The Pub Curmudgeon

Tyranny of the pint

2012-01-29T16:39:00.001Z

No doubt this Guardian article will raise a few hackles:

The pint glass is an outdated relic and beer drinkers have been subjected to it for too long. It's time to put it out to pasture, says Ben McFarland

But he has a point. Most of the world, certainly most of Europe, tends to drink beer of about 5% ABV in glasses of around 330 ml. Only in Britain and Ireland do we tend to drink beer of about 4% ABV in pint glasses.

Yes, if you’re just relaxing or chewing the fat with your mates over your usual tipple of mild, ordinary bitter or cooking lager, pints are fine. But if you really want to appreciate beer, especially beers of 5% ABV and above, pints are just too much all at once, while halves continue to look like a distress purchase. So here’s to more pubs and bars offering their customers the choice of a two-thirds pint measure in the future.

Little and often?

2012-01-28T16:48:00.000Z

A House of Commons committee recently recommended that people should have at least two alcohol-free days a week (I wonder how many MPs abide by that). So I thought I would ask readers whether two heavy weekend sessions would be better than drinking a modest amount every day. I deliberately chose 14 pints as it is a little above the official government guidelines, but still within the 21-30 weekly units range which the research on which the guidelines were based actually said was associated with the best health outcomes.

And the results were quite clear, with 48 out of 59 respondents, more than four-fifths, reckoning that, overall, two pints a day would be better. In reality, I doubt whether there would be much difference, but drinking seven pints might result in a marginal increase in the likelihood of stroke or heart attack, not to mention the risk of banging your head or being knocked down when crossing the road.

I am not a scientist, but gut feeling strongly suggests that the “little and often” approach is likely to be kinder to your body in the long run. Drinkers who survive into great old age generally seem to adopt a regular routine of modest imbibing. And, while it might theoretically be better for you, I can’t really believe that three pints five days a week is going to make any difference compared with two seven days a week.

However, as I said here, present-day social mores tend to militate against that kind of regular drinking:

The office worker who ostentatiously sips bottled water during the day, but then goes out and has ten pints of Stella on Friday night, is regarded much more positively than his colleague who has a couple of pints of bitter in the pub round the corner each lunchtime. “Work hard and play hard”, not “moderation in all things”, is the motto for our times.

Fast track to trouble?

2012-01-27T09:42:00.001Z

It’s often claimed that there’s a singular lack of association between venues majoring on real ale and alcohol-related disorder, and indeed the experience of many beer festivals seems to bear that out. However, things seem to be rather different along the main Transpennine railway line:

Unruly real ale lovers searching for high-octane beer are losing their heads and giving fellow rail travellers and staff a hangover with anti-social behaviour.

Now British Transport Police have warned real ale fans taking the Transpennine Real Ale Trail from Batley to Stalybridge, stopping at Dewsbury, Mirfield and Huddersfield, to keep their celebrations on the right tracks or face prosecution.

They could end up walking home if banned from the railways.

The trail, featured on the BBC’s Oz and James Drink to Britain, is described as a “unique voyage to a selection of Yorkshire and Lancashire best real ale pubs”.

Some drunk trail-followers are running across crowded platforms and railway lines, compromising safety, say police.

Stag and hen parties are downing a range of strong ales, beer glasses are taken on trains, people urinate on platforms, train doors are held open, disrupting services, and trains damaged, added police.

In reality, I suspect to a large extent the Real Ale Trail is being unfairly blamed for this. Given that the line connects the nightlife capitals of Manchester and Leeds, and runs through a number of major urban areas, most of the bad behaviour is likely to be associated with the normal lads’ and girls’ nights out. Indeed, it’s not usually known for stag and hen parties to be swigging real ale. However, the problem is that mud is likely to stick...

Killing the thing you love

2012-01-25T22:10:00.000Z

Some trenchant words here from Simon Cooke about CAMRA’s blinkered and self-deluding response to the neo-Prohibitionist agenda:

CAMRA along with the idiots at Greene King and the nutters at Diageo have fallen hook, line and sinker for the nannying fussbuckets' agenda. Introduce a minimum price per unit for alcohol (just 40p say the bearded ale-suppers) and it will all be fine! Except it won't.

That 40p will soon be 50p. Then 60p and in no time £1. And the prohibitionists, nannying fussbuckets and adherents to the Church of Public Health will still scream about the terrible damage alcohol is wreaking on society.

So we'll get advertising restrictions and advertising bans. We'll get licensing restrictions and regulatory controls. High alcohol content beers will be banned. Warning labels will be placed on alcohol products - getting more and more extreme with each new iteration.

Soon universities and colleges will close their bars. Some will ban alcohol on campus. Only teetotallers will be recruited by the NHS and having alcohol in their private cars will lead to some workers being sacked.

And still the prohibitionists will scream about the evils of drink. We'll still get haggard doctors frowningly explaining how even one sip of booze could lead to alcoholism, liver disease and cancer.

This is not what CAMRA want - this is an organisation supposed to be an advocate for a healthy, mature and quality approach to boozing. Yet they are lining up with the ghastly people whose aim is to "denormalise" drinking, to make it something that normal people don't do - to kill the very thing that CAMRA campaign for.

It sometimes seems to me that CAMRA has slowly but surely metamorphosed into the thing it was originally set up to oppose, the “very fat man who waters the workers’ beer”, just as the pigs in Animal Farm eventually started walking on two legs and behaving just like the oppressor class that the animal revolution had overthrown.

Turning full circle

2012-01-25T14:22:00.000Z

It has often been commented how the growth of High Street coffee shops has usurped the traditional role of pubs as informal meeting places. So it’s interesting to see that Starbucks are trialling serving a range of beer and wine in some of their outlets in the USA and Spain.

Clarice Turner, the company’s US vice-president, said that the beer and wine selection would be tailored to each location as much as possible to reflect local tastes and “would be refined over time”.

