Welcome to the second half of the 2024-25 London Pub of the Year award.
In the first installment we revisited last years top five, and now we're going to check out five brand new entries. (Well, two of them are brand new, the other three are, in Top-of-the-Pops parlance, re-entries, but what the fucky hey.)
Let's chuffing well crack on, shall we?
Like the proverbial Renegade Master, we are 'back once again'. It's time to pick a London Pub of the Year, and I feel like a very old hand at this lark nowadays.
Will there be a surprise winner? Has the Greater London pub scene dramatically changed in the last 12 months? Am I still deeply frustrated with the quality and choice of cask ale in the capital?
All these questions and more will be answered over the next few days and soon enough a winner will be crowned. If you're not familiar with how the contest works (because even I have some rules to stick to!) check out the previous years.
Now we'll crack on by revisiting each of last year's Top Five, and in a few days time we'll have the five newcomers/retreads. One of these ten pubs is going to be announced as my London Pub of the Year 2024-25. Ooh goody. Whoop-de-bloody-do. Can't fucking wait. And so on.
The aroma hit me as soon as the car door was open.
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| Modest, unassuming... |
I say 'attracted my senses' because it's really more than just an aroma. It gets into your system on another level, possibly even engaging with ones sixth sense. Deep, rich, barely describable umami.
Before anything got to interact with my actual tastebuds, I knew it was going to be totally fucking awesome. The best chippy ever? In the entire world? It might well be.
The VE Day celebrations last month, fairly subdued as they were, got me thinking about VE Day 1995, which was much more of 'a thing'. Perhaps understandably, because 50 years is a 'bigger' anniversary than 80 and, more poignantly, there were many more people alive back then for whom it actually meant something tangibly memorable.
Me being me, it got me thinking about Young's Victory Ale, and that, in turn, got me wondering if it would be possible to come up with a definitive list of my favourite cask beers ever.
People do occasionally ask me 'which one was your favourite?' when they find out out many pints I've had, and it's really not a straightforward question to answer, precisely because I've had over 12,500 cask beers since I started keeping records in January 1996.
I was drinking for a few years before that too, though the only beer from my 'bibens juvenilia' period that still stands out as a contender for this list would be the aforemented Victory Ale. That's how good it was.
Has it finally had its day? Avocado, I mean.
I ask the question with a sort of cautious optimism, because I've noticed over the past year or so that the once ubiquitous menu staple might be finally fading back into deserved demi-obscurity.
And not before time.
Obviously I'm a pretty big fan of cask beer.
It accounts for about 96-97% of the beer I drink, I spend way too much time seeking out new and interesting pints to tick off, and it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that drinking cask, in pubs, is a huge part of my life.
I'm also well aware that I exist in a beer bubble of my own creation, that my drinking habits are far from universal and that cask beer is in serious decline.
Most of the beers I'd want to drink can only really be found in a relatively small number of specialist pubs, and the fact that I do almost my drinking in such places doesn't change the fact that as a mainstream product, cask is on the endangered list. Which should, and does, worry me.
The boys from the Craft Beer Channel on YouTube are concerned too. And, unlike me, are a whole lot more proactive when it comes to actually doing something about it!
Their long-running 'Keep Cask Alive' campaign is to be taken up a level as they seek to secure UNESCO 'Intangible Cultural Heritage' status for cask beer. Which is interesting for a number of reasons.
The Wetherspoons 'Beer Festival' which is currently running has a lot going for it.
There's a reasonable mix of beers from all over the country (including the usual 'International' offerings which are all actually what the Yanks call 'domestic' but we'll gloss over that) and a fair range of styles from which to choose.
Having sourced both Vienna- and Mรคrzen-style lagers on cask would seem particularly daring for Spoons, and indeed both are worth seeking out (more on why that may be less easy than it sounds in a bit!)
