Our golden pints for 2024

Every year we share a list of our favourite beers and pubs as part of a lingering beer blogging tradition called ‘The Golden Pints’.

It was a big thing a decade or so ago but hardly anyone does it these days. That’s a shame because, like The Session, it was a fun thing that contributed to a sense of community.

We stick at it because we find it a useful summary of what was hot and what was not in wach passing year.

Back in 2015, for example, Brewdog Electric India was our bottled beer of the year – a beer we’d forgotten ever existed. And in 2012 we declared the Blue Anchor in Helston our brewery of the year – a reminder of a very different time in our lives.

This year, we’ve made a real effort to get to more pubs, and try more new-to-us beers. We’ve also been taking note of our emotional responses to certain beers and breweries: which ones make us say “Oh, great!” when we see their brands on the bar?

Before we get stuck in, a quick note on the categories: these used to be fixed, and set by the ‘admins’, which made it easier to compare the results across many blogs and find the popular vote winners. Now, we more or less do what we like.

If you want to write your own golden pints post, though, you’re very welcome to use our post as a template, and steal the graphic above, too, if you like.

Right, let’s do this.

Best cask ale

We had quite a debate about this one. You might remember that last year we made Five Points Gold our beer of the year and, in so doing, took a side swipe at Five Points Best: “We find it muddy and confused.”

Well, guess what? Either it’s got better, or we’ve changed, because Five Points Best is a beer we’ve really fallen in love with this year.

As we wrote on Patreon back in October:

“On the face of it, it’s a really traditional bitter, but there are a few tweaks that make it next level good. There’s a honeyed, biscuityness in the malt; and a slice of orange, Fuller’s style, alongside the hard bitterness. If we were going to make comparisons it would be something like Bathams, or the various Boddington’s clones we’ve had over the years. But like Bathams, it also tastes like its own thing.”

Honourable mentions: Bass, of which we’ve enjoyed many pints this year; Cheddar Ales Gorge Best, partly for sentimental reasons; Fuller’s ESB, which, when it’s good, is very good.

Best keg beer

This feels like a bit of a throwback category from the days of the cask versus keg wars. We do tend to default to cask but in some of our favourite pubs in Bristol – The Swan With Two Necks, The Kings Head – the keg selection is often extremely tempting. And at the Lost & Grounded taproom, where we end up most Friday evenings, it’s keg (almost) all the way.

A beer we both loved, and were excited to drink, and were gutted to see disappear from the menu, was Lost & Grounded Newstalgic 8, a West Coast Pilsner at 5.2%. Here’s what we wrote in our notes in July:

“We’ve been drinking this wonderful beer at the taproom for the past couple of weekends. It’s confusingly listed on the printed menu as a West Coast IPA but it’s definitely a lager – albeit a distinctly zingy, bitter, flowery one. It’s ultra pale and looks gorgeous in a German-style Willibecher glass with a few inches of foam. If you liked the much-missed Five Points Pils, you’ll also enjoy this.”

Honourable mentions: Torrside Franconia Rauchbier; Moor Smoked Lager; Moor Elmoor Belgian-style pale ale.

Best packaged beer

We’ve been trying hard to drink in pubs and consume less booze at home. Our ‘cellar’ (the corner where we keep some beer crates) is mostly stocked with Belgian beer (Westmalle Tripel, Orval) and German lager (Augustiner Helles, Jever, Schlenkerla Helles).

From the supermarket, we’ve occasionally picked up bottles of Schneider Weisse and Duvel, or cans of Thornbridge Jaipur.

So, have there been any standouts? Well, again, we have to shout out Lost & Grounded whose canned Hop Hand Fallacy Witbier is convincingly Belgian, fresh, and zesty.

Best overall beer

Our overall beer of the year is Five Points Best. We’re cask drinkers by default, that was the best cask beer we had this year, so what else could it be?

Best brewery

This was another category that prompted a lot of pondering. One brewery sprang immediately to mind not because its beers were the best we had – though they are very good – but because we were so consistently delighted to see them on offer. And that is Cheddar Ales.

We’ve always liked them but in the past year or so have come to regard them as a sign of a publican who knows what they’re doing. They’re often on at The Merchant’s Arms in Hotwells, at The Bank in the centre of Bristol, and now at The Crown in St Judes. A range of clean, well made beers in a range of styles, served in good condition, is all we really want.

Honourable mentions: Five Points, of course; Thornbridge, whose beer we’ll go out of our way to drink; and reliable old Butcombe.

Best pub

We decided The Swan With Two Necks in St Judes, Bristol, was going to be our local and have been trying to go at least once a week for the past year.

We’ve now seen it in all its moods, from Friday night riot to sleep Sunday chillout zone, and find ourselves very attached to it.

It’s also the pub we recommend to visitors because it’s somewhere they might not go without a nudge, and because when we take friends there, they tend to love it. We’re not saying it’s perfect but it works for us.

Honourable mentions: The Kings Head, Victoria Street, Bristol, which would be our local if it was a little closer, and if we could rely on finding space to sit; The Pembury Tavern, our London local; The Evening Star Brighton, which we revisited in February and loved… Oh, look, we could go on. Pubs are just great.

Best non-pub boozer

By which we mean taprooms, bars and cafes. The Lost & Grounded taproom has this one easily. It’s beginning to feel more and more pub-like as the years pass. The team behind the bar is great. There’s almost always one beer that’s new to us, and at least one standard beer that’s on top form. It’s not the cheapest place to drink but still tends to feel like good value because the beer is so beautifully presented.

Honourable mentions: It was nice to get one session in at the Good Chemistry taproom this year – another quite pub-like space.

Best beer book

CAMRA publishing continues its streak with Dr. Christina Wade’s The Devil’s in the Draught Lines: 1,000 years of women in Britain’s beer history. We wrote a full review of this book in which we said:

“If you want to understand the deeper history of brewing in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, it’s a readable survey of previous research. And it’s a must-read if you want your world view shaken up a little – something which is good for all of us to do from time to time.”

Best beer blogger

We’ve done a separate list of our favourite blog posts and articles – a version of news, nuggets and longreads that wraps up the whole year. But here we want to recognise someone who has posted consistently throughout the year and created an evolving composite picture of the drinking scene in Dublin. That is, Lisa Grimm, and her Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs project. It’s frequently featured in our weekly round-ups, or in the bonus links in the footnotes to those posts we share on Patreon.

It’s also a great example of how to create and sustain a blog: pick a topic, or give yourself a mission; find a format; research, write, post, repeat. Anyone can do this! You should do this.

Honourable mentions: We frequently refer to Martin Taylor’s blog when we’re trying to work out where to drink and, like Lisa, he’s consistent in posting, and has a clear project. And the Beer Nut continues to write the best tasting notes in the game, with a new post almost every day.