Mahinda’s Little World

As some of my more astute readers will have noticed, the whole Platt Fields Summer hockey thing has come to an end for the year - too wet, too cold and too dark, basically.

As an end of season shindig, I organised a trip, yesterday evening, to the Marble Brewery. I think there were 22 of us in the end, which was nice.

We started off in Sinclair’s Oyster Bar for a quick pint and meet, at 6pm - I arrived at 6.25pm and almost everyone was already there! Makes a change from the usual - I suppose my continual "7pm start at Marble" reminders must have worked!

Then, it was off to the Marble Arch, which is the great little pub in which the brewery is based. For those who don’t know it, it’s a fantastic old Victorian building - standing on its own, with pristine tiling outside and in. Oh, and a sloping floor, which is always a danger.

We were split into two groups, as it really is quite a small place. The first group ate while the second were shown round.

Food

Well, it was pretty damn good. With the exception of Pete’s fish ‘n’ chips (which was okay but nowt’ special), everyone was very happy with their feed. We even convinced them to serve us dessert - in the case of the second group, half an hour after the kitchen closed!

I had the venison pie:

Marble Venison Pie
A venison pie made using spring onion, potato and celery in a rich stock of venison and stout, served with potatoes and roasted vegetables. 

Mmmm. Tim, the chef, was a top bloke and served up some top scran. It was pretty cheap, too - a tenner covered you for hugely filling tasty main and a sumptuous dessert, in my case:

Apple and Caramel Crunch
Heavenly delicious apple and caramel crumble, drizzled with caramel toffee. Served with ice cream.

Bloody gorgeous!

Tour

The two assistant brewers gave us the tour - Colin and…I have no recollection of what the other chap’s name was. Both fairly young, as in under 30, and very enthusiastic.

Marble is a tiny microbrewery - you won’t find many smaller commercial setups, in fact, so they have to brew pretty much every day to meet demand. There just isn’t that much room in the back room and cellars of an old Victorian pub, really - with the dozen of us in there, there was barely room to move.

They showed off the usual array of vessels, pipes and hoses, and the new "bottling plant" - basically, a manual one-at-a-time bottle steriliser, drying rack, and four-nozzle filler. NASA it ain’t…but that’s how they like it, in a way.

Beer

When I walked in and saw something like ten handpumps on the bar, I rubbed my hands with glee. Unfortunately, it emerged that THEY WERE ALL SODDING LIGHT ALES. RUBBISH!

Ten beers and the darkest was the Manchester Bitter, which is about the same colour as John Smith’s. Much nicer, though, but still not really what turns me on. I’d been looking forward to some Chocolate Heavy, but they didn’t have any on

A conversation with the-lad-whose-name-I-cannot-remember revealed that it’s the head brewer’s preference - he likes IPAs and summer ales, and that’s pretty much what they brew as a result.

RUBBISH!

Anyway, come 9.30pm a few of us were craving some nice malty pints, so I made an executive decision and ushered people towards Bar Fringe.

Bar Fringe

Went in, to find some Boggart Hole Clough Noir on the bar. Not something I’d had before, but it was mighty dark and mighty tasty. Housemate Gillian seemed to like it too. I also had a half of Liefmann’s Kriek - just because, in Bar Fringe, I always do!

I bumped into Tim, Kim, Dave and the remnants of that night’s CAMRA U30 cider crawl. Mucky stuff, and that’s putting it nicely

People started drifting away home, and I just missed last orders, so a group of us headed off towards Bar Centro on Tib Street…

The Fabulous Caféteria

…which was closed. Off to Fab, then!

Pete, Rosy, Gillian, Si, Andy and I ended up in Fab, as all that was left of the original 22-or-so. I guess the rich food had taken its toll.

They had a very nice pint of Adnam’s Broadside on, which did me just about nicely.

We sat and drank, and played random card games. One notable one between Pete and I was a hand of poker (five card draw, I think), with completely made-up money…we ended up all in with at least three thousand made up Pounds apiece…Pete triumphantly showed a flush…and then I trumped him with a full house, 7s over Aces! The chances of that are absolutely ludicrously tiny!

Anyway, rummy ended up the game of choice, then matching pairs, until Si spilt much beer over the deck. And then we left.

The Bus Home

I’m not going to say much about this one, except that there’s some random student somewhere in Fallowfield with a picture of my right nipple on his phone. I’m not entirely sure how or why, either.

Got home, then Gillian, Andy (who was crashing over) and I had some pizza before collapsing into bed. Phew!