“I never liked the beer anyway” or “It tastes like piss” are standard responses to stories about BrewDog, as if the company’s ethics or culture can be tasted in the product.

We suppose that is a logical extension of the idea that the products of virtuous breweries – those that are small, independent, craft, or whatever words you choose to use – taste better.

We’re not sure it’s very helpful to dismiss specific beers because of politics, though, even if you might decide for other reasons not to buy or drink them.

The idea of objectivity in beer tasting is pretty much a myth unless you go to extreme lengths but we should at least try to be honest and get close to the truth.

We were also inspired by Michael Deakin’s attempt to taste Beavertown Neck Oil with an open mind:

The initial taste is better than I had anticipated. What strikes me harder than anything else, is the pleasant bitterness, which I so often criticise modern beers for lacking… At the most basic of levels, my judgement of the quality of a drink can be reduced to how easy it is to pick up individual flavours, and I am struggling. There are passing nods to flavours I recognise, primarily grapefruit, but they are whispers in the wind. Now that my palate has adjusted, and the beer has warmed slightly, the initial bitterness has all but completely faded, and my palate is overwhelmed by the distinctly sweet taste of cheap malt.

But, of course, Michael knew what he was drinking. And the ultimate step when you’re shooting for anything like objectivity is to taste blind, to at least some degree.

We’ve not done any blind tasting for a while. So, after a few weeks had passed, Ray went to Sainsbury’s and acquired three cans of beer:

• BrewDog Punk IPA
• Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
• Wiper & True Sundance IPA

The first was the real point of the exercise.

The second seemed like a useful calibration beer but also interesting in its own right: is it still an exciting beer, or at all enjoyable, in 2025?

The third was something of a side quest. Jess doesn’t like Wiper & True’s beer, much as she does appreciate the green ethos of the company and their lovely garden taproom.

Tasting blind, would she still feel the same way, or would it reveal some prejudice at play?

The blind taste test

Jess tasted these beers without knowing what they were.

She did not even know which beers were in the mix, or even that Punk IPA was the subject of the tasting.

Ray lined them up for her in identical wine glasses.

That meant she could see them, and compare their appearance – but we’re not yet ready to invest in black glassware and red lightbulbs.

A. SNPA – this was noticeably darker, shading to amber, and perfectly clear. The flavour was initially impressive with a heavy pine aroma. It elicited an “Ooh!” – always a good sign. With successive sips, an unpleasant burn made itself known, almost like chilli pepper. It was well balanced but not, ultimately, hugely exciting. Jess did not guess this was SNPA.

B. Punk IPA – this was extremely pale and also perfectly clear. Jess’s immediate reaction was to identify “weedy hops”, which she found offputting. That dominant characteristic fell back with subsequent sips until it tasted more balanced. “I would drink this quite happily but it’s not very exciting,” was her final judgement. She did not guess it was Punk IPA.

C. Sundance – this looked noticeably different in the glass with a heavy yellow-grey haziness. Jess’s notes were “weedy, oniony, tastes dirty”. It’s possible its appearance influenced that latter observation. She didn’t like it and didn’t want to drink any more than necessary for the purpose of the job at hand. She guessed it was Verdant “or someone like that”.

Ray also tasted them knowing what they were and found Punk IPA to be the best of the three, although it did taste less intense and exciting than even a few years ago. The reduction in ABV to 5.4% is perhaps part of the problem there. When exactly did that happen? We can’t work it out.

To answer the question that prompted this post, however: yes, Punk IPA is still a decent beer.

We’d be quite happy to drink it, especially if it was accompanied by good conversation in good company.

It certainly doesn’t taste like “piss”.

Is BrewDog Punk IPA still a decent beer? originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

First, some news: Martin Dickie has left BrewDog, the brewery he co-founded back in 2007. It seems to have happened quite suddenly and “for personal reasons” sounds rather vague as an explanation for why it’s happened. As others have observed, this probably signals that something is going on behind the scenes, such as an impending takeover. Or it might be related the equally sudden dropping of BrewDog beer by around 2,000 pubs.

