Tag: news nuggets

Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs that grabbed our attention in the past week, from Guinness to barley wine, via dark mild.

First, news of the ongoing hype – hype! – around Guinness.

Will Hawkes spotted this story in The New York Times about the rising popularity of Guinness in the US: “Oran McGonagle, an owner of the Dubliner, a two-year-old pub in Boston. In 2023, his bar sold more Guinness than any other bar or restaurant in the city. And this year, the Dubliner’s purchasing volume of the stout is up 63 percent to meet rocketing demand.” (Paywalled, but the link worked for us the first time.)

And on this side of the Atlantic Diageo is reportedly limiting supplies of Guinness because of rising demand in the run up to Christmas: “While overall beer drinking was slightly down between July and October, the volume of Guinness consumed from kegs was up more than fifth.” The last thing Diageo would want you to do, of course, is panic buy.

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For British Beer Breaks Phil Mellows has been considering what the discontinuation of Banks’s Mild on cask means for pubs which have made a name supplying it:

At the Royal Oak, Chapel Ash, however, the matter is more than an academic debate. Run by Emma and Terry Cole, the Royal Oak is a brilliant community pub that cares about local people and understands the role a pub plays in their lives. It’s also proud that it keeps a great pint of Banks’s Mild only a few hundred yards from where it’s made at CMBC’s Wolverhampton brewery, serving up to 200 pints a week… In fact, since we learned the brand was in its final days, the pub has been especially busy, Terry reports, with people coming in for what might be their last ever cask Banks’s Mild.

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For the blog of a homebrewing supplier Matthew Curtis has written his list of the best beer cities in the UK. If he was expecting furious disagreement, he might have been disappointed, because the chat online was unusually constructive and harmonious, with most people broadly agreeing with his judgement – or at least understanding his rationale. We didn’t find much with which to argue, either, including this bit on Bristol (at number 5):

What makes the scene great here is each of its many different layers. You’ve got genuinely world class breweries – the aforementioned Left Handed Giant for starters – but also Lost and Grounded, Wiper and True, and several more besides… The only funny thing about Bristol is that its scene is quite insular. It can be difficult to find a variety of interesting beer that isn’t made in Bristol sometimes, because here is a city that prefers to look after its own. When the offer is as good as that of the breweries I mentioned earlier, however, you can see why it’s one of the best cities for beer in the country.

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Eoghan Walsh has been to “the most Christmassy pub in Brussels” and now, of course, we want to go there too:

I must have walked past Le Saint Nicolas, on the narrow Little Butter Street just downhill from Brussels’ Grand Place, innumerable times and never noticed it. The café is opposite the compact St Nicolas church, and its entrance is overshadowed by the large rainbow flag hanging outside a neighbouring LGBT bar. Whether it was named for the church or the Greek saint who delivers pepernoten and mandarins to good Low Countries children in early December is immaterial, because the owners have leaned fully into the latter as Le Saint Nicolas’ overriding leitmotif. A sign hanging over the entrance has Sinterklaas in white beard and red mitre painted on it, and the rest of the bar takes its cue from there.

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It’s easy to think that Thomas Hardy Ale just materialises under one owner or another every year, or every few years. But Ed Wray has shared some insider info on when he was involved in producing a batch a few years ago:

The last is of particular interest to me as I worked at Hepworths when production moved there. For this legendary beer another beer legend, Derek Prentice, is the brewing consultant employed by the brand owner and we worked with him to bring the beer back again… I wasn’t doing much actual brewing by that stage of my work at Hepworths but I made sure I brewed one of the batches of Thomas Hardy. Oh yes, I wasn’t going to miss that opportunity. Unlike at Eldridge Pope it’s brewed as a single gyle and it proved to be surprisingly problematic… We had to throw everything we could at it to get the beer down to target gravity and the ABV up to the strength we wanted. It spent a long, long time in tank.