Turner added: “The move is a natural progression for us as we are always looking for ways to evolve and enhance the Starbucks experience based on what our customers are telling us.

They say they have no plans to extend this to the UK, but it would be ironic if they ended up in effect reinventing the pub for the 21st century.

Yet more beer watering

2012-01-22T19:48:00.002Z

H/t to Tyson for pointing out the news that AB InBev are planning to cut the strength of Stella, Becks and Budweiser from 5% to 4.8% ABV. While this won’t affect me personally to any great extent, it’s yet another example of the growing trend to water down beer. It has the double advantage of saving duty and also gaining brownie points from the government and the anti-drink lobby. Given that 4.8% is the typical strength of German Pilseners, it’s not really taking Stella outside the category norm, either.

But surely they are being disingenuous when they say “The reduction might put a few punters off but the majority probably won't bat an eyelid as long as the 4.8 per cent brews deliver on taste.” Let’s face it, the main reason people buy 5% Stella rather than 4% Carling is not the taste, but the fact it has more alcohol content. There must come a point where customers start seeing through such moves and the brewers find they have suddenly destroyed their product’s cachet. And, over the years, InBev have been experts at eroding Stella’s brand equity.

Raising the bar

2012-01-21T15:07:00.000Z

“Brewer Molson Coors and drinks giant Diageo have predicted a growth in illicit cross-border trading if minimum pricing goes ahead in Scotland.” Wow, they must have some powerful crystal balls there.

But more interesting is the later comment in the article:

On the issue of competition, the Office of Fair Trading claimed there may be an unintended consequence of such a scheme — in particular, that retailers will increase their margin on selling alcohol, which “could give retailers an increased incentive to sell more rather than less low-cost alcohol — for example, through advertising or changing the mix of products on the shelves”.

Of course the product mix will change, as there will no longer be any point in selling low-priced economy brands that come in well below the minimum price. Why buy a bottle of High Commissioner when you can get a bottle of Grouse for the same price? So, while undoubtedly minimum pricing would strengthen both retailers’ and producers’ margins, it wouldn’t be the bonanza for business some claim, as the bottom end of the market would simply disappear.

Surveys indicate that a 45p/unit minimum alcohol price would affect over 70% of alcohol units sold in the off-trade, so for most of the market price competition would be a thing of the past. So inevitably there would be much more reliance on ways of encouraging trade that do not depend on price, such as in-store promotions and advertising, which would be funded by the fatter margins.

More alcohol advertising would be a likely unintended consequence of minimum pricing. So no doubt this would provide ammunition for the next step in the programme – to severly restrict advertising, with a view to eventually banning it entirely.

Never did me any harm

2012-01-20T17:01:00.000Z

There’s not a lot more you can say about this one:

A former pub landlord who regularly drank 40 pints a day has dismissed health warnings over alcohol as part of a ‘nanny state’.

Ken Chappell said tests ordered by a doctor concerned about his beer belly showed his liver was normal, even though he used to consume 30 times the recommended intake.

The 78-year-old has now cut down to six pints a day from his heyday in the 1980s and 1990s.

But he criticised government health officials for allegedly overstating the effects alcohol has on the body.

‘We are consistently told that two or three pints a day will kill you, maybe not today, but in the future,’ he said.

‘But I’m 78, so when is it going to be my time?’

But it does illustrate the inherent limitations of one-size-fits-all health warnings, and underlines that they are likely to represent a lowest common denominator.

Incidentally, in the mid-Eighties I remember the Boddingtons house magazine, The Bodfan, reporting that the Barbridge Inn near Nantwich had a regular who would routinely consume twenty pints each lunchtime, but the story was quietly dropped when it was pointed out that it didn’t put across quite the right image.

Freeloading?

2012-01-18T22:10:00.000Z

Imagine you are a licensee. It’s a bitterly cold day. Someone comes in your pub on their own and sits down at a table reading a free newspaper. This person isn’t an obvious loon, but may possibly be something of an eccentric. They show no sign of buying a drink or ordering food. The pub isn’t sufficiently busy that they’re depriving someone else of a seat. How long do you wait before speaking to them, maybe asking whether they would like a drink? Or would you just leave well alone if they’re doing no harm and only intervene if they started doing it regularly?

On a related note, over the years I’ve noticed a distinct shift in pub behaviour. In pubs where food is ordered at the bar, in the past groups would come in, get their drinks, sit down and then peruse the menu. Now, increasingly, they sit down at a table, peruse the menu and then go up and order food and drinks at the same time.

The family craft

2012-01-18T08:50:00.000Z

Prompted by this post about Fuller’s on Eating isn’t Cheating, I asked which of the family brewers in the North-West, Yorkshire and the Midlands people considered to be in any sense “craft breweries”. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t “expecting” any particular outcome from this. But the result is quite clear – 28 out of 48 respondents (58%) didn’t think any of them were. Does this mean that people don’t feel any brewery that was trading in 1972 can be a craft brewery, or that they don’t think much of the concept in general?

This certainly contradicts the statement made by Boak & Bailey and others that most British real ale qualifies as “craft beer”.

Of those who did, Timothy Taylor’s were marginal leaders with 10 votes, despite the fact that they do not produce either seasonal beers or “interesting” bottles. Robinson’s, Batham’s and Hook Norton were joint second with 9, while, perhaps surprisingly, Donnington, who must be the smallest and most truly “artisanal” of all, were joint bottom with 6.

My personal view, which I’ve said before, is that the concept of “craft beer” maybe causes more problems than it solves, but if it means anything it means beers that are knowingly produced to have a specific appeal to beer enthusiasts, in a sense that standard cask and bottled beers aren’t.

