#CaskAleWeek - missing an obvious trick?

We're slap bang in the middle of 'Cask Ale Week' which this year runs from 17 to 27 September (I know, ten days, what were they thinking etc.) and as usual I find myself struggling to really see the point of it.

I could trot out the usual trite-but-true sound bite, and explain that, for me, every week is cask ale week, but why even bother? It seems almost glaringly obvious that most people would either fall into this category anyway or not give a fuck about cask beer. And, that being the case, I don't think three extra days is going to change many habits!

BV London Pub of the Year 2025-2026 - the results

It takes a lot of hard work and strenuous drinking to run this little Pub of the Year contest. 

Yes, there's travelling and making notes and taking the occasional photo'n'shit, but it mostly involves drinking beer, which is what I love about it. 

(Except when the beer isn't up to much, obviously, but that hardly ever happens because we're talking literally the best pubs in the area and even That London, for all its myriad faults and horrors, can still boast a fair few decent pubs if you know where to look. And if you don't, read on because I'll tell you!)

In part one we reassessed last year's finalists, and in the second part five new contenders and retreads joined the party, with the ultimate aim of picking out the best pub in Greater London.

Once again it's now time to pick out an overall winner, and, like so many of life's little experiential trinkets, it comes around faster and faster with every passing year, so let's get on with it, before it's next year or 2038 or the 14th segment of Advanced AI Supertime...

Made to make your mouth water?

As you may or may not know, one of my many alter egos is The InnQuizitor. If you knew that, one point. Which is meaningless as this isn't a quiz.

Anyway, I like to think my pub quizzes are entertaining, rewarding and possibly even informative. I even try to be 'fair', which can mean a lot of different things to different people but, specifically, I deliberately seek out questions to which I personally wouldn't instinctively know the answer, and avoid leaning too heavily into 'my era'. 

The participants are a fairly healthy spread of ages from those in their late teens or early 20s right up to octogenarians, whose exact ages I wouldn't like to ask, so it's not as though I'm setting questions for a bunch of my fellow 49 year olds.

BV London Pub of the Year 2025-26 - part two

Here's the second batch of contestants in the latest London Pub of the Year survey. 

In part one we reassessed last year's top five and now we have five new contenders. Well, technically three new contenders and two 'Re-Entries' if you still watch old Top of the Pops episodes - and why wouldn't you?

Can we find ourselves an overall winner amongst these five pubs?  

BV London Pub of the Year 2025-26 - part one

Better late than never?

Some might argue it's actually better not to bother but, hey, I've been doing a London Pub of the Year for 14 years now, and for ten of those years I haven't even been living in London. It'll take a lot to stop me, even though I admit my research is nowhere near as comprehensive as it was when I was younger and more London. (Ooh, look at me using a Proper Noun as an adjective!)

Let's crack on then. Last year's top five will get their annual reassessment today, and in a few days time we'll have five new contenders, then, eventually, some sort of result.

See here for competition rules, past winners and general explanatory gubbins...

Right...

But is it beer?

One of the many things that irritates me these days - as an increasingly irritable middle-aged man who finds lots of stuff irritating as he gets older - is going into a pub and being confronted with lots of beers that are very similar to one another.

Sometimes I'll go for a long session consisting entirely of beers I've technically never had before, but which seem suspiciously familiar.

Drinking mostly cask, as I do, this will typically take the form of a 4.2% pale golden ale, moderately hopped with New World varieties. Accessible, easy to drink, and, to borrow a phrase from my late Grandmother, common as muck.

I don't dislike them - they're generally good beers from good brewers. But they really are hard to tell apart at times. Given a choice between sticking to a formula or taking bold risks, the brewers chose the option that involved minor tweaks to an existing recipe and possibly having to come up with a quirky name!

 

The accidental vegan

Sometimes strange things occur accidentally. 

The other night I cooked a meal that was technically vegan - without even realising it!

There's no way I'd have done this deliberately, unless it was for some sort of project or challenge, and I only realised while we were eating it, but, hey-ho, I did my little tiny bit for a cause I don't believe in.

(This isn't a 'Veganascene Conversion' post about how I've seen the error of my ways and am now discovering the joys of plant-based life - sorry-not-sorry to disappoint!)