CAMRA’s National Winter Ales Festival 2011 takes place at the Sheridan Suite, Oldham Road, Manchester, M40 8EA from January 19^th – 22^nd 2011.

The festival begins at 2.30p.m. on the Wednesday with a trade session and then opens to all from 5.00p.m to 10.30p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday’s sessions run from 12noon to 10.30 p.m.  . 

Concessions apply for students, pensioners and members of the armed forces (suitable ID to be shown).

CAMRA members £1 off the FULL price at all times (except Thursday – free ALL day).

(more…)

I don’t recall how I first heard about the above art prize and pub, the New Inn, Wedmore, Somerset, but since first reading about them four/five years ago I look forward to seeing the results of the prize each year and listening to the exploits, at this my favorite art competition.  

This annual piss-take of the established art world’s Turner Prize is held every year in early December at the New Inn and the winner is the entry that makes the judges laugh the most and into which the least amount of effort has gone. The more crap it is, the better its chances of victory and entries can be disqualified for “not being shit enough”. The competition is held an hour before “the lesser known Turner Prize” and apparently this year it attracted a full room at the New Inn.

(more…)

I read with interest the above recent article in The Publican .

In it BrewDog says it has joined the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA), of which All Gates is also a member, simply to make use of its Direct Delivery Scheme (DDS), as it says it is “the only way” it can sell to Enterprise Inns’ pubs.

I should really show the same picture as The Publican and Morning Advertiser did, of BrewDog’s M.D. James Watt when running this article, but find this lady on the left, to be far more attractive.

(more…)

I read this week in the Morning Advertiser with heavy heart that Greene King has sold the former Hardy’s and Hansons Kimberley Brewery in Nottinghamshire for an undisclosed sum. Greene King acquired Hardy’s and Hansons in 2006 and shut the brewery at the end of that year.

There was never a chance that brewing would ever take place on the site again but having now been bought by the Leicester-based Alif Group ahead of an auction due to take place; my guess is that it will simply become a vast store for this bathroom wholesaler.

(more…)

Fly In The Loaf, 13 Hardman Street, Liverpool L1 9AS
0151 708 0817

There are no flies on this traditional Liverpool pub. The old Kirkland’s Wine Bar in Hardman Street opened in March 2004 as Fly In The Loaf. It was the second venture in the city by Isle of Man based Okells (IOM) Limited, part of the Heron & Brearley Group. The previous year they had renovated Rigby’s in Dale Street, one of the city’s oldest ale houses, into the highly successful Thomas Rigby.

(more…)

I wrote a post the other week entitled - If you want to predict the future, simply look at the past, about Belhaven and Greene King. I believe that same maxim may apply here but for different reasons.

In recent days Robert Cain’s Auditors have warned that this famous Liverpool brewery again faces material uncertainty over its finances which may threaten its survival, but its owners remain “optimistic” they can again turn things around. I think we have heard that before.

(more…)

It’s Christmas; I don’t really enjoy it; in that it has become one big commercialised racket. Also that Christmas now effectively lasts for three weeks and affects our main business; property development, big time. On the upside our pubs and the brewery do well. So from a business perspective it’s a curates egg.  However I do try and enjoy it for a few days for my kids sake.

So before I play Santa and at some stage get myself off to one or more of our pubs over the Christmas break, a quick post to wish all a very Happy Christmas.

I’ll have a few days away from my blog.  So, eat, drink and be merry but whatever you do, have a great and peaceful time.

.

The Hulton Colliery of 1910, known locally as Pretoria Pit, employed 2,500 men and boys some as young as 12 years, many from the same family. The miners were local workers, from Westhoughton, Wingates, Lostock, Daisy Hill, Chequerbent, Daubill, Chowbent (Atherton), Tyldesley and Hindley Green; 900 clocked on for the morning shift of December 21st 1910 while the rest of the community was preparing for Christmas.

However, the local coal mining families were completely unaware that in a brief instant their lives were about to be tragically and irrevocably changed.

(more…)

Put your hands up if you buy the Christmas Radio Times and then spend an evening circling the programmes you intend to watch or record with a marker pen?

Well here’s a new TV series you should perhaps circle along with the rest….a BBC2 TV series, made by RDF West, about British beer (along with some wine, whiskeys and ciders). 

(more…)

Regular readers of my blog will know that I am a big fan of George Orwell.  He shared many of my ideas about the world in general and I think said everything worth saying about the ‘pub’ in his essay, The Moon under Water first published in the Evening Standard, in 1946.

Orwell wrote.

“Many as are the virtues of the Moon under Water, I think that the garden is its best feature, because it allows whole families to go there instead of Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone.

(more…)