Craft Beer Without The Jargon

The media sold you panic about Christmas pints. The real story? Workers at Diageo’s Belfast facility are packaging the exact same Guinness liquid as their Runcorn counterparts.. but getting paid 20% less. Not because Belfast’s cheaper to live in (it’s not). Because they don’t have a Heineken brewery 27 miles down the road to walk to.

Planning a 12 Pubs of Christmas crawl in Belfast? We’ve mapped the ultimate ‘Zig-Zag North’ route from Bridge House to Sunflower. Includes a full cost breakdown, strategic food stops to prevent disaster, and a survival guide for tackling 12 pints without losing your dignity. The sensible guide to a questionable decision.

In Belfast you’ll pay £6.70 for a “craft” IPA that’s actually owned by Guinness or Tennent’s. At The Bridge House I just had a proper independent Thornbridge Jaipur for £2.55. Turns out one of the only places in the entire city that can pour genuinely free, independent beer at a price normal people can afford… is a Wetherspoons. The paradox is real, and it hurts

One brewery group went bust, and now Fourpure, Magic Rock, Black Sheep and Purity are on the chopping block. Some are real breweries with jobs on the line. Others are already ghosts. Here’s what’s actually happening.. and why it matters for your next pint.

Northern Ireland’s liquor licensing system just got another chance at reform.. and chose Guinness over everyone else. Douglas’ Bar in Limavady closed and its licence went straight to Tesco, while award-winning breweries like Lacada are stuck opening 4-10pm on select days, beer only, no exceptions. The minister looked at a £478,000 independent review recommending actual reform and said nah, we’re grand. Hospitality Ulster, the trade body that’s supposed to represent hospitality, welcomed keeping things exactly as they are. One rural pub closes every 2.7 days. The surrender principle means licences cost £150k-£400k just for the paper. And the system that’s been bleeding community pubs dry while supermarkets accumulate their licences? That continues unchanged. If that’s stability, you can keep it.

Had a sour beer that made you pull a face like you’d licked a battery? That’s not what good sour actually tastes like. Last month I watched my mate Dave try his first Berliner Weisse by accident.. the face he pulled was like watching someone discover their tea’s been made with salt water. Thing is, the beer wasn’t off. It was just shit. There’s a difference, and that difference is why sour beer is either the best thing to happen to British brewing since someone figured out how to hop properly, or a pretentious nightmare depending on who you ask. Real sour beer isn’t “beer that’s gone bad”.. it’s deliberate, complex, and been around longer than your nan’s nan’s nan. It’s to vinegar what aged cheese is to gone-off milk. Related? Sure. Same thing? Absolutely not. Here’s how to drink it without hating yourself, why Britain’s gone sour in a good way, and how Dave finally stopped pulling the battery-licking face.

Picture the scene: you’re outside CastleCourt in the rain, phone in hand, trying to remember which direction the Cathedral Quarter is. Your mate’s already two pubs ahead. You’ve walked a mile and seen nothing but roadworks. The session is slipping away from you. This is preventable. Belfast’s city centre is compact.. you can walk from one end to the other in fifteen minutes if you know where you’re going. The problem isn’t finding a pub. The problem is finding the right sequence of pubs that flows in a sensible direction without doubling back on yourself. We’ve done the legwork so you don’t have to. Four routes through BT1 and BT2, each one flowing logically from south to north or east to west. Every pint priced up. Every route tested. No zig-zagging. From the Penny Pincher at £31.25 total to the High Roller at £41.10, pick your budget, follow the route, and try not to get lost after pub four.

Last week I bought a round at my local. Four pints. Two IPAs, a Guinness, and a cider for the mate who “doesn’t really like beer.” £38.40. The barman said it with a straight face, like he hadn’t just quoted me the price of a decent blender. I tapped my card with the fixed smile of someone who’s died inside but still needs to look sociable. Walking back to the table trying not to spill forty quid’s worth of liquid, I started doing the maths. Turns out it’s complicated. Properly complicated. And almost nobody’s getting rich except the tax man. That £9.50 DIPA breaks down to £2.20 liquid, 90p duty, £1.58 VAT, £3.50 in pub costs, and maybe £1.50 margin for the publican.. roughly 16% profit on a good day. Your local Tesco makes more on a banana. Here’s where every penny actually goes, why 136 indie breweries vanished in 12 months, and what’s actually working in 2025.

Picture the scene. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon, the pub garden is calling your name, and you’ve got a solid six hours to kill before you need to be anywhere else. You fancy a pint with some proper flavour. Something hoppy, citrusy, maybe a bit piney. You want an IPA. Here’s the problem, though. That beautiful, hazy double IPA on tap is 7.8%. Delicious, yes. But after two of them, you’ll be trying to pay for your crisps with your house keys and telling your life story to a confused-looking dog. Your session will be over before it’s even begun. For years, this was the great dilemma of the craft beer drinker: flavour or longevity? And then, like a sensible, practical hero arriving in a sensible, practical hatchback, the Session IPA appeared. All the grapefruit, mango, and pine, but with none of the impending doom. Here’s why the 4% hoppy pint is actually brewers’ hardest trick, and why Verdant Lightbulb nails it.