Totnes Brewing Co, Devon
Yes, there is a small brewery behind the bar, but this is definitely a pub that also happens to have a brewery. Here it idles, halfway up Totnes’s steep High Street on the corner with Castle Street: a handsome old building of wide sash windows with overhanging slates on the upper storey. On the Saturday lunchtime I visit, it provides a welcome sanctuary from the groups of shoppers moving up and down like a particularly well-mannered football crowd.
Inside are two rooms, both with plenty of waist-high wood panelling, scuffed wooden flooring and well-worn furniture plus the odd settle and sofa. This classic pub aesthetic makes us feel at home as we sip our pints (but are our homes as shabbily chic as the pubs we like?).
The mood is convivial as like-minded souls enter to escape the crowds, some with dogs and others with a pasty purchased on the way up the hill (no food is served but the pub is happy for you to bring your own).
Let’s have a beer. There are 16 draught beers available, both keg and cask, and a fridge full of bottles and cans, featuring contemporary brewing stars such as Cloudwater, Vocation and Northern Monk. At the end of the bar, as if to remind today’s lucky beer-lover of past iniquities, there’s a small Watney’s Red Barrel keg, an ogre that once sat on bar tops across the land.
I opt for American Brown Ale from Powderkeg. It is dark amber and, in contrast to a lot of today’s hazy beers, as clear as the voice of a sergeant-major on the parade ground. There are caramel, chocolate and mocha coffee notes on the nose and palate, which, along with a crisp mouthfeel and dry and bittersweet finish, make for a very pleasing pint.
Contented souls continue to drift in, one chap clutching several books he discovered at the bookshop across the road. “Been looking for this for ages,” he tells his friend, who – no bibliophile he – laughs and asks, “What you having?”
As I consider getting another pint, I feel snug and rested, while outside the cavalcade of shoppers continues. This is the pub as a true sanctuary.
Adrian Tierney-Jones
59a Castle St, Totnes, Devon TQ9 5PB 01803 849290; thetotnesbrewingco.co.uk