Eccleshall brewed Slaters Top Notch was voted Champion Beer of Walsall 1999, having beaten all other 85 real ales on sale at this year's Walsall Beer Festival.

Brewer Andrew Slater is shown receiving the certificate from Rob Bentley of Walsall CAMRA branch at a recent ceremony in the George, Eccleshall, the Slaters Brewery tap.

For a couple of years CAMRA has been concerned that real ale is being replaced by nitrokeg in many pubs and it has recognised that regional brewers are the most important brewers of cask beers.

This certainly seems to be the case in the Cannock town centre area where a recent survey revealed that real ale was available only in the two Banks's pubs - the White Hart, Wolverhampton Road, and the Fern & Fallow, Stafford Road.

The cask beers once available in several Bass (M&B) and Allied (Ansells) pubs have gone and new micro-breweries are not represented in the town.

Stone's first beer festival was held at the Swan Inn, Stafford Street, from Friday 16th to Sunday 18th July.

Most of the 37 real ales were stillaged in the Swan's stables, which are earmarked for conversion into the John Joule and Sons micro-brewery.

The beers came from as far afield as Yorkshire (Marston Moor, Rudgate) and Somerset (Berrow, RCH) and ranged from 3.5% abv (Judge's Barristers Bitter) to 6.6% (Kelhem Island Grande Pale). A token system meant that all beers could be bought for £1.42 a pint and a special commemorative glass was available.

With fine weather and all of the beer sold, the beer festival was judged a great success. A Winter Ales Festival will probably be held next.

Illustrated here are the Surgery, Crabbery Street, and Yates's Wine Lodge, Goalgate Street, both of which opened recently, as reported in the last issue of Potters Bar.

A Stafford pub user recently wrote to Bass in Burton on Trent expressing concern about the quality of some of the Draught Bass brewed there.

Bass replied that "Unfortunately your query is outside our level of expertise and we have, therefore forwarded your enquiry to Bass Brewers Customer Services, based in Leeds."

Without "expertise" in Burton, it is no surprise that Draught Bass is losing ground to other premium cask bitters, such as Marstons Pedigree.

Clive Wilson-Hart is selling Stafford's Castle Tavern after several years at the ex-Butlers pub in Doxey Road. He has stocked the full range of Banks's ales and established the Tavern Restaurant there. He had previously run the Nags Head and is now leaving the licensed trade.

The Jolly Jockey is the latest name for the Falcon, which for the last eighteen months has been the Staff of Life. The Enterprise Inns pub in Stafford's Foregate Street no longer sells real ale.

Before the demise of Joules and Son in the late 1960s there used to be as many as fifteen public houses in Stone's historic High Street. There is only one remaining -the Red Lion, writes Andy Burdon.

Built as a Georgian townhouse in the late 18th century, the earliest recorded license was granted in 1793, making it the third oldest licensed premises in Stone after the Crown Hotel and the Crown & Anchor.

Evidence found in the recent refurbishment indicates that it stands on the site of a much older building, though whether this was a beerhouse is not known. The Red Lion served as a coaching stopover when Stone was on the route to Holyhead and Liverpool in the 18th and 19th centuries. Stabling is still to be found at the rear of the premises.

Having fallen on hard times in the early 1990s, the Red Lion was taken over by Andy and Sylvia Burdon in 1995, who embarked on a series of improvements. This culminated in a major refurbishment in 1998 which extended the bar, brought toilets inside and provided wheelchair access. These works were undertaken with the emphasis on retaining a traditional town pub atmosphere, which has proved itself in the popularity of the pub since.

Following the refurbishment it has been a policy of the Red Lion to offer an ever changing choice of cask conditioned ales, whilst keeping one or two favourites like Everards Tiger and Boddingtons. We serve them at their best, not using tight sparklers where appropriate and last year stocked over 50 guest ales from brewers such as Adnams, Smiles, Wychwood and Tomintoul.