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!
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!)
Last week, I drank a cask beer from Downton brewery at the Ealing Beer Festival. Secret Sobriety was the name.
There's nothing unusual about that in itself. I go to Ealing most years and drink a lot of cask ale when I'm there. Downton are a fairly well-established brewery and I've drunk 63 different cask beers from them. However...
It was a good beer. Dry. Hoppy. Easy to drink. What makes this beer so remarkably unusual is that it was only 0.5% ABV. And cask beers at that strength are incredibly rare.
We are told that the Low Alcohol / Alcohol Free beer sector is absolutely booming. Apparently it has grown 870% since 2013, which is quite astonishing growth, given that the overall beer market has been in long-term gradual decline. AF Guinness has become one of the most popular beers in the country in next to no time (I find it too sweet and malty personally) and lots of big brands now have a low- or zero-alcohol variant available.
Heinekin, Becks, Peroni - all the mainstream lagers are at it, and Adnams has managed to take the alcohol out of Ghost Ship without losing too much else. A success story, definitely, and possibly even some sort of victory for the nation's health and wellbeing. And these beers are genuinely a world apart from the non-alcoholic beers of the past. Kaliber, anyone?
But it's always a bottle, a can, or sometimes keg. The one thing that LA/AF beer hasn't traditionally offered us is that authentic cask experience. The unique quality and mouthfeel of a cask beer is what marketing wankers might call a 'key product differentiator' or something. There's something about it that you don't get when you drink beer that comes out of a keg, can or bottle.
So why is Low Alcohol cask still so incredibly uncommon?
For the best part of 20 years, Thornbridge has been one of my favourite breweries. Quite possibly my favourite British brewery of all time. (And, just in case you hadn't heard, I drink a lot of different beers from a lot of different breweries!)
One of the things I like about Thornbridge is that they're not afraid to innovate, whether that means experimenting with contemporary ideas, or delving deep into brewing history. A couple of years ago, Thornbridge began an interesting project, very much in the latter category, when they acquired a 'Burton Union Set', and began a series of 'from the Union' beers - six of which I've now sampled.
This unique method of fermentation is a fascinating part of brewing history, and one that almost died out altogether when Carlsberg-Britvic-Marstons (or whatever amalgamatory name they're calling themselves these days) stopped using their decades-old Union, and broke it up for scrap or salvage. Thornbridge salvaged some of it, as it happens, which is where this story begins.
I've been toying with the idea of starting a Youtube channel. Specficially one that documents me visiting pubs, drinking new cask ales and steadily adding to my tally of around 13,000 different pints over the past 30 years.
Maybe called BV ticks beers. Or something. You'd see me in a pub getting excited because they have a new Red IPA from Siren on. I sup the beer, tell you a bit about it, and give it my considered verdict. The number 13,326 flashes up on the screen, along with the beer name, the ABV and a rating of 7/9. Then I move on to another pub in search of the next tick. Probably swearing quite a lot if it's my tenth of the day, then cutting the video short because I need a piss.
Would there be any demand for content such as this?
(I'm not assuming the answer is 'Yes', by the way. I know it's a niche thing. But then a lot of Youtube is niche. And still more of it is about making niche feel normal.)
The recent news about Brewdog isn't particularly encouraging. Even as a pessimist, it feels like an almost unfathomably bleak turn of events.
A little story:
Brewdog were once, briefly, my favourite brewery. In their very early years, between 2008 and 2010, they put out some excellent beers, were at the forefront of a rise in high quality and experimntal brewing in the UK, and while they weren't exactly the pioneers they purported to be, they were major players, doing good things and I liked them a lot.
That is why I put my money where my mouth was, and became one of the earliest 'Equity for Punks' investors. I spent, I think, £810 on three 'shares' back in, when was it? 2009? It was definitely the first wave of the EFP mania.
And I regretted it almost immediately, because Brewdog - having taken my money - went in a very different direction to what I'd have liked. Founder James Watt showed himself to be an absolutely massive bellend - no that's an understatement - a cuntishly borderline psychopath is probably closer to the mark.
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 fairly decent, ale-wise, but delving a tad more deeply into me records (for the purpose of this post) the past year actually appears far more underwhelming. Certainly less whelming. Quite 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 597 new cask beers 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 and perform tie-breakers in my head!
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...
I noticed that my last two blog headers have been 'So long's - something that happened purely by accident and/or editorial laziness on my part.
So I'm now going to 'complete the trilogy', as it were, but this is a farewell I really wish we didn't have to bid. RIP Peter Edwardson, aka The Pub Curmudgeon, who died unexpectedly a few days ago, at just 64.
This is a sad loss; To my knowledge, I only met Peter in person the one time, and that was a fair few years ago, possibly even before his beer blogging really took off, though he was already writing for local CAMRA publications.
I had contacted his local branch about the possibility of re-publishing some of his work down South, and as I happened to be in his neck of the woods for football, we met up for a few pints. Robinson's Unicorn, if I remember correctly. We chatted - slightly awkwardly, if I'm honest - about pubs, beer and the role of CAMRA newsletters/magazines.
