Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got warmer Guinness, Italian pils and the Good People.
First, a rare example of a story from a retail technology vendor press release that is actually interesting: payment provider Dojo has provided a granular breakdown of exactly when and how the World Cup increased spending in pubs. Being a football fan, and having done quite a bit of work with electronic point-of-sale (EPOS) systems and retail data over the years, this is right up Jess’s alley. Check out this nugget in particular:
Hydration breaks saw peaks throughout the tournament. The second half hydration break saw spend jump by 204% as fans rushed to the bar to calm their nerves while England tried to hold onto their lead. While it wasn’t to be for England again, spending stayed strong and near double typical levels well past the final whistle, remaining up 99% at 11pm. Fans stuck around for around half an hour after full-time for a final commiseration drink before turning in.
Quite a different story to 1966, eh?
For Pellicle Adrian Tierney-Jones has written about Birrificio Italiano’s Tipopils, a modern classic which is now, at 30 years old, not so modern:
“Its birth was due to my desire to replicate a flavour that had absolutely enlightened and overwhelmed me at a certain point in my young life,” [brewery founder Agostino] Agostino tells me. “The first time I drank Jever Pils.” … Agostino says he finds it funny, because Jever—brewed in Germany by Friesisches Brauhaus zu Jever, part of the Radeberger Group—and Tipopils don’t have too much in common. Jever is far more bitter than Tipopils, for starters, and unlike the latter it isn’t dry-hopped… “That’s just how it goes,” he says. “Beer takes you by the hand and leads you where it wants to go.”
Every now and then a story emerges of someone daring to defy the locked-down, carefully prescribed corporate rules around the serving of Guinness. There was the pub that was degassing kegs and serving them through a cask ale pump, for example. In a similar vein, we were fascinated to learn from Donal Fallon about a pub in Dublin that is serving Guinness at room temperature:
Keeping the Guinness away from the cold room, it’s certainly noticeable that… The pint takes considerably longer to settle, as the surge of bubbles behaves surprisingly differently to what we’re used to watching… [And there] is a depth of taste to it which is lost when the pint is too cold… It’s worth saying the vast majority of stout served in the pub is in the cold room, and this is just an experiment of sorts through one tap, should people wish to try it.
And guess what? The Beer Nut did wish to try it. Click through to read his verdict in the thread.
Because I've been FORCED into it by @lisagrimm.com, @eoghanwalshbxl.bsky.social and @beerfoodtravel.bsky.social, a pint of non-coldroom Draught Guinness from the creamy Wayback Machine.
— The Beer Nut (@thebeernut.bsky.social) 28 July 2026 at 13:00
(With thanks to Lisa Grimm for pointing us to the original Substack post.)
Although not directly about beer or pubs, Bettina Makalintal’s piece for Eater about how some restaurants are rejecting AI-generated text and imagery is certainly relevant:
The backlash to AI imagery is growing across a certain part of the culture. Sentiment along the lines of “I’d rather see a poster made with Sharpie on a scrap of paper than an AI event flyer,” or “I’m not going to your restaurant if the ad is the AI” is proliferating. “Frictionmaxxing,” a term that writer Kathryn Jezer-Morton coined to refer to a rejection of technologies of convenience in favor of slower and more analog processes, has escaped containment, coming to mean the general choice to choose pre-internet ways of creation and problem-solving. In this sense, it can refer to the choice of the handcrafted over the AI-generated… At Dean’s, the long-awaited new British restaurant in New York City, the menu is also handwritten. Every week, interim director of operations Tommy Hunt receives the menu updates, then comes in and writes the menu by hand for it to be photocopied. “When we talked about the pubs that we admired most, like our sources of inspiration in the [United Kingdom], there was always a handwritten menu, because it’s a really personal experience,” says co-owner Annie Shi.
For her Weirdo Guide to Dublin Pubs Lisa Grimm has written a review of Quinn’s which also reveals her interest in folk horror and the paranormal:
It’s something of an infamous pub, known just as much in the past for its brushes with poor drainage, health and safety issues and even a murder as for its reputation as a gameday location for those descending upon Croke Park from the countryside for the GAA… We even get a bit of folklore in the demise of the previous incarnation of Quinn’s – the story goes that then-owner, Seán Quinn – devastatingly referred to on the pub’s current website as a ‘former billionaire’ – caused his own misfortune when he moved the Aughrim Wedge Tomb, a megalithic tomb of c. 2000 BCE, in order to make way for some quarrying (and to create an ersatz tourist attraction at a hotel he formerly owned, where it remains). This, as one might expect, upset the Good People, and it was all downhill from there… In any event, Quinn himself has not been associated with the pub for some years, but it’s taken the new ownership group a long time and a somewhat-controversial investment scheme to get back up and running.
Tandleman has been looking at the alcoholic strength of Carling and the influence of beer duty thresholds on big brewery brands in particular:
Molson Coors… have announced that Carling lager will reduce to 3.4% for their packaged versions… It will not apply to the version sold in the pubs and is being done to keep Carling competitive with its rivals such as Carling Pilsner and Fosters in the supermarkets… The figures are quite startling. To reduce the alcohol by volume to under the threshold of lower duty, set at 3.5% will save the brewer – the brewer pays the duty– 20.35 pence per 440 ml can. Multiply this by the millions of cans produced and you can see the logic. Will this saving be passed on to the dedicated Carling at home drinker? Well, if history is anything to go by, no… Already we see a rash of 3.4% cask beers in free houses and is that difference passed on to customers? I would suggest not. Are most of them thin and watery? Yes.
Finally, from BlueSky, another sign of the Fall of the BrewDog Empire…
Guest beers at Brewdog Waverley tell a very 2026 story
— David Desi Pubs Dason (@davidjesudason.bsky.social) 26 July 2026 at 16:25
For more good reading check out our Patreon-exclusive ‘Footnotes’ to this post and Alan McLeod’s round up from Thursday.
News, nuggets and longreads 1 August 2026: African Psycho originally posted at Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog
