In a world of modern fads, Glasgow has always kept a weather eye on tradition and history.

For all the trendy burger bars and hype craft breweries (of which there is still a surprisingly small, but growing, community), Scotland’s largest city celebrates the established.

Mother India's Cafe in the West End, for instance, has long been a curry house institution. While the nation’s most popular lager, Tennent’s, represented by the "big red T", feels omnipresent among the city’s never-ending streets. Thanks to this fondness for the orthodox, however, Glasgow has always been a welcome home for cask ale.

Through Glasgow's institutional pubs such as The Laurieston, The Three Judges, Blackfriars (which sadly closed in 2021) and The Bon Accord, cask beer has always been the city drinkers’ focus. Which is in no small part due to a suspicious feeling against modern and experimental craft beers being "too dear", a sort of superstition against the unfamiliar.

The State Bar is the perfect example of Glasgow’s cask-loving soul, thanks to its unpretentious, warm atmosphere; it’s a quiet port in the storm of the vociferous city centre, and the excellently kept and conditioned cask ale running through its seven constantly rotating lines helps, too.

Glasgow is where I spent my student years, and it is The State Bar where I came to fully appreciate the majesty of zesty, tropical fruit-packed American hopped cask ales like Fyne’s Jarl or Oakham’s Green Devil or Citra. This pub became a post (and occasionally mid) shift staple, a home away from home, and now that I’ve moved away, The State is an absolute must-visit whenever I’m in town. There’s an almost spiritual connection between us that calls on me every so often.

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The State Bar isn’t particularly trendy or arrogant, it’s a humble affair with an unassuming frontage. Possessing an Edwardian horseshoe bar upstairs—an ideal spot for watching football, doubly so as the bar is strictly non-partisan, (a rare blessing in Glasgow). Head downstairs and you’ll find yourself in what feels like the cosy library of a well-to-do Victorian household, complete with dusty books to read, well-worn leather chairs and a crackling fireplace. You can find all the essentials here; house wines and spirits, Tennent’s, Guinness, Cider & McEwans 80-/, or "wee heavy" as it’s known by the locals, and a stage for the bar’s weekly comedy or acoustic nights.

"The reason for the State’s success is simple; excellent beer quality which is based on good turnover and top-notch cellarmanship," Robbie Pickering, the Glasgow and West Scotland CAMRA branch’s head of publicity, says.

"Glasgow has many friendly and atmospheric pubs, but only a few come close to The State for quality and range of beer.”

In honour of this success, CAMRA has awarded The State Bar their coveted Pub of the Year award for the Glasgow area an unprecedented seven times since 2007, including a four-year undefeated streak between 2014-17.

As Robbie says, “It’s a living example of the aphorism, ‘nothing succeeds like success.’”

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The State Bar is where beer explorers and connoisseurs of all (legal drinking) ages visit to fall in love with staple classics, such as their house Scottish Ale State No. 3 (named after its tap position on the beer board) by Stewart Brewing, while also discovering other deserving oddities.

On any given day you might find unexpected treats by Scottish breweries such as (the now sadly closed) Fallen, especially their decadent Salted Caramel Milk Stout Chew Chew, or Cromarty’s piney West Coast pale Rogue Wave. The State has even recently started stocking cans from upcoming Glasgow craft beer starlets, Overtone. Looking further afield, the bar always possesses a finely curated selection of (often Northern) English breweries such as Track, Almasty, Vocation, Marble, Burning Sky and Arbor Ales to introduce to predominantly Scottish drinkers often for the first time.

“Our whole modus operandi is to offer something different to every other similar venue in the city,” explains The State Bar’s landlord of 27 years and baker of the pub’s daily pie, Nancy Lyons. “Glasgow is not a big city. You can walk from one end of the centre of town to the other in half an hour. Because of that, we have to give customers a reason to keep coming back, and thankfully for us, they always do.”

Nancy, a born and bred “Weegie” isn’t wrong. While the city’s greater area stretches out to various satellite towns, reaching an overall population of just over a million, the city centre itself is fairly compact, made even more apparent by a grid system of tightly packed, easily walkable blocks, which, so the story goes, is where the Americans got the idea for their earliest city planning committees.

