Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got community pubs, pub communities, and indie beer.

First, some news from the recent Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) members’ weekend at which a motion was passed instructing the Campaign’s leadership…

to ensure that all relevant CAMRA publications and communications pledge preferential support to beer producers and suppliers that are independent of the influence of the multinational brewers, and to make the case persistently for this stance…

In other words, to prioritise support for independent producers, and to avoid supporting or publicising multinational brewing businesses – even if they produce cask ale.

The best summary currently available outside CAMRA’s walled gardens for members is via Keith Flett’s blog.

We’ll be pulling together some thoughts of our own in the footnotes post on Patreon that follows this round-up every Saturday.

Hazel Southwell took on the running of a large, somewhat decrepit pub in South East London last year. A side product of that has been one of the frankest and most interesting newsletters or blogs to have launched in recent years, recording her experiences – and especially her management of relationships with locals and regulars.

This week’s post was particularly impassioned, being a reaction to a UK Supreme Court ruling on the legal definition of the word ‘woman’, and how that might affect trans people. This passage struck us as particularly powerful:

That’s the thing about pubs, everyone in them is a real person. Suddenly both the GB News-pilled bigots and the woke lesbian landlady are real people who have to deal with each other, not the concepts of each other. And not to invent some sort of magical thinking but I think that’s a very important space, in a world that’s badly lost its way with a lot of made-up things, in forums better suited to online roleplaying than political debate.

At A Tempest in a Tankard Franz Hofer has attempted to pin down what makes a Wirtshaus, from decor to culture:

The Viennese claim the Wirtshaus as a unique ingredient in their culinary identity. But it didn’t take long before I realized that I had seen these kinds of establishments before—dozens if not hundreds of times, in fact. If there is something ineffably Viennese about its Wirtshaus culture, the Wirtshaus itself has a long history in Central Europe… What makes these places so special? It’s no one thing in particular. It’s the rusticity of some places, the homey décor of others. Wirtshäuser come in all shapes and sizes. Still, you’ll notice family resemblances. They all have a certain feel, an atmosphere of cozy comfort. This, if anything, is what sets the Wirtshaus apart from a restaurant. The beer flows more liberally here, the laughter rings louder.

At Beervana Jeff Alworth has made some interesting observations about the convergence of pale ales and pilsners, some of which, he argues, could have their style labels swapped without anyone noticing:

On one track we have lagers, clean and dry, with lean bodies and increasingly fruity and aromatic hop profiles. Instead of herbs and wildflowers, they waft the scents of American hops, and tinge the flavor profile with limes, tangerines, lychee, and cannabis. Sulfur plays no role. They are light and sunny, around 5% ABV, and slide down a throat with the ease of water… On another track are pale ales, stripped of body and sparkling, redolent of American hops. Made with light malts and clean yeast, they are platforms for mid-intensity hopping, with lovely bouquets and flavors crackling with those same citrus, tropical fruits, and a hint of something savory for contrast. They are light and sunny, around 5% ABV, and slide down a throat with the ease of water… Am I drinking a West Coast pilsner or a West Coast Pale ale? Does it matter?

Chris Dyson at Real Ale, Real Music has gathered together notes on a bunch of pubs across the UK that didn’t fit into his town-by-town crawls, but which do make sense considered as a type in their own right. That is, pubs near stations where you can hang out while waiting for a train:

It happens quite regularly. Often when on a rail journey where I have to change trains I have enough time for a pint while I wait, so I call in a station buffet bar or nearby pub… One place that I have called in a couple of times this year and numerous times in the past is the York Tap (opening image) which I have mentioned in previous blogs when I have been featuring York, but on both times I have visited this year the beer and ambience has been as good as ever… Another station bar that is an ideal calling point when in-between trains is the Draughtsman Alehouse, which is situated on platform 3b of Doncaster Railway Station, which I last called in on my way to and from Lincoln a few months ago. This is a gem of a micropub converted from a former Victorian buffet bar which had lain empty for 18 years before opening in 2017.

