Goatee Phil's Beer Blog

  Beer and plenty of it Beers at Yard House, Addison TX   So, was 2021 the year that the hospitality industry recovered from the shitshow caused by Coronavirus or have we learned to live in a permanently compromised world? I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Life doesn't feel back to normal, and that's assuming that we can agree on what normal is. As I write, we've just emerged from Christmas and whereas last year, in the UK, we were heading for a lockdown, this year a rather surprising reversal is happening. Our government is now resisting calls to  clamp down but people have reacted on their own. A week or so ago I met a friend in the Evening Star , one of Brighton's most popular pubs. On the last Monday before Christmas, a day you would expect pubs to be heaving, it was practically empty. The following day, Charita met friends in the Hobgoblin , another busy Brighton pub, and it was the same story. Teasing the positives out of that disconcerting obs...

Bring on the crowds! Like a lot of people, I have managed to overcome my fear of infection enough to pay fairly regular visits to pubs. I've even ventured more frequently into the lawless hell-hole that is Brighton where mask-wearing has never really caught on. Large crowds though? A different kettle of sour. All the same, I was struck by the coincidence that the London Craft Beer Festival should be happening in the week that I "happened" to have taken some time off work. I had a look at their booking information and was reassured to see that only those who could show evidence of a recent negative test were allowed in. So I bought myself a ticket. It was held in Tobacco Dock , in Wapping, and my first thought on arrival was "how the hell are they going to fit that lot into even a large exhibition hall?" There must have been four or five hundred hardy souls squashed onto the tow path between the canal and the wire fence around the venue. The answer to my questio...

More craft beer adventures in the USA Outside the Midlands Beer Garden, Washington DC One of the problems I struggle with when visiting the States, and one that has impacted on my access to craft beers while there, is the almost total lack of public transport. Linked to that is the fact that shops and bars are either concentrated in vast malls, smaller strip malls or in the downtown area. Only the last of these variables bears any resemblance to town and village life in the UK. Wherever American shops and bars are located, they can only, except in the rarest cases, be reached by car. It follows from this that I have to rely on the kindness of others to deliver me and, hopefully, collect me or else I have to summon an Uber. On my two Stateside trips this year, to Cincinnati and Maryland, and to Cartersville GA, I did manage to get myself to several bars but I also made better use of the supermarkets and liquor stores. At least I did discover one chain, Total Wine and More...

The Goatee Awards 2018 The Brewery Shades , Crawley - an excellent selection of ales, as always If you're a beer drinker, I'm not sure there's been a better time to be alive. Thanks to the impact of the craft beer revolution there are now more microbreweries in the UK than there have ever been. You might suppose that at some point we will reach critical mass, and the market will start to shrink, but there's no sign of it happening yet.  On the down side, this was the year in which the torchbearers for good beer, CAMRA , failed to pass a motion at their AGM which would have enshrined their support for ALL good beer, not just the cask ale that they had always championed. This may not turn out to be that significant, or especially damaging, but at a time when cask sales are dropping CAMRA's credibility has taken a damaging hit. Let's hope that it isn't fatal, for them or for cask. My 2018, beer-wise, has definitely been memorable. Trips to German...