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Katie Mather has some helpful suggestions for your relatives on what to buy you for Christmas, instead of the gift set of world lagers they’ve currently got their eye on. You might want to print it out and leave it lying around. This is a particularly good idea:

Put Money Behind Their Favourite Bar… Genuinely, genuinely do this if you’re feeling generous. Instead of getting a gift card for an online beer company or buying them a crate of something they might not like, go to their favourite pub or bar and put some money on tick for them… Not only will the bar absolutely love you for giving them a little cash boost at an important time of year, your mate will love you because they can go in and get pints whenever they want for free until the money runs out… From personal experience as a bar owner, this also encourages people to try things they wouldn’t normally buy, which is also a brilliant thing.

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Finally, from BlueSky, a snapshot of a brilliant pub…

Great night at the Dog and Bell. One of London’s most unique pubs.

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— Will Hawkes (@willhawkes.bsky.social) November 30, 2024 at 8:44 AM

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

Here’s our weekly round up of the best writing about beer. This week, we’ve got cask ale, Belgian beer, and lots of different boozers.

First, some news: Carlsberg-Marstons has decided to stop brewing a bunch of the cask ale brands it has acquired over the years. Some have shrugged – these aren’t beloved beers, on the whole, and why brew them if nobody wants to drink them? Others, like Tandleman and Pete Brown, are concerned about the message it sends: “Are CMBC honestly trying to deliberately destroy the UK’s cask ale market? Of course they’d say no, if they could ever be arsed to comment on the situation. But if they really were trying to murder cask ale, what would they be doing differently to what they’ve done so far this year?”

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For Belgian Smaak Jonny Garrett has written about one of the great puzzles of beer geekery: why did we all decide Westvleteren 12 was “the best beer in the world”?

Local news stations reported chaos in that late summer of 2005. Drivers in the Flemish village parked wherever they could, churning up grass and leaving debris. The police were summoned. Helicopters scrambled. People queued for hours outside the village’s monastery, bringing traffic to a standstill… Then the world saw what was going on and the press started calling. They asked how a handful of monks had achieved such a thing, and why they would even want to… The monastic inhabitants of St Sixtus Abbey, a few kilometres south of Westvleteren, had brewed beer for centuries, using the profits to support their peaceful way of life. Like any conscientious brewery, they wanted their beers to be as good as they could be, but it was far from their focus. They certainly didn’t list Westvleteren 12, their Belgian Dark Strong Ale—or “Quadrupel”—on any beer rating sites. So they were probably more surprised than anyone when, in 2005, an American website crowned Westvleteren 12 the “best beer in the world”.

(Public service announcement: to close the ‘Sign up to our newsletter’ popup you want the little cross hidden in the top right corner of the screen, nowhere near the popup itself.)

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At Tempest in a Tankard Franz D. Hofer has been exploring an important Austro-Bavarian institution – the Wirtshaus, or village inn. It starts with a typically delightful anecdote from his travels:

A small group of burly men with broad grins joined us at our table, curious to hear about these two wanderers who clearly weren’t from this Bavarian village snug up against the border with Bohemia. So it goes at the Wirtshaus, where tables for two are rare. Some had worked in construction. Another was a local farmer who supplied pork to the butcher around the corner. The conversation grew more animated as the empty glasses lined up and the talk turned to the state of the world today. Our food arrived and we tucked in. After a few minutes the farmer proudly proclaimed that the Schweinsbraten and Schnitzel on our plates had come from his farm.

