Tag: blogs by theme

Categories
Blogging and writing pubs

Nostalgic 20th Century Pub Blogs

This is part of our occasional series highlighting interesting blogs and the theme this time is pubs in the 20th century.

Screenshot: Manchester's Estate Pubs.
Screenshot: Manchester’s Estate Pubs.

Manchester’s Estate Pubs is put together by the pseudonymous ‘modernmoocher’ and features original photographs accompanied by sometimes lyrical prose:

Point a camera at a hard man and he’ll tell you exactly what you want to hear, it’s easy, though it’s much, much harder to fill a pub these days – tough times.

Standing lost and forlorn in a sea of green grass – nobody’s home, laid low by a litre and a half of Lambrini or six.

Bare burnt rafters, boarded doors, the sign no longer swings in the wind.

Somebody just called tinned-up time.

Billy Greens is no more.

manchestersestatepubs.wordpress.com

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The Never Ending Pub Crawl is put together by Alan Winfield and alternates between accounts of recent expeditions and those from 30 years ago. The latter are accompanied by photographs which, though straightforward in style, have attained a certain romance with age, like this one from 1987:

© Alan Winfield
© Alan Winfield

neverendingpubcrawl.blogspot.co.uk

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Screenshot: Pubs of Manchester.
Screenshot: Pubs of Manchester.

We found both of the relatively new blogs above via Pubs of Manchester (@Pubs_of_Mcr on Twitter), a website of long-standing that also belongs in this list. Its author takes the time and trouble to document even the most lowly of pubs using every photograph he can harvest from private collections, old publications and various corners of the internet. A fascinating recent post, which is fairly typical, is this one about The House That Jack Built:

The House That Jack Built was a very distinctive 1970s estate pub, opening in 1975 at the newly-built Newbury Place shopping centre off Bury New Road in Higher Broughton… It was described in the Manchester Evening News at the time as ‘something entirely different’ – a maze of bars, passages and alcoves with an indoor tree house!

The tone is often rather wistful — so many of the pubs chronicled have disappeared, often only in recent years — which only underlines the importance of recording their existence before they are forgotten altogether.

pubsofmanchester.blogspot.co.uk

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Any other suggestions for blogs that belong on this list are very welcome — leave a comment below.

Categories
Blogging and writing real ale

Cask-focused UK Beer Blogs

In an article for All About Beer, American writer Jeff Alworth said: ‘If you read the English beer blogs, you’ll find mention of cask ale is nearly absent.’

He’s reading the wrong blogs, then, we thought, and came up with this reading list of people who mostly write about cask-conditioned beer consumed in the pub.

Before we get to the links, though, it’s worth noting that we do think Jeff might be broadly right: the bloggers we’ve suggested below are all on the… erm… experienced side, and while younger bloggers do write about cask-conditioned beer, it does seem that it’s not often what that gets them excited.

Tandleman

A long-time Campaign for Real Ale activist based in Manchester, Tandleman is proud to say that he rarely drinks beer at home, and rarely touches keg beer when he’s out. With experience in pub cellars and managing festival bars, he understands the technical ins-and-outs of cask ale better than most, and a recurring theme on his blog is the generally poor condition in which he finds it in London pubs.

Tandleman screenshot.

Sample quote: ‘There is nothing more vexing than coughing up the best part of four quid for a pint in London (or anywhere to be fair) and then finding it warm enough to poach an egg in.’

Paul Bailey (no relation)

While not dogmatic about cask vs. keg, Paul has been a CAMRA member since the 1970s and writes frequently about his memories of drinking cask-conditioned beer over the course of four decades, as well as providing first-hand commentary on the contemporary scene such as this piece on Doom Bar.Paul Bailey screenshot.

Oh Good Ale

Another Manchester-based blogger and CAMRA loyalist, Phil is an academic by day and so knows how to string a sentence together. He is outspoken in his praise of cask-conditioned beer and, despite repeated efforts to ‘get’ what it is people see in it, an intelligent critic of modern kegged craft beer, and especially the way it is priced and marketed.

Sample quote: ‘The answer to the question, I honestly believe, is “because any given beer is better from a cask than a keg (or bottle, or can)”.’

Categories
Blogging and writing

Eye Candy Beer Blogs

Words are great, but sometimes, pictures are better.

As part of what is turning into a series, here’s a collection of show-not-tell beer- and pub-related blogs you might want to add to your reader (we use Feedly these days) or just bookmark for a slow Friday afternoon in the office.

1. Oh Beautiful Beer

A showcase for all kinds of beer-related graphic design from around the world. If you run a bar or brewery, it’s a great way to get a sense of overall trends. (But it also brings home just how identikit ‘hip’ branding can be…)

2. Beer Lens

Robert Gale and Kim Reed take gorgeous photographs of pubs and bars, primarily in the US and UK, and it’s easy to get lost in the archives for an hour or two. Sadly, because they’re so good, their photos get ‘borrowed’ rather too often — if you want to use them, ask nicely, and/or pay up!

Continue reading “Eye Candy Beer Blogs”
Categories
Blogging and writing

Pub Crawling Blogs

Pub at night.

Look, the fact is, if you want to read about drunken escapades, this isn’t the blog you’re looking for.

We’re bookworms, nerds, squares; taking things too seriously is what we do for fun; we hate having hangovers; and that’s unlikely to change as we daily grow ever more middle-aged and becardiganed.

But don’t despair — there are plenty of bloggers less po-faced and/or sedentary than us who are barely ever out of the pub, and here are four you might enjoy.

1. The Ultimate London Pub Crawl

Once a month, twenty-somethings Andy and Greg pick a bit of London and visit every pub there — every pub. They generally get drunk, flirt, make friends, fear for their lives, and then miss their bus or tube home.

2. My Pub Odyssey

Pubman goes to pubs, mostly in London, and says what he reckons about them without even a dab of gilding on the lily: ‘It is a fairly normal little grubby touristy pub.  Grubby is a compliment in Pub Odyssey world…’

3. Walking and Crawling

Adam walks and drinks and walks and drinks. His long posts are full fresh air, verdant fields, and well-earned pints of beer in Scottish country pubs. It a close to being on holiday as you can get at your desk.

4. Wee Beefy

He’s been a bit less prolific of late but his reports from the front line of the war on sobriety in pubs in the Sheffield area are always entertaining: ‘We finished our trip at the Duck and Drake, where we stood at the packed bar to hear a band finish playing, supping beers that I have forgotten to record, but which were, I assume very nice – as was the food, which may have been a pie, I genuinely don’t know, however!’