The Barrel House, Kendal

I like Bowness Bay's beers, but in this brewery tap they were being served too cold - much too cold - into tall, thin, half-pint glasses which did nothing to help them display their quality. I know there was some flavour lurking in there somewhere - I've had them before and I had them again over the course of my holiday in the Lake District - but to find them served like this in the brewery's own tap room was very disappointing. There were a few Sunday afternoon drinkers being entertained, if that's the right word, by a singer with an acoustic guitar who managed to make Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land sound like a funeral march or dirge. Perhaps he was being paid in beer and this was his protest song.