For the March 2025 edition of The Session I’m asking participants to produce a piece of critical writing about beer or pubs.
This could be a review of a beer you’ve enjoyed, or perhaps one you haven’t. A pub you’re fond of, or maybe one that has room for improvement. You could write about a beer experience (or lack of) in a setting such as a restaurant, or even produce a critique that focuses on a particular aspect of beer or pub culture.
The aim is not to be judgemental, subjective or to showcase any particular bias; this is not some finger-wagging exercise. Whereas criticism involves building an argument about why you think something is simply good or bad, critique involves taking a more holistic approach, using carefully researched and considered analysis to build a reasoned, objective, and possibly even entertaining take that benefits readers by giving them good quality information to consider.
Last year I wrote about how there is a general lack of criticism in beer writing, and contemplated why that might be. When it comes to restaurant, wine, or whisky writing there is an expectation for the writer to levy fair criticism because it’s already established that this is the done thing. No one is surprised when Jay Rayner or Marina O’Loughlin pans a bad meal at a restaurant, because it's the norm. But they’re also very good writers who work hard at building a fair critique, and this helps them to be respected within their field.
If you consider that food writing is the blanket category under which other niche topics, including wine, whisky, cider, restaurants, etc exist, then writing about beer and pubs is the outlier because of its inherent unwillingness to be critical. Perhaps, if we want beer and pub writing to be more accepted within mainstream discourse, it needs to grow some teeth.
I understand why there might be trepidation for people to write critically about beer because of the reactions it can so often spurn. Speaking from experience, brewery owners don’t take criticism particularly well. There’s also the weird element of beer culture where some breweries have cultivated fans, who will rise to the defence of the businesses they revere if they’re framed in a negative way, often letting emotion cloud reason in the process. I should know, I’ve been that guy on several occasions in the past. But I’ve not seen anyone get mad about independent breweries listing beers in a national supermarket for some time now, so maybe we’ve moved on. Maybe we’re ready.
This is why I’m asking participants of this months session to produce a critique. This isn’t about why you personally don’t like something, it’s an opportunity to make an evidence-based case why something is either good, bad, or somewhere in between, and why that matters.
I would also say to those within the beer industry worried about being criticised: its time to pull your big boy pants on. If beer culture hasn’t matured enough for writers to levy fair, objective critique of culture, products and processes, then I would argue it hasn’t matured at all.
I’ll add that if you don’t feel comfortable writing about negative aspects of something within your critique then don’t feel forced to. I would also advise that you don’t use this as an excuse to punch down. You might, for example, consider writing about a beer from a brewery that is objectively flawed, but could then offer context by considering other offerings from the brewery and explain why its an outlier and it shouldn’t put others off drinking their beer. Writing about a cultural topic is a good way of swerving this completely, but I would like to see some people having a go at writing a constructive review of why something wasn’t quite as advertised, and why.
My hope is that this exercise helps build a little confidence within beer writers new and old, and we start to see more critical writing about beer and pubs as a result. Writing collectively as part of The Session means we’ve got each others backs, which is why I feel this is the perfect opportunity to explore this style of writing.
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Entries to this edition of The Session should be published on, or by Friday the 28th of March. I’ll produce a roundup of all entries to be published on the Monday afterwards. Please either tag me on Bluesky or Instagram (not X, I don’t check it) using @totalcurtis, or by emailing matthew@pelliclemag.com. You can also leave the link in the comments section beneath this post.
Participants should feel free to use any form of media they’re comfortable with, be that a blog, newsletter, audio, video, social media or whatever but please note that I reserve the right not to include it in the roundup if I feel it doesn’t meet the above brief, or if its paywalled.
You can see the roundup of last month’s Session, hosted by Boak & Bailey, by clicking here.
April’s edition of The Session is, as yet, without a guest host. If you’d like to volunteer please get in touch via email.