Stocks Bar, Abingdon, offers discount to Camra members
Going one step further to encourage real ale drinkers to the pub, the Stocks Bar at the Crown and Thistle Hotel on Bridge Street in Abingdon [map], is now offering a discount of 20p per pint of real ale and a 25% discount on bar food to anyone showing their Camra card when ordering.
More information can be found on the back page of this month’s Oxford Drinker, which can be found in most good pubs covered by the Oxford Camra branch. The current edition also includes the first part of the Abingdon pub survey and a report of the Stocks winter beer festival.
It is one of the first two pubs in the Oxford area to be awarded Camra LocAle status, which is awarded to pubs that regularly serve good quality beer brewed within a 25 mile radius. The Stocks achieves this by having beer from the White Horse Brewery, and from Wychwood/Brakspears.
May 11, 2009
Posted in: abingdon, pubs 
No Comments
King’s Head and Bell, Abingdon could reopen this autumn.
The King’s Head and Bell on East Saint Helen’s Street in Abingdon has been closed since Autumn 2007.  It is a historical coaching inn in one of the oldest streets in Abingdon. I believe the reason for its closure was structural damage making it too dangerous to continue using.
Last year it was purchased by Foundation Inns, who applied for planning permission to renovate it. The plans can be seen by visiting the Vale of White Horse District Council’s Planning permission web site and entering reference number as 08/00939/FUL
Work has been proceeding over the last few months, including demolition company, electricians and plasterers, and skip loads of junk were appearing outside. A week or so ago, work stopped.
Following various rumours going around town ranging from ‘its going to be demolished’ to ‘its turning into a wine bar’ and speculation of it getting mixed up with the Old Gaol development, none of which matched up with what Foundation Inns is all about, or what the planning permission application stated.  So I wrote an email to the directors of Foundation Inns to try to get more information.
I received two replies, one from Gavin Drew the Commercial & Finance Director, and another from Ian Grundy the managing director.  These replies say that work is now complete on making the building structurally safe, but due to the current market situation the plans need to be scaled down a bit, so requires re-applying for planning permission. It should open this summer or autumn and will be a traditional pub with real ales and reasonably priced food.  The full replies are at the end of this article.
May 6, 2009
Posted in: Alcohol, abingdon, pubs No Comments
Stocks Bar - Beer, Blues and Jazz Festival
As mentioned in the previous post, the Stocks bar in Abingdon has seen a huge improvement to its beer range and cellar quality over the last year to become one of the best real ale pubs in the Oxford area.
It is holding its 3rd beer festival this weekend (Friday 3rd April - Monday 6th April). Previous beer festivals have been very good with an excellent range of beers, mostly locally sourced.
March 31, 2009
Tags: abingdon, beer, pubs Posted in: abingdon, pubs No Comments
Update on Abingdon Pubs over the last year
I haven’t made many blog entries recently, but now the summer is on its way, it is time to be more active.
Pubs in Abingdon have seen some major improvements over the last year. After the take over and closure of the Morlands Brewery and Morrels Brewery by Greene King around the end of millenium, we ended up with something of a beer wilderness in Abingdon where almost every pub was run by Greene King and all served the same small selection of beers (Greene King IPA, Morland Original and maybe one guest… but all the pubs seem to choose the same guest each month). Not that there is anything wrong with Greene King beers, but I like to have a choice.
March 31, 2009
Tags: abingdon, beer, pubs Posted in: abingdon, pubs No Comments
Hop Harvesting, European Beer Festival
I have just made a blog post on the Oxford Brewer’s Group blog about hop harvesting
Also, at the weekend I was in Copenhagen visiting the European Beer Festival. This was an amazing event with lots of interesting things. Expect some blog entries from me about this over the next few days.
And thirdly… last week we released the Camra Good Beer Guide 2009 mobile edition to coincide with the launch of the book. You can find more information about this on the Camra web site.
September 15, 2008
Tags: beer, camra, Craft Brewing, gardening, hops Posted in: Craft Brewing, hops, pubs No Comments
Wifi with Gentoo Linux on Acer TravelMate 7510
I just spent ages fixing a problem when I upgraded the kernel to version 2.6.24
To get wifi working on this laptop I use the following packages:
- acer_acpi : Provides access to the special keys, one of which turns wifi on or off.
- madwifi-ng : The kernel driver for the wifi network hardware.
With the previous version of kernel 2.6.23 this was working fine, apart from the wifi light switched off during the boot, but if I pressed it at the right time, it would all work fine.
With 2.6.24 several problems occured:
May 11, 2008
Posted in: linux, sysadmin One Comment
This blog
This blog is not really working as I had planned… I had expected to post mostly technical stuff about software development, but it has actually turned out to be mostly about brewing and pubs. Now that this is also syndicated on my company’s web site I plan to split the blog into two. One for personal hobbies such as craft brewing, and another for more technical stuff. I’ll post a small item with URLs for each blog on here when I’ve sorted it out
April 29, 2008
Posted in: Uncategorized No Comments
Pubs closing down… do they want customers???
The Oxford mail had a report the other day about how pubs are losing business because of the smoking ban. In particular the landlord of the Plough in Abingdon says he is closing down because he has lost over 50% of his trade since the ban. However some other pubs are reporting an increase in trade. I admit I rarely go the Plough because there is no good reason for me to do so. It serves only one real ale (Greene King IPA) and does nothing to differentiate itself from other pubs. It still has the look and feel of a local boozer. Read the rest of this post »
January 4, 2008
Posted in: Alcohol, pubs No Comments
Good Customer Service : Punch Bowl and Brewery Tap, Abingdon
As a contrast to a previous posting which has since been removed about the poor service we received in an Abingdon pub, I thought I’d balance it with praise for some good customer service we received in various Abingdon pubs on the same day.
The Punch Bowl staff and landlady were friendly and welcoming as usual. In addition they offered free turkey and cranberry rolls, and warm mince pies to all the customers. The Morland Original I drank was in good condition and well served. Read the rest of this post »
December 24, 2007
Posted in: Alcohol, pubs No Comments
Host names and Beer…
We have now put our mobile Good Pub Guide into beta testing. If you want to try it then text the word GOODPUB to 87080 which will take you to the download site where you can obtain the java application for your phone. During beta testing it is free to use apart from your data transfer costs through your operator which should be fairly small compared to using web sites. This works on all major UK operators and on most handsets from the last few years (requires MIDP2 java ). By texting in you are agreeing that we can use your network operator to locate where you are so that we can search for pubs near you. The application shows details from the Good Pub Guide 2008 as well as maps.
October 20, 2007
Posted in: Software Development, mobile No Comments
