BV London Pub of the Year 2024-25 - part two

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?

BV London Pub of the Year 2024-25 - part one

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.

World Heritage Pints

Obviously I'm a pretty big fan of cask beer. 

It accounts for about 96-97% of the beer I drink, I spend way too much time seeking out new and interesting pints to tick off, and it wouldn't be an overstatement to say that drinking cask, in pubs, is a huge part of my life. 

I'm also well aware that I exist in a beer bubble of my own creation, that my drinking habits are far from universal and that cask beer is in serious decline. 

OK, it may not exactly be dying - yet - but it has increasingly become a niche product, as I vaguely predicted some years ago. 

Most of the beers I'd want to drink can only really be found in a relatively small number of specialist pubs, and the fact that I do almost my drinking in such places doesn't change the fact that as a mainstream product, cask is on the endangered list. Which should, and does, worry me.

The boys from the Craft Beer Channel on YouTube are concerned too. And, unlike me, are a whole lot more proactive when it comes to actually doing something about it!

Their long-running 'Keep Cask Alive' campaign is to be taken up a level as they seek to secure UNESCO 'Intangible Cultural Heritage' status for cask beer. Which is interesting for a number of reasons.

Missing you

I don't know about you, but early August has felt very strange this year for me.

There's been no Great British Beer Festival. And my life doesn't really seem to make sense without it.

Where I belong...

I'm well known for my deep love for the GBBF, having first attended 30 years ago and I've never missed one since.

Yes, I know we went without it in 2020 and 2021 due to some silly pandemic nonsense, but it was great to welcome it back into my life in 2022 and last year I finally took the plunge and spent the week volunteering which gave me a whole new perspective on the event.

So I'm really missing it.

I've said many times before that there's just something about it that makes the experience unique among beer festivals. It's not just about getting loads of banging beers into my system; it's a part of my life and a tradition. 

Picking up rumours and tittle-tattle from various CAMRA sources has got me worried about the future of the GBBF. I don't doubt that it will return - after all, the main reason behind this years event being cancelled was due to the extensive ongoing renovations taking place at Olympia - but it may not be quite the same festival when it does come back.

I've heard that the festival has gone beyond being cost-ineffective and become quite seriously loss-making, which would make it unsustainable in its current form. Over the years staff perks have been cut back a bit in an attempt to offset this but fat can only be trimmed so much before one starts carving into muscle. 

A scaled-down half-hearted GBBF of compromises just wouldn't be the same. I'd go, of course, but would I still be in love?

BV London Pub of the Year 2023-2024 - part two

Here we go then, the second part of this year's BV London Pub of the Year contest. Check out part one first if you need to, then read on. This time it's five new or returning hostelries that weren't in last years competition, so let's keep things fresh with these beertastic beauties. 

You won't want to miss this! (If you do want to miss this then feel free to miss this, obviously.)

BV London Pub of the Year 2023-24 - part one

Unbelievable though it seems, the BV London Pub of the Year award has now been going for 12 years!

It seems to come around quicker every time, with the sort of overfamiliarity that can only breed the deepest of contempt, but I keep at it, and it's now time for the latest installment.

You probably know the drill: This time we revisit the Top Five from last year's competition, and next time there will be five 'new' contenders, then finally an overall winner will be announced.

Check out some previous years contests if you need to get a handle on the scoring system. Otherwise, let's crack the fuck on...

GBBF 2023: A Call to (Volunteer) Arms

I've been attending the Great British Beer Festival for 29 years now, and have long been a staunch supporter of the event. 

Typically I'd get a Season Ticket, attend most or even all of the sessions, and drink lots of beers during the week, which would be one of the highlights of my year. I've seen it grow in size from the mid-90s onwards; the evolution as it moved from Olympia to Earl's Court and then back again. And I sorely missed it in 2020 and 2021, when it didn't take place. Its return in 2022 brought a sense of purpose back to my life. Well, back to my first week in August, at any rate.

But despite being a GBBF Superfan, I'd never volunteered - until this year - and it's only right that I now give you my honest assessment of how I got on last week.

BV London Pub of the Year 2022-23 - part two

Whenever there's a part one, there's always a part two. The second course. The revenge of the killer sequel, if you will.

And this is it - the second half of the 2022-23 London Pub of the Year contest, where five new contenders join the competition and go up against last year's Top Five.

This year sees a mix of complete newcomers and pubs that have been absent from the contest for a few years, so let's crack on...

BV London Pub of the Year 2022-23 - part one

It's that time of year again when I think about whether I should give up doing a London Pub of the Year award, and then go ahead and do it anyway. 

With another full year of no lockdowns and freedom-of-drinking under our belt, this year's contest should be a cracker. God only knows I've made enough visits to 'That London', as I'm now obligated to call it, in search of the capitals best pub. 

So here we go. This post will cover last years top five and part two will reveal five brand new challengers. Well, 'new' in the sense that they weren't in the 2021-22 contest.

Enjoy. Or don't.

BV London Pub of the Year 2021-22 - part two

What's hotter than the current ambient temperature and more competitive than the race to be Prime Minister?

Why, yes, it's the second part of the long-overdue Return of the Revenge of the Pub of the Year!

If you haven't already read part one, you might want to so so first. Otherwise, here we go with the remainder of this year's contest. Let's find the best pub in London, shall we?

And, not unexcitingly, we happen to begin with two former winners!

BV London Pub of the Year 2021-22 - part one

It might not feel like it, but it was fully ten years ago that I launched my London Pub of the Year award. 

And now, at last, it's back!

Yep, after a long wait it's time to once again pick my favourite pub in the Greater London area from the past 12 months. God I've missed doing this.

Counting down to the end of lockdown!

