PINtPRESS Archive

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• All47
• Essays26
• Notes12
• Guides6
• Postcards3

• 20 October 2026 · Essay
  Before he could sell ESB to America, he had to sell it to Fuller’s
  Jeffrey House remembers the first pour at the College Inn in Seattle on 7 November 1987. He had been trying to get it there for years. When it arrived, American brewers found more in it than a good pint.
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• 17 October 2026 · Note
  Why Firestone Walker chose Fuller’s yeast
  The American influence on British beer is usually told through hops. This one runs the other way. Firestone Walker ran beer trials, a Fuller’s ESB yeast beat Chico even though Chico was cleaner, and then its flocculation handed them years of diacetyl. What replaced it is still, in co-founder David Walker’s words, essentially a Fullers/London yeast.
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• 23 September 2026 · Note
  Tegernseer on Draught, and Where
  Tegernseer Hell is one of Bavaria’s most sought-after lagers and reaches British bars in small, unpublicised quantities. Cross-referencing our own live tap data finds eleven UK venues that have poured it.
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• 20 September 2026 · Essay
  Everything Traditional About Oktoberfest Is Younger Than the Tent
  In 1898 a Nuremberg publican used five strawmen to buy five Oktoberfest stalls and built a hall for 6,000. The restaurateurs sued and lost. The pale beer, the giant tent and the six-brewery rule are all younger than anyone admits.
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• 19 September 2026 · Guide
  UK Oktoberfest Events 2026
  Munich’s new mayor needed two blows of the hammer at noon today. If that gave you ideas: thirty-four British Oktoberfests, six of which pour actual Wiesn beer — and one “all six” claim that names five.
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• 18 September 2026 · Essay
  September is Oktoberfest
  The 191st Wiesn opens tomorrow at noon, and the beer in the tents is not the beer the festival started with. Munich changed it, America kept the old one, Britain borrowed the words — and twelve of the sixteen days fall in September.
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• 17 September 2026 · Essay
  Cask Ale Week: the Format Nobody Else Can Pour
  Cask Ale Week runs 17–27 September, with a record 10,000 pubs signed up. What cask actually is, what the plaque on the door promises, eleven pints worth chasing this week, and the numbers behind a revival led by drinkers in their twenties.
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• 3 September 2026 · Essay
  The Geography of Sobriety
  How Wapping and Canary Wharf relocated London’s great professional drinking cultures into places where they could not breathe.
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• 2 September 2026 · Essay
  Old Haunts of the Square Mile
  The five bar empires that ran the Square Mile in the 1990s: Balls Brothers, Corney & Barrow, Davy's, All Bar One and Pitcher & Piano. Two died in name, one sold its bar arm, one refused to change and outlived most of its imitators, and two arrived late as the daylight revolution that undermined everyone else. Claret, red braces, three-hour lunches — and what's left of them now.
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• 30 August 2026 · Essay
  Ghosts of Baddow Brewery
  Baddow Brewery stopped brewing in 1927. Nearly a century later, 30 of the 61 pubs associated with it are still serving drinkers — from Great Baddow itself out to the Essex coast. Fourteen have been replaced or converted, fifteen have gone, two remain honestly unknown. On the old brewing soil, Chelmsford Brew Co brews again: not the same company, not the old building, but new beer on old brewing soil.
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• 17 August 2026 · Essay
  These aren't revivals. They're not even spirits
  British beer is having a revival revival. Old names are back on the bar — some painstakingly reconstructed, some entirely new beers wearing dead men's clothes. Diageo is now DNA-sequencing yeast from an 1864 shipwreck bottle. A field guide to what's actually being resurrected: recipe, yeast, water, brewery, people, badge, or nothing but the name.
