Election 2019: Maybe go for a pint instead of voting?

Tomorrow's General Election is the first in over 22 years that I won't be personally involved in.

Yep, I'll probably go out to vote, but I haven't been doing any campaigning, apart from possibly the occasional Like or Retweet, and I mean very occasional.

I did attend the Conservatives East Surrey candidate selection meeting a few weeks ago and wish Claire Coutinho all the best tomorrow. But I just can't bring myself to do any more than that.

Many readers will be aware that I'm normally quite politically active, but this campaign has been depressingly, disappointingly, dispiritingly, despairingly dreadful and, while I'm still a party member, the way that politics in this country has shifted as a whole towards Authoritarian and cheap, lazy populism has left me pretty much alienated.

Lost Breweries: J is for Jarrow

One of the biggest changes to the beer industry in recent years - and it's probably part perception, part reality and part aggressive promotion forcing reality into perception - is the defining nature of the new breweries that are springing up.

Think for a moment about what it means to set up a brand new brewery these days. What do you imagine that means? In meeting-speak, what would a new brewery about to launch in early 2020 'look like'?

Would it be run by self-confident young hipsters? Based under a railway arch or on an industrial estate? Maybe crowd-funded to some extent? Bold marketing campaigns with some edgy but slick artwork that their mate did? American IPAs and plenty of pale hoppy beers? High strength experimental dessert Stouts? Lots of beer going into keg and can? Tap room open on Saturday lunchtimes? A relationship with CAMRA that's love-hate at best?

Sounds about par for the course, yes? That's certainly how I see it. And, yeah, I know that not all new brewery start-ups are exactly like this, and those that are probably achieve more prominence than those that aren't, due to that whole 'forcing reality into perception' thing I mentioned, but, overall, this is how it feels to me.

And it represents a marked shift from the 90s and 00s when new microbreweries typically took a somewhat different form. E.g.

Often run by older chaps (and it was almost always chaps) who had already enjoyed a lengthy career and perhaps taken a redundancy or early retirement; Sometimes spin-off projects from long-serving pub landlords or former brewery workers; Focused mainly or entirely on producing cask beers, usually ordinary strength, not particularly hoppy bitter; Beer names invoking historical curios, bad puns, railways or, in the worst cases, crassly sexist jokes; Inconsistent pumpclip design featuring poor typography and rubbish illustrations? Firmly in bed with the local CAMRA branch (and not above designing a 'hilarious' pumpclip playing on that phrase)...

Sound familiar, if slightly nostalgic?

Wetherspoons: A life just beginning?

JD Wetherspoon is turning 40.

In pub industry years, where change now tends to happen at breakneck pace, that makes it something of an elder statesman. In 'real' time, the chain is only a couple of years younger than I am, and consequently Spoons has been around for my entire life; a constant presence since I started drinking, albeit one that has changed substantially over time. Not necessarily for the better.

Marked by their latest beerfest featuring 40 beers - most of them new and/or exclusive - this birthday is a milestone occasion for a staple of the British High Street that is as controversial as it is popular.

Having visited over 600 of their pubs (exactly 612 at the last count), I consider myself one of the chains biggest fans, but also one of its more vocal critics. There is a lot that Tim Martin has done right, and few would argue that, on balance, Wetherspoons haven't been an overall force for good. but there are a number of worrying issues and a hell of a lot of ways in which things could improve.

BV London Pub of the Year 2018-19 - the results

Everybody enjoys a really close contest - there's nothing better than a thrilling nailbiter that goes right down to the wire. So much more enjoyable than watching a procession where the end result was never in doubt. No prizes for being in front, only for winning as they say.

(I've got loads more cliches left in the locker from my days as a BBC Sports writer, but that'll probably do.)

Anyway, this year's Pub of the Year competition has turned out to be pretty exciting. With five - count 'em, five! - pubs all level on points going into the final reckoning. Nothing like this has ever happened before and the margins involved in picking the winner will be finer than a fine old ale (see what happens when you stop using sporting cliches, you end up with beery analogies that are weaker than a table saison...)

How times change...

Having reached my 40s, and considering myself really quite open-minded about food and drink, Ive been thinking about how little my tastes have changed in adulthood, yet how drastically they were altered in the space of a few years - probably from 14-17 or so.

Happily, there seem to be far more things that I've 'grown into' than those with which I've fallen out of love.

Stuff I liked as a child but now pretty much detest	Stuff I hated as a child and still don't really like	Stuff I thought I didn't like as a child but now rather enjoy
Milk McDonalds Cadbury's Chocolate Margarine Cake Icing (the traditional hard, white kind) The adhesive you lick on the back of stamps.	Peas Tuna Quorn (and its laboratorial ilk) Brussels Sprouts Broad Beans Liquorice Marzipan - even when I liked the icing that goes with it.	Mushrooms Haggis Venison Broccoli  Black Pudding Anchovies Carrots Coffee Tea Butter Beans  Smoking While we're on the subject, Frankfurters and other smoked sausages Tofu Blue Cheese Pâtés and Terrines Poached Eggs Game Birds Veal Grapefruit Yoghurt

BV London Pub of the Year 2018-19 - part two

Welcome back - it's time to crack on with the 2018-19 Pub of the Year contest, and here we have our five new contenders for this year. Four completely new ones and one re-entry hoping to make a triumphant return. Let's see how they stack up against last year's Final Five.