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Closer to home Chris Dyson at Real Ale, Real Music has been exploring Leeds and provides a useful update on the state of the city’s beer scene:

I carried on down past the Duck & Drake under the railway bridge towards the Minster where on one side was the Lamb & Flag… This lovely brick-built pub dates from the 19th century and was formerly run by Leeds Brewery until their demise, when the small pub estate was acquired by Camerons and the beers were taken on by Kirkstall. With its mullioned windows, interior featuring exposed brickwork and timbers, wooden floors and fittings it is one of the most attractive pubs in the city… I ordered a pint of Kirkstall Three Swords, missing out on the few Leeds beers that were amongst the 8 hand pumps on the bar, and took it to a corner table at the side of the door facing the bar… 

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For news outlet CNN Will Noble has done his best to explain the UK’s Wetherspoon pub chain to Americans. We suspect British readers will enjoy it, if only for the strange sensation of seeing our own culture presented as alien and exotic:

Utter the single word “Wetherspoon,” or even the colloquial “Spoons” to a Brit, and they’ll know what you mean. Some will grimace. Some will groan. Others will excitedly rub their hands together like you’d just cooked their favorite meal… Wetherspoon pubs are an institution in the UK. They enjoy cult-like status both among admirers, lured in by real ale and “pub grub” sold at astoundingly low prices, and detractors, who see them as emblematic of everything that’s wrong with modern Britain… More than 800 Wetherspoon chain pubs freckle the country — from The Muckle Cross in Scotland to The Tremenheere in Cornwall. In just a few decades, “Spoons” have become so ingrained into British daily life that they probably now deserve to be up there with Stonehenge on the list of UK cultural institutions.

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As we near the finish, let’s pop into a few pubs around and about.

First, in Dublin, Lisa Grimm takes us to a pub with the brilliant name The Glimmer Man: “The name comes from the Emergency/WWII-era job title – think a sort of proto-TV license inspector role – tasked with seeking out people using too much gas. It’s been applied to the pub here since at least the 1980s, though a previous proprietor, T. Lyster, is still commemorated in the tiled entrance.”

Then we’ll bob over to Ramsgate in Kent with Alex at Pub Vignettes for a snapshot of life at The Hovelling Boat Inn, among others: “You here for the Meat Raffle, son? Wasn’t aiming for a whole side of lamb kind of afternoon, but carpe diem. Strip of five tickets. Sonny and Cher. Simon and Garfunkel. Micropub and Butcher. Get the collab while it’s happening, nothing’s eternal.”

Finally, with Adrian Tierney-Jones, let’s visit Whitelocks in Leeds: “I engage in the tradition of vertical drinking at the long bar, its polished copper top gleaming like a much-loved child on Christmas morning, while the well-polished glasses standing on shelves at the mirrored back bar add to the impression that this is very much a glittering palace of beer…”

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Finally, from BlueSky…

The AEB – GEB yeast packet designs go so hard. Would have each of these on a t-shirt. (Pic from geterbrewed.com)

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— Katie Mather (@katiematherkm.bsky.social) November 26, 2024 at 11:26 AM

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

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer and pubs from the past week. This time we’ve got festivals, malt, Kölsch and more.

First, some news: AB-InBev is closing the Elysian brewing facility in Seattle. Now, we don’t generally jump on every item of news from the US (it’s not our beat) but, as Jeff Alworth explains, this is significant as a sign of a wider shift in the market: ‘Big beer is done with craft.’ We’ve all spent so much of the past decade talking and thinking about small breweries being taken over by multinationals that it hasn’t dawned on everyone that we’re in a new phase:

With ABI sales of eight breweries  last year and Molson Coors dumping four of their breweries a few months ago, we can call 2024 the final chapter in ‘corporate craft’ era of American brewing. ABI will no doubt radically scale back Elysian’s offerings going forward to streamline production, distribution, and sales. In 2020, ABI purchased Craft Brew Alliance for a single beer, Kona Big Wave, which is now a standalone brand in their portfolio. I would expect them to strip Elysian of everything but Space Dust going forward… This was never a great union. National breweries and small, regional breweries have not just different business models, but nearly opposing reasons for being. since this is the end of the line for these relationships, it’s worth doing a bit of forensic work to understand why they didn’t work.