The latest edition of the London Centric newsletter contains details of a new way the hospitality industry has found to be weird about pricing:

For the last few weeks London Centric has been doing the heavy lifting of visiting pubs across London and trying to understand why they’ve started adding a 4% service charge to drinks bought at the bar… While some other news outlets this week reported that the Well & Boot in Waterloo station has been indulging in this practice, we can reveal that it’s already been enacted in at least eight other pubs in the capital… More intriguingly, the driving force appears to be an attempt to sidestep increased taxes on employers introduced by chancellor Rachel Reeves.

London Centric is an interesting new entrant to the news market edited by Jim Waterson. Jess, being a Londoner who is interested in new models for funding independent journalism, is a paid subscriber.

For Pellicle Rachel Hendry has written what may well be the definitive reflection on beer mats. It details how they’re made, how they’re used, and why they’re necessary:

It begins with temperature, so I should, too… A cooled liquid greets a warmer glass and the glass becomes cool in response.  A sign of respect to some, straightforward physics to others. The surface of the glass submits to the lower temperatures of its contents and now it is the glass’ turn to assert dominance. It’s all cause and effect, you see… Air behaves differently to glass: it doesn’t comply so neatly. Instead, air molecules change in protest, water droplets forming, clinging to the glass’ surface, condensing in defeat. And as these droplets slowly run down the length of the glass they’ll eventually meet another surface—a table, let’s say… Here the destruction continues.

We do get weary of pub tables slopping with liquid when a simple circle or square of board would solve the problem. “But you have to clean up when people tear them apart!” Well, yes, the job would be easier without all these pesky customers, now you mention it.

At Tempest in a Tankard Franz D. Hofer shares an account of his visit to what he says might be “the best German beer fest” – Sandkerwa in Bamberg:

Bambergers enjoyed the Sandkerwa plenty when it got going in the 1950s. Still, organizers figured it needed something to make it stand out from the hundreds of other Kerwa festivals in the region. They didn’t have to look far. Not only was the Sand district home to the St. Elizabeth Chapel, it was one of Bamberg’s historic fisherman and boatman quarters. These river farers just so happened to have their ancient guild headquarters in the Sand. And they had been staging their Fischerstechen tournament since the Middle Ages… The first Sandkerwa Fischerstechen was simple. Each boat was crewed by three jousters with poles and someone at the rudder. If a punter was knocked off the flatboat, the next crew member sprang into action till one team prevailed in knocking the opposing team into the drink. These days jousters square off from small planks fastened to the bow of the punt. Onlookers line both banks of the Regnitz, while a brass band plays encouragement for the contestants.

At Craft Beer & Brewing Evan Rail has explored the full range of Czech hops beyond the famous Saaz variety:

Even today, the legendary cultivar that locals call žatecký poloraný červeňák or ŽPČ, represents about 82 percent of the Czech Republic’s total hop acreage… Yet if Saaz represents the Czech Republic’s hop-growing history, the other 18 percent just might be its future. The country’s significant hop industry—the world’s third-largest, by acreage—currently includes 28 registered varieties of chmel. Almost all of those are Saaz descendants, which often showcase some of its characteristics as well as compelling qualities of their own… Just north of Prague, at Pivovar Chroust—a well-regarded brewery known for its hop-forward ales—brewer Karolína Chroustovská says she was struck by the unusual fruitiness of Juno (4.5 to 6 percent alpha acids) and Eris (6 to 8.5 percent) when she recently used them to dry hop her hazy Union Czech IPA.

For CAMRA’s What’s Brewing website Laura Hadland has been thinking about the growing ‘normalness’ of alcohol free beers as signalled by their inclusion at the Great British Beer Festival:

There were dry drinkers, including a few well-known faces who dedicate their writing and social media to alcohol free beer. Then came the zebra stripers, who punctuate their regular beer drinking with the odd non-alcoholic (NA) version to keep things level through the session. There were also the curious onlookers, perhaps still yet to be converted, but at least they are taking the time to see what’s out there… Does this mean that drinking alcohol-free beverages is now considered normal? … I think that it does. Attitudes have been steadily changing towards zero per cent drinking over the past 10 years, with a decided improvement in quality and variety sparking a sharper ascent in the last five.

