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News, nuggets and longreads 13 January 2024: Light Cycles

January’s a great time for writing about beer and pubs as dormant blogs spring back to life and New Year’s resolutions kick in. Here’s our pick of the week.

First, a few items of news:


A canvas sign advertising a beer festival car park.

The longread of the week really is long: it’s Steve Dunkley on the problem of beer festivals. How can they be made to work for drinkers and for the people and organisations lumbered with organising them?

At the more traditional festivals fun entailed tombola, drinking horns, silly hats and suspect t-shirts. At the craft festivals it was DJs and stickers and serving beer from slushie machines. There really was a generational divide… But even the newer craft festivals could be accused of getting stuck in their ways. Where once they hosted a range of brewers not usually seen, they have often settled into an annual showcase of the same breweries and beers, which like the CAMRA festivals before them are now available in the surrounding pubs throughout the year… I think CAMRA can learn a lot from the newer festivals, and they already have. But I also think that these newer festivals can learn a lot from CAMRA.


A painted sign on a pub wall: real ale and real food.

For the Morning Advertiser (you get two free articles before you have to register) Victoria Wells, Professor of Sustainable Management at the School for Business and Society at the University of York, has written about her analysis of some old pub guides and what it tells us about the ways pubs have changed to survive:

My 12-year-old niece… [gave] me a 1992 copy of Pub Walks in the Yorkshire Dales​ by Clive Price… It’s perhaps a sign of the times, with so many pubs at risk or closing, that my first thought was not “great, I can plan a few nice days out walking and visiting pubs” but was instead “how many of these pubs are still going to be there?”… My first response as I worked my way through the pubs was surprise. Of the 31 pubs listed in the guide, 29 still existed – although I would say only 26 of these could be defined as a pub (defining pubs in itself is a problematic endeavour) – with three becoming restaurants or hotels.


Someone in orange boots on an orange brewery floor transferring beer from a fermenting vessel, we think.
SOURCE: Matt Curtis/Pellicle.

At Pellicle editor Matt Curtis has himself put together a profile of RedWillow Brewery in Macclesfield. If you have your brewery profile bingo cards out you’ll get an immediate tick against ‘Owner left a successful career in IT’. But, snark aside, it’s good to have a detailed record of a brewery founded as a cask ale brewery during the keg-focused UK craft beer boom, which has outlived many of its peers:

RedWillow’s first commercially released beer was a 4.2% cask golden ale called Directionless… Directionless gradually became less popular as RedWillow’s audience developed their palates and began to demand more up-to-date flavours in their beer. An evolution that ran in parallel with the arrival of modern North American hop varieties such as Citra and Mosaic. Wreckless, a 4.8% ABV pale ale, and Weightless, a 4.2% ‘session’ IPA gradually filled the space Directionless previously occupied in its core range. These were bookended by the 3.9% Headless, an accessible cask pale for traditionalists, and Contactless, a distinctively modern, hazy, 5.2% pale ale aimed squarely at the growing number of younger beer enthusiasts.


Closed sign

It makes total sense for pubs to limit their opening hours and match them to demand… doesn’t it? Maybe it doesn’t. Tandleman, who spends plenty of time on the front line chatting to publicans, has been grappling with this question:

Concentrating efforts and resources on peak business hours, can – or here I’ll say should  – ensure that the service, atmosphere, and offerings are of the optimal standard. It does not work at all if you simply take the same sad old offering and simply spread it over a shorter period. If you are going to open less, greater efforts have to be made to make the pub attractive when you do.  And above all, you need to ensure that potential customers know when you will be open. Even now, far too many pubs seem to think that opening hours are some kind of state secret that should jealously be guarded. Telling potential customers about opening hours and what’s happening in the pub is not a bothersome extra. It is an essential part of the business.


A pitcher of dark beer on a pub table with someone making 'ta-da!' hands behind.
SOURCE: Jeff Alworth.

We’re enjoying Jeff Alworth’s reports from a January he’s spending in the pub, especially because the experience he has in Portland, Oregon, is similar to ours in England in some ways, but different in others. This account of a momentary connection with strangers sounds exactly like something that might happen in The Drapers Arms here in Bristol:

On that particular night, my friend and I got our beers, rejoined our group and fell into the flow of conversation. Some time later—could have been a few minutes or two hours, in the manner of bar time—we looked up to see the two women from the line. They were proffering a pitcher of Scottish Holiday, a full, malty winter ale. I tuned into this development late and the pitcher was being deposited on the table by the time I noticed what has happening. Their group was breaking up and donning coats, and I missed why they had this spare pitcher of beer. But we had spoken, and our table wasn’t far from theirs, so they decided to leave us with the extra ale. We took pleasure in this unexpected generosity, and they took pleasure in our wonder. It was one of those things that happens sometimes, if you’re living right, in bars.