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For Pellicle Pete Brown has written about Baird’s Malt in Essex, with a particular view on the future of the malting industry in the face of climate change:

It’s January 2024 and I’m on the train back to my new home in Norwich. It’s a cold, blue day, and winter light fills the carriage. I look up from my laptop and see that we’re speeding past a beautiful lake, the sun shimmering on its surface. I knew about the Norfolk Broads, but I never knew about lakes like this!… Quickly, I stab at my phone and bring up Google Maps. I want to see exactly where we are so I can bring Liz back here for a lakeside picnic in the summer. When the app responds, I’m momentarily disorientated. The blue dot informs me that my immediate location is surrounded not by blue, but green and gold. This is not a lake. It is—or was—farmland. Somewhere under all that water is what was supposed to be the 2024 winter barley crop.

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Roy at Quare Swally has an impassioned piece about the importance of the Belfast Beer and Cider Festival to a place whose indie beer scene has struggled to establish itself in the past half century:

It was a time pre-Covid, pre-Ukraine war, pre-Liverpool winning the Premier League. It was also a time when you could get a decent beer in Belfast for well under £7. That time was 2018 and that’s when the last Belfast Beer and Cider festival took place – until now. For reasons we won’t go into here, there’s been no such CAMRA NI-organised festival since 2018 and it was great to see it returning, now at Banana Block, opposite Boundary Brewing on the Newtownards Road… If there was no appetite for a Belfast Beer Festival, it simply would not exist. The reason such an event happens is because people want it to happen. The drinkers of Belfast and Northern Ireland made the festival a success… There’s also something special occurring across the wider beer scene in Northern Ireland. The festival proved, as if we needed reminding, that more people are embracing independent beer and seeking a better range of styles. The festival didn’t sell Guinness, Carlsberg, Harp, Madri or Tennent’s. It didn’t have what NI hospitality chiefs are telling others is our “taste profile”, yet the place was rammed.

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Jane Stuart has been exploring again. This time, she’s been checking out the pubs of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, and it’s more about the photos than the words, really, although there’s poetry in those snippets, too:

We were intrigued by the front door – had this previously been a prison door? I enquired of the barman, who confirmed that the door had been custom-made for the pub. This was in fitting with the general quirkiness of Harrogate that was endearing me to this wonderful spa town… I must point out that there was absolutely nothing wrong whatsoever with the condition of the toilets… The friendly barman remembered us from earlier and I told him that we were back after visiting seven pubs because his beer was the best (I had that lush liquorice porter again)… 

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We’re bothered by the lack of a definitive, detailed history of Kölsch, the unique top-fermented lager-like beer of Cologne. We may have dropped hints to this effect at various times, hoping that someone like Andreas Krennmair, who has ability to read sources in the original German, might take on the job. Now, on his blog, he’s shared notes on how to brew a pre-World-War-II version of Kölsch, with historical notes on the side:

Johannes Olberg’s book Moderne Braumethoden from 1927 contains a multitude of recipes for more than 50 different beer styles. One of them is Kölsch, briefly discussed as the “national drink” of Cologne, and characterised as golden, thirst-quenching, “not too heavy but digestible” beer. The recipe is particularly interesting because it’s the only well-documented Kölsch recipe I’m aware of from before the end of World War 2… A lot has changed since then, and the Kölsch of 2024 is of course very different from Kölsch about 100 years earlier. Even the modern standards of what Kölsch is supposed to be, the “Kölsch-Konvention”, was only developed from 1981 onwards, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office signed off on in it 1985, and it was finally signed by 24 Kölsch breweries in 1986.

