Real Ale, Real Music

We are still only in January, but this first month of 2024 has already seen a number of changes within the brewing industry, affecting some well-known names. But, whether we like it or not, change has always been a feature of the brewing landscape. Here's some thoughts.... So there's been plenty going on this past month. One of the country's biggest brewers announces it is no longer to brew one of its best-known beers using traditional equipment and methods of which they were the last-surviving exponents in the country. Two popular craft brewers announce they are calling in administrators. Within days, one of them is saved by a neighbouring brewery. Another craft brewery announces they are to merge with a local leisure group. And these events all follow on from the news from earlier in the month when Midlands brewers Purity announced they were going into administration, only to be acquired a few days later by the Breal Group who stepped in and came to the aid of  Black Shee...

An assortment of different places from the central parts of Newcastle when I was there between Christmas and New Year, with a few where I was paying my first ever visit. Read on to find out about the best beer I'd had all year, a first-time visit to a pub that I had actually been to before, and a possible sighting of a musical legend.... Now I know of some bloggers ( no names, no pack drill ) who regularly write about pubs they visited weeks or even months ago. Myself, I usually write about places I have often visited just days before. However on this occasion, in the interests of not over-featuring one particular area I decided I would follow the example of my esteemed colleagues and hold back on writing this piece from the North East for a week or two, having written one just before Christmas and then mentioned the area and some of its pubs and beers next time. But nearly a month on, I have returned with a somewhat random assortment of pubs that I visited over the couple of days ...

A first trip to Manchester of the year, and one which involved dipping into a couple of the city's suburbs plus a foray into the fringes of neighbouring Stockport. And there was much to applause as I visited a quartet of excellent places.... One of the best books I have read recently, and certainly the best involving beer, is Matthew Curtis'  Manchester's Best Beer Pubs and Bars , a cracker of a guide to the city which was published in Autumn 2023. In it the author, who is a beer writer, podcaster, and joint founder of the excellent online magazine based around beer called Pellicle , gives the reader a guided tour of almost 200 pubs, bars, cafes, taprooms, bottle shops, etc. - a personal run through the best places to get a beer in Manchester and the area beyond, backed up with some excellent photographs and plenty of history and useful information for the visitor. And so I decided I would road test one or two of the places that Matthew had enthused about in his highly read...

I spent an hour or two the other day in the town of Sowerby Bridge, set in the heart of the Calder Valley. Here's what I discovered as I returned to the town where I was brought up and checked out some of the local pubs.... It had been about a year, bar the odd pint, since I'd last been out in Sowerby Bridge. The town, which lies in the Calder Valley to the west of Halifax, stretches out along the valley bottom, with houses climbing up the often steep surrounding hillsides. It had originally been a bridging point at the confluence of the River Calder with its tributary the Ryburn, but it was a marshy, boggy no-man's land here with few inhabitants, with the valley's residents tending to live in small settlements dotted about the drier terrain of the higher slopes. However, when first the canal and then the railway came, mills and factories sprung up in the valley bottom, and the local woollen trade, hitherto consisting of individual weavers in cottages using wool from th...

A personal round-up of the last 12 months from the world of beer and pubs.... Another year over, another one just begun, as someone (almost) once said. Or most likely did. After a time for reflection, enjoying time with family, friends, and those random acquaintances you see once a year and those you will probably never see again. A toast or two drunk to those no longer with us but always remembered, never forgotten, the memories and sense of their presence wrapping around us like a warm comfort blanket on a wild and chilly winter's night. 2023's contract has now ended, with so many things that are not good in the wider world as we take those first tentative steps into 2024. Sadly we have lost several breweries over the course of 2023 whilst pubs continue to close on a regular basis. Amongst the breweries we have lost are Bad Seed ( Malton ), Donkeystone ( Saddleworth ), Cains ( Liverpool ), Revolutions ( Castleford ), Alphabet ( Manchester ), Thirst Class ( Stockport ), and Bo...