The Clifton Arms, Caversham

In which I journey into Reading, Caversham, and Tilehurst 😨 in search of the first new ticks in my 2025 edition of the Good Beer Guide.
The September forecast was for showers which I naively thought we could dodge.  Hopping off the train at Reading station, we crossed the Thames into Christchurch Meadows, where the heavens opened and I got chastised for not bringing anything waterproof.
Our intended destination was The Clifton Arms...but the Fox & Hounds came first...

The Fox and Hounds (51 Gosbrook Road, Caversham, RG4 8BN)
This is a cracking, well-known, Berkshire pub, with a well-deserved reputation for cask ales and craft beer.
Five cask options to pick from, featuring Arbor, Brass Castle, Wylam, Fyne, and the local Elusive Brewery.  I stuck local myself, with a fine 'Arc' pale ale from Elusive.  Served by a friendly young man who got into a discussion with us about how many people dived into pint measures of sour beers (more than we'd imagine).

This was probably the quietest I've seen the Fox & Hounds, although the clock had only just ticked past noon.  But I didn't need a crowd of folk to be content this lunchtime, sheltered from the rain, pint of pale ale in a handled mug, Fontaines DC in the background never sounding so good.

I know it was only supposed to be a quick stop for a bit of shelter, but I couldn't resist picking something else from the craft selection.  That'd be a Verdant 10 years celebration 8% double-IPA collaboration with US brewery Fidens.  Mmmmm.

Here's a bit of blue plaque history on the outside of the Fox & Hounds...

The rain had stopped.
And we were thirty seconds brisk walk down the road from the new Beer Guide entry, The Clifton Arms.
So, to be honest, we didn't really need to stop to shelter in the Fox & Hounds, which just shows it was a sham excuse to start the day on double-IPAs. 

The Clifton Arms (12 Gosbrook Road, Caversham, RG4 8BS)
I must have walked past this a fair few times, having (I think) visited all the other nearby Caversham pubs.  It's a proper traditional boozer that has been in the hands of the same landlady since 1995.
With a needy dog that gets the best bit of cushioned bench seating in the house and multiple signs telling us she doesn't need buggers like us waking her up to be stroked.

  

The 2025 Beer Guide is looking good, even though I much prefer 2024's Iron Maiden cover to fictional pubs from soap operas.  The counties are back in alphabetical order, which is a very welcome improvement, meaning it doesn't take me five minutes trying to find the region I live in.
I have four new Oxfordshire pubs to visit, and seven to keep up with the completion of neighbouring Berkshire.  We'd reduce that by two on this trip.

But just remember that the Good Beer Guide doesn't always lead you to the places with the widest or most exotic real ale choices...

So, we had a beer I wasn't especially excited by and a dog I couldn't stroke.
But, on the plus side, Mrs PropUptheBar could watch Chelsea winning on the TV (she'd skipped the Brakspear, "the original taste of Oxfordshire" (according to the pump clip), and was drinking J2O).
There were a decent number of punters in for the early hour, someone feeding the jukebox and lining up hard rock classics to compete with the football commentary.

There was no 8% craft beer to tempt me into a second in the Clifton Arms, so we moved on, getting an 'enjoy your day' and 'cheerio' from the locals, which is always a good sign. 
We crossed the river again and walked back into the busy centre of Reading, aiming for somewhere I'd not been for many a year.

Zero Degrees Microbrewery and Restaurant (9 Bridge Street, Reading, RG1 2LR)
Part of a small chain, this brewpub opened in Reading in 2007.  It stretches from a frontage of a traditional red-brick building on Gun Street (the restaurant bit), to the modern steel frame construction at the back on Bridge Street (the bar and brewery bit).
I've always found it a bit of a 'cold' place with a sparse choice of seating around the bar - none of it comfy.

But I've had a fair few good beers here over the years, including getting caught out by a 6% Märzen that didn't mix well with rum cask cider in the Ale House.