This stolid pub is tucked away on Holland Street, where Sauchiehall and Bath Street link—the parallel roads home to the city’s late-night music venues, clubs, theatres, cinemas and art centres—catering to all. Inside is a healthy mix of older locals, CAMRA members, theatre, cinema and nightlife goers and art school students. The bar itself serves as an unofficial exhibition library, documenting Glasgow's rich history of entertainment venues—the city used to be home to hundreds of music halls with a boom period in the 50s and 60s—displaying a fascinating collection of various old posters and photos from this era, with some so old even Bruce Forsyth looks young in them.

“At times during a Glasgow weekend, you can be surrounded by discarded takeaways, screaming students and parties in an evening,” says Chris MacMillan, a long-time regular and employee of the gorgeous art-deco era independent cinema The Glasgow Film Theatre that sits nearby.

““Glasgow has many friendly and atmospheric pubs, but only a few come close to The State for quality and range of beer.” ”

— Robbie Pickering, CAMRA

“My best advice is to make a sharp turn off the strip to arrive in a proper pub to relax in after work.”

Nancy agrees. “It’s no secret that we do a lot of trade thanks to the nearby entertainment venues and the art school just up the hill, though we took a bit of a hit when the great fire destroyed the ABC and Mackintosh building.”

What Nancy is referring to was 2018's devastating fire of The Glasgow School of Art’s signature building designed by renowned Scottish architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

After four years of restoration work after an initial blaze, The Art School was nearing reopening, however, the fire this time was so thunderous that it spread to the roof of the ABC Music Hall, the largest and oldest music venue on Sauchiehall Street, which sits directly downhill from “The Mack.”

Some friends and I witnessed this event, stood in horror outside The State Bar’s front door, shocked to see this beautiful and important historic landmark up in flames once again.

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On the left-hand side of the bar, near the toilets, there’s a poster on the wall with hundreds of signatures painted across it. The State Bar’s logo is at the centre, an iconic Northern Soul raised fist with the words “CASK ALE – THE STATE” along the top and “KEEP THE FAITH” along the bottom. This is a tribute to the bar’s former manager Jason Lyons, son of Nancy, a passionate Northern Soul fan and consummate publican in the truest sense of the word, who sadly and suddenly passed away in 2016. He was only 40 years old.

Jason’s dry wit and infectious laugh made him a popular fixture of the bar and in the local beer scene, and it was he who sourced and maintained the inspired selection.

“It was as if he’d been born to do the job. He had a friendly word for everyone and was always ready to listen to the regulars about the kind of beer they wanted to drink,” Robbie says.

“I always enjoyed the relationship between Jason and Nancy,” Fyne Ales head brewer, Malcolm Downie, tells me.

“Jason steadfastly believed in having quality cask always being on offer with quite a holistic view, whereas Nancy always had her business head-on at all times.”

These days, Nancy carries on her son’s legacy, keeping and developing the strong relationships he formed, such as with the brilliant Fyne Ales who produced an Extra Special Bitter, especially for the bar in 2015 called “Fyne State”, which the brewery re-created in honour of Jason after his passing.

Malcolm fondly recalls the beer’s launch at the pub: “Usually those “meet the brewer” events are two obsessive guys and their dug chewin’ your ear off about their homebrew, but that launch was a successful event with a really good turnout of interesting parties, and a lot of it was thanks to Jason’s hard work.”

In the bottom right-hand corner of the poster, you will find my signature, signed along with many other friends and regulars of the pub during a charity tribute night-cum-wake in honour of our dear friend. All cask ale proceeds went to Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital, British Heart Foundation and Dogs Trust UK, raising around £3,500, and Jason was played off by the bar's house blues band who perform every Tuesday night without fail.

“Jason's memorial night was so special,” Malcolm says. "Obviously [it was] very sad and surreal too, but also the perfect send-off for him and exactly what he would have wanted—a celebration of great cask beer, music, friends and family.”

This, for me, sums up the sense of community and kinship of The State Bar, and of the City of Glasgow. A cathartic expression between friends celebrating great beer and great people, brought together under one familiar roof to forget our troubles, and raise a glass to life.