77 Castle Road  

51.545361, -0.146062 (OpenStreetMap, Google Maps, Yandex Maps)

Pub "Tapping The Admiral".
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Historical background

Beer has existed on the British Isles pretty much forever. When the Romans had arrived here at the beginning of the era, the locals had been already preparing drinks with fermented grains for hundreds of years. In the Middle Ages, beer was served with food instead of water - it was considered much safer to drink than water. In the 15th century brewing was mainly managed by monasteries, and at about the same time hops were introduced as a flavouring — beer without hops was called ale, and beer with hops was called, well, beer.

Beer has successfully won the popularity war with gin in the 18th century, being “healthier and more nutritious”, and in the middle of the 19th century the industrial revolution allowed to produce beer in much larger volumes. However, by the end of the 1800s, beer consumption started to decline — improved clean water supply and improvements to diet meant that beer was no longer necessary to quench thirst or to boost calorie intake. During World War One, strict restrictions on beer production, sale and consumption were placed (for example, it wasn’t allowed to buy rounds of beer). All of this led to a drastic decline in beer consumption, which dropped from 36 million barrels per year in 1913 to 13 million in 1919. Introduction of artificially carbonated beers, and increasing popularity of a new style of beer, lager, seemed to be bringing the end of traditional ales (which at that time meant just a top-fermented beer, with or without hops).

However, not everyone was ready to part with ale. In 1971, an organisation called The Campaign For Real Ale, CAMRA, was founded. For the last 50 years they have been promoting small breweries producing traditional real ales and ciders, and pubs selling such beers without artificial carbonation. After the peak of megabrewering in the second half of the 20th century, beer seems to be having a sort of a rebirth — number of real ale breweries nowadays is at its highest since World War Two, and beer from microbreweries (so called craft beer) has been consistently growing in popularity for the last decade.

Present in routes of categories Lion, Atlas

Passed by: 42/42 (100%).

By categories:

  • Atlas: 5/5 (100%)
  • Lion: 37/37 (100%)