#dark-ales

#dark-ales

The annual National Pub & Bar Awards nominees have just been announced, and eight London pubs have made the list of 252 pubs and bars across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland vying for pub supremacy.

Irish desserts are, in one word, resourceful. They have to be; in a nation that grappled for centuries with conflict, famine, and outright war, luxurious ingredients were not accessible to most people. Instead, the Irish turned to local ingredients like sea moss, apples, and an impressive array of dairy products to satisfy their cravings for something sweet.

The U.S. version lists 73 grams of sugar per 20-ounce bottle. The U.K. version lists 4.5 grams of sugar per 100 milliliters. Crunch the numbers, and you'll find the American Fanta has nearly three times the sugar as its counterpart across the pond - 12.4 grams per 100 milliliters versus 4.5. The thing is, the British version doesn't taste like it's missing anything.

In 2014, Leon opened his brewery's first location inside a tiny warehouse space in the city's north-east. It was good timing. All over North America, millennials were going crazy for craft beer, and in Alberta, the government had recently changed rules to help microbreweries get their product to market. "There was a huge thirst in Alberta for craft beer," said Leon, who recalls getting emails about new breweries opening nearly every week. "It was a pretty wild time."

The U.S. spirits landscape has evolved far beyond the recognition of simply being the birthplace of bourbon. In recent years, we've seen a transformation in both the quality and individuality that the country's craft distilleries have been able to produce. While previous decades were dominated by the big-name distilleries, far more awards are going to craft distillers who have mastered the art of producing high-quality whiskeys, rums, gins, and more.

The days of having great liquid alone? Those days are behind us now. It's really that total guest experience, so we've really leaned into that and really focused on training our employees, making our environment as approachable and inclusive as possible, and just not taking any customer for granted.

Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, Japan, India and (because my editor will insist) Australia are countries we'd normally associate with whisk(e)y production and excellence. That growing list includes Bottega SpA in Italy, Israel's Milk & Honey Distillery and single malts from Soubeyran (France), which just launched stateside last summer. It also includes a few excellent distilleries in Mexico, New Zealand and England, which had an incredible showing at the most recent Whisky Exchange Awards.

NIQ's exclusive PubTrack solution has published its rankings of British consumers' favourite pub operators in 2025. The lists are based on a range of metrics from last year, including overall satisfaction and value for money, the quality of drinks and service, and intentions to revisit and recommend. The feedback provides accurate insights into guests' engagement with Britain's best-known pub names, helping operators and suppliers understand brand sentiment and benchmark performance against their competitors.

This multi-multi-million-pound paean to the black stuff, where Guinness disciples can make pilgrimage, has been on the capital's horizon for what seems like an era. The project has been tantalisingly dangled as an opening for some years, then delayed umpteen times, because, quite understandably, erecting a purpose-built, gargantuan, multi-floor Willy Wonka's Booze Factory in the West End of London for a corporate behemoth is no easy feat.

The modern origins of both beer and wine are rooted in Europe, which is home to a north-south division often referred to as the "beer-wine divide" that splits the continent into two. There's the Wine Belt in the south and the Beer Belt in the north. This is primarily due to their respective climates, with the Mediterranean climate of southern Europe being ideal for growing grapes and the cooler climate of northern Europe better suited toward producing beer.

No trip to the brewery is complete without sampling the wares. Even if it's a place you visit regularly, you'll likely want to sample most of what it has to offer at least once. But while a greater variety may seem more enticing, it can also signal a potential red flag. Every kind of beer they have on tap means another tap that needs to be maintained. The more tap lines they have, the more likely it is that maintenance or cleaning gets neglected.

Fish and chips is about as iconic as you can get for pub fare. It's a perfect harmony of tender, subtly sweet and briny cod with a crisp, buttery coating; plus, salty, starchy fries. The only thing a classic fish and chips meal is missing is a good beer. After all, it's a standard order in pubs, where many guests are already enjoying pints - and that's not to mention that many chefs actually batter the fish in beer.

Beer has been brewed at Weltenburg Abbey, a stunning, still active monastery on the banks of the Danube in Bavaria, for nearly 1,000 years.

Boston Beer posted Q3 revenue of $537.5 million, down 11.2% year-over-year, while expanding gross margin to 50.8%.

Bell's, famous for its Two Hearted IPA and summer-coded Oberon, was founded in 1985 as Kalamazoo Brewing Co. in Michigan. In that first year, it brewed 135 barrels. Today, it brews nearly 500,000 barrels annually. A barrel is roughly 31 gallons, or about two kegs' worth of beer. So the brewery's production went from around 270 kegs in 1986 to around 934,000 kegs today.