The Session March 2025: A critique

Here we are, back again for Session time. Where beer writers from anywhere and everywhere come together to write a little, or a lot, about a chosen topic. This month The Session challenge has been set by Matthew Curtis over on Total Ales who has asked us to write a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs.

He asks this not to stoke negativity, but because he perceives there to be “a general lack of criticism in beer writing” – which I find really interesting. It immediately made me think of a post I wrote on this very blog in 2021, when I realised that I had to abandon Tiny Rebel, a brewery I loved, because of their misogynist ways. I didn’t hold back and I have held my boycott ever since. I wasn’t afraid to be critical, even though the only real cost was to me, personally, having to give up Stay Puft. Luckily, I’ve found ever so many replacements from lovely, welcoming breweries since that it doesn’t matter any more.

Anyone that knows me reasonably well will know that I never write publicly about The Scottish Brewery if I can help it. Rather than give them oxygen, I’d rather ignore them altogether and focus on the people who are ethical and worth supporting. That’s the reason I started the Ethical and Sustainable Beer & Cider Directory. Which is still going, although admittedly I could do a lot more updates than I have.

And perhaps that’s partially the point that Matthew is making. I actively avoid writing about something in the beer industry I don’t like, because I’d rather focus on the stuff that I do. So when someone is googling around for information, they don’t get a detailed explanation of the catalogue of errors that company has made – not written by me at least. Forewarned is forearmed, and I am not forewarning.

It’s a conversation I used to have very regularly on social media when this blog was in its infancy. I was always happy to write honest reviews – highlighting the positive and the negative of whatever restaurant, drink or event I was covering. A lot of my fellow bloggers at the time stated very publicly that they would not write negative reviews, because it’s not helpful to the business. I always stuck to my guns believing that an honest review, with fair and reasonable criticism is better for both the consumer, and potentially the business, should they choose to act on it.

I remember one of the early restaurant reviews I wrote for the Leicester Mercury – my first paid writing gig. Usually the editor and I would decide where I was going to go based on a reasonable level of confidence that it would be good and my ‘mystery shopper’ visit had a good chance of resulting in a positive review. They didn’t like to post too many bad reviews either, I think because it just doesn’t set a very nice tone if they were seen to be punching down on city eateries week after week.

But on this occasion a new restaurant had opened and no one had written about it yet. Neither of us had a clue what it was even serving, never mind what the quality was. But we thought it was worth giving them a chance.

It was dire. The whole experience. The service was terrible, as was the food, as was the ambience, the layout, the drinks. I had no option but to do what I always did – write an honest account of my visit. They published it and before I knew it I was receiving messages from readers cheering me on and thanking me for highlighting the new business’s flaws.

Then the restaurant got in touch with the paper. It turned out that they were in the midst of a battle with the residents who lived on the same street over the noise and odour produced by their flue over and about those properties. The restaurant accused me of being a plant by this co-op of neighbours and giving them a bad review ‘for the cause’. Which was, of course, utter nonsense, but I later discovered that one of the enthusiastic readers emailing me about my fine review was indeed one of the residents. The whole thing was downright bizarre and quite the furore.

It all left a very bad taste in the mouth (and not because of the dodgy food or alleged dodgy flue) but I’m not really sure I learned very much except that you never know when you are going to accidentally stir up a hornet’s nest of local politics.

And now I’m conscious that I’ve written quite a lot, but not really a critique relating to beer or pubs. So I’ll finish by saying I have an Untappd account. I was very good at keeping it up to date in 2024, not so good this year. But I always put my honest score and, where I write a few words, honest perceptions of the beers I try. I find it very useful to have a record of beers I’ve tried and an indicator of how I found them. A lot of people don’t like Untappd, and I can understand that. But if you want to see me trying to fairly assess quality, that’s probably the easiest place to go. I don’t think many other beer writers are visibly on there, perhaps because they don’t want breweries or readers to see what they think about every single beer that they try. But I don’t mind, because at the end of the day, I am only writing my genuine perception of that beer on that day. Many of them I will never drink again, because they’ll never be available again, just like a certain vintage of a certain wine. And maybe that’s why sometimes criticism of bad (or perhaps more fairly ‘less good’) beers isn’t newsworthy a lot of the time – because many ales are fleeting, transitory things. Like rare birds they settle in our locals for one cask, only to be gone, forever just a memory. So we expend our effort on the good ones, and just hope for better from the brewery that produces the not-so-great ones, so we can write about them next time.

And for the record, here’s how I got on with tasting the big brand ‘Spanish’ beers for The Telegraph (and paywall free on MSN). It’s often quite easy to be negative about Big Beer, because they tend to be rather uninspiring. But I remember really struggling with having to use a 5* scoring system here, because some of them I truly despised. Lidl’s Spanish brand, San Miguel and Madri all got 0.25 on Untappd from me, but I couldn’t give a third of the list no stars. So perhaps the real criticism here is not having a scoring system that could properly convey my contempt.

That’s it I guess. For what it’s worth.