Hail to the Ale is a micropub at Claregate, Wolverhampton, WV6 9JN.
The pub is owned by Gary and Angela Morton of Morton Brewery, based in nearby Essington, Staffordshire.
The pub was the first micropub to open in the West Midlands, opening on 5 September 2013 in a building that was previously occupied by the former Claregate Post Office and an antiques shop.
Hail to the Ale won the Campaign for Real Ale's Wolverhampton City Pub of the Year for five years in a row in 2015, [1] [2] 2016, [3] 2017, 2018 and 2019 [4] as well as the Campaign for Real Ale's West Midlands Regional Pub of the Year [2015], West Midlands County Pub of the Year awards [2015 & 2017] and Wolverhampton CAMRA Cider Pub of the Year [2018]. [5] [6] The micropub was also named in the Daily Telegraph's Thirsty Thirty pubs list, [7] picked by the writers of the Pint to Pint column in the newspaper's Weekend supplement.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hail to the Ale operated a non-profit cash and carry of essential goods for the benefit of the local community. [8]
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is an independent voluntary consumer organisation headquartered in St Albans, England, which promotes real ale, cider and perry and traditional British pubs and clubs. With just over 150,000 members, it is the largest single-issue consumer group in the UK, and is a founding member of the European Beer Consumers Union (EBCU).
Real ale is the name coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) for beer that is "brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide".
Marston's plc is a British pub and hotel operator. Founded by John Marston in 1834, it is listed on the London Stock Exchange. Marston's disposed of its brewing operations in 2020, selling the assets to a newly formed joint venture with the Carlsberg Group to create the Carlsberg Marston's Brewing Company (CMBC), in which Marston's plc holds a 40% share.
The Titanic Brewery is an independent producer of bottle conditioned and cask ales in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, England.
Beer has been brewed in England for thousands of years. As a beer brewing country, it is known for top fermented cask beer which finishes maturing in the cellar of the pub rather than at the brewery and is served with only natural carbonation.
Beer in Wales can be traced to the 6th century. Since the 2000s, there has been a growing microbrewery industry in Wales.
Claregate is a suburb of Wolverhampton, West Midlands, England. It is north west of Wolverhampton city centre, within the Tettenhall Regis ward.
The Great British Beer Festival is an annual beer festival organised by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). It presents a selection of cask ales, and the Champion Beer of Britain awards, and is held in August of each year. GBBF's sister festival, the Great British Beer Festival Winter, is held in February each year.
A beer festival is an event at which a variety of beers are available for purchase. There may be a theme, for instance beers from a particular area, or a particular brewing style such as winter ales.
Beer in the United Kingdom has a long history, and has quite distinct traditions. Historically the main styles were top-fermented Bitters, Porters, Stouts and Milds, but after World War II lagers took over half the market by volume. The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was founded in 1971 and has encouraged the preservation and revival of traditional styles of ale. In particular CAMRA has promoted cask conditioned beer, which completes its maturation in casks in the cellar of the pub rather than at the brewery. As of 2014 the UK drank 634 million imperial pints of cask ale, representing 60% of ale in pubs and restaurants and 17% of all beer in pubs. In total 42.42 million hectolitres of beer were produced in 2013 of which 48% was sold in the off-trade.
The Champion Beer of Wales is a beer award presented annually by the Campaign for Real Ale at the Great Welsh Beer & Cider Festival in Cardiff, Wales.
The National Pub of the Year is an annual competition held by CAMRA, the winner of which is announced in the February of the year following that in which the competition is run, that finds the best pub in the UK. Established in 1988, the competition helps to highlight quality pubs around the UK that are worth seeking out and visiting. Each year, each local CAMRA branch nominates one pub in their area to be entered. These 200 pubs then go through to the regional competition, which then whittles down to 4 pubs to go to the national final.
The Society for the Preservation of Beers from the Wood (SPBW), founded in 1963, is the oldest consumer-based group interested in stimulating the brewing of, increasing the awareness of, and encouraging the drinking of traditional cask ale. The Society also supports and encourages the use of wooden casks for beer dispense.
Blue Monkey Brewery is a 20 barrel microbrewery located on the border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. Founded in Ilkeston in 2008, the company doubled its capacity and moved to Giltbrook in 2010. It produces beers, including Ape Ale and Guerrilla Porter. It currently has four outlets; The Organ Grinder Nottingham, The Organ Grinder Loughborough, The Organ Grinder Newark and The Coffee Grinder Arnold
The term micropub was originally devised by the Campaign for Real Ale, in the 1976 edition of its Good Beer Guide, simply as a description for an unusually small but otherwise traditional pub. Examples of pubs described as such in this era included Manchester's Circus Tavern and The Nutshell in Bury St Edmunds. In more recent years, the term came to be redefined much more tightly, as a very small, modern, one-room pub, serving no food other than snacks, and "based upon good ale and lively banter". The original of these newly-defined micropubs is often cited as the Butchers Arms in Herne, Kent.
The Elgin is a Grade II listed public house at 96 Ladbroke Grove, London.
William Milroy Etheridge is an English politician who was previously a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the West Midlands region. He was elected in 2014 as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, but left the party in October 2018 and joined the Libertarian Party. He joined the Brexit Party in 2019 but rejoined UKIP in September 2020.