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Stroud CAMRA launched the 2024 Good Beer Guide on an unseasonably warm and sunny Sunday 1 October at the Lord John in Stroud, which is back in the guide for the first time in 18 years.

Copies of the Good Beer Guide were available at the launch at the special members’ price of £12—£5 less than the £16.99 cover price. The 2024 guide has a striking cover using the distinctive imagery, font and typography of heavy-metal band Iron Maiden, whose lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, contributes a foreword. Bruce is an avid drinker of real ale, so much so that his collaboration with Robinsons Brewery has produced one of the most well-known beers in the UK, Robinsons Trooper.

The Guide was published by CAMRA on Thursday 28 September. This is the entry for the Lord John:

‘Behind a handsome red brick and Cotswold-stone façade, Wetherspoon’s sympathetic conversion of the town’s former post office has produced an L-shaped bar with a south-facing walled courtyard. The pub is dominated by the large greenhouse-style glazed skylight which used to light the sorting office. The bar counter runs down the right-hand side with booths and individual high tables opposite. The rear has been designed to resemble an old-fashioned railway carriage, complete with overhead luggage racks and a curved, boarded ceiling.’

Stroud CAMRA chose these eight pubs to be included in the guide this year:

Black Horse* (2011) Amberley
Crown Frampton Mansell
Woolpack* (2020) Slad
Ale House Stroud
Crown & Sceptre Stroud
Lord John* (2006) Stroud
Prince Albert Stroud
Stroud Brewery Thrupp
*Asterisk indicates a pub back in the Guide with (in brackets) the date when it was last featured.

The self-styled ‘beer-lovers’ bible’ is fully revised and updated each year, and this year lists 4500 pubs, bars, and clubs across the United Kingdom that serve the very best real ale. Each entry contains a short description as well as details of regular and guest beers both local and national.

The guide is completely independent, with listings based entirely on evaluation by members of CAMRA’s 200-plus local branches. The unique breweries section lists every brewery—micro, regional and national—that produces real ale in the UK, and their beers. Tasting notes for the beers, compiled by CAMRA-trained tasting teams, are also included.

Stroud CAMRA (which covers postcodes GL5, GL6 and GL10) has more than 200 members who file reports on the pubs they visit, rating them for the range and quality of their beers, as well as welcome, service and atmosphere. At our monthly meetings, these reports are used to draw up a shortlist of pubs to be visited and evaluated for inclusion in the Good Beer Guide.

As part of this evaluation process, each shortlisted pub is visited unannounced at least three times a year—in spring, summer and winter—to see how the pub fares at different seasons, whether the number of beers available varies, and if the temperature and quality are consistent on a hot summer’s day as well as on a cold winter’s night.

Teams comprising at least two members (and armed with electronic thermometers) assess each pub, and these teams are rotated to avoid possible bias. So every pub is assessed by three separate teams of assessors—a minimum of six different individuals. As far as possible they try to judge the quality and condition of the beer on offer—the part that is down to the licensee and the cellarmanship—rather than whether or not a particular beer is to their taste.

The Lord John opened on Tuesday 14 July 1998 and I was there on the first day. At a stroke it transformed the pub scene in Stroud, joining the Pelican (later renamed the Market Tavern), the Queen Vic and the Duke of York as standard-bearers for real ale in the town centre. Of those three, only the Queen Vic is still open. The Lord John soon earned a place in the Good Beer Guide and was featured in 2003, 2005 and 2006 before an 18-year hiatus until this year’s triumphant return

The red-brick and carved Cotswold Stone façade on Russell Street gives little indication of the Tardis-like space inside, featuring a unique purpose-designed and woven Axminster carpet and culminating in a series of booths designed to recall the compartments of an old-fashioned railway carriage, complete with overhead luggage racks and a curved, boarded ceiling. These are inspired by the pub’s proximity to Stroud Railway Station—in fact the back of the pub overlooks the station, though it is not visible from the pub itself, which terminates in a suntrap walled courtyard.

The range and quality of real ales at the Lord John have over the years sometimes been a disappointment but, since she came from the Moon Under Water in Cheltenham to take over as manager, Leah Farrel has transformed the selection of beers on offer (usually including a dark ale) and the quality has never been better. Beer temperature in the glass is spot-on at c12.5ºC.

All Wetherspoon pubs clean the lines thoroughly between every beer—unlike so many pubs and even several Stroud CAMRA Good Beer Guide entries. How do I know? Because I’ve been in the cellar. Like all ‘spoons, they have an automated line-cleaning machine. You just plug it in, pull the handpump forward and let the gas-assisted flojet pumps do the rest.

But that’s not the really clever bit. The line-cleaning machine records every pass. And it’s audited. So if a member of staff wants to cut corners and skip a line clean between beers, it will show up on the audit. ‘You sold 95 firkins of real ale, but the machine only records 80 line cleans.’ Managers who preside over this sort of malfeasance are transferred to one of the many Wetherspoon airport Gulags. As janitors.

Photos by Bill Hicks