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• 5 August 2026 · Essay
  Davy's: 155 years of sawdust and candles
  Founded off the Strand in 1870, Davy's still trades eleven sawdust-floored subterranean wine bars across London — plus three El Vino sisters brought in in 2015. In 2007 the chain had 37 sites; more than half of the family-name ones have gone since. Bangers, Bangers Too, the Crusting Pipe (closed just before Christmas 2025 after a 45-year run), the City Boot twice, City FOB, Skinkers, and two different lives of the Tappit Hen. The story of a chain slowly editing itself down.
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• 31 July 2026 · Essay
  Celebrity-Owned Pubs Worth the Pint (Not Just the Autograph)
  News this week that James Blunt has bought a second London pub — The Carpenter's Arms in Hammersmith — is a decent excuse to ask the only useful question about celebrity-owned pubs: which are actually worth the pint? Verdicts and PINtPOINT deep links for Ian McKellen's Dickens-listed Thames boozer, Blunt's Chelsea local, Guy Ritchie's Fitzrovia gastropub, Jeremy Clarkson's Cotswolds farm-pub, and seven more.
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• 29 July 2026 · Essay
  The Green Triangle and the Oldest Trademark in British Beer
  On 1 January 1876 the world's first registered trademark was granted to a beer — Bass Brewery's red triangle, UK Trade Mark No. 1. A hundred and fifty years later — to the year — PINtPOINT needed a shape to single out the best pub around. What else could we pick? Why the geometry, why green not red, and why on a small screen at the end of a long day the fastest way to say 'this one' is still a triangle.
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• 17 July 2026 · Essay
  The Anti-Check-In: Why We Skip the Feed
  Untappd is a social network first and a beer database second. Its tap lists only get fresh when someone posts publicly about a pint. PINtPOINT lets you improve any tap list with one tap and no check-in — because contributing to shared data shouldn't demand personal consumption or a social broadcast. Why fresh tap lists shouldn't depend on social posting.
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• 15 July 2026 · Essay
  It's Not Just the Sunshine: Your Holiday Beer Really Is a Different Beer
  The Estrella you drank in Barcelona is not the Estrella they pour in Manchester. Damm bought the Bedford Eagle Brewery outright in 2023 to brew a 4.6% UK version of a 5.4% Spanish original. Madri Excepcional has never seen Spain. What CAMRA's July 2026 Beer in the UK Report exposes — and why the app cares.
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• 14 July 2026 · Essay
  The Beer Final We Almost Had: England vs Spain
  Argentina beat England 2-1 in the semi-final on Wednesday. This piece was drafted for the beer final we might have had — a Berlin rematch of English cask against Spain's Iberian craft column. Publishing it anyway as the parallel-timeline read. Draught Bass hat-trick, a 101st-minute ghost goal, Estrella Damm and La Pirata Black Block. The Pub VAR booth stands by its verdict. The actual final (Argentina vs Spain) follows.
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• 3 July 2026 · Note
  Norman Balon: London's Last Great Rude Landlord
  The Coach and Horses landlord who ran the Greek Street pub for sixty-three years and made a public brand of his own rudeness has died aged 99. On the fortnightly Private Eye lunch, the Waterhouse play, the 2005 licensing regulations he wouldn't sit down and read — and why a room isn't the same room once the person who kept it wrong on purpose has gone.
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• 30 June 2026 · Note
  Humphrey Smith: British Beer's Great Awkward Character
  The Samuel Smith's beer baron who ran Britain's strangest pub chain by his own private rule has died aged 81. On cheap pints, dark wood, shire horses, boarded-up villages and a row over an air freshener — and on why the whole thing may become easier without him and also less peculiar.
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• 27 June 2026 · Guide
  Loaded’s World Cup Canon: From Crisps to Vodka
  The canonical record of Loaded magazine’s recurring World Cup format. The first five editions ran in fifteen months from September 1994 to December 1995, Crisp, Washing Powder, Lager’lympics, Cereals and Vodka, and define the format at its peak.
