Branch News

Our own Sue Thirlaway reflects on Berkshire South-East's celebrations of CAMRA's 40th anniversary:

March 2011 marked the fortieth anniversary of the foundation of CAMRA. How to celebrate? With beer of course! Not just any beer, but our own specially commissioned beer from local brewer West Berkshire - WB 40, specially designed to refresh the parts other beers cannot reach. A tasty 4% beer, ruby in colour, was requested from West Berkshire brewers Dave and Helen Maggs and they certainly did not let us down.

Having organised the beer, the next stage was of course to drink it! A party night was arranged at the Crispin, a friendly traditional local in Denmark Street, Wokingham, run by Mick Musson and his team. Trish Boley baked a delicious birthday cake using Fullers’ London Porter along with more traditional ingredients, and decorated it with CAMRA's special 40th birthday logo. Various items of finger food such as onion bhajis and samosas were purchased from the highly recommended Wokingham Tandoori across the road.

The WB40 was an excellent brew - malty but not sweet, with a robust bitterness and fruity notes - and was so popular it ran out part way through the evening. West Berkshire’s much loved Dr Hexter’s Healer was also available, and Ascot Ales supplied two excellent very hoppy ales - Aardvark and Single Hop Columbus. Word had got around and the pub was throbbing with real ale drinkers - at least forty, maybe as many as sixty at the height of the evening - who kept Mick, Austin and Emily busy pulling pints until closing time.

Here's looking forward to CAMRA's 50^th!

CAMRA turned 40 on the 16^th March 2011, and on that date our WB-40 celebration ale became available in pubs across Berkshire. Thanks to the success of our birthday celebration event, the Crispin in Wokingham have already temporarily sold out of WB-40 (although they still had some tasty Ascot Ales Aardvark and Single Hop Columbus at the end of the night). However, if you couldn't make it to the Crispin, there should be plenty of opportunities to try WB-40 yet.

Our very own Jack o'Newbury at Binfield were amongst the first to receive a delivery, along with nearby pubs such as the Hobgoblin, Allied Arms and Blagrave Arms in Reading, plus the Crown at Swallowfield and the Bird in Hand at Knowl Hill.

Other pubs in our area expected to take the beer in the near future include: New Leathern Bottle (Jealotts Hill), Rose & Crown (Sandhurst), Swinley (Ascot), White Hart (Winkfield), Cottage Inn (Maiden's Green) and Jagz (Ascot).

Here's to another 40 years of successful campaigning!

2011 marks the 40^th anniversary of the formation of CAMRA, and we are delighted to announce the brewing of a commemorative Berkshire ale. An original idea from within our very own Berkshire South-East branch has been brought to life with the help of neighbouring branches.

The beer will be brewed for us by the West Berkshire Brewery and is to be named “WB-40”. WB-40 will be ruby in colour (ruby signifying a 40^th anniversary) and will be a 4.0% ABV beer to mark the 4 decades of CAMRA's existence.

Helen Maggs of West Berkshire Brewery expects the beer to have their brewery's “usual malty, but not sweet character, with a robust bitterness, and fruity notes from all English Hops”.

One hundred casks are planned to be brewed. We will be holding a launch event for the beer at the Crispin in Wokingham on Wednesday 16^th March 2011, and WB-40 will be available in pubs across Berkshire from that date.

We have secured a special discount for all CAMRA members at the Loch Fyne restaurant in Wokingham. General Manager John Davies would like to welcome all CAMRA members and their families, so he is offering members a discount of 20% off their final bill.

All you need to do is present your CAMRA membership card and sign a form with your details when you set up a tab to eat at the restaurant. Discount does not apply to, and cannot be used with any other promotion in place.

Two real ales are sold, currently:- Greene King IPA at £2.80 and Old Speckled Hen at £3.00 per pint. John plans to have guest beers throughout the summer period, and welcomes customers who only wish to drink in the bar area.

Thanks go to Dave Goater for securing this discount.

A Berkshire pub has won the Pub of the Year award for the CAMRA Central Southern Region. The Bell at Aldworth fought off competion from across Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire to take the prize.

