Boak & Bailey (Jess & Ray)

West London.

West London.

A totally normal time in the pub. [Ray]

[Video description: A bunch of people in white shirts and red neckerchiefs dancing with swords.]

Stress and confusion: the concept of cognitive load in the world of beer Whether we realise it or not, most of us seek pubs and beers which require us to use less brain power, and to do less on-the-fly risk assessment. “You just like pubs where everyone is like you,” said ...

This will be the first month without a newsletter since 2015 or whenever. We'll probably be doing a newsletter-type post on the blog. We're also making progress moving Substack pieces over, backdated, e.g.

boakandbailey.com/2025/04/stre...

It was the end of a long day at the near end of a long week… and that’s my excuse for being briefly mesmerised by a squeaking (abandoned) pub sign - The Gate…squeaking.

It’s nearly a form of Onomatopoeia, a painted object finding a sound which mimics the well known sound of the object painted.

Having AI make a bad smeary rendering of your beautiful Victorian tower brewery should be grounds for having it taken off you. For shame, Hook Norton.

The Generation Game — How Clerkenwell’s Sutton Arms Became the Quintessential London Pub — Pellicle The door at the Sutton Arms swings open and six Americans come bounding in like cocker spaniels just off the leash. After securing a table in the corner, they send emissaries to the bar. Lunchtime foo...

Hands up if you love the Sutton Arms, Clerkenwell!

@willhawkes.bsky.social takes us to one of London's finest boozers, where good beer is served perfectly and the pies are 👌🏻👌🏻

www.pelliclemag.com/home/2026/3/...

I visited the Dame in bedminster last weekend, here's my dartboard report: fredcook.co.uk/2026/03/07/T...

Here we are. The lead up to St Patrick’s Day Tuesday which means maybe a four or five day event. I’ll be in the shed. As you condensate, here’s the beery news notes for this week.

anyway if anyone have recs for pubs basically anywhere in zone 1 that do a decent enough weekend lunch then please do holler in this general direction, 9.41am too early to already be losing the will to live

(please, no lectures on The Reasons Behind This, sometimes you just want to whinge)

trying to book a table for a big pub lunch with friends and I'm sorry, how many pubs in London now feel comfortable charging over £20 for their mains? what are we, fucking Monaco?

It has been a nice few days of pubbing around Sheffield and the Peak District.

Couldn't get the idea of adibass out of my head 🔺🔺🔺

That is The Hare on the Hill. The photo is a couple of years old.

We've gone to The Old Stillage which is *also* lively and busy. Big Sunday.

Had to give up on The Swan With Two Necks because it was too loud and too busy. But bloody good for them!

Arthur Taylor's book might have something. We'll check when we get a chance.

When did the game of darts become associated with pubs? We all know that in the UK if you want to play darts you head to the pub. But where did this association between pubs and darts begin?

BLOG POST: Dartboards and pubs go together, everyone knows that. But how long has that been the case? And, actually, how old is darts as a game? 🍺🍻

boakandbailey.com/2026/03/when...

Uh oh...

Ha, so, we nearly linked to this in the footnotes. We often find ourselves sitting next to Nicola at The Swan With Two Necks and we've spoken to her a few times. When we were there last weekend some visitors to town told her they'd toured the pubs from her first video and she was delighted.

I visited Maddens in Belfast in the early 2000s and was buzzed in/on camera, but context is important in this case...

And Steve is here --> @steveuntilnextyear.bsky.social

There's two (out of ~800) bars you need to be buzzed in to in Dublin. One good one with an eccentric owner who vets everyone, one cocktail bar trying to pretend its in the Prohibition era. So not unheard of but definitely rare

We'd forgotten this. We're quite proud of it.

Is BrewDog Punk IPA still a decent beer? We recently found ourselves sticking up for BrewDog Punk IPA on social media, much as we might be critical of the brewery as a business.

We also find that pretty annoying! We wrote something about it last year:

boakandbailey.com/2025/08/is-b...

We've also just realised that we were at Unwin's taproom at the same time as the Finnish bloke mentioned in the footnotes post and clocked him asking what the "unusual" name of the brewery could possibly mean.

Footnotes on news, nuggets and longreads 7 March 2026 | Boak & Bailey Get more from Boak & Bailey on Patreon

And here are the footnotes, just for Patreon supporters, with more BrewDog links, more thoughts on gentrification, and a pointer to a piece of short fiction set in a pub.

www.patreon.com/posts/152445...

News, nuggets and longreads 7 March 2026: The Lonely Londoners Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got pub influencers, brewery sales and buzzers. We usually start these round-ups with an item or two of beer...

GOOD MORNING! Here's the latest edition of news, nuggets and longreads, with a bit on BrewDog, and several links that connect with and echo each other in pleasing ways on influencers and gentrification. 🍻🍺

boakandbailey.com/2026/03/news...

An alternative sports bar (or a bar for alternative sports) I love watching sport in the pub but some of the sports I enjoy watching most are simply not on offer. Where can I watch curling with a pint?

BLOG POST: Jess on the difficulty of watching anything but the most mainstream sports in the pub and why she dreams of something better. 🍺🍻

boakandbailey.com/2026/03/an-a...

For Patreon subscribers, some further thoughts on this:

www.patreon.com/posts/152336...