The Malt & Mardle, Norwich

A typical shop conversion micro, very small. The counter is on the left as you enter with a bit of seating in the front window, three pulls which are dummys and four keg taps which are live on the counter. Further back there’s a couple of tables opposite the cooler cabinet where the casks are kept and pulled from. There’s a chair and three quarters of a table lurking under a staircase that’s part of the shop next door, at back two more tables and a bench, a toilet off of there going right. Customers seemed to be mainly LGBT people although there’s nothing overtly gay about the place. Malt of course is self explanatory “does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man”, Mardle is apparently “a Norfolk dialect term meaning to chat, gossip or natter, best conducted with a pint in hand”, others have noted this in reviews but I thought I’d stick in the A.E. Houseman quote as well even though it doesn’t mean what people usually think.

Busy micro-pub with limited furniture, so quite tricky to find a spot to sit even mid-afternoon. Three real ales, not served from the (what turn out to be decorative) handpumps on the compact counter, but from the cool cabinet further back. Just enough time for a quick half of Mr Winter's excellent Rorschach Stout.