A Quaffing Time

The Crown and Anchor in Sowerby is gearing up for its second annual beer festival, from Friday 5th to Sunday 7th September. For those who don’t yet know the Crown and Anchor, it is a pretty little pub on Front Street in Sowerby, at the junction with Gravel Hole Lane (but they filled the hole in long ago) and the ever charming Blakey Lane, with its famous bridge! There’s a car park for pub customers. Inside you find a fresh and welcoming family-friendly pub, where you are bound to meet somebody to talk to. There’s a proper beer garden too. Licensees Scott and Layla have worked hard to create an attractive atmosphere.This is their second beer festival, with lots of interesting stuff to try. Talk of real ale reminds me of the dire days when all you could get most anywhere was the gas-pressured output of Burton-on-Trent. I still recall with a shudder a brew called Watney’s Red Barrel, not least because it made me feel really ill, and not from drinking too much of it. Enter Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale. I had the enjoyable task once of working on the expansion of a chain of pubs run on behalf of Camra. I still have a sticker on my boater which reads “Batemans at the Salisbury” from the opening of the Salisbury Arms in Cambridge, and I might well pop it on for the festival.Scott and Layla promise 18 beers, so they will be putting in an extra bar in the beer garden to cope with demand. There will be some popular local brews – Black Sheep Best Bitter and Hambleton’s Stallion. This year there is a beer specially named for the event – it comes from York Brewery and it’s called “Sowerby & Thirsk Quencher”. I think I might just end up saying “pint of S and T Q please”…It’s described as a pale ale brewed with wheat. The type of grain used affects the flavour, as does the length of time the grain is roasted at the brewery, but having said that, this isn’t a meeting for beer fanatics. It’s about trying different brews that have unusual or interesting flavours, and enjoying yourself.Some brewers have a zippy sense of humour when it comes to finding names for their drinks. Take, for instance, the Triple FFF Brewing Co from Hampshire, who are sending up their “Pressed Rat and Warthog”, which contains neither animal but is in fact a dark brown, mild beer.Then again you might enjoy a pint of “Village Idiot” from the White Horse Brewery in Oxfordshire. And you don’t have to be one.O’Hanlon’s Dry Stout, “a classic Irish style stout as it should be”, comes from Devon – confused? Skinner’s Brewing Co of Truro in Cornwall are supplying Ginger Tosser, originally created for Pancake Day, hence the name. In short, there will be a refreshing range of milds, beers and stouts, pale and dark, from near and very far, to tempt the interested.And there will be music. On the Friday night it’s a return appearance for The Prowlers, and on the Saturday night a local group who played at the Thirsk Music Festival, Deadbeat at Dawn. This proves that not only brewers can dream up odd names.To go with the beer and the music, there will be a hog roast on the Friday and Saturday evenings. 


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