A long-lost relative and a celebratory brew

Last Sunday lunchtime, I came across my first draught Coronation Ale. The beer in question was the imaginatively named, Coronation Ale, from Greene King, and I have to say it was very good. It's a shame I was driving as it's no exaggeration to say it was one of the best GK beers I've had in a long time. Coming in at 4%, the beer is described on Untappd as “An easy drinking and refreshing golden ale, with tropical fruit notes.” I won't disagree with that, and it’s evidence that a large brewer, such as GK, can turn out decent beer when they put their minds to it.

The pub where I enjoyed this beer, was the Cock Horse, in the village of Detling – just off (literally), the busy A249, as it descends the steep escarpment of the North Downs, just to the north of Maidstone. Detling is familiar territory to me, as I passed through the village back in October 2020, whilst walking the  North Downs Way. I'd  stayed overnight at Black Horse, in nearby Thurnham, so the Cock Horse wasn’t open when I passed by mid-morning. I'd called in a few times, when I lived in Maidstone, but that would have been three and a half decades previously..

So, apart from drinking Coronation Ale, what was I, and indeed the rest of the family, doing at the Cock Horse on Sunday lunchtime? As truth is sometimes stranger than fiction, I shall give a truthful answer – we were there to meet up with Mrs PBT’s long lost cousin. You can blame the Ancestry website, the one where you register, submit a small sample of your DNA (by spitting into a tube), post it off, and wait it to be analysed, and your DNA profile to be emailed back, in due course.

Eileen and I both had our profiles analysed some years ago, and to anyone interested in this sort of thing, or indeed curious about their genetic makeup, and hence their ancestry, it’s certainly well worth doing. Getting your DNA analysed can throw up some surprising results, as I discovered with mine - 60% from Southern England and North West Europe, with the remainder split in roughly equal portions, between Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, and Scandinavia. The Wales connection doesn’t surprise me, as my maternal grandmother came from Mountain Ash, in the Welsh valleys, but the Ireland and Scotland connections were totally unexpected.

I’m digressing here, as this is supposed to be about Eileen’s ancestry, and hers veered more towards Northern Europe and Scandinavia, with the wildcard being a small amount (1%), from Sardinia! Eileen took out a monthly subscription to ancestry, which means she gets much more regular updates than I do, but four or five months ago, she received a message from a person with a DNA match, close enough to be a first cousin. Contact was established, more so with this long-lost cousin’s wife, but because there are still other relatives living, who are not aware of this individual, or from which side of the family he originates, this is as far as the disclosure goes.

What I can reveal is that Eileen and I arranged to meet up with her new cousin, and his wife, and as they were staying relatively local, whilst visiting another member of their family, we chose the Cock Horse at Detling, as a suitable venue. It was less than 10 minutes’ drive from the hotel they were staying at, and it also offered a “lite bites” option alongside its main Sunday lunchtime menu. I’d been tasked with locating a pub with this option, but as I explained to my good lady wife, most pubs understandably want to capitalise on the Sunday lunchtime trade by offering the full roast or carvery options, complete with all the trimmings. "But you're the pub expert," I was told. Pub expert, possibly, but miracle worker, definitely not, but as proof that persistence sometimes pays off, I eventually came up trumps.

The Cock Horse stood out as one of the very few pubs with a baguette or jacket potato option, alongside the Sunday roast, and its close proximity to where Mrs PBT’s newly found relatives were staying, made it the ideal choice. The landlord had told me, over the phone, that whilst there were no tables available in the restaurant, we were welcome to find some space in the bar, and order what we liked from the “lite bites” menu. With fine weather making a long overdue appearance, many people were sitting out in the garden, so there was plenty of room in the bar when we arrived.

The meeting was a success, and we could tell, at a glance, exactly who Eileen’s long-lost cousin is related to. Furthermore, him and his wife were really nice people, so we will arrange a further meetup in the not-too-distant future. The pub also proved a good choice on a busy Bank Holiday weekend, as well as providing my first opportunity for a visit  moving away from Maidstone, nearly 40 years ago.The pub was friendly, welcoming and the food offering was good too. It was certainly busy last Sunday, with a full restaurant, and a packed garden as well.

Before bringing this article to a close, I want to touch very briefly on the subject of royal, celebratory ales. In the past, such beers proved immensely popular when brewed to mark various royal events, and thinking back to the late Queen’s Silver Jubilee, in 1977,  it seemed that just about every brewery in the land, irrespective of size, produced a special beer to mark the event. Almost without exception these beers were only available in bottled form. 25 years later, fewer celebratory beers were brewed to mark the monarch’s Golden Jubilee, and in 2012, fewer still appeared in honour of the Diamond Jubilee. Some of these might well have been draught, rather than packaged, but I didn’t give that much attention to the matter and might still have done the same with regard to the coronation of the new King. A quick browse of the shelves in Sainsbury’s, last Bank Holiday Monday, revealed a Coronation Ale as part of the store’s "Taste the Difference" range.

Coming in at 7.0% abv, this strong, rich ale seemed worthy of my attention, so I treated myself to a bottle. Priced at £2.25, for a 500ml bottle, and attractively packaged, the beer is brewed by Dorset brewers, Hall & Woodhouse, and to my mind at least, is produced at a more fitting strength for a bottled, celebratory beer. Photos on Untappd, show this beer to be quite dark in colour as well, so I shall look forward to cracking this one open, next weekend.

Several other brewers, including Abbey Ales, Chiltern, Elgood’s, Greene King, Mauldon’s, Timothy Taylor, Tring, plus Windsor & Eton have also brewed their own coronation brew, to mark the occasion, but there hasn’t exactly been a flood of these beers. So, worth sampling, should you come across one, but on the other hand not really worth going out of your way to track any of these down.