Finally, from BlueSky, some delightful pedantry…

Far be it from me to embrace pedantry, but that looks like a crown cork bottle, which … *chortles* … would not have been used by Guinness in the 19th century! Oh, my days …

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— IrishBeerHistory (@beerfoodtravel.bsky.social) August 18, 2025 at 7:32 PM

For more good reading check out our Patreon-exclusive ‘Footnotes’ to this post and Alan McLeod’s round up from Thursday.

News, nuggets and longreads 23 August 2025: Inugami originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

First, some news on the health and status of various historic pubs across England from the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) pub heritage crew. Their July update offers a fascinating snapshot of beautiful pubs that are reopening, that have been repurposed as restaurants, and that remain in danger:

The Grade II*-listed Waterloo, built in 1907 as a flagship pub for brewer Mitchell and Butlers, has now been closed since 2011. Following a recent visit by Sandwell Council’s planning enforcement and conservation officers, a fresh Section 215 notice is being issued to the owner to maintain the building… The pub has been included on Historic England’s Heritage at Risk register since 2012. The ground floor and basement, which houses the spectacular Grill Room, are in a deplorable state.

On the ‘good news’ list is the reopening this very weekend of The Crown in Stockport, under the ownership of Chris and Alan Gent of Petersgate Tap fame.

One of our favourite writers, Eoghan Walsh, has tackled one of Jess’s very favourite topics: the intersection of football and beer. For Pellicle he’s written about the symbiotic relationship between Dublin craft brewing and its beloved local football teams:

On 15 July 2009, Stephen Clinch landed in Salzburg, tired and confused, after jetting from Dublin to Sioux Falls, Minneapolis, back to Dublin, and finally, to Munich. He’d been buying equipment for his new brewery Trouble Brewing, and he’d hightailed it back to Europe because his beloved Bohemian F.C (‘Bohs’) were playing Red Bull Salzburg in a blockbuster Champions League qualifier… “There’s no greater joy than a European football trip with a load of lunatics,” Stephen tells me, a joy heightened that day when Bohs took an unlikely 1-1 draw. Stephen was there in Dalymount Park (‘Dalyer’) the following week, as Bohs lost at home to a late Salzburg winner. But winning wasn’t why he supported Bohs his whole life. He’s there for the camaraderie, for the community spirit in the stands, and, to be honest, “for the misery.”

For some time we’ve been asking for more writing about the development of European beer in the 20th century. How did the various beer styles many of us learned about from Michael ‘The Beer Hunter’ Jackson end up as they were when we first encountered them? At Daft Eejit Brewing Andreas Krennmair has been mining this seam with recent posts about Altbier and Kölsch in the 1980s…

I like going to the library, in particular the GGB library at the VLB in Berlin… When you go through a lot of historic material, there’s inevitably some bycatch, random articles in journals or paragraphs or sections of books that you didn’t intend to look up, but stumbled upon, that turn out to be super interesting… One of these articles is one about top-fermented beers in West Germany in 1980… At the time, 14.3% of the total beer production in the Federal Republic was top-fermented beer, partially driven by Bavarian wheat beer… The descriptions of Altbier and Kölschbier (sic!) are particularly interesting because they are essentially a style guideline (before there were any comprehensive style guidelines) and a short guide on how to brew both styles… The article states that most [Kölsch] breweries use 100% Vienna malt (an unusual choice from today’s perspective), while some use up to 20% wheat malt to improve the body and round off the flavour of the beer.

…and Oktoberfest-Märzen beer in the post-war period:

When looking at the data, a few things stand out: in 1953, two of the beers had an OG of only 13.3 resp 13.5%. While technically a Märzen, it would nowadays not be allowed as Oktoberfestbier, as those need to have an OG between 13.6 and 14.0%. The attenuation was lower than what we’re used to, and this also shows in the alcohol content, which is between 4.6% ABV (converted from ABW) and 5.6%… In particular beer #1 combines a fairly high OG (13.8%) with a relatively poor apparent attenuation of 63.9% and lots of unfermented but fermentable sugars. That beer was probably very sweet.

