Those days were even still around when I first moved to Cardiff. 90% of pubs only served Brains beers, which are...average at best, and lagers. It was so bad that the Cardiff morris dancing side has had a 30-40 year tradition of piling on a bus and going for drinking tours up the South Wales valleys just to find good beer.

I must admit that I am partial to asking the bartender to take the sparkler off the cask tap when pouring a pint. I grew up with flat beer and sparklers seem to be an industry way of trying to sell bitter to people who expect beer to be fizzy.

Thankfully it has changed for the better, but I am worried about the effects of the lockdown on the upstart good-beer pubs. My local had finally given into my nagging and was permanently keeping a dark beer on tap, which is a rare find here; IPAs and the like are much more popular :D