Plymouth Pub Helps Launch Good Beer Guide
September 14th, 2010
Real ale lovers in Plymouth will be delighted to hear the historic Fisherman’s Arms has made a welcome return to the Good Beer Guide 2011.
On Monday (Sept 13) the Barbican pub – reputed to be the second oldest in the city – hosted the launch of the 38th handbook, featuring 4,500 pubs across the country serving the best real ale.
The Good Beer Guide, produced by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), is completely independent and each pub is checked several times a year.
Landlords Martyn and Pauline Scott, who took over the Fisherman’s Arms two years ago, said they were over the moon to be included in the guide.
“Unfortunately the Fisherman’s Arms was ineligible for the guide two years ago as we were new landlords – but it hasn’t taken us long to regain our status,” said Martyn.
“It’s a real honour for us to be recognised for the quality of our beer. We pride ourselves on our warm welcome and friendly atmosphere, which I’m sure added to our appeal. “
The Fisherman’s Arms is part of St Austell Brewery’s 176-strong estate and serves a range of the Cornish brewery’s award winning draught and bottled beers including Tribute, Proper Job, Admiral’s and Clouded Yellow.
Adam Luck, St Austell Brewery’s Estate Director, said: “We are proud to have the Fisherman’s Arms back where it belongs in the Good Beer Guide.
“It is both a testament to our award-winning ales and Martyn and Pauline’s hard work and enthusiasm as landlords.”
Picture: Martyn & Pauline with Dickie Dickinson, Chairman of Plymouth CAMRA.
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Anchors Aweigh, were all at sea
August 18th, 2010
Back home, tired,wet & happy no.1 (including Jim, 2nd left, front row, he was our leader, teacher, organiser, father figure, motivator and general all round pain in the arse & bloody clever dick !)
Back home tired, wet and happy No. 2, Minus Jim, he had gone to the pub by then, but including the baby of our group, and bloody good sailor, Alex, far left, back row.
At last the day dawned, yup its our fishing trip, watch out fishes you don’t stand a chance against all us expert professional anglers !!!!!! ( truth be told not many of us had been fishing before and didn’t have a clue what lay ahead).
Mo and Pauleen enjoying a nice cup of tea (and having a good gossip)
We had to make a really really early stupid o`clock start (well early for me anyway) and all met up on the Mayflower steps at 7.00 o`clock, i would like to say bright and breezy and in fine fettle, but i cant !
John boarding(obviously not a morning person!) and Stan playing with his large attachment (leave it alone Stan, you will go blind!)
After a short walk to our boat “Crusader” we were happily on our way and way past Plymouth breakwater heading towards Eddystone with Jolly Jim, our team leader, expert fisherman and father figure to us all happily regaling us with his salty sea dog tales of trips past, but then it started to get a little bit choppy. Ignoring the bumps we happily loaded our rods and started fishing, who would catch the first ? i can proudly report that i did, yup i caught the first fish of the trip, and of my life, stunned i then quickly came to my senses and started to let the others know in my usual shy, quiet, retiring way, if there had been rooftops and a pa system there i would have been shouting from them. By now it was getting quite choppy and our first casualty of the day fell, step forward Matt, we all now know you `ain’t got no sea legs, undeterred we all carried on fishing and then Maureen, “our mum” and lovely wife to Jim caught the largest fish of the day, hats off Mo, were all proud of you. By now our second casualty had dropped out, yup Matt’s dad Ted went as well, with an anguished cry and a quick drop of the head over the side Ted was out of the game as well, oh well, all the more fish for us. It wasn’t long before my wife Pauline caught the second biggest fish much to her absolute excitementand astonishment, go girl. My son Alex was to my right and he had been landing steadily all morning, as had i and we were all having an absolute blast, John, Debs And Stan were all steadily landing some good catches and then Debs caught, and i quote “ee ba gum, it may not be largest but its prettiest fish, look at those beautiful eyes”. John, Debs husband who certainly looked the part, and Stan were both on the starboard side, kept on getting tangled up with each other, and all we could hear was Johns northern tones exclaiming “Ba heck Loov, its only blooody `appened again”
Matt`s position for the whole of the trip
Then the weather unfortunately took a turn for the lot worse, and with Stan doing his best Tom Daley impression and diving all over the place and ending up on the deck, the skipper made the decision to return to port and get this motley crew off his boat as quickly as possible. All in all we had a great day out and cant wait to do it again, special thanks go to Richard the skipper for having us, and a large debt of gratitude and thanks go to Kevin, the mate for his endless patience and assistance with this total group of novices.
Next blog – the meeting we convened that evening to discuss our day out, also titled the inaugral meeting of Fallus !
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Korev, A New Tipple
August 2nd, 2010
As everyone is now probably well aware St Austell brewery have recently launched their first “own brewed lager”. We took delivery of our first case a couple of weeks ago and now having had time to,( and I’m now unashamedly quoting Lloyd Grossman here, digitate, cogitate and inwardly digest ) the stuff, thought i would write a few words. First of all let me state that my favourite tipple of choice is Budweiser Budvar,followed by Negra Modello, i cant stand fizzy, weak, pale Lagers but to my palate Budvar hits the spot perfectly and long may that continue, my hats permanently off to you Czechs, and good luck in your continuing court battle with that weak gnats pee drinks company from America. However i digress, when St Austells Publicity machine said that they had produced their very first lager in the style off eastern European pilsners i was naturally intrigued, curious and had to try it. Could they pull it off i wondered ? Well, now having had time to taste it at length, yes they can and how. This Lager knocks Sol, Budweiser, Peroni, Corona into a cocked hat, it comes in 500ml amber bottles and is most definitely not a quaffing brew, but if you sip slowly and appreciate the remarkable flavours that come through then it really is rather good, my only criticism is that i found if you have a second bottle then the honey overtones become a bit too sickly sweet, having said that a lot of my customers love that inherent sweetness ( i have always been a cheeseboard rather than Dessert Man) so i wouldn’t mark it down for that. So if like me you enjoy quality Pilsners and Korev is on sale, then have a bottle, i dont think you will be disappointed, and to Roger, the head brewer, nice one mate, you have pulled it off again, Oh and finally, for those who dont yet know, its been called Korev as that is Cornish for beer. Cheers.