Finally, from Facebook, via BlueSky, an invitation to a rabbit hole we hope we have time to go down…

A photo of what looks like a typical English ‘brewer’s Tudor’ interwar pub only it’s actually in New Zealand, shared on a local Facebook group and then shared with us by Kieran Haslett-Moore.

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday. We put no effort at all into making sure our links are different to theirs; if a piece appears in more than one round-up then you know it must be good. But there’s usually plenty of stuff they’ve highlighted that we haven’t.

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News, nuggets and longreads 6 January 2024: Innsmouth Look

Here’s all the writing about beer that grabbed our attention in this wet, gloomy first week of January 2024, from stats to smoked beer.

Let’s start with a collection of notes on the health of the UK hospitality and brewing industries:

We’re under no illusion that 2024 is going to be a boom year for beer, and January is often a particularly rocky time, but things do seem to be gently ebbing rather than collapsing. Maybe we’ll do a full on predictions post but, for now, what we said last year probably still applies.


A glass of Tribute on a pub table, with 'Cornish Pale Ale' on the glass.

You know our fascination with the weaselly ways breweries avoid telling consumers where a given beer is actually being produced. For some time we’ve been eyeing St. Austell Korev with suspicion – “Born in Cornwall” is it? Now it turns out bottled St. Austell Tribute is no longer described as Cornish on the label because it’s sometimes produced at the Bath Ales facility near Bristol. It’s still in the West Country, just about, rather than Burton for Sharp’s Doom Bar, but it does feel as if they might have underestimated the appeal of beer from a place. Although they’re very keen to underline that the cask version is still brewed in its hometown.


The window of Mort Subite in Brussels.

Your mileage may vary, of course. In Brussels, as Eoghan Walsh reports, there’s a sense of impending doom:

50%. That’s the number of hospitality businesses Moeder Lambic co-owner Jean Hummler thought would close from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Hummler made his prediction in the Spring of 2021, speaking to me in his living in the middle of another national lockdown. A little over two years later and Hummler’s apocalyptic prognosis has not quite come to pass. Though the number of new openings has slowed, as of the end of 2023, only one brewery has closed and the wholesale collapse of the industry has yet to materialise… But that isn’t much cause for optimism. in a widely-shared article earlier in the year, Le Fooding Magazine editor Elisabeth Debourse drew attention to the overlapping challenges bar and restaurant owners have struggled to overcome this year in the wake of the pandemic and the impact of the war in Ukraine. The acute impact of inflation. Rising energy prices and raw material costs. Debt. Increased fiscal oversight. A burnt-out workforce. Declining customer numbers.


A pumpclip for Torrside Bugbear American Brown Ale.

For Pellicle Katie Mather has written about Torrside Brewery from Derbyshire, which has a cult following partly built around its smoke barleywines:

The owners of Torrside – a brewery founded here in Derbyshire’s High Peak in 2015 – are also its brewers, a team of best friends and their partners. Chris Clough, Peter Sidwell and Nick Rothko-Wright have brewed together since finding each other at Manchester Homebrew Club in 2013, sharing their delight in subverting classic and historic styles – or simply making them up… “I’m glad we don’t have a business manager,” Chris tells me. “Because they wouldn’t let us make smoked barleywines that might only sell a few bottles. But that’s what we want to do.”


The historic interior of a pub with beams, benches and fireplace.
The historic Bell at Aldworth. SOURCE: Dermot Kennedy/Pub Gallery.

At Pub Gallery Dermot Kennedy has taken a break from his usual programming to provide a run down of the top 5 pub discoveries he made in 2023. If this doesn’t get you looking forward to exploring when the weather becomes bright and drier, there’s no hope for you:

All the pub is like a time warp but the star of the show from a heritage point of view is the Tap Room on the left with its red quarry tiled floor, huge inglenook fireplace and Victorian furniture. The bar has a serving hatch on each of its three sides and I started with a pint of Arkell’s 3B. Three generations of the family were around on our visit, including the landlady, now in her 90s, and full of tales from the past. Her son, effectively the landlord, was full of questions, and her grandson who brews in the small barn at the back allowed us a pint each of his Five Giants, not due to go on until the next day. We were welcome to park our camper van on the field above the car park, so we were able to dine on the famous pub rolls and have a few more pints before we headed off to bed.


