Pub Curmudgeon

As my dear departed landlord, Steve, said of the village local. If the doors aren't open they won't come in. In my patch, passing trade is so irregular these days limited opening hours are a disaster.

If you don’t open it, they can’t come The licensee of the Wonston Arms in Hampshire, a former CAMRA National Pub of the Year, recently had an article published in the Daily Tele...

New blogpost - pubs that open short and erratic hours shouldn't really be surprised that they have no customers.
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/08/if-y...

The village pub I run is being taxed to death Soaring costs and rising levies have turned Britain’s favourite pastime into a luxury

The village pub I run is being taxed to death, by the licensee of the Wonston Arms, Hampshire. Link free to read.
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/f31f4db...

The ‘real’ drinking pubs serving £5 pints and no fancy food – and thriving From a tiny north London boozer to a historic building in Bristol, our writer speaks to the landlords who are keeping things simple

The ‘real’ drinking pubs serving £5 pints and no fancy food – and thriving
www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1037610...

Fresh cream Budweiser Brewing Group (the new name for AB InBev in the UK) have announced that they are relaunching Boddingtons Cask Bitter , which was l...

New blogpost – reviving Boddingtons Cask Bitter represents a significant declaration of faith in the cask market by one of the international brewers.
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/07/fres...

"The laws in your location require you to verify you're an adult before accessing certain features on Bluesky, like adult content and direct messaging."
Ah well, not doing that, so that's an end to DM's on here.

The long retreat of cask The Morning Advertiser recently published figures confirming the continued decline of cask beer sales in the UK, which were reflected on b...

New blogpost – what are the reasons behind the long-term decline in cask ale sales, and can anything be done to reverse it?
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-...

Bass at the Tynemouth Lodge Hotel

Bass at The Sun Inn, Stockton on Tees. It's banked!

Bass at the Five Bells, Wootton Bassett (it's brighter because I brightened the image)

Bass at The Star Inn, Bath. It's flat!

The Bass revival is real - or, at least, there's plenty of it out there. Banked, flat, somewhere in between. Controversially, perhaps, the best pint was at the Five Bells in Wootton Bassett, Wilts

Is cask beyond the pale? By Phil Mellows

Cask ale volumes down by 7% over 12 months, and it now accounts for only 8% of beer sold in pubs. britishbeerbreaks.substack.com/p/is-cask-be...

Team bonding exercise.

This is a stunning location, with views for miles around, and the beer garden within the walls of the ruined castle, so it’s perhaps surprising it’s not better known.

The Castle Hotel, Halton, Cheshire, in the 1950s.

The Castle Hotel, Halton, Cheshire in the 1950s. Still open as a pub.

Adding insult to injury The Daily Telegraph reports that the government have spent over £35,000 on beermats to boast about increasing the minimum wage. This in it...

New blogpost – it comes across as something of a sick joke to expect pubs to display beermats celebrating a swingeing increase in their costs.
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/06/addi...

Interior of the Laurieston Bar, Glasgow

The Laurieston Bar, Glasgow. If only more pubs could look like this ☺️🍻

Thanks for the mention - surprised I haven’t got more kickback from that piece.

Ties that bind When you ask people about how to improve the fortunes of the British pub, one issue that often comes up is the beer tie. Remove restrictions...

New blogpost – imagining that the pub landscape can be transformed into one of free-of-tie independent freeholders is a “three acres and a cow” fantasy.
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/05/ties...

ANALYSIS: Pub numbers down by over 15,000 in past 25 years The figures found from 2023 to 2024, pub numbers fell by 350.

Pub numbers down by over 15,000 in the past 25 years ☹️
Public Health will chalk this up as a win, of course.
www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/Article/2025...

That brickwork alone is top drawer but decent ale as well. British Oak, Stirchley - Brum

Absolutely monumental pub, sadly currently closed, as with so much of their estate.

Early to bed Earlier this month, Keir Starmer announced that pubs would be allowed to stay open until 1 am on Thursday 8 May, to mark the 80th anniversar...

New blogpost - pubgoers are a lot less willing to stick around until last orders than they used to be.
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/05/earl...

Lager is difficult to do well, and most British craft brewers fail that test.

I went to the pub with an old friend – and headed home at 9.30pm. Is anyone still there for last orders? I couldn’t find a single pub that stayed open late for VE Day last week. No wonder when they’re so often empty by 11pm, writes Adrian Chiles

This is a massive change in drinking habits - and why the VE Day extension was so pointless.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New Bass pumpclip 👍🔺
Certainly stands out better on the bar than the previous one, which was a bit dark. Also good to see it being (correctly) described as a Pale Ale rather than "Amber" like Pedigree.

Absolutely. A lot of social connections are made in workplaces. Also traditionally a good place for meeting the opposite sex.

There’s certainly a lot to this. A lot of male friendship is about shared ritual and routine.

But alcohol acts as a social lubricant.

Yes, in a sense it accelerated a trend, but without the ban a lot more pubs and clubs would have remained open for a lot more years.

For many people, the simple act of getting out of the house and visiting a pub or club is a form of socialising. You don’t have to engage in conversation to benefit. A lot of people don’t understand this.

Although plenty of food-serving pubs allow dogs, especially in rural areas.

Scarcity bites A few weeks ago, I was browsing the Wetherspoon’s app and noticed that the chicken breast bites were “temporarily unavailable” I thought not...

New blogpost – it may seem trivial, but Wetherspoon’s ongoing chicken bites famine is indicative of an uncharacteristic failure of supply chain management.
pubcurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2025/05/scar...