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A few weeks ago Time Out published a guide to London’s best pubs that made everyone angry. In response, we said: “Remember, if you see a list in a newspaper you don’t like, that’s nature’s way of telling you to make your own list. (We would like to read your list.)” To our delight Tommy Palmer, a Belfast man in London, has done exactly that. Some of these pubs wouldn’t make our list, and some pubs we like aren’t included. But there are also lots here that we’d now like to visit thanks to Tommy’s short, evocative descriptions:

The Auld Shillelagh serves all the standard drinks that you might expect from an Irish pub, and although I’m not really a Guinness drinker, I have been reliably informed that they pour it well… Once when I was in there on a Friday night a proper seafood seller was coming round, so I helped myself to a little pot of prawn cocktail. My only experience of the classic pub fish man, but it made me wish it was still common… It also serves Nordie Tayto, which as you’ll see is a recurring theme when it comes to pubs that I enjoy.

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Finally, from BlueSky, a proper thread from one of our favourite beer historians…

Michael Jackson did great work, but he also left the beer community permanently confused about stone beer. The problem is the Beer Hunter episode where he visits Rauchenfels in Franconia to see their stone beer. What's truly weird is that everything he said was true, and yet it's deceived everyone.

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— Lars Marius Garshol (@larsga.bsky.social) November 20, 2024 at 8:23 PM

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

Every Saturday we round-up the best writing about beer and pubs from the past week. This time we’ve got Landlord, Norwich, and more.

First, some news. Thomas Hardy Ale is one of those renowned, revered beers that is nonetheless not in regular production. It comes and goes every few years, under new stewardship. The latest vintage is available in the UK as a partnership between Italian outfit Interbrau S.P.A. and distributor James Clay.

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Rachel Hendry has written a long, thoughtful piece about the cult cask ale Landlord from Keighley brewery Timothy Taylor:

Landlord requires at least 48 hours of cellaring before it can be served—Tim even suggests leaving it a week. Once begun, the cask is only good to pour for about three days, time becomes the fifth ingredient… The cellar has a choice, it can become a place of transformation, or a place of ruin. Casks put on too quick, or served for too long, can leave a sour taste in a person’s mouth. The name Timothy Taylor becomes forever associated with a bad pint. It is a supply chain of trust, the production of real ale. A brewery reaches out to a pub and asks: will all my work be for nothing at your hands?

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For Bon Appétit Kate Bernot has written about the decline in draught beer drinking in the wake of the pandemic:

For Gen Zers who turned 21 during the pandemic’s shutdowns, staying home became the default social mode… The decline in draft beer is a decades-long story, though COVID-19’s temporary closure of bars and restaurants accelerated the pace of those losses. On a national scale, data company Draftline Technologies estimates between 7 and 13% of all draft lines are empty—installed and ready, but not dispensing any beer. If trends continue, draft beer could become a novelty, or perhaps, a relic.

(We were able to read the story the first time we clicked through, but then it disappeared behind a paywall. Here’s an alternate link via MSN.)

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Chris Dyson has shared more notes from his pub crawling around northern towns, this time reporting from Bradford, which is another place we’ve had on our to-visit list for years:

The Lord Clyde is situated on the corner with Tetley Street, which is somewhat appropriate as it became a Tetleys pub in 1959 when the Leeds brewery took over the local William Whitakers brewery, who’d actually stopped brewing in 1928 and had subsequently sold Tetleys’ beers in their pub estate.  The pub is named after Field Marshal Colin Campbell, 1st Baron Clyde, a British Army officer born in 1792, who was a key figure in the 19th century Opium wars and became a hero of the Indian mutiny when he commanded the British forces in India. There is no evidence to suggest he ever had any connections with Bradford, but as was the way in Victorian times many pubs were named in honour of famous military figures. And elsewhere in the country there are other pubs called Lord Clyde, or Sir Colin Campbell, as he was before he was given his peerage in 1858… I liked the Lord Clyde too; it was fun, it was friendly, a happy place.

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Irish blogger The Beer Nut has provided another of his detailed observations of the English scene, reporting from Norwich, where he enjoyed, or at least encountered, a lot of cask ale:

It was CAMRA’s turn to host the autumn meeting of the European Beer Consumers Union this year, and the powers that be in that august institution picked Norfolk as the destination. It’s famous for its barley, you know. The county town of Norwich also has plenty of beery attractions, including lots of very pleasant pubs. Why, you’d nearly think you were up north… Reuben and I didn’t have to stray too far from our Premier Inn to find our first one: The Rumsey Wells, owned by the Adnams brewery. I’m a longtime fan, and this was my first time drinking on their home turf. On cask, unusually, was a Landbier that Adnams has brewed in collaboration with Londoners Five Points, called Distant Fields. It’s copper coloured and has what is for me the signature Adnams taste: dry tannins with immense thirst-quenching power. There’s a little noble-hop character alongside this; some dried grass and aromatic herbs, but it didn’t do much else to convince me it’s a German-style beer. The flavour, a full body, and low-level cask carbonation made it seem far more like a high quality bitter to me. That’s fine. It’s what I’d want in an Adnams pub.

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Ron Pattinson has also been on the ground in England, drinking in pubs in Kent and is worried about the health of the English pub:

First night there, Thursday, we went to the Royal Cheriton on Cheriton High Street. Three customers. A mother and her ten-year-old daughter, dressed for Halloween, and an old chav in a corner nursing a pint. When we left after a couple of pints, we were the last customers. I’ve never seen the pub that quiet at any time of day… Next day, Friday, we’re in Dover for some shopping. (At Iceland, don’t judge me.) A new shopping centre close to the docks. I notice a pub right next to it and think “That’s a bit of luck for that boozer, having a load of shops built right next to it.”… Mikey has something to do, so I think what I always think when I have a free moment and there’s a pub nearby: “Let’s give that pub a try.”… Totally deserted…

(Chav, Ron says, is a traditional alternative for ‘bloke’ in Newark on Trent where he grew up, rather than a pejorative term.)

It’s worth saying that we, and others, have observed a realignment: pubs in town are often busier on Thursday than Friday, because people choose to work from home, in the suburbs, on Fridays. But, yes, we’ve also seen some very quiet pubs in the past year or two.

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Finally, from social media, a worrying update that suggests things are not changing where they need to change:

Just heard about two brewers being very inappropriate with women at a beer festival recently (one incident is definitely sexual assault). I wonder why I haven't attended a single beer festival this year. Disgusting.

— Anaïs Lecoq  (@anahlcq.bsky.social) November 15, 2024 at 7:11 PM

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

Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time we’ve got Berliner Weisse, suburban pubs and jugs of Bass.

We usually start these round-ups with a single piece of beer-related news but this state of the industry read-out from Jessica Mason at The Drinks Business is all the news, effectively, synthesised and summarised:

If brewers had a crystal ball, they’d have thrown it in the mill by now: 2024 was meant to be the year when beer regained ground, not a time of closure and brand resale… But the issues have been complicated, and not only because rising costs are clearly in direct opposition to developing prosperous businesses, but also because survival has now become a bit of a game of predicting how the beer world is changing. And then doing what is necessary by leaning into it…

The phrase we heard earlier in the year was “Survive ‘til 25” summarising the attitude of many brewers. Fingers crossed.

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When we see that Dermot Kennedy has published another of his heavily-illustrated pub history posts, we clap our hands in delight. The third part of his series on Art Deco pubs arrived this week with a focus on suburban pubs:

Nottingham has no fewer than 7 art deco pubs and in the Crown Hotel includes one that was possibly the first to be built in the moderne style anywhere in the UK. W.B. Starr & E.B.H. Hall had established themselves as the city’s main pub architects and had built or rebuilt twenty or so in the 1920s and early 1930s. None had been art deco, but in 1933 they designed the Crown Hotel for Home Brewery in a striking moderne style. The style was already common in cinemas, and was starting to make an impact on factories, housing and hotels but until now had not been applied to pubs.