BV London Pub of the Year 2018-19 - part one

It's time, yet again, for the Ben Viveur London Pub of the Year awards to commence. Woohoo!

Now, don't get upset, but I'm going to have to make a decision as to whether this should be the last year of the competition, or keep it going.

This is the eighth year of the competition and it's always a pleasure. but the truth is that since I moved out of Greater London I've spent a lot less time drinking in eligible pubs. In all honesty, my pub surveying process has therefore become a bit rubbish. It's certainly not as thorough as it could be, and in all likelihood there are numerous very good pubs that aren't getting a fair crack of the whip simply because I haven't been to them.

But that's for me to think about over the next 12 months. There will be a 2018-19 award, and it starts right here, right now.

You know the drill - first I revisit last year's Top Five pubs, then in part two I check out some new contenders and re-entries. We think about it for a bit, talk it over with some fellow beer writers, and then, some time in August, this year's winner is crowned.

Let's get right to it then.

Nothing to see here?

It's perhaps appropriate that during the visit of Sir Donald Trump to our fine native Covfefe, the Morning Advertiser has served up its latest misleading slice of fake news.

CAMRA yields to allow craft keg beer at GBBF reads the headline, announcing that, for the first time, the flagship beer festival of the Campaign will be serving beer that isn't cask.

Except that it's not news. It's clickbait. As I reported at the time, domestic keg was served two years ago. And again last year. And foreign keg beers have been a part of the action for about the last 30 years.

The main difference this time might be, if I'm reading it correctly, a dedicated keg bar, which social media is predictably hailing as long overdue and 'not before time'.

Lost Breweries: I is for Ind Coope

The lists of quarterly Guest Ales in Wetherspoons don't tend to be particularly interesting these days.

In a world where most of us know where to go for limited-release barrel-aged sour or a Bretted Imperial IPA, it might be comforting to know that there's a Spoons somewhere (or rather, there are Spoons everywhere) serving Kelham Island Pale Rider this month, but it really isn't news.

That said, there is something that caught my eye in the April-June list, for which I shall keep an eye out. Burton Bridge brewery's Draught Burton Ale at 4.8%.

Dear Mr. Vernon...

It's been a while since my intrepid search to find the best breakfast around turned up any new savoury evidence. Well, let's be brutally honest, it's been a while since I blogged about absolutely fucking anything, isn't it?

So, let's do a quick Brekkie review. Specifically The Breakfast Club, where I breakfasted last week. On my birthday. 42, since you asked. Getting old.

Anyway, 'The Club' has several locations across the capital, from Battersea to Hoxton as well as Oxford and Brighton, all of which should give you a general idea of where they are coming from and what sort of market they are after. (Possibly not 42 year olds, even if it is their birthday.)

Cask 2019: Why it rocked; Why it sucked

I had some fantastic beers at the weekend.

To be more specific, I had some fantastic beers between 6 and 11 PM on Saturday at Testbed1 under railway arches in Bermondsey. Beers that, for the most part, will never be seen again anywhere, at any other time. And, fairly obviously, that is part of the problem.

I absolutely loved the Cask 2019 beer festival, if indeed one can call a one-day event, divided into two sessions a 'festival'. I appreciated the beers immensely, and several of them will go down as some of my favourites of 2019. But we have a problem here. And in attempting to outline some of the underlying issues facing the beer industry in 2019, the organisers have only served to create further problems. In a sense.

When Porky met Curry

What's the best option when eating out? Indian, right?

What's the best roasted meat? Pork, right?

Why can't you get curried pork in Indian restaurants? That would be the most amazing thing ever, right?

It is, however, even in this age of every-conceivable-fusion, still remarkably rare. Never the twain shall met. Which is a bit odd. I know there is a cultural and religious explanation, but it's a lazy one, and under scrutiny it doesn't  really make a whole lot of sense.

Golden Pints: BV's best beers of 2018

So, another year over and we're all a bit closer to the merciful release of death...

2018 was a moderately eventful period for beer. Brewdog and Cloudwater grabbed the headlines by returning to cask production; Brut IPA became the next big thing; sales of real ale slumped somewhat alarmingly and the CAMRA Revitalization Project, two years in the making, turned out to be something of a non-event.

Meanwhile ordinary people like me continued to drink beer every day and obsessively keep a record of it.

I managed pints of 623 new cask beers in 2018, bringing my overall total to just short of 9100 and every tickers' big target is now neatly in sight if I can up my game a little in 2019.