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?
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...
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!