We’re suckers for stories about communities taking on the running of pubs and so pounced on this piece by Giancarlo Rinaldi for the BBC about The Plough Inn at Wigtown in Scotland:

The former Plough Inn in Wigtown was at risk of being turned into flats until local residents stepped in and took it over… Craig Hamnett, who chairs the Wigtown Community Inn community benefit society, said it was a relief not to lose the centuries-old hostelry… The pub in Wigtown had been in continuous use for more than 200 years… Its first licence was granted in 1795… Unfortunately the business closed shortly after the Covid pandemic… It has been a long battle but thanks to support from South of Scotland Enterprise the group was able to purchase the building for £330,000 and got the keys on Valentines Day this year… Thanks to an army of volunteers – and more than £30,000 from a community share offer – it recently reopened its doors to great acclaim.

Finally, from Bluesky, some interesting news re: the hype beer of 2025…

Can hardly believe it but I’m hearing that ABInbev/Budweiser is launching a sales drive behind draught Bass with new PoS and stuff. Glassware has already been spotted. Interesting development, if true, but let’s see…

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— Phil Mellows (@philmellows.bsky.social) April 18, 2025 at 5:39 PM

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week – even when we’re on holiday, apparently. This time, we’ve got UNESCO, green beer, and the absence of gammon at JDW.

First, a couple of related news stories: there are bids underway to secure UNESCO ‘intangible cultural heritage’ listings for both British cask ale and Czech beer culture. Belgian beer culture was listed in 2016, so there is precedent.

In practice, what does a listing mean? As far as we can tell, it’s mostly about awareness, and supporting further campaigning. It puts preassure on politicians to step up and protect listed cultural assets or, at the very least, not to be seen to be vandalising them. It’s about saying: “These things matter to the world, and you are being watched.”

At IrishBeerHistory Liam K has been exploring the strange history of Green Beer, which was briefly fashionable in London in the 1930s. As in, beer that was artificially coloured a “strong and clear green”:

One of the earliest mentions of this new beverage is The Yorkshire Post & Leeds Intelligencer in late October 1930… “As to the green beer, I have heard many descriptions of its peculiar and individual flavour, but to me it tasted just like any other sort of beer in spite of its lurid emerald colour. Brewed in Scotland, it is at present the monopoly of the proprietors of a restaurant in Bury Street, who ‘invented’ it…” Hardly a glowing or detailed review but it shows that it had certainly been around for a short while at this point, and a week or so later this new concoction appeared in the society pages of the London Weekly Dispatch when the author Arnold Bennett was seen “drinking the newest drink of all in a Bury Street restaurant – green beer”. The author, one John Grosvenor, goes on to state that the beverage “looks like particularly clear crème de menthe, and tastes like – beer, good beer.”

Anyone who has made beer part of their lifestyle and, dare we say, identity will read Vincent Raison’s piece for Pellicle with a sense of recognition – and perhaps unease. He’s been told to cut down on booze by his doctor but, to cut a long story short, doesn’t want to. He likes beer, and likes being in the pub, and is in the process of attempting to reengineer his lifestyle and habits:

The doctor gently suggested some lifestyle changes. More (or some) exercise. Improved diet. The usual stuff. Then she proposed I take three consecutive days off alcohol a week to avoid gout attacks and otherwise unnecessary medication… I have friends who have gone sober and are very happy about it, but that’s not for me, despite their increased vim and vigour. I needed a Third Way. A strategy for survival that still involves my beloved local pub… I began walking more, cutting down on delicious, empty carbohydrates and beautiful, calorific snacks. Fine. But the real challenge was not drinking from Monday to Wednesday.

The piece is also, somewhat incidentally, a portrait of a particular pub in South London, The Green Goddess, which sounds very much worth a visit.

