Pint to Pint: Dipton Mill Inn, Northumberland On the bar are Devil's Water (4.1% abv), a fruity, copper-hued best bitter; award-winning Shire Bitter (3.8% abv), an easy drinker with a delicious hop and fruit balance; plus Devil's Elbow (3.6% abv) and Whapweasel (4.8% abv). Blackhall English Stout (4.0% abv) has proved so popular it has eased Guinness from the counter. Brooker also brews Old Humbug (5.5% abv), a winter ale he's considered stocking year round. However, an outlying pub couldn't survive on liquid alone, and the lunchtime chalkboard that includes chicken breast in sherry sauce, lambs" liver and sausages and three-cheese ploughman's accounts for 40 per cent of trade. Mince and dumplings and steak and kidney pie are bestsellers, received wisdom being that these days people rarely cook such staples for themselves. More importantly, everything is home-made by the landlord's wife (who also compiles the pub's quiz questions). Forty-odd years ago, an episode of The Likely Lads was filmed outside - a reshot and reshot sequence with Bob and Terry cycling up and down and using the phone box. It's not that nothing ever happens here, but people still talk about it. Hexhamshire Brewery beer mats scattered around the pub feature its logo, a Thomas Bewick 18th-century woodcut depicting two men in brimmed hats and breeches with a wooden barrel suspended between them. It was quite a while before an elderly visitor pointed out that they weren't lugging beer, as folks had naturally thought. "It's a reference to the local leather tanning industry," she said. It's urine. People still talk about it. Dipton Mill Inn, Hexham, Northumberland NE46 1YA (01434 606577)