The Pub Curmudgeon

I know others have got there first, but I thought these two stories about minimum alcohol pricing that came out in the past few days were wo...

Councillors in County Kerry in the west of Ireland have voted in favour of asking the Irish government to introduce a relaxation of the dr...

Three months ago I wrote a post called Steady Decline Continues , saying that the most recent BBPA Beer Barometer figures weren’t actually a...

Robinson’s Unicorn (formerly Best Bitter), the best-selling cask ale in and around Stockport, is brewed to a relatively generous 4.2% ABV....

The latest round in the inexorable process of watering the workers’ beer came with the announcement from Heineken that the strength of Joh...

Something I’ve noticed a few times recently is pubs aiming to establish their credentials for selling and promoting real ale trying a bit to...

Some telling words here from William Lees-Jones of Middleton family brewer J W Lees: Lees-Jones said that the company had been “in the tr...

Tom Paine recently made a blogpost in which he suggested that resistance to State nannying is only likely to become serious once the pleasu...

I wrote here about how Wetherspoon’s had bought the former Kings Bar and Lounge in Poynton and were busy working on it with a view to ope...

Over the years I have been consistently critical of the dogmatic “real ale good, keg beer bad” attitude but, on the other hand, I have seen ...

As someone known to have an interest in beer, over the years I’ve received my fair share of rather naff beer-related Christmas gifts. Pos...

A comment by Phil alerted me to the dubious delights of CAMRA’s Nottingham Drinker magazine: I've just got back from Nottingham, whe...

In the days of the old licensing laws, the “lock-in” where a pub continued serving after hours to a group of favoured customers was commonpl...

Yesterday was widely described as “black Friday” – the day of the year on which most pressure is placed on emergency services from drunken...

It often seems to be assumed by people involved in the pub trade that either alcohol minimum pricing won’t affect them at all, or it may eve...