Chesterfield CAMRA’s usual annual beer festival at the Winding Wheel theatre couldn’t happen this year as Covid uncertainty had impacted the planning timescales. As a replacement a huge list of pubs across Chesterfield town centre, Brampton and Whittington Moor teamed up to put on a weekend walkabout event featuring beer, food and music.
Members of Sheffield and Dronfield CAMRA branches all arranged to get together for a couple of joint socials, with us visiting Whittington Moor on the Friday night then the town centre & “Brampton Mile” on Saturday afternoon. On both days we also caught up with friends from Chesterfield branch too!
Friday night saw us start at the Glassworks on Whittington Moor, which is run by Brampton Brewery. For the festival weekend they had a number of guest ales on the bar alongside their own including Anarchy Deafening Silence pale ale, Durham Apricity Copper Ale and Durham Dark Angel Stout. With a 6:30pm start we were able to sit and relax here for a bit! By the time we moved on to the Beer Parlour it was packed with the usual friendly crowd and great beers, including one from the relatively local Silver Brewhouse and a classic not seen about as much these days – Bass.
We finished in the Derby Tup to enjoy live blues music from Slim Wilson & The Swamp Brothers along with again a great range of beers including a plum porter and IPA from Eyam Brewery, a pale ale from Scarborough and more, including another local classic – Hartington Bitter from Whim Brewery.
On Saturday afternoon we met up at the Pig & Pump in Chesterfield town centre, which for the festival weekend featured an Abbeydale Brewery tap takeover, with the brewery supplying a diverse range of beers from Serenity, a 3.9% pleasantly hopped pale ale, up to Black Mass, a 6.66% black IPA.
Next we walked up to the Hidden Knight for a quick half, this is a Greene King pub but they had a guest ale on from Thornbridge. We then proceeded to an old favourite, the Chesterfield Alehouse micropub, who were hosting a tap takeover with all the handpumps given over to showcasing beers from Two by Two brewing whilst a good number of the keg taps featured beer from Seven Bro7hers Brewery.
We were then within touching distance of the Brampton Mile and visited the Tramway Tavern, Brampton Brewery and Real Ale corner (which had a couple of extra casks on gravity) before time ran out and we caught the X17 bus back to Sheffield.
However a special mention goes to David Marsh from North London CAMRA branch who joined us for the afternoon who apparantly managed to fit in another 5 pubs after we left before he caught his train home from Chesterfield!
Scott Colebourne with the half barrel plant The idea for a brewery came in the summer of 2007 after Barry had spotted an advertisement in “The Publican” for a half-barrel plant. He and Scott Colebourne (who was working at the Countryman at the time and became head brewer) decided to experiment with a “hobby” brewery and were easily persuaded by the manufacturer who also supplied a simple recipe and brewing kit. Fortunately, the pub had previously stocked beers from the Fugelestou Brewery (Louth) and Phil Ellis provided free and friendly advice to the Countryman team. The first principle Barry and Scott agreed upon was to keep things simple. Honey, coriander and hedgerow weeds were definitely off the menu! Ace Ale (a mid-brown session bitter at 3.8%) duly emerged and was eventually accompanied by a light-coloured summer IPA (Leila’s Lazy Days at 3.6%) and a dark ruby autumn/winter beer (Lincolnshire Life at 4.2%).
Success bred success and Barry purchased a 2.5 barrel plant from Poacher’s Brewery in Lincoln which had downsized production. A stable on the Countryman site had become vacant and this was converted and the plant installed between December 2008 and March 2009. By summer 2010, brewing was sufficiently advanced to have all three beers permanently on.
At present, Leila Cottage has to use informal arrangements (the backs and boots of cars!) to supply beer festivals and the odd pub. Although there’s no official delivery system, casks can be collected and Fugelstou, Oldershaw’s and Small Beer at Lincoln have assisted at one time or another. Advance notice will allow you to see the brewery and there is a large car park as well as facilities on site for caravans and camper-vans. So, if you are holidaying in the area or just passing through, both the “Countryman” and Leila Cottage Brewery should be on be a must visit if your in this area.
From Skegness Platform A take the Number 1 bus which takes 20 minutes and is every half hour. Alight at St Paul church and The countryman is a minute walk away.
Philip Brown 
First port of call was Paulaner, a subsidiary of the Bavarian brewer, and with the same beers but brewed on site. The beers were decent but not exciting, and around £3 for a half litre so expensive by local standards. As I had two days I decided to call it a night and tackle the rest the next day, and adjourned to my hotel.
Next day I had a lie in then set about the rest of the beer scene, starting with the NZS brewery, the largest independent brewery in Azerbaijan, which has an onsite restaurant serving their one beer, a fairly standard lager (the menu advertises an unfiltered version, but it wasn’t available on my visit). I blagged a tour of the brewery, being given a bottle of the beer fresh off the bottling line at the end. I jokingly suggested a collaboration brew next time I’m over, but I’m not sure Azerbaijan is quite ready for what we think of as craft beer! From there, it’s a short 13p bus ride to Mala Praga, a largish brewpub serving 4 beers – filtered and unfiltered pale lagers, a honey beer and a dark lager. Again the beer was expensive by local standards but average to us. I also had a bowl of merji shorbasi, a local lentil soup, served with a quantity of bread more commonly associated with the feeding of the 5000.