In Round 1 (Berkshire) of the Regional Pub of the Year award the Bell won the contest between the four Berkshire branch Pubs of the Year:

1st Bell, Aldworth (West Berks)
2nd Jack O'Newbury, Binfield (SE Berks)
3rd Carpenter's Arms, Windsor (Slough, Windsor & Maidenhead)
4th Bird in Hand, Knowl Hill (Reading & Mid Berks)

Reassuringly, the Jack O'Newbury (our branch Pub of the Year) polled a very close second, which is an excellent achievement.

1st Bell, Aldworth (Berks)
2nd The Royal Oak, Wantage (Oxon)
3rd The Crown and Sceptre, Bridens Camp, Nr Hemel Hempstead (Bucks)

The Bell at Aldworth was presented with its Central Southern Region Pub of the Year award on the evening of Thursday 7^th October 2010.

Adrian Bean, Chairman of West Berks Branch said of the Bell “'The West Berkshire and Arkell's beers and Uptons and Tutts Clumps real ciders are always in excellent form. Sometimes its better to see a limited, but well-kept range of beers rather than a forest of hand pumps that some pubs do.”

The Bell now goes on to compete against 15 other Regional Pub of Year winners for the National award. See the main CAMRA Website.

The Staffing Manager, Organiser and Committee of the Fourth Ascot Racecourse Beer Festival have expressed their thanks to all volunteers that helped out, both serving and behind the scenes.

Staffing Manager Sue Thirlaway said "Our sincere thanks to all the volunteers who helped at this year's Ascot Racecourse Beer Festival. Without you we couldn't have run the festival. We hope you will join us again next year."

On 17^th July a group of intrepid branch members caught the Real Ale Train (RAT). This is a steam train that runs on the Watercress Line where real ale is served to passengers.

The night started in the Railway Arms, a popular pub near Alton station that is owned by the Tripple FFF Brewery, where we were able to atune our taste buds to the local brews.

Once aboard the real ale train, we managed to get seats in an optimal location, right next to the bar carriage and close to the food carriage.

The bar treated us to a selection of bright beers from the breweries of Langham, Harveys and Tripple FFF, plus a Newton cider. The Langham's Hip Hop went down particularly well on the night.

We contentedly supped away as the steam engine hauled us through the picturesque Hampshire countryside between Alton and Alresford. There were plenty of station stops plus opportunities to watch the engine manoever from one end of the train to the other each time we turned around.

One of the highlights of the night was each time we encountered the other train running along the Watercress Line that night. The passengers on that train were dressed-up to the nines and eating a posh meal. Their reactions were priceless as we held up our pint glasses and called out “Cheers!”

Photos from the trip can be found in the Gallery.

In an article written exclusively for SE Berks CAMRA, Suzanne Gill of Ascot Ales reflects on just why she and her husband Chris choose to run a family micro-brewery, and gives us a taster of what they will be brewing next:

As we enter our fourth year of trading we often get asked 'what on earth made you go into the beer business?'. With a background in retail sales, buying and marketing from the luggage industry what could be more different? But our passion for beer came from spending a lot of time in Belgium for work so I guess it was either going to be beer or chocolate.

Ascot Ales had been set up by a Swiss American in June 2007 using a 4 Barrel Porter plant and 2 fermenters, at that time we had started dabbling in beer through Quaffs, our 2 x 4m beer stall at Spitalfields Market in East London selling over 200 global bottled beers. We knew of Ascot Ales and really liked the beers and when the opportunity came along to buy the business we jumped at it. That was in December 2007.

In a small, anonymous industrial unit in Camberley, barely bigger than a double garage we were producing just over 2000 pints a week and had 3 regular ales; Posh Pooch our 4.2% best bitter, Alligator Ale a 4.6% hoppy golden ale and Anastasia's Exile Stout a 5% beautiful black complex stout. We were certainly on the micro end of microbrewery's when you compare it to Loddon Brewery's then capacity of over 28000 pints a week!

Now, as we celebrate our 3rd birthday and enter our 4th year of trading sales have grown and the brewery has even got a bit bigger with the addition of an adjoining unit at the same location. Some walls came down and we now have a total space of just under 2000 sq ft with the same brew plant but with additional fermenters taking our potential capacity to nearly 6000 pints a week. We now brew 5 regular beers and plenty of seasonals. But we're still very much a microbrewery, our beers are truly handcrafted from beginning to end.