A pint of golden ale.

Though the tradition is dwindling, along with the number of beer blogs, a few people joined in with producing Golden Pints posts this year:

You might find more; these are just the ones we noticed.


And in the world of social media we want to highlight once again the Instagram feed of Brasserie de l’Union in Brussels, which provides a constant stream of images that, together, evoke what this particular bar feels like:

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 16 December 2023: Rare Exports

This is the last news, nuggets and longreads of 2023, featuring Edwardian pubs, beer tourism and American cask.

First, some big news: there won’t be a CAMRA Great British Beer Festival in 2024. The Campaign promises it will be back “with a bang” in 2025 and says the reason is that its usual venue, Olympia London, isn’t available this year. It feels like a big deal, though, especially coming so soon after the two years lost to COVID in 2020 and 2021. Perhaps this will also be an opportunity to rethink the festival and reinvent it somewhat for the 2020s.


The ornate exterior of the Warrington Hotel with decorative fired tiles, columns and mosaics.

Dermot Kennedy’s excellent blog Pub Gallery is back with a beautifully illustrated post about the pubs of Maida Vale in West London:

Maida Vale is a well off residential area in north west London known for its streets of mansion blocks. It’s also home to Little Venice, the canal basin on the Regents Canal famous for multiple narrowboats and waterside cafes and pubs. BBC’s Maida Vale Studios are possibly best known for being the home of the John Peel Sessions which were recorded here for his influential radio show from 1967 to 2004. What the area is less well known for is its collection of exceptional Victorian heritage pubs. This short walk takes in four pubs, all well worth a visit to see the extravagant steps brewers and entrepreneurs took to ensure their pub outdid their neighbours in style and elegance.


Casks in a pub yard.

For Pellicle Courtney Iseman explores the history and culture of the cask ale revival in New York City, focusing on Strong Rope Brewery:

While nearly every neighbourhood had at least a couple of options, these places—an eclectic array of traditional-ish pubs, divier bare-bones spots, polished brewpubs, Belgian-inspired cellars, and sports-bar facsimiles—were destinations for which beer lovers would schlep across three train lines. I remember breathing deeply into bready, biscuity, pie-crusty, floral, woody, earthy, spicy, herbal aromas as I clutched my glass in the creaky wooden Blind Tiger Ale House, the warm and pubby David Copperfield’s House of Beer (RIP), the well-appointed and spacious Ginger Man (also RIP), and the rowdier Hop Devil Grill (oh, yes, RIP), and savouring smaller pours to suss out malt or hop differences at cask festivals at Chelsea Brewing Company (yep…RIP) and the Brooklyn location of d.b.a. (also closed; happily its original East Village space soldiers on).


Detail of Mark Dredge's book Craft Beer World.

David Elphick of the Brighton Beer Blog has interviewed beer writer Mark Dredge on a pub crawl around the city. We tend to avoid writing about beer writing these days but it’s interesting to see Mark’s reflections on actually making a living at it, which required (a) taking some risks; (b) making some compromises (working for breweries); and (c) nailing the art of pitching to publishers:

I timed it quite well. In 2008 I was about 24, everyone else in the scene was like 40, so I was coming into this as the young person, just as Punk IPA was being released. Just as Thornbridge was out there. Just when these modern beers came along… Many people were talking about heritage beers, trying to keep the classics going. Whereas I didn’t have a clue about all that. I just know this modern stuff is really interesting, I didn’t know any better… I got lucky, right place, right person, right time. But I worked hard for it. I would get up at 5am and write about beer, which as a 24 year old is an unusual thing to do.

Ahem… We were about 30 at the time. But people are always surprised that we’re not ancient.


Stu Stuart, with neat grey hair and goatee, in a very American flying jacket with badges, contemplates a glass of Orval.
SOURCE: Ashley Joanna/Belgian Smaak.

At Belgian Smaak Ashley Joanna has another entry in her series of ‘Humans of Belgian Beer’. This time, it’s Stu Stuart, an American who leads Belgian beer tours:

In 2007, he began teaching a “Belgian Beer Me! Beer Appreciation Class” at the ASUW Experimental College at the University of Washington in Seattle. Some of his students suggested he should lead a beer tour in Belgium… When he first started, he was giving tours to just 3 people at a time. Now, his tour groups are generally numbered at 24 people… In 2018, Stu became an Honorary Knight of the Knighthood of the Brewers Mash Staff, an honour handed out by the Federation of Belgian Brewers in an enthronement ceremony in the Brewers Guild House in Brussels’ Grand Place.


