Buxton calling in administrators got us thinking about breweries that are merely quite good – and how that’s a tricky space to occupy. Buxton used to be top tier. Their beer was in all the beer geek pubs. People raved about them and recommended them. But that doesn’t seem to have been the case for a few years, at least from what we’ve seen and heard. It’s not that people are going round saying, “They’re terrible!” If asked, in fact, they’d probably say: “Oh, yeah, Buxton – they’re all right.” But “all right” isn’t ideal in a hyper-competitive, crowded market. Looking at their published account ..read more

Every week, we round-up the most interesting writing about beer and pubs from the past week. This time, we’ve got flyovers, pub grub and hard data. First, a few bits of brewery news, including one that’s close to home for us: Buxton, founded in Derbyshire in 2009, has announced that it intends to appoint administrators, as reported at The Business Desk. This feels like a big one in the context of the craft beer boom of the 2010s. (We now have a standing search for brewery + administration, by the way.) Bristol Beer Factory, founded in 2004, is moving its brewery… slightly. And expanding. Our ..read more

In the 1970s and 80s pubs added video game arcade machines to their roster of attractions, in pursuit of younger customers and additional revenue. We sort of knew this but had forgotten it. We both recall seeing arcade machines in unusual places when we were kids – Chase HQ at the swimming pool, Space Invaders at the chip shop. And, yes, we must have seen them in pubs here and there, perhaps glimpsed through cracks in the door as we sat on steps with Panda Pops, or ran around beer gardens. What brought this memory back with a rush was this clip from 1983 via the excellent BBC Archive, From 23 ..read more

Every Saturday we round up the most interesting writing about beer and pubs. This time we’ve got tickers, micropubs and Australia. First, some news. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is digging on the matter of ‘Fresh Ale’, a concept being pushed by Carslberg-Marston’s, and has now taken its complaint to the Secretary of State for Business and Trade. CAMRA chairman Nik Antona said in a letter to Kemi Badenoch: “We are now asking the Business Secretary to step in and allow National Trading Standards to investigate Carlsberg Marston’s misleading ‘Fresh Ale’ dispense method at a national level…O ..read more

Every Saturday we share links to a selection of articles or blog posts about beer and pubs. This time we’ve got Art Deco pubs, posh publicans and lethal breweries. First, some news. The Stonegate pub chain has issued a profit warning putting the future of its more than 4,000 outlets in doubt. This story also highlights the problem with chains: when they go, it can potentially wipe out a bunch of pubs at once, rather than the slow drip-drip of closures, causing a jolt across the industry. Still on the subject of pubs under threat, for Pellicle Jacob Smith has written a provocative piece questi ..read more

Christina Wade has written an accessibly scholarly book about women in beer that offers a refreshingly different lens on the world. It tells us, with overwhelming heaps of evidence, that women have always been involved in brewing, and still are. But more than this, it shows us that it’s possible to write a 180-page book almost without citing or talking about men at all. Women are the centre of the stories told. Academic texts by women are cited in every other paragraph – many of them, more than most of us could digest in a lifetime. And when punditry and insight are required, Wade is able to c ..read more

Drinking ale with my dad in a down-to-earth backstreet pub in a small town in Somerset was just what I needed, it turns out. Dad’s been unwell for large chunks of the past year. Lying awake in the small hours fretting about him, I frequently found myself thinking: “What if we’ve had our last trip to the pub together?” In Brighton a couple of months ago we did make it to the pub, and made the best of it, but he still wasn’t himself, and needed a wheelchair to get around. I wondered if he’d only come out for my sake. But there have been encouraging signs in the past few weeks. The wheelchair has ..read more

I visited St Davids in Pembrokeshire, South Wales, after 15 years away, and noticed some changes, and some things that had stayed the same. The first place I checked in was The Farmers Arms, pictured above, which I wrote about back in 2008, not long after starting this blog: If I had to choose my favourite pub in the world, it would probably be the Farmers Arms in St Davids, Pembrokeshire. This isn’t because of its beer offerings or even because of the great atmosphere, but because all my early pub memories were formed here. When I was growing up, we went to the Pembrokeshire coast every year ..read more

Here’s all the writing about beer and pubs one or the other of us bookmarked in the past week, from the stink of Brussels to Pilsator. This is usually where a beer-related news story goes but nothing much caught our eye this week. Probably the most interesting story was the Portman Group judgement on the pump clip for Twickenham Brewery’s Naked Ladies – it’s fine, they reckon – which prompted a statement of disappointment from the Campaign for Real Ale. Our view is the same as it’s been for years, now: if the name of your beer is ‘cheeky’, and you have to explain to people that, “No, actually ..read more

Young’s was an important London brewery, and remains an important London brand, but it might be losing its place in the city’s language. Back in the 1970s, Young’s, under the leadership of John Young, was a holdout against keg beer and its beers were championed by the Campaign for Real Ale. It even had its own fan club. But when we first started blogging about beer, in 2007, things weren’t going so well. The beer, people said, had been declining in quality for years, and wasn’t what it used to be in those early days of CAMRA. In 2006, Young’s had sold a majority stake to Charles Wells, John Yo ..read more