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Colston Crawford's
Beer Column
For 21 years I wrote a beer and pubs column for the Derby Telegraph. After retiring in October 2025, I am continuing it as a blog, and this is it. Feel free to read, subscribe, comment or whatever.
Posts
Gluten-free beers matter - and you can't tell the difference anyway!
BY HER own description, Becky Carr has been on something on a one-woman campaign to make gluten-free beers more widespread in Derby, and further afield. Becky is coeliac, so it matters to her, of course. As she says, “I don’t want to be a gluten bore but it makes or breaks a pub for me, determining whether I can eat or drink there.” Happily, there is much more awareness now than there used to be and many more breweries either producing gluten-free beers or only producing glut
Colston Crawford
6 days ago4 min read
Gluten-free beers matter - and you can't tell the difference anyway!
BY HER own description, Becky Carr has been on something on a one-woman campaign to make gluten-free beers more widespread in Derby, and further afield. Becky is coeliac, so it matters to her, of course. As she says, “I don’t want to be a gluten bore but it makes or breaks a pub for me, determining whether I can eat or drink there.” Happily, there is much more awareness now than there used to be and many more breweries either producing gluten-free beers or only producing glut
Colston Crawford
6 days ago
How does Shardlow manage to support seven pubs when bigger villages have none? A few thoughts...
The Malt Shovel at twilight, by the canal at Shardlow. It’s long been a fascination of mine that the village of Shardlow supports no less than seven pubs in these most difficult times for the hospitality industry. It’s a freakishly large number for a village with, give or take, 1,000 voters (I know this, since I used to help out as a poll clerk during elections as a sideline). Compare that to Findern, which has no pubs for almost 5,000 inhabitants, or Borrowash, which has one
Colston Crawford
May 19
A beer in Beer? Don't mind if I do... a box ticked on my travels
The bar at the Dolphin, the highlight of the pubs in Beer, owned by the historic Hall & Woodhouse brewery. A bit of a travelogue for my latest piece, as I fulfilled a long-held whimsical idea to have a beer in Beer. Beer is an absolutely delightful village on the south Devon coast, a seaside village without amusement arcades but with beach huts, deckchairs for hire, clifftop walks and the opportunity to buy the day’s catch from the fishing boats hauled up on the beach – a lis
Colston Crawford
May 11
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