The news that the Wetherspoon chain is tweaking its food menu might not seem, at first glance, to be especially interesting. For the Pub Curmudgeon, however, it highlights a fundamental feature of their business model: the willingness to adapt to market pressures to keep prices keen. In a lengthy post, he reflects on what makes Wetherspoon tick, and how it has risen to such prominence in British beer culture:

Wetherspoon’s have ended up reinventing the pub model from the ground up. The fundamental point is that the underlying cost assumptions of the pub trade should not be taken as fixed… This wasn’t something that was in place from the beginning. Tim Martin started out by converting former shops to offer something that most London pubs at the time didn’t – cask beer, food service, consistent opening hours and a comfortable, welcoming, unthreatening environment. In the early days, they weren’t markedly cheap compared with the competition. It wasn’t until the mid-90s that they started expanding outside their initial South-East base – the Moon Under Water in Manchester city centre opened in August 1995… But it is an approach that has evolved over time. Every aspect of the pub cost base has been challenged in the quest to make a lower margin viable.

Patreon supporters get bonus footnotes on these round-ups most weeks, with extra commentary and even more links. Do consider signing up.

A while ago, Jeff Alworth at Beervana came across an unusual imported version of Mexican Corona lager that was possibly more ‘authentic’, and certainly better tasting. But he struggled to pin down the story behind this strange variant. Now, further fascinating details have emerged:

The label listed Oz Trading Group of Hidalgo, Texas as the importer, which was an oddly bold move for, to quote the economist Stringer Bell, “a criminal [expletive] enterprise”…. [Now] we finally have some resolution to the mystery: Constellation and Modelo are suing Oz… According to the case against Oz, the charge is counterfeiting… And the suit directly identifies the Corona Mega scam: “While Oz Trading reportedly withdrew its applications for the infringing labels, the lawsuit contends that the company continues to market and sell products that bear the Modelo trademarks, misleading branding, and false advertising…”

Jeff’s follow up questions are good ones, too, such as: “Why was the counterfeit beer so much better than Corona?”

Here’s a fascinating thing: at Beer & Brewer Jake Brandish has done his best to come up with a brew-at-home recipe for a clone of low-alcohol Guinness… although the message really seems to be “Don’t bother.” As in, brewing low alcohol beer is a considerable technical challenge, and the improved quality of modern LA beer is something of a marvel of the age:

When it comes to home brewing no or ultra-low alcohol beers at home, there are some areas of major concern. Some of the main reasons beer has become such a safe and relatively stable product are the low pH levels and the presence of ethanol. Both factors will keep most spoilage organisms at bay – most! At some point we have all done a bad batch or had a few bad bottles. Am I right? Yes, I thought so. Imagine what would happen in your bottled beer (with a high amount of residual sugars) if there wasn’t ethanol, or very little, to assist in killing these spoilage organisms. There is, however, a way around the risk of having bottles explode for home brewers, but you must be prepared to pasteurise your beer once it is bottled. This will mean heating up your HLT or kettle to 68°C and place your bottled beer in it for a few minutes to achieve the minimum amount of PU (pasteurising units).

Finally, from BlueSky, a post that made us slightly homesick for the UK…

Just huffed and puffed up a massive Yorkshire hill – BUT there was a beautiful Yorkshire pub at the top of it

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— Will Hawkes (@willhawkes.bsky.social) April 9, 2025 at 9:04 PM

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. Even, it turns out, when we’re travelling across Europe. (We can’t promise to keep this up.)

We’re writing this particular post from a hotel room in Vienna. Having spent much of the past few days sitting on trains, we’ve had plenty of time to catch up on what’s going on in the news, and on various beer blogs.

First, this story grabbed our attention: Richard Percival, the man who collects brewery-branded tin trays, has been profiled by the BBC. We referred to his old website many times over the years and now he has a new one. It’s always interesting to hear from people who are obsessive about some niche aspect of beer. His motivation, it turns out, is that old overlap between football and real ale:

It was always linked to an away match at Notts, where you go to a different part of the world and they had different breweries, so you knew you were going to get a different tray… I started to realise, after I’d picked up about 10 from matches, that these things were really quite ornate so I decided to start collecting.

