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News, nuggets and longreads 17 February 2024: Running Wild

Every Saturday we round-up the best writing about beer from the past 7 days. This week we’ve got pessimism, optimism, and pure Belgianness.

First, there’s been a flurry of news about brewery closures and changes:


The pumps at the Royal Oak Borough including one for porter

Will Hawkes has shared the January edition of his London Beer City newsletter online. It’s a great read from beginning to end with the provocative title ‘Is this a golden age for London pubs?’

Given the current economic pressures, it’s worse now than ever. But pubs closing is not a phenomenon just of the last 20 years; they’ve been shutting since the Victorian era, as Mark Girouard pointed out in his superb 1975 book Victorian Pubs. “London is full of dead pubs,” he wrote back then; “In Oxford Street between St Giles Circus and Marble Arch there were 19 pubs in 1890; today there is only one.” (That pub, then the Tottenham and now The Flying Horse, is still there, btw: it’s worth a visit for its classic 1890s interior)… You cannot discuss the decline of pubs without acknowledging the huge changes in society that have taken place, and the new and varied options open to ordinary people that didn’t exist in 1890 or even 1980 (the pre-cheeky Nando’s era, if you like). So much of the hand-wringing over pubs is really disgruntlement at how society has changed – which is all very well, depending on your perspective, but it doesn’t get us very far.

His diary of a weekly visit to a posh pub in Dulwich is fascinating, too, and something all of us habitual pub goers could try. Perhaps we’ll keep a Swan With Two Necks diary for a month or two.


The moody interior of The Britons Protection with tiles, low light and red paintwork.

At Jim’s Substack Jim Cullen has written about a small crawl around some classic Manchester pubs with old friends from work, and the nature of old friendships:

The last few months – on a personal level – have been a bit bleak – so, when I spoke to one of my work heroes (my colleague Phil) about getting my old Boss (Mick) out, I was delighted that he took the reins and organised it… so we found ourselves, on pay day, on Liverpool Road, just off Deansgate in Manchester…. Phil noticed me walking in and I was quickly furnished with a pint of Knack (Mild) by Thornbridge. Lightly roasty, creamy and smooth with ever such a light chocolatey note, it was a beautiful reminder that it doesn’t take a old family brewer to brew heritage styles. I love Mild.


A smiling man with a bald head and big smile holding a flipping massive rabbit.
Senne Eylenbosch with a massive rabbit, of course. SOURCE: Belgian Smaak/Cliff Lucas.

At Belgian Smaak Breandán Kearney profiles Senne Eylenbosch and his lambic blendery, Het Boerenerf, which has a romantic back story:

At the 2011 Kasteelfeest—when Eylenbosch was 15 years-old—his parents were busy scooping ice-cream and making pancakes, so Eylenbosch sneaked off to the tent next door, where Sidy Hannsens of Geuzestekerij Hannsens pulled him aside and gave him a glass of Hannsens Oude Kriek. She even gave him a five euro note to buy a Kriek from another producer so he could understand how “a real one” tasted against other versions. It was a small gesture that made a big impression on a young Eylenbosch… Growing up in the Zenne valley, Lambic was always on Eylenbosch’s periphery. The building right next door to where he lived, now a block of apartments, was once a Lambic brewery dating back to the 1860s and owned for a period by his own bloodline. “It was a big scar in the family,” he says of the family’s decision to stop Lambic production in the 1960s. “It wasn’t commonly talked about. It’s still not.”


An old illustration of hops against a bright green background.

It’s fascinating to see the big problems of European history reflected in the smaller local story of controversy around the Upper Austrian hop market in the 19th century. As Andreas Krennmair writes, the price and provenance of hops was a hot issue, and tangled up with antisemitism:

An 1869 article claimed that hop growers were only paid 60 fl. for their hops, while at the same time, Upper Austrian hops were traded in Saaz for 90 to 100 fl. This is blamed specifically on Jewish hop traders, who the anonymous author accuses of arranging with each other, thus controlling the prices. The same author suggests that hop growers should form an association to centrally control the sales of Upper Austrian hops, thus having more leverage to dictate prices… This article was immediately contradicted by an expert.. The editors added a note to the letter, claiming that the author, although only anonymously signed as “an expert”, was a Jewish hop trader… About a month later, another article was published in a different newspaper, denouncing the initial reports as wrong, not only correcting the wrong price information, but also scalding the use of defamatory, antisemitic language.


