On a misty winter’s night there’s nothing so welcoming as the warm glow of pub windows, fires lit and merry laughter spilling from the door. Head to The Jolly Sailors at Brancaster Staithe for an evening supping Norfolk beers brewed by Norfolk people, rich in flavour and fireside stories. The Jolly Sailors brews small batches of top quality real ale from ingredients sourced nearby and named for local heritage. In winter, try ‘The Smuggler’, a strong stout named after…you guessed…a smuggler. Once landlord of this very pub, William Hotching had a lucrative, highly illegal side hustle.
His ‘crop’ of contraband tobacco and bootleg rum was hidden in a secret cellar at the Hat and Feathers, another of his inns. Pulled by his horse, Black Bess, the stash was transported on a cart under a mound of herring. Well, would you fancy searching through a pile of old fish after a few days on the road? Exactly.
Hotching was soon running goods across the Atlantic in ‘Harlequin’, his speedy clipper. Eventually the excise men arrested Brancaster’s buccaneering free trader in Boston in 1865, nearly a century after the revolutionary Tea Party.
Not keen on stout? Try a refreshingly tangy ‘Sharpie’, named after a traditional Norfolk sailing boat or ‘The Wreck’ an aromatic old English Ale made with malted Maris Otter barley from Wells-next-the-sea. It’s named after the old merchant navy vessel, SS Vina, whose lonely wreck is visible on the Brancaster shoreline at low tide.