The other brewpub, Beerbasa, is at the opposite end of town, though easily reached using a metro then a bus, at 26p for the journey. The three beers here, a light, a dark and a red, were all fairly average, and halfway through my second beer the waiter put down an unsolicited bowl of pistachios on the table, which then appeared on the bill for about £6! Fortunately some brief remonstration got them removed from the bill, but it’s something to watch out for.
I had a couple of other leads as coincidentally a mate was going a couple of weeks later and had done far more research than I, my own efforts being limited to the Ratebeer places lists. The Brewery has closed down and been replaced by a fancy cocktail bar, Mesopotamia brewpub seems not to exist, at least not where it was purported to be, and Hops turned out to have nothing but macro beer and football fans shouting at the tv. My last port of call did exist though, Beer O’clock, and unlike the brewpubs is a proper locals’ pub rather than a tourist trap, both beer and food being less than half the prices I’d paid in the brewpubs. There’s no craft beer as such but independent breweries are served including Stara Praga and Falken.
The train from Baku to Tbilisi is very sociably timed, leaving at 2330 and arriving at around 10am, with the border formalities being 7-9am. I’d opted for ‘Spalny’, two-berth sleeper compartments, and fortunately nobody else was allocated in my compartment. Like Baku, not many bars open at lunchtime, so I did the touristy bit first. Unfortunately a combination of the late opening of bars and early departure of the train to Yerevan meant I only had time to visit three places in a little cluster of bars near Liberty Square, my mate’s research has another couple of bars nearby, and another little cluster in another part of town.
9MTA is a modern craft bar, with 18 taps serving a few Georgian beers plus imports from the likes of Warpigs, Mikkeller and Brewdog. Four of the beers are from their own brewery, I tried the red ale and the IPA, both of which were pretty good, and then a Cherry Tripel from Lost Ridge brewery and a milk stout from Megobrebi. I didn’t try any imports due to time constraints, though unusually in my experience they were cheaper than in the UK. Also unusually for outside the UK, a 150ml measure cost exactly half the price of 300ml, no ‘ticker tax’!
The nearby Black Dog Bar has six beers from Number 8 Brewing, no small measures are served, so I just had a Zulu Run IPA before moving on. It was a decent IPA although nothing exciting to someone used to the UK beer scene. My last stop, sadly brief as it didn’t open until 1900, was SMA Bar. 6 Georgian beers on tap, plus usually a Belarussian lager, sadly off on this occasion so I had a raspberry blonde from Underground brewery and an IPA from Lumberjack brewery. I also acquired some takeouts for the train as they have a good bottle selection. I particularly enjoyed the Breccia, a gooseberry and tkemali (a tart berry native to Georgia) sour. I also had a cucumber kolsch from Megobrebi, and from Underground brewery a coconut IPA and a coffee stout with 20 grams of coffee per litre, possibly not the best idea just before bed!
A 
combination of the train to Yerevan only running every other day in winter, and cheap flights from there being only twice a week, meant the only way to fit it in was to make a return trip from Tbilisi on consecutive nights. The outward journey is earlier than ideal, leaving at 2020 and arriving just before 7am. The border crossing was relatively painless though you can expect a bit of questioning if you have Azerbaijan stamps in your passport. Again I took a touristy wander, but at least here the bars mostly open at lunchtime, so I was in Dargett on the dot of 11am. I spend several hours here, during which I tried all 16 beers on offer – fortunately they offer three different flights of four beers each. I started with a barrel aged wild ale, before setting about the flights including everything from lager to IPA to stout along with fruit beers. I then finished up with a Double IPA and a very good Imperial Stout.
From Dargett I headed south to Dors Craft & Kitchen, another modern craft bar serving 8 of their own beers. Two different flights of 4 are available, I went for the one including a farmhouse ale, a cherry ale, and APA and a DIPA, the latter being a tad weak for style at 6.5% but packing a respectable 80IBU. Again all well brewed and refreshing. 4 x 100ml was about £2.
Next up was Labeerint, an underground bar with a selection of their own beers. Their Lager and Munich ale are available from self-serve taps at your table, while the bar has others including a Helles, a Weissbier and a Dark Lager along with another lager Kilikia brewery. Finally, Beer Academy is another ‘brewpub’ though it seems the brewery isn’t actually on site, serving about half a dozen of their own beers, sadly on my visit these included a ginger brew, which the brewer insisted I try.
My final day was in Kutaisi, the city I visited on my one very brief previous visit to the region. The pseudo-brewpub (the beers actually came from the sister pub in Tbilisi) I’d visited then is long gone, but a new pseudo-brewpub has opened since, namely Bagrati. The waitress spoke no English, but via google translate I established the brewery is not on site but is ‘nearby’. The one beer is a fairly standard lager.
I found English was spoken in almost all the craft bars visited, but otherwise not widely spoken, Russian unsurprisingly being the second language in all three countries. Getting around the cities is easy and cheap, all have metros and frequent buses. Baku uses a ‘Baku card’ which can be loaded with any amount or disposable 4 ride cards (available from machines, which I only saw at the airport and at metro stations), these are the only way to pay for metro and red bus routes, while white bus routes are cash only. Tbilisi has a similar card system for the metro but bought in person from a ticket booth, I didn’t use any buses. Yerevan metro is cash based, again I had no cause to use any buses. Baku metro and bus schedules are loaded into Google Maps meaning it’s easy to plan getting around, I didn’t check in the other cities but the metros run frequently. Wi-Fi is fairly widely available, but to be sure I downloaded all three countries in maps.me for navigation while offline.