More Craft Beer on Malta

Our base for a week sweltering in Malta was Buġibba, on the north-east of the island.
Architecturally, it's a nightmare of modern apartment blocks and busy roads, with a barren area of scrub-land in the middle of the peninsula, home to the town's cats.

On the plus side, you get sunsets...

An authentic megalithic temple in the grounds of the Double Tree hotel...

And a great crest for the local football team...

But, it has to be said that Buġibba isn't really a great destination for the artisan beer enthusiast. 
Cisk is the dominant beer, strangely preferred in bottles or cans in some of the bars.  We saw a fair bit of the Farsons range, from the same brewing conglomerate as Cisk, as well as lots of Guinness, Stella, Heineken, and - the oddly prolific - Charles Wells 'Bombardier'.

Our best local bar turned out to be the Craftsman Tap...

The Craftsman Tap (Triq Il-Port, San Pawl il-Baħar)
An interesting first visit on a Saturday evening found the place thriving with all tables taken in the cool air-conditioned interior, and a gentleman entertaining the masses.
Apologies, I can't credit either the singer in his snazzy suit, nor the owner of the grizzled elbow in my picture. 

I grabbed a Huskie 'IPA', Huskie being the country's lesser-seen craft micro.  

The bar also served two beers from the Sliema brewpub, somewhere we planned to visit ourselves.  But, bizarrely, the handful of English customers served whilst I waited at the bar all opted for cans of Skol.  

The crooning was too loud and drove us outside to the terrace within a couple of songs, darts from Blackpool providing the entertainment on the outdoor TV.

When we returned mid-week, the bar was much quieter, although had a steady succession of locals trotting in to say hello to the staff and sink a couple of beers.
Hits of the 80's on TV proved easier to handle than the live entertainment and we sat inside on uncomfortable cocktail bar stools, back on the Huskie IPA and the same breweries 'Chaos' stout from the bottle fridge.

We needed to travel a little further afield for some more adventurous beer finds.
On Thursday afternoon we caught the bus for the 45 minute ride south, through St Julian's, and on to Sliema.
36°C is probably enough to deter even the most committed of persons on a Curated Cisk Pub Crawl.  It wasn't long before I was grumbling about the sweaty patches engulfing my shirt and my annual summer holiday sunburn incident.

Still up in the thirties in the evening: it was really too hot for wandering around bars, but we tried our best.

The first point of call, on the Sliema waterfront (as long as you ignore the four lanes of road between the buildings and the sea) is Malta's brewpub.

 

The Brew Grill & Brewery (74 The Strand Tas, Tas-Sliema)
Everyone had gravitated towards the seating on the covered terrace out front, although I have no idea what makes people intent to sit outside when it's so hot.  We were initially the only customers inside, where it was a little cooler in the basement room, although it filled up nicely whilst we were there.

Here's the beer list, a couple of the ales unavailable on our visit, although we made light work of making our way through everything else that was on offer.
In fact, we nailed the beer list and finished on Dry Hard Cider (an unwise 8%) and IPArol Spritz (just unwise in general).

My favourite was the APA, although kudos for a quality Bourbon Stout, the bourbon flavours making it taste more like an imperial than the (still quite hefty) 7% that it was.

Hey, I haven't included a shiny brewing equipment picture on the blog for some time...

Making an exit from the brewpub, we branched off into the narrow streets of Sliema to a pub with an exotic-sounding name.

The Salisbury Arms (81 Triq Il-Kbira, Sliema)
Yep, it's English run, will show you Premier League football, and serve you an English breakfast and pint of John Smith's Smooth.

Mrs PropUptheBar splashed out on the grilled swordfish whilst I went for the budget friendly €9.50 Maltese cottage cheese pasta.  An authentic Maltese dish, apparently, and about the only traditional dish I'd be likely to have with the others being very rabbit-orientated.

The TV screens showed local football team Ħamrun Spartans tackling Armenian side Pyunik in a Champions League qualifying match.  Oh, I might have made the effort to go to the ground had I known that was happening.  Although it was stupidly hot to be watching football. Let alone playing it - no idea how they managed to run around in such temperatures.

