IS LANDLORD THE MOST UBIQUITOUS PINT IN GBG PUBS NOW ?

January 2024. Buckingham.

Buckingham doesn’t have a railway station, so short of walking to Oxfordshire we were restricted to the town centre for the rest of our evening entertainment (if you can call observing a bloke necking two pints of Lucky Saint entertainment).

The What Pub menu is short.

even more so now us real ale twats have lost a couple more to the evil keg of late, so I stuck to the Good Book.

Now, I know I visited the Kings Head Coffee & Gin Bar not that long ago, but no record exists on this blog, so lets peruse Pubs Galore;

10/10, blimey. Shame the only review is nearly 15 years old. Where’s Sheffield Hatter when you need him.

I remember this a smart cafe-cum-creche with handpump, think it may have been a late morning visit. Now it seemed considerably less smart, which is fine.

The “gin bar” element seemed to be the fore, and it seemed to be the Saturday night meeting point for young folk.

Young folk in Buckingham are not like young folk in Brighton. Or Bolton. Probably not students at the private University, I guessed, they spent their time negotiating the misshaped seating, without success.

As I noted last time, the hypothesis is that the presence of a Wetherspoons will kill competition in a small market town like Buckingham, but the absence of one here had certainly not seemed to improve the beer scene much. Even the Buckingham aka the Whale, a decent Fullers pub, has now closed.

And the lone beer is the ubiquitous Landlord, which was cool and crisp to start (3+),

but as it started to drift to “cold tea” (see also : London Pride) I necked it.

Some folk (“scoopers”) record every beer they see on the and can tell you which ales they see most regularly; probably NOT Doom Bar as scoopers don’t tend to go in those sort of LCD places oh no.

I reckon Tim Taylor Landlord is taking over in GBG pubs and beyond, even at a quid a pint more than the rest. Certainly it was the most common sight in Scotland last year, and any pub with a pretension to elegance. Y’know, the sort of pub where folk wear clothes like this;

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Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

21 thoughts on “IS LANDLORD THE MOST UBIQUITOUS PINT IN GBG PUBS NOW ?”

  1. I wear clothes like this…

    The Landlord plague is annoying, I’m convinced the reason for its popularity is the one pint of outstanding Timothy Taylor ‘something’ on a Yorkshire holiday in the 90’s that everyone’s had. I know, I’m the same, horribly drunk in the Fighting Cock on Golden Best means I’ve spent the last 30 years being horribly disappointed whenever I’ve tried Landlord from the Midlands south. If it’s not been auto-vac’d to buggery in a backstreet Bradford boozer, I tend to avoid it now…

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    1. It’s actually a photo OF you but I used magic eraser to erase you.

      That’s a great analysis by the way. And really good Landlord still possible. Be interested in the Dick and Dave perspective.

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      1. Only being in England 1 or 2 weeks of the year, I must admit that Tim Taylor is a brewer that I am always happy to see when I walk into a pub. Knowing how difficult Landlord is to care for, makes it all the more intriguing. I will take my chances. Landlord, Boltmaker or Golden Best, I take them as a choice. Do they use a sparkler in London?

        Dick

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      2. Dick,
        I once heard that Timothy Taylors Landlord was the inspiration for the Craft Beer movement in the US a few decades ago.

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      3. We often see Landlord in more upscale pubs. It seems to have a bit of status. In these pubs it is often pretty mediocre. I love the beer and really enjoy it in pubs that really manage their cellar well. Ram Tam is a true love of mine😀

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      6. Stafford Paul,

        I can see that. On occasion, we can get Landlord in the bottle. Maybe someday American brewers will reach the quality of Landlord.

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    2. I wonder how many Golden Bests it took to get horribly drunk? You’re the persistent kind it seems, but generally I agree with your comment.

      Re Martin’s observation, I’ve had a few drifts-to-cold-tea of late and the reason – is it ever excusable? – seems to have been ends-of-barrel. As for keg, I had five or six pints of Moretti last night. I wasn’t counting, and the alternative was autovac beer, in which I’ve seen the dog-fussing bar staff rinse their hands to clear a “blockage” (It gets worse). I have to say, that this morning I believe that I felt better than I would have done after six pints of Landlord the night before. And who needs anything more than belief for a claim any more?

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      1. Moretti is quite decent, certainly a superior lager.

        I’m not sure about end-of-barrel but that cold tea taste certainly appears more commonly with Pride and Landlord.

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      2. Ah, you meant literally tasting of cold tea, rather than its being a similarly joyless experience in other ways – such as being a flat, bitter, deadness, Martin.

        I’ve had that only a few times, but evidently remembered to forget the beer.

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  2. Given how often I hear that “the Landlord’s drinking well” I can believe that it is the most ubiquitous cask beer in the more upmarket pubs that tend to get into the GBG.
    Coincidently an hour ago I was briefly talking to the Timothy Taylors rep in a nearby proper Craft Union pub.

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  3. It definitely seems to me that Landlord is more common across the country now than it was before the pandemic. It certainly ticks all the boxes for a publican looking for a safe bet: familiar, but no credible claims that it has been “dumbed down”, and I imagine the price differential to other beers is not as significant as it once was.

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    1. Safe but credible, a bit like Adnams Bitter used to be.

      You might be right about the margin coming down. Landlord being sold for under £3 in some Craft Union pubs must be a factor.

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  4. Deuchars was a wonderful beer when it came out – it was incredibly popular and very tasty. Then it did indeed get dumbed down. Hopefully Taylors management will not be as stupid as the Caledonian’s.

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