The Beacon Hotel Sedgley After a gruelling 4 hour journey on Friday 4 October in our campervan, we arrived at the Beacon Hotel with just under an hour to spare before the presentation of the Sunshine Beer and Cider Festival award for 'Regional Beer of the Festival' which was Sarah Hughes ‘Surprise. Unfortunately our fellow South Devon CAMRA members Les and Jackie had some issues with the bus getting from their hotel, so missed out on the presentation.
Head Brewer Ricky Follos, gave us a tour of the brewery - everything is gravity fed with the brewery being on 3 levels - everything is still very olde worlde with just a few newer additions - the majority of the equipment dates back to the beginning of the last century. Ricky described the brewery as a ‘museum’. The presentation took place afterwards. We headed to the bar after this to sample some of the beers and meet up with Les and Jackie who arrived soon after. We were joined by Gary Timmins, CAMRA National Director and John Corser, Chairman of Dudley and South Staffordshire CAMRA branch.
John remained our guide for the rest of the weekend.

Dave Buckler with Ricki Follos On Saturday we were all invited to join Dudley and South Staffordshire’s social to Wombourne which started at The Old Bush Inn . They had 10 real ales on! Ourselves with Les and Jackie arrived by taxi soon after 12pm with branch members arriving for the 12.30pm start. This has recently been refurbished and is part of Black Country Ales who now own 51 pubs in the Midlands with each one having a range of 10 ales on, 5 of their own and 5 guest ales from around the country including, on occasions, some from Teignmouth Brewery. Many were sampled before moving on including a very good Black Country stout.

Our next stop was 2 doors away at The Vine where a lovely open fire welcomed us. Wainwright’s Golden Ale and Doom Bar were on offer there - you can guess which was sampled! As the weather was so good for October we stopped at a members only Cricket Club, which we were welcomed into - we discovered 5 ales and sat outside in the sunshine. The next stop was a sports bar - The Pool Bar - they had Timothy Taylor and Enville Ale which is made with honey. We then made our way to The Mount Pleasant where they had Proper Job and Tribute plus one other. Time to move on to our penultimate destination, the Red Lion, where we missed out on Kinver ale which had just sold out. Our final destination was a 15 minute walk along a canal ending up at The Waggon and Horses - a Vintage Inn - Salopian Lemon Dream was very good. We said farewell to our hosts and caught a taxi back to The Beacon Hotel with John, Les and Jackie to sample a few more Sarah Hughes ales.

We will be returning to The Beacon Hotel for the Dudley Winter Ales Fayre 28-30 November..It would be great if more South Devon CAMRA members could join us?

Dave and Amanda

In the Brewery

The Lift & Scales in the brewery Clocking in time The bar in the Beacon Ready for drinking!