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Watch out Neptune.
July 12th, 2010
Can’t wait for the 9th August. Me, Pauline and a bunch of salty sea dogs (alright a small bunch of our reprobate regulars) are going to take to the high seas and spend a day fishing. We will be casting off from Plymouth at 7.30 in the morning and not returning until 5.30 that evening (gawd help the poor skipper).Despite virtually all of us having had no boat fishing experience at all, we are all confident of getting a great catch and I`m particularly looking forward to the cod, bass, mullet, sturgeon ( all that caviar !) and mackerel that just know I will catch ?
Our grateful thanks go to Jim Jolley for arranging the boat and day in general, and I suspect for testing his patience in general to the limit on the day, him being an expert fisherman and all that. We do however have one small problem and it is this, Jim has said that we are not allowed to have a drink on board until we have stopped fishing, but I have grand visions of dropping some great New Zealand Cloudy Bay white over the side to cool while I cook my stupendous haul, oh, and he also said that no naked flames are allowed on board, but I’m sure the Skipper wouldn’t mind me taking just a little primus ? The other obstacle is lunch, I am all for stopping off at Dartmouth and having a lovely long lazy lunch at say Mitch Tonks, but again, Jim has said that we don’t stop when we are at sea, c`mon please, lighten up a little bit, seems a little unfair to me. Anyway I`m sure we can get round Jim and the Skipper after a couple of pints of H.S.D ! Watch this space to (hopefully see photos) to see how our day went and to see my record breaking catch.
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Pub quiz raises funds for St Luke’s
July 2nd, 2010
Plymouth’s branch of the Campaign for Real Ale and a Barbican pub have raised £158 for cancer charity St Luke’s Hospice.
The Fishermans Arms pub held a beer-themed quiz and raffle event, forming part of CAMRA’s celebration of Cask Ale Week, promoting Britain’s national drink.
Licensee Martyn Scott said: “I was delighted to host the event. We had a great night.
“I’d like to extend the warmest thanks to all those who came along and made the evening such a success.”
Dating from the 17th century, the Fishermans Arms is the oldest pub located on the Barbican, in Lambhay Street.
Rob Hick, Plymouth CAMRA spokesman and quizmaster for the evening, added: “It was a brilliant evening. I really hope we can do something similar next year. The questions were tough, but I think everybody enjoyed themselves!
“And I really must give my thanks to Martyn for making it all happen.”
Forming in 1971, CAMRA is a voluntary consumer organisation with more than 100,000 members. It promotes good-quality real ale and pubs.
Picture: Rob Hick and the Fisherman’s Arms Pauline and Martyn Scott present a cheque to Lorna Baker, from St Luke’s Hospice
Source: The Evening Herald
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Dessert As Promised
June 29th, 2010
Salted caramel is currently “flavour of the month” in the foodie world, heres a very quick and easy recipe for Caramel Pannacotta, its one of our most popular desserts, it makes an impressive dinner party dish, and you can make it in advance and forget about it, hope you like it.
300 ml Double Cream
300 ml Milk
2 Bronze Leaf Gelatine Leaves
Pinch of Salt
125 gm Castor Sugar
Bring Milk/Cream to the boil with 25 ml of the sugar and the salt, in a seperate pan slowly melt the remaining sugar until liquid caramel stage, remove from heat and slowly add to milk/ cream (carefull, it will spit and try and bite you) at this stage it will solidify slightly so return to low heat and stir until caramel has melted again. Soak the gelatine in cold water until floppy and add to mixture,stir well, pour into glasses and refrigerate until set, about 3 hours. In the pub we use heavy bottomed whisky tumblers and top with vanilla chantilly cream, praline snap, strawberries and mint.
Enjoy.
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Hello world!
June 24th, 2010
Hello and welcome to what I hope is going to be a regular little blog about the joys of running a pub in the 21st century. I hope you will find it interesting, friendly, informative and sometimes funny, and perhaps a little outrageous, but whatever it is, it will always be totally honest and from the heart. This is the first time I have ever taken anything on like this so please excuse me if sometimes I make the odd spelling mistake, typo or am late posting a blog; it isn’t intentional.
Those that know me, know that as well as being the landlord I am also the chef, so there will be a fair bit of “foodie” items included. Please feel free to reply as it’s great to get your feedback (and also to know that people are reading this and I’m not wasting my time!).
Here goes then with a quick couple of lines to open about a new drink discovered last night. One of our regulars, let’s call him Dave? (not his real name obviously, oh okay, it is!) came in last night and had his usual pint of Cornish Rattler Cider, someone rather cleverly suggested that he should have half cider, half Guinness, then someone else suggested that it would be rather nice with a drop of port on top, and lo and behold, the Blackadder was born. Whilst we obviously support responsible drinking (!!!), it is, needless to say, quite strong, but it is very, very agreeable. Goodnight, hic.
Next time, the recipe for one of our most popular desserts.
Martyn
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