Every Saturday we round up the best writing about beer from the past week. This time, we’ve got cask stats, Czech stats, and Edinburgh pubs.
First, a bit of news that slightly surprised us because, clearly, we have not been paying attention: Powder Monkey, a brewery based in Gosport, Hampshire, has become a multinational business, acquiring its third and fourth Australian brewing brands this week. Powder Monkey has an entire separate Australian operation and its owners have spoken about a “buy and build” strategy. They’ve also been expanding in the UK, taking on brands/breweries on the Isle of Wight and elsewhere. One to watch, clearly.
At British Beer Breaks Phil Mellows attempts to interpret new stats on cask ale sales, observing that though the headline numbers are worrying, there are reasons to be hopeful:
According to the pub trade’s Morning Advertiser this week, cask ale volumes dropped by more than 7% in the past 12 months on top of year after year of similar falls for as long as anyone can remember. Barely 8% of total beer sales in pubs and bars – also in decline – are now poured from a handpump. I remember when it was twice that and people were worried then… But the full picture is intriguingly messy… Some brewers are seeing cask sales climb… Theakston, for instance, last week reported a third consecutive year of growth based on a “renewed interest” in the category.
In London this week, we’ve observed that places with cask ale are (a) taking more care with it and (b) focusing on more traditional and/or sessionable styles. Picking a pub more or less at random yesterday evening, because it was handy for where Jess had been working, we found a vaguely hipsterish vibe and, among other beers, Bass on the bar. Something may well be afoot.
On a related subject, Prague resident Evan Rail has been digging into the story behind figures that show a drop in beer consumption in Czechia, for VinePair. Like Phil, he argues that the topline numbers often conceal more complex narratives:
“I don’t think these numbers are really representative of what is going on in the market,” says Dan Hojdar, CEO at Vinohradský Pivovar, a leading craft brewery in Prague. “I don’t think it went down for small breweries.”… If craft producers didn’t really feel the crunch, Hojdar does note that the overall Czech beer business has changed a lot in recent years, becoming more competitive, even in the once-chummy world of small breweries… That might sound similar to how things have changed elsewhere. But what most outsiders don’t get is the pronounced stratification of the Czech brewing landscape. Today, there are around 550 breweries in the Czech lands, though most of those — over 500 — are small to tiny, operating as neighborhood brewpubs or at most regional producers. By contrast, the well-established big brands are absolutely enormous.
At St. John’s Wort Jordan St. John has written about the experience of teaching people about beer, both through a more serious college course and at a lighter-touch ‘introduction to’ level for hospitality workers and keen amateurs. There’s lots of interest but one section struck us as particularly interesting:
It’s Saturday morning and one of the students from the last Beer One class which ended ten days earlier has invited me on a ride along to train some restaurant staff on the beer they have on tap. The menu is largely Mediterranean and the staff are young; probably some of them are seasonal hires since the patio is open and sweltering… Do they need to know what a hop is? Probably not… It’s landing pretty well, although I think some of them were out late… Craft Beer has been suffering from brain drain, not unlike the rest of the service industry. People got out because of the pandemic and some of the lifers are uninspired and going through the motions.
All of this speaks to the reality of the situation on the ground, where we expect people to be passionate and knowledgeable, even if their training is brief and second hand, and when the job is poorly paid and possibly seasonal.
Edinburgh Pub Reviews is a newsletter that’s new to us, written by Imran Rahman-Jones. As we don’t get to Scotland often (based on current stats, about once every 20 years) it’s great to read detailed, evocative notes from a pub culture that’s slightly different to the English one in which we are immersed. This week’s piece was about Thomson’s Bar:
The pub itself is your basic one-room boozer. The large chequerboard floor tiles are the first thing to catch your eye upon entry; they provide a welcome backdrop to the heavily-wooded decor that dominates the rest of the room. Some central high tables are surrounded by an outer rim of tables up against the walls. The impressively carved ornate bar, with matching gantry, dominates one side… Though this is a classic old-fashioned Scottish boozer, the design dates only from 2000, when [Ian] Whyte bought the old Bissets Bar and gave it one of his refits. He had already beautified boozers such as Bow Bar and Cumberland Bar, turning them into tasteful and timeless taverns. This time, he was inspired by Alexander “Greek” Thomson, an influential Glasgow architect from the 19th century.
It’s been a while since we linked to The Londonist – one of those websites that used to be great but has largely descended into clickbait and (non-AI) slop. This week, however, it published an updated version of a pub crawl by Matt Brown originally shared in a newsletter in 2024, which has a clever premise:
Blunder with me, if you will, on a pub crawl for the ages. We’re heading out on a beer-soaked journey around some of London’s most historic boozers. But this is no random selection of ye olde inns. Instead, we’re going to try and visit one pub for every century, from Tudor times onwards. Prepare to embark on a temporal swash, a carousing chronology, as we navigate our time machine through half a millennium of pub history… The optimal route makes use of the networks of passages around Fleet Street and Strand. These are ponderous to describe so if you do the pub crawl in real life, you might want to use your phone or A-Z to navigate between pubs. On the other hand, it’s fun to get a bit lost now and then.
The pubs suggested aren’t all great, in all honesty, but they are all interesting. And in warm weather, those Fleet Street adjacent alleyways and courtyards are nice places to hang out.
Finally, from BlueSky, farmhouse brewing makes the Latvian equivalent of Take a Break:
Our Latvian expedition made the front page of Latvian newspaper “Kas jauns” (thanks to Reinis at Labietis).
This is important because this kind of attention shows Latvians that their brewing tradition is more than just old grandpas getting drunk in their cellar. It is actually real, serious beer…
— Lars Marius Garshol (@larsga.bsky.social) June 26, 2025 at 8:27 AM
For more good reading check out Alan McLeod’s round-up from Thursday.
