Okells

[P.K.]

1 hour ago, Barlow said:

Can you please put a link to all or any of your quotes and video. 

TIA

As my post above, here's a link for you https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/news

(second down "The Truth")

@Barlow

Don't you trust me?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/coronavirus-wetherspoon-tim-martin-pub-closed-tesco-supermarket-uk-a9420906.html

We know all about Tim Martin's Weatherspoon "news" and "truth".

The cheeky monkey sent his staff out delivering one of his Wetherspoon News flyers through the neighbourhood. We got one at our gaff in Manchester. It was full of all the usual lies about brexit. Including what they called "Project Fear" now known to all and sundry as "Project Reality". Of course, lots of folks who voted for brexit pretend it's all going swimmingly. The denials about the queues at Dover being a case in point!

ETA: if you're happy going to a Wethers, which you obviously are, then good luck to you.

Each to their own...

Edited April 9, 2023 by P.K.

[Barlow]

13 minutes ago, P.K. said:

 

ETA: if you're happy going to a Wethers, which you obviously are, then good luck to you.

Each to their own...

Thanks for the link. I remember it at the time, but I feel the reply from Wetherspoons as I linked puts it into a  balancedcontext.

I can't do much about Brexit but I am not going to go all anti-Wetherspoons because of the views of its owner.

I am happy to go to Wetherspoons. The one I go to is always busy (yes, er, even at 8am opening time...) and yet there is always a seat. the atmosphere, service, ambience, prices etc is more-or-less everything I want in a pub. 

 

 

 

[Passing Time]

18 hours ago, Ativa said:

And I bet you haven’t been in there for weeks.

You probably think the robot is rude.

The thing with hospitality on the island is people tend to form opinions based on what happened three months ago. When in reality a place can have changed massively in the passing weeks.

We were in there on Friday numbnuts. Are you related to that other poster Asitis by any chance?

[Happier diner]

3 hours ago, jackwhite said:

How many HL does Okell's produce?

For comparison, the leading craft brewery in the UK, for me, Cloudwater, produce less than 10,000. Timothy Taylors is 103,000 from the latest information I can see.

You're hardly making startling revelations here. None of those figures are remotely surprising. You're also not really comparing similar things, considering the markets each has. 

I wasn't trying to make any startling revelations. Were you? 

I was merely trying to get my head around how big Okells is on a UK comparison. 

I am concluding that it's small but certainly not insignificant. 

It's hard to get a figure for Timmy Taylor's. Is the 100 and odd thousand just landlord or total production.  They seem to produce a bloody lot of fairly decent beer from quite a small premises. I was starting to suspect that perhaps landlord is also brewed elsewhere under license but it seems it's not. 

[genericUserName]

Are pubs on the Isle of Man allowed to use autovacs to recycle the slops? In England they were banned - but I was reading recently that legislation now allows them to be used provided the 'servers' have clean hands. Scotland is bad for this apparently.

Always seemed disgusting to me. 

[thommo2010]

People being snobby about wetherspoons saying its cheap. It is and that's why people go there as people don't have the disposal income they once did. Fair play to people that can afford 5 quid a pint and 6 quid for wine but not everyone can. 

[Barlow]

27 minutes ago, genericUserName said:

Are pubs on the Isle of Man allowed to use autovacs to recycle the slops? In England they were banned - but I was reading recently that legislation now allows them to be used provided the 'servers' have clean hands. Scotland is bad for this apparently.

Always seemed disgusting to me. 

That sounds disgusting.

Don't give the brewery ideas.

Clean hands? I doubt it. I keep going in pubs, usually brewery pubs I have to say, and the staff are pouring the pint with their hand right at the top of the glass ie ..durr, where the customer drinks from. The very, very first rule of pouring a pint is hold the glass at the lower end. This suggests to me that the brewery are slack-arsed and clearly do not give the staff even basic training. 

Edited April 9, 2023 by Barlow

[Passing Time]

43 minutes ago, genericUserName said:

Are pubs on the Isle of Man allowed to use autovacs to recycle the slops? In England they were banned - but I was reading recently that legislation now allows them to be used provided the 'servers' have clean hands. Scotland is bad for this apparently.

Always seemed disgusting to me. 

From memory, slop tray for bitter used to be filtered back into the mild barrels. Seemed to be a common practice years ago. 

[finlo]

39 minutes ago, Passing Time said:

From memory, slop tray for bitter used to be filtered back into the mild barrels. Seemed to be a common practice years ago. 

Correct.

[P.K.]

2 hours ago, Barlow said:

I am happy to go to Wetherspoons. The one I go to is always busy (yes, er, even at 8am opening time...) and yet there is always a seat. the atmosphere, service, ambience, prices etc is more-or-less everything I want in a pub. 

In broad terms how would you describe the 8:00 am clientele?

[Ativa]

2 minutes ago, P.K. said:

In broad terms how would you describe the 8:00 am clientele?

Varied.  I can’t be doing with people who judge others for what they do.

Nothing wrong with an occasional early morning pub visit, and obviously some of them will be shift workers or people just grabbing breakfast and a coffee

[Dirty Buggane]

Also the Guinness slops, some even went as far as a pint or two of the black stuff in the mild. Father and his compadre's used to drink mixed and swore it improved it no end. This was in the saddle when the landlord took pride on how his beer was stored and tasted. And the amount they put away it must of been good, 15 pint's on a Saturday afternoon. Home, nap, shit, shave and a bath then take me mother out meet up with friends another 10 pints and still not seem like he was drunk.

[jackwhite]

4 hours ago, Barlow said:

Nice pub crawl.

The quality of the toilets seem to be way down the list on many Okells premises. O'Donnell's bogs were for many years an Irish country byre experience if ever there was one. Now sorted of course but it took a number of refurbs for the brewery to suss that one out. I would have thought they would have learned for The Railway (I take your word for it, I've not been in yet)

Sir Normans is just weird with no draught beers!   It is weird. The Sefton received monster amounts of pandemic handouts and The Promenade works should have catapulted the place as the pearl of Douglas Promenade. They don't seem bothered. Sir orman's said they were going to get draught beer in "next month " last Summer. And we wanted to organise a do there last year but they said "the bar is going to be in a major refurb at that time". 8 months later, it hasn't happened yet.

Interestingly, The Sefton Hotel was overwhelmingly voted by its shareholders to become a private company again in June 2021.

 

Sir Normans does have draught beer. I've literally just had a half in there about an hour ago. They have Sharps, Amstel, Heineken and Guinness on draught. 

It's also not run by The Sefton. The Bonzai guys are renting and running it. 

[Happier diner]

1 hour ago, Passing Time said:

From memory, slop tray for bitter used to be filtered back into the mild barrels. Seemed to be a common practice years ago. 

 

28 minutes ago, finlo said:

Correct.

It was stopped in the 80s. It didn't filter back it just ran back via a second pipe and drip troughs were much bigger. It actually produced a better pint because you could pull a good volume through the sparkler and entrain air which went back into the cask thus livening it up. You could get a real small but velvet creamy head on the beer and still an almost full pint. 

Of course it was horribly unhygienic.

It didn't go into the mild. That's a rumour that just doesn't make any sense.

[jackwhite]

4 hours ago, Barlow said:

I thought you were somehow involved in the pub business? It is now well known that the "Oh, Wetherspoons buy beer near its sell-by date" pub bore rumour is complete and utter trash. Just think about what you are saying and how that could be possible on such a large and continued scale. 

Take a read of "Does Truth Matter" https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/news Yes, it's from Wetherspoons, your mate Tim, but I think you deserve to read the other side of your rumour mongering.

 

The people who trash Wetherspoons on the Isle of Man strike me as people who have rarely if ever been in one. The sort of people if you for example mention the government they reply with "oh they're shit" or you mention the horse trams or Steam Packet or whatever regurgitate their usual "they're shit" mantra.

 

I am involved in the pub trade. I know however Mr Martin is not exactly known for being the bastion of truth and also know their beer buying model from the inside. So I will take that over what he tells anyone.

I don't agree with trashing the Government on everything (it gets extremely tiresome on here) but most with industry knowledge won't go anywhere near a Wetherspoons. They also attract a customer looking for a cheap product, are in the business of cheap cask ale (never has been or will be something I seek out) and make bland food. Pretty much the opposite I want if I have a very occasional night out. So I would avoid them for both personal taste as well as ethical reasons.