As the dust settles on CAMRA’s 2025 Great British Beer Festival various people have shared their views on how it went in a new venue, after a year off. For CAMRA’s own What’s Brewing Matthew Curtis highlights both pros and cons:

I was glad to see the festival had moved away from London. I understand the capital is a great focal point for many, but Britain’s brewing culture is not tied to one city alone, and those of us from the North like myself were glad of the venue being within a shorter distance. It was also a great chance for people to experience just how vibrant Birmingham’s beer and pub scene is. Beer lovers were able to flock to city-centre venues like the Colmore and Woodman, while also checking out local breweries such as Attic Brew Co. and Indian brewery. For me, it also provided the opportunity for a day trip to the nearby Black Country, and to experience beers from Batham’s and Sarah Hughes in the flesh for the first time.

Benjamin Nunn, a long-time GBFF-goer, expresses what might perhaps best be described as unease about the health and future of the festival:

The layout was – and I get that’s partly due to it being a new venue – a bit weird. Probably sub-optimal. There seemed to be a lot of unused or wasted space, and the ‘main’ hall seemed to be hidden away from the entrance, and was on a different level, down a few stairs and quite a long way away from the other side… The important thing is of course the beer, and this is where I was a bit underwhelmed. All the beers I got to try were generally fine, but nothing really stood out… It didn’t seem that busy, particularly at times when a London-based GBBF would be filling up with the after-work crowd… Over the entire week, I gather attendance was at the ‘disappointing’ end of CAMRAs expectations… Worryingly there has been no announcement amount GBBF 2026 yet.

The Beer Nut had “a jolly day out” and enjoyed lots of “lovely British cask beer” although, true to form, he managed to encounter a beer we really like and dislike it:

The nearest bar to the entrance was full of awards nominees, with judging for Champion Beer of Britain happening nearby. Here I found my primary target for the day: Oregon Trail IPA from Elusive Brewing. It’s become quite the cult beer in Britain recently and I had never seen it in the wild. In proper west coast style it’s bright and golden, and is shockingly bitter at first, going beyond mere grapefruit into raw lime peel and concentrated pine resin. A rapidly-arriving finish adds an unwelcome savoury note of caraway seed to the picture. It’s very dry and sharp, and needs its full 5.8% ABV to give it substance. As a result, while it’s far from balanced, it’s not harsh either. Still, my half pint was tough going and I think this may be an acquired taste. It has several points in common with Thornbridge’s mighty Jaipur, but lacks that one’s subtlety and (dangerous) drinkability.

Paul Bailey (no relation) has been to a couple of country pubs, one part of a posh chain, one independent, and took notes on the experience:

Let’s start with the Chequers, an attractive oak-beamed 15th-century pub, situated in the small settlement of Laddingford, in the midst of the English hop growing countryside. The Chequers sits at the very heart of the village and is a cornerstone of village life… The pub hosts a variety of events, including an annual beer festival, held to mark St George’s Day. The event takes place in the pub itself and also in the extensive garden behind. The majority of the beers are racked up in an old oast house, at the side of the pub, which looked as if it may have been a stable block, back in the day. In true festival fashion, the beers are dispensed straight from the cask.

This is the kind of post that grabs our attention because it’s a thoughtful document of everyday pubgoing experiences that might otherwise be taken for granted, and forgotten.

Finally, from YouTube, a video by Deutsche-Welle about “German beer garden culture” which (a) shows us the faces of people who actually run beer gardens and (b) informs us of the existence of the Society for the Preservation of Beer Garden Tradition:

For more good reading check out our Patreon-exclusive ‘Footnotes’ to this post and Alan McLeod’s round up from Thursday.

News, nuggets and longreads 16 August 2025: Cheap Seats originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

It’s in a ‘business park’, yes, but this particular industrial estate happens to sit on the banks of the Kennet & Avon canal. So, the rag-filled oil drums, skips and piles of pallets are balanced by whispering trees, rippling water, and birdsong.

We know Kettlesmith’s beer fairly well because it’s a frequent guest at The Drapers Arms which was our local for several years. We’ll always give their beer a go, and often enjoy it, even if it doesn’t send us into raptures. It’s decent, solid stuff.

Finding ourselves detouring via Bradford, however, after a failed attempt to make it to Frome by train, we took the opportunity to see if it might taste different, and better, at source.

Jess had actually reconnoitred the site before, on her big bike ride from Bristol to London, when she stopped nearby for emergency repairs. She was able to find it quickly, even without the trail of beer casks with helpful arrows directing us round the back of Sainsbury’s supermarket.

