On the first day of June, glorious sunshine beamed down on us, causing thoughts of beer gardens and country walks to embed themselves firmly in the front of our minds. As luck would have it, I was ideally placed to take advantage of such seasonal weather: I was staying near RSPB Minsmere on the Suffolk coast, some 250 miles from Manchester.
As a reserve, Minsmere covers an extensive area, encompassing woodland, reedy marshes full of booming bitterns, fields containing the ruins of an ancient chapel and roaming Konik ponies, a coast dotted with WWII anti-tank defences… It was a fascinating and beautiful place to spend a summers’ day, spotting newts, woolly bear caterpillars, and listening to birdsong, but once three o’clock hit, I started getting thirsty. The one drawback? You’ve guessed it – no beer. I know, I really should have packed a can or two of Founders All Day IPA in a cool box; an amateur mistake! Luckily my lack of foresight was not calamitous, as just down the road from the reserve, less than half an hour’s womble away along wooded lanes, lay a little Adnams pub: The Eels Foot Inn.
The Eels Foot is a proper traditional country pub, with Southwold Bitter, Ghost Ship, Broadside, Gunhill, and Fat Sprat gracing the hand pumps – the latter two, seasonal specials. The cider drinkers, or should I say, cyder drinkers, can go for locally produced Aspall. The floor is bare, and the walls are white, with a few old paintings and quirky touches – the Springwatch team, who adopted this as their local during their time at Minsmere, were invited to sign the ceiling. There is a telly in the pub, but, while we were there at least, it was showing the Springwatch camera feeds on the Red Button. Outside, the massive grassy garden area is dotted with benches, and patrolled by large fluffy chickens. On an afternoon when I had stopped off at the pub on the way to the reserve, alone, one of these large fluffy chickens decided that I looked lonely (or that I might have food), and took it upon itself to sit on the other side of the bench while I finished my pint.
Ah yes, my pint. I feel that at this point, I must put up my hands and admit that I didn’t have particularly high hopes. I had vague memories of trying an Adnams beer somewhere, years ago, and being unmoved. Despite the high praise in the Twittersphere for Ghost Ship, the prospect of a relatively traditional beer didn’t get me excited – after all, it won’t have 200,000 IBUs, be barrel-aged on Mars, or cause my face to pucker in on itself until I look like Homer Simpson eating the sourest sweet in the world.
But I’m always up for exploring local beer, and I love a good country pub, so The Eels Foot and Adnams it was. I plumped for a pint of the Fat Sprat, a 3.8% ‘amber’ summer special. Well, there was some wonderful citrus going on alongside a gorgeous, crisp, spicy vibe, and I fell in love a little, but I suspected that after an hour’s walk in the blazing sun along Suffolk B-roads, I might not be particularly objective. Who was it who said that the best beer in the world is the one in your hand? At any rate, recuperating in the shade of a bright blue Adnams umbrella, I finished that pint in roughly seven minutes, and followed it with a half of Ghost Ship – which, while nice enough, didn’t do it for me in the same way.
Returning to the pub at ten o’clock that night with my partner after filming (if you watched last Monday’s Springwatch Unsprung, you may have spotted a chubby pale figure in the audience, haunting the studio like the ghost of a hipster: my 15 seconds of fame!), some of the crew were already there, enjoying pints of Ghost Ship after a long day. I went back to the Fat Sprat, to see if it still tasted good to me. It did. That slight spice mingling with the light citrus made it relentlessly quaffable, and I’m rather tempted to order a ‘mini-cask’ of it for the summer evenings. Speaking of temptation, behind the bar there were Adnams spirits. I didn’t know that they had a distillery, but will take the next chance I get to sample some of their gins, although I’m not so sure that I’ll be trying ‘The Spirit of Broadside’, distilled from – well, what do you think? – Broadside! Beer-spirits have yet to convince me, though they might be better actually distilled than freeze-distilled; if the brewer isn’t concerned with it remaining a ‘beer’, they may have more scope.
The Eels Foot was lovely, but a bit far from our cottage to really be convenient for more than one pint. Fortunately, there was another Adnams pub which was a little easier for us to get to. To be more precise, it was a three minute stroll down the road… The Bell Inn stands near a church which tolls the hours out across the surrounding countryside. Another traditional building, this pub still has two doors, labelled ‘Public Bar’ and ‘Lounge Bar’. Although the ‘Lounge Bar’ door now leads to the pub’s little restaurant, the ‘Public Bar’ was everything I hoped it would be. Bare wooden floorboards, awards and local notices on the walls, and, charmingly, beer served via gravity dispense, something I haven’t seen outside of beer festivals for quite a while. There are also a few little metal plaques set into the floor, inscribed with names and dates. When I asked the landlord about them, he told us that they mark where regulars have fallen over. Ace.
I had chosen a half of Southwold Bitter to start on, but after sipping the half of Ghost Ship my partner had gone for, we both decided to move on to pints of the latter for the next round. Full of flavour and depth, I finally understood what the hype was about. I don’t know what was different about Ghost Ship at The Bell compared to at The Eels – perhaps it was the fact that it was on gravity, it could have been because I’d tried it after a beer made with Fuggles, rather than one made with Cascade, or maybe we were just lucky and caught it at the peak of its condition – but it was a really enjoyable pint. Not to cast any aspersions on The Eels at all, their beer was, of course, very well-kept. My partner agreed that the Ghost Ship at The Bell seemed more full-bodied, but taste is so susceptible to the power of suggestion, I can’t really take that as any strong indicator that my feelings were correct. Oh, the joy of cask!