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Let the rejoicing continue! All About Beer has published an actual article, with actual text, instead of expecting us to listen to podcast episodes. Adrian Tierney-Jones went to Berlin in search of Berliner Weisse and… didn’t find much, actually:

It was reminiscent of a travel assignment to Leipzig when I excitedly told a hotel receptionist that I wanted to try Gose. His reaction was a quizzical smile and the word ‘Why?’… “Why” is a good word to describe the predicament of Berliner Weisse. Why is it such a minority style in its home city, especially as independent brewers around the world, including the United Kingdom, United States, Italy and even Taiwan, have made one?… For Oli Lemke, who started the eponymous brewery in 1999, it is almost obligatory for a Berlin brewer to produce a Berliner Weisse. There are more than 100 breweries in the city but it seems like Lemke is only one of three producing the style. The other two are Schneeeule and Berliner Berg, who according to their website have brought in a ‘newly brewed’ version of the style.

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Blimey, Wigan looks like a good day out! Chris Dyson has written about his crawl around the pubs of the Greater Manchester (formerly Lancashire) town which was nearly scuppered by the first pub being too good:

Just around the corner, occupying a couple of arches in the railway bridge on which sits part of Wigan’s other railway station, North Western, is the suitably railway-themed Wigan Central. I had called in here last time before getting the train home and remembered a good bar with a good atmosphere, then run by the former Prospect Brewery who were based in the town and a number of their beers had been available alongside a few guest ales. This time, with the house beer now brewed by Bank Top, several guests on hand pump on tap were augmented by several more as this current Wigan CAMRA Pub of the Year was hosting an Autumn Beer Festival! A second bar featuring hand pumps with a wall of keg beers was set up in the far room, I ordered a pint of the 3.4% It Belongs In A Museum on hand pump, a predictably very good pale ale from Sureshot (NBSS 3.5). I surveyed the festival beer list; there were some very good beers included on both cask and keg. This was not what I needed…

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Our 2017 book 20th Century Pub has a chapter about community-owned pubs. We were, and are, fascinated by what motivates people to invest in, or play a part in running, their local pub. So the latest post on Paul Bailey’s blog (no relation) grabbed our attention with the title ‘We bought a pub’:

Even without the house-brewed beers the Swan [at West Peckham] is a destination pub in its own right, given its attractive location on the village green, at the crossroads of the Weald and Greensand ways… Despite this illustrious trading record, and in spite of the Swan remaining a successful pub and popular restaurant, the decision taken, just over a year ago by the current owner and licensee Gordon Milligan, to sell up and leave the trade after 24 years at the helm, sent shock waves through the tight-knit local community. Fortunately, rather than seek to convert it into housing, Mr Milligan approached the villagers and asked if they wanted to take the pub on. Their answer was a resounding “yes”, so a steering group was set up with the aim of purchasing the building collectively for the village… I’m now the proud owner of 250 shares in the Swan Community Project Ltd.

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Martin Taylor has been in Bath and makes a passionate case for The Star Inn as one of the wonders of the world:

Now, let it be said I always speak the truth. On first sip, this flat Bass wasn’t as softly stunning as 2 years ago, when I rated it in my Top 5 pints of all time (only 26 in that)… But the Star itself just felt otherworldly… The symphony in brown and red played out around us… Folks, there are people who profess to like pubs and beer who have never been here!

It’s interesting that one of the commenters refers to it as a “tourist trap”. It isn’t. For one thing, it’s not especially friendly towards tourists, and is quite a way from the bits of town where tourists hang out. We also insist on the distinction between tourist attraction (a thing you should see, that has a purpose and existence outside tourism, like the Hofbräuhaus) versus a tourist trap – something that only exists for the purpose of fleecing rubes, like Madame Tussaud’s.

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Finally, from BlueSky, a very pretty glass of beer indeed…

Draft Stille Nacht 2019 at 't Brugs Beertje. Absolutely sensational, and far better than when fresh five years ago. Cheers! 🍻 🇧🇪

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— Jezza (@bonsvoeux1.bsky.social) November 8, 2024 at 5:10 PM

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