Categories
bristol opinion

Our top 5 Bristol pints

What are the top five reliable pints in your town or city? That is, beers you always know you’ll find in specific pubs.

That question comes via Ross Cummins who set out his favourite five pints in Manchester in an excellent post on his blog earlier this week:

This is not a definitive list of best beers in Manchester, or best beers by Manchester breweries, this is a list of MY favourite pints, that I can get in Manchester.

This sparked some interesting follow ups on BlueSky where people pondered what a similar list for London might look like, for example.

And of course, it made a natural topic of conversation for us during one of our recent pub sessions: what would be our equivalent of this list for Bristol?

We found it hard because relatively few Bristol pubs that we like consistently have on the same beers.

The ale-focused pubs have a laudable variety of guest beers, but that means you rarely find any of the same stuff two visits in a row.

And lots of our favourite Bristol breweries also change their range regularly, so even in taprooms or tied pubs you might not be guaranteed to find a particular favourite beer.

In our selection, therefore, we have hedged our bets a little and sometimes suggested alternative beers.

We’ve also tried to balance what we actually really enjoy drinking versus what we would recommend to a visitor to Bristol, who maybe wants to try something local, and new to them.

Then we decided not to overthink it too much. It’s just a blog post! If you disagree, write your own.

So anyway, with all of Ross’s caveats and a few of our own, here is our list.

The exterior of a grand Edwardian pub with ornate gables, painted grey.
The Langton.

1. Butcombe Bitter at the Langton

The Langton for us, anyway, as it’s walkable from our house, but maybe at The Ostrich for out-of-towners.

We like Butcombe Bitter a lot when it’s good, and it’s reliably good these days. It’s also available in quite a few decent Bristol pubs.

It’s the closest thing we’ve got to a traditional brown bitter from an old family brewery.

Although Butcombe is only 40-odd years old, it was founded by a former Courage employee with the explicit intention of brewing Courage-style beer.

The most regular place that we drink it is probably The Langton but it’s quite schlep out of town and not a particularly remarkable pub. It just happens to be close to us.

And its Butcombe is almost always in great condition.

The Lost & Grounded taproom with bare tables, bunting, and an illuminated sign that reads COLD LAGER.
Lost & Grounded.

2. Keller Pils at Lost & Grounded

We visit this taproom more often than any other, and it’s partly because we like the range and styles of beer and partly due to proximity.

It was hard for us to pick a particular beer because our actual favourites do rotate.

Also, if we’re honest, we don’t always find they taste the same from week to week. So we’re going for Keller Pils for now.

A pumpclip for Oakham Citra beer.

3. Oakham Citra at the Old Duke

The Old Duke is a music-focused pub on the King Street Run in the centre of town.

Oakham Citra is hoppy catnip for us.

We always enjoy it, and it appears to be a regular beer here, together with its tamer pale-n-hoppy cousin Adnams Ghost Ship.

A pint of golden amber beer in a straight pint glass in a pub garden.
Young’s Ordinary at The Highbury Vaults.

4. Young’s Bitter at the Highbury Vaults

The Highbury Vaults has a well-deserved reputation for good ale, and for extreme proper-pub cosiness.

It also has a pleasant, shady garden for the summer.

We tend to switch between Young’s London Original (AKA Young’s Bitter, AKA Ordinary) and St. Austell Proper Job when we’re there.

We usually try both and settle on whichever is in the best condition. But they’re both reliably very good and often excellent.

A big gold ornament of a dog with a cluttered pub bar back behind.
The Swan With Two Necks.

5. Elmoor (Moor) at the Swan with Two Necks

Both the beer and the pub have become favourites of ours.

The beer is billed as a ‘Belgian pale ale’ and tastes a bit like something Brasserie de la Senne would produce.

It’s refreshing, bitter, still just about sessionable at 5.5%, if you take it easy.

This was tough

There were so many things we almost included, but couldn’t quite justify.

For example, we also wanted to include Bass. It’s still very much present in a surprising number of Bristol pubs – but not in any pubs we visit regularly.

