Ale.is.good

The Nightingale is what we consider our "local". It is a, mostly, relaxed and friendly locals' pub with great beer. There is a core of regular drinkers from an interesting variety of backgrounds, from foreign imports like ourselves to people who've lived in the area since the day they were born. From time to time there is live music, and other special events – but not every weekend (that'd be a bit much, some people want a quiet drink on a Saturday evening!) There's a huge half-covered patio area out the back, with summery BBQs and heaters for the poor smokers in winter (while I feel sorry for them, I'm glad of the smoking ban, without it I'd be outside or not going to pubs.) A lot of the activity in the pub revolves around the seasonal pool and darts leagues, there's also a Thursday dominoes league. Us, we're useless at pool and don't know how to throw a dart, we're there for the beer, company, and conversation.

I remember when I first came to look at the house we now live in in Hitchin. I walked down the road from the station and saw the "5 regularly rotating real ales" sign out the front. It seems a bit obsessive I guess, but I immediately called Kat and told her there was a pub just up the street that may have good ale. We had become followers of real ale, and CAMRA members, over the previous year. It had been a somewhat slow path to total conversion since we'd lived in Rickmansworth, a pretty crap town when it came to real ale. The best ale pubs close to our place (in the middle of town) were the Land of Liberty, Peace, and Plenty in Heronsgate and the Rose & Crown in Harefield – the closest of which was a 40 minute walk distant!

To come to Hitchin from Rickmansworth is a most recommended move for the ale lover. As far as we're concerned The Nightingale is the best pub in the town, though there is always some bias to one's local. Hitchin doesn't stop there though, the other end of town sports the Half Moon, 2009's North Herts pub-of-the-year. And there are many pubs between, or varying range and quality when it comes to proper beer.

The Nightingale typically has 5 hand-pumps on duty, though from time to time a pump may be between-barrels. The almost-always-on beers are Colley's Dog (5.2%) and Brock Bitter (3.7%) from Tring brewery. The other 3 pumps rotate through a series of regulars, seasonals, and specials. Tring and Nethergate are the most common breweries, but other breweries from our region show their faces from time to time. Our personal favourites are Nethergate's Old Growler Porter and Umbel Magna (which is Old Growler with coriander.) There's also the lethal Old Rosie Scrumpy (7.3%) and crisp Aspall Cyder (5.5%) for the fruit lovers.

The pub itself is the last remaining example of the railway inns that once lined the corner near the station. It has a bit of history, and perhaps a ghost or two. If you look carefully at the roof you can see that it was called the Leicester Arms at some point in the past. And while the interior has been opened-out, as is the modern way, it still retains a feel of having rooms. There's the bar area, with seating (sometimes stage) at one end, and the pool table area at the other, plus a snug area with couches around one corner – not to mention that huge patio out the back.

My inspiration for writing about our local all of a sudden is that we are so keen on the place that Kat has built a little website for the landlords: The Nightingale. The site tracks the scores for the various teams playing at the pub, advertises upcoming events, and (of course) has an up to date list of the beers available at the bar. As time permits we'll add the usual standard features of a modern website, things like RSS pull-feeds and Facebook push-feeds, blah. blah. For the moment a quick glance at the page of your choosing is supposed to tell you all you need to know. What beer's on at the 'gale? Easy.

We helped out with this site because, well, the Internet is generally pretty crap. There are websites out there that list information for establishments like pubs, often these are inaccurate and sometimes slanderous (often the latter comes from comments, I've seen few good pubs on sites like Beer in the Evening that don't have at least one user comment that heads in this direction.) What's worse is when these sites don't permit incorrect data to be fixed, unless you pay them of course. To be permitted the honour of updating information about your own pub on BitE will cost you nearly 150 quid per year. It doesn't seem like much of course, but the pub trade is pretty tough at the moment, and something feels fundamentally wrong about paying to have errors corrected! I'm not singling out BitE here, it is just the most prominent (in the pub trade) of a pile of sites that follow this sort of business model. It sucks, and people feel unhappy, powerless, and even victims of extortion because of it. Anyway, that's enough politics.

In case you're wondering:

There is no:

• Sky
• Wireless (unless you have a good enough receiver to leech from McDonald's across the road)

There is:

• A big screen, projector screen, and other screens; used to show selected sporting events
• A pool table
• 2 darts boards (plus 3 more concealed ones used in comps)
• 5 hand-pumps, usually all on
• Fairly typical selection of lagers/etc
• Covered "smokers' patio", with heaters
• Outdoor seating and BBQ
• A fish pond :)

It's all there on the new Nightingale website!