A fluted pilsner glass with the word 'Time' on one side and 'Smithwicks' on the other.
SOURCE: Liam K/IrishBeerHistory.

We haven’t seen a flared ‘pilsner glass’ in the wild for years – but we might if we go to Ireland, reports Liam K at IrishBeerHistory, in the latest post in his ‘100 Years of Irish Brewing in 50 Objects’ series:

It is an elegant form, if a little top-heavy in appearance when full, although in truth this is balanced by having a thick and heavy base, plus it’s incredibly tactile and extremely practical to drink from, with the width of the mouth of the glass perfectly proportioned for either sipping or gulping its contents. This example from the Smithwick’s brewery in Kilkenny for their forgotten and (ironically) timeline purged Time beer brand has all of those elements, plus a wonderful, thick gold band around its rim that heightens its graceful beauty… Time ales were launched by Smithwick’s in 1960 with the aim of revitalising an ageing brand for more modern times and to celebrate their (so-called) 250th anniversary… The launch meant a complete rebrand for most of the Smithwick’s beers with a new logo, beer labels, coasters and other ephemera, plus of course glassware. Branding on glasses was a relatively new idea here, and Time was probably one of the first beers in Ireland to have its own range of branded glassware.


Finally, from Instagram, it’s Nat Ainscough again, who has been posting pub photos from Glasgow.

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

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Beer history pubs

The Iron Duke and the battle for a union for bar staff

For an ambitious politician in 1930s Liverpool, wealthy brewers were a tempting target, and underpaid bar staff a potential source of power.

When we’re trying to understand what life was like in pubs and breweries in the past local working class histories can be an excellent source.

For example, there’s My Liverpool by Frank Shaw, published in 1971. It contains a hundred or so individual entries, each under their own headings, reflecting the author’s memories and impressions of life in the city during the 20th century.

On a recent dip into this book, which has no index and no real structure, we came across a passage about a local Labour politician and later Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Luke Hogan.

If we measure it by 21st century standards, Hogan is something of a forgotten figure: his Wikipedia page is barely more than a stub. That makes Shaw’s rambling, personal, first-hand observations all the more interesting.

First, he tells us, Hogan was known as ‘The Iron Duke’ not because of his aristocratic bearing, though he was apparently lordly, despite his upbringing in the slums, but simply because it rhymes with ‘Luke’.

He then goes onto say:

When I first met him in the Thirties he was working on the marvellous but hopeless task of organising barmen and barmaids in a union.

Shaw then rambles away from this intriguing point for a while, giving us a broader portrait of Hogan as a sharp political operator with street smarts – like a character from The Wire or, dare we say it, Peaky Blinders.

He then loops back to explain Hogan’s particular interest in pubs:

The licensee [of The Maid of Erin] was the brother of Luke who was a powerful man on the local Watch Committee, well liked by all policemen… Yes, Luke’s defunct school of politicians never missed anything. We could drink after hours because Luke was a magistrate and on the licensing committee. Police, pubs and schools he saw from the outset to be the sources of power and personal repute.

The battle for a barmen’s union

For more detail on Hogan’s campaign to establish a union for bar staff we have to dig around in the newspaper archives. A piece in the Belfast Telegraph from 8 October 1935 has Hogan speaking at a joint meeting of the National Union of Distribute and Allied Workers (NUDAW) and the Amalgamated Transport and General Workers Union (Barmen’s Branch):

Alderman Luke Hogan… described the distributive trade as the biggest sweated industry in the British Isles. Since the year 1922, the workers in this class of industry had increased by over 50 per cent, and of the total number more than 50 per cent were under the age of 21. The industries were expanding, and every big firm, combine and trust was making profits of a phenomenal character. But despite those features, the tenure of employment was shorter, for it was a “blind” occupation into which thousands were brought in at 14 and discarded when they became 18… In a reference to the men and women engaged in public houses, Alderman Hogan, said that if they had barmen as strong as the liquor they sold was weak it would not be long before they took a great step forward in bettering their conditions.

In 1944, Shaw mentions in passing, Hogan angered members of the local Brewers’ Society by surveying NUDAW members employed in their pubs. There’s more on this incident in the newspapers, too: they took Hogan to court.

The questionnaire asked pub managers for details of wages, living conditions, weekly sales, and the number of staff. As far as the brewers were concerned, this was commercially sensitive information, and confidential.

At a hearing in April 1945 Hogan’s defence counsel said:

It is simply an attempt… to uphold and maintain the policy of the brewers to oppose the formation of a trade union. It has been an effective step, and has resulted in the temporary obstruction of the union, and they may feel some justification in that. But I submit this action has no legal foundation. This is the kind of action against which the unions are protected by the Trade Disputes Act.

Hogan’s own testimony (Liverpool Daily Post, 27 April 1945) helpfully fills in some gaps in the story:

[He] said at various times he had attempted to build up an organisation among the workers in the brewing industry. Other unions had made similar efforts, but all got tired of wasting money… Dealing with the effort to establish a Joint Industrial Council, witness said the suggestion was that machinery should be set up to deal exclusively with the on-licensed trade, covering all employees in the trade. The invitation to join in the effort was sent to the plaintiff companies, with the exception of Bent’s, who had always been hostile to organisation in the trade, and it was thought it would be a waste of time to trouble with them. Nothing developed in the way of forming an Industrial Council. In November 1940, there was a largely attended meeting of public-house managers and barmen and others to interest them in the formation of a trade union.

In May 1945, the court declared that Hogan was wrong to ask for information about turnover and staff costs, and shouldn’t do it again. If he did, the brewers could come back to court for an injunction. But he was free to continue to ask individuals about their pay and conditions. (Liverpool Echo, 16 May 1945.)

Bobbing about (we’ve put this in clearer order than it appears in the book) Shaw tells us that after World War II, and after his stint as Lord Mayor, Hogan continued his association with pubs and booze:

I was in Luke’s company in the Forties with other heavy drinkers in the home of a prominent Liverpool businessman. The businessman was temporarily out of the room. His wife, much younger than he, clearly resented his generosity to us, though she must have known, as we did, that he wouldn’t give anything to anyone for nothing. She said: ‘I think you gentlemen should pay for your drinks.’… Luke, elegant as ever, carefully put his drink down and looked down at her, murmuring softly: ‘Madam, you forget. I am a magistrate. If you charge one penny for a drink in this unlicensed room I shall have to summon the police.’

In 1971, Shaw had this to say about the long-term effects of Hogan’s campaign on behalf of bar staff:

[They], especially the barmaids, in Liverpool, remain among the poorest paid workers.

Half a century later again, there are unions bar staff can join, and an active campaign to encourage them to do so. But it remains an ongoing battle.

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News

News, nuggets and longreads 10 February 2024: Station Eleven

Every Saturday morning we round up our favourite reading about beer and pubs from the previous week. This time, we’ve got country houses, faux-snugs, and little bowls of malt, among other delights.

First, some news. SIBA has published updated stats on UK brewery numbers and reports a slight drop from 1828 active brewers in January 2023, to 1815 in 2024. Interestingly, the data they’ve collected also allows them to be more specific about which regions are being hit hardest. This time, it’s the North West of England, and the North more generally. This is always worth remembering when we have conversations about boom and bust in the brewing industry: it’s rarely evenly distributed.


A Victorian painting of farm labourers during harvest with English countryside behind.
‘Harvest‘ by John Frederick Herring, 1857, via Wikimedia Commons.

Martyn Cornell has been looking at English country house brewing – a commercial activity in a different sense, as a byproduct of the real business of farming. His focus is Samuel Unwin Heathcote of Shephalbury Manor in Hertfordshire:

The six quarters of malt at a time that Heathcote bought in 1861 would have been enough to make perhaps 24 barrels of beer, which would have been supplied to the servants and farm workers at Shephalbury Manor, as well as the family (I’m ignoring the malt dust Heathcote was buying because I have no idea what difference that might have made to yields …) Over the year that works out at 96 barrels, or just under 76 pints a day. If that sounds a great quantity of beer, the average number of male farm workers per farm in Hertfordshire in 1851 was 13. Let’s guess that Heathcote was, as a substantial landowner, employing twice the average, that gives him 26 workers. That’s three pints per day per man, which sounds perfectly reasonable for the time.


Ale casks piled in a pub yard.

Whenever someone suggests raising the price of cask ale as a way to save it Tandleman is on hand to argue: “No.” This time, his post is in response to an opinion piece by Georgina Young, head brewer at St. Austell. He writes:

You have to get the quality right, and really there is a fat chance of that given that there is a wide and diverse range of outlets for cask beer, from the specialist supplier to the lone dusty handpump sporting a Doom Bar pumpclip. You have token cask beers, indifferent cellar keeping, differences between brewery outlets and those of pub companies and more. In the diverse pub market we have, you can’t simply wish premiumisation upon it, bump up the price, and hope people will cough up… Already in some specialist outlets that premium does apply, and it applies for the simple reason of trust. People will pay more for the certainty, especially if quality is poor elsewhere.  The other point that should not be forgotten, is that cask beer is a live product. Usually in premium situations, you price an object higher, but sell less at a greater margin. But pesky old cask doesn’t lend itself to this arrangement. It goes off if you keep it hanging around.

One thing that struck us, though, is the suggestion that “the existing consumer base for cask conditioned beer often values its affordability and accessibility”. Our suspicion is that the existing customer base for cask ale has shifted, or has already substantially shifted, to those who can afford to waste a fiver on the odd duff pint.


BrewDog bar sign.

Glynn Davis at Beer Insider has some sharp insight into what’s going on with the global superclass of craft brewers as represented by Mikkeller (which just sold a 20% stake to Carlsberg) and BrewDog:

The strategy since BrewDog received a £213m investment from private equity firm TSG (in exchange for a 23% stake) in 2017 has been all about top-line growth, and the business has failed to make a profit since that date. As part of the deal, TSG received an 18% compounding coupon that has so far earned it a total of more than £600m, which BrewDog now owes. This payment will be made when the brewery is either bought in a trade sale or undertakes an initial public offering… The fact BrewDog is now talking about profits represents a change in the narrative that could be the precursor to TSG initiating a course of action that, seven years into its investment, will enable it to take out some money out for its investors… The craft brewing revolution has long since passed its honeymoon period… But it could be the poster child of the sector, BrewDog, that potentially takes things on to the divorce stage for the industry and craft beer drinkers.

The Mikkeller news did surprise us because we’d totally missed it. Perhaps that’s because, frankly, we’ve never particularly cared about Mikkeller (disappointing beers brewed under contract) but maybe also because we’re not using Twitter. Was it the hot topic for a day or two over there, as it would have been in, say, 2016?


A green-painted pub with lettering in gold: "J. McNeill, select bar, music shop, ales, beers, wines, established 1834".
SOURCE: Lisa Grimm/Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs.

We quite fancy the look of J. McNeill’s as presented by Lisa Grimm at Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs. It’s interesting that Ireland is so dominated by a single brand, Guinness, that a pub with a different stout, Beamish, seems positively rebellious:

As is the case for countless Dublin pubs – indeed, for countless pubs across Ireland – J. McNeill’s Pub purports to be quite a different business, at least partially; in this instance, a music shop… Indeed, J. McNeill’s did begin life as a musical instrument shop, back in 1834, albeit a few doors further down Capel Street, though the music business moved out of Dublin a good 20 years ago, and J McNeill’s has been ‘just a pub’ ever since… But it retains a strong musical tradition, from the instruments in the window to the nightly-ish trad sessions in the main bar, and the wealth of photographs of well-known musicians throughout the pub. While the entrance and front bar are rather small, the pubs winds its way back in slightly eccentric fashion, with a series of not-quite-snugs (you may decide for yourself whether our seating area pictured here, with your own fair author deep under the stairs, counts as a snug) to a cozy back room with another fireplace…


The sign on the Brasserie de la Senne brewery

You might take Eoghan Walsh’s evocative list of his favourite food and drink in Brussels as a to-do list for your next visit to Belgium. But it’s more like a poem than a city guide, and perhaps a more accurate reflection of the culture for that:

Fried plantains and Guinness at Le Vieux Mila

A little bowl of malted barley to chew on at Moeder Lambic

The window nook at Le Coq with a cold €2 Stella

A meringuey half litre of Zenne Pils down the back of the Brasserie de la Senne taproom

A zingy bottle of Zinnebir on the terrace at Bar Eliza (RIP), on a Friday after the school run 

Pre-match weeknight beers upstairs at BBP Port Sud after they’ve finished brewing 

Cask-poured Stouterik from a tankard at Gist

A quiet Orval in the hotel bar of the Esperance


Finally, from Instagram, Nat Ainscough has been photographing pubs again…

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

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Beer history bristol pubs

Pubs and breweries in Bristol Archives

After almost seven years in this city, we finally made it to the Bristol Archives in January 2024, to see what they had on pubs and beer.

When we were researching 20th Century Pub in particular we visited archives in a number of cities, looking in particular for information about the construction of pubs and social housing in the interwar and post war periods. 

