10 breweries that make us say “Ooh!”

When we walk into a pub and see these breweries' beers on the bar we get a little bit excited and know we're going to end up stuck for a session.

We recently turned up at The King’s Head in Bristol intending to have one last beer on the way home but the range of breweries on the bar made us say, “Ooh!” and stay a bit longer than planned.

We have experiences like this from time to time – not as often as we’d like! – and it struck us as an interesting way of gauging the reputation of breweries.

It’s not that they’re necessarily ‘the best’, whatever that means. Only that we’ve had enough good beer from them over the years, and especially in recent years, that we’re excited to drink whatever happens to be on offer.

We’ve excluded Bristol breweries for obvious reasons – you’re not likely to “Ooh!” at something you see everywhere, all the time.

So, in alphabetical order…

Adnams

We’re starting with a tricky one. Do Adnams beers always live up to the anticipation they prompt in us when we see the pump clips on the counter? Perhaps not so much these days. But Broadside, which often turns up in autumn and winter, is still a treat. In our minds they occupy a similar space to Fuller’s – but Fuller’s is always around and available, whereas Adnams feels rarer, and more of a treat.

Five Points

The East London brewery might not have been on this list a few years ago but they keep impressing us. There’s something about the boldness of the beers, even in traditional styles, that particularly pleases us. Railway Porter is the one that seems to work best away from home and which is among our very favourite takes on the style these days.

Fyne Ales

It’s been too long since we walked into a pub and encountered an unexpected Jarl, or one of its similarly pale and hoppy siblings. Bristol is a long way to travel from Argyll, we suppose. Because Jarl is only 3.8% ABV it’s also pretty much possible to sit in a pub and keep drinking it until closing time, knowing that you might not see it for another two years.

Elusive Brewing

A particular favourite of Jess’s, Elusive beers will usually hook us into a pub for at least a couple of rounds. It’s about cleanness, precision, and depth of flavour. It’s also maybe that we see their presence of evidence that a pub is run by someone with good taste.

Ideal Day

They’re the newest brewery on this list but we cannot deny the facts: we see their little wooden keg labels and we get a bit excited. More because their beers are so strange and interesting rather than because they’re consistently satisfying like some others we’ve named above and below.

Oakham

We’ve been enjoying Oakham beers since the mid-noughties and wish we saw them more often. Citra is obviously the most exciting of all, the gold standard, but we also thrill at the sight of JHB and others.

Newbarns

Another new addition to this list, this Edinburgh brewery has impressed us enough times in a row that we now expect to be impressed. Their beers make it to Bristol often enough that we’ve been able to get to know them a little without ever being able to take their presence for granted. That we had a beer-of-the-year contender from them last weekend probably doesn’t hurt. (See: recency bias.)

St Austell

This requires a small essay: for six years, when we lived in Penzance, we could have St Austell beers whenever we liked, and the novelty perhaps began to wear off. Even so, we never got fed up with Proper Job. In the past few years, though, it’s been harder to find St Austell beer in Bristol and Proper Job in particular has once again become a beer that we’re pleased to stumble upon. Tribute less so, even though we regard it as a very decent beer.

Thornbridge

Twenty years old this year, the sight of a Thornbridge beer on the hand pumps will still get us excited. Jaipur IPA remains the most exciting of all but we’ll at least try anything they produce and invariably enjoy it.

Timothy Taylor’s

Like those Magic Eye pictures from the 1990s, once you ‘get’ Landlord, you get it: at its best, it’s a peachy, orangey, pithy delight. And it’s enough of a rarity where we live, with very few regular outlets, that it’s still a thrill to encounter it. We wish we saw their dark beers more often, though.

Notable omissions

Let’s also have notes on some breweries we omitted, just for completeness:

• Batham’s and, to a lesser extent, Holden’s – well, of course we’d say “Ooh!” if we ever saw them. But we don’t, no ever, so that has to remain a purely theoretical “Ooh!” for now.

• Harvey’s – we haven’t seen Harvey’s beer in Bristol for a few years now so it feels like a moot point. Also, we know where to find it (The Royal Oak, Borough) and go there once or twice a year.

• Verdant, Deya, et al… This newer generation of breweries are all grand, and we’ve enjoyed Verdant’s trad cask beers quite a bit when we’ve had them. But on the whole, it’s not our kind of beer, and we can’t pretend we get excited to find them on offer.