Filling up

2012-01-17T11:54:00.000Z

There were predictable howls of outrage from Alcohol Concern and their transport equivalents BRAKE at the news that a filling station in Kenilworth was offering a discount on fuel to customers who also bought alcohol.

A spokesman for Alcohol Concern said: “This irresponsible promotion is a direct encouragement for people to make unplanned alcohol purchases when people may be driving to visit friends and family. This is bound to increase the likelihood of drink-driving.”

Oh come on, are there any recorded drink-driving cases whatsoever where the driver has called in to fill up, seen a four-pack of Carling on sale and thought “oh, I’ll just have these for a bit of refreshment during the journey”? And surely anyone so inclined would be just as likely to buy some drink from a Tesco Express they were passing.

The article also lumps this in with more general statistics about drink-driving without any evidence of there being an actual link.

Of course, for Alcohol Concern, any success in restricting alcohol sales anywhere is another little victory. Looking back through the archives, I see that this issue has cropped up already.

(H/t to JuliaM)

And I see that is post #1000 on here :-)

A whole world out there

2012-01-17T09:09:00.000Z

While craft keg may be struggling to get out of the starting blocks, a phenomenon that has made a significant impact on the British pub scene is the growth of “world lagers”. Because this is nothing to do with real ale, it has tended to go largely unremarked. But, when a bog-standard Robinson’s local has a tap for Budweiser Budvar, and a Hydes pub one for Moretti, it is clear that a major change has taken place from the days when Carling and Stella ruled the roost.

The drinker who wishes to appear discerning but won’t touch that warm flat stuff that comes out of handpumps will now very often choose a fashionable imported lager, which is likely to be the most expensive draught on the bar.

Given that lager has twice the market share of ale, and all of it is keg to start with, perhaps ambitious British craft brewers might do better to concentrate on distinctive lagers rather than keg ales. The “reassuringly expensive” Pointing Dog in Cheadle Hulme already has a tap for Derbyshire-brewed Moravka, of course.

Storm in a nip glass

2012-01-16T17:23:00.002Z

There’s probably nothing in the beer blogosphere about which so much verbiage has been expended in relation to its importance in the beer market as “craft keg”. CAMRA have even set up a working group to consider its response. However, I was just thinking that, outside specialist beer pubs, I have never seen a single font dispensing anything that falls within that category. Things may be different in that London, but from where I’m sitting it is a classic beer bubble phenomenon that hasn’t shown any sign of moving out into the mainstream. Things could change of course, but at present I see no evidence of it.

Robinson’s retreat

2012-01-15T18:55:00.002Z

Stockport family brewer Robinson’s have historically been reluctant to abandon their tied pubs until it has become clear they have become completely unviable. However, recently they seem to have adopted a more pragmatic approach to rationalisation. The Grove and the Woodman in Hazel Grove – where Robinson’s have a near-monopoly – have been surrendered to the ASDA development, and the White Swan in Fallowfield, the crucible of the Stockport & South Manchester Branch of CAMRA, has been sold to a third party who until now have continued to operate it as a pub.

In the past few weeks news has come through that they have closed the Royal Oak on High Street in Stockport town centre – scene of this unhappy episode – and the imposing Bull’s Head on Stockport Market Place. The Royal Oak had obviously been a “dead man walking” for some time, and the Bull’s Head has never really seemed to find a niche in the twenty-seven years I’ve lived in Stockport.

It is an impressive building, and you do wonder whether, in such a central location, some other pub owner could not make a go of it. However, the once-thriving Market Place drinking scene is now a shadow of its former self, with Bambooza (formerly Yates’s) and Sam’s Bar firmly closed and the Pack Horse seemingly struggling. The town’s centre of drinking gravity seems to have switched more to the Crown – Magnet axis further west.

Most of the dead wood in the local Robinson’s estate now seems to have been culled – but you do have to wonder whether further pruning might be on the cards. There are one or two pubs in the general Marple/Bredbury/Romiley area that appear a bit run-down and underappreciated.

Free to be unfree

2012-01-15T14:34:00.000Z

The issue of Scottish independence has been much in the news recently. But, as Tim Black argues here, while Salmond claims to be campaigning for Scottish freedom, in practice he is busy extinguishing freedom on the ground.

Since its establishment over 10 years ago, the Scottish Parliament has certainly made use of its devolved powers. Indeed, there’s barely an area of private and public life north of the border in which members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs) have not had a significant impact. Impressive is not the word; repressive is more accurate. In fact, informed less by the electorate than by the clamour of campaign groups and myriad professional bodies, the Scottish government has shown itself to be a world-leader in some of the pettiest, mealy-mouthiest authoritarianism around.

A thaw in Tadcaster

2012-01-14T10:42:00.000Z

Sam Smith’s have been in the news recently for the wrong reasons, but it’s interesting that over the past month they have also broken the habit of a number of years and increased their prices above and beyond those increases dictated by changes in tax and duty rates. Beer seems to have gone up by around 8p a pint. Clearly, in an environment where costs across the board are remorselessly rising, a policy of freezing the pre-tax price is unsustainable in the long term, and even after the increase, Old Brewery Bitter is still only £1.60 in their two Stockport pubs, and £1.66 in the Vine at Dunham Woodhouses in the Cheshire countryside.

Sam’s are still a long way from that point, but if a key aspect of your business proposition is low prices, you have to be careful you don’t end up frittering that away. Going back fifteen or twenty years, Joseph Holt’s had the same reputation as Sam’s enjoy now, and their pubs were often very busy with a distinctive, boisterous, working-class clientele. Over time, they have slowly allowed the differential to erode, so that now many of their pubs are no cheaper than others in the locality, and in the process have lost a lot of that distinctive character and not really replaced it with anything else.

The Big Price Hike

2012-01-12T18:53:00.000Z

Bad news from Tesco Towers:

Tesco saw billions of pounds wiped from its shares today after the supermarket admitted it messed up its pricing strategy in a "disappointing" Christmas.