The last couple of years have been a bit, well, disrupted, and you'll probably know that for the 2019-21 period I decided upon a 'special award' for the Kentish Belle in Bexleyheath who went above and beyond the call of duty during the first lockdown as well as being a damn good pub the rest of the time. (Well, it was originally only going to be for 2019-20, but further lockdowns meant that this effectively held true for an additional year!)

Anyway, because I wasn't able to run the contest and do full pub surveys for the past two years, we're going to have a completely fresh start, and then - fingers crossed, no more fucking lockdowns please! - return to normal this time next year.

So, this year's competition will consist of eight pubs, including previous winners, returning old favourites and a couple of new entries, and the top five will automatically come back next year, alongside five new ones to keep things fresh.

Fot pit nor furpose!

What is the point of the Good Beer Guide?

No, really, what is the point of it now? 

It's not as though folks haven't been asking that question for some years, given that a thick paper volume that might be 18 months or more out of date is a bit of an anachronism in an age when we can all whip out our phones and search for up-to-date pub and beer gen in an instant.

But I myself didn't go out of my way to ask that particular question, partly because it would be labouring an obvious point, but mainly because I've long held the official CAMRA Guide in some esteem, largely based, probably, on the affection of nostalgia.

So I held off. Until now.

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'.

Mostly on the side of the dinosaurs

It's sometimes easy to over-obsess about things, so this will be my last word on the seemingly unending CAMRA Revitalisation plans - at least until after next month's AGM when the train will either be diverted on to the fast lines or stopped in its tracks.

I've already cast my votes online and, after much consideration, I have mostly voted against the proposals for change. Which may surprise some people.

CAMRA Revitalisation - much ado about nothing?

Last week, CAMRA finally revealed a set of recommendations resulting from their 'Revitalisation' consultation.

I say 'finally', not because there is even a remote sense of finality about this, but because this process has dragged on for absolutely fucking ages, as if swimming against a tide of treacle. I attended one of the very first consultation meetings (in April 2016, which really does seem a hell of a long time ago now) and once the series had concluded, I was invited as a beer writer to a sort of beer media briefing which went into more detail about what they'd learned.

That was about a year ago. They've had a long time to get their shit together following the consultation process, but finally the cat is out of the bag.

Are we feeling revitalised yet?

So, last week I was able to attend one of CAMRA's consultation meetings as part of their Revitalisation programme.

Admittedly, one of the reasons I wanted to do this particular session was that it was being hosted by the Southwark brewery, and as such, was another small step towards doing every brewery in London this year. But I also have views, some of which aren't always entirely in line with established CAMRA dogma, and this was an opportunity to make them heard. Possibly.

For a start, I didn't agree with the negative and provocative language they used in bringing this exercise to the attention of the mainstream media, though I have to admit, it certainly got their attention, if possibly not for the best of reasons...

So, how did it all go? And what can you expect when the Revitez crew to rock up in your manor going all craft on you?

CAMRA's suicide note

I don't pay a whole lot of attention to CAMRA politics - I'm a member, but I'm not that kind of member - but over the last few days things have really gone a bit weird.

Some recent headlines made for interesting reading:

'Thanks to the hipsters, has the Campaign for Real Ale pulled its last pint?' asks the Telegraph, while the Indie wonders if the organisation is about to change its name and perhaps its entire remit. The BBC went with 'Should there be a crusade to save British pubs?', which, of course, is already heartland campaign territory, but there is a strong implication that this should become CAMRA's sole focus rather than worrying about all that 'real ale' nonsense.

So, it's pretty clear that a press release was widely circulated ahead of the AGM / Members Weekend in Liverpool, and whatever was in it has caused news outlets to jump to all kinds of fucked-up conclusions, right?

Or possibly the cart really was leading the horse on this occasion. Given that the title of the press release in question was: Is this the end of the Campaign for Real Ale?.

Yes, that's the actual title of a Campaign for Real Ale press release. Provocative? Confusing? Stupid?

Suicidal? Quite possibly.

Not so much the gentle winds of change, but somebody somewhere really pushing an angle that either CAMRA is in crisis (almost certainly not true in any sense; membership figures are at record levels) or that the organisation is about to make drastic policy changes.

Irresponsible Drinking

So, it's the start of London Beer City.

What a week it's going to be - just look at the schedule. A whole host of fantastic beery events taking place all over the capital.

Brewery open days, one-off brews, beer and food pairings, it all looks lovely, doesn't it?

Trouble is, there's hardly space for any beer in this room, given the massive, trumpeting elephant that's stamping all over common sense and reason as we speak.

IT'S THE SAME FUCKING WEEK AS THE GBBF!!!

The same week. Who in their right mind could possibly think that this insane scheduling is a good idea, hmm?

A first timer's guide to the GBBF - from a GBBF old timer

So, the GBBF starts tomorrow, and I've been looking forward to it since, well, since the last one! If I had a calendar, I'd have been crossing off the days in a big red marker pen (but not sniffing the nib afterwards, because that's solvent abuse, kids).

Alcohol abuse, on the other hand, is perfectly fine - so long as it takes place within the awesomeness of a big fuck-off beer festival.

I've been going for 20 years now, and while it was always a unique event, it's now bigger and better than ever and looms like a vast, beery ox in a year-round field of chickens. The very anticipation causes me to come up with fucktarded metaphors.

Anyway, the sheer massiveness of it all it can be a tad daunting for GBBF virgins, so following on from my rough guide to British beer festivals, here are a few friendly tips for anyone who perhaps doesn't have an awful lot of GBBF experience:

The 16 species of Beer Drinker

What are the two things we like most in this world?

That's right. Beer. Beer and...

Venn Diagrams! Everybody loves Venn Diagrams, right?

So, where do you fit in?