For Pellicle Fred Garratt-Stanley has written about how the pubs of Rye in East Sussex have been shaped by its history as one of the medieval Cinque Ports. Although it begins with some tales of smugglers’ tunnels beneath a 900-year-old pub (you learn to ask “Are they?” and “Is it?” in this game) it quickly brings in the voices of historians, and begins to dig deeper:

Dr. Chris Moore’s research often centres around uncovering these stories by digging into architectural quirks. For example, when he learned that The Mermaid’s central chimney is made from Caen stone (a type of limestone quarried in northern France and usually shipped to England to construct religiously symbolic buildings like Canterbury Cathedral,) he was immediately intrigued… “Caen stone is basically a religious stone used to construct most of our big cathedrals, it would not have been used on a pub,” he explains. “So that’s probably Reformation stone from a dissolved monastery close to Rye that’s been reused. There’s symbolism to that; did the landlord make a conscious decision to go ‘It’s a shame that monastery’s been destroyed, let’s keep a bit of it in the pub’?”

Jane Stuart continues her exploration of the pubs of the north of England with a visit to Lytham, just up the coast from Blackpool:

Taps is a must visit on any trip to Lytham. It’s a Greene King pub but you wouldn’t know it. There is an excellent range of ales – and, crucially, there’s always a mild on… So here’s me, sitting in an old armchair, under an old lampshade, drinking a pint of mild. I sometimes wonder if I’m turning into Ena Sharples… To add to the escape from the outside world, I can never get any phone signal in here. I’m sure that has its advantages for some, but I have beer admin to do – mainly checking into Untappd before I forget what I’ve had – so I was happy to discover they had WiFi, so I faffed about logging into that for a bit with some success… Right now it’s time for the first #LooReview of the day. My first impression was that they smelled lovely, which is always a good start. I then spotted lots of Lowry art on the walls.

At Beer & Soul on Substack Sayre Piotrkowski has written about the challenge of reigniting people’s passion for craft beer when the market is saturated and nothing feels new. This is the follow up to an earlier post from February. In the latest piece, Piotrkowski writes:

Perhaps it is time for us Cicerone-types to shift our focus from going broad to diving deep.… feigning enthusiasm to entice customers into an experience that does not serve them is what “carnival barkers” do. Our new normal begs that we “evangelists” update our sense of purpose. Headwinds are not a reason to surrender or shrink our ambitions. They are a reason to once again innovate on behalf of our customers, whether that entails showing them something new or adding nuance to a familiar experience.

(And here are our thoughts on whether ‘The thrill has gone’ from 2023, if you want more on this subject.)

The recent round of The Session hosted by Matthew Curtis had the theme of ‘critique’ which made us appreciate that The Beer Nut didn’t need prompting to do this – it’s what he does on his blog every day. A recent post, for example, dissects beers from Galway Bay, dishing out both praise and considered suggestions for improvement:

It looks like there’s a story to be told about Whiskey & Coffee, the stout they launched, quietly, in March. The badge implies that it’s one in a series called “Modern Classics” and that it’s a “celebration stout”. Celebrating what, and how do the whiskey and coffee enter the picture? Not in the flavour, anyway. This tastes very plain indeed, and though it’s not powerhouse-strength, 5.5% ABV is plenty to give a stout character. Here, the extent of the coffee is no more than you’d find in any typical dry stout. There’s nothing resembling whiskey at all, so I doubt it’s barrel-aged. Whisky-soaked oak chips, maybe? Sorry, there are more questions than answers with this one. I was a bit bored by it, not to mention confused.