Now, there’s not much point in arguing with us about our choices, but do feel free to tell us which breweries make you go “Ooh!” in the comments, or in a post of your own somewhere.

The difficulty of explaining the pub

Why is it so hard to write a guide to how the pub works?

British journalist Will Noble had a go for American outlet CNN and his effort prompted some eye rolling, mocking, and cry-laugh emojis from people who thought his effort was out of date, over simplified, or just plain inaccurate.

Of course it’s an impossible task, because…

• a pub in Aberdeen is a different creature to one in Hackney

• there are many different types of pub

• etiquette is inconsistent, context specific, and opaque

• pubs and pub etiquette change over time

There have been many attempts over the years to create typologies of the pub. We quoted a few in the introductions to each section of our book 20th Century Pub – which is, in itself, an attempt to categorise pubs by type, over time.

One of our favourites was from Luther Allison’s 1981 book The Condition of England:

Even an attempt at classification suggests layers of categories: the classics like the village pub, the roadhouse, the canal pub and the market-square tavern having been joined by new modifications like the estate pub, the scampi-and-brass-taps (no riff-raff) pub, and the precinct pick-up pub…

Tom Wilkinson’s 2016 article for Architectural Review is another good one.

As for setting out the rules, or at least observing how people behave, it’s hard to beat Kate Fox’s work, even if it’s getting pretty old.

Our own attempt to explain how pubs work primarily for an American audience was for All About Beer a few years ago. It still holds up, even if bits of it make us cringe now. We stand by this observations in particular, which is another reason it’s hard to explain pubs:

The problem is that many of the very best pubs, and the most charming, don’t look or feel superficially much different to rough pubs. Unpretentious is perhaps the best word. The pub’s seating will be well-worn, possibly even ripped or stained here and there. If there are carpets, they will have a subtle scent of stale beer, but there are more likely to be well-trodden floorboards. Don’t expect elaborate bathroom facilities, either – just be relieved if there is a lock on the door and a bar of soap on the basin.

In other words, if you know, you know.

Our in-a-nutshell advice to overseas visitors going to British pubs this summer might be:

• Be brave – chain pubs and hotel bars might feel like the safe option but they’re unlikely to be magical.

• Get off the main drag – some of the best pubs are in quieter neighbourhoods or back streets, not on main roads.

• Search blogs like Chris Dyson’s, Martin Taylor’s and, er, ours if you’re coming to Bristol. Local knowledge is free and easy to find these days.

The Session

Laura Hadland is hosting the next edition of the Session where people around the world post something on the same beer-related topic on the last Friday of each month.

She’s asked us to think about the ultimate pub quiz round.

As always, you’re free to interpret that as broadly or weirdly as you like. The main thing is to join in and have a bit of fun.

On the blog

Back in May, making our way home from the Balkans via Italy, we wrote about the bizarre experience of drinking in smoke-filled craft beer bars in Serbia. We expected to get told off a bit for this one but barring a snarky comment or two, people mostly seemed to agree with us: this feels weird in 2025!

We just about managed to contribute to Session #127 on the subject of fictional pubs. The main problem was that we realised we’d kind of said everything we had to say on this subject. If we hadn’t been working from hotel rooms and FLIPPING BOATS we might have done something a bit more interesting.

Back home, in June, we were saddened to hear of the death of Martyn Cornell. He was a legend and someone we always enjoyed chatting to online or by email. We got some of those thoughts off our chests in a blog post. Other people wrote proper obituaries; this was just about processing our own feelings.

Jess wrote about the numerous vegetable beers she enjoyed during our big trip and their connection with food preferences in the Balkans. On Mastodon (we’re still there, just about) someone said this trend started in Russia in about 2017. We’d like to know more about that.

Encountering lots of mild in lots of pubs in Bristol we began to wonder: is “mild is back” back… again? The answer is slightly complicated, in that it’s more back than it has been when people have said it’s back in the past, but not as back as people who want it back would like it to be.

There were also weekly roundups of links to good writing about beer and pubs; weekly footnotes on those roundups for Patreon supporters; and weekly notes on the best beers we drank in one place or another, also for Patreon supporters.

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

Cheers,

Jess & Ray