Where it is poured properly.
Nineteen places that keep the lines clean, the cellar cold and the glass the right shape. There are four thousand pubs with Hawkstone on the bar. These are the ones we would drive to.
Nineteen places, and what each is for.
- The Farmer's Dog Asthall, Oxfordshire The full range, and the only place with everything on at once. Ours
- The Brewery Tap Bourton-on-the-Water Fresh off the plant. Two miles from the tanks. Ours
- The Chequers Chipping Norton Cask Session, and a landlord who cleans lines weekly whether they need it or not. Cask
- The Bell Langford, Oxfordshire Premium on keg, and the best fish in the county. Food
- The Swan Swinbrook Cask, riverside, and no music. Cask
- Bridge Street Tap Manchester Six lines, one of them always ours. Keg
- The Gate Leeds Northern flagship. Premium and IPA year round. Keg
- Quayside Bar Newcastle Cold, loud, and very good at turnover. Keg
- The Vaults Edinburgh The furthest north the cask goes. Cask
- Kelvin Tap Glasgow Premium on tap, cider in summer. Keg
- The Ferry Bristol Cider country, and they still take the lager. Cider
- Harbour Bar Falmouth Summer only, and worth the drive. Seasonal
- The Anchor Brighton Zero and Session, for a town that drinks earlier. Low-and-no
- Borough Tap London SE1 The busiest single account we have. Keg
- Hackney Yard London E8 IPA and the Black. Rarely the lager. Keg
- The Malt House Norwich Cask, and a cellar cooler than ours. Cask
- Cathedral Tap Lincoln Premium, and a fire in winter. Keg
- The Quarry Cardiff The Welsh account, and the only one that outsells Bristol. Keg
- The Long Room Belfast Bottle only. Shipping a cask across the sea is a fool's errand. Bottle
Hover a name to find it on the plan. The map is schematic — it will get you to the right county, not the right street. The address is on each pub's own page.
The distribution, honestly.
How a pub gets onto this list.
-
They clean the lines every week.
Not every fortnight, which is the industry norm and the reason most keg beer tastes of the pub rather than the brewery. Weekly, and they can tell you which day.
This is the single biggest difference between a good pint and a bad one, and it is entirely within the landlord's control.
Nothing we do in the brewhouse survives a dirty line.
-
The cellar is between eleven and thirteen degrees.
Measured, not guessed. A cellar at sixteen turns a five-week lager into an ordinary one in a fortnight.
-
They use the right glass and they rinse it.
A cold, wet, un-rinsed glass kills the head and takes the aroma with it. It costs nothing and almost nobody does it.
-
They will take it off if it is not right.
The ones on this list have all, at some point, rung up and said a cask was wrong. That is the whole qualification. A pub that never complains is a pub that is not tasting it.
We would rather hear it from the landlord than from a stranger on the internet.
If your local is not on here.
It probably still sells it — four thousand pubs do. This list is not a stockist finder, it is a shortlist of places we have drunk in and would go back to. For the full stockist search, which is a different and much longer thing, use the stockist page.
What people ask.
Stock it, keep it properly, and tell us. We visit before anything goes on this page, and we pay for our own pints when we do.
No. Nobody has ever paid to be on this list and nobody ever will, which is the only thing that makes it worth reading.
No, and the entry says which. Cask is a much shorter list than keg, and the Black rarely travels.
In ten countries, through distributors. Not from this site.
Elsewhere on the estate.
/brewing/stockists/
/brewing/stock-us/
/pubbing/
