The Pub Curmudgeon

Over the years I’ve met a number of people who buy themselves a lot of exotic bottled beers and end up with more than they can drink. Some h...

This blog has now been going for seven years, and I make no apology in saying that the smoking ban was what prompted its creation and, while...

I’m in a Brains tied pub in a Welsh market town to have a bite of lunch. I order a pint of Brains Bitter, which is OK but a bit past its bes...

There’s a widespread view that, going back to the early days of CAMRA, pub life was pretty dull. Everyone dutifully trooped in to their loca...

When CAMRA was formed in the early 1970s, it settled upon the definition of “real ale” as involving the beer undergoing a secondary fermenta...

I was in a local pub at lunchtime the other day delivering the monthly CAMRA magazine. The pub in question had a couple of free-standing rac...

To paraphrase Admiral Lord Nelson – but, in most pubs, he wouldn’t even if he put his telescope to his good eye. Over the past few weeks, th...

Boak & Bailey’s recent blogpost on the decline and fall of Boddington’s Bitter reminded me of its erstwhile advertising slogan “If you ...

In the early 1970s, the British beer market was increasingly becoming dominated by a dwindling number of bland, dumbed-down beers mass-produ...

It’s always good to see a pub so busy it’s standing room only, but very often a visit is more rewarding at a quieter time when you have a ch...

In the 1977 edition of the Good Beer Guide , the breweries section amounted to 11 pages. By 2014, with the enormous growth in new breweries ...

A few months ago, I wrote a post about the history of electric real ale dispense . In this I mentioned that some pubs in Sheffield used t...

The poll on voting intentions that I put up a couple of weeks ago ended up being rather over-enthusiastically shared by others on Twitter an...

I reported recently on the launch of the Pound Pub chain – which in fact is selling a pint for £1.50. However, as I quoted in the comments,...

Well, not exactly, but it is to be made available in the currently fashionable canned format . A 250 ml can of the 15% ABV tonic wine will r...