Also reporting from Ireland, Lisa Grimm continues her Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs with notes on a pub that’s due to be demolished to make way for a public transport scheme:

This week, we are visiting a pub that will eventually (in theory) be disappearing to make way for the proposed MetroLink: Hedigan’s The Brian Boru. But all things planning- and/or transit-related in Dublin take much, much longer than they do in most other places, so you likely have a goodly amount of time to visit the pub in advance… there have been proposals to name the future station here for the pub, possibly including some of the pub’s architectural details. And while the MetroLink wouldn’t be anything on the scale of the Tube, there’s plenty of precedent for naming stations after both extant and long-vanished pubs over on the Neighbouring Island. And it’s not as though this part of Dublin, where Phibsborough turns into Glasnevin, is short of pubs – there are many excellent ones in the area.

Finally, from Bluesky…

I regret to inform you that I have discovered the 'wackiest' pub in England.

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— Paul Clammer (@paulclammer.bsky.social) March 29, 2025 at 7:03 PM

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got Irish pubs, pub sofas, and barroom fiction.

First, an interesting nugget of news: Leeds-based craft brewery Northern Monk has signed a UK distribution deal with Spanish brewery Damm. The latter will now distribute a couple of Northern Monk’s beers across the UK.

Russell Bisset, founder of Northern Monk, is quoted as saying: “2025 will see Northern Monk’s brewing capacity increase by 20%, allowing us to produce an additional 2 million pints, compared to 2024… we’re excited to join forces with Damm, a best-in-class partner, to accelerate our on-trade growth, too, using this increased capacity to raise awareness of Northern Monk across the UK.”

This is interesting to us because, first, it consolidates Northern Monk’s place in the market – no longer small or local, very much sitting alongside BrewDog as the kind of brewery whose beer you see everywhere.

And, secondly, because it’s a reminder that being taken over isn’t the only way for indie breweries to hook up with multinational businesses. We’re always a bit surprised that this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often.

After a well-earned break David Jesudason is back at his weekly newsletter with a new series of posts about gay pubs, and the struggle by gay people to be included in British pub life. The first post is based on an interview with queer historian Alf Le Flohic who came of age in the 1980s, and focuses on one particular gay pub in Chichester:

For someone like me who was born in the 1970s, it seems a bit OTT to describe what a gay pub is but these days single-identity spaces have become rarer and younger people – even if they are gay or queer – may never have experienced one… The Bush, as described by Alf, is… a typical gay pub complete with big glass windows that were difficult to see into. This afforded a lot more privacy than a regular pub – “people inside the bar didn’t feel on show,” Alf tells me… The entrance was down the side with the pub door sealed up. Instead you knocked on a side door, which had a little window in it where you were sized up before being allowed entrance… “Once you were in, you were in,” says Alf. “Once your face was seen a couple of times you were let in automatically – so it was like being a regular in a private bar.”

“My own most totalitarian, right-wing opinion is… that no pub should have sofas,” writes neuroscientist and author Dean Burnett. “Or armchairs. Or futons. Or beanbags.” In a post entitled ‘Why sofas in pubs need to be banned’ at The Neuroscience of Everyday Life he explores this personal hatred of soft furnishings in pub in some detail:

I like a sofa, they fulfil an important role. People having somewhere they can sit back and relax is a boon to any living space… That’s the key, though; sit back and relax. That’s all well and good in your own home. But at the pub, you’re there to engage, to socialise… And as any introvert will tell you, socialising is work. It requires neurologically-taxing effort. If you don’t want to invest that, fair enough. Going to the pub isn’t mandatory, and there’s nothing wrong with pursuing other socialising options… But if you do go to a pub, then you’ve entered into an implicit contract to engage in the norms of the context… You’re there to sit forward and engage, not sit back and relax. Reclining in softness means you’re more likely to be relaxed, drowsy, disengaged.

