March Ale Trail

On Friday the 23rd myself and the usual suspects went out for our monthly Ale Trail. It was Andy G's turn to drive but unfortunately his car wouldn't start (so he says !) so Nigel stepped up and volunteered again. He won't have drive for four months now.
Our first stop was the Culm Valley Inn at Culmstock in Devon. It was quite a trek out there but it was worth it.
It's renowned for having up to ten ales on at weekends all served direct from the cask. This night we had a choice of seven beers, all from local breweries. I went for an O'Hanlons Firefly first at 3.7%, this is a light bitter with fruit flavours but a little uninspiring. Next I tried a Bays Best also at 3.7%, this was more to my liking.
As its Wetherspoon festival time we decided to cut short our visit and start to head back to Chard, but not before we had called into the Half Moon Inn at Clayhidon.

Here we all tried an Ale from a new brewery at Plymouth called Pilgrim which at 4.4% was well received by all.We shall have to keep an eye on their progress at the Plymouth Brewery when their website is up and running.
We then headed on back to Chard to see what festival beers were on offer. Again there were only three from the festival catalogue on sale but two were quite good so it wasn't quite so disappointing.
We all went for the Caledonian Coffee Porter at 4.3% first (Nigel had taken the car home first and met up with us). This is an exclusive to the festival beer with its official launch in May and was well received by all.
I next went for a Batemans Smokey Joe at 4.8% and boy was it smokey tasting just like a bonfire but not at all unpleasant. The last beer on in the festival was Wadworths Swordfish at 5.0% but having tasted Andy J's I decided not to bother and went for another pint of the Coffee Stout.
And so ended another Ale Trail, watch this space for next months outing