Stockport : Angel Inn
Next on my tour of Good Beer Guide pubs in Stockport was the Angel Inn and I’m not sure that I would have noticed it if I had just been walking by, the scaffolding is quite dominant here.
The beer list, there was a decent mixture of cask and keg.
I’m a big fan of Tiny Rebel so it was a little bit of a treat to see two of their beers on cask.
The interior is functional rather than jazzy. It was early January when I visited, hence the Christmas tree. More on the history in a moment, but its change of uses over the last few decades have led to some of the traditional feel perhaps being a little lost.
The first beer was half of the Sertified Simcoe from Tiny Rebel, which was a punchy, hoppy and juicy little number. Acceptable crisps too.
More interior. It was a welcoming environment with friendly service and warm surroundings.
This was, as far as I’m concerned, about as good as cask gets. It’s half a pint of the EWA from Tiny Rebel, well rounded with a suitable amount of sweetness. It was creamy and tasted of cookies and Twix, really rather decadent.
This whole set-up is interesting as I just assumed it had been a pub for centuries and it did indeed have a long history, but it stopped being a pub in the 1950s and turned instead into a retail outlet. However, 57 years on, it was reopened as a pub and that seems like a really good idea to me. In terms of the building, it dates from the 1500s and has a wattle and daub construction, having first been turned into a pub in the early nineteenth century. Always a positive thing to see a pub being reborn, especially one in such an historic building and the wide range of cask and keg options added to the excitement. Thanks to the Good Beer Guide for directing me here.