For Smithsonian Magazine Liza Weisstuch achieves something that defeated us: gets the people from the company that designs and exports pre-packed Irish pubs to tell their story. Honestly, we wrote so many letters and emails trying to get an interview, or just anything out of them for our book 20th Century Pub. And we know they got the messages because, though they never replied, they did add us to their sodding email marketing list. Oh, well, enough of our moaning. This article, which has the faint whiff of PR about it, nonetheless does a good job of setting out the history of The Irish Pub Company, explaining its business model, and unpacking the aesthetics of the global Irish pub:

Mel McNally is not in the business of just shipping pub-in-a-box packages around the world. Each one is custom-designed to fit a specific space in collaboration with the local owner, who has creative control over the many, many, many details involved. The company’s stock-in-trade is not the Irish pub as a commodity; it’s the Irish pub as a vibe. You can’t sell the history and lore and memories intrinsic in a community’s longstanding institution. But you can sell the craftsmanship inextricably linked to a nation’s cultural legacy… The Irish Pub Company evolved out of a project McNally did about pub design for a competition when he was an architecture school student in Dublin in the 1970s. What the professors believed to be a cheeky excuse to spend time drinking pints turned into a two-year expedition through Ireland in which McNally and some architect friends visited more than 200 pubs in cities and remote country villages… “We recorded the essence of what makes a pub a pub—in the scale, the architecture, the mix of details, the craftsmanship,” McNally says. “No two are the same, but they have an essence that we carry into projects we do now.”

For Belgian Smaak Eoghan Walsh has written about Brussels brewery Brasserie de la Mule and its founder, Swedish-born Joël Galy:

Fitzcarraldo’s dream of introducing European high culture to a remote Amazonian trading post involves, among other things, hauling a 320-ton steamboat over a steep hill separating two rivers. Belgian brewer Joël Galy may not share Kinski’s mania, and his dream—introducing German beer styles to Brussels in a neighbourhood brewery and taproom—was less outlandish. But the pair do share a persuasive glint in the eye, the same near-quixotic, evangelical passion. A tête de mule, Galy calls it, a mulish determination… You need to be stubborn, pig-headed, if you have—like Kinski’s Fitzcarraldo—a grandiose dream. As Galy was to find out too, a tête de mule comes in handy when you’re trying to get anything done in the complicated chaos that is Belgium’s capital city.

We always feel the need to justify “How we founded our brewery” stories here, because they can feel rather generic. In this case, the points of interest are (a) the brewery’s “no geeks” policy and stated intention to produce good but ‘normal’ beers; and (b) the seeming difficulty of getting anything off the ground in Brussels, let alone when there’s a pandemic in the way.

We don’t often feature fiction here but every now and then a story pops up with a pub at its heart and we can’t resist. Lucie McKnight Hardy’s latest, ‘Wild Horses’, is about a woman returning from America, and a disastrous marriage, to the Welsh pub where she worked as a young woman:

Sandra is behind the bar and she doesn’t look up. She’s pouring a pint for an old guy who’s perched on one of the bar stools, the usual sort: flat cap, tweed jacket that will be pungently reminiscent of sheep dip and creosote. Sandra’s hair is still bleached and scraggy, and pulled up in a tight ponytail on the top of her head—what they’d have called a council facelift, back in the day. She’s scrawny-thin, but the tops of her arms where they peer from the sleeves of her blouse are glutinous, like cheap ice cream melting in the tub. She’s still wearing the low-cut tops, and Alison can see the curve of her breasts, hoisted artificially high, wrinkled and parched. When Sandra does look up, Alison is absurdly shocked that she is still wearing her trademark plum lipstick. At her age.

The story contains depictions of sexual assault, by the way, so proceed with caution.

Finally, from Bluesky, behold this excellent T-shirt…

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— David Bailey (@bathedailey.bsky.social) March 27, 2025 at 1:29 PM

There will be even more links, and further commentary on the links above, in a ‘footnotes’ post for Patreon subscribers. Sign up now (£2 a month) if you want to access that, and other bonus features.

And for more good reading elsewhere check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.