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• 25 June 2026 · Guide
  Lager’lympics: Loaded Magazine’s Lost 1995 Lager World Cup, Found
  The full record of the Lager’lympics, Loaded magazine’s 1995 Lager World Cup, published in the ‘What’s For Tea Love?’ supplement. 62 lagers, a knockout bracket and drunk-panel scoring. Budvar beat Molson 178 to 98 in the final.
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• 23 June 2026 · Essay
  Before Kick-Off: Why English Cask Has the Advantage
  The football is heading to the business end. The Beer World Cup is heading the same way. With the Perfect Pint Promise just launched and heritage cask back on the rise — Greene King selling Old Speckled Hen to Spanish lager giant Damm, Draught Bass tripling distribution this year, JW Lees relaunching cask Boddingtons — the case for English cask is loud and current. The squad of eleven hand-pulled pints we'd send into a Beer World Cup, and why cask is the one format the world can't quite copy.
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• 19 June 2026 · Guide
  World Cup 2026 Stadium Beer Map: Help Us Find Good Beer Near The Grounds
  The World Cup is here, across 16 host stadiums in North America. We mapped the bars, pubs, breweries, taprooms, bottle shops and beer gardens that can actually help fans before or after a match. A first pass, not the final whistle — Atlanta, Seattle, Philadelphia, Vancouver and Toronto landed cleanly; Dallas, the Bay Area and Mexico City need local knowledge; MetLife is still the loudest help-wanted flag. Open PINtPOINT near a host stadium and add what we missed.
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• 19 June 2026 · Essay
  Beer World Cup XI: 48 Nations, Real Fixtures, Stupidly Serious Beer Results
  The football teams play on the pitch. The beers play in the pub. Every country in the World Cup gets a beer squad; real fixtures drive the matchups; Pub VAR, The Selection Committee and The Pint Desk arbitrate the disputes. A serialised editorial tournament loosely based on a distant memory of Loaded magazine's lost Beer World Cup. Help us pick the squads.
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• 2 June 2026 · Essay
  Beerology — The Anatomy of a Pint
  What does this beer actually feel like to drink? Eight axes — Body, Bitterness, Sweetness, Roast, Fruit, Finish, Softness, Complexity — plus four drinker cues, a drinkability bucket, and one plain-English gut-take sentence per beer. Built for the 800-millisecond tap-list decision; honest about the sour and Belgian-yeast styles it doesn't cover. The capstone of the four-essay arc on choosing the right pint.
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• 31 May 2026 · Essay
  Following the Firkin trail(s)…
  In 1979 David Bruce opened the Goose & Firkin in Elephant and Castle. By 1995 the chain had 44 pubs, 19 of them brewing on site. On 8 October 1999 the brewing stopped — and that, not the 2001 brand-discontinuation, is when Firkin actually died. The 12 original London Firkin sites, plotted on a 1990 paper leaflet, traced — deliberately — the outline of a dog's head. Companion: walk the route in PINtPOINT's new Hall-of-Fame crawl.
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• 24 May 2026 · Essay
  Anchor Brewing's British heritage runs deeper than people realise
  Three of Anchor's signature beers were lifted from English brewing on a 1975 Yorkshire pub tour. The Great American Beer Festival was modelled on CAMRA's GBBF. Anchor first reached British draught in November 1991, in borrowed Fuller's kegs, and a Halifax distributor kept it there for fifteen years after. The companion to Friday's revival piece: the case that Anchor's identity was always partly English — and what that means for a return to UK taps.
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• 22 May 2026 · Essay
  Anchor Brewing looks to be coming back. The 2021 rebrand isn't.
  Construction crews at Potrero Hill, twenty months of silence from a billionaire owner, and a homepage in May 2026 still wearing the 1896 logo — not the 2021 mark drinkers hated. Anchor's revival is moving from rumour into pre-brewing infrastructure. What's coming back, on the evidence, is the older Anchor.
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• 20 May 2026 · Essay
  Under the Hood: How PINtDEXTER Picks Your Pint
  The engineering follow-up to the recommender essay. The four layers PINtDEXTER stacks under the hood — preference capture, manual sliders, per-beer LLM-inferred flavour DNA, and venue-aware scoring — and the misclassified pale lager that exposed the most recent fix. For the data-science curious.
