The Star Beer Festival

The Star Inn, Wenhaston is holding a bank holiday beer festival. The date is Saturday 29th, Sunday 30th& Monday 31st from noon – 11pm

Included over the course of the weekend there will be a Barbecue from 12pm - 8pm with live music and tasting notes on the below beers ...

Everards Tiger 4.2%
Everards Sunchaser 4%
Fullers London Pride 4.1%
Meantime London Pale Ale 4.3%
Nethergate Umbel Magna 5%
Nethergate Three PoINT NINE 3.9%
Nethergate OlD GROWLER 5%
Nethergate Suffolk County4%
PURity UBU 4.5%
Purity PURE GOLD 3.8%
ADNAMS BITTER 3.7%
REGATTA 4.3%

For more information on these beers please see here.

The Music

Saturday 29th

7pm - The Low house blues band

Sunday 30th 

3pm -Bridget & Friends – Folk session

6pm - Mark Anthony

Monday 31st  

3pm - The Night Rollers



The Food

A Barbeque is on offer at only £6

Choose from Organic Red Poll Beef burgers, organic lamb
burgers, clarkes butchery sausages, mushrooms filled with
goats cheese. 

In a Stradbroke bakery Bun

Then help yourself to salads.


Pop along and see us - for more information call us on 01502 478240.

How to... taste beer

Professional beer tasting might be the best job in the world, but it’s also one of your most important responsibilities, there are some pieces of advice that need a lot of hammering home to persuade people that a little chore is worth doing. Then there are some that probably don’t.

The advice that you should taste your beer every morning before opening undoubtedly falls into the second camp.

You should taste your beer before opening to ensure it is up to scratch. This quality control check will avoid people being put off by a dodgy pint and make it more likely that they will come back to your pub. It is especially important with cask beer – as a live product, it continues to evolve and change in nature in its container.

“They need to be, because quality control is so important.”

Next, you should swirl the beer in the glass, and then take a good sniff to check the aroma. The gap left in the glass allows the aromas of the beer to circulate, something that is a big determining factor in taste.

Finally comes the drinking. Take a sip of the beer at first, and then take a bigger slurp over the entire tongue to really assess the taste. Make yourself aware of which parts of the tongue receive different elements of flavour by checking the diagram (right). For most beers, the really important part is found at the back of the tongue, where the bitterness receptors are.

This does not necessarily mean you have to swallow the beer. Even once it reaches this point of the mouth, you can train yourself to spit it out as you would wine in a wine tasting.

If your beer tastes sour or vinegary, this means it is almost certainly off, something that is generally caused by the beer having been on too long.
If your tasting detects either of these problems (and it is much better that you do so, rather than having your customers do it for you!), stop selling it immediately, then determine the cause of the issue.

“It is important to me to taste a sample of the beers every morning, as imperfect taste is the least obvious at the point of dispense and we pride ourselves on delivering the perfect pint every time.”

Election 2010: The Publican's guide to the political parties' pub policy

On Thursday 6th May, millions will vote in one of the most anticipated and hyped general elections of our time.

But, as a publican, which way will you vote? If you’re still undecided, or want to check the main parties’ policies towards pubs, read on…

Alcohol duty

Labour’s regime on alcohol duty has been a massive issue for the trade. In the past two years beer duty alone has been hiked by a whopping 26 per cent. In the last Budget, Alistair Darling announced he would be extending the alcohol duty escalator until 2015. He also slapped a 10 per cent above-inflation rise on cider duty. However this will expire in June and have to go through Parliament again. Labour is planning to change the definition of cider so that higher-strength versions are taxed more.

The Tories have committed to raising taxes on “drinks related to anti-social behaviour”, such as super-strength lagers, ciders and “alcopops”. However shadow home secretary Chris Grayling has said “local traditional products” will not be affected. Labour’s recent 10 per cent cider duty increase would be scrapped.

The Lib Dems promise to review the system around alcohol tax to ensure it tackles “binge-drinking”, without “unfairly penalising responsible drinkers, pubs and important local industries”. They also vow to review the beer duty escalator and “explore the possibility” of a preferential rate of duty for draught beer.

Who wins you decide!