News, nuggets and longreads 3 May 2025: Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got trains, indie beer, and wallpaper.

First, some news, via John ‘The Beer Nut’ Duffy and the European Beer Consumers’ Union (EBCU). We’ve just spent several weeks travelling across Europe by train and bus, finally reaching Istanbul, only to learn that the best railway station pint anywhere on the continent can be found in Sheffield:

The European Beer Consumers Union (EBCU) has revealed the results of its European Travel Beer Survey, listing the best places to enjoy a quality beer while on the move… And the steel city has come out on top, with the beloved Sheffield Tap securing the best rail station title… EBCU chairman André Brunnsberg said: “We launched this survey to shine a light on how beer culture can thrive even in places of transit… Copenhagen and Sheffield show what’s possible when quality and locality are put first… These aren’t just places to wait for your flight or train – they’re places worth arriving early for.”

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And here’s another bit of news, via Darren Norbury at Beer Today: the Exmoor Ales brewery has closed with production of the brands moving to Hog’s Back. Exmoor is a particularly significant first-wave UK microbrewery, founded in 1979, and with a claim to having produced the first ‘golden ale’, as early as 1986. Darren’s personal commentary is worth a read:

Hogs Back is an excellent business partner for Exmoor Ales and will be a good custodian of the brewery’s recipes. The alternative was never to see the Exmoor brands again, so we can be thankful. But other brewers struggling with costs may not be so lucky… Rupert Thompson, owner and chairman of Hogs Back Brewery, added: “In a very challenging market, one of the ways to survive and eventually prosper is to enter into close commercial collaborations with like-minded businesses. This allows for the sharing of resources, expertise and staff, and at the same time, saves a very popular local beer brand.”

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One of the great strengths of Jeff Alworth’s writing is his ability to come up with a snappy phrase to summarise a trend or phenomenon. This week he suggested that craft beer has entered it’s “wallpaper phase”:

For the first couple decades, small breweries commanded a very committed, niche audience. These were the early-adopters who were excited to discover a new craft they could help birth. Beginning in the late aughts, craft beer started to break through and had enough of a profile to reach a broader audience. It wasn’t completely niche anymore; it was a new arena for the cool kids to enter… Today, most people have heard of craft beer; IPAs are about as exotic as as lattes. You can get it anywhere, and anywhere you go where beer is served, “craft” will be available, from dive bars to stadiums to the best restaurants. Nothing stays cool long, and so trends in alcohol have moved along. This is the way of things: once a product category reaches a certain threshold, it is too common to be cool. 

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We spotted a run of blog posts that struck us as related this week. First, in the wake of the Campaign for Real Ale’s collective decision to prioritise support for independent breweries, Ed Wray asked: “Why should I care if a brewery is independent?”

I’ve drunk good and bad cask beer from both independent and multinational breweries. I’ve also worked at small and large breweries. The multinationals are undoubtedly evil but then again some of the… most awful people I’ve ever met have been running small breweries.

And Martin Taylor has been observing some signs of a buzz around Bass which got him thinking about its awkward status in relation to the new CAMRA policy:

I watched as a succession of unapologetic young folk arrived at the bar, went “ooh” and pointed at the red triangle… Should I have told them that CAMRA doesn’t consider it a “good” beer?

Finally, Phil Cook at Beer Diary has put down in writing thoughts we know have been bubbling away for a while around the constant pleading for governments to do more to support beer and brewing:

Your favourite thing might not be quite so beloved by others, and almost certainly isn’t objectively more important than theirs. I think this is important to keep in mind when advocating for something, so you don’t veer into expecting special treatment for your business or your hobby — if someone didn’t care as much as I do about this, would they still agree to what I’m proposing?

Actually, you can probably rope in Darren’s post about Exmoor and Jeff’s piece about “wallpaper”, too.

It’s one big conversation about where beer finds support, which beers get supported, and who should do the supporting.

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If you want more links, and commentary on the links in this round up, check out our Patreon, where paid subscribers get a bit extra every week.

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In his latest post Kevin Kain at Casket Beer gets to the root of something that’s often bugged us in articles about American ‘dive bars’: aren’t they often just describing… bars? The word ‘dive’ suggests, to us, that these are low-down places, or at very least notably down to earth. Perhaps Kevin’s criteria for dive bar status will irritate some people, sounding, as they do, rather close to the controversial conversation around ‘rough pubs’ in the UK. Still, we found it refreshing, and illuminating:

On the outside, a dive bar shouldn’t seem too inviting. In fact, its appearance should make you question whether the place is even open. Windows should be small or obstructed in some way to shield potentially nefarious behavior from the outside. Graffiti, stickers, and other items likely adorn the facade with little concern from the owners about how the place appears… There may be a neon sign in the window for a brewery. It may even be a smaller, local-ish brewery, leading you to think there might be some fancy beer inside. Don’t be fooled by this.

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Neil Reid, AKA The Beer Professor, has written a proper broadsheet review of Bottle Conditioned, a new documentary about Lambic producers, which not only endorses the film but also serves as a summary of the history of Lambic, and of the film’s key themes and ideas:

On the one hand, there are producers like Cantillon’s Jean-Pierre Van Roy for whom tradition and protecting the heritage of lambic are important. Van Roy bemoans the emphasis that the younger generation of brewers’ place on “production, turnover, and profits”. According to him, “the beauty and aesthetics” of producing authentic lambic “doesn’t interest them”… Van Roy is also dismissive of the modern beer drinker – “When I see people drink beer nowadays, I’m horrified”, he says. He dislikes the way many of them analyze beer as they drink it, taking notes, lining up bottles and taking photographs. This, Van Roy says, is “atrocious”. At one point in the film, Van Roy laments that “I am simply from a different time”… 

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Finally, on BlueSky, a statement from a hard-to-impress critic that Thornbridge ought to be putting on billboards…

Is Thornbridge Jaipur the best beer in the UK? Quite possibly. Definitely a contender. I wish I could find the  Burton Union version.

— Tandleman (@tandleman.bsky.social) May 2, 2025 at 10:42 PM

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