The Pub Curmudgeon

In Boak & Bailey’s recent discussion about getting casual drinkers back into pubs , the old chestnut inevitably cropped up of “Use it or...

The government are planning to introduce a tax on sugar in carbonated soft drinks with the stated aim of reducing child obesity. On the face...

There’s an interesting piece on the Labour Uncut website by Kevin Meagher entitled The skipped over people of real Britain . The whole thi...

In response to the recent debate over at Boak & Bailey about the apparently very poor returns available to brewers, I thought I would c...

Earlier this week, Boak & Bailey did a very stimulating blogpost entitled Pubs Need Casuals, Not Stakhanovite Drinkers , in which they a...

There has been much recent discussion in the media as to whether the “graduate premium” obtained from gaining a degree justifies the cost of...

In a recent blogpost, Stuart Vallantine reflects on the decline of that onetime pub staple, the cheese toastie . I’ve written myself about h...

Last Friday night, the local CAMRA branch did one of its regular monthly “Staggers” or pub crawls around the Shaw Heath and Higher Hillgate ...

Throughout my drinking career, the steady encroachment of food into pubs has always been a bone of contention. “It’s gone over to food” was ...

The recent closure of the Waterloo was discussed on a Stockport-related Facebook group, and inevitably the old chestnut came up that pub cl...

Back in January 2010, to welcome the new decade, I produced a list for my Opening Times column of features of the drinking scene of 1980 t...

The subject of whether we undervalue good beer in the price we’re prepared to pay for it has cropped up again in the past couple of days. Th...

There has been a lot of talk recently about some “KeyKeg” beers qualifying as real ale. Essentially, these are vessels in which the beer is ...

Manchester brewers Cloudwater have gained a lot of praise over the past couple of years for being in the forefront of the craft beer moveme...

Well, here are the results of my poll on whether CAMRA should formally embrace non-real “craft” beers. There’s a clear majority against of a...