The Pub Curmudgeon

We pick up our story in the back room of the Vaults in Uttoxeter. The next pub on the itinerary was the Plough on Stafford Road, but this w...

The Staffordshire market town of Uttoxeter is best known for its racecourse and being the home of JCB and Elkes Biscuits. The name will also...

A Bristol licensee has recently complained that her profits were being adversely affected by customers choosing just to drink tap water wit...

In the early days of CAMRA, a substantial proportion of cask beer, especially in the Midlands and North of England, was served via electric ...

The other day, I was in a pub where a guy went up to the bar and very decisively ordered a Heineken Zero. Nothing unusual about that, maybe,...

Earlier this week, the Institute for Public Policy Research published a report proposing that, to combat obesity, the plain packaging curren...

Last Autumn, I argued in a post entitled Something’s Got to Give that the steady decline in cask beer volumes would inevitably lead to redu...

Pete Brown (yes, him again) has recently been complaining in the Morning Advertiser about the poor aesthetic presentation of beer as compa...

This isn’t an overtly political blog beyond the sphere of lifestyle politics. However, for each major national election, out of interest I’v...

Last week, there was a rather odd report claiming that British people were the biggest boozers in the world. This was based on a survey whi...

In recent years there has been a growing amount of interest in and media coverage of vegetarian and vegan diets. The impression given is t...

Yesterday I wrote about how there was a fundamental limitation to the extent to which pubs could diversify their offer to attract non-drink...

A major problem for the pub trade is the growing proportion of young people who have chosen not to drink alcohol at all. In response to this...

We pick up our story having left the Victoria and heading back along Clifton Road towards the centre of Rugby. This brought us to the Squir...

I recently came across this interesting article discussing whether the temperature at which it is served is holding cask ale back. However,...