25 Mar 19

Hot-pot and Pint Night

Monday’s are tough enough to deal with as it is without having to think of something to cook in the evening as well. You’ve got another week of drudgery and work ahead of you and the last thing you need is to worry about is whether you’ve got enough gone-off mushrooms to scrape together another bl**dy Jamie Oliver pasta bake. Let’s face it, with this level of depression and gloom you’re definitely going to need some kind of beer-based anaesthesia to get you through and a deathly dull bottle of Doom Bar from the Co-Op just isn’t going to cut it. What you need is the Sally to take all this pain away from you. What you need is a steaming hot bowl of a delicious, comforting stew all made with quality, local ingredients. What you need is a fresh, foaming pint of perfectly conditioned ale to sup your troubles away. What you need is the cheery company of others who can understand and alleviate your Monday blues. What you need is the gentle crackle of a log fire to warm and soothe your soul. What you need is the Sally Hot-Pot and Pint Night. Yep that’s right, every Monday night the Sally Hot-Pot and Pint Night will bring you a different hotpot, stew, casserole or chilli plus a pint for just £8 with food served between 5pm and 8pm. That’s Monday sorted, just got to get through Tuesdays now….!!. This weeks hot-pot is Chicken white wine and broad bean hot-pot served with crusty bread and butter

28 Mar 19

The Sally Cheese Club

One of the few things that we love almost as much as beer and cider here at the Sally is cheese. Being based in Berkeley we are also steeped in cheese-making history with the town once famous for being the cheese capital of the county (Double Berkeley anyone?!). Given this, we’ve decided that we need to celebrate, nay worship, our favourite booze accompaniment on a monthly basis. Ladies and gentlemen, may we present to you The Sally Cheese Club! Our resident cheese connoisseur Jerry (no, not a cartoon mouse but actually a cheesemaker for the legendary Jonathan Crump) will take all you fans of fromage through a hand-picked selection of world cheeses that would make Wallace and Gromit wet themselves. Jerry will be pairing each cheese with a sample of perfectly paired beverages from some of the world’s finest beers and ciders and some alright wine as well. Sally Cheese Club will run on the last Thursday of every month starting at 7.30pm . Tickets are £17 each (available to book in advance now from the bar) and include a selection of and introduction to six different cheese and drink pairings from our man Jerry.

30 Mar 19

Live Music – Cat Amongst The Pigeons

Cat Amongst the Pigeons are an up-tempo folk outfit made up of musicians you might just recognise from the Severn Vale and beyond. Their sound is a soaring, swoon of fiddle, accordion, guitar, trumpet and vocals covering a range of folk styles from traditional Irish to foot-stomping Balkan gypsy jazz to Pete Seeger-inspired big-band Americana. We’re going to pack them in to the piano bar in the Sally to really ramp-up the atmosphere to 11! It’s going to be a lot of fun! Music starts at 7.45pm.

31 Mar 19

The Sunday Sally Singalong

The late afternoon/early evening Sunday session in the Sally is one of our favourites. Sunday lunch is all washed up, you’ve kicked out the relatives, Saturday’s hangover is starting to clear and before you even start thinking about another working week, there is just one last treat to squeeze in. Time to get out of the house, have a brisk walk up to the Sally and sink a few relaxing pints with friends sat by the warm fire. Well, those Sunday evening sessions just got even better since we found hand-clapping, foot-stomping, ivory-tinkling, Elton John-eat-your-heart-out, piano playing legend “Mike The Piano” (OK we’re not sure what his surname is). Mike is the most gifted pianist and can it seems, pretty much play any number you ask guys for (“Do you know your monkey’s stolen my pint? “No but if you hum it…” etc etc). American Pie, Crocodile Rock, Hey Jude, you name it and he will play it (and we’ll probably butcher it trying to sing along). The Sunday Sally Singalong is brilliant way to round off your weekend and is well worth delaying Mondays for.