Right, just time to bring you an unnecessary picture of the WC signage... 

And to search those football scarves hung from the ceiling for one from a decent team.
Ah, there you go! 😊

We had one more pub on our short list to visit on this hot evening.
Which was probably just as well, as all that beer and cider at The Brew had gone to my head. 

Hole in the Wall Bar & Cafe (31 High Street, Sliema)
This building was originally a stables before it was sold and converted to a bar in 1922.
It's certainly a smart and interesting place, proffering coffee, cake, craft beer, and arts and music events.  The Hole in the Wall gets mentioned in most lists of beer places on Malta, although I didn't think it was great as a beer bar.  No taps, just a small selection of cans and bottles in the fridge.

I picked a Stretta 'Pale Ale' in a can, one of the Maltese breweries that had eluded me until this point.
We took our drinks and sat on a table next to the free, multi-game arcade machine and before I knew it I was hooked.
Lots of joystick wiggling trying to remember those special moves on Tekken.

And that proved to be quite enough, thank you very much.
We caught the next bus back to Buġibba - welll...jumped in front of it as it tried to speed past our stop, is more accurate.

Somehow, my capacity for beer regenerated on the bus ride and I thought it was a good idea to pop into Fat Harry's Pub for a nightcap. 
On the busy main square of Buġibba, this was a reasonable English pub, bedecked with all the necessary olde worlde pub tat within, and selling the decent Red Mill Brewing Co IPA on draft.

Here it is in the daytime...

And here it is inside of an evening - all the custom preferring the terrace to the back room with its Bass breweriana and Cisk flags.

 

We had an enjoyable week in Malta, battling the heat to complete a packed itinerary of churches, catacombs, air-raid shelters, megalithic stones, and the odd dip in the sea.
And I think we did a fair job of sampling a few craft beers alongside the Cisk, before catching out flight home.

Cheerio, Malta.

Searching for Craft beer in Valletta

Having given up on waiting for summer to arrive in the UK in 2024, we headed out for a week in Malta where there was ample sunshine and shorts weather.
In fact, it was so hot that I found myself pining for the overcast skies and rain showers of Minehead.  Yep, never happy.

Our first proper excursion with 'craft beer' on the itinerary was to the capital, Valletta.
The hilly streets of the town are strikingly wonderful, a wealth of impressive architecture whichever way you turn.

 

Mrs PropUptheBar is a bit of a WW2 history buff so we had to visit the war museum in St Elmo's fort at the tip of the peninsula (great views from the Bastion, but swelteringly hot).  We were later guided through the fascinating war tunnels (swelteringly hot, even underground).

Here's the view from the bastion, looking across to the controversial modern developments of Sliema on the other side of the bay.  For movie location buffs, the old barracks in the foreground starred as the Turkish jail in Midnight Express.

The temps were such that I worryingly had little enthusiasm for beer.  But a healthy late lunch salad and lots of water put that right, and we headed to The Pub in the middle of the afternoon.

This lady hasn't followed my instructions to act naturally when I take my pub picture.

The Pub (136 Archbishop Street, Valletta)
This small side-street bar is infamous as the place that actor Oliver Reed met his demise.  Reed was filming scenes for Gladiator in Malta in 1999 when he dropped dead after a drinking session with a group of sailors in The Pub on the 2nd May, aged just 61.
The Pub seem quite morbidly proud of this beer bar fatality.

I was pretty underwhelmed by this place when I visited many years ago, but I really quite liked it this time around.  It's small with a total of six tables in the ground floor room, hugging the walls either side with the fabric well-worn on the bench seating.  The bar is decorated throughout with pictures of our aforementioned hellraising actor and insignia of various naval crews that have passed through.

Beers on offer were Farson's 'Blue Label', Cisk, Strongbow, Guinness, and - rather more interesting - Red Mill Brewing Co. 'IPA' and 'Golden Ale'.

