Posts by: Roger Protz
Pubs’ business rates blow
A post-Budget business rates bombshell could see scores of pubs closing as they face massive hikes in the amount they pay. The increases fly in the fa...
Long road back for Bass
Draught Bass may be in a pub near you. If I had written that 20 years ago, I would have been carried off to the funny farm, as Bass was the leading pr...
Small is beautiful
The sale in mid-October of the former Ringwood site in Hampshire to a property developer marks the sad end of a brewery that played a pivotal role in...
An Open Letter to the Rt Hon Rachel Reeves, MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer
Dear Chancellor, I am writing to you with a plea to take wide-ranging measures in your Budget to help our struggling pubs. The latest dire prediction...
Mild’s stronger than you think
On my first trip to the Beacon Hotel in Sedgley I found a visitor from Japan in one of small rooms supplied by the central bar. When I asked him what...
The Firkin Saga goes on
The Firkin Saga by David Bruce, Right Book Press, ÂŁ18.99 In July 1979, when David Bruce transformed the boarded-up Duke of York under a railway arch i...
Stout legacy for Martyn Cornell
Porter and Stout: A Complete History by Martyn Cornell (McFarland, ÂŁ55.66). This is, without doubt, one of the great books about beer, standing proud...
Return of an old friend
The first time I drank Boddingtons Bitter I refused to leave the pub. I was in Hyde on the edge of Manchester, en route for a meeting with the graphic...
The greatest long drink in the world
Have Carlsberg, Heineken and other global brewers been rereading George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 where the truth is consigned to a memory hole an...
A great British tradition
Beer Festivals: Â A Great British Tradition Laura Hadland, CAMRA Books, ÂŁ15.99 Laura Hadland is not only a fine journalist and beer writer but has also...
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