Every brewery in Nottingham

A straightforward challenge for this rambling: drink a beer from each brewery based in the Nottingham city boundary at a pub close to that brewery.

I'd been saving this for the summer, but with a trip to Nottingham needed - to buy my nearest and dearest an Easter egg from Hotel Chocolat - I threw caution to the wind and set off on my quest. By my reckoning, I needed to score beers from Nottingham (natch!), Castle Rock, Magpie, Alcazar, Mallard and Fellows Morton & Clayton. So, with sturdy shoes and an Easy Rider bus & tram ticket, I set off to city of my birth to start the ramble, er, rambling.

An early arrival into Nottingham was greeted by foul weather. Like a dummy, I didn't seek shelter in a nearby Spoons but instead started the hack southwards in driving rain. I haven't been down this side of town for a few years, so walking past Meadow Lane, the City Ground and Trent Bridge brough back all kinds of bittersweet sporting memories.

Over the river and through the backstreets of West Bridgford brought me to the first pub of the day, the Stratford Haven

This is a bonus Castle Rock pub for me - I'll be drinking thier beers at the Vat & Fiddle later - but I've always wanted to visit. An interesting pub, this; extended into a former courtyard, high backed benches, assorted tables, short stools, carpet and floorboards, bottles in rafters, prints on walls, artificial plants wide ranging menu, no music, Harvest Pale, Sherrif's Tipple and several others. Quiet - no students this week , the forty-something newspaper readers were out in force.

The weather was still blowy, but only a short walk past Trent Bridge (with the new stands looking rather funky) and back over the bridge to The Globe.

Here's where the ramble starts in earnest. Just over the canal from Meadow Lane and the Magpie brewery, the Globe is the closest outlet for Magpie beers. But - disaster! No Magpie! Time to decide how to tackle the rest of the day. With the weather still filthy, I decided to scrap the original ramble and instead just roll around a few pubs, trying to pick up Nottingham-based beers as I went. Fortunatly the Globe had a beer from Nottingham on, so half a Legend was knocked off and a trip out to Radford saved for a sunnier day.

Bucketing rain made it a short sprint over to the nearest bus stop. Back into the city centre, past the Castle Rock brewery (back here later) and onto the tram. To maximise my chances of Notts beers, I thought I'd jump off a couple of stops earlier than intended and visit the Lion Inn.

The city does a great job of promoting real ale pubs close to the tram route with the Beer By Tram promotion and CAMRA logo / pub name on the tram maps.
Into the Lion and it was busy, busy, busy. A fair few diners, drinkers following Nottingham CAMRA's Stout and Porter Trail and plenty of punters here for the jazz band. But none of their usual Mallard beer here - perhaps I'm feted to not find locale today? Though the Thornbridge St Petersburg Stout was tempting, I stumped up for some lush Roosters Yorkshire Pale Ale.

I could have stopped longer - a good range of beers and some easy jazz seems a pleasant way to while away a late lunchtime. But, got to keep moving. From the shadow of the old Shipstones brewery, it was a hop, wobble and skip to the tram and a few minutes wait before the two-stop trip to Basford and the Alcazar brewery tap, the Fox and Crown.
And it was all quiet here, strangely so. I pulled up a barstool and looked over a fair array of Alcazar beers, plumping for Alcazar Stout which was a little on the creamy side and borderline bland. Should have had something IPA-ish, Alcazar make some fantastic stronger beers.

Back to the tram, then, for the journey back to the city centre and the Vat & Fiddle. A minute from the railway station (if you run), the Vat is a great pub to pop into whilst waiting for a train. If only they'd install a screen to let you know how late you're train's running...

Busy enough in here for a late Sunday afternoon, it's often a bustling pub and always has excellent beers. It also stinks since the smoking ban, so hopefully the next time I go back will be on a warmer day when they've ben able to wedge the doors open and air the place. The brewery tap for Castle Rock, I'd usually order a pint of Harvest Pale without even looking at the other beers on offer. But, having secured a smashing pint of HP earlier in the day, I was easily tempted by their 'wildlife' themed special, Mr Toad which was everything in a stout that the Alcazar one wasn't; creamy with a lactic edge, some redeeming bitterness with roasty licks.

Next stop is a half-brewpub. Fellows Morton & Clayton, the oldest brewpub in the city, has a malt extract brewing operation upstairs (actually next door to the gents...)























A half of their Matthew Clayton Original Strong was dispatched quickly - odd name for a golden ale, though I did hear a rumour that it's only called that because the brewer found a box of old pumpclips and decided to recycle the Clayton one rather than design something new!























It's a comfy pub, a one-time warehouse on the canal with a smart bar area, a lower level room full of soft sofas and widescreen TVs dripping off every wall. What made watching Robbie Keane score a sublime goal even better was being able to score another Nottingham beer here - Mallard's Duck 'n Dive. I've often found a Mallard beer here - usually their wonderful, light Duckling - and so I enjoyed a full pint of it.

Time is pressing and I could fit in visits to two pubs before catching a late bus home. The Salutation is a pub I know of old, twenty years or so ago it was one of my pre-gig drinking dens before a night out at Rock City. The music is still the same but the beer seems to have got better and better. And there was plenty of yummy stuff on offer, but no Magpie. So, being ruthless, I snuck out the back door and legged it up to the last pub I could fit in today.























The Roebuck is a Wetherspoons with plenty of nooks for hiding away with a pint. It's even got a rooftop smoking garden! But it didn't have the one thing I wanted - Magpie beer. So, I settled for Milestone's Somers, a wheaty fruity thing that was fun but would have been more fun on a baking hot day in a beer garden. After a pint of MAGPIE!!!

It would have been good to nail all the beers from Nottingham, but at least the thrill of the chase was fun. Roll on summertime; if I can get gen that Magpie's on somewhere, I'll score it first and spend the rest of the day revisiting these pubs again.