A week in pubs: w/c 18 January 2010

Pub visits this week: 3

Thanks for your recent comments on the site – I’ve enjoyed them all, and especially ones like Sam’s on the Tap and Tumbler and Jono’s on the Rutland Arms. These are great examples of the way any given pub means thousands of different things: one for every person who’s ever been inside it and had a drink. And this is precisely one of the main aspects of the pub that Get to the pub.com exists to celebrate. More of that please!

Thanks are also due to Sheffield Blog for twitterficating about Get to the pub.com a couple of times recently and thus sending us dozens and dozens of new visitors. Thanks!

Illness has kept me from getting to the pub very much this week. I was especially disappointed to miss meeting some friends at Saturday lunchtime in the Cocked Hat – a smashing ale house in the unlikely environs of Attercliffe, near Sheffield’s Don Valley Stadium, where my hopeless excuse for a football team were about to fail again – but by that evening I was firing on just enough cylinders to make it down the road for a few here in Walkley. Sunday night made the week just about respectable, as you’ll see below.

Saturday
Freedom House, South Road, Walkley, Sheffield. My friend and bandmate Dan has moved to Walkley today, so to celebrate we enjoy a long night in the Freedom: a splendidly cosy pub which I don’t get to nearly enough given its proximity to my house. I’ve made a start on a dedicated post about it, so that’s all I’ll say for now, other than urging you to look out for the Freedom becoming a featured pub on this blog later on this week.

Sunday
Sheffield Tap, Sheffield (featured here). I’m meeting a couple of people I’ve not seen in ages, and Jamie suggests the Tap as he hasn’t been here yet. This makes the Tap quite unusual, as there are only 20 or so pubs he hasn’t been to in the whole of Sheffield. In fact, that’s how I met him: five years ago I wrote a piece for the Sheffield Telegraph about Jamie’s mission, with his mate Dave, to down a pint in every pub in the city. To spend an hour or two drinking with him is to extend vastly one’s knowledge of Sheffield’s licensed premises.

(If you’re interested, a shorter version of the article which appeared in the Sheffield Star is online here.)

The BrewDog festival is still on, so I take a pint of Trashy Blonde, which is really excellent and full of flavour for its temperate 4.1%, followed by a dark, smoky EFP. (I also notice that Punk IPA is 6%, which explains why I felt more woozy than might have been expected last Sunday afternoon.) Is it just me, or is the Sheffield Tap getting colder every week?

Rutland Arms, Brown Street, Sheffield (featured here). Jamie, Mark, Dan and I cross to the Rutland for a couple, and Tonieee comes in after his band practice. It’s probably the first time I’ve been in, since the new management arrived, at any time other than after work on a Friday, and while it’s not as busy as those frantic first hours of the weekend, there’s still a very agreeable hum about the place (and the stout is still a bit too cold), making for a very fine end to the week. Explaining why his burlesque night is much better than the tackier, seedier alternatives, Jamie reflects a little loudly that “once you’ve seen one pair of tits, you’ve seen them all”. “I’d have to disagree on that last point,” grins a man at the table behind us.