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 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...

Golden Pints: BV's best beers of 2024

It's that time again, when I cast an over-shouldered glance at all the new beer I got to drink over the past year and tell you which ones were best.

My drinking year was ultimately cut short by a few days due to the worst 'flu' I've ever suffered. Because I don't do hangovers, I'm not really used to having headaches. And it seemed to make the neuropathic pain in my toes many, many times more agonising, like being set on fire and hit repeatedly with sledgehammers and anvils. Then there was the concurrent shivering and fever sweats. Horrible.

But possibly the worst feature was what I call 'Hypnogogic Purgatory' - highly tedious and frustrating half-dreams that seem to go on forever in a state where I'm not fully asleep or awake; a sense of endlessly trying to shuffle arbitrary objects into an order and constantly failing to do so. (Maybe Hypnogogic Purgatory should be an Imperial Stout?!?)

Golden Pints: BV's best beers of 2022

Are 'Golden Pints' still a thing? Is beer blogging still a thing? Are things being a thing still a thing?

In my case, the answer to all these questions is 'just barely'. If that.

Indeed, it's probably not unreasonable to suggest that I fell somewhat out of love with beer during 2022 - a combination of beers being indifferent and me being clinically depressed.

I haven't blogged a whole lot either and even coming up with a handful of words to describe a beer for an Untappd check-in sometimes feels like too much effort. Again, it's probably the depression for the most part. Mopey old Ben, fishing for pity as usual.

But it's a new year and so I'll try to squeeze something out about my favourite brews of 2022. After all, with all the breweries that have shut up shop lately a positive word about beer might go a long way. Or it might not.

BV's best beers of 2016

Well, it's Twelfth Night and so 2016 is now well and truly gone; Banished to the hinterland of the past, and some might say rightly so.

Let me guess: Your favourite celebrities all died and some votes didn't go the way you wanted, right?


I won't shy meekly away from the fact that 2016 was a bit of an epic fail for me. You may recall I was planning to visit every brewery in London and then put it all into a hugely entertaining and informative book that would top the bestseller list across the globe for years to come.

I did spend a lot of the year visiting breweries

And I did visit a lot of breweries, drank a lot of awesome beer and talked to loads of interesting people. However, real life, real work and moving house kinda got in the way and by the end of the year I'd only done maybe two thirds of the capital's breweries. But I'll try to resurrect the project in 2017 as I still think it's worth doing, even if my proposed timescales were too much for me.

Anyway, as is traditional at this time of year, I'll be looking back upon my favourite beers of 2016 or, more specifically, my five favourite new cask beers of 2016. And here they are: