Our top 5 Bristol pints

What are the top five reliable pints in your town or city? That is, beers you always know you’ll find in specific pubs.

That question comes via Ross Cummins who set out his favourite five pints in Manchester in an excellent post on his blog earlier this week:

This is not a definitive list of best beers in Manchester, or best beers by Manchester breweries, this is a list of MY favourite pints, that I can get in Manchester.

This sparked some interesting follow ups on BlueSky where people pondered what a similar list for London might look like, for example.

And of course, it made a natural topic of conversation for us during one of our recent pub sessions: what would be our equivalent of this list for Bristol?

We found it hard because relatively few Bristol pubs that we like consistently have on the same beers.

The ale-focused pubs have a laudable variety of guest beers, but that means you rarely find any of the same stuff two visits in a row.

And lots of our favourite Bristol breweries also change their range regularly, so even in taprooms or tied pubs you might not be guaranteed to find a particular favourite beer.

In our selection, therefore, we have hedged our bets a little and sometimes suggested alternative beers.

We’ve also tried to balance what we actually really enjoy drinking versus what we would recommend to a visitor to Bristol, who maybe wants to try something local, and new to them.

Then we decided not to overthink it too much. It’s just a blog post! If you disagree, write your own.

So anyway, with all of Ross’s caveats and a few of our own, here is our list.

1. Butcombe Bitter at the Langton

The Langton for us, anyway, as it’s walkable from our house, but maybe at The Ostrich for out-of-towners.

We like Butcombe Bitter a lot when it’s good, and it’s reliably good these days. It’s also available in quite a few decent Bristol pubs.

It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a traditional brown bitter from an old family brewery.

Although Butcombe is only 40-odd years old, it was founded by a former Courage employee with the explicit intention of brewing Courage-style beer.

The most regular place that we drink it is probably The Langton but it’s quite schlep out of town and not a particularly remarkable pub. It just happens to be close to us.

And its Butcombe is almost always in great condition.

2. Keller Pils at Lost & Grounded

We visit this taproom more often than any other, and it’s partly because we like the range and styles of beer and partly due to proximity.

It was hard for us to pick a particular beer because our actual favourites do rotate.

Also, if we’re honest, we don’t always find they taste the same from week to week. So we’re going for Keller Pils for now.

3. Oakham Citra at the Old Duke

The Old Duke is a music-focused pub on the King Street Run in the centre of town.

Oakham Citra is hoppy catnip for us.

We always enjoy it, and it appears to be a regular beer here, together with its tamer pale-n-hoppy cousin Adnams Ghost Ship.

4. Young’s Bitter at the Highbury Vaults

The Highbury Vaults has a well-deserved reputation for good ale, and for extreme proper-pub cosiness.

It also has a pleasant, shady garden for the summer.

We tend to switch between Young’s London Original (AKA Young’s Bitter, AKA Ordinary) and St. Austell Proper Job when we’re there.

We usually try both and settle on whichever is in the best condition. But they’re both reliably very good and often excellent.

5. Elmoor (Moor) at the Swan with Two Necks

Both the beer and the pub have become favourites of ours.

The beer is billed as a ‘Belgian pale ale’ and tastes a bit like something Brasserie de la Senne would produce.

It’s refreshing, bitter, still just about sessionable at 5.5%, if you take it easy.

This was tough

There were so many things we almost included, but couldn’t quite justify.

For example, we also wanted to include Bass. It’s still very much present in a surprising number of Bristol pubs – but not in any pubs we visit regularly.

That means we can make recommendations for places to try but have to stop short of a full endorsement for any one pub.

For a fuller view of what to drink and where, check out our Bristol pub guide which we’ve just updated for 2024.