The blue-chip stock slumped by an unprecedented 15% - equivalent to more than £4 billion - after chief executive Philip Clarke said the grocer had failed to pull in enough customers with its £500 million Big Price Drop campaign.

Tesco, which has 2,700 stores in the UK, reported a "disappointing" 2.3% decline in like-for-like sales excluding VAT and petrol in the six weeks to January 7, which came in below its own expectations.

Judging by today’s experience in the beer aisle they’re not going to turn things round any day soon, as the standard price for 500ml premium bottle ales has been increased to £1.99, even for the 3.8% ones, which is the same as you would pay for a pint in Spoons. Not a sniff of a multibuy offer either. When Morrisons are selling a broadly similar selection for £1.75 each, or £5.50 for four, it will be hardly surprising if those customers who include beer in their weekly shop vote with their feet.

A consultation with Nanny

2012-01-10T12:20:00.001Z

Apparently Government ministers have backed a proposal by the Future Health Forum that health professionals should take every opportunity to discuss diet, exercise, smoking and drinking habits, even if completely unrelated to the condition being treated.

Obviously if you have gone to see the doctor and he believes that your particular ailment may be linked to lifestyle factors, he is perfectly entitled to raise the issue. But, if it’s entirely unrelated, then what business is it of his? We’re not (yet) government-controlled drones who are required to conform to the officially-approved lifestyle for the greater good of the hive.

Dr Clare Gerada of the Royal College of GPs, is quite right to point out:

“We already look for opportunities to offer advice, but the idea that every consultation will have to address these four concerns may deter patients from coming in the first place. The discussion must be based on the patient's agenda, and we should prise open these other issues only if it feels appropriate.”

Anything more likely to poison the doctor-patient relationship and deter people from seeking treatment is hard to imagine. Paradoxically, such a move could very well end up making the nation’s health worse, with people only grasping the nettle of seeing a doctor when they’re actually at death’s door.

And I suspect they won’t be asking about participation in dangerous sports, or sexual habits, as that would be politically incorrect. Not that they should do that either, of course.

Twice drily

2012-01-09T20:28:00.000Z

In the light of today’s news about people being recommended to have a couple of alcohol-free days each week, it’s interesting to revisit the results of this poll from a couple of years ago, in which 40% of respondents said they typically had an alcoholic drink every day.

It was disappointing, although not remotely surprising, to hear some strident harridan from Alcohol Focus Scotland being allowed to repeat her bilge on the BBC without the slightest challenge from the reporter.

As someone said on the radio, “two dry days a week is what passes for summer in Scotland”.

Derby bypassed

2012-01-08T19:16:00.001Z

I was interested to see yesterday a notice in a pub saying that they would not be screening today’s FA Cup Derby match between City and United, even though it has several large-screen TVs. Obviously they’d decided that having a crowd of boisterous footie fans in would put off their lunchtime diners and in the long run might damage their trade. It’s also a pub that has been recently refurbished and is maybe trying to shake off a reputation for being a bit rough. It would be good to see a few more pubs have the courage of their convictions and do the same from time to time.

Hydes on the move?

2012-01-08T15:33:00.000Z

Text of press release from Hydes dated 6 January 2012:

Hydes Plans to Relocate Brewery

Hydes has today announced its intention to close its ageing Queens Brewery in Moss Side and move to a new facility within the locality late in 2012. The Company has identified a number of suitable premises that meet its needs for the future and will commit an investment of some £2.0m to the new site.

The new facility will be far more efficient than the existing plant and will focus exclusively on the production of high quality beers targeted at the growing cask ale sector. This will include popular favourites such as Hydes Original and Manchester’s Finest as well as a diverse range of seasonal and themed craft ales.

As the closure will involve the potential loss of a number of jobs at the Moss Side site, the Company has entered into a period of consultation with all staff concerned. Nonetheless the sizeable investment in the new brewery would enable the company to protect the interests of a number of skilled staff who would be critical to the success of the new brewery. Every effort will be made to help any staff affected by these changes to find alternative roles.

Linked to this proposed change Hydes has also decided to withdraw from supplying the free trade market. Following this decision the company is pleased to announce that it has agreed to sell its free trade interests to Daniel Thwaites PLC to ensure continuity of supply to free trade customers. This sale will complete on 16th January 2012. Hydes free trade sales team and some free trade support staff will transfer to Thwaites as part of this deal.

“This was a very difficult decision for us to take and although it will be sad to see brewing end at Queens Brewery it is simply not sustainable” commented Hydes Managing Director Chris Hopkins. “The site was built over 150 years ago and is not able to meet the challenges of efficient production and distribution of beer in the 21st century. Given the imminent conclusion of a major contract brewing arrangement the site is not suitable for the company’s future requirements, particularly given the level of maintenance expenditure which will only increase as time goes by. We very much regret the likelihood of job losses but in order for the company to remain competitive in a very challenging sector there is no realistic alternative.

He concluded by saying “The proposed investment in the new brewery indicates Hydes continuing commitment to the brewing of great cask ales in Manchester. These changes will also allow for an increased management focus on the company’s pub estate and will accelerate plans for capital investment in refurbishments and the acquisition of new sites such as the John Millington in Cheadle and the Joshua Bradley in Gee Cross”.

Now, I've long felt that, amongst the four Greater Manchester family breweries, Hydes were the most likely to substantially recast their business in some way, and so it has proven. Only time will tell whether it works out as they foresee...

IPA as it used to be

2012-01-07T16:02:00.002Z

In recent years, many breweries have sought to revive the original style of IPA – a strong, heavily hopped beer brewed for export to India in the first half of the 19th century. However, this has led to armchair pedants decrying existing beers bearing the name, most notably Greene King IPA, for not being “true to style”. It seems to be forgotten, though, that the original style had entirely died out, and any beers retaining the name suffered along with the rest in the drastic reduction of beer strength brought about by the First World War. For most of the 20th century, IPA was a term typically given to inoffensive bitters of moderate strength, mostly, although not exclusively, in the South of England.

