Reasons to be cheerful about beer in 2025

It’s dark, it’s cold, and it’s all too easy to default to gloom and glumness. To counter that, we sat down together and asked each other: what’s going on in beer that makes you feel optimistic in 2025?

Even if not every pub has a huge range of beer, we have no trouble finding pubs within walking distance of our house that have more exciting beers than we can get through in a single session.

The Swan With Two Necks astounded us on a recent visit with draught beers from Brassiere de la Senne, Sierra Nevada, Birrificio Italiano, Burton Bridge, Kernel…

The Kings Head often has four interesting cask ales, a similar number of keg beers, and a bunch of bottled classics to fall back on if nothing on draught appeals. It’s very rare that we don’t find ourselves stuck trying to decide what to drink.

We’re not even talking about the Big Blackboard Bars like Small Bar here – just fairly small, fairly pubby pubs.

Last week it was Portola from Elusive, a cask ale that hit all the stylistic marks for a modern pale ale (soft, slightly hazy, fruity) while still being clean, precise and exciting.

It made us sit up and pay attention. It told us that craft beer might not be the new kid on the block any more but that doesn’t mean it’s quite ready to be embalmed and entombed.

Specifically, this beer reminded us that there are enough subtle variables that even a beer that looks like a lot of other beers, and shares their spec on paper, can stand out as something different.

We haven’t seen it all.

When Asahi took over Fuller’s we were quite upset. It’s a brewery that’s meant a lot to us over the years and we feared this was the beginning of the end.

There’s some evidence, however, that Asahi has a slightly different attitude to the businesses it acquires. Quite a sensible one. Why spend all that money acquiring heritage and reputation only to chuck it away?

London Pride often tastes better now than it ever has. We can still go to Fuller’s pubs (a different company) and drink Fuller’s beers and feel that nothing has really changed.

And when there are signs of change, they feel quite positive – like the rather excellent 180th anniversary pale ale we enjoyed in Hammersmith the other day.

There were so many contenders for the recent Women in Beer awards that the shortlist omitted some of the most famous female names in the industry.

David Jesudason’s book Desi Pubs has broadened popular ideas of what a pub can be, and what ‘pub people’ look like.

And we see more Pride flags flying in pubs now than we did a decade ago.

Progress might feel precarious, and as if it’s taken a lot of effort from people who shouldn’t have been obliged to work so hard. But, still, it feels real.

Even if you don’t like mild, the fact that it’s once again become a mainstream beer style is remarkable.

It’s not in every pub we visit but it’s certainly in many of them, including places you might not expect to see it at all.

A few years ago we expressed concern that Bass, an important beer and brand, was going to be allowed to wither away by AB-InBev, its careless owners.

In 2025, what we wanted has happened: they’ve fairly subtly revived the brand, done a little marketing, and refloated it. It’s now available in around 1,000 pubs – which feels about right.

We wouldn’t want it to become Doom Bar, but the idea that it might be slightly easier to find is good news.

This one slightly surprised us. It might feel as if beer blogging (like blogging in general) is on its last legs; Martyn Cornell is a sad loss; and we still miss Good Beer Hunting.

But, on reflection, we realised that in 2025 we’ve managed to fill our weekly round-ups with relatively little trouble.

That hasn’t been a given in recent years. There have been many Saturday mornings when we’ve almost given in because it’s proven hard to find quite enough really good stuff to fill the minimum five slots.

Not lately, though. And, in fact, we’ve been bookmarking enough to justify bonus links in our ‘footnotes’ pieces for Patreon subscribers.

We’ve also had a revival of The Session this year and a bunch of interesting books. We’re spoiled, really.

Now, it’s possible some of our reasons to be cheerful might be your reasons to be glum (Bass taking bar space from independent breweries, for example). But if you try to be optimistic for a minute, what would be on your list?

December’s a fun time for us because we get to produce a few regular blog posts:

• Golden Pints awards

• our best of beer writing list of 10 to 20 great posts or articles we’ve enjoyed

• an update to our Bristol pub guide

We didn’t start the Golden Pints and we’re not in charge of it or anything. But we would encourage you to join in. All you need to do is come up with nominees for a bunch of categories like:

• best pub

• best cask ale

• best keg beer

• best packaged beer

• best imported beer

• best beer book

People often remove categories if they don’t have a nominee, or it doesn’t make sense for where they live; and add categories if there’s something they want to talk about.

It’s not important, it’s not official, do what you like.

We’ll be posting ours on our blog, of course, but you can do it on social media or wherever is easiest.

We’d also be quite interested to be reminded of any particularly brilliant pieces of beer writing from the past year. (But don’t suggest something you wrote yourself. Come on now.)

We’ve been having a conversation for months about the concept of ‘genius loci’ and pubs and it finally coalesced into a blog post after Ray looked at The Prospect of Whitby from the Thames foreshore.

At a pub in Bath we saw an old pub price list which mentioned Mann’s Rustic Ale and then sent us down a rabbit hole. What was it, exactly? It was great to do some proper old-fashioned research in our own little library.

Last weekend we went to London and came away buzzing with ideas and observations which we wrote up as, effectively, a bunch of very short blog posts jammed together. The thread running through them is change, reinvention and revival.

There were also weekly news round ups (you know about those), plus bonus footnotes posts for subscribers on Patreon. We’re grateful to them for their ongoing support and encouragement. We also posted a few other bits and pieces on Patreon this month, about flags, books, and the best beers we drank each weekend.

And that’s it, that’s your lot, until next month.

Cheers!

Ray & Jess