Established in 2023, Red Mill aren't quite the micro they appear - they're a craft offshoot of the island's big brewery Farsons, producers of Cisk, alongside their own ales.
That didn't stop me really enjoying the IPA which didn't suffer from over-carbonation or chilling that puts me off keg so often. 

Mrs PropUptheBar realised that the Cathedral was due to shut soon, so I valiantly agreed to stay in the pub and tackle the beers whilst she whizzed away to tick off the Caravaggio.
Therefore, The Pub can legitimately put up one of those 'Husband Creche' A-boards.

We moved on to what was touted as the cities top craft beer spot, appearing most frequently on Untappd.

67 Kapitali (67 Triq l-Ifran Il-Belt Valletta)
This was a comfortable single room corner bar with an unusual counter in that the draft taps were on the outside of it on one side facing the door.
They served 11 lines of beer from Malta's best known independent brewery, Lord Chambray, covering styles ranging from a strawberry sour to stout.  The hot weather made me pick something I'd usually steer well clear of - 'A Toda Velocidad', a Mexican lager packed with lime zest and brewed in collaboration with To Øl.

Our final beer bar in Valletta was a fair way through the streets back towards the barracks and bastion at the edge of the city.

Wild Honey Beer and Bistro House (131 Merchants Street, Valletta)
This was very quiet customer-wise, as we interrupted the barman from tinkering on his phone on a table in the corner.  There were a couple of other people called in whilst we were there, but we really didn't visit when the party was in full swing.

But it's a must-visit when in Valletta, with a good design, great music, a fine beer selection, and friendly staff.
I picked the Lord Chambray 'San Blas' on tap, whilst Mrs PropUptheBar made an excellent choice from the bottle fridge with the Lord Chambray one-off coconut stout.

Then I decided to be decadent and return to the fridge for a bottle of Westvleternen 12.

 

At that point, we hadn't really taken the opportunity to sample the best of the regular Lord Chambray range.  A couple of days later, we traveled north and hopped on the ferry to Gozo, where a visit to the brewery taproom was on the agenda.

Being a bit of a fan of some ancient stones, I was excited by the chance to visit Ggantja on Gozo.  I'd done the stone temples on the SW of Malta back in 2005, and covered a couple more smaller places from Julian Cope's Megalithic European during this week.
But Ggantja is the big one, an awesome complex on a massive scale, of which I don't have a single picture doing it justice. 

We caught the bus from the village of Xaghra down to Victoria, the island capital: overly busy with coachloads of folk, hectic and hot.  The attempt to walk around the walls of the Citadel in the mid-afternoon heat just about finished me off.

Another short bus ride took us to Xewkija, a couple of miles south of Victoria, and home to Lord Chambray on a small agricultural park.

Lord Chambray (Mgarr Road, Ix-Xewkija)
The brewery was set up in 2014 as the first craft brewery in Malta and has since enjoyed a fair bit of success.  Originally a reception area and small tasting area, the front bar has been transformed into a smart tap room over the subsequent years
There is a handy map on the website showing everywhere on the island that stocks their beers, acting as a good guide, although I typically spotted that when I was coming home.

Between us we tried the American pale ale, white IPA, wheat beer, wittbier with local rosemary, and Fungus Rock stout.
All great stuff.  Enjoyed in the air conditioning with a contemporary soundtrack of music I didn't recognise.
The Lord Chambray beers were great, but there was more local craft to be had in Sliema, which is what I'll be waffling on about in the next post.

Pub Ticking in Minehead and Surrounds

July 2024.  The British summer is noticeable by its absence.
I'd rather hoped to spend a couple of days on the Somerset coast looking across the Channel at Wales with glorious blue skies and sunsets.  It didn't work out that way and I got rather wet instead.

This was a short trip to visit a few pubs in that western bobble of Somerset that includes Exmoor and the Quantocks.  The bit that's letting my Somerset pub-ticking down.

Let's start a couple of miles outside of Minehead at the picturesque medieval village of Dunster.
This is a spectacular place and an obvious tourist draw, with a National Trust castle on the hill, and a high street full of gift shops, galleries, and tea rooms.  Up at the top of the High Street, by the old octagonal market hall, is the Luttrell Arms Hotel.

