The Pub Curmudgeon

My recent post about bottled Butcombe Bitter raised the long-running issue that many beers are significantly stronger in bottled form than ...

The brewing industry is in a slow, steady decline. Beer volumes are 25% down over 14 years. High duty levels are putting drinkers off and ma...

There has been a lot of media interest recently in 21-year-old Laura Hall from Redditch who has been banned from every pub and bar in Britai...

Council bosses in Carlisle have written to their employees suggesting that, if smokers have to clock out for a fag break, anyone wishing to...

A few more points from the UK Quarterly Beer Barometer : Over the past three years, off-trade beer volumes have been falling as well as on-...

The point was made in the comments the other day that the vast majority (in terms of shelf space anyway) of lagers on sale in the average su...

There's an excellent article about food and dieting from Dominic Lawson in today’s Independent . It concludes: Back in 1974, Dr Lois M...

According to the most recent figures produced by the British Beer & Pub Association, total UK on-trade beer sales in 2010 were 14.2 mil...

I’ve expressed my liking before for Butcombe Bitter, a beer that for me is always associated with being on holiday in the West Country. It...

Josie Appleton reports how bar owners in Spain are refusing to take draconian new restrictions on smoking in public lying down: In this ba...

The place was actually open and trading for a start. It wasn’t one of the 7,000-odd that have closed since 1 July 2007. It was busy, lively...

I can’t say I was particularly surprised to read the reaction of CAMRA’s Mike Benner to the government’s “minimum pricing” plans, although ...

Well, the theme of minimum pricing/below cost selling has been done to death, so I didn’t see much point in doing yet another post on the su...

This article underlines a point I have often made in the past, that people’s decisions as to which pubs to visit can often be influenced by...

Another pub name gem courtesy of Google Street View. Somehow I doubt whether visiting American tourists will be too keen to call in at this...