So here are the IPAs listed in the 1977 Good Beer Guide, with their original gravities:

Charrington (1038.9)
Darley (1034.7)
Eldridge Pope (1041)
Greene King (1035)
Palmer (1039.5)
Wadworth (1035)
Wells (1036)
Whitbread (Marlow) (1038.2)
Younger (1043.2)

The average gravity of those beers was 1037.9. There seems to be a division between those brewers who used IPA to describe an “ordinary” bitter, and those who used it for a “special” bitter.

Charrington IPA was a notably sweet, lightly-hopped bitter that was almost the opposite of the original IPAs. According to the current Good Beer Guide it no longer exists, although the similar Brew XI does. And is Darleys now the least-remembered brewery in the country that survived into the CAMRA era?

Measuring up

2012-01-07T09:11:00.001Z

I was recently in a pub next to a group who looked like they were a middle-aged man and his parents. The father went to the bar and returned with a round of drinks, including a pint of bitter for the son with a head at least one and a quarter inches deep. “I asked for a pint, not a half,” he said. “Well, take it back to the bar for a top-up,” his father replied. He pondered this for a moment and said “You know, I really can’t be arsed.”

This illustrated very well the problem with the issue of full measures in pubs. As I argued here, while in principle I support legislation that a pint should be a pint, and no less, in reality on the ground it is not something that people get very excited about.

Something similar happened in another pub at a CAMRA event. A colleague returned from the bar with a blatantly short pint and said “we really should be campaigning about this!” It was pointed out that campaigning for full measures legislation was already CAMRA policy, but not one that resonated very much with the general drinking public. Of course, if he wasn’t happy he could always ask for a top-up, although in reality when pubs are busy that often isn’t practical, and many people, as in the first example, just don’t bother.

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, across large parts of the Midlands and North of England, there was a critical mass of pubs using oversize glasses which could have formed the basis for such a campaign. However, while I’m not saying that CAMRA actively campaigned against full measures, in practice, when pubs stopped offering them they were never criticised for it, as it invariably coincided with the replacement of electric metered dispense with handpumps.

And that is what this poll was all about – presenting people with a simple either-or choice of which, to them, was more important, full measures or handpumps. And the result is quite clear – it’s handpumps, which provide an unambiguous symbol of cask beer in a way that no form of metered pump ever quite did. In a sense, the poll is a mirror image of asking in 1987 “Would you like to see the widespread restoration of handpumps even if you knew if would lead to the loss of full measures?”

What would be totally invidious would be to try and run a campaign highlighting certain pubs for being more likely than others to serve seriously short measures. Over time, I’ve probably asked for a top-up in pretty much every pub I visit regularly and, while some do perhaps seem more prone to it than others, that would be well-nigh impossible to prove.

Many years ago, someone tried to get the local CAMRA branch to mount a campaign against individual pubs suspected to be returning slops to the cask. This is undoubtedly a reprehensible and insanitary practice, not to mention being illegal, but the problem is that it also is very hard to prove. The presence of a stainless steel bucket behind the bar doesn’t prove it’s happening, and the absence of one doesn’t prove it isn’t. So the end result would be making insinuations against particular pubs on the basis of hearsay and supposition, which could be extremely damaging to CAMRA’s reputation amongst licensees.

Any campaign that involves singling out specific pubs for criticism must do so on the basis of verifiable fact, not rumour and speculation.

It’s worth adding that, in my view, as often as not short measure results simply from sloppy bar practice rather than from any deliberate intention to short-change the customer. And I have often seen customers - including members of CAMRA - take pints off the bar that, if left for a moment, would have been topped up without asking, which may well have been the case in the first example I gave.

Crystal ball working well

2012-01-06T09:34:00.002Z

Almost four years ago, I wrote of the Penny Black in Cheadle Hulme “in the next few years I can all too easily see it being put in the category of ‘return to sender’.” And so it has proved – after the New Year trading period it closed its doors for good and apparently is to be converted into a mini-ASDA.

For once my powers of prediction were spot-on. This was always a questionable venture – it seemed as though the Barracuda Group thought “OK, Cheadle Hulme has become a bit of a drinking circuit, so let’s open a crappy pub in a poor location and try to hoover up some of the bottom end of the trade.” And it was clearly a sign of desperation to rename it the “Sozzled Sausage”.

Just say no

2012-01-04T15:50:00.001Z

Ooh, this will certainly wind up some folks…

“Veto Ale is a traditional English bitter and a perfect example of a great beer style that you can drink and feel proud to be British,” said Tim Martin, Wetherspoon chairman.

Given that cask beer is a distinctive British product, traditionally sold in pints, you do have to wonder whether some people wouldn’t really be happier drinking lager in half-litres.

And, of course, it’s brewed by the same company who brought us Iron Lady Bitter a couple of years ago, celebrating their home county of Lincolnshire’s most famous daughter.

I’m not drinking that muck!

2012-01-02T15:09:00.000Z

Out of 80 poll respondents, 43 wouldn’t be prepared to let the likes of Carling, John Smith’s or Guinness pass their lips if caught at a party or function where there was no “decent” beer available. Sorry folks, but whatever the motivation, that comes across as a pretty snobby attitude to me. Scant sign of the “all beer is good” inclusiveness there.

Would the whisky snob drink Bell’s, or the wine snob drink Aussie Chardonnay? I think they would, if there was no better alternative. This underlines the key point about beer snobbery. Whisky snobbery, wine snobbery, even car snobbery, all serve to enhance the entire category by encouraging aspiration. On the other hand, beer snobbery all too often denigrates the ordinary and sets up an unhelpful them-and-us attitude.