On this occasion I was drawn to the Black Lager, the other option being their signature mango pale ale.
Exmoor pull off calling a beer 'The Beast' quite well. 
This 4.6% lager didn't really live up to the name.

Zero Degrees provide the latest shiny brewing equipment pictures for the blog...

Thank you very much to Mrs PropUptheBar for the pizza and beer in Zero Degrees.  Although she wasn't feeling quite so generous to treat me to the Meter-Long...

Doesn't say how wide it is though, does it?!

We drank up swiftly after checking bus times, and jumped straight aboard a waiting Purple 17 to Tilehurst.
Where the sun always shines.
The blue skies over our next Beer Guide listed pub were a dramatic change from the lunchtime rain.

The Victoria (1 Norcot Road, Tilehurst, RG30 6BP)
Of all the new places to visit in Berkshire in the new beer guide, I hadn't expected to be making a trek into Tilehurst again.  Perhaps I should have just started at the sizzling grill Tylers Rest and crawled around the lot, pre-empting Reading CAMRA sticking the next one in the guide!

At the Victoria we found a trio of real ales available: Pride, alongside seasonal offerings from Butcombe or St Austell.
I ordered a pint of the St Austell 'Thunder Struck', 'cos...y'know...AC/DC.

In a previous life this pub was called The White House, under the stewardship of the long-gone Blatch's Brewery of Theale.
It has undergone a big refurbishment in 2014 turning it into everything you'd expect from a suburban all-rounder.

It was doing a roaring Saturday afternoon trade, with sandwiches laid out for some sort of function in one area, and folks being drawn to the garden by the revitalised weather.
We grabbed one of the last remaining tables where we could keep track of the latest football scores on a TV screen.
You'll spot the young lad in his replica Forest kit in the picture above.  I got chatting football with his Derby-county supporting granddad.  Only for the youngster - in his glorious Forest kit - to pipe up "I'm Spurs, me".

Crucially, that St Austell beer was on good form. 
Two new Berkshire pubs from the Good Beer Guide, both serving good beer.  Who would have thought it?

Berkshire Brewery Bonanza

In which we travel from Wokingham to Reading, taking in a quartet of breweries along the way.
Hopping off the train at midday we braved the walk through a sudden deluge of rain, making our way to the centre of town and the Outhouse Brewery. 

Outhouse Brewery (Unit 4, Southgate House, Alexander Court, Wokingham, RG40 2SL- web)
This brewpub opened on the 9th July 2021 - rather inconveniently for me as I was standing outside it two days before that date the last time I was in town.
It's owned by a chap called Peter Rhodes who starting brewing beer in the cellar of a Chichester terrace before moving to Wokingham and locating the brew kit in his outhouse.  Hence the name.  And - as you can see - he's now upgraded from the outhouse to a brewpub.

Top marks for the bright and enthusiastic staff who were keen to tell us which of the ten beers were their favourites, chatting cheerily to us and offering us tasters.
I picked the 'Big DIPA' - a dangerous 7.3% ABV to start the day.

We settled into the spacious side room, sat in front of bits of brewing kit, entertained by a soundtrack of Blur, Oasis and the Manics which was pure Q Magazine best of the nineties.

Wokingham has previous form in expanding its boundaries for Good Beer Guide entries listed under the town name.
The Oakingham Belle in 2022 as far out on the edge of town as you can get.
The Crooked Billet in 2021, a mile beyond the Welcome to Wokingham sign, surrounded by fields and farmhouses.
But Elusive Brewery is really taking the biscuit...  

It was a 5-mile, 30-minute trip from the town centre to somewhere that could more justifiably be listed as Arborfield, Finchamstead or Farley Hill. 
To get there we caught the Leopard 3 bus to the Robinson Crusoe stop - names which make it sound like a way more exciting journey and destination than it really was.

A few minutes walk through the twists and turns of the Hogwood Industrial Estate, the Elusive Brewery banners pointing us in the right direction, and we found ourselves here...