Sometimes, we’d also stumble across other interesting titbits, particularly in brewery minutes.

Once, Jess even found an ancestor of hers mentioned in the board minutes of Barclay Perkins, although the story wasn’t particularly relevant to the book.

We knew from some pre-visit enquiries that the Bristol Archives does not hold brewery records for Georges (Courage) or any of its predecessor breweries.

There were some bits and pieces relating to Smiles brewery, which will add to our incomplete but growing history.

We also enjoyed looking at huge rolled-up plans for post-war council estates indicating the locations of pubs, and there’s perhaps a story to be told sometime about the pubs that were planned but didn’t get built.

It looks as if there was a fourth pub planned for Southmead, for example, but we don’t know anything more about it at this stage.

Possibly the most colourful material we found were various police and licensing records.

There’s a lot there and the organisation of the material is a little confusing. This is not the Archive’s fault but a result of the police divisions in Bristol seeming to switch about and alter their systems of recordkeeping every five minutes.

Even so, we found lots of interesting nuggets around investigating licence complaints, including quite a few records of the police dropping in, just in case.

When were you last in a pub when a constable turned up on his rounds?

We were also reminded that the police also took notice if you were not open during your licensed hours, recording instances of pubs being slow to open in the morning:

“Sergeant Edward Midwinter… reports that at 11:10 am 22nd December 1913, he observed that the Pilgrim [public house] New Thomas Street, Saint Philips, was closed for the sale of intoxicating liquor.”

What we’re not clear on is why.

Nothing we’ve read so far suggests that pubs could get in trouble for being late to open. Generally, the emphasis is on them staying open after they’re meant to be shut, or opening earlier than their permitted hours.

Paul Jennings’s article ‘Policing Public Houses in Victorian England’ from 2013 is a good piece on this.

From our brief glance over the Bristol records, though, we got a faint impression that being late to open was perhaps an indicator of a generally unruly house.

Why might they be late to open? Perhaps because they’d been late to close the night before.

Anyway, we’d be all for the police keeping notes on pubs that fail to open when their Google profile says they will. Throw the book at ‘em! (Because this is the internet: we are obviously joking.)

Most frustrating was confirmation that the Courage records do exist but were withdrawn from the Archive in the 1990s. We contacted the person who withdrew them (their contact details are in the catalogue) and they confirmed that these papers are in “deep storage” and inaccessible to researchers.

We feel pleased that we finally made it to the archive and found it very friendly and helpful, and might make a return visit sometime with more focus.

We’ve got copies of 20th Century Pub for sale at £12 including UK postage and packing. And you get a free Pierre van Klomp zine with each one, too. Email us to sort out payment, inscriptions, and so on.

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News

News, nuggets and longreads 3 February 2024: Poker Face

Every Saturday we compile the best reading about beer and pubs from the past week. This time we’ve got porter, pubs, and personal taste.

First, some news: Steve Dunkley is organising a Historic Brewing Conference to take place in Manchester on 5 and 6 August 2024. Speakers announced so far include Gary Gillman, Lars Marius Garshol, Laura Hadland and Pete Brown. There are also plans for a bar selling recreations of historic beers. Two-day tickets will cost £70. Follow Steve or HistoricBrewCon on your favourite social media platform to find out when they’re available.


The exterior of a large pub at night. The sign reads 'Fishponds Tap'.
The Fishponds Tap in Bristol, which is listed in the book Desi Pubs.

This week’s meatiest read is an academic paper called ‘A pub for England: Race and class in the time of the nation’ by Amit Singh, Sivamohan Valluvan, and James Kneale, originally published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies.

It was brought to our attention by David Jesudason, to whose book Desi Pubs it seems to be a response. Its 11,000 words of Academic-ese (“concomitant”, “searching conceptualisation”, and so on) are not easy to digest. But the effort is worth it.

The main argument, as we read it, is that most writing about pubs ignores the question of race altogether, shoring up the idea that pubs ‘belong’ to white working class culture. But the Desi pub points the way to a different, more inclusive, more complex idea of what pubs can be:

The UK Government’s apparent neglect of the pub has largely been represented in terms of heavy-handed and uncaring state intervention into private businesses, in the form of high and increasing levels of duty on alcoholic drinks, particularly beer; the 2007 smoking ban; and the pandemic lockdowns of 2020–2021. These characterisations of this threat evoke a particular kind of pub, one relying on income from drink rather than food, on smokers, and on the ‘regular’ patron deprived by lockdown of a ‘second home’. And as we have surveyed in the previous section, almost all such interventions, whether right or left, remain insufficiently critical of the ethnonationalist assumptions integral to these ideas of loss, or have even enthusiastically embraced them.