Always look on the bright side

2012-01-01T11:10:00.001Z

I’ve seen a few postings recently complaining about blogs having a negative tone, and being much more willing to criticise than to praise. Now, I willingly plead guilty as charged, as the key point of this blog is to highlight the ever-increasing attack on lifestyle freedom, mainly, although not exclusively, in the sphere of the pub trade, beer and alcoholic drinks in general.

2011 was the usual gloomy round of pub closures, anti-drink hysteria and general illiberal bullying from government and fakecharities, although Chris Snowdon did identify a few flickers in the darkness.

The only thing I can think of in the past year that has actually improved my drinking life is the conversion of the Gateway in East Didsbury to a Wetherspoon’s. Oh, and Tesco’s get-it-while-you-can 4 for £5 beer offer. While I have had some very enjoyable experiences in pubs, they have mostly been ones you could have had five or ten years ago, and these opportunities are steadily becoming fewer as pubs continue to close and their customer base dwindles, which in a sense makes them more special and poignant.

But, gazing into my (slightly fogged) crystal ball, maybe through an alcohol-induced haze, I can see some positive developments on the horizon for 2012:

January: Tim Martin announces that the Wetherspoon chain is to start providing beermats in all their pubs and, in an attempt to appear more “pubby”, will be refitting them all with much more extensive fixed bench seating.
February: Secretive family brewer Samuel Smith’s announce they have acquired ten wet-led pubs in Cheshire towns and villages from Enterprise Inns. Even though beer prices fall by on average by £1.20 a pint, the local CAMRA branches complain about “loss of choice”.
March: George Osborne announces in the Budget that both HSBD and low strength relief are to be scrapped. Beer duty will be cut by an immediate 5% and then frozen until after the 2015 election.
April: CAMRA Chairman Colin Valentine announces at the National Conference that fighting the anti-drink lobby will now be the organisation’s Number One priority, and that any differences with off-trade representatives will be set aside in pursuit of this.
May: Stockport brewer Robinson’s open a brand-new pub in a former social club in a large Cheshire village. While it will serve food, they clearly say that it is intended to be a pub first, not an eating house.
June: A pre-emptive legal challenge in the European Court to the Scottish Government’s minimum pricing plans succeeds, with the scheme declared illegal and the Scottish taxpayer lumbered with a bill for several million pounds’ costs.
July: Controversial Scottish brewers BrewDog open a new bar in the prosperous South Manchester suburb of Didsbury. It serves only keg beers and has Punk IPA at £4.10 a pint. Despite this, or maybe because of it, it rapidly becomes the busiest and trendiest bar in the village.
August: Specific official alcohol consumption guidelines are scrapped as they are declared to be misleading and counter-productive.
September: The smoking ban in pubs, bars and restaurants is completely repealed. After a few months, the trade settles down to an equitable provision of smoking and non-smoking areas in proportion to the demand, and shows a marked upturn in the fourth quarter of the year.
October: The government announces that a pint of draught beer is to be defined as 20 fluid ounces, and no less. Pubs and bars are given twelve months to change their glass stock and dispense methods.
November: The Highwayman at Rainow in the Cheshire Peak District is acquired and reopened as a pub by a local free house operator.
December: The government instruct all police forces to concentrate on closely-targeted enforcement of the drink-drive laws, and abandon the practice of large-scale harassment of the innocent. The core message of seasonal publicity campaigns reverts from “Have none for the road” to “Stay low”.

Now that would be a year worth celebrating!

And I look forward to spending a pleasant summer afternoon in the beer garden of the Davenport Arms watching the Royal Porcine Flight wheeling lazily in formation in the azure skies above Woodford.

(Two of those 12, but only two, are actually not entirely beyond the bounds of possibility, at least within the next 2-3 years)

Price and value

2011-12-29T15:55:00.001Z

I was recently rather surprised to see a comment about one of Brunning & Price’s pubs in the South-East describing their food as “hearty stuff at moderate prices”. Up here, I’d describe them as unashamedly expensive and up-market, and I doubt whether that is much different down there. Let’s take their nearest outlet to me, the Sutton Hall near Macclesfield. The menu, which obviously is likely to change, currently offers, for example:

* Braised shoulder of lamb with dauphinoise potatoes and redcurrant gravy £16.75
* Pan-fried seabass fillets with a chorizo, caper, lemon, herb and tomato dressing £15.25

Now, of course they are perfectly entitled to charge those prices, and I’m not saying the food isn’t worth it, but those dishes on a pub menu are unquestionably expensive, ambitious and upmarket. There are cheaper main courses, but nothing, not even ham, egg and chips, below £9.95. To be fair, their sandwiches are not so much out of line with other food-led pubs.

To my mind, I would expect main dishes – excluding prime steaks and the like – in middle-of-the-road pubs to cost maybe between £7 and £9. Below £6 is cheap’n’cheerful, whereas over £9 is getting a bit steep, north of £10 and the eyes start to water.

The whole question of pricing in pubs, whether for food or drink, is far from simple. You have to consider the quality and choice of what is on offer, convenience of access, general atmosphere and the preferences of your companions. There may be forty pubs within easy reach of you, especially if you can travel directly to a town centre, but realistically on each occasion you’re unlikely to be choosing between more than a handful.

Recently, for beer of around 4.0%, I have paid £1.60 in a Sam Smith’s pub, £1.99 in Wetherspoon’s, £2.15 in a Holt’s, £2.46 in a Hydes’, £2.53 in a Lees’, £2.71 in a pub company outlet, £2.80 in a Robinson’s (one of the more upmarket ones), £3.30 in a Brunning & Price and £3.60 in the Pointing Dog in Cheadle Hulme, all within 15 miles of my house. This demonstrates the huge range of prices that are on offer. I won’t be going back to the Pointing Dog in a hurry, though. The Sam Smith’s beer was just as good as most, and rather better than some.