Elusive Taproom (Unit 5, Marino Way, Hogwood Road, RG40 4RF - web)
At a proper brewery tap, with an open shutter, brewing kit on view, and German beer garden style bench seating under gazebos.
Inside there are a handful of tables and a couple of video game consoles, the bar on one side with a plethora of framed awards hung above the beer taps.

I picked the tasty keg 'Assassin's Trail', brewed in collaboration with Roosters Brewery. 
Then thought I should really try the solitary cask ale - 'Serano Pale Ale' - being as you don't often find a hand pump at an industrial estate brewery tap room with limited opening hours.

Straight across the road from Elusive are the big boys of Berkshire brewing...

Siren Taproom (18 Marino Way, Finchampstead, RG40 4RF - web)
It was winter 2018 when I was here last during the Beast from the East, huddled against the chill clutching a stupidly strong DIPA.  
Marginally better weather this time, although don't bank on it in the summer of '23.

Inside the Tap House there were a trio of long social tables, with a decent crowd and a small queue to the bar when we arrived. 
Ten beers listed at the back of the bar, offering a great, varied selection, and Ricky Martin's 'Livin' La Vida Loca' playing in the background while we made our choices.

I ordered a trio of  beers:
A modern pale ale brewed in collaboration between Verdant and Rivington: 'Never Known Sharks Like It'.
The Siren/SALT collab 'Birthday Bourbon' - a great stout at a sensible strength.
And Siren 'Send Me More Sunshine' - a "massive mango sour".  Worth it for the craft photo opportunity...

We did much clock-watching, not wanting to miss the hourly bus for our onward journey to Reading.

Where we made a quick stop in the Alehouse - thereby spoiling the brewery theme, but worth it for a fabulous pint and the usual heavy prog rock soundtrack.

 
Then we set out on one last bus ride to reach the fourth and final taproom of the day.

To get there we took a bus up Oxford Road, hopping off at the Pond House pub.
Better pub bloggers than me would have called in to investigate...

But we had not time to stop for the £2.80 Fosters.

We strode on, taking a right at the roundabout and following the hubbub of conversation emanating from a dull-looking industrial estate.

Double-Barrelled Taproom (Unit 20 Stadium Way, Tilehurst, RG30 6BX - web)
Wow, this was busy.  Families, young folk, couples, craft beer geeks, loads of excitable dogs.
Lots of happy people.  In Tilehurst.

Double Barrelled are another brewery that started on a small scale in a Caversham garage.  They've made a fair leap in size as they now brew 1.3 million pints a year at this site.

There were 12 beers on offer, 9 of their own creations plus guests from Yonder, Bristol Beer Factory and Napton Cidery.
I picked a 6% ABV West Coast IPA called 'What's Your 20?'
What's that beer name mean?

We accompanied the ale with a pretty superb and wickedly spicy paneer wrap from the Desi Infusion food truck parked outside.

I'd wanted to hold on for food at Oxford Road's Polish pub, The White Eagle.
But it didn't seem to be serving the most traditional of Polish cuisine... 

So instead we predictably ended up in the Nags Head where I sampled the very peculiar 'Tzatziki Sour' by Orbit.  And several more besides.

A nice day out: three breweries in industrial units, a brewpub, and two top-notch Reading pubs.

Green Tiny Rebel in the Nags Head

The arrival of Tiny Rebel's 11th birthday beers at the Nags Head provided Mrs PropUptheBar with an excuse to make a rare midweek excursion to drink 11% triple IPA's.
And an excuse for me to set out early and visit a couple of Beer Guide pubs either side of Reading beforehand.

First up:The Wheelwright's Arms, located around 5-miles from Reading, within walking distance from Winnersh station which was, on this occasion, being served by rail replacement buses.   Somebody had managed to search out the most decrepit double-deckers in the Thames Valley to ferry the handful of passengers through the suburbs...Gaffer tape covered the rips in the seats and possibly held the rest of the bus together too.

