Recently, I have been spending a lot of time with the Good Pub Guide, CAMRA's Good Beer Guide, and beerintheevening.com. Not for the obvious reason - incipient alcoholism - but because someone bought me the Good Pub Guide as a present and I found it so odd and unsatisfying a guide that I felt compelled to dig deeper into the whole world of pub-tips publishing. Don't thank me. This is Word of Mouth, this is what we do.
Men are from Mars, women are from Venus - likewise our leading pub guides. I understand the need to differentiate your offer, but they are almost comically contradictory. The current Good Pub Guide opens with an upbeat, crisis-what-crisis assessment of the pub sector's resilience; the Good Beer Guide announces "Pubs in Peril: all hands to the pumps!" The Good Beer Guide, as befits a guide published by the world's biggest single issue campaign group bangs on (slightly unbelievably) about how real ale will save the British pub; the Good Pub Guide's introduction, meanwhile, pays as much attention to wine, whisky, food and accommodation as it does beer.
Indeed, there's a section in the Good Beer Guide's introduction explaining its modus operandi - "it's the beer that counts" - that is surely a sly dig at its more genteel, middle class rival:
"The Guide is unique in one further and vital way. We begin with the beer. Not roses around the pub lintel, Turkish carpets, sun-dried tomatoes, drizzled olive oil and the temperature of the oak-aged chardonnay. The Guide is committed to pub architecture, history, food and creature comforts. But, for us, the beer comes first ... We are especially proud of [our] coverage. We do not confine our entries to rural pubs or smart suburbs. We cover towns and cities where most people live and enjoy pubs in abundance."
Of the two, the Good Beer Guide is the one that can claim real authority. It lists 500 fewer pubs than its rival, but is compiled from the reports of 100,000 CAMRA members. In comparison, the Good Pub Guide relies on just 4,000 correspondents. The pubs it lists as main entries are reviewed anonymously by its editorial team, but these constitute a tiny minority. In Lancashire, just 32 pubs are main entries, with another 180 or so "Lucky Dip" boozers rounded up in brief, based on reader tip-offs.
The problem, however, is less one of numbers than purpose. The Good Beer Guide has its flaws. Its rigorous fairness, for instance, is self-defeating. Every pub is given one paragraph, but why? Not all pubs are equal. Given that the Good Beer Guide's aim is to illustrate the transformative powers of real ale, it seems weird it doesn't make more of real beer's most dynamic proponents: the Baltic Fleet in Liverpool, the Works in Sowerby Bridge, the Marble Arch in Manchester. But at least you know what you are getting - a guide to the best real ale pubs.
The Good Pub Guide, in comparison, has no such USP. It has little direction, in fact. Of the 32 pubs it lists as main entries in Lancashire (with Greater Manchester and Merseyside), seven are already listed in the Good Food Guide, another seven are primarily food-led pubs (and well-known as such), and two are 'classics' of such national fame that there are teetotal cockneys who will have heard of them. Half of the guide's main Lancastrian listings, therefore, leave you asking: where's the news? Bizarrely, the Good Pub Guide even lists all three of the regional Ribble Valley Inns pubs in full. Now, much as I love them, these could have easily been rolled into one listing, to give more space to other pubs.
I just don't get it. If you want to find out about pubs that offer good food (or accommodation for that matter), there are plenty of other sources of information out there. Instead, given the parlous state of Britain's pub and bar sector, couldn't - shouldn't, even - the Good Pub Guide be doing something new, valuable and unique? It would require a larger investment (more anonymously reviewed main entries, fewer reader recommendations), but it could be evolved into a genuine celebration of Britain's licensed premises without encroaching too much on CAMRA territory.
List some food pubs, sure, and throw a spotlight on some superb real ale pubs, too, but do so in a way that doesn't just replicate information already available in the Good Food Guide or Good Beer Guide. Moreover, as a 'pub' guide, make drink, socialising and entertainment - the pub's traditional functions - your focus. You're a pub guide, not a restaurant guide. Showcase Britain's great Belgian and European beer outlets (crazily these places aren't mentioned in either guide); cutting-edge cocktail bars; brilliant music-led, late-night city-centre bars; those pubs reinventing themselves as arts and community hubs, delis and Post Offices. The Good Pub Guide could be our window on a whole world of idiosyncratic watering holes.
More than that, be critical. Both main beer guides are relentlessly upbeat in a way that insults your intelligence. The Philharmonic in Liverpool is an architectural gem, but the last three times I've popped in the beer has been very average. Why is no-one mentioning this? At least on beerintheevening.com - which has irritating holes in its coverage, as any user-generated web guide will - you get robust reviews.
If you need to find a good pub, where do you turn? Does the Good Pub Guide fulfil a useful function? Is the Good Beer Guide the better book? Or are they both being overtaken by online resources?
