Huddersfield - Beer Capital of the UK?

Well Sheffield perhaps has as good a choice of beer as long as you take the tram from the train station and get off at the Wellington.

Yes, Sheffield comes close with the Fat Cat, Wellington (Cask and Cutler) , Kelham Island Tavern, Hillsborough Hotel and New Barrack Tavern.. I still think Huddersfield has the edge.

The Champion has to be Rugby , Warwickshire.

Two micro breweries, plenty of great pubs: The Merchants Inn ( 10 Ales ) The Raglan ( eight ) The Seven Stars ( six) The Alexandra ( six ) Weatherspoons ( up to eight ), The Squirrel etc etc I could go on and on... Our local CAMRA group are confident that within walking distance of the railway station you could enjoy around fifty different beers. Give it a try ?

Cheers .Rod

In message , MPlatting@?.?.invalid writes

I've only managed a couple of brief visits, but Derby is no slouch...

Derby CAMRA Annual Beer Census Results 2008 More Real Ales per head than any other City

The recent Derby CAMRA Annual Beer Census saw the City try to recapture the title of 'Beer Capital of Britain', which it has held on numerous occasions throughout the years. However, we came up slightly short of our bigger City neighbours, Nottingham and Sheffield although per head of population we definitely have more different ones available than any other City in the Country.

The ABC crawl (as it has become known) has developed into one of the best social nights out of the year with members young and old crawling around most of Derby's pubs in the name of Beer Science and a pint or three. Meeting up at the end of the evening for a right good knees-up, a swapping of tales from the night's activities and of course the all important result announcement.

This year's event saw 79 pubs visited with the idea being to determine how many different Real Ales were available in the City on any one given night. The results again proved startling but fell slightly below last year's total by 4. However this in itself is still quite impressive for a cold wintry night in February with less pubs being visited than last year.

With no Real Ale available in 10 pubs and 4 Closed, the 275 Real Ales recorded (147 different ones) came from just 65 pubs, an average of over 4 per pub. These Ales came from 70 different breweries throughout the Country. 7 Real Ciders & Perries where also found.

Star pubs of the night included the Flowerpot with 28 Real Ales followed by the Babington Arms with 25 and the Brunswick with 16. Marston's Pedigree is still the most dominant brand in the City available in 40 pubs easily beating its nearest rival Draught Bass which continues its steady decline and is now only available in 16 pubs compared to its position of power a few years back. Greene King Old Speckled Hen - 8 pubs, Wells & Youngs Directors - 8, Wells & Youngs Bombardier - 7 and Greene King Abbot - 7 make up the next nearest rivals.

The average price of a pint was noted but this was recorded before the last budget increase and City Centre price hike. Anyway, on the night itself the average price of a pint came out at £2.38 (6p up on the previous year) making Derby probably the most expensive place to drink in the East Midlands. On a slightly worrying note though the beer quality throughout was generally found to be average with only a handful of pubs (mostly Derby's Good Beer Guide entries) serving good quality ale.

So there you have it, a few stats to bear in mind while crawling around 'Beer City' sampling one or two of the many different beer styles and tastes available. We may have failed to take the title back but Derby is still a haven for Real Ales and long may it continue!!!

Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool are probably too big to count as fair competition.

Chester has 2 or 3 superb pubs and a lot of nice ones. Derby, Norwich and Nottingham abound in pubs and microbrewieries. Reading, Salisbury, Oxford, Cambidge are all pretty good. St Albans, Bradford, Peterborough, Salisibury...

Opps..left out a personal favourite, Stockport.

Rugby has 3 pubs, Raglan Arms, Merchant, Victoria (Atomic Brewery tap), with

Liverpool CAMRA has I think described their fair city as "the real ale pubs capital of the UK".

If the OP's question is "which town/city is the Beer Capital?" then to me, it's open to any place, big or small. cheers MikeMcG

Yes perhaps I should have been more specific - but then I wasn't quite sure of the question myself! I think the 'withinin such a small area' is the key - I was thinking of someone arriving at a railway station for a day out, and being able to walk to a selection of pubs and back again to the station.

Perhaps a half mile radius from the principal railway station would be a reasonable yerdstick (which in Liverpool's case would include the Baltic Fleet - so that's ok!)

And the Northern quarter is easily accessible from from Machester Victoria.

Just returned to the US from a trip around West Yorks and up into The Dales. We stayed in Holmfirth (reasons are obvious??), but did drive up into Huddersfield.

Gotta say ... WOW!!!

Parked in the big lot at the top of the town and walked to bunches of pubs with loads of real ales. Think we liked the Rat and Ratchet best, 'cause they were doing their Mild festival. But there's two pubs just over at the station, and there's the Grove right by where we parked. Then there's the Star as well.

The day we were there, across all the pubs we looked into, betcha we counted over 60 different real ales on the pump.

Next time, you'll have to do the Sportsman as well, just a stone's throw from the station - Taylor's Landlord, Black Sheep Golden Sheep and 6 guests, mostly Huddersfield-brewed ales. Cheers!

Been to all of those, mostly several times, and vote for Huddersfield!

Now everyone knows that real ale can solve all the world's problems so it were all only a matter of time....

Over 20 years ago (1986 I think) it was a well known fact in Heavy Metal circles that:- "everybody knows the centre of the universe is Huddersfield"

Prophetic words methinks

Let Huddists rejoyce for the word is spreading far and wide.....

My vote goes to Halesowen/Lye

Havent seen., if so!

give some details to make me spend some of my summer hols here ....

I'm not sure it's really a "summer holiday" type of place...

Chris (who comes from 3 miles up the road!)

Obviously I'd be OT and we all (I trust) want good news; but has anyone encountered the opposite - that is a Real Ale desert? or maybe just a dull monopoly town?

I'd have mentioned Merthyr Tydfil in dishonourable dispatches, but it has a Spoon and (saving grace) a (the?) Rhymney brewery outlet.

I spent a summer holiday (a week? long time back) touring the Dudley area, sampling Holden, Batham, Sarah Hughes, Plant Holt& Deakin, (that'll date it to mid 80's) etc beers . Came back quite tanned; shocked work-colleagues by my answer to the "where did you go for your hols?"!