Waggon & Horses, Halesowen

2019 Good Beer Guide Entry and Stourbridge and Halesowen Pub of the Year 2018. Part of the Black Country Ales Chain. Like the Wellington in Brum, there's TV screens showing the 11 or so real ales on. This has a real pubby feel. Multiple houses knocked together, providing some side rooms complete with real fire. Bar is long, thin and has a wickedly sloping floor. BCA seem to source very unusual brews and I had a fine Black Storm Porter - all the way from Whitby to the West Midlands. Perfect Pub.

This is one of the Black Country Ales "beer festival" pubs. Although it has a long frontage onto the main road the only entrance I could find was on the left side of the building. Inside it has the bar along the long frontage with more comfortable areas either side of it. The area along the bar is not very deep and overall the pub is not as large inside as you might think from the exterior. However, the long bar does allow a huge row of hand pumps with a smaller set to the right devoted mainly to cider. The thirteen beers available included the three usual BCA ones and the rest ranged from smaller micros up to the long established Black Sheep. I went for Harbour IPA (£3.25) which was excellent. This is another superb BCA outlet.

Fantastic Black Country Ales house, with a two-room bar along the frontage and a separate seating area to the other side of the entrance. Tidily decorated throughout in an appropriately traditional style. Very impressive range of 15 real ales and four ciders on handpump at prices ranging from £2.95 to £3.60, from which I went for the Beowolf Chase Pale (but would have been happy to try almost anything from the chalk and TV boards here).

Official site of Waggon & Horses - www.blackcountryales.co.uk

Official site of Waggon & Horses - www.blackcountryales.co.uk