looked for in whichever pub I visited was the furniture. Surely the number of tables had been reduced, and therefore the number of seats? Well, yes, most had but the biggest difference I noticed was the absence of standing customers. The most striking instance of that came when I visited the Evening Star. It was a Friday evening and I arrived about 5.30. Under normal circumstances the pub would have been packed at that time. The tables outside were pretty crowded. Those inside were occupied but with noticeably fewer people. Names and phone numbers were being taken and each table had a QR code for those with a suitable app. 

Everywhere I went face coverings were widespread but not universal. The Foghorn team all sported full face visors. Brighton Bier Haus staff wore face masks but in some venues - the Brighton Beer Dispensary for instance -  they wore no face covering. Fair play to the woman behind the Dispensary bar though - she took no shit from a couple who came in demanding to be seated. She was on her own but got them out with a minimum of fuss.

    

Everyone seemed to be taking track and trace seriously. Table service was universal, with the exception of the Bison Craft House, and everywhere had someone on or by the door, making sure that customers knew the score, and that, if space was at a premium, they had booked in advance. 

So are things back to something close to normal? Well no, not really. My enjoyment has been seriously impaired. Even though I am a solitary drinker inasmuch as I tend to arrive at a pub on my own, I love the vibe in the typical micropub. People are more sociable there and, even if I do arrive intending to sit and read, I rarely succeed. Instead I usually spend much of the time chatting happily to people I hardly know. This sort of serendipity is now extremely difficult to achieve and it will happen less and less as Autumn gets stuck in. It will be too cold to spend much time outside and inside I'll be the other side of a screen, nursing my pint. Still, there's always sign language, I suppose.

The Bermondsey Beer Mile

I first heard about the Bermondsey Beer Mile in a blog post by Emma Inch. If you've never heard of it before, it's a series of bars, breweries, tap rooms and bottle shops, stretching along now close to two miles of railway arches in, well, Bermondsey. The first brewer to set up here is reckoned to be the Kernel, and the fact that they still have a tap room here should be reason enough for a visit. The others include Fourpure, Anspach and Hobday, Beer By Numbers, the Barrel Project and Partizan, but there are now close to twenty venues in total. This includes a couple of out of towners, like Moor Beer and Cloudwater, but the majority started here and they are here still.

There is an excellent blog about the Mile, which, like the other more touristy websites, recommend starting your visit at Maltby Street Market. This is a weekend food market, with lots of enticing cafes and stalls to tempt you. You don't need me to tell you the good sense of eating before a bar crawl. The market is, however, only open Saturday and Sunday and if, like me, you make your visit on a Friday night you are well advised to eat first. Did I do that? No, of course I didn't. I also ignored the burger van situated outside the BeerByNumbers tap room. There'll be other options, I told myself. There were not.

Well, call me a lightweight but I only managed five bars, and one of those was the following day. But it was an enjoyable and occasionally enlightening experience, surprisingly little affected by the restrictions required by social distancing. Only at the first bar, Beer By Numbers, was I turned away. I did manage to blag my way in, however, by assuring the guy on the door that I'd be gone in half an hour. I was as good as my word.

I was expecting the bars to be similar in vibe but there were small yet subtle variations. Moor Beer was the only one to have a sound system, and a pretty loud one at that. The lighting at the Kernel was noticeably more subdued than elsewhere, while Bianca Road was very bright. The quality of the beers was uniformly high. My favourites, perhaps unsurprisingly, were the two I drank at the Kernel, their IPA Citra and one of their seemingly endless variations on the theme of Export Stout. I also enjoyed the OG 56 Tropical Pale from Bianca Road, a really fruity take on a very popular style.

Even by doing just half of the area, and a quarter of the bars, I walked a fair distance. As a result, when I woke up the next morning, I was knackered. I had booked myself a room for the night, in Docklands, with the intention of hitting several more bars on the Saturday. Once I was sitting in the empty space that was the Anspach and Hobday tap room, and staring listlessly at a third of gose, I realised that I didn't have the energy.

Will I go back? Is the Pope a Catholic? Do bears, you know...?

Pictures (from top to bottom):

Board outside the Brunswick, Hove

Facing the bar at the Evening Star, Brighton

Rope Walk, the entrance to Maltby Street Market

The bar at Beer By Numbers, Enid Street

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