How Beer in UK Pubs Changed While I Wasn’t Looking
It’s not just the drink itself either.
It’s what’s on the bar, how it’s served, what people order, and what the pub thinks it needs to stock to keep people coming back.
I’ve been drinking in pubs long enough to have lived through a few “eras” of beer, and looking back, each decade had its own flavour, its own feel, and its own set of trends that seemed normal at the time.
In the 1980s, when I first started drinking properly, choice wasn’t really the point.
Most pubs I remember felt familiar and straightforward, and if you were a bitter drinker like me, the decision was often as simple as Trophy Bitter. Handpump or electric pump. That was about as exotic as it got (always handpump for me .. and 71p a pint! God I loved that stuff).
I wasn’t a big lager drinker then, and if I’m honest, I’m still not, but even I could see lager starting to take over. You’d hear orders for Carling Black Label and Heineken far more than you’d hear anyone talking about what bitter was on. Lager felt modern. Bitter felt like what your dad drank. That was the mood, even if it wasn’t fair.
What sticks with me most about the 80s is the pub as a place. You didn’t go in expecting ten choices. You went in expecting your pint, your people, and a few hours where the world felt smaller and simpler.
It was probably in the late 80's that Grolsch suddenly seemed to hit us, and it felt like it had an identity, partly because of the bottle, and yes, I wore Grolsch bottlecaps in my laces just like the Bros boys did! (I think that was the one and only time I ever felt like a slave to fashion!)
Then the 1990s arrived and the bar began to change.
Smoothflow and nitroflow versions of traditional bitters started turning up everywhere, and they didn’t just appear, they replaced things. In a lot of pubs, cask options quietly shrank while the creamy, easy pours took over. The sell was consistency. The reality was that a lot of those beers felt softer, sweeter, and less characterful than a well-kept cask pint.
I spent a lot of time in Manchester in the 90s and I swear Caffreys was on every other bar. You couldn’t escape it. It had that surge where it felt like the default choice, the “posh” pint you ordered when you wanted something a bit different, even though it was everywhere.
The supermarkets joined in too. John Smith’s, Boddingtons, Worthingtons. Smoothflow cans became a thing in a big way. It was like the pub experience was being bottled up and sold back to you for the living room.
In fact, the late 90s and early 2000s, supermarkets realised that beer brought people through the door.
So they started selling multipacks ridiculously cheap; we realised that we didn’t need the pub to drink socially anymore, we could drink pretty much the same beers in the comfort of our own hoes for a fraction of the cost.
And of course, the 90s had alcopops.
It’s hard to explain to anyone who didn’t live through it just how big they were for a while. Red Square, Smirnoff Ice, WKD Orange, Bacardi Breezer, VK. Suddenly the drinks menu wasn’t only aimed at bitter drinkers and lager drinkers. It widened overnight, and pub culture shifted with it.
Threshers much have been hitting its heights in the late 90's, I remember me and the lads (Hans, Gords and Pete) heading to the nearby Threashers before we hit the local pubs, the pubs was for beers and lagers, Threashers served us with bottles of Black Tower and Blue Nun (and they opened the bottles for us in there!) ... great times.
The 2000s were a different kind of turning point.
Lager seemed to tighten its grip even more, and it felt like Foster’s was everywhere for a good chunk of that decade. I also remember more bottled pilsners sitting behind the bar, the sort of brands that felt a bit “premium” at the time. Peroni is the obvious one. Budvar too, if the pub was trying to look like it stocked something a bit more interesting than the usual suspects.
Even though I wasn’t chasing lagers, I noticed how pubs used them. Bottles became a signal. If it was in a bottle and sounded European, it was treated like an upgrade.
And then there was Magners.
I remember the summer of 2000 like it was yesterday. Magners was everywhere, and it wasn’t subtle. It came with its own ritual. Over ice. Always over ice. It became the drink you ordered because everyone else was ordering it, and once a trend hits that level, it stops being about taste and starts being about belonging.
There was a time when those shops were everywhere and they felt like part of the drinking culture, not just somewhere you picked up a bottle of wine. You’d walk in and see shelves full of bottles that made you think there was a whole world of beer beyond what the pub had on draught.
The 2010s, though, are where things really got turned upside down.
Craft beer didn’t just arrive. It exploded. (I don't mind admitting it, that I shunned away from this type of beer at first, preferring my "proper" beers like John Smiths, Worthingtons etc, I know ... I was a fool!)
Suddenly hops were the talking point. Not just “is it bitter?” but what kind of bitter, what kind of fruity, what kind of piney. BrewDog are the obvious name people mention, but it wasn’t only them. New breweries seemed to pop up constantly, and it felt like every week there was a new beer, a new can design, and a new style I’d never heard of.
This was the decade where I started noticing how pubs were splitting into two worlds.
You had the “normal” pub that still leaned on lager and mainstream brands, and then you had places that took beer seriously. Bottle shops. Taprooms. Micro pubs. Little independent places where the beer was the whole point, and where you could actually talk to someone behind the bar who cared what they were pouring.
Supermarkets changed too. They started selling far more beer, and in much bigger variety, often at aggressive prices. Multi-buy deals made trying new things feel risk-free. Even if you didn’t love something, you didn’t feel like you’d been mugged off.
The off-trade boom didn’t happen because people stopped liking pubs because I'm sure we would all still be in them, but supermarkets have made beer cheaper, easier to get, and providing more variety than they ever had done before, while pubs slowly lost the things that once made them feel special; they've all turned "Gasto".
Now, in the 2020s, the bar feels familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
You’ve got the rise of “Spanish” and “Italian” lagers brewed here in the UK, sold on sunshine, and lifestyle, and the idea that a cold pint is a holiday in a glass. They dominate taps in a way that feels like lager dominance never really went away, it just changed its clothes.
Guinness has somehow become fashionable again too, thanks to "splitting the G", which still makes me smile. It never disappeared, but it’s definitely having a moment. You see it ordered by people who, ten years ago, probably wouldn’t have given it a second look.
What I’ve been happiest to see, though, is a bit of renewed interest in cask ale. It’s not back to how it was, and it probably never will be, but it’s not dead either. When you get a properly kept pint in a pub that cares, it still reminds you why cask has always mattered. It’s not just tradition. It’s genuinely a brilliant way to drink beer when it’s done right.
Looking back, what stands out most isn’t just how beer has changed, but how pub culture has changed alongside it.
The 80s felt simple, and in some ways I miss that. You went in for your pint and that was that. The 90s brought smoothflow and new drinking habits. The 2000s brought bottled premium cues, Magners over ice, and a different kind of mainstream. The 2010s brought craft beer, and with it, a whole new language and a whole new set of places to drink. The 2020s have become a mash-up of everything, with trends arriving faster and disappearing quicker.
I don’t think one era was “best”. I think each one had its thing.
But I will admit there’s a fondness I can’t shake for those early pub years, when the bar felt predictable and the pint felt like part of the furniture.
That said, I’m glad I’ve lived through a time where beer became more interesting again. Not because everyone needs a fridge full of hazy IPAs, but because variety is healthy. Choice keeps pubs alive. Curiosity keeps beer moving forward.
I’d genuinely love to know what era other people remember most fondly.
Was it the simple bitter-and-lager days, the smoothflow 90s, the Magners-over-ice 2000s, the craft explosion of the 2010s, or the strange mix we’ve got now?
And what’s the one drink you instantly associate with your own pub-going years?
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