Here’s some more news, via Tim Burford: The Eagle & Child in Oxford has been shuttered for three years but has now been bought by the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), founded by Larry Ellison of Oracle. EIT’s interest in the pub is down to its historic importance with links to Tolkien and C.S. Lewis:

Dr David Agus, EIT Founding Director and CEO, told BBC Radio Oxford that the Institute will re-open the pub as a pub… He said that the kitchen would be totally overhauled with a view to serving top notch food, while Norman Foster’s architectural agency Foster + Partners has been hired to work on a master plan that will see the second and third floors renovated into meeting spaces to discuss global problems, in effect a cosy and congenial extension of EIT’s recently announced state-of-the-art new campus in Oxford.


Finally, from Instagram, another of Niall McDiarmid’s beautiful pub photos:

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 9 December 2023: Wonderful Life

Every week we round-up the most interesting and informative writing about beer from the previous seven days. This time we’ve got post-war pubs, ABV and foodborne pathogens.

First, a great resource from Historic England: a list of historic pub walks in cities across the country. What’s fascinating is how rarely the pubs mentioned are the same ones beer geeks would recommend. Compare their Bristol list with ours, for example – only one pub appears on both.


Andreas Akerlund. SOURCE: Pellicle/Lily Waite.

At Pellicle Will Hawkes has done what he does best: proper journalism, digging below the surface, speaking to people who don’t otherwise get spoken to. In this case, it’s the owner of a pub chain, Grace Land, who Will argues played a vital role in the rise of London’s craft beer scene:

Andreas Akerlund is hard to miss. Tall, bearded and with grey-brown locks swept defiantly back from a balding pate, the Swedish co-owner of London pub group Grace Land stands out in a crowd… He prefers, though, to blend into the background… He doesn’t like to be photographed… It’s this undemonstrative nature, perhaps, that explains why his key role in modern London beer is so under-appreciated. He has been, variously, co-founder of Barworks, whose dozen-or-so pubs were essential addresses during craft beer’s boom years; champion of quality beer since the 1990s, when he put Freedom, London’s first modern lager brewery, on the bar at the Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen; start-up investor and director in Camden Town, one of the city’s game-changing breweries, in 2010; and co-owner with Anselm Chatwin of Grace Land, whose six pubs are amongst London’s best for drinking beer.


Design Research Unit designs for Watney's.
A page-spread from Design Research Unit 1945-1972, by A Practice for Everyday Life.

Liam K has reached the 15th stop in his list of 50 objects that tell the story of Irish brewing. This particular entry is right up our street covering, as it does, post-war pub design, typography, and Watney’s:

In early 1967 the Watney Mann group became the majority shareholder in Murphys and in that year it was decided that all of its tied pubs should have a uniform look, so the manager of the tied houses Rex Archer along with Cork illustrator and artist William Harrington were sent off to study the branding and look of the Wilson Brewery houses in Manchester. Wilsons brewery had itself been absorbed by Watney Mann in 1960 and it appears that shortly after this time new branding was rolled out for its houses. Although Harrington came up with designs for the interior of some of the Cork pubs and perhaps the exterior too, it seems that a decision was made to just copy the typeface and signage from the Wilson’s pubs right down to the gold text on a black background rather than come up with something specifically for Murphy’s houses.

To add a bit of additional context, the branding Liam describes was conceived by the Design Research Unit and applied across the Watney’s pub estate, including pubs owned by breweries it took over. The particular lettering Liam has noticed is in ‘English Two-Line Antique’. Liam’s post also led us to this cool modern font called ‘Freehouse’ inspired by vintage Watney’s signage – nice!


The sign of The Wackum Inn, a Greene King pub in Bristol.

The Pub Curmudgeon has a particular interest in the impact of government policy on the reality of beer and pubs. This week, he dug into how changes to the beer duty thresholds have affected the strength of beers on the market:

The biggest mover in the cask beer field has been Greene King IPA, which has been cut from 3.6% to 3.4%. This is the second biggest cask seller, but most of the rest of the Top Ten are 4.0% or above and so probably won’t be shifting. Its strength has been reduced in all formats. I don’t know whether this will cause any kickback in its traditional East Anglian heartland, but elsewhere it tends to be just dismissed as a standard “ordinary”, so it will probably make little difference… Other cask beers that have been cut from 3.5% are Hook Norton Hooky Bitter and Hawkshead Windermere Pale. Such a small reduction is unlikely to make much difference either to taste or the beers’ appeal. Marble Brewery have cut their Pint all the way down from 3.9%.

