The Flower Pot, Maidstone

What is now a backstreet pub opposite the thundering A229, separated by a high wall on what sounds like it was once on the old main road. A classic CAMRA GBG pick and it had the general trappings, except perhaps customers, on my Saturday early afternoon visit. There’s two rooms over two levels with a traditional alehouse feel - dried hops wood floor etc. Lower room has an over-dominant pool table. Lots of events advertised - they keep themselves busy and to be fair in the less-than-stellar location fair play to them for trying to drive trade as you aren’t going to randomly walk past the place.11 pumps at the bar with five actually on, plus some boxed ciders. My Goachers was a bit butterscotch-tasting though not sure it's the pub's fault in this case so I’ll go with a GBG-par score of NBSS 3. Think this is more an evening pub, if I find myself back in Maidstone I’d leave it towards the end and see there’s a bit more atmosphere.

Corner boozer to the north of Maidstone town centre. There are a couple of rooms. Both have access to the bar. The lower room contains a pool table, whilst the upper room contains the 9 real ale handpulls. Just a couple of other customers were in when we arrived. They appeared to be CAMRA members and husband and wife. A further customer arrived and sat with them during our visit. The barman was reasonably knowledgeable about beer and we had a good conversation, with him and the other customers about local pubs and beers. Goacher's Gold Star is the regular real ale. Guests on for our visit were Moor Illumination, Fyne Ales Jarl, Kent Madagascar, Odyssey Underground Up & Oakham Citra. Also on the bar in the upper room were 4 boxes of real cider - Biddenden's Dry & Bushels & Lilley's Mango Cider & Rhubarb Cider. All are listed on Untappd. Of 10 pubs we visited in Maidstone, I would certainly rate this in the top 3. Although, it did feel a bit quiet on our Tuesday afternoon visit. Discounts are offered on pints between 1-4pm on a Tuesday. CAMRA discounts are offered at other times. However, I'm not sure our halves qualified for a discount and we didn't enquire. Pizzas were advertised for Wednesdays.

This is a very nice split-level, backstreet pub to the North of the town centre. The lower front room has a bit of a public bar feel to it, mainly due to the presence of a pool table to one side, although the room has been smartly set up, with dark red walls, neat floorboards and an attractive bevelled counter front, which a few locals quickly lined up along on an otherwise quiet mid-week afternoon. Steps to the rear lead up to a quieter rear room with the same flooring and a squarer bar counter beneath a canopy with a nice Kentish mural across it, which also noted the pub’s two Kent Pub Of The Year awards from 2010 and 2011. Loads more CAMRA awards are hung around the room, which has been furnished with comfy bench seating arranged into booth-like formations. A nice fireplace stands on the back wall, with an attractive moulded surround, whilst the decor includes a few old tankards, vases, lamps, books and the like. The side entrance had a decorative moulded door frame which is worth checking out. Music played quietly in the front room, but from where I was sitting in the back bar, I could barely make it out. Food is available from the pub’s in house pizza menu, with several bar snack options also listed. On the bar, a handsome row of handpulls was dispensing Brit Hop Filmstar (a bargain at £3.70 a pint), Oakham Citra, Black Iris Bajan Breakfast and Goachers Gold Star. Six ciders were also listed on TV screens around the room. I took a pint of the Brit Hop, which was in excellent condition - probably the best conditioned beer I’ve had post-pandemic. The barmaid was friendly and when I arrived she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the bar counter - the sort of attention to detail that clearly also ensures they serve top quality ale. This is an excellent pub in just about every respect, from the traditional two bar layout with comfortable seating and smart decor, to the friendly service, interesting beer range and care and attention paid to quality and presentation. If there’s a better pub in Maidstone, I didn’t find it, and I’d love to come back here some time, preferably when it’s a bit busier, to sample more of those great ales.

This is situated at the North end of the old Sandling Road, I'm sure the new road just to the West was not there when I last visited Maidstone. My old Kent beer guides suggest it may have been a Truman's pub back in the day. Inside it has two levels the rear upper level with the bar, bar stools plus a few tables and chairs and the lower level has some seating but is dominated by a pool table. There is also a juke box on the wall which as I stayed for three pints was able to examine at length. Juke boxes aren't what they were, this one had seemingly thousands of albums including a Jethro Tull compilation with Aqualung on it which made my day. I soon realised that it was playing random tunes which included tracks by Alma Cogan, Pavarotti and Motorhead! The bar had nine hand pumps with some beers coming on during my stay. I noticed Fyne Ales Hurricane Jack, Country Life Golden Pig & Reef Break, Oakham Citra, Dark Star APA, Goacher's Light, Saltaire Amaarillo Gold and Newby Wyke Kinston Topaz. I think all prices were £3.25 a pint reduced to £3.15 after showing the CAMRA membership card which the friendly landlady reminded me about. Another plus point is that they use lined glasses here. I tried the Hurricane Jack, Oakham Citra and Dark Star APA. The Hurricane Jack and Citra were superb but the Dark Star APA was a fresh barrel and may have needed a bit more pulling through, although I certainly wasn't prepared to complain about it. My only two minor niggles were that the bar stools block the beer line up and I thought the pool table was overly dominant for such a small room. I liked this place a lot and would be surpised if it wasn't the premier real ale venue in Maidstone. It gets a strong nine from me.

An Edwardian corner pub on the outskirts of Maidstone's central area, on what used to be the main Chatham road and now bypassed by the new traffic-losing system. The décor is basic, it consists of two bars with floorboards, is decorated with dried hops and a shed-load of well deserved awards for its beer and various assorted bric-a-brac. The pub is a GBG regular and quite rightly so. The staff were incredibly welcoming and offer try-before-you-buy on all draft beers. They also give a small discount to CAMRA members on production of a valid membership card. There were 8 ales on draft and 2 ciders on gravity feed – sadly I only had time for one pint, so I went for the Whitstable Native, which was absolutely perfect. They also did Snyder's jalapeño pretzel pieces, my favourite monosodium glutamate-based snack. It's a truly excellent, no frills (apart from the Snyder's, obviously) pub which should form part of any town crawl and is a must-visit for ale lovers. I shall return. Often.

There is a pool table and seating area that is served by the end of the bar at the front of the Flower Pot. The main bar area is up a couple of steps at the rear where there is more seating. There is a limited draught range but the main draw, and why the pub was so busy on Friday afternoon, is the ale selection. Three of the hand pumps were unused during my visit, but the other six were drawing Cairngorm’s Howler, Salopian Brewery’s Oracle, Sunny Republic’s Hop Dog, Goacher’s Gold Star, Fyne Ales’ Hurricane Jack and Kent Brewery’s Pale. A pint costs around £3.25 and there is a 10p discount for CAMRA membership card holders. There is a plasma screen that was turned off and I didn’t note any live sport advertisements, but there was some background music playing. This isn’t the biggest place so it doesn’t take many people to make it feel very busy. I will say that the service was very friendly, although I found a couple of the locals to be less than hospitable. I think that I’d give this place another go if I had time to kill in while in the area.