Customer's Choice

For the first time in what seems like a very long time, we'll be featuring two ales at our upcoming Beer & Sausage Festival (18-20 Feb) that are not brewed locally.

Being Oxford's first CAMRA LocAle pub and having our own SixSixes portfolio, where we only stock ales direct from breweries within 36 miles of the pub, we have always taken this reasonably seriously, but all rules are there to be broken and what better time to do it than at the biggest event of our year.

But, I still needed some sort of justification, hence, "The Customer's Choice". Customer number one is me (and Ange, although Ange didn't know much about it and neither of us are really customers either) and my choice, as already mentioned a few days ago is CAMRA's Supreme Champion Beer of Britain 2010: Castle Rock Harvest Pale from Nottingham, a 3.8% blonde ale with a distinctive citrus hop. When we lived in Sheffield, we used to frequent The New Barrack Tavern more than anywhere else and being a Castle Rock house, I sampled much Harvest Pale back then (as well as Abbeydale Moonshine, another personal favourite). As luck would have it, Hook Norton had it on their guest ales list this month.



Our second Customer's Choice comes from our house musician Lawrie (if you missed Lawrie performing last Saturday night, make sure you catch him on March 5th). Now Lawrie, like me, is a huge fan on Hook Norton Hooky Bitter, but because this is a beer festival and we have Hooky on the pumps the rest of the year, Hooky isn't at the festival (unless we run out of everything else). So, I gave Lawrie the choice of nominating his next favourite beer and If I could source it I said I'd get it for the festival.

Lawrie's choice was RCH Pitchfork from Weston Super Mare, a 4.3% golden bitter with floral citric hop aroma. Back in the day, Lawrie used to frequent a pub called The Wharf House in Oxford, which has long since closed but at the time, although a little run down by all accounts was Good Beer Guide listed and served cracking pints of both Hooky Bitter and RCH Pitchfork. Apparently, Pitchfork has a hoppy predominate taste which is slightly sweet and fruity and leaves you wanting more. Knowing that Lawrie and I share similar tastes (in beer), I'm certainly looking forward to it. As luck would have it, Vale Brewery had it on their guest ale list this month!



From RCH brewery's website: Pitchfork was judged to be the Best Bitter of the Year in 1998 at the Great British Beer Festival and has been a finalist in the last three years.