Golden Pints: BV's best beers of 2025

Well, that's another year done and dusted. How was it for you? Did you drink some good beer? Excellent.

Personally, I was sat there all contendedly like, thinking that 2025 was probably a fairly decent year, beer-wise, but delving into the records I keep, it actually appears far more underwhelming. Disappointing even, which is just what I needed at this time of year. Fuck you, you stupid year!

Unless the spreadsheets are telling lies, I managed 595 new cask ales during the year (about 100 down on 2024) and only five of them scored the 'effective maximum' of 8/9, which, I suppose, means they can all be detailed here without any need to shortlist them, so at least I won't have to remember which were slightly better than the others!

This takes my overall total up to 12,890 since I first starting keeping track, exactly 30 years ago. (Happy beer-ticking anniversary to me! Do I get a Pearl tankard or something?) 

I'll try and work out my absolute 'beer of the year' in a moment, but firstly, a few mentions of the - ahem - 'other' stuff...

 

The shameful and sinister world of non-cask beer

My favourite keg beer of the year was Vault City Fruity Fluff  which possibly isn't particularly surprising as my favourite keg offering from the previous year was a similarly outrageous beer from Vault City. Fruity Fluff is an 8.0% ABV Imperial Sour, with Pineapple, Mango, Passionfruit and Marshmallow. It's like stuffing your face with a big handful of assorted retro sweets and not giving a fuck about the imminent telling-off from the proprietor of the sweet shop. A guilty pleasure that I won't feel guilty about because life's too fucking short.

Cheers, and best wishes for 2026!

Turbo Slurm and Sugar Plum and Custard Danish, both from Yonder would also be right up there. Though it still rankles me that so many of these tasty fruity sour beers aren't getting a cask release...

And at this point, I might also mention Red Fin Cider Meloncherry which many wouldn't accept as a proper cider, and I'd be inclined to agree some of the time, but it's fruity and delicious and only 3.4% on keg. A perfect summer (borderline) soft drink. 

These days I hardly drink any canned or bottled beer, but my pick of the year - such as it is - would probably be Brewdog Two Scoops in can. Yes, I'm technically 'favouriting' a beer from Brewdog. I know, I know. It's a honeycomb ice cream stout at 7.0%. Obviously not a patch on any of the real winners.

The 'revisited' cask beer I've enjoyed most this year - again, drawn from a relatively small pool as I'll always go for ticks wherever possible - is Brew York Tonkoko  which still tastes like a dark chocolate bounty bar with a bit of tonka bean on it. At just 4.3% it's a session-strength dessert beer that, crucially, isn't too sweet either. There's a lot of these around at the moment and it's a trend in brewing that I'm really enjoying.

We might even find some of them in contention for my beer of 2025...

 

The Big Five

So, here's the important stuff. (Well, I say important, it's not going to end global famine or cure bone cancers, but these things are relative...)

The first of the five cask beers scoring 8/9 in 2025 appeared in mid-March and was a bit of a surprise given that it came from Sambrook's in Wandsworth - known for solid but unspectacular beer generally -  and was served in a Wetherspoons! Kiwiana was the beer - a 4.5% New Zealand pale ale brewed for their Spring beerfest. The lychee and melon notes made it super-juicy and a really, really good example of a refreshing, hoppy pale, if not a good example of a typical Wetherpint!

But get ready to be shocked again, because the next beer to make the five was also in Spoons! This time the honour goes to Silhill WOW  (4.0%) which I enjoyed in June when ticking off the Halesowen branch. Silhill rarely distribute beyond the West Midlands area, but this is a brilliant citrussy pale ale that I could stop and drink all day - if there weren't other beers and pubs to be ticked off, obviously. What really struck me here was the impeccable conditioning; it just wasn't 'spoonsy' in the slightest.

(Indeed, it was almost an unlikely Wetherspoonian hat-trick a few days later, as a Roosters cucumber beer in Consett came very close to scoring an eight, but narrowly misses out. Other 'honourable mentions' which don't quite make the cut are cask-aged Abbeydale Last Rites and the Armagnac-cask Thomas Hardy's Ale - love them, but both are north of 10% and become slightly hard work.) 

Theakston's Portergeist  came out around Halloween, and this did sneak the 8-rating because it never felt like an uphill struggle. It's one of those dessert beers that's neither too sweet nor too strong. Salted Caramel Porter, and boy does it let you know that that's what it is. Just 4.2% but rich and delicious. Properly yummy. And again, a bit of a surprise on the upside because Theakston's aren't a brewery I'd espect to see troubling my Golden Pints list.

It was just four days after that Tiny Rebel Double Drip (4.7%) introduced itself to my eager palate. I've been a big fan of this brewery for a long time, but sadly struggle to find their beers on sale these days. I'm also huge fan of coffee stouts, when they're not too sweet and cloying. This, however, didn't disappoint. Proper black coffee in pint form. Uncomplicated, no-nonsense and hit the spot. Repeatedly.

And just before Christmas I got to enjoy After/DV8 from the Deeply Vale brewery in Bury. A dark chocolate mint stout. Yes, it tasted like liquid After Eight mints. 5.0%. It had that cooling-but-warming peppermint mindfuckery going on. Gorgeous.

But if I had to pick just one for my favourite cask beer of the year it would actually be the Silhill. Completely unexpected and, in an understated sort of way, absolutley fucking brilliant. WOW indeed, by name and nature. It's not an exaggeration to say that necking that cool fresh pint - which only took 2-3 minutes - was one of the most fulfilling moments of my entire year!

I hope you all enjoyed 2025 and best wishes for the New Year, whatever that is!

(note to self: it's 2026)