Mug, originally uploaded by LondonBrad.

This is not what Tony calls me, but for the international of you, it’s a kind of mug that’s–depressingly–less common in British pubs these days. Whilst I love the way they look, they are a little ungainly and really don’t look right unless you’re smoking a pipe. Quite a few pubs [...]

Drinking ale at home, originally uploaded by aleFinder.
Essential equipment for drinking at home. Ales just don’t taste right out of anything but a pint glass (or mug). Personally, I really don’t like the metallic taste of pewter tankards either.

So that you don’t have to copy and paste postcodes into google maps to really work out where a pub is, we’re now including direct links to maps of a pub’s location with each review.

For my 40th birthday Brad and I considered getting a barrel of ale from a local Free House. Brad had salvaged a proper Ale pump from a local skip and we reckoned it would be cool to rig one up.
After much faffing about we decided against it – mainly due to the short life of [...]

Finally, I’ve transitioned Alefinder from Blogger to the vastly superior Wordpress platform. The colour scheme is a bit funky for the moment, bit it will be changing. We’ll be blogging a lot more from now on.

With so many of the good pubs being out of town or a drive away, I wasn’t sure just how much ale I could drink and still legally drive after, so I thought I would find out.
The legal limit turns out to be 80mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood (BAC). Guidelines say that [...]

Something seriously simple learned from sitting at the bar of The Grapes all night while they served some pretty lively Timothy Taylor’s Landlord. Decanting makes bottled ales much more enjoyable and closer to their draught counterparts. So from now on, I’m going to carelessly pour my bottle of ale into a large jug and then [...]

I have been giving ale a bit of a rest lately. Mainly due to my growing stomach, but also because I have stacks of wine to get through ! I’ve had the odd pub lunch with Brad – but nothing exciting enough to write about. Until today!
My Italian friend Enrico fancied a pint of Guinness [...]

According to the bottle this stuff should be amazing. It has been twice voted ‘World Champion Bitter’, three times voted ‘Champion Beer of Britain’ and the winner of many other awards around the globe. In their own words “…ESB is acknowledged as one of the World’s Greatest Beers.

Brad and I tried this offering a couple of months ago – and at the time we weren’t convinced that this as a ‘proper ale’ at all. Given where if comes from – California USA (no singing the OC theme tune please!) – it has all the signs of being an American beer and not [...]