It’s also worth checking out his post on the latest stats on the best-selling cask ales. Bookmark these numbers so you’ve got them handy next time someone says “You can’t get a normal brown bitter any more!”


The interior of a pub with an upper gallery designed to look like Tudor houses.
The Purley Tavern. SOURCE: Lloyd Lugsden.

In his weekly newsletter, newly-crowned Beer Writer of the Year David Jesudason has written about another post-war pub – one he remembers from his childhood, with complex feelings. With our interest in the gimmicky pub design of this period we were especially intrigued by one detail he mentions:

The pub was demolished in 2020, and on a Facebook page people mainly wax lyrical about it being a community space among the occasional “shithole” comment. It’s likely it was both as a few people say how diverse it was, how friendly the bar staff were but how it possessed a volatile atmosphere at the pool table… A lot of posters mention the décor but I don’t remember the houses above the bar because if it’s your first visit to a pub you normalise what you see. I guess I expected a mini-Mock Tudor village in a ceiling in every boozer… Now, though, I realise how special this feature was and Dead Pubs of Bedfordshire (Vol 2) contains this account from Bob Currie, who liked me, visited the Purley as a child: “I always remember the fake buildings in the roof, and always wanted to go exploring up there.”


Illustration of the word 'Zero'.

There’s no surprise here, really, but a new study suggests that non-alcoholic beer poses more risk when it comes to “foodborne pathogens”. This is particularly interesting as more breweries, not just the biggest players, start making non-alcoholic beer. Here’s how Blaine Friedlander explains it in something like simple terms:

Traditional beers—which can be up to 10% alcohol by volume—contain low pH, harbor a presence of ethanol, provide acid from the hops and keep little oxygen, all of which contribute to microbial stability. In fact, for beer wort boiling (the watery grain simmer that starts the brewing process), the natural pasteurization, filtration and cold storage contribute to pathogen safety as well, according to the paper… The researchers said that due to increasing consumer demand for nonalcoholic beer served on draft—or poured from a keg, for example—also could boost microbial problems. The group suggested that nonalcoholic beer kegs, draft-system tubing and beer-pouring faucets should be sanitized regularly to eliminate potential foodborne pathogens and spoilage organisms.


Finally, from social media, another Christmas gift idea…

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

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News, nuggets and longreads 2 December 2023: Bleak House

Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs that grabbed our attention in the past week, from insolvency to skinny pizzas.

At the start of the year we made a prediction that 2023 wouldn’t “apocalyptic” when it came to brewery closures. Now, new figures obtained under Freedom of Information from the UK Insolvency Service suggest that as many breweries closed in the first half of 2023 as in the whole of 2022. Jessica Mason has the story for The Drinks Business:

Matt Howard, head of insolvency and recovery at Price Bailey said: “The craft beer market was already oversaturated before the economic fallout from the pandemic tightened its grip. Many breweries were walking a balance sheet tightrope and have been plunged into the red by a combination of soaring overheads and falling demand for premium brands… The sector tends to be highly leveraged and therefore vulnerable to interest rate rises which push up the cost of servicing debt. Even in benign economic conditions small breweries can struggle to turn a profit for a few years but with higher borrowing and raw ingredient costs, coupled with weakening consumer demand, many startups are likely to fold before they get out of the red.”

Now we stand ready to have a debate about the meaning of the word ‘apocalyptic’.


Illustration of a beer mug mostly full of foam.

For The Washington Post Ruvani de Silva has written about the rising popularity of foamy beer in the US, inspired by Czech pouring traditions:

Lukr’s uniquely designed “side-pour” tap, introduced in the late 1990s, utilizes a clever ball-valve mechanism that allows servers to regulate the flow speed of beer through the faucet, enabling them to create traditional Czech-style foam-focused pilsner pours with ease and precision. These pours include the hladinka, šnyt and mlíko, which respectively offer three fingers, three-fifths, and a full glass of foam, each delivering a different drinking experience… The mlíko is a carefully poured full glass of soft, sweet, wet foam that resembles milk; hence the name, which translates as “milk pour.”

(This wasn’t behind a paywall for us; you might find it is.)