The autumnal delights of Friday night pub exploring
As the nights draw in, we've been trying to get out and about, pounding the streets of Bristol to check in on its many and varied pubs, bars and taprooms.
Routines and habits can be helpful and comforting. But they can also start to feel restrictive – a rut you’re stuck in. Which is why we’ve taken to exploring on Friday nights.
For quite a while our Friday night routine has been to shut down our work computers, let out a long exhausted sigh, and drag ourselves round to the Lost & Grounded taproom.
It’s more-or-less our nearest licenced establishment; we like the beer; and in summer especially it’s a pleasantly cool half-indoor-half-outdoor space.
We like being recognised by the staff and greeted warmly, too – hello, Dan!
It might be comforting and convenient but what it is not is stimulating.
Sure, they often have a seasonal beer or two on offer, which at least gives us something new to try. But we rarely have great revelations or observe anything remarkable. (The parrot incident is an exception.)
Our recent trip to Germany and Poland reminded us how much we enjoyed walking the streets of a city at night, and of the energy boost we get from exploring.
In Bristol, there aren’t many pubs we’ve never been to. We’ve visited 310 at the time of writing and reckon that leaves about 40 before we’ve caught ‘em all.
There are, however, lots of pubs we haven’t been to for a long time. Sometimes years, it turns out, in fact, when Jess checks her records.
A pub can change a lot in 3, 4 or even 5 years. Even if we weren’t impressed last time, perhaps now it will have an interesting beer or two on the bar, and the grumpy barman will probably have moved on.
Also in the back of our mind is the upcoming update to our Bristol pub guide. We put that together to save us having to keep answering the same questions about where to drink over and over again. It also happens to be a good motivator for us to at least try to keep on top of the scene.
So, a few Fridays ago, Jess put together an itinerary: The Crown in St Judes for Bass, The Bell in Stokes Croft to check in, The Hillgrove Porter Stores in Kingsdown for the same reason, the Highbury Vaults to finish, and a train back from Redland to Lawrence Hill.
This worked out well for a few reasons. First, it made us pause between pints, and we were able to walk off some of our tipsiness hiking up hills in the cool autumn air.
Secondly, it meant that even if a pub was a dud, we knew we were only there for one.
Thirdly, we got to be where there were lights, music, and lively people – a great antidote to the urge to hibernate.
Finally, it counted as exercise, amounting to about 15,000 steps by the time we were done.
Last Friday, we did the same again, with a similar route, but different stops: the New Bristol Brewery taproom for silly stout, Mickey Zogg’s (formerly The Surrey Vaults) because it’s new to us, The Green Man to check in, and The Good Measure to investigate an old favourite.
The Green Man, a corner pub on a quiet residential street, was a particular highlight this time. There was a raffle underway and just about enough space to get a drink and find a seat. Someone won a jar of pickled onions. The booby prize was a ‘mystery shot’. There was a baby at the bar eating raffle tickets and Nacho Libre was playing silently on the TV.
On the strength of this visit, it’ll probably enter the guide next year. Previously, we’ve tended to avoid it because we didn’t like Dawkins Ales but, now, the beer range was pretty great, including a cask porter from Vibrant Forest, for example.
We don’t want to do this every Friday, of course, or it too will become a habit, or a rut. We also need to keep showing our faces at Lost & Grounded to maintain our ‘regulars’ status.
Every couple of weeks, though, we’ll be making an effort to get out and explore – to range across the city and sit in unfamiliar snugs, with unfamiliar pints, watching unfamiliar dramas play out.
Christmas gifts
If you get in quickly, you can order a copy of 20th Century Pub directly from us, if there’s someone in your life you think might enjoy it.
It’ll be £12 including UK postage and packing.
There’s also our ‘best of’ collection, Balmy Nectar, and Gambrinus Waltz, a slim monograph on the rise of lager in Victorian and Edwardian London.
If you prefer fiction, there are also Ray’s books of weird stories –Municipal Gothic, from 2022, and this year’s new release, Intervals of Darkness.
If you don’t want to buy the latter from Amazon we can sell copies directly at £13 including UK postage, plus some exclusive extras.
On the blog
Inspired by a trip to the supermarket we put together a quick guide to ‘brand codes’ and their use in beer packaging. In a follow-up comment on BlueSky someone pointed out that craft beer brewers often borrow brand codes from big brands for their own takes on mainstream lager, which struck us as an interesting observation.
We wrote about a post-war Bristol estate pub that, having survived the humiliation of being turned into a restaurant, is finally set for demolition. Will anyone miss it? Probably not. But we stopped to pay our respects.
A trip to Hereford, and visits to some delightful pubs, inspired a little write up of the trip: “We nosed around the cathedral, looked at a statue of Edward Elgar, regarded an old barn, climbed into the roof of a church to look at an obscene carving, and then pottered along the river…”
The month’s chunkiest post was a record of our impressions of the Polish city of Gdańsk: “The international brewpub style is so 1990s. Nowadays, it’s all about the international beanie hat tote bag pot plant horn-rimmed hygge lo-fi ambient craft beer street food scene…”
We also provided the regular weekly round-ups of good beer writing, weekly footnotes for the same via Patreon, and notes on the best beers we drank each weekend.
That’s it, that’s your lot, until next month.
Cheers!
Jess & Ray