Handmade wooden labels for Ideal Day beer.
SOURCE: Pellicle/Lily Waite.

Last year we went to Vessel in Plymouth where proprietor Sam Congdon talked enthusiastically about Ideal Day, a farmhouse brewery just over the border in Cornwall. We made half a plan to visit, but couldn’t make it. We also made a note to find out more and maybe write something at some point. Now, for Pellicle, Lily Waite has saved us the trouble, with an in-depth profile of brewery founders Nia Rylance and James Rylance, late of Beavertown, Redchurch and Harbour:

Ideal Day is one of a number of businesses that make up Crocadon Farm, perched on Cornwall’s southeastern border with Devon, just north of the town of Saltash at the mouth of the Tamar Valley. A self-styled “agrotourism retreat,” Crocadon is a farm-restaurant founded by chef and farmer Dan Cox… What James is doing is, to some degree, antithetical to how he brewed toward the end of many, if not all, of his previous brewing roles. None of Ideal Day’s beers are particularly to or of a style—very deliberately so. They are, until the imminent launch of Field Beer in bottles, only available in keg, sent out individually, with a hand-finished and stamped keg badge cut down from whatever nearby tree recently fell. They taste of James and Nia’s intent, of railing very, very gently against homogeneity and mass-production. 


Mild taste-off: multiple milds in plastic beakers.

At Tempest in a Tankard Franz Hofer has been looking inward in an attempt to understand his own taste in beer. It’s an attempt to get closer to being objective by being transparent about his prejudices and preferences:

It’s a sunny autumn afternoon and I’ve just arrived in the Oberpfalz, home of Zoigl. I immediately become part of a tableau with Zoigl in the picture, but one that’s also much more than just about the beer. The frame around the tableau encompasses the lively squares and ornate churches, the cobblestone streets that cradle those wonderful Zoigl taverns, the meadows and rolling hills, the colour of the leaves against the sky, the fragrance of the forest as I wander from town to town in search of my next Zoigl… Does all of this cultural stuff make the beer taste “better”? It’s a question I’ve grappled with for years. But the question misses the mark. Instead, it’s more a question of remaining attentive to how these cultural frameworks – from the Wirtshaus and the beer garden to the communal brewhouse and the coolship – have shaped both the beer of a given region and my own taste in beer. Context does matter. And it’s what mitigates against our tendency to reduce beer to a mere object to be evaluated, rated, and scored.


The carpet at the Imperial, Exeter.

For Time Out Fred Garratt-Stanley has been investigating what it means for communities when the Wetherspoon closes. It’s interesting to read as on-the-ground reporting, with quotes from Wetherspoon customers, and as an analysis of the market, highlighting the rise of the Craft Union chain in particular:

It’s true that Craft Union — an affordable pub company that has expanded significantly in recent years — appears to be benefiting from the demise of Spoons. Across the UK, the chain’s emphasis on cheap drinks, community events and a homely atmosphere for regulars has allowed them to scoop up a fair chunk of Wetherspoons’ lost trade… Despite the important role the chain plays as a meeting point for communities – particularly working-class communities – many Spoons pubs struggle to foster lasting emotional attachments with punters. The formulaic, transactional nature of the chain means that when Wetherspoons shut, it may be a blow, but locals will soon start searching for alternatives.


One of our favourite types of blog post – a staple in the early days of beer blogging – is an earnest review of a can from a corner shop. The Beer Nut, with his tendency to try any beer he encounters and judge it fairly, has sniffed out a decent Baltic porter that we’ll be looking for in our local Eastern European supermarkets:

Volfas Engelman Baltic Porter, then, is 6% ABV and the can tells us it’s in “limited supply”. Also that it’s 25 IBU, which strikes me as a little low, even if the scale is largely meaningless. Nevertheless, it pours a handsome dark brown with a modest and mangeable off-white head. The aroma gives gentle caramel and the promise of some herbal liquorice hops. Everything is in order there, then. A lager-clean texture follows, and there’s a surprise in the flavour…


Finally, from Instagram, a pub in the urban landscape on a sunny day… ah, remember sunshine?

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