Opinion
Topical articles and pieces from a personal point of view.
The emperor’s new clothes?
Making my way to a table just in front of the bar at my new local, Stockport’s the Magnet, I take a seat and watch a near constant stream of people ap...
Sharing the lager love
As a child of the 1980s and a fledgling beer drinker in the early 2000s, I don’t mind telling you that I have consumed a fair amount of macro lager in...
A healthy respect for beer
What is it about the British that we treat beer, our national drink, with such lack of respect? I spent several days in Belgium last month on a work a...
Review: Desi Pubs – good for beer, food and society
Can a book about pubs be heart-warming? It can, as Desi Pubs is about more – far more – than beer. It’s about multiculturalism and tackling racism as...
Is Keykeg the way to open up the world of real cider and perry?
I recently spent a weekend at FyneFest, the annual festival run by lauded Scottish brewery Fyne Ales. The event has been running since 2010 and, since...
Welsh rarebit with Manchester Brown Ale
Imagine if you will that you are a landed Edwardian and you are close to finishing your 10-course dinner. The hors d’ouevres, soup, fish, roasted join...
Hop on board the sustainability train
I recently sipped a new release pale ale from Bristol’s Wiper and True. Upside Down (5 per cent ABV) positively explodes with tropical and stone fruit...
Stranger things have happened
The buzz word on Beer Street is collab. It’s short for collaboration and means a beer produced by two or more breweries that share malts, hops and yea...
Use it or lose it
The news of pub and brewery closures continues apace this year. Independents and freeholds that were battered by lockdown and then a wave of price inc...
Hasta la vista heritage
The American writer Mark Twain famously observed when a newspaper published his obituary “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” and real...
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