Kinver Constitutional Club, Stourbridge

This is a club so membership is restricted to club members but production of a CAMRA membership card will allow entry as a visitor. Back in the early CAMRA days Kinver was a celebrated place as there were tied houses of so many different breweries including Batham, Hanson, Simpkiss and Davenport. The first ever GBG in 1974 listed nine pubs and the town is only about half a mile from one end to the other! Of those nine just four remain, the Batham's Plough and Harrow, the Black Country Ales (ex Hanson) Cross plus the Marston's (ex Hanson) Royal Exchange and White Hart. This club goes a long way towards making up for those losses. Long before CAMRA it was the Green Dragon Hotel but is now a modernised club that includes a restaurant to the left as you enter. Inside it is a fairly large, long narrow carpeted room with exposed brickwork, various seating arrangements and the bar on the left. The interior is a bit like a small JDW but without all the food service. Further in there is a room with three snooker tables. The bar has a row of eighteen hand pumps which on my Saturday afternoon visit only had one unclipped and two ciders neither of which were mainstream. The only fly in the ointment on the beer front was the Doom Bore which was also one of the the most expensive beers and during my stop here I observed nobody trying. The other fourteen beers were from Enville, Old Swan, Hobson's, Wye Valley, Titanic, Three Tuns and the Kinver Brewery house beer Kinver Constitutional. Visitor prices are 20% on top of member's prices which puts them in a similar price bracket to a Black Country Ales pub but more expensive than Holden's or Batham's. I tried the Titanic Cappuccino Stout (£2.87), Three Tuns Cleric'c Cure (£3.26), Enville Ale (£3.15) and Old Swan Bumblehole (£2.97). All four weere in top notch condition. I thought this place was superb as did a small group of three beer tourists who followed me on the bus back to the Stourbridge Batham's pub. The only slight disappointment for me was that none of the breweries represented here were new to me but that's being very picky. It keeps standard pub hours apart from Monday and Tuesday mwhen it opens at 18:00. If you visit Kinver with a CAMRA card then this shouldn't be missed. It's a regular entry in the GBG.