Each pub has its own target market, and the £3.30 in the smart B & P pub will be acceptable to those who have come for a meal and are only ging to drink one or two pints, but won’t appeal to the local six pints a night men. But you do need to be careful that your pricing aspirations don’t go beyond what your customers think is reasonable, otherwise they will start to drift away. People still have a strong sense of fairness and value for money. Also, the headline prices of a pint of bitter and lager are likely to stick in the mind, and be readily comparable to other pubs, and so it makes sense not to be seen to be out of line on these.

And price competition is much more intense in town and city centres, where there is much more of a choice of pubs, and where the influence of Wetherspoon’s is likely to have been brought to bear.

It must be said too that people are often happy to condemn pubs they don’t like as expensive, while happily tolerating similar prices in those they do like.

Unlikely pioneers

2011-12-28T16:13:00.002Z

You wouldn’t have guessed it in advance, but conservative, secretive family brewer Samuel Smith’s of Tadcaster seem to be leading the response to the reduced beer duty for beers of 2.8% or below. They have cut the strength of their keg Light and Dark Milds to this level, together with that of Alpine Lager. I think the two milds were only about 3.0% before, so it isn’t a huge difference in strength, and Alpine, once their standard lager, has now been supplanted by Taddy Lager as their full-strength offering.

It is significant that they have done this by cutting the strength of existing products rather than introducing new ones which will inevitably carry something of a stigma. Would you really want to go in a pub and order a pint of Small Beer?

I sampled a pint of the Light Mild, available at the Boar’s Head in Stockport at an incredible £1.18 a pint (where Old Brewery Bitter is £1.60). It’s a nitro effort, although not quite as soapy as John Smith’s Extra Smooth. It’s a bit darker than OBB, with a dense, lasting head, and is bland but inoffensive in flavour, with a slight burnt caramel tinge. Nothing to write home about, but if your finances are limited and you fancy a pint it has an appeal.

It was notable that, despite there being no actual market in the Market Place, the Boar’s Head was standing room only at lunchtime today, when Robinson’s nearby Baker’s Vaults and Bull’s Head were both closed.

Jumping on the wagon

2011-12-28T10:34:00.003Z

The Daily Telegraph reports today that Call Me Dave is actively looking into the introduction of a minimum unit price for alcohol. I’ve gone through the arguments against this at length in the past – it is wrong in principle, even on its own terms it won’t work, and it is against EU competition law anyway. Several other bloggers have criticised the plan this morning – I thought Cranmer (not one of my usual sidebar links) offered one of the best summaries.

Perhaps part of Cameron’s thinking is to pick a fight with the EU, although it is unlikely that many of his natural supporters will be with him on this one, and ironically it would give UKIP the opportunity to open up some more clear blue water.

And can we expect Labour, which historically has claimed to be the champion of the poor, to fight him on this? I strongly suspect they will do so just as strongly as they stood up for working-class pubs and clubs in 2007. Mind you, it’s unlikely to affect the price of Chianti, is it?

Edit: and I see the Telegraph in its editorial column is not at all keen. Could this be the Coalition equivalent of Blair’s “marching yobs to the cashpoint”?

Brass in pocket

2011-12-27T16:20:00.001Z

You often hear representatives of the medical profession moaning about alcohol being available at “pocket-money prices”. However, they’re always vague about what specific products they are referring to. It would be illuminating to get them to name the products they are talking about, and to demonstrate that they have some kind of disproportionate involvement in alcohol-related health problems.

And are they talking about the price per individual pack, or the effective price per unit? Tesco will sell you a single bottle of Czech lager for 99p, but in terms of bangs per buck that is a lot dearer than a 20-pack of Fosters for a tenner, and the latter can hardly be regarded as within the scope of “pocket money”. And the average weekly pocket money for a child is apparently £6.84, which will comfortably buy a four-pack of pretty much any beer in the off-trade.

In reality, the UK has about the third-highest alcohol duties in the European Union, and amongst the highest 10% in the world. In no meaningful sense can alcoholic drinks in this country overall be regarded as cheap.

If anything really is available at “pocket money prices”, then that suggests one or both of it being very weak and in a very small measure. This is a dishonest and emotive use of words that is only too typical of the anti-drink lobby, and regrettably is occasionally taken up by some claiming to represent the interests of drinkers who really should know better.

Bang on?

2011-12-27T12:04:00.000Z

I seem to have got the idea into my head that Wells’ Bombardier is a beer I don’t like. I tend to feel it has an unpleasant, cloying maltiness that really isn’t to my taste. But, I have to say, on at least three occasions over the past twelve months, I have ended up with a pint of it as it was the least bad option on the bar, and actually found it quite enjoyable. And – dare I say – the cut in strength from 4.3% ABV to 4.1% actually seems to have made it lighter in body and more palatable. It’s got to the point now where I may even actively prefer it to some other mainstream beers on the bar.

Having said that, I was recently in a (decent enough) pub where the beer range was Bombardier, Everards Tiger and Hobgoblin. Does that not perfectly define “dull and predictable”?

Strangers in tonight

2011-12-23T15:28:00.003Z

Last night we had a very enjoyable evening in the Davenport Arms at Woodford to present licensee Yvonne Hallworth with a certificate commemorating 25 consecutive years in the Good Beer Guide. This is a classic pub, bursting with character and, while it has been altered a little over the years, still has a cosy tap-room and snug at the front, all warmed by real fires which, on a fairly mild evening, produced a roasting atmosphere. Robinson’s Hatters Mild, Unicorn, Mr Scrooge and Old Tom were all on excellent form.

