PRATS-STATS

Well that’s the season all done, 31 trips but only 29 matches, one rained off the other had floodlight failure, 23 x SLP, 2x FA cup, 1 x Red Insure and 3 x Hillier cup. 5,496 miles travelled, what utter madness, it equates to driving from Land’s End to John ‘O’ Groats and back 3 times with a few miles to spare, well done Parker, he chauffeured for most of them.

The all-important statistics, we sampled 240 different ales from 151 different breweries. We visited 84 pubs and 27 brewery taps.

The average price of ale was around £3.34; with the most expensive we saw being a strong ale served at the Orange Tree in Baldock, £4.10, we didn’t buy one of those, too expensive for the likes of the PRATS. The cheapest was £2.20 served in Bamber Bridge for our failed FA cup replay. We could get cheaper ales but we don’t generally frequent Spoons pubs.

 Have a look at the BEERS, PUBS DATABASE this link will take you to a spreadsheet.

The PRATS had many good days out so it’s very difficult to choose the best. Hitchin was a good one as was the postponed visit to Slough. Frome will take some beating with 4 brewery taps. Towcester Brewery Tap seems to be a favourite, the Land of Liberty, Peace and Plenty at Heronsgate just off the M25 Jct 17 gets a couple of visits. We had far too many good ales for there to be a favourite, Fuggles and Citra prefer citrusy pale ales whilst Pharp and Parker go for the slightly darker ales.

Citra went to every competitive match last season only missing the friendly at Quorn, he didn’t go there because Mo Farrah wasn’t playing and the burgers are crap.

Pharp vented on 4,723 occasions, we experienced 37 shades of purple haze with several drifting perilously close to Van Gogh’s sunflower inspiration.

The footy, well we were quite inconsistent in the first half of the season, our away form was atrocious, yet we recovered and almost made the play-offs.

By the time the PRATS are back on the road we may or may not be in Europe. The scaremongers have paraded out every conceivable scenario that may have an adverse effect on our lives. Brexit may have a significant effect on erectile dysfunction with the Viagra supply chain severely interrupted. Can we stand up on our own or will we just limp along, to stay in or to pull out? Germany have threatened to halt the supply of all yellow fizzy drinks with German sounding names, I suppose every cloud has a silver lining, anyone for a 330ml of Berlinersteinhoffercrappenziweissbier?

Have a good summer PRATS readers hopefully you’ve enjoyed our jolly jaunts hither and thither across the south of England. We’ve discovered some decent pubs and some very decent brewery taps. Back in a few weeks, meanwhile we have an inordinate amount of summer beer festivals to frequent all in the course of research you understand. 

A footnote, the PRATS blog has been viewed 17000 times with most viewers from the UK, we've had views from all around the world but a significantly high number from Russia and the Ukraine, it seems their search engines see PRATS as something entirely different with a few porno sites and lingerie sites directling their customers our way