11 Apr 19

The Great Sally Alley Quiz

Yes that’s right Ladies and Gentlemen, roll-up roll-up roll-up your sleeves, its time to start swotting, sweating and rubbing those brain cells together for The Great Sally Alley Quiz!

“What’s so great about it?” we hear you cry. Well, it’s at the Sally of course!

“We thought you said you’d never do a quiz – running out of ideas are we?” Aah sod off!

Enough with the awkward questions, here’s how it works; on the second Thursday of every month we’re inviting a different Berkeley charity to set the questions, act as quizmaster and trouser all the entry fees. Adding to the fun, each quiz will be sponsored by one of our favourite local breweries who will be donating a case of bottled beer as the prize. There will be six rounds of different topics chosen by the charity, including one specific to their own cause. They ask you questions, you try and answer them. The team with the most correct answers wins beer. We’re allowing teams of up to six people and entry fee is £4 per person. Register your team for 7.45pm and the great quizzing commences at 8pm. It’s going to be great…I don’t know why we didn’t think of this before?!?!?

13 Apr 19

The Sally Alley Shindig

We thought about calling it “Hamfest” or “Hamstock” or something like that but the way that “Sally Alley Shindig” tripped off the tongue was too beautiful to ignore. It’s pretty simple really, we’re hosting a line-up of not one, not two, not three, not four, not five (is anyone still reading?) but SIX BRILLIANT BANDS in the Sally skittles alley! It will be a shindig of epic proportion. This musical extravaganza will start at 5pm and will feature local bands. Line up to be announced soon.

The music starts at 5pm. There will be delicious beer. There will be incredible bands. There is no entry fee (although we will shake a bucket and ask for a donation). And it will be ruddy bloody brilliant. See you there.

18 Apr 19

Folk Night

The Sally house band (Sally and the Hamonites) will be playing in the front bar of the Sally on the third Thursday of every month. Expect screaming fiddles, rattling banjos and heaving accordions with some traditional Irish jigs and reels! As Shane MacGowan once described it, it’s “heart, b*lls and feet music”!! Music usually starts about 7.30pm.

11 May 19

Pizza Monkey at the Sally

We are thrilled to have Pizza Monkey (a.k.a. Nick Higgs, a.k.a. Street Food Legend or as we called him, “Street Food”) back at the Sally once more. Those of you that have had his pizzas here before will know why we’re so excited to have him back. Those of you that haven’t, take a good hard look at yourself and ask “what the hell have you been playing at?!?”. Using his mobile wood-fired oven, Nick’s pizzas are all hand-stretched using fresh dough and topped with the finest artisan ingredients. With the best pizzas this side of the Italian alps, washed down with the best beer brewed this side of Ham Green, your stomachs are in for one hell of a treat! Pizzas from 4pm until we run out!

25 May 19

Live Music with the Daybreakers

“Celtic interpretations of indie, alternative, Irish folk, punk and ska classics, you say? Do you play Pogues numbers?…You do. Yes we’re interested. VERY, VERY interested!!”

There hasn’t been this much excitement about a band in Sally HQ since a young man called Mark Knopfler bought a fender Stratocaster and some sweat bands. (We’re joking – we weren’t born then). On a serious note though we are very excited about having the brilliant Daybreakers play live at the Sally. We’ve had a sneak listen to their stuff and it’s superb, beer-bopping music that is right up our street. They deftly handle covers from the Cure, the Levellers, the Pogues, the Waterboys, the Dubliners, the Jam, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Van Morrison, the Jam (I’ve already said them – keep up), Echo and the Bunnymen and the Smiths! It’s like they’ve hacked into our Spotify account and compiled a set-list from musical heaven! (For the benefit of our older customers, Spotify is what the kids listen to music on these days – apparently gramophones are on their way out). The Daybreakers cover all of these with their own Celtic twist incorporating guitar and bass guitar, drums keyboard and violin. They’re going to be rocking our skittles alley for one very special evening starting at 8.30pm. Get your dancing shoes on – this is going to be great!