ReviewTucked away in a village to the west of Northern Ireland, not too far from Enniskillen, this pub appears to be the most westerly pub for cask ale in the UK, since Wetherspoon's closed the Linen Hall in Enniskillen.
Opening times are limited to Thursday and Friday evenings and all day on Saturday. I arrived in the bar area shortly after 5pm opening on a Thursday evening to find a couple of locals sat at the bar. The bar area itself is quite small, but it soon leads to two more rooms at the front of the building. Beyond that is a large dining room with bench seating, which is adjacent to some brewing equipment where the house brews are produced. There was also a sizeable function room and a rear outdoor patio.
It soon became clear that the pub was popular for food, with plenty of different groups walking in for meals. The female bar and waiting staff and the female landlady were all very friendly, with the landlady happy to start conversation with me about the reason for my visit.
There was just the solitary cask ale on, which was Sprocker. With a picture of a dog on the pumpclip, I assume it is named after the pub dog who was happily walking around and who was looking at me admiringly for my bag of crisps. The Sprocker was also available on keg and the landlady offered me a taster of the keg beer too. Although the cask beer was easily better. A second beer was almost ready to be pulled through, which would have been a stout.
The pub also serves a number of ciders - Sandford Orchards Devon Mist, Aston Manor Friel's & Lilley's Bee Sting Perry. Craft beers were Fermageddon Mosaic IPA, Rough Badgers New England IPA, Whitewater Copperhead, Forged Irish Stout & Boundary IPA.
The landlady was proud of the fact that they had a beer festival coming up and she listed the various Northern Irish breweries that would be supplying the beers, some cask, some keg.
Whilst Northern Ireland doesn't seem to promote real ale strongly, this was one of the few beacons of hope for the province. The ale here was very well kept and I thought the pub was well worthy of the trek across the country.
