Weary pilgrims struggle along the path to the final destination of a long journey—the Beacon Hotel, Sedgley, in England’s Black Country.
With a fish-and-chip shop and local grocery market as a backdrop, it’s an unlikely setting for a pilgrimage. But these are dogged members of the UK Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) who’ve taken a near three-hundred-mile bus trip for a day visiting Black Country pubs and sampling their unique beers.
West of Birmingham in the English Midlands, the Black Country is named after the permanent pall of smoke that belched from furnaces and metalworks when it was one of the first areas in the world to become heavily industrialized. The Titanic’s colossal anchor was manufactured down the road from the Beacon Hotel.
The region even flies its own flag and is proud of the pubs that once lubricated the workforce. Despite the area’s recent deindustrialization, many classic pubs still remain. The Beacon Hotel echoes the opulence and splendor of the Black Country's Victorian heyday. Unlike the recently and scandalously demolished nearby Crooked House, its interior enjoys a degree of government protection. It’s a warren of wood-paneled snugs, taprooms, and smoke rooms with roaring winter fires and polished benches, all arranged around a central servery where bar staff fill dimpled jug glasses from handpulls while partially hidden by Edwardian glass panels.
Mild is a lightly-hopped beer style that was tremendously popular with manual workers in early-twentieth-century industrial Britain. Now a rarity in much of the UK, it remains popular in the Black Country. Normally a low-gravity style, the Beacon Hotel brews a stronger, distinctive variation: Sarah Hughes Dark Ruby Mild, a marvelously complex, fruity, almost black beer with a smooth texture that belies its 6% ABV.
It’s immensely difficult to obtain anywhere other than the brewery tap, conferring upon the Beacon Hotel as a highly venerated destination to end a beer “pilgrimage”.
Words + Photo by Michael Clarke