some breweries in the United States<\/a> and elsewhere mimic the beer.<\/p>\nBecause real ale continues to mature\u2014and eventually deteriorate\u2014in the cask, it requires careful management by the pub and its staff, and many pubs have abandoned the beers for easier-to-handle keg products. Along with efforts to secure UNESCO status, Britain\u2019s Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) promotes the historic beer style, through lobbying, promotion and beer festivals lauding the beer.<\/p>\n
CAMRA also annually publishes the Good Beer Guide, which lists pubs throughout Britain that meet standards of quality in the treatment and serving of real ale. During the video call, Hill held up the 2020 edition of the Good Beer Guide. \u201cThere\u2019s 4,500 pubs in this book,\u201d said Hill. \u201cI\u2019ve visited every one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hill admits with a chuckle that if a pub does not serve real ale, \u201cGuinness is a good reserve drink.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Quest<\/p>\n
\u201cI have to keep setting myself different targets,\u201d said Hill. He set his sights on visiting every pub in every county of the Midlands. Done. Then he set out to visit every pub in Wales. Done.<\/p>\n
Presently, Hill is trying to visit every island of Great Britain that has a pub on it. He says there are 69 of them.<\/p>\n
Along the way, Hill has documented every pub he has visited, taking photographs, a card or a paper menu. He keeps the sourvenirs in 250 lever arch files. On the video call from Hill\u2019s office, those files completely filled shelves behind him.<\/p>\n
Raising A Pint For Charity<\/p>\n
At each pub he visits, Hill simply asks the licensee to donate a pound. Almost all comply and many will give more. \u201cVery rarely, a pub will give me a \u00a320 note,\u201d said Hill. In exchange for the small donation, Hill hands over a card, on which he certifies that he has visited, and indicating the exact number that pub visit constitutes.<\/p>\n
Those few pounds from each pub add up. Visiting 24,400 pubs has allowed Hill to donate \u00a336,320 to various charities, usually selected to help the area in which Hill is visiting pubs at the time.<\/p>\n
The Importance Of Pubs<\/p>\n
The local pub has historically been an important part of British culture. But pubs have been closing at an alarming rate. \u201cBack in 1992, I put together a guide of my local pubs,\u201d said Hill. \u201cThere were 93 pubs in the guide. But we\u2019ve lost 60 of those pubs.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we lose a pub, we lose contact with the friends you only see at that pub,\u201d said Hill. \u201cWhat happened to them? Do they go to a different pub now? Did they stop drinking?\u201d Historically, pubs have been a third space for Brits and the loss of pubs has changed the way people gather.<\/p>\n
One of the things Hill is proud of, is that his documentation of the pubs he has visited has become a sort of archive of many of these special gathering places that have now been lost.<\/p>\n
The rise of smartphones and social media is in part to blame. Hill says the video call for this article was the first time he had used the technology. He prefers real life.<\/p>\n
So, Hill continues to visit pubs. And he is excited that new generations seem to be coming back. \u201cI\u2019m after fun in my life,\u201d he said. He estimates he is in a pub 95% of weekends. And now he is seeing younger people return.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see young kids\u2014we\u2019re talking about people in their 30s, who I consider kids,\u201d Hill laughs, \u201cI\u2019m teaching them to play crib and dominoes.\u201d Despite what outwardly may seem like an odd obsession, Hill\u2019s passion for visiting pubs is a very human pursuit. He raises money for charity while connecting with friends, old and new.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Peter Hill in his natural habitat, in a pub, with a pint of beer. Courtesy of Peter Hill…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[104207,167590,39372,43862,111,139,69,167588,167589,145,1491],"class_list":{"0":"post-306566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-black-country","9":"tag-british-pubs","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-guinness","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-peter-hill","16":"tag-real-ale","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-wales"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306566\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}