The brewery occupies a fairly small unit with a couple of tables out front under a basic garden centre gazebo, and a few stools arranged around large barrels just inside the rolled-up shutter. There’s also a small wooden bar that feels pleasingly homemade.

There were seven beers on keg ranging from a bitter at 3.4% to a Maibock at 5.7%. While our beers were being poured, we took in the surroundings.

There’s a whiteboard covered in phone numbers for various farmers who supply brewing materials, along with a scrawled to-do list. There are haphazard piles of equipment and ingredients. And every surface has signs, notes and reminders: “Protective footwear must be worn beyond this point”; “Clean or DIE”.

The person behind the bar told us that there was more seating behind the brewery looking over the canal and led us through the brewery (“It’s wet, mind your step”) to the back door.

We headed across a yard to a patch of grass behind another industrial unit and dragged a wooden table into the shade.

From one angle, it was a pretty dismal spot: plastic patio chairs, rat traps, and ashtrays. Look the other way, however, and it was quite idyllic. Long canal boats slid by in both directions, piloted by holidaymakers or grizzled river-dwellers. Walkers and cyclists passed on the opposite bank.

And, at one point, a party of ten or so ducks waddled up from the water, surrounded our table, and preened themselves. After about quarter of an hour, their leader headed back to the water and the rest of the party followed.

It all felt quite different to the practiced, polished slickness of Lost & Grounded in Bristol but no less pleasant for that.

“What this reminds me of,” said Jess, “is one of those Franconian beer gardens that you spend hours walking to and it just feels like someone’s back garden.”

The beer helped in this regard. Specifically, something we think was badged as a Mandarina lager. It was bitter, floral, and fruity, almost like a German white wine. Framed as lager, compared to beers like, say, Krombacher, it probably doesn’t work. Reframed as the kind of rustic beer you might find on the limited menu at the inn in a small Bavarian village, it evoked holidays past.

The Maibock, Outer Sunset, was also remarkably enjoyable, being pretty clean and clear, with a heavier dose of balancing bitterness than is usual for the style. Again, its home-brew qualities felt like a selling point – a taste of the land, and of the Handwerk that went into it.

A third lager, Mission Bay rice lager, was also a hit, tasting to us not a million miles from Lost & Grounded Keller Pils. Or, indeed, an authentic Kellerpils from the back of beyond Bamberg.

Now, let’s be clear: we’re starved of these styles, and it’s likely that a German, or someone with more recent memories of Bavaria-Franconia might be less impressed. But on a summer’s day, after a walk in the sun, they felt spot on to us.

The ale styles excited us less but were all decent enough, much as we’ve always found them at The Drapers.

Our main takeaway from a pleasant couple of hours at Kettlesmith is that the local taproom is a good thing.

You might not go out of your way to visit if you’re in the country from, say, Norway, and staying in the Cotswolds.

But if you happen to be passing on a boat, and there’s a mooring space free, and you’ve got a thirst, you’d be silly not to stop.

The Kettlesmith taproom is at 16 Treenwood Industrial Estate, Bradford on Avon, BA15 2AU. They also have a bar in Corsham which we have not visited.

The barely urban un-metropolitan duck infested taproom originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog

First, some news. Earlier this week, the Champion Beer of Britain was announced at the Campaign for Real Ale’s Great British Beer Festival. The winner was Penzance Brewing Co Mild.

You might recall that we used to drink a lot of their beer when we lived in Penzance. Back then, the brewing was done by brewery founder Peter Elvin, who died in 2023. We were huge fans but sometimes cautious to recommend it because whenever we drank it away from The Star Inn, where Pete kept a careful eye on quality, it never quite seemed as good. So for the current brewer, Lewis Elliott, to take a PZ brew to national prominence is quite something.

