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Best-selling business advice from a BrewDog
As the only beer writer on the planet with an MBA (probably), it falls to me to give a business school-style review on behalf of beer drinkers to Business for Punks, the just-published “how we...
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Goodbye to the last of London’s million-barrel breweries
Flag on the top of the Mortlake brewery 1932 It is one of history’s ironies that just as London hits more breweries than at any time in the past 110 years, its brewing capacity is more than halved with...
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Caley’s self- crafted approach to being craft
Are you a mature but still lively Victorian brewery? Do you worry that younger breweries, with their weird American hop varieties, shiny stainless steel lauter tuns and one-off wacky recipes, are...
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AB InBev acquires Camden Town: least surprising news in the history of beer
I was actually speaking to a senior London brewer about something else entirely on Monday when he asked me if I had heard that AB InBev had bought the Camden Town Brewery, and my instant response was:...
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The Twelve Beers of Christmas
On the 12th day of Christmas my True Love gave to me Twelve draughts of Duvel Eleven pints of porter Ten Landlords leaping Nine Lagunitas Eight Mackeson milk stouts Seven Silly Saisons Six Geuze...
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Pleasure versus risk, the honest alcohol debate
If Dame Sally Davies had really wanted to be honest, she would have said: “Here’s my advice on how to live a possibly longer but almost certainly less pleasure-filled life …” Instead the chief medical...
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Shall we call this new British beer style – Hoppy Light Ale?
A new British beer style is being born as you read this. Indeed, “being born” is almost certainly wrong: “building up bulk” is probably much better, since it’s been on bar tops, arguably, for at least...
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Hangmen, and other plays set in pubs
To the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End to see Hangmen, by Martin McDonagh, a play set almost entirely in the public bar of a pub in Oldham in 1965. If you go to see it yourself – and you don’t have...
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Dishonest nonsense and Camra’s Clause Four moment
Is the Campaign for Real Ale about to have its Clause Four moment? For younger readers, Clause Four was the part of the constitution of the Labour Party that contained the aim of achieving “the common...
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A short history of spruce beer part one: the Danzig connection
Danzic circa 1700: are those kegs of spruce beer on the quayside? Spruce beer is made from the tips of spruce trees. Except that the connection is not as simple as it appears: it is pretty much a...
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A short history of spruce beer part two: the North American connection
Jacques Cartier supposedly pictured learning from a Canadian First Nationer how to save his men from scurvey: but the chap with the buckskin suit and the metal axe with the tepees in the background...
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How to brew like an 18th century Virginian
I live half-way between Richmond and Hampton – which gave a small but still slightly odd twist to my 3,000-mile journey last month to deliver a talk in another town halfway between Richmond and...
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Two traditional breweries: a photo-essay
Compared to, say, Roger Putman, recently retired editor of Brewer & Distiller International magazine, who has visited more than 170 different breweries in his career, I’ve really not been to that...
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Why Rooney Anand is talking rubbish on minimum alcohol pricing
I was disappointed and angry to see Rooney Anand, chief executive of Greene King, calling in the Daily Telegraph last week for minimum unit pricing for alcohol. Disappointed because the arguments for...
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Why Greene King doesn’t care that the haters hate its IPA
Hard luck, haters: Greene King knows you don’t like its IPA, you think it’s too bland, “not a real IPA” at 3.6% abv, and it doesn’t care at all. Not the tiniest drop. In fact it’s probably quite...
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How I got Mikkeller to call me a bastard
What sort of bastard goes along to a book launch just to point out to the author the mistakes he’s made? Errrr … Me. OK, it was done in what I’d like to insist, really, was a semi-joking way, and in a...
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More notes towards a history of the beer mug
Loved and disliked in equal parts, and enjoying an unexpected renaissance in hipstery parts, despite being more than 70 years old, the dimpled beer mug is undoubtedly an icon of England. It was...
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In which I give more badly written beer history a good kicking
Why oh why am I still having to write lengthy corrections to articles about the history of India Pale Ale? Well, apparently because the Smithsonian magazine, the official journal published by the...
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Eight per cent of British craft brewers have PhDs and other dubious statistics
I have a new book out, A Craft Beer Road Trip Around Britain, with snapshots of 40 of Britain’s top small breweries from Scotland to the South West. Don’t rush to try to buy it from Amazon/your...
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Why Welsh beer blogger Simon Martin is a superstar in Poland
Two of the more than 300 bronze dwarfs to be found on the streets of Wrocław. They commemorate the surrealist anti-Communist Orange Alternative protest movement of the 1980s, whose symbol was a dwarf,...
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