Walking up to a craft beer bar shouldn’t be intimidating, but it is. Sixteen taps you don’t recognize, a bartender who definitely knows more than you, and a queue building behind you. Most people just default to Guinness and avoid the whole thing. This guide cuts through the bullshit and teaches you how to order craft beer with confidence. Learn how to scan a menu in 30 seconds, ask the right questions without looking like a knob, when to ask for a taste (and when not to), and how to avoid paying £7 for something that should cost £5. No pretentious jargon. No homework required. Just practical advice for ordering beer like a normal person who doesn’t want to get ripped off.

The UK brewing industry has discovered a magic number. Foster’s, John Smith’s, Carlsberg, Coors Light, Sol, Grolsch, Greene King IPA, and now Molson Coors’ new Caffrey’s Black Stout have all reformulated to exactly 3.4% ABV. They’ll tell you it’s about your health and ‘balanced lifestyles.’ We’ll show you it’s about the duty threshold at 3.5% that saves them 11p per pint. John Smith’s pocketed £14.5 million while raising keg prices. Use our calculator to see what your local is really worth

Next time you’re in a Belfast pub, look at the taps. That lineup isn’t about taste.. it’s about debt. Northern Ireland’s licensing system, frozen since 1923, requires £100,000 just to get permission to serve alcohol. Most businesses don’t have that kind of money. The multinationals do. Here’s how a Temperance law designed to reduce drinking accidentally created a century-old monopoly that handed the keys to global brewers.

Everyone in Belfast has a Guinness opinion. Your da has a pub he swears by. Your mate won’t shut up about the place that “does it right.” But here’s the uncomfortable question: why does the £7.80 hotel pint sometimes taste worse than the £4.39 Wetherspoons one? Diageo will tell you every pint is identical. Your tastebuds disagree. We break down the science of the bad pint, the “line beer” effect, and why the busiest bars often serve the best stout.. plus what to actually do when someone hands you a dud.

Same city. Same beer. Wildly different prices. We track the cost of Guinness pints across Belfast..from the £4.39 Wetherspoons bargain to the £7.80 hotel premium..to find out where your money actually goes. Discover the hidden economics of the beer market, how the unique ‘Surrender Principle’ blocks competition, and why your local independent pub is the one getting squeezed the hardest.

Diageo just announced their fifth price hike in three years. By the time it hits the bar, that’s another 10-20p on your pint. Cathedral Quarter is now pushing £6.50 for a Guinness. But here’s the thing: five minutes away, the same pint costs £4.40. Two pints twice a week at those prices? That’s a £437 difference over a year. Same stout. Same city. Wildly different maths.

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.