Tag Archives: cask

Pub Guide

Bakewell Pub Guide 2022

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June 11 to 16, 2022, my wife and I spent our holidays in Bakewell in the beautiful Peak District. We happened to try out quite a few local pubs, so this is my (obviously very subjective) guide to all the pubs in Bakewell we went to.

The Peacock Inn

Very focused on standard pub food. Three beers from cask, all from Peak Ales: Chatsworth Gold, Bakewell Best and Swift Nick. Well-kept but really just your average bitters and golden ales. When we were in Bakewell previously in 2016, they wouldn’t even let you sit down inside unless you wanted to order food. This has fortunately changed. Good for a quick refreshment in the sun.

Website, Google Maps

The Queen’s Arms

In a stark contrast to the previous pub, you’re being greeted by a “sorry no food” sign. With parts of the floor carpeted, the whole length of the wall is lined by benches accompanied by tables and chairs. The whole pub gave me a rather simple and slightly Spartan impression. Even though it was relatively busy when we were there, it seemed quiet and relaxing, with some people reading their newspaper and enjoying a few pints. It seems to be a Marston’s pub, and had Pedigree and Old Empire from cask (besides a few others I don’t remember). Good for a quiet day.

Facebook page, Google Maps

Wheatsheaf

Despite its slightly sterile and pub-chainy look, we were unable to determine who actually owns this pub. I wanted to try Young’s London Original, but had to return it after I was served a pint of vinegar (the beer wasn’t taken off though), and went for Wainwright instead, which was fine but less bitter and hop-aromatic than what I remember it to be. The couple on the table next to ours also had food, but weren’t happy with their Sunday roast.

Website, Google Maps

The Red Lion

Three cask beers on, with either Timothy Taylor’s Landlord or Boltmaker being on all the time. Boltmaker tasted great, though a bit on the sweet side. It was quiet when we went in, the overall atmosphere seemed fine, but it can apparently get very busy at times.

Timothy Taylor’s Boltmaker

Website, Google Maps

The Joiners Arms

This pub wasn’t around yet when we first spent time in Bakewell. With slightly hipsterish-looking panelling from reclaimed scaffolding boards on the bar and the walls, it had a micropub-like, very informal atmosphere. In total, they had 6 beers from cask, always rotating, but while we were there, at least 1 to 2 Thornbridge beers were on, accompanied by several keg taps (lager, craft beer, cider). No food other than the typical pub snacks like crisps and pork scratchings, but instead a good place to get to casually get to talk to people, both locals and tourists. The pub is also very dog-friendly, and lots of people walking their dogs seem to make a quick stop there for a pint.

A good place if you’re into trying new, local beers, or if you’re into craft beer.

Facebook page, Google Maps

The Rutland Arms Hotel

Essentially a hotel bar, it has 2 beers from cask, namely Jaipur and Lord Marples, as well as their Helles Lukas from keg. The whole hotel lobby/bar/restaurant has been completely redone since we were last there in 2016, apparently after a takeover from a hotel chain. All the beers were Peak Ales back then, and frankly, I’m glad they changed it because all casks beers this time were well kept, tasted great, and highlighted a local product to tourists (and there were several American tourists at the bar while were also there).

Thornbridge Lord Marples (left) and Lukas (right)

Website, Google Maps

Thornbridge Taproom

A bit further out from the town centre, this is Thornbridge’s brewery taproom, with a fairly large range of their own beers from cask, keg and bottle or can. Everything we tried was well kept. If you’re hungry, you can order pizza which is all made from scratch in-house, and even though we didn’t have any, it smelled fantastic. As I learned, they take their pizza pretty seriously, got a proper pizza oven (though not wood-fired) and even ensure to buy the right flour.

By far the best place to try Thornbridge beers straight from the source!

Jaipur X at the Home of Jaipur

Website, Google Maps

The Manners

This is a Robinson’s pub, and it shows in the cask offering: Robinson’s Unicorn, Wizard, Trooper and Dizzy Blonde (despite the name, the visual branding has improved since 2016). The beer is perfectly fine, just not the most exciting to me. Instead, this pub is best visited for its food. By far the best pub food I’ve had in England. Our food highlights there were the honey roast belly pork, the steak & ale suet crust pie, the super juicy venison cheese burger, and of course the local specialty, Bakewell pudding.

Bakewell pudding at the Manners

Website, Google Maps

A few remarks

If you’ve been to Bakewell before, you may have noticed that we have not covered all the pubs. This is because we didn’t go there specifically to put together a complete pub guide, and also there was one particular pub that we thoroughly did not enjoy last time, and thus didn’t return. As for drinks, I mostly mentioned cask beer because that’s what I’m interested in. If you want to drink keg beer or cider instead, the typical offerings are stuff like Carling, Coors, Fosters, Peroni, John Smith’s, Guinness, Strongbow (& Strongbow Dark Fruits), etc. You get the idea. Some places (like the Manners or the Joiners Arms) also have craft beer on keg.