Once I'd made it to Winnersh it was a walk up Robin Hood Lane, across the motorway, then a left turn into a quiet lane which took me to the pub.

The Wheelwight's Arms (Davis Way, St Nicholas Hurst, RG10 0TR - web)
Being a Wadworth house, the real ale options on the bar were 'Horizon', Henry's IPA', 'Swordfish', or '6X', with two hand pumps for each making it look like there was more choice than there really was. 

It's a fair trek from Reading for a pint of 6X.
Yet I was quite content sitting next to the unlit fireplace, reading the paper and sipping my beer.  The old 18th century building was once a wheelwright's shop - hence the name.  It has been extended to the rear to provide more dining space, but the front section has wooden beams and chunky stone walls, retaining a little bit of a country pub feel to it.  

I doubt they'd pick the cricket-themed wallpaper for the gents again.  Looks like some wag decided every cricketer needed additional detail adding in the crotch region, before somebody else has followed them around with an eraser, trying to restore some decency...

With the pub tick done in St Nicholas Hurst, I headed back into Reading and hopped aboard the Purple 17 bus to take me out through the wild west of town.
This deposited me in Tilehurst and within a housing estates walk of 2023 Beer Guide re-entry, the Royal Oak.

The Royal Oak (69 Westwood Glen, Tilehurst, RG31 5NW)
Now completely surrounded by the expansion of Tilehurst, in times gone by it would have been a walk across the fields to get to this old pub.  A Greene King sign marks the bottom of the steep driveway leading up to the inn.
The two main rooms, each with their own bar counter, are quite different: cosy upstairs, more spartan downstairs.

It's a wet-led pub serving two real ales from anonymous pumps with no clips attached.  Further investigation revealed a blackboard advertising Windsor & Eton 'Guardsman' and Greene King's seasonal six nations brew 'Scrum Down'.

Picking the rugby-themed beer again!
GK 'Scrum Down' served in a Wild Weather glass.

I was under strict instructions from Mrs PropUptheBar to get to the Nags Head early and make sure that nobody drank all the Coffee and Popcorn Stout before she arrived.
But I gambled that the Tiny Rebel craft wouldn't be selling quite that fast on a midweek afternoon and that I could make one more random pub visit in Tilehurst.
The Plough - that'll do...

The Plough (78 School Road, Tilehurst, RG31 5AW)
This was very much a locals pub, an open plan room stretching around a long bar counter.  All quite recently smartened up, but long enough ago for the tub chairs to acquire all manner of dubious stains.
Pints of Carling looked to be the norm for the locals sat at the bar, although the lone cask hand pump was serving a Loddon 'Hocus Pocus' which was a nice surprise.  And not a half bad pint of dark ale either.

I sat in the window alcove on the far left of the pub, with the bus stop just a few meters away, wondering if it was possible to neck my pint when I saw a bus coming down the road and get out in time to catch it. 
No.  It's not.  You can just about make it in time to see the back of it disappearing towards Reading, but luckily they're pretty frequent.

After waiting a short while in the cold, the bus took me down along the chaos of Oxford Road where I hopped off and made the familiar trek to the Nags Head.

Nags Head (5 Russell Street, Reading RG1 7XD - web)
It's tough to find a happy medium in the Nags - head down on a sporty Saturday and it can be uncomfortably busy - Thursday late afternoon was perhaps a little too quiet.  But at least it meant I got to settle in my favourite seat next to the framed game of Risk on the wall, which must mean something to someone.

The keg lines had been dedicated to Tiny Rebel who'd concocted 8 new beers in various styles to celebrate their 11th birthday.
All with colourful pump clips depicting traditional beer ingredients such as doughnuts, ice cream, pineapple and shortbread fingers.

The letters page in the Metro covered the major issue that W.H from South Gloucestershire can't get a decent bag of crisps in the pub.
I was quite happy with my Jalapeno Real hand cooked crisps, accompanying the Tiny Rebel beers that I'd brought two at a time and gotten mixed up as to which was which.

