The Pub Curmudgeon

I was disappointed to learn that Batemans are to cut the strength of their flagship XXXB premium bitter from 4.8% ABV to 4.5%. A Batemans s...

Anyone reading this blog will quickly realise that I am not the greatest fan of the smoking ban. But, on the other hand, if you are running ...

The other night, I picked up a beermat in the pub asking the question “Why is illegal tobacco so easy to get hold of?” I would have thought ...

Following my rant here , I started a poll asking the question “Should children be barred from drinking areas of pubs?” There were 92 respons...

The duty increases announced in this week’s Budget would result in an increase in the price of a typical pint of beer in the pub of about 4p...

Drinks journalist Andrew Pring has controversially claimed that, despite the closures of recent years, Britain still has far too many pubs ...

There will be plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth from the pub and beer community over the lack of any concessions in today’s Budget but...

An issue confronting the compilers of pub guides in the early 1980s was how to identify pubs with an “up-market” clientele, and, without see...

In the past, I’ve sometimes heard the view expressed that, if a market economy functions efficiently, there should be no need for consumer p...

Although it was widely signalled in advance, it is still good news for pubs and pubgoers that the government has decided not to reduce the B...

Last night, we had a CAMRA pub crawl, and one of the participants was a retired gent who said that his normal mode of pubgoing was on his ow...

I've recently been running a poll asking the question “In which year would you have most liked to be a beer drinker and pubgoer in the U...

Any suggestions from the readership for polls that you’d like to see on here in the future?

Ten or more years ago, beers from the Caledonian Brewery in Edinburgh were a common sight in the off-trade. More recently, they seem to have...

Today, the Campaign for Real Ale celebrates its fortieth anniversary . There can be no doubt that during its lifetime CAMRA has played a cen...