When comparing the state of Bakewell pubs in 2016 with 2022, I have to commend those who have expanded their offerings: back then, we couldn’t find a single pub that served Thornbridge beers (it’s literally brewed a few hundred metres down the road!), save for the Thornbridge taproom itself, which was just a bit of a lounge and a small bar underneath some of the brewery offices. Nowadays, you will find multiple local places happily serving a fairly wide range of Thornbridge beers in excellent condition, and Thornbridge brewery itself now has a massive and very popular taproom, all of which are great improvements. And there’s even a micropub-ish free house in the town centre that brings rotating taps to the town that have clearly been missing before.

History

German Sparklers

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Sparklers, little attachments to a beer engine’s nozzle that aerate the beer and produce a bigger head, are a bit of a controversy. Northerners stereotypically swear by them, Southerners despise them, etc. Personally, I think they make sense with some beers, but not so much with others. My personal hypothesis is that a lot of cask beers are brewed with the intention of being dispensed with or without a sparkler. A pint of Landlord without a thick head on top would certainly be weird, while London Pride served through a sparkler was probably one of the grossest pints I’ve ever had.

Most people think that this is probably a problem only cask beer aficionados in England face, but at least in the 19th century, lager beers in Germany and Austria directly dispensed from wooden casks were served in a similar way: besides the regular tap, a device called Mousseux-Pipe, sometimes also called Bierbrause (lit. “beer shower”), was also quite common. I’ve never seen an actual photo or illustration of one, but the descriptions of it make it sound very much like a sparkler: when beer was dispensed from a cask through the Mousseux-Pipe, it foamed up and produced a bigger, denser head.

As with every aspect of beer, the effect of this dispensing method also came under scrutiny by beer researchers. Th. Lange compared how much carbon dioxide was lost when dispensing from a regular (wooden) tap compared to dispensing from a Mousseux-Pipe, both with bunged and unbunged beer.

The total loss of CO2 when pouring bunged beer was 14.6% from a regular tap, and 22.72% from the sparkler tap. For unbunged beer, which is lower in CO2 in the first place, the loss was slightly lower: 10.27% from a regular tap, and 14.03% from a sparkler tap. (Source)

What’s also interesting is the amount of CO2 lager beers were served in the late 19th century: a regularly carbonated (bunged) beer contained 3.9 g/L (= 1.99 volumes) of CO2, a medium-bunged beer 3.457 g/L (= 1.76 volumes), while an unbunged beer contained as little as 3.097 g/L (= 1.58 volumes) of carbon dioxide. Compared to the typical carbonation of modern beer, this is fairly low: modern lager beers are often carbonated at around 5 g/L or roughly 2.5 volumes, while cask ales are carbonated lower at roughly 2.9 to 4 g/L (1.5 to 2 volumes).

So when we’re looking at the historic carbonation rates, it clearly shows that they are more in the range of what we get in modern cask ale. These historic lager beers seemed to have been more gently carbonated, making for a nicer drinking experience, something that you would find also in beers gravity-poured from wooden casks in Franconia.

Just like its modern counterpart in England, the use of Mousseux-Pipen was not uncontroversial either: in Tyrol, the use of syringes of similar devices to create artificial foam in beer was prohibited from 1854 on for sanitary reasons. A letter to the editor in a newspaper from 1871 laments the “strict non-enforcement of this edict got rid of syringes” and popularized beer showers that produced a thick and dense foam that helped defraud customers through underpouring.

Some publicans also saw sparkler taps as an issue: the wooden casks of the era were not entirely tight, so they gradually lost carbonation. Combined with a sparkler tap and the agitation when transporting, handling and tapping the casks, this led to an unacceptable amount of carbonation loss resulting in flat beer.

The organization of Viennese brewery owners even blamed assertions of beer adulterations on poor beer pouring practices: beers that tasted overly bitter were accused of using something other than hops for bitterness. Practically, beer that was poured hard and through devices like sparkler taps ended up flat, and no CO2 to soften down the hop bitterness. The Viennese brewers therefore suggested to pour beer as little as possible, and with as little devices in between. Instead of getting beer poured through a sparkler tap into a jug or large bottle, and then carried all the way home, beer should ideally be poured directly into a glass through a regular tap, and protected from sun and heat while bringing it home.

All in all, Mousseux-Pipen seemed as controversial back in the day as sparklers are in England nowadays. While I couldn’t find anything definite, I’d say the practice at the very latest died out when gravity-pouring beer from cask fell out of fashion, and more modern top-pressure-based dispensing methods became popular. And frankly, in the narrow context of gravity-poured lager beers, I don’t really see the need for it, as I’ve never seen such a beer freshly poured from a cask suffering from any foam issues, while still having a gentle carbonation that makes it easy to drink. Maybe brewers have become more knowledgeable about brewing beer with greater foam stability, or the slightly higher carbonation of modern lager beer is making a difference, or maybe the higher quality of modern “wooden” casks (most of which are metal-lined nowadays) means less CO2 leakage and a better retention in carbonation. In any case, a properly poured beer directly from a cask, with a nice thick head on top, makes for a great presentation, and I crave one now.