Cornwall

Campaign for Real Ale

Campaign for Real Ale

Bude Brewery & Pub Tour

Saturday 6 May 2017

Kernow CAMRA members had a great day in Bude on Saturday 6th May and the event was hosted by Bude Brewery.

The members met up at Bodmin Parkway station where we boarded our coach with our usual driver and embarked on our journey to Bude. We arrived at Bude Brewery where we were met by Thomas Rooke the managing director of Bude Brewery. He kindly informed us about the history of the brewery and also the future. He introduced us to Liam Cook, Head Brewer who has been at the brewery for three years and since joining he has embarked on ensuring the beers are different, good quality and flavours. Thomas Westlake helps to produce theses great beers as assistant brewer. This year marks the 40th year for Kernow CAMRA and Bude Brewery have produced a golden Ale to celebrate our anniversary. We all enjoyed the first taste of the fabulous brew, trouble was it was very moreish. Make sure you look out for it as it is definitely a beer I would recommend. We also sampled a raspberry milk stout called Draco which was also very pleasant. Liam and Thomas the brewers gave us a very informed tour of the brewery. Showing us the brewing tanks (who all have names) one of which is Dirty Debbie. The brewery also bottle the beer themselves and now with the help of their newest piece of equipment a mobile canning machine they can their beer too.

We stayed at the brewery for around an hour and a half and we would very much like to thank Thomas, Liam and Thomas for hosting the event for us, generously giving us as much beer as we wanted to drink and a very enjoyable tour.

We then moved on to Bude Rugby club where there was also a barrel of Kernow CAMRA 40th Golden Ale plus Porthbud another one of Bude Brewery’s Beers and very nice it was too. We were also very generously given a selection of pies from The Cornish Pie Co and we would like to thank them for feeding us.

We left the Rugby Club and moved onto Preston Gate Inn at Poughill who are passionate about real ale and make a point of buying from breweries and micro-breweries in Devon and Cornwall. They regularly have guest ales alongside their staples. They sell refreshing and hoppy pale ales in Summer and dark ales in winter. Some of the guest ales that they had have passed through their pumps before being sold anywhere else.

After the Preston Gate Inn we went to Kings Arms, Stratton which was built around 365 years ago. The Kings Arms a 17th century coaching inn located just of the A39 and one mile from Bude. There are over 50 prints of the pub on the walls which captures some of the history. The floor off the pub is made from Cornish delabole slate and there is a log burner for cold winter nights. They have a great selection of real ales and are in the Good Beer Guide and Cask Marque accredited which means they guarantee the quality of our beers.

The last pub on our journey was Bullers Arms Hotel, Marhamchurch a traditional country pub, which is just a mile from the north Cornish coast and near to Bude. They offer a good selection of real ales, ciders and hand-picked wines. The pub offers food with locally sourced ingredients, including local meat from the family farm and local cheese.

A great day was once again had by all members and on behalf of everyone I would like to thank Roger for organizing the trip, Bude Brewery for hosting it, First for our great driver and all three pubs who kindly allowed us to invade them on a Saturday afternoon.

Sonia Bunce, Press Officer