The Pub Curmudgeon

Pete Brown (again) has recently produced the latest edition of the annual Cask Report , which in fact will be the last one he writes. Obviou...

When he’s not engaging in juvenile rants against the Ebil Toriez, or claiming that a big brewery merger spells apocalyptic disaster, left...

I’m not a huge fan of the Good Pub Guide , but its most recent launch highlighted the issue of children in pubs , something that has long be...

For many years, I’ve regularly distributed the local CAMRA magazine to a varying selection of pubs. One thing that always struck me was that...

In the early days of CAMRA, Donnington Brewery in the Cotswolds was widely seen as the ideal of the small, rustic, country brewery. The bre...

In his budget in July, George Osborne announced that, from April next year, the National Minimum Wage would rise to £7.20 an hour for over-2...

Regular readers will be familiar with my other blog of Closed Pubs , where I take advantage of the views offered by Google StreetView to hig...

Boak & Bailey have posted a fascinating gallery of pictures of 1960s Watneys pubs taken from the back of matchboxes. Only one out of th...

I recently wrote about how some in the contemporary “craft beer movement” had set themselves up in opposition to the achievements of CAMRA ...

For several years I’ve been arguing that minimum alcohol pricing would not only be ineffective and disproportionately affect the poor, but w...

In recent years, we have seen a huge expansion of the German discount supermarket chains ALDI and Lidl. Before acquiring any new site, I’m s...

My recent visit to West Wales prompted me to dig out my copy of A Year in the Drink , a book written by Martin Green and published in 1982,...

The White Swan in North Walsham, Norfolk, has recently been in the news for stopping selling food and suggesting that customers bring their ...

Go back a few years, and it was common for a man ordering a round of drinks in a pub including a half-pint to be asked by the bar staff “and...

I was originally going to do a rather light-hearted post on “why I don’t like craft beer”. However, in view of this post by Arthur Scargill ...