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• 16 May 2026 · Note
  Save Our Pubs, In One Pub: The Bell at Ingatestone
  We walked into the Bell to claim a free pint of Telegraph Ale on Saturday. PINtPOINT's Financial Pressure Index also flags the same building as Struggling — rates up 74% vs 2023, FPI 44.38/100. The campaign's structural argument, made personal, on the bar in front of us.
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• 16 May 2026 · Note
  Four Pubs a Day Are Closing. The Telegraph's Answer Is a Free Pint.
  Saturday 16 May is the Telegraph's National Pub Day. Renegade Brewery — the West Berkshire outfit that took on the West Berkshire estate after the 2023 collapse — has brewed Telegraph Ale, a 4% cask English bitter, for over 250 participating pubs nationwide. The campaign sits inside Save Our Pubs, the Telegraph's response to a closure rate of roughly four pubs a day.
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• 14 May 2026 · Essay
  From Half of British Beer to Half a Percent — What Happened to Mild
  In 1959 mild was still half the beer Britain drank. By 2011 it was 0.5%. How Britain's everyday beer became a rarity — and why Mild May is trying to bring it back. Pattinson, Cornell and Boak & Bailey on the collapse; the modern fork between stalwarts and craft revisionists.
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• 8 May 2026 · Note
  The Sparkler Question — A Field Guide to Britain's Quietest Cask Argument
  A small nozzle. A 140-year argument. Mostly a Northern tradition, with London outposts at the Queen's Arms and the Punch Tavern. From 14 May the Whippet adds a sparklered Boddingtons to the Liverpool Street commute.
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• 5 May 2026 · Note
  The Whippet: Why This Could Be One of London's Most Interesting Beer Openings of 2026
  June update: The Whippet still is not pouring Augustiner, but it has quietly built one of the more unusual lager line-ups near Liverpool Street — Bitburger, Kutna Hora, Tegernseer, Benediktiner and more — alongside Boddingtons cask with a sparkler.
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• 1 May 2026 · Note
  Radio City Turns 7: 7 Cans, 7 Sins, 35 Launch Venues — and One Big Saturday in Chelmsford
  Saturday 9 May 2026 — Radio City Beer Works in Radley Green throws its biggest birthday yet, preceded two days earlier by the nationwide can launch of the Seven Deadly Sins. Lust × Black Iris (Strawberry Vanilla Pastry Sour), Wrath × Ampersand (Southern Hemisphere IPA), Gluttony × Vibrant Forest (Imperial Stout 8.4%), and four more. Full launch-venue locator inside.
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• 1 May 2026 · Note
  Blackhorse Beer Mile 4th Birthday: All 10 Participating Venues with PINtPOINT Links
  Sunday 3 May 2026 — Walthamstow's brewery-district mile turns four with an all-day, free-entry, family-friendly takeover across 10 east-London craft venues: Big Penny Social, Exale, Signature, Borough Wines, Burnt Faith, East London Brewing Co, plus 40FT, Hackney Church, Renegade and Pretty Decent. Every venue with a PINtPOINT deeplink plus the canonical Hall of Fame crawl.
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• 30 April 2026 · Note
  Augustiner on Draft, Finally: Eight Confirmed UK Pubs Pouring It
  Augustiner Helles landed on UK draught in November 2025 via James Clay & Sons with no public venue list. PINtPOINT cross-references public Untappd data to confirm six — King's Arms in Bethnal Green, Café Beermoth and Society in Manchester, Bavaria Brauhaus in Glasgow and two more — with Blind Jack's in Knaresborough and the Oil Basin Brewhouse in Worcester added since. No news on the Whippet, but we are still hopeful.
