Craft Beer

[ewan]

There are an increasing number of pubs self-describing themselves as "craft beer pubs" opening up. I'm thinking of the Draft House chain, the Euston Tap, the Craft Beer Co/Cask, the Jolly Butchers and its new SW9 outpost the Crown and Anchor.

I am therefore wondering if a "Craft Beer Pub" (or just "Craft Beer") category on RGL would have any meaning or usefulness? Obviously, it's a disputed term, though the category page could link to the various arguments. It's also a bit of an ambiguous term, since it generally seems to mean a variety of things depending on who uses it (American 'craft' beer on keg, keg or cask from microbreweries, et al.). But it might be of use when searching for pubs?

What does the community think? I am veering towards not using it myself, but it does seem to have some currency.

Comments

[kake]

This is a really tricky one! I would love to have some way of identifying pubs that do interesting drinks. If I was out on a wander, I'd happily make a diversion if I knew there was a pub nearby that had a good chance of having a mild, or a kriek, or a cloudy perry, or home-made lemonade. But this is veering into the territory of subjectivity, which we generally try to avoid.

[ewan]

We do already have some 'interesting' categories, so could extend those to "Interesting Beer Selection". Those categories are already subjective. It seems as if "craft beer" has some currency already, but I am not entirely happy with getting involved in the arguments (though obviously I did do a Pubology post about it...).

[kake]

I am actually already a little unsure about the "Interesting Food/Booze Shops" categories. I think this partly comes down to the lack of clarity in our remit — we don't just cover places that we think are worth visiting, yet we also don't cover everything in London. (To be clear, I think the latter would be an impossible task given that we care about keeping our data up to date.) If we did only cover places worth visiting, then the Interesting Shops categories would be pointless.

[ewan]

Well I suppose it comes down to whether there should be a policy for inclusion on RGL? Some kind of justification for a place being in there? We've made justifications for entire chains in the past (e.g. Nicolas and Oddbins, EAT. and Wetherspoons, et al.) and this is already subjective. If there were a policy, should inclusion be judged just on quality (or how famous a place is, or how much press they're getting) and if there's disagreement between different RGL reviewers, what then? It can of course be useful to have critical comments on an establishment, but it doesn't seem fair to do so for a small or independent businesses and there doesn't seem to be a lot of point in listing branches of bog-standard uninteresting chains. But then again, how to decide fairly?

[bob]

adding entire chains may have been a mistake. possibly.
I think the only mass imports/updates we should do is the GBG changes each year. since at least one of us intends to have visted all of them at some point and were mostly in agreement that a GBG pub is worth listing even if we havent been there.

[kake]

Yeah, I think it was probably a mistake in the case of EAT/Wagamama/Itsu, and also in the case of the Good Curry Guide (though the latter was specifically because Evil Dave wanted it). Not really sure if we should remove them now or not, though. But I am happy to have Oddbins and Nicolas on there, partly since they're much more spread out over London while e.g. EAT is mostly in the centre and at airports.

[bob]

leaving them is okay i suspect.

[kake]

My main concern over this is that having them on there means we really should keep the list up to date, i.e. add new ones as they open. But this is counter to the principle of only adding places we've been to!

[ewan]

I am not really a huge fan of EAT. in particular and wouldn't be particularly bothered if they all disappeared, especially since there's very little one can write about individual branches really. I'm not about to write up all the Pret branches I frequent regularly, though, either. I think giving coverage to smaller, independent sandwich shops is a good thing, which is why I should try and get round to doing more of the Fitzrovia ones I've been visiting for breakfast...

[kake]

Accessibility info would be a useful addition to the existing writeups — it's not on their website, and it would be very helpful to be able to find e.g. a stepfree cafe in a central London area.

Definitely agree re coverage of independent sandwich shops. It would be great if you could add say the top 25% of your Fitzrovia breakfast places, with links to London Breakfast for fuller writeups (I realise you already said you don't want to add them all).

[kake]

I think the main policy is "you must have been there", e.g. no adding places just because a PR asked us to. Of course there are many older entries that don't conform to this policy, stemming from the initial days when bob and I thought RGL was just going to be basically our pub/restaurant to-do list in handy internet form.

I wonder if one useful guideline would be that either you find yourself able to write more than, say, two paragraphs about the place, or that you would happily go back there? If your experience was not very good overall, but there were enough nuances to be worth mentioning, that covers the first half. Conversely, if you can't do a full writeup because you're in a bit of a rush or you didn't take proper notes or whatever, but you felt the place is worth recommending, that covers the second half.

Incidentally, we don't mass-import Wetherspoons pubs — there are a fair few on there, but this is partly because they turn up in the GBG a lot.

Regarding critical comments — I don't like writing negatively about small independent businesses either, so unless a place already has lots of appreciative reviews elsewhere (e.g. Cafe East) I do always try to come up with something good about it. This is useful for the reader as well as for the business, since sometimes one ends up going with a group to an establishment that one might not have chosen oneself, and it can be handy to know that e.g. there are one or two decent dishes on a menu in between loads of indifferent stuff, or that an otherwise boring pub has a nice collection of old photographs on the wall in a tucked-away corner.

[bob]

craft beer as shorthand for pubs that do beers(not lagers) from smaller breweries served from keg would be a good thing.

it also raises the question if fro bottle counts and if we should have a category for pubs which have an interesting range of bottled beers.

[ewan]

Maybe some kind of category for "Bottled Beer" or "Interesting Bottled Beer"? I mean the 'interesting' categories are already a bit subjective.

[bob]

indeed. that was my thinking.
and yes the interesting ones are subjective.