Pub Chronicles - Three Stags Heads

 A sign at the bar loudly proclaims:

"PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR DRAUGHT LAGER, AS A SMACK IN THE GOB MAY OFFEND".

Our first experience of the Three Stags Heads, based on a busy main road in Derbyshire with only a farm and a greasy spoon for truckers as neighbours, was as part of a Duke of Edinburgh expedition. We'd travelled from Stoney Middleton across the seemingly endless Longstone Moor before reaching Wardlow Mires. Our digs for the night - a particularly non-descript field by the side of the pub, which serves the dual purpose of camping and lambing. On that first trip we were charged £1.50 per night to put our tent up - returning a few years later we discovered a surcharge of an extra 50p, along with the upgrade of a lightbulb in the cinderblock loo.

We've woken up on many a fuzzy morn in this field, only sometimes because of a wobbly lambing ewe tripping over our guy ropes, but always with the aid of Black Lurcher.

Brewed by Abbeydale Brewery solely for the Three Stags, Black Lurcher is a baffling anomaly, a quirk that the brewery has retained for decades. The pub was the very first customer of the brewery back in 1996 - they asked for something unique, and almost 25 years later they still have it. A 7% well-hopped dark ale, it's collectively one of our favourite beers (disclaimer: Jim has now made it a few times, but it's been up there since well before our days of working at the brewery). Named for the canine companions you'll find yourselves surrounded by in the Three Stags', it's one of those beers you get thirsty just thinking about - black as tar, always served in a heavy tankard with a thick yet effervescent creamy top which gently oozes over the rim of the glass in anticipation of that first sip. Heavy, satisfying, strangely refreshing and very much of the place.

The pub itself is an inadvertently Gothic delight. A mummified cat and a taxidermy hare carrying a shotgun are the main sources of decor and even Laura (at a not-so-lofty 5 foot 1) has to stoop to make her way through the heavy doors into the "front room" of the pub - the sort of room that even in the height of summer with blazing sunshine outside, you can guarantee there'll be a roaring fire inside, with one-time landlord Geoff ever-present in a rickety seat in front of it, a lurcher at his feet.

The pub holds no prisoners with their house rules - the aforementioned lack of lager, a strict "no phone" policy, and definitely no music or other such frivolous entertainment. One trip of ours coincided with the World Cup, and we were greeted by a blackboard which simply stated "WHAT FOOTBALL?" It's the type of pub where you make the most of it for yourself - a quiet, contemplative, well kept pint, a chat with the seemingly omniscient staff, and if you're really lucky, you'll even get to pluck your own pheasant for tea.

The Three Stags' is one of the last places we visited before lockdown hit back in March, and it's without doubt one of the pubs we absolutely cannot wait to get back to when they're able to re-open. We'd love to encourage you to visit when you can, but if you do so on the back of this, please don't tell the staff you read about them on the internet - they'll probably bar us for life.

Cheers!

Lockdown 2.0 - missing the pub

I miss pints.

I miss a table with torn open packs of Sneiders Pretzels.

I miss lacing.

I miss a sarni for snap after early brew shifts.

I miss 4:15 lagers with the team.

I miss the joint acknowledgement that we are, indeed, in rounds.

I miss the pub.

Both mine and Laura's first introduction to beer was in the same restaurant with our respective parents. While they never knew each other, they had a shared knowledge of the best Northern Pakistani food East Sheffield in the early 90s had to offer, in a sadly now closed classic curry house called The Kashmir. Reminiscent of a greasy spoon, but where the sticky tables were accompanied by gilt depictions of Mecca, and the usual glass fridge of uninspiring sandwiches was replaced with a warming cabinet of poppadoms.

While we sat as children with glass tumblers of mango lassi and wooden bowls of saag aloo, large breads and bowls of multi coloured fluffy rice littering the lightly viscid table, all watched over by owner Bsharath (we knew him as Paul), one of the most gentle people you could ever wish to meet, who'd been working there since he was 14 years old - there amongst it all would sit a plastic jug or two of pale ale, carefully brought over from the hostelry across the road.

The East House, somewhat renowned in Sheffield for being the site of a triple murder on New Year's Day in 1960, was an old school boozer which was much loved by many despite having a reputation for being a little rough around the edges. It was warm and welcoming, there was already a friendly greeting from the landlord, and the beer was always well looked after. The pale ale in question was Abbeydale Brewery's flagship, Moonshine - and what turned out to be my first taste of beer in a pub once I was old enough to join my parents in supping a glass, is now a beer that I work in a team to create - pre-lockdown, over 30,000 pints a week.

The Kashmir closed in 2010, followed by the East House in 2013. And in reminiscing about missing the pub in general, I realised how much I still miss both of these two venues - the sense of comfort, familiarity, total lack of pretension, and overall quiet enthusiasm for just getting on with what they do best.

 I miss the pub. 

Jim.