You can read a personal take on it from our pal Darren Norbury, the man on the scene in Penwith, at Beer Today:

In my years either side of the bar at the Star Inn, Crowlas… you could mark the times of the year by the familiar upcountry faces who would appear on their annual visits. Autumn, for some reason, was peak season for Midlanders…

Steve at Wait Until Next Year has written about The Royal Oak in Northumberland Heath on the London-Kent border, making some interesting observations about what drinkers might really want from the refurbishment of their local pub:

The old wood panelling inside had been revarnished, the old tat on the walls removed, the ancient carpet replaced (but with a proper pub carpet!), the paintwork doesn’t feel too modern, but in keeping with the building. A modern pub doesn’t need to have a load of exposed brick, or grey walls, or a tiled bank of craft keg taps. It just needs to look like it cares. The pub is now not just for the Regulars, but is very deliberately a place for whoever wants to cross the threshold, wherever they are from, whoever they are… It is a pub that finally looks like it is proud of itself, and is worth taking pride in.

At Drinking in Strange Places Charlotte Cook has done something useful and put together a list of places in London where you can actually get decent beer. Her criteria might not be yours, or ours for that matter, but she clearly explains her choices so you can make up your own mind:

The Hand and Marigold is also in Bermondsey. Recently reopened by Ollie and Alice this well-beloved boozer sells pints at around the £5 mark, and since the owners are both very knowledgeable in how to keep beer, the pints are some of the best around. The cask selection changes frequently, with kegs from Cloudwater. They do pickled eggs, which are the eternal sign of a good pub.

Reminder: anyone can write a post like this! If we asked you for advice on drinking where you live, or in a place you know well, what would be on the list?

For The Guardian Steve Rose has dug into the question of why pub food seems to be on the decline, or at least in a state of change, interviewing various publicans, chefs and commentators on the way:

Pubs have never had it so hard, you could argue. They face significant and often inexorably increasing costs: rent; staffing (partly as a result of the recent national insurance contribution increases); energy (to heat and chill food and people); alcohol (duty on a bottle of 14.5% red wine has risen by nearly £1 in the past two years); and food (one chef tells me beef has gone up 50% in the past eight months). This comes on top of Covid recovery and the cost of living crisis… “Pub food used to be the moneymaker, but with the rising price of literally everything, it really isn’t as cheap to do that any more,” says [Katie] Mather. “For a long time, business owners have been able to hide the effects from customers to a certain degree; they’ve been able to cut corners in kind of invisible ways. But it’s become so difficult to deal with.”

We’re not just including this because Ray is quoted in it, honest. Steve approached us for input because we’ve been writing about this topic for a while, including a whole chapter on gastropubs in our book 20th Century Pub.

It’s always interesting when new categories or sub-categories of pub emerge. For lifestyle magazine Inside Hook Ruvani de Silva has written about the rise of women’s sports bars in the US:

Austin, Texas’s 1972 Pub opened its doors as March Madness kicked off, hosting a bursting-at-the-seams event with lines out the door. In the buzzy state capital, new bars always elicit interest, but excitement around 1972’s opening was about more than just another cool new watering hole: Austin had its first women’s sports bar… Hundreds of happy guests queued politely for handcrafted cocktails named things like Billie Jean and Simone and pitchers of light lager with a palpable buzz of contentment and community. Fans of all genders were welcomed into the bright space, decorated with women’s sports memorabilia, to watch women’s matches on their many indoor and outdoor screens.

We don’t often include podcasts here. Jess only listens to them very occasionally and Ray mostly listens to podcasts about film and folklore. The Bowery Boys is a long-running podcast about the history of New York and its most recent episodes are about the city’s oldest bars and taverns. Crucially, they also come with nice photo-laden accompanying blog posts:

Neir’s Tavern, in the quiet residential neighborhood of Woodhaven, Queens, once sat next to the popular Union Race Course, one of the key American sports venues of the early 19th century. Horse-racing remains in the bar’s DNA — in its insignia and on its walls… But this surprising spot may be better known for its connections to sassy queen of comedy Mae West and to the iconic Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas, which was filmed here.

Finally, from BlueSky, a striking piece of vintage beer advertising art…

The Starship Rainier, circa 1970 Simply stunning image in its own right, but also better than every frame of SNW season 3 so far. (via MOHAI)

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— Historic Beer Ads (@beerpuffery.bsky.social) August 8, 2025 at 3:05 PM

For more good reading check out our Patreon-exclusive ‘Footnotes’ to this post and Alan McLeod’s round up from Thursday.

News, nuggets and longreads 9 August 2025: The Old Scavenger Inn originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog