Everything I drank in January.
It's the most wonderful time of the year.
Unless you’ve been kicked in the head by a horse, you’ll be well aware of Dry January. You’ve probably made fun of it and you might even have tried it this year, along with 17.5 million other Brits.
January sees craft breweries fall over themselves to get a beer on the shelves and prove their worth. Pubs reluctantly add a line to their offer (removing one of their eight faux-Spanish lagers brewed in Burton-upon-Trent). And insatiable AF fans like me plunder the last of the post-Christmas piggy bank to collect every beer they possibly can like non-alc Pokémon cards.
I’ve written a full list of my January beers at the end of this article, but let’s start by zooming in on some of the month’s best bits, shall we?
The AF Beer Weekend at Beer & Burger, King’s Cross. 10 rotating lines featuring the best breweries.
Ben Gibbs and Martin Dixon are two big fish in the vibrant pond of British AF. They’re quite literally ambassadors for good beer, and have dedicated huge chunks of their time / life / personality to sharing the best (and worst) beers with the world.
In January 2026 they pulled off a feat that would have been unthinkable, and completely economically unviable, just a couple of years ago: the biggest selection of AF beers on tap in Britain. Possibly ever.
I missed the Saturday tasting bonanza, but a few hours spent here on a quiet-for-London Friday evening meant I could tuck into five brand new beers, and revisit a number of old favourites.
Cans are great; they’re the vessels that facilitate the vast bulk of my AF habit. But the ceremony of a pint, in a proper glass, pulled from a cold tap, simply hits different.
Annoyingly, I was having too much IRL fun and forgot to take any photos. Anyway, here’s to more events like this, more often, and in more places.
We Can Be Friends tasting session at Seven Seasons, Hoxton Rd. Four of the best cans alongside the guy who brewed them.
I knew this was going to be a small thing. But it’s always a bit weird when you’re the first to arrive. What a keen bean I am.
I approached the bar, started a tab, and plonked myself down between Sam and his friend Pierre — a pair who brewed together during lockdown in east London for a small run of pubs, years before Sam founded WCBF.
In time a couple of my friends joined, plus another guy. It was super relaxed, I got to ask a number of nosey questions, and Charlie (the homebrewer) correctly guessed the hop line-up in every beer with otherworldly accuracy. Nerd.
I’ve admired Sam’s beers since I first tasted SUPERLIQUID. And his collabs with Mash Gang, Gravity Well, Weekend Project, Verdant, Track, DEYA, Beak, Vault City, OVERTONE, Rivington and Sureshot are all among the best in the biz. Sam’s the common denominator in each great collab beer, despite the decades of experience and awards those big craft breweries can boast.
In short, We Can Be Friends is the best AF brewery out there right now. I’ll write more on this soon.
A quiet pint at The George & Dragon, Chipstead. Here’s to always having an AF on tap.
I get it. Most pubs are tied into supply chains. Capitalism and localised micro monopolies don’t make pubs better. The industry is on its knees. Rachel Reeves hates them. And too many have to sell shite food to survive another year. C’est la vie.
What’s more, I didn’t really enjoy this AF pint of 1664. But we did get a free 2/3rds because the keg ran out mid-round. So at least they’re shifting the stuff.
I loved a pint of full fat ‘numbers’ post-five-a-side in the mid-Covid summertime glory years. But this booze-free version doesn’t come close.
Here’s the good news. You can pick up a four pack of Estrella Damm N.A. in most big supermarkets for a fiver. And that stuff really does deliver the chewy macro lager cans-in-the-park wallop.
This Japanese AF. Muled back from an antipodean honeymoon.
Food and drink is always more than the sum of its parts: the music, the emotion, the art, the crockery, the place, the weather, the people.
So my Beer of the Month has to be this DDH NA IPA from Uchu.
I cracked it the night before Burns Night, a few hours before my birthday began, whilst on a surprise holiday for a few nights beside The Solent and New Forest. How’s that for 10/10 ambience?
With a hop profile of Krush, Mosaic and Nelson Sauvin, this USxNZ mix bordered on being too much. And the last resinous sip was. But before that it was all my favourite flavours in modern beer, with the added bonus of being personally flown 14,000km to my Airbnb’s fridge.
Kanpai!
And finally, here are all of January’s beers, in no particular order, with the 10 best in BOLD/orange:
1664 0.0%
Shaka Lo - Hand Brew Co.
Dog On A Skateboard - Twice Brewed
LA Coney - Brew York
Biére De Boire - Lost Pier
Implosion Pink Sour - To Øl
Faith AF - Northern Monk
La Trappe Nillis 0.0% - Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoevan
All In Lager - All In Beer
False Summit - Weekend Project x We Can Be Friends
Palace Pils - We Can Be Friends
Beyond AF - Northern Monk
Best - Nirvana
Brighter, Bolder - Queer Brewing
Lychee & Watermelon Aviation Sour - Cloudwater
Mello Peach & Passionfruit - BrewDog
1983 Lager (Aberdeen FC Collab) - Fierce
Tropical 0.0 - Kasteel
German Weissbier - Lucky Saint
Mash Gang - Glug
Pale Ale - Days