We are very, very lucky at the moment in the beer world. We now have more breweries in the UK since the 1930’s. Beer is outselling wine in every country in the world (other than France, Italy, and quite bizarrely, Bulgaria). We luxuriate in choice and variety. A new...
Some of you may know that I used to work for Guinness, and the most commonly asked question I got asked was “Why does Guinness taste so much better in Dublin than it does in a pub here?” Well, there were some technical reasons: throughputs and volumes of the Black...
When I first started writing these features, I was very determined that the beers I chose would be available from John O’Groats to Land’s End, so no reader could ever accuse me of being too regionalised, and become frustrated that they couldn’t get the beer in their...
Cast your mind back a few years ago to Walker’s (the crisp people, just in case you’re not with me and thought I was talking about a beer) who launched an advertising campaign focused on the quality and care they put into every bag of crisps. It showed a slow motion...
Throughout most of the 1990’s I now realise I lived in a bit of a bubble. I was lucky enough to run a free house, not tied to any big brewery; I had a fairly lenient boss who was happy for me to choose and buy the cask beers I wanted to feature on the bar each week; I...