The Luttrell Arms (36 High Street, Dunster, TA24 8SG)
Dating back to the 15th century, it's Grade II listed, originally three houses, one of which belonged to a Richard Luttrell who provides the current name.

The route to the bar - directing you away from the main door so as not to upset the hotel guests - is a convoluted one.  In through one door, out into a small yard, back inside, past some folks dining in a snug that isn't really a snug, turn right...by this point I was wondered if I'd ever manage to find the bar.

I'm glad I did.  It's a bit of a museum piece, with timbered ceiling, pewter mugs hanging from the high beams, and displays of brass, guns, swords, and antlers galore.
Early afternoon it wasn't very busy - just a couple of chaps sat at the bar drinking the Exmoor ale, a few folks eating, and a couple of people outside in a hidden outdoor courtyard - a mini George, Southwark, with galleried walkways looking down on it.

The cask choice at the bar was Exmoor 'Ale', Otter 'Bitter', or Quantock 'Glimpse of Summer' (a very apt name - I think the last glimpse was on a Thursday at the end of June).
Efficient service from the smartly attired staff, and I was soon settled on a big wooden table with the superb Quantock pale ale. 
A nice place, but not really very 'pub.

Minehead would provide my lodgings for the night but, before wandering the streets of the seaside town, I decided to travel further west along the coast to visit...

Porlock Weir turned out to be a mile and a half beyond Porlock village.  You can tackle this by walking down the lane towards the bay, then picking up a nice flat section of the SW coast path.
It's a pretty hamlet when you get there - a handful of cottages, a hotel, and the Ship Inn, along with some fine views across the Bristol Channel, even on this grey day.

The Ship Inn (Porlock Weir, TA24 8PB)
I really liked the Ship: everything I expect an old fisherman's pub to be.  It had a simple whitewashed frontage with plentiful picnic benches that it was too chilly to comfortably use.  Stepping into the bar there were thick stone walls, big fireplace, flagstone floors, and boxes of cider stacked precariously three-high on the bar counter.
I stuck with the beer, with RCH 'PG Steam', Exeter 'Ferryman', and three picks from Essex brewery Brentwood being available.  I don't see those Brentwood ales very often so opted for the porter, which suited the glum weather and was an excellent dark ale.

With no music and customers spread out, this was a very quiet visit, only livened up by laminating woes for the staff.  It seemed a page had gotten stuck in the laminating machine, which someone eventually noticed was smoking.  A young chap was duly dispatched to unplug it and deposit the machine in the back yard ("Nothing to see here"). 
It turns out that acrid burning plastic really doesn't enhance the rural pub experience in the same way wood smoke from a real fire does.

I departed as the young lady at the bar was on the phone to someone explaining why they hadn't quite finished preparing the laminated menus for the evening ahead.

The Ship at Porlock Weir is known as the Bottom Ship.
And that's to differentiate it from the Top Ship in Porlock village...

The Ship Inn (High Street, Porlock, TA24 8QD)
This is an absolute corker of a pub, which would only have been enhanced with a bit more trade, except I will insist on visiting places on rainy Monday afternoons.
The Ship is a sprawling place with with an L-shaped layout -  dining rooms leading at two angles from the bar in the corner.  And what a bar - it has a heritage feel with fixed wooden benches along the back wall, red and black tiled floor, and a big inglenook fireplace in the corner.

"Ooh, that looks like nice" the customers sat at the counter commented when my Exmoor 'Ale' was poured, the chap behind the bar replying that it was fresh on, before contemplating the clear golden nectar himself.  Stop admiring it and just give it to me!!!
Other cask beer on my visit was Exmoor 'Beast' (so tempting, but I was feeling sensible), Otter 'Ale' or 'Amber', St Austell 'Proper Job' or 'Tribute'.

 

The beer was a great form.
And the effect of sitting on a slightly uncomfortable hard bench in this characterful bar was only spoilt slightly by Heart Radio and half the other customers taking my arrival as their cue to leave.

Five in the afternoon and I eventually made it to Minehead.   Which was supposed to be the feature of this post but has ended up making a late appearance.
In Minehead, I had booked my second ever overnight in a Wetherspoon Hotel.

Duke of Wellington (Wellington Squarw, Minehead, TN24 5NH)
The Duke of Wellington is a grand three storey red-brick building in the centre of Minehead, first opened in 1820 when it served as a staging post for the coaches to Taunton and Bridgewater.
Being an old hotel gives it a bit of a different feel to those Spoons with one big room.  This is a large place with at least four distinct seating areas and 2 bars.
Bags dropped off and splash of water on the face, I headed back downstairs and picked a table in the front right bar.  Mangalorian Cauliflower Curry and a pint of Exmoor 'Gold', please.

My first 2024 Good Beer Guide entry in Minehead was a few minutes walk in the drizzle away from the Duke of Wellington and town centre.

Kildare Lodge (Townsend Road, Minehead, TA24 5RQ)
A "cracking local pub" according to Whatpub, although I'd call it a hotel bar.  After a quick snap of the foliage covered frontage, I headed through the door under the arch to the side, then gingerly through the corridor the length of the place, wary of finding myself in a residents only bit and being told off.

The bar was at the opposite end of the hotel from the door, seating in an unusual high-ceilinged corner room, with the bar up one step to the side.
The nice lady behind the pump clips apologised for lack of custom, with just one chap sat in the corner, although it filled up quite nicely with a selection of retirees and their four legged friends as I supped my pint.  

'Rev James', Butcombe 'Original', and Exeter 'Tomahawk', or Exeter  'Avocet' made up the cask choice. Despite being so quiet when I arrived, the Tomahawk was on good form, enjoyed whilst sat on the big leather benches next to the fireplace.

Drinking up, I strolled down to the seafront for the grey and wet July holiday picture.

The big top style roof of the pavilion at Butlin's is on the horizon.
I've seen Iggy and The Stooges under that roof, back when I used to come down for those great All Tomorrow's Parties festival weekenders.  Whizzing down the water slides and enjoying the wave pool alongside heavily tattooed hairy doom metal fans...those were the days.

I never ventured far into town on those weekends, so the walk along the quayside to the final two pubs of the day was new for me.  

The Quay Inn (Quay Street, Minehead, TA24 5UJ)
This proved to be my favourite Minehead pub without a doubt.  A nice place with a few locals and holidaymakers who'd become regulars and were treated like old friends by the landlord.
It had the best soundtrack of the day, featuring The Move, The Who, and The Small Faces.
And a very enjoyable pint of Nuttycombe 'Doonicans', a beer I didn't rate very highly when I last tried it, but picked because I've had far too much of the alternative 'Jail Ale' this year.

As comfy as I was in the Wetherspoon hotel, I kinda wished I'd stayed in the Quay Inn when I spotted the Channel 4 'Four in a Bed' winners award hung on the wall.
The landlord was a top chap too, popping over to ask how I'd found myself in this part of the world and chatting about Somerset pubs.

Just one more to go then-  five wet minutes along the road.

Old Ship Aground (Quay Street, Minehead, TA24 5UL)
It's in a great location and I'm sure the benches outside would be marvelous in different weather, looking out across the water from the quayside
But I'm afraid I didn't warm to the place much, mainly because all the tables were full with groups eating and there was little in the way of places to perch with a pint.  A Hall and Woodhouse pub, the three cask ales were Badger Best, Fursty Ferret, and Tanglefoot. 

Tanglefoot is a regular bottle on the supermarket shelf, but I don't think I've ever had it on cask before - to be fair it was much better than I expected.  And a seat at the end of the big table in the window became available which improved my mood.

It had been a long day and I was ready to brave the weather to get back to the hotel.  I must have been tired, as a plan to have a cider nightcap in the bar at Spoons was scrapped in favour of sinking into my bed.
I'd enjoyed the pubs of Minehead and surrounds, but I'd appreciate some sunshine next time please.