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

Every week we round up the best writing about beer and pubs. This time we’ve spotted berm, Oirishness, and a Boddies clone in New York. First, some news about ‘fresh ale’. This term arose last year when Otter used it to describe a tweak to keg dispense which would, they said, help the beer feel more like cask ale. At the time Tandleman was dismissive: “We have been here before, and they have failed before.” More recently Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Co (CMBC) has announced a product under the same name which they say “marries an exquisite flavour and body similar to cask ale, but with a shelf-l ..read more

It’s rare to read a memoir, local history or folklore text without finding mention of beer and pubs. Here are some we collected recently. First, let’s look at The Valley by Elizabeth Clarke, published in 1969. It’s a memoir of life in a Welsh valley between the wars and has a few interesting mentions of pubs and beer. There’s a story told by Emrys, a shepherd, about poaching salmon: One night, he told us, in the rough and ready days of his boyhood, when agility and boldness counted above prudence, they went to a pub by the river one night, and talked about what they were going to do to the wa ..read more

It’s only a pub but the tourists don’t understand that so one of the staff is having to play maître d’. But it’s beginning to get to him. After one particularly frustrating conversation with a party of ten who don’t understand why there isn’t a table big enough to take them he retreats behind the bar. Concealed behind a pillar he lets his shoulders slump and at once a colleague rushes over to ask if he’s OK. They share a few muttered words. The second lad takes the first lad’s face in his hands, looks him in the eye, and says: “You’ve got this, mate.” They both laugh, play fight for a moment ..read more

Every Saturday we round-up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time we’ve got beer festivals, noble hops, and AF Augustiner. First, some news: Going up: Northern Monk is expanding, investing £500,000 to expand its brewing capacity by 20%. (Via Beer Today.) Going down: Fourpure has applied for a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) and could face liquidation. (Via James Beeson.) This got us thinking about which breweries are thriving, and which are struggling. As we’ve said before, you have to worry if you’re the kind of brewery that is nobody’s favourite. Are people buying yo ..read more

It’s a standing joke amongst horror fans that you can make the case for almost anything to be part of the ‘folk horror’ sub-genre. But what about real ale? This thought started with a conversation I was having on BlueSky about cultural cycles of reaction against technology in which I said: I don’t think it’s any coincidence that the Campaign for Real Ale, The Wicker Man and the English Morris dancing revival all landed at about the same time. The Wicker Man, directed by Robin Hardy and released in 1973, is arguably the key text in understanding what folk horror means. It stars Edward Woodwar ..read more

The January 1968 edition of Town magazine (“For men”) includes a guide to pubs in London and the surrounding area. How many are still there, and still good? The guide is split into sections starting with pub entertainment. The first entry is a theme pub – one of our pet topics: The Blue Boar, Leicester Square. Cheerfully, blatant subterranean restaurant and bar devoted to the Robin Hood theme: ‘Kindly deposit ye arrows,’ and ‘Knights’ and ‘Dames’ etc. Sounds awful, but is tremendous fun. Mock torches, waitresses in medieval gear, Maid Marian cocktails, free cheese ‘from the Sheriff’s larder ..read more