 

It turned into quite a long day.
We got hooked on the Europa league footy on the TV and accidentally tried all eight of the Tiny Rebel birthday beers before we remembered we had a train home to catch.

Phantom Brewing, Reading

Reading has a new brewery hidden away in the side-streets.
And a relatively new central taproom for Berkshire brewer Wild Weather.
And a 2020 Good Beer Guide entry that I've never been to.
So on (yet another) wet and windy February weekend we hopped on the train to visit all of the above.

The Moderation (213 Caversham Road, RG1 8BB - web)
First things first, we headed to the 2020 Beer Guide entry.
The Moderation is a mix of pub and restaurant, with a fusion menu containing various SE Asian dishes alongside traditional pub fodder.
The front bar has Six Nations flags hanging from the ceiling and footy on TV.
Mixed in with some lesser seen pub decorations...

BRAPA was in the Moderation a few weeks ago, reporting how his chosen beer ran out, but they "still squeezed one out, which was pure 'cleaning lines fluid".  We were to get a repeat performance as the Bath Ales 'Gem' filled half the glass, before some determined hand-pull pumpin' commenced, the last dregs spluttering out of the barrel.
This left one ale on offer, an Otter 'Bitter', which was, well...just okay.

This seems to be a bit of a rogue guide entry by Reading CAMRA who do like to throw in a few curve-balls. 

Phantom Brewing is located in roughly the same part of Reading as the Moderation, north-west of the train station.  To get there we negotiated several streets of terraced housing, eventually leading into an industrial estate.

Are we going the right way?

It's safe to say you're probably not gonna stumble across it by mistake.
We had a moment of doubt about opening hours when we saw the big closed shutter, although the presence of the food van gave us the confidence to stride up to the small door.

Phantom Brewing Co (Unit 3, Meadow Road, RG1 8LB - fb)
Once inside, it's a pleasant surprise to find a reasonable number of folks in an intriguing venue.
At the far end is the 12 barrel brewery, which was up-and-running in November 2019.  To one side is the semi-enclosed 'The Haunt' where the bar stands, and you get the luxury of heaters, rugby on the TV and marginally more comfy seating than the German beer-fest benches elsewhere.

The folks of Reading get a pretty good choice of craft ales already, the lucky blighters, and The Haunt at Phantom Brewing further increases this.
With 13 taps, there were 6 of their own creations available on our visit, plus a good choice of top-notch offerings from the likes of Arbor and Neon Rapture. 

Too many DIPA's led to ADHD?!  No problem, as there's plenty to keep you occupied here.

There's Skee Ball in the corner, darts, table football (which we got quite hooked on), and it's not often that you come across a 22ft table shuffleboard.

Shuffle Board - harder than it looked.

Here's some practical stuff, on the off-chance that anyone's actually found this post and got this far down and wants practical stuff...
Opening hours are limited at present - Friday 3-10pm and Saturday 1-10pm & don't take a big wadge of cash as it's card only at the bar.

Setting out this morning, a visit to the Weather Station was intended to be the main reason to come to Reading.
But we may have a got a little waylaid in here...

Which means by the time we actually got to the Weather Station it was the point of the day where I'm struggling with my beer, taking some odd photos, and failing to recollect much about the place the next day. 
Hell's bells - how many times do I manage to do this?!

Weather Station (19 Eldon Terrace, Reading, RG1 4DX - fb)

Yep, I need to make a revisit here, ticking it off at the start of the day.
As I say, odd photos.  Nothing to actually show what the place was like, but there is one of the contents of the shelf next to where we were sat.

Everything you ever need.

Whereas the Eldon Arms (which this was previously) had traditional pub comforts, the Wild Weather crew have set this up in craft bar/taproom style, most notable with precarious stools around barrels as tables. 
The lighting is dim, there's hip music, and lots of WW's recognisable artwork.
And a fantastic beer list, of course.
From which I picked something ridiculously strong and hard work.

I'll be back, and I'll do it justice next time.  Cheers!