It’s an early start leaving Kettering around
8:30am. Today we are without Parker, so we are travelling in the Pharp machine
with its built-in methane fuelled boosters.
We are joined today by Bogsnorkle making his second trip of the season, although
his first experience being in a confined space with Pharp. As it was a long
journey back down to Dorset for the third time we stopped off for a fry up at
the Little Chef. They say a man is what he eats, so it will come as no surprise
to learn that we all went for the Olympic breakfast. The down side of this is
that baked beans were included; this on top of last night’s mushy peas, Pharp
was potentially volatile. Half an hour later and we were on our way to the
first supping session.
We arrived at the
Wayland
Sixpenny brewery, located in the middle of a farm yard. The Weebles were
already downing their second pint, in the incredibly small taproom only about 8
foot square. There were 9 punters already leaning against the walls when the
PRATS all piled in. Fuggles ordered 3 pints of Sixpenny Gold, from the back
Pharp asked if they sold Doombar, within an instant a very loud hooter was
sounded. That was the first £1 in the swear box, I tried to explain that we don’t
like Bloody Doombar, again the hooter sounded, that was another £2 in the swear
box. Then before we had a chance to pay
for our beers, Pharp’s phone rang, off the hooter went yet again and yet
another £1. So we are already £4 down and we haven’t paid for our beer yet. In
the end Pharp had a pint of 6d Best; needless to say we kept very quiet for the
next few minutes. The Gold was a delightful gold coloured ale and quite
refreshing at 4.2%, with a hint of citrus, very nice and in good condition. The
6d Best is a fairly typical session ale rich amber coloured with a strength of
3.8%, hints of hops and malt were well balanced. Pharp’s internal system was
now ready, fully primed to unleash it on the unsuspecting locals. A volley of rasping
perps continued unrelenting to shatter the peace and quiet of the farmyard
ambience. The locals were ducking for cover, they didn’t have the courage to
come up for air to sound the hooter, it would have been drowned out anyway.
After about five minutes things settled down. Pharp was popping a few pills,
Citra asked what sort of pills they were, to which Pharp replied, “they are
anti-inflammatory pills”, to which Citra countered, “does that prevent you from
setting fire to your underpants?”, which roused much chortling from the locals.
Next up, everyone went for the same again, except Fuggles who tried the
Sixpenny IPA, it was ok, quite sweet, very much like drinking barley sugars sweets.
A slight haze coming in at 5.2%. There was another Sixpenny ale on the bar
Cranbourne Chaser but no one had that. The hand pumps were quite intriguing;
the pump clips were all on the wrong pump. If you pointed to a pump clip of the
ale you wanted they pulled an entirely different pump, bizarre, but the locals
loved it. This is a very nice set up, small and unassuming. Very rustic, and
would look forward to coming back here sometime in the future, however, they
are moving to new premises in due course, so maybe not. Time to move on, we
left the Weebles there and moved on to Dorchester.
It was around 1:15pm when we
parked up opposite the
Brewhouse
& Kitchen , which is
part of a growing chain of pubs, they have a nine at the moment with three more
opening this year, mostly scattered across southern England. They brew on the
premises and serve what looks like very wholesome snaffle. They had 4 of their
own ales on pump. Fuggles, Citra and Bogsnorkle all started on the B&K Nine
Stones, named after a ring of Bronze Age stones just up the road near
Winterbourne Abbas. A Very pleasant blonde ale, quite hoppy coming in at a
session ale strength of 3.8%, it was in very good condition, considering the
brewery was about 5 yards away from where we were sitting it is only to be
expected. Pharp sampled the Stationmaster’s Ale; you could drink this all day
and never get inebriated, just 3.2% golden ale, fairly typical super session
ale. It was very clear with a very tight head. One or two Poppies supporters
had now arrived in the bar. The next ale was Judge Jefferies, named after a
chap that’s used to hang around these parts. JJ is a tasty blonde, single hop, strong
ale, coming in at 5.0%, very nice and in excellent condition. That was it, time
for some footy.
Avenue
Stadium home of the Magpies is a very nice set up, built next to Tesco and is owned by the Duchy of
Cornwall, nice one Charlie. During the last 45 minutes of our last match we
scored 7 goals; we continued in this style and were 2 up within 15 minutes, 9
goals in 60 minutes, marvellous. It was 3-1 by half time and finished 4-1. A
good day at the office, unfortunately, other results didn’t go our way so we’ll
be plying our trade again in this league. Time to go home, but not before we
had a good end of season session at the Towcester Mill a favourite hostelry for the PRATS,
Pharp opened up with Towcester
Bell Ringer, a golden 4.4% ale and as you would expect in excellent condition.
The rest of us went for Towcester Mill Race, a blond ale, coming in at 3.9%
very citrusy with grapefruit finish. Next up, Bogsnorkle and Citra stayed with
the same whilst Fuggles sampled Whittlebury brewery’s (former name of Towcester
Brewery) Blue Eyed Dragon, it looks as though they are resurrecting some old
ales. This was a decent blond ale coming in at 4.0%, quite hoppy and bitter,
very refreshing. I don’t think we were planning a session but the ales kept
flowing. Next up for Fuggles was Nobby’s Brewery Swift Nick, 4.2% best bitter,
quite tasty pale ale, triple hopped, decent refreshing ale. The others stayed
with what they’d already been supping. Two packets of Black Country pork
scratchings, described as ‘real’. They were authentic; they still had bristles
on them, very crunchy and salty and thirst inducing. Another ale for Fuggles,
Charnwood brewery’s Outback brewed with Australian hops, a delightfully
refreshing 4.0% straw coloured ale. Very easy drinking, it went down quite
quickly. Clearly impressed Citra and Bogsnorkel had one of these next time around
as did Fuggles. That was enough ale for one day; it was close to 10:30pm when
we got back to Kettering. A decent day out, the Poppies won, 3 brewery taps in
one trip not bad really. One more game this season, the county cup final being
played at Northampton Town ground against a newish club that play in
Wellingborough.
