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.

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, deliberately traced the outline of a dog's head. Companion: walk the route in PINtPOINT's new Hall-of-Fame crawl.

Two of Anchor's signature beers came home from an October 1975 English brewery tour. Liberty Ale, the one everyone credits to it, predates the trip by six months on David Burkhart's dating. 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 West Yorkshire 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.

Construction crews at Potrero Hill, an owner who has said almost nothing in public, and a 2027 date nobody official has given. Updated in November with the label approvals and the business-name filing.

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.

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: rateable value up 74% since 2023, FPI 44.38/100. The campaign's structural argument, made personal, on the bar in front of us.

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 the paper put at four pubs a day.

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.

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.

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 and Benediktiner, alongside Boddingtons cask through a sparkler. Only the Tegernseer is brewed in Bavaria.

On 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.

On 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.

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, Blind Jack's in Knaresborough and the Oil Basin Brewhouse in Worcester. No news on the Whippet, but we are still hopeful.

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.

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.