Twenty beers before lunchtime

The time is 10am and there are 20 different beers to be drunk before lunchtime. It must be another supermarket beer judging.
I judged for the twice-yearly Tesco Beer Awards quite a few times, but this week’s was the Sainsbury’s Beer Competition, and although Sainsbury’s has brought in the same PR team to organise the entries [...]

The Prize goes to Fuller’s

When Fuller’s announced in 2005 that it was acquiring Gale’s of Horndean, I couldn’t get very upset, in large part because I was angry at what Prize Old Ale had been allowed to become.
This should have been a proud and heavily promoted flag-carrier for British beer, about the last survivor of the “strong old ale” [...]

The Lego(TM) ale conner

I’ve just put up a new myth page on this site completely debunking the story that medieval ale conners ever sat in puddles of drink in order to test it – so it’s a bit naughty to plug this page, which tells the (totally inaccurate, remember) story of the ale conner and the leather breeches [...]

What colour was mild?

In the mid-1970s I had a girlfriend who was a student at Liverpool University. The campus pub-of-choice was (and still is, I believe) the Cambridge on the corner of Mulberry Street, which was, back then, a Burtonwood Brewery outlet.
Its popularity was partly down to its closeness to the university, of course, but also for the excellent, well-priced [...]