Great grandad was 'ere

Sunday night I stopped in the Sun at Hitchin, a great pub and hotel which has been there since the 1500's.  I was gobsmacked to read some idiotic review on trip advisor complaining, "the corridors are narrow, the floor isn't level, and there are wooden beams sticking out of the ceiling!".  This is exactly what makes the place so brilliant (other than the fact they serve best breakfast I have had in Hertfordshire)
Sadly I arrived too late to hear the live music, which is on every Sunday.

On Tuesday evening I got the train up to York, wandering around the south of the city wall to stop in the Waggon & Horses.

Of all the times that I have been to York, this is the first time I have seen the old keep.









There are some great old pubs in york...

..and the Waggon and Horses is one of them.  I know I am supposed to be on a diet, but the steak was calling out to me, so a perfectly cooked steak duly arrived, complete with a mountain of chips, mushrooms and tomato!

I was up here  to judge the beer of the North East of England at the racecourse on the Wednesday.  The sun was shining outside, with blue skies, but inside there was water dripping onto us.  It is the first time I can remember when I have been in the sun outside a beer tent, but rained on when inside.

The first round of best bitters was mediocre, with half the beers cloudy, and almost all of them flat.  Very little aroma and very little taste. Very disappointing.

The second round I was put on the speciality bottle beers, which I was dreading, as this is not my beer of choice.
However...
We had a couple of beautiful wheat beers, very smooth, a smoked beer, a coriander and lemon beer that tasted just like a nice smooth pale ale.  Then the Milk Stout arrived and Wow!  The appearance of this drink was a delight in itself, the aroma was amazing and the flavour perfect.  For the first time ever, both me and Jenna agreed that this drink could not be faulted, and gave full 60 out of 60.
Last in this round came a chocolate porter.  Massive chocolate aroma, and a superb chocolate flavour, this had to be the Triple Chocolate Porter from Saltaire.


On the last round, I was judging the strong cask bitters, and again, half of the beers were hazy, and most of them were flat.  Boring, boring, and then the last beer of the round, although unfined, was clear, had a wonderful hop aroma, and a not too overpowering hop flavour that made this a superb IPA.

The overall finals are always hard to judge because you have eight different beer styles to judge against each other.  The only way to do this is to judge each one as itself, then compare the scores at the end, with a bit of side by side comparison at the end.

Altogether an enjoyable day, despite the poor quality of some of the beers, and we  rounded off with another superb steak!