Design by ADDITIONAL SOLUTIONS LTD

The Queen’s Quackers go Missing - 18 August 2008

The three ducks on the fence outside the pub were removed on Friday night. They had been there for a long time and were featured in the advertising for the pub. “I was livid when I discovered they were missing,” said Alan Randall, their owner and landlord of the Queen’s Head, “and I really want them back.”

It appears that there is more to this than just casual vandalism as on Sunday morning, Alan had an e-mail from their kidnappers claiming they had been taken abroad.

With at least three ex-policemen in the village, it shouldn’t be too difficult to solve the matter. Asked whether there were any distinguishing features, Alan said they looked like ducks, each one having dark legs, webbed feet and a bill but unusually for ducks, they were made of wood.

If you have seen any of these ducks (pictured below) or can help in their return, let Alan know.

Photos: MP&D; June 2008

The Queen’s Head Hog Roast and Jazz Band - 22 June 2008

Alan can make good weather happen! The Hog Roast and Jazz on the last day of the Beer Festival and Fete was a lovely day in the grounds of the Queen’s Head. The garden looked festive as the tents were still up from the fete – apart from one. Alan’s luck with weather is not always perfect; with seven or eight big tents and gazebos on his front lawn, what weather condition would he really not want ..... gales! So, that’s exactly what we had on Sunday morning. We noticed some fabric flapping on one of the tents and when we were fixing it, the other end, thirty feet away, collapsed under the force of the wind. Some emergency dismantling with the help of Arthur (the hog roaster) and Peter from across the Street stopped it blowing away completely and possibly damaging the other tents. Unfortunately, some of the poles bent and the plastic joints broke so it’s just good for spares now.

By the time the Hog Roast got under way, the weather was sunny and warm. The Brandeston Pickles jazz band was playing in the shade of the big tent and people started pouring into the grounds. Tables and chairs were moved out of the restaurant to help seat over 100 people. The different beers from the festival were still available. Arthur, the Randalls’ family friend, roasted the pig while Steve Cannell and his team in the kitchen prepared the salads and puddings. The attentive staff as ever provided excellent service.

This was a good end to a terrific weekend – a warm and sunny afternoon in the gardens of a country pub in England with good food, good beer and lots of people just having a relaxing time with friends and family.

The Brandeston Pickles Waiting for lunch Tiger and friends The Salads The Diners One of the families Another family Peter and June Mike Greg Catherine

Brandeston Beer Festival - 20, 21 and 22 June 2008

If you throw hops, malted barley, yeast and water together you eventually end up with beer. It seems essentially to be a very simple process and one that has been around for a very long time. It’s amazing, therefore, how frequently it can go wrong and, as far as most home brews are concerned, very wrong. My father-in-law went through a phase a long time ago of making homebrew. On one visit, I was offered a glass of his “really good” beer. I said that I didn’t like to taste the yeast, which is often the case with home brewed beer, but I was assured that his beer was not like that and was more or less perfect. I think he must have been drinking too much of it because I could smell the yeast as soon as I went to drink it and the overwhelming impression? Well, it was of yeast, of course. I finished the glass but that was the last time I’ve had homebrew.

For a long time, I stopped drinking Adnams Best because it tended to give me the mother and father of all headaches and while in my younger drinking days, a hangover was a minor side effect and possibly a badge of honour for a good night out, there comes a time when the unfortunate but seemingly unavoidable secondary effects become more significant than the primary effect. Lagers, wines and G&Ts were the substitutes but in recent time, I’ve moved back to Adnams and the side effects don’t seem to happen as often nor to the same extent as they used to.

So, the Brandeston Beer Festival, the excellent backdrop to the village fete at the Queen’s Head, was an event where a variety of beers could be sampled on our doorstep without worrying about how to get home - very much like the village hall’s Wine Club, really.

Unlike homebrews which always go wrong, all these beers were well produced. That’s not to say that all the beers tasted good or that I would spend an evening in their company. There were definitely some winners but there were also some odd tasting ones among them.

Brains from Cardiff was a good place to start. I’d never liked it much – we had Hancocks (another Cardiff brewery) or Felinfoel (from near Llanelli and on one occasion a guest beer at the Cretingham Bell) locally. I quite enjoyed it but there could be a bit of bias in this. It reminded me a little of Adnams but without the depth of flavour.

Festival Beers Wickwar Brewery, Station Porter 6.1% St Austell, Tribute 4.2%% Copper Dragon, Golden Pippen 3.9% Arundel ASD  4.5% Oakleaf Brewery, I cant believe its not bitter 4.9% Westons Organic Cider 7.2% Brains SA 4.2% Wells and Youngs bitter 3.7% Mauldons, Suffolk Pride 4.8% Earl Soham Brewery, Victoria bitter 3.6% Earl Soham Brewery, Brandeston Gold 4.5% The Adnams Range on the Bar Bitter, 3.7% Broadside, 4.7% Expolrer, 4.3% East Green, 4.0% Regatta, 4.3% Tally Ho, 7.0%

My fellow taster didn’t get past the first sip.

My favourite without any doubt was the St Austell beer. It clearly travels well and was easy to drink. My fellow taster thought it was fruity and tasty. We both had more of this than any of the others.

This can’t be said of the Youngs beer. Youngs always tastes pretty good on a trip to London but this one was slightly thin and tending to be flat. The bouquet, as some of the wine tasters would say, was of a dirty dishcloth. It was just not pleasant and not to my taste. Unlike the St Austell brew, the A12 was a road too far for this beer.

My fellow taster thought the Mauldons beer was fruity and fragrant and reminiscent of Adnams Regatta.

Brandeston Gold, made from our own Victor’s malted barley, was good and can be found locally.

Then there was Adnams East Green – a carbon neutral beer. This sort of thing is an absolute, major turnoff for me. There’s a restaurant in Southwold with a menu that shows how many food miles each dish has consumed alongside its price. It just doesn’t do anything for me and makes me cross by implying that if I eat there, I will save the planet. I won’t eat there, not because I don’t want the planet saved nor that I don’t like local food. I just don’t want it pushed down my throat and any restaurant would do more for the planet by not being there in the first place. East Green seems to be trying to do the same but Adnams, I feel, forgot to add flavour presumably because it would be carbon negative to do so. Some of the comments at the brief tasting were anodyne, watery and unpleasant. Someone did think that it had a hint of Adnams flavour.

That was about it on the tasting; we didn’t get around them all and we forgot to write things down at times. We tried to start again at the Hog Roast but decided that Adnams Best was actually what it said – the best - and we stuck to it for most of the afternoon before drifting into the G&Ts when I felt that I was drowning. What was remarkable was the variation in flavour, bitterness and alcohol content across the 18 beers of this event and if I lived in any of the areas where the festival beers were made, I would enjoy them tremendously but the great thing about the Queen’s Head event was that we could compare others with our own Adnams. Alan did an excellent job of nursing them through the three days and the black bags containing ice helped to keep the barrels in cellar-like conditions.

The Festival was an excellent event and good fun. Roll on next year when we’ll do a better job of getting around the beers and taking notes.

If anyone else want to write a piece about the event, please send it to me and I’ll add it to this review.

Outside the Queen Chris and Richard If only ..... Sarah and Daniel Marian and Mary Tiger, Pete and Tim

New Year’s Eve 2007