His blog famously promised 'a jaundiced view of life from the darkest recess of the saloon bar', but possibly more significantly, he also wrote from a perspective well outside of the 'beer bubble' and provided a refreshing counterpoint at a time when you'd be forgiven for thinking people who wrote about beer were woke hipsters who only drank craft keg.
He couldn't be persuaded into 'that world' and I acted as an intermediary for a while, with a foot in both camps. Indeed he rather relished being blocked on social media by some of the bigger names in the beer writing business for having 'the wrong opinions'! (Mentioning no names but it won't take a whole lot of guesswork...)
We had very different tastes in beer, and indeed different views on many of the issues affecting beer, pubs and breweries, but we definitely shared a taste in music (Tull, Rush, Roxette, Thunder... though we disagreed slightly on 'Stop the Cavalry by Jonah Lewie') and broadly Libertarian politics. I wonder if we were the only two mostly non-smokers that were fiercely opposed to the smoking ban on the grounds of essential human freedom and choice?
He was a staunch defender of traditional British beer styles, bench seating, regional breweries and the tied house system. And of course Draught Bass. And, to some extent, Sam Smiths. He actively disliked a lot of the stuff I like, but we were always able to disagree amicably and have an intelligent discussion, from which we might all learn.
This is not a eulogy and I didn't know Peter well enough to say any more. Just go and read his blog. It was good. And have a pint in his memory. I did.
Rest in Peace and Rise in Glory. Or Bass.
As one of the laziest people on the planet, I frequently find myself thinking of stuff to write about, and then failing to write about it.
Honestly, the amount of content that existed in my head that never made it onto page, podcast or screen is quite frightening. A prime example is my local South Indian restaurant, which I could've written about when I moved to this town almost ten years ago, or at any point in the intervening decade, but, as usual, I did not.
Now the Kerala has closed. Apparently for good. Which is a shame because it really was excellent; quite possibly the best restaurant of any kind in the local area.
Is this the end of the Great British Beer Festival?
When I visited GBBF 2025 last month, I had a few concerns about its future. My beloved special place, dislocated and poorly attended. Something not quite right.
Talking to staff there, it was felt to be 'quiet', but there was no sense of absolute disaster. We all had a pretty good time, even if it didn't feel the same.
Then came the murmerings of disquiet and doom-mongery.
It wasn't encouraging when some of US casks went untapped and had to be sent to other events and pubs in the area. That's right - beer from the USA bar which always sells out early hadn't found enough customers at the NEC. Suboptimal.
No queues, plenty of seating available - maybe a good thing for a customer, but not a good sign for CAMRA really.
Then the news emerged that they had made a loss. A big loss. £320k apparently. That's not just 'disappointing', it's an excuse to legitimately wheel out terms like 'existential' and 'catastrophic'.
It's really not good news.
I love the Hope in Carshalton.
It just won my London Pub of the Year award for the fourth time, and a few days later CAMRA turned out to be in full agreement with me, naming the Hope as the best pub in Greater London. A big achievement and an entirely deserved one, I think.
But this isn't about how absolutely fucking awesome this pub is. I'm going to say something controversial; something I'm not completely believe to be true, but I reckon it's worth floating the idea for debate at least:
Great pubs are killing good pubs. Maybe.
I'd better explain exactly what I mean by this...
Go on then, let's have a winner, shall we?!?
It's been a close contest this year, particularly deciding which of the ten pubs make my top five and which will have to sit out next years competition to make way for plucky young upstart newcomers, but thems the breaks...
Indeed, last year's winner, the Star & Garter in Bromley has narrowly failed to make the final this year and I do feel a slight pang of sadness, but I'm sure they'll be back. (If you haven't read parts one and two, this won't mean a whole lot of jack shit, so check those out first!)
Right...
My relationship with the Great British Beer Festival goes back a long way - I've been attending it for over 30 years and have never missed one - so it was with a little trepidation that I attended GBBF 2025 last week.
Trepidation, because it was always going to be just that bit different this year; the first GBBF to be held outside London since 1990, and, consequently, my first GBBF not at Olympia (or its deceased sibling, Earl's Court) so I was prepared for unfamiliarity. And I don't always like unfamiliarity.
But let's be thankful for small mercies; in three of the last five years, there hasn't been a GBBF at all, and the future of the festival was in doubt (maybe it still is?) Additionally, it's a huge undertaking involving a lot of wonderful volunteers (of which I wasn't one this year, but I feel like I probably should've been), so brilliant work from everyone involved in making it happen. Anything is better than GBBF not taking place, like last year.
On paper the NEC (which is technically in the Borough of Solihull, not Birmingham, but hey...) has long felt like a good potential festival location. The site is massive, it's more central (to the rest of the country) than London, and it has the necessary supporting infrastructure (so I'm told by an HGV driver!)
So, how was it?
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.
 |
| 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.