However, amongst some people, this pub seems to have got a reputation for being “cliquey”. It was described by one person as “ very much a locals' local in the style of "American Werewolf in London"'s Slaughtered Lamb: odd looks from (most likely) regulars, and the like.” Well, yes, it does have a strong band of regular customers, and isn’t that really a sign of a good pub? And, given its location between Bramhall and Wilmslow, most of them tend to come from the comfortable middle classes.

I must declare an interest as I have been going in there throughout those twenty-five years, and before, delivering the local CAMRA magazine, and have had many stimulating conversations both with Yvonne and her late father John who was the licensee before her. Every pub has its own character, and I can understand why this one may not be to everyone’s taste, but I can honestly say I have never experienced that exclusiveness of which some complain. And, in reality, especially in the tap-room, it’s a lot more down-to-earth than some seem to think.

Do these moaners simply have a problem with any pub having regular customers? Another excellent Stockport pub sometimes unjustly tarred with the same brush – and which undeniably has a mostly middle-class clientele – is my local, the Nursery in Heaton Norris.

Class in a glass

2011-12-21T14:03:00.000Z

There have recently been a few postings on beer blogs discussing the issue of when the appreciation of unusual and expensive beers turns from simple enthusiasm to beer snobbery, such as here, here and here.

A point that was made was that some of this was tied up with the British class system, and it wasn’t anywhere near so prevalent in other countries. However, I have certainly got the impression that food and drink snobbery was alive and well in the USA, and indeed was often accentuated by being tied up with the “culture wars” that are a much more pronounced feature of that country’s society. This was confirmed by this piece I unearthed about food snobbery, which has very clear echoes of the way many craft beer devotees enthuse about their favoured brews:

Whereas you’re keen on Granny Smiths, he insists that you haven’t even tasted an apple until you’ve sampled a Newtown Pippin...

...Artisanal. Adjective suggestive of handmade goods and old-fashioned craftsmanship. In the food world, a romantic epithet bestowed upon the cheesemaker, breadbaker, bacon-curer, etc., who labors in his or her integrity-steeped native locale, independent of the pressures and toxicities of Big Food, to produce exquisite high-end, SMALL-BATCH edibles available by mail-order.

“The farmstand’s shelves groaned with a dazzling array of artisanal pickles.”

To my mind, anyone who ever uses the term “artisanal” in a food and drink context is unquestionably guilty of snobbery.

The pieces on the same site about rock snobbery and wine snobbery are also well worth reading.

Much of this modern snobbery is not driven by social-climbing affectation, as was often the case in the past, but by a genuine belief that one is being a champion of quality in food and drink, and indeed in other aspects of culture. But this can easily turn into a rancorous and patronising denigration of those – often from a working-class background – who do not share your heightened appreciation. Ironically this often comes from those who would consider themselves as having a left-wing political outlook. It’s far from uncommon to read denunciations in the columns of the Guardian and the Independent of people who swill Carling and eat Big Macs and pizzas from Iceland. If only we could have a society where everybody could afford to buy polenta from Waitrose!

In beer terms, I would say the key factor differentiating the snob from the mere enthusiast is whether you feel a sense of superiority over the unenlightened by choosing the expensive and exotic, or whether you just think “each to his own”.

I also came across this blog post about beer snobbery. Some of the “types of beer snobs”, particularly the “Beer Führer” and “Beer geek” are all too familiar.

A rum do

2011-12-21T10:37:00.000Z

Innis & Gunn’s beers take a little bit of getting used to at first. As they’re brewed in Scotland, and oak-aged, you expect them to have some of the peaty, smoky character of Scotch whisky. But they don’t, and that takes you aback a bit. What I eventually decided they most resembled was a beer equivalent to American Bourbon-style whiskeys, smooth and slightly sweet, with pronounced oak, vanilla and toffee notes to its flavor. Once you understand what it’s getting at, you can appreciate it more.

A variant that seems especially suited to the style was the Rum Finish variety that I recently picked up in Tesco. (The photo says “Rum Cask”, but it was “Rum Finish” on the actual bottle) This was a rather steep £1.99 for 330 mls, but was available in a 3 for 2 offer covering a wide range of “world” and “craft” beers. It’s 7.4% ABV, so just coming under the HSBD threshold, and in the glass looks very much like Coke – dark but translucent with a thin but lasting head.

The typical I & G vanilla character is fairly subdued, but the toffee comes through strongly, and it is mixed with distinct fruit and spice notes. There’s a definite alcohol kick, but it’s relatively smooth and light-bodied and so is easy to drink – it’s not a heavy, chewy beer like many ales of this kind of strength. An ideal beer to sip and savour on a cold winter’s night, and probably the best I have sampled from this brewery.

Lansley speaks sense shock

2011-12-20T12:35:00.001Z

I can’t say I’ve been the greatest fan of Health Secretary Andrew Lansley since his appointment last year – far too much of a Nanny Stater for me (although no worse in that respect than his predecessor). However, he came out with some surprisingly blunt common sense last week on the subject of minimum alcohol pricing:

He said that there were “big problems” with the idea, which he said would penalise the poor, fall foul of EU competition laws, and do little to tackle the kind of dangerous drinking seen in town and city centres on Friday and Saturday nights.

Roll on the day when this misguided, illiberal and élitist policy comes before the courts and gets struck down. I really do look forward to seeing the egg plastered over that face of that smug, sanctimonious git Salmond.

Lansley’s government colleague Chloe Smith was speaking on similar lines last week. Interestingly, in that debate, some backbenchers “condemned Tesco for marketing tactics that encouraged shoppers to buy from English stores when minimum pricing for alcohol is introduced in Scotland.” You do have to wonder what else Tesco are supposed to do. It would undoubtedly be illegal for them to stop Scottish people buying from English stores, and I doubt whether it would need much if any publicity for canny Scots to realise they can get a bargain in Carlisle Tesco.

Join the revolution

2011-12-20T11:39:00.000Z