Small can be beautiful and we are very proud to have received over 20 awards for our ales, most recently winning Overall LocAle of the Festival for our Anastasia's Imperial Stout 8% at Reading Beer Festival in May, one of the largest in the country. At least we now have a wall long enough to display them all!

We are lucky to have the support of some gems of freehouses that take our ales regularly on a guest basis and also pubs that have our beers on a permanent pump such as Jagz in Ascot. They trialled our Posh Pooch 4.2% best bitter against Fullers London Pride in the autumn last year and it sold so well that they now also have Alley Cat our 3.8% bitter permanently on the bar too which replaced Deuchars IPA. They are truly a LocAle pub.

We even brew a couple of exclusive house beers for some pubs. The Rowbarge in Guildford is right next to the river and stocks locally brewed beers from the SIBA Direct Delivery Scheme. Our Posh Pooch and On The Rails (our 3.8% hoppy mild) are permanently available and also their newly launched Compass Point Ale 4% brewed specially by us as their house beer. A real LocAle recipe using malts from Berkshire, Surrey, Wiltshire and Hampshire and hops from Kent and at 4% a session beer to savour with barely any food miles to worry about.

Chris is currently working on our seasonal range for the autumn which will includes favourites such as Double Trouble 5.4% (belgian dubbel style) from late August, Oktoberfest 4.8% for Sept/Oct plus our Penguin Porter 4.5% which was initially brewed as a seasonal in April but due to demand has become a semi regular. There is also a waiting list for our Anastasia's Imperial Stout so we have to squeeze that in when we can. There are also some ideas bouncing around for a belgian tripel style at over 6% and playing with additional flavours in some current recipes such as vanilla, hazelnut, peach, raspberry.... And we have to fit in a festival special for the Ascot Racecourse Beer Festival at the end of September and also a special beer to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Croydon Tramlink in South London for mid October. Now you know why we needed the extra capacity!

So bonkers or brave....? When the alarm goes off at 4.45am most mornings with a packed day ahead of brewing, bottling, delivering, sales, marketing and not to mention the paperwork then bonkers must seem the most apt. Brave....probably as it is tough out there and with competition in the microbrewery sector growing each year and the pressures of increasing taxation and running costs can make it difficult to sleep some nights. So if any of you out there know a terrific pub that would like to try our beers let us know! I guess we're both bonkers and brave, we're doing something we love and giving many people pleasure in drinking our beers and supporting a small, family run local business.

Cheers!

The future of the Redan (Peach Street, Wokingham, RG40 1XG) is under threat. Pubs Officer Dave Goater has learnt that planning began in April to develop the site into further retail outlets and dwellings.

The consultation process was completed in June, featuring 8 opposition entries; Dave identified a suggested CAMRA letter template to file an opposition and, albeit late, sent the letter (below), to which receipt was confirmed.

Dave has also written to local MP, John Redwood, but no help has been forthcoming.

It is hoped that the pub will remain open in its current form, and the branch will keep abreast of the situation as it develops.

The long awaited work at the Rose and Crown (High St, Sandhurst, GU47 8HA) has finally been completed with a new extension being added to the bar, additional decking added, leading out to the garden at the rear.

Pub landlord Barry, is delighted with the increased bar space and has worked hard in the old bar area, turning the old area into something that is much more pleasing to the eye. With the addition of extra handpumps Barry is hoping to stock an additional 3 draft bitters making nine hand drawn beers during busy sessions.

On Saturday 13^th March, we were informed by landlord Kevin that The Wheelwrights Arms (Davis Way, St Nicholas Hurst, RG10 0TR) are now in the CAMRA discount scheme. Camra members will benefit from a 10% reduction in the price of Wadworth's beer.

Not only should we support Kevin by going and drinking in the Wheelwrights, but we also ought to think of this as a campaigning opportunity for the branch and see if we can encourage other pubs to follow suit. So don't forget your membership card when visiting the Wheelwrights in the near future.