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• 29 April 2026 · Note
  12 Years of Bosko: All 12 UK Venues Pouring Pressure Drop's West Coast IPA on 1 May
  Twelve years ago Pressure Drop released their first batch of Bosko — a 6.5% West Coast IPA brewed in a Hackney railway arch. Friday 1 May 2026, twelve UK venues are simultaneously putting it on the lines. Every launch venue with PINtPOINT links, plus the back-story on the beer.
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• 27 April 2026 · Essay
  Left Field Beer: One of Britain's Best Independent Beer Shops
  Fresh American imports — Trillium, Hop Butcher — alongside European specialists like Arpus and CoolHead and championed UK indies including DEYA and Buxton, all curated from a single Solihull shop. With the deep-dive on why drinking American craft properly is so expensive over here.
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• 24 April 2026 · Essay
  Bass Pale Ale: The Red Triangle That Took an English Beer Global
  Before consumer brands were global, Bass already was. The red triangle of Bass Pale Ale travelled to India, Russia and America in the 19th century, riding hard Burton water, coke-malted pale grain and clear glass into a worldwide reputation. From a Burton High Street brewery in 1777 through the Bass Charrington years, the Molson Coors split, and modern attempts to recover Burton pale ale heritage.
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• 20 April 2026 · Postcard
  A Postcard from London: The City That Taught the World to Brew, Then Started Again
  The third in the trilogy. London is one of the oldest beer cities in the world, but the version you can drink now is barely fifteen years old — a comeback layered over an inheritance. Porter, IPA, Ind Coope and Charrington, then the long gap, then The Kernel in a Bermondsey arch and a new scene built on top of the ruins.
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• 19 April 2026 · Guide
  Walking the Ted Lasso Pub Trail in Richmond — From Crown & Anchor to Richmond Hill
  The Crown & Anchor exterior is The Prince's Head on Richmond Green. The view above the Thames bend is the one Ted reflects from. A four-stop walking pub trail for fans of the show — and a shortlist of the wider Richmond craft-beer scene worth a pint while you're there.
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• 16 April 2026 · Postcard
  A Postcard from Melbourne: The City That Built a Craft-Beer Scene on Bars, Not Breweries
  Companion to the San Diego piece — the structural opposite. San Diego built a craft-beer capital brewery-first; Melbourne did it bar-first. Catfish, Local Taphouse, Cookie, Hippo, Boilermaker — a scene that turned curation into a category of its own.
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• 12 April 2026 · Essay · Reference
  The Drinker's Guide to Hops: What Each Variety Actually Tastes Like
  A drinker-first reference to the 30-odd hops you're most likely to meet on a UK or European bar — Cascade, Citra, Mosaic, EKG, Saaz and the rest, organised by a six-category flavour framework that collapses Drexler's unwieldy 107 descriptors into something you can actually hold in your head.
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• 9 April 2026 · Postcard
  A Postcard from San Diego: How a Navy Town Became the IPA Capital of the World
  Karl Strauss in 1989. Stone and Ballast Point in 1996. A hop arms race through the 2000s that perfected the West Coast IPA. A tour of how San Diego quietly became the most important craft-beer city in the world — and where in North Park, Miramar, and La Jolla to drink its legacy today.
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• 5 April 2026 · Guide
  The Chelmsford Beer Mile: A Live Guide to Essex's Best Craft-Beer Crawl
  Eight specialist venues in a mile — bottle shops, a brewpub, railway arch taprooms — walked in the right order. With live tap lists for every stop, plus a footnote on Baddow Brewery (1798–1927) and how Chelmsford Brew Co broke the century-long local-brewing quiet.
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• 29 March 2026 · Essay
  What's Wrong With Beer Recommendation Systems (And What PINtPOINT Does Differently)
  A response to Ethan Haley's Untappd-as-a-recommender analysis and NYC Data Science's Ninkasi project. Three walls rating-based recommenders hit — cold start, popularity bias, geography-blindness — and how PINtDEXTER layers Sip-or-Skip, Head-to-Head and venue-aware scoring to answer the different question a drinker is actually asking.
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