Beer, Glorious Beer

What’ll it be? A pint of vaguely malt-flavoured chemicals? Or perhaps a glass of yellow stuff with a pseudo-authentic German-sounding name which is actually brewed in Luton, all carefully sourced for you by a youth in the buying department of a multinational corporation. Makes you shudder doesn’t it?

Thankfully our hands aren’t tied, and here at the Three Shires Inn we’re proud to say that there is one reason, and one reason alone, behind our choices when it comes to the beer we serve. We serve it because it’s good.

Better still, we’re surrounded by a plethora of excellent independent breweries who supply an extraordinary range of superlative and award-winning beers.

Take Hawkshead Brewery for instance. They’ve achieved terrific success since brewing their first real ale in a barn near Hawkshead, just five miles from Little Langdale, back in 2002. Their beers are described as bursting with flavour, handmade and crafted, and “made by people who love beer, for people who love beer”. When it comes to quenching a thirst earned through a hard days walking, their signature Hawkshead Bitter takes some beating.

Speaking of hiking in the fells, we’re also pleased to serve the very popular and rather unusual Old Man Ale (named after the mountain of the same name) from the Coniston Brewing Company. CAMRA described this as “a radically different beer… it has roast barley added to the pale and crystal malts. It has a deep burnished copper colour, a rich port wine aroma, a big chocolate and creamy malt palate and a dry, grainy, roasty finish balanced by hop bitterness and tart fruit. It is a remarkably complex beer that deepens and changes as you sup it.”

Meanwhile the Langdale Ale from Cumbrian Legendary Ales is a refreshing golden best bitter with flavours of fruit and marmalade, which was rightly awarded Silver Champion Golden Ale of Britain in 2012. And from a little further north, Eden Best is a deep chestnut coloured bitter with a crisp and highly refreshing character to it, brewed just outside Penrith in the north east of the Lake District by the Eden Brewery; another terrific thirst quencher.

Beyond these, we also have ales from the Bowness Bay Brewing Company, Barngates Brewery, and the Ennerdale Craft Brewery; and we think you’ll struggle to find many other pubs who offer so many choices of independently brewed beers, all of them brewed within about 30 miles of the beer cellar where we keep them and the Cask Marque recognised pumps through which we pull them.

However you’ve spent your day in the Lakes; be it hiking or biking, strolling or sightseeing, or just lazing around, there’s nothing to beat a good pint to round it off with while sitting and admiring the sunset over the fells on a summers evening, or warming by the fire in the winter months. And here at the Three Shires, whatever your particular taste in strength and flavour, we’ve got a beer that you’re going to love.