That means we can make recommendations for places to try but have to stop short of a full endorsement for any one pub.

For a fuller view of what to drink and where, check out our Bristol pub guide which we’ve just updated for 2024.

Categories
pubs

The best pub in Britain, according to Twitter

On Saturday night, Tony Naylor declared the Old Bridge, Ripponden, ‘arguably Britain’s best pub’:

https://twitter.com/naylor_tony/status/1116742125767602176

That prompted us to ask our Twitter followers, slightly mischievously, we must admit, to place their votes for Britain’s best pub.

When the replies started to tumble in, we realised the results might actually be somewhat meaningful, as certain pubs got multiple votes, and the names of cool-sounding pubs we’d never visited popped up.

So, we’ve decided to sort through the answers and turn them into a to-do list.

Notes

We discounted pubs that nominated themselves, obviously.

There were a surprising number of votes for Orwell’s the Moon Under Water, or similarly whimsical perfect pubs of the imagination. Lovely stuff but basically a smart-arsed way of copping out of answering.

Where people named multiple pubs, we’ve ignored all but the first one mentioned in their Tweet. That’ll teach ’em.

We noticed one satirical answer – the Wetherspoon in Preston that was controversially named best pub in town last week – but others might have slipped through the net.

The list

First, here’s a list of all the pubs that got more than one nomination – a very decent list, which overlaps with our personal favourites to some degree.

  1. The Great Western, Wolverhampton
  2. The Hope, Carshalton
  3. The Grove, Huddersfield
  4. The Free Trade Inn, Newcastle
  5. The Bell, Aldworth
  6. The Old Ship, Seahouses
  7. The Ship & Mitre, Liverpool

(We really must get to the Hope. This is getting embarrassing.)

Now, here’s the full list.

You might not like every pub suggested but the point is, to someone, somewhere, these pubs were special enough to warrant a response, which means they’re probably at least worth sticking a nose into if you find yourself in the area.

Categories
Blogging and writing pubs

On Lists

Collage: nine pubs.

We contributed to a list that appeared in the Guardian yesterday in a special travel supplement billed as The 50 Best UK Pubs.

As these things always do, it has generated some passionate commentary – why only three pubs in Scotland? Why only one in Birmingham, or the whole of Sussex? Why not my local, or the pub run?

And we haven’t dared look a the comments section online – that’s just what we’ve gleaned from Twitter.

Although we’ve written plenty of lists ourselves…

…this is the first time we’ve been involved in one of these big pieces in a national publication and it’s been interesting to see the workings from the inside, so we thought we’d share a few observations.

Fifty pubs isn’t many

Why only one pub in [LOCATION]? Why only [NUMBER] in [REGION]?

Interesting questions. We took a moment to do the sums on this: it’s because 50 pubs equates to about half a pub for each UK county, or 0.6 pubs for every town/city with a population over 100,000.

That means that inevitably some places are going to get left out, and even those that are listed are going to feel underrepresented to people who know them well.

The list has to be manageable, too. Most pubs are important or special in some way, to someone, but sooner or later you have to get off the fence and give a straight answer: if you’ve only got so much time, don’t go there, go here.

And that’s before you take into account other requirements of a list like this, i.e. the need for geographical spread, and to cater to a range of tastes.

Not ‘the best’

Even if the headline says The Best, and the accompanying social media, and even if that’s what we’re all conditioned to assume a list represents…

Scott Aukerman's chronological list of Star Wars films to which someone replies "WRONG" assuming it is a ranking.

…people who write these things never intend them to be that, because how could they be? Pubs are even more subjective than, say, films, or books.

They can feel different on Wednesday lunchtime than Friday evening. Some are great in tourist season but terrible out, and vice versa. Between a reviewer’s visit and publication they can change beer list, staff, management or ownership.

But The Best is just how headlines and titles work, like it or not – full of superlatives and hyperbole, bold and punchy.

When we’re writing here on the blog, where we are our own editors, we can afford to be more subtle, using “our favourites” and other codes intended to convey that your mileage may vary.

But we’d get more clicks if we said The Best, and probably more again for The Worst. National newspapers, which rely on traffic and clicks, can’t afford to be so snootily high-minded.

Not just about beer

If you think it’s all about beer, most lists like this are going to disappoint you. We think a pub with no exciting beer can still be a great pub. It can certainly have a great view, or a great Sunday roast, or deep history, and so on.

Articles in national newspapers aren’t aimed at hardcore beer geeks.

The usual suspects

There’s a reason the same pubs crop up on these lists time and again: they are pubs that lots of writers genuinely like, and that there’s therefore good reason to suspect lots of other people will also like them.

We’ve been to lots of pubs we kind of liked, and found kind of interesting, but we wouldn’t dream of sending anyone else there without a lot of caveats.

Write your own list

It’s become a bit of a cliche to bat away criticism with a variation on: “This is my list. If you don’t like it, write your own.”

But that is literally a thing anyone can do.

Not enough Birmingham pubs on the list? We’d love to read and bookmark any take on Top Ten Birmingham Pubs.

(But a list of every halfway decent pub in Birmingham is basically useless – you have to be cruel and leave some out or it’s just the Yellow Pages.)

Not enough “unsung pubs”? That’s a great idea for an article – which are the best pubs that never get on to these lists? And what is it about them the prevents them achieving wide acclaim?

Lists are nonsense

We never take lists seriously. They’re fun, a particular angle on the world that you can enjoy for a moment, then ignore.

Or, of course, rail against. That’s the most fun of all.

Categories
opinion pubs

These are a Few of our Favourite Pubs

Over a few beers the other week we found ourselves making a list of pubs we love and find ourselves longing to be in.

It’s not The Best Pubs, it’s not a Top Ten, it’s just some pubs we like enough to feel wistful for. We’ve been tinkering with it since and decided to share it.

Brains bitter at the City Arms, Cardiff.
The City Arms, Cardiff

10-12 Quay St, CF10 1EA
This is, in fact, the pub where we had the conversation. It was our first visit but love at first pint. The perfect mix of old school, new school, cask and keg, it just felt completely right to us. Worn in and unpretentious, but not curmudgeonly, and serving a revelatory point of Brains Bitter. (Not SA.) Is it an institution? We assume it’s an institution.

The Brunswick, Derby.
The Brunswick Inn, Derby

1 Railway Terrace, DE1 2RU
We loved this first time, and it’s still great. Flagstones, pale cask ale, cradling corners, a view over the railway, and the murmur of lovely local accents. Worth breaking a train journey for.

Categories
Beer history Brew Britannia

The Most Important British Craft Beers?

British beer bottle cap.

In response to an article listing ‘The 25 Most Important American Craft Beers’ Michael Lally at Bush Craft Beer has challenged his readers to think about what might be on a Brit-centric version of that list:

I think we can define ‘craft’ relatively loosely and ‘important’ in a similar way to our US colleagues: It’s one that either changed consumer tastes or how breweries approach making beer. There are a few obvious ones: Punk IPA by Brewdog, Jaipur by Thornbridge, ESB by Fullers.

There’s a survey you can respond to including space to make your own suggestions but here’s some food for thought from us.

1. Traquair House Ale (1965)

Arguably the very first ‘microbrewery’ was Traquair House which commenced production in 1965. It demonstrated that it was possible for small breweries to be opened despite prevailing industry trends, and also that small independent breweries could often do more interesting things than their bitter- and lager-focused Big Six peers — this beer was (and is) at a hefty ABV and very rich.

2. Litchborough Bitter (1974)

Another brewery with a strong claim to being the first microbrewery was Bill Urquhart’s Litchborough based in the village of that name near Northampton. The beer itself doesn’t seem to have been especially exciting but the business model, and Mr Urquhart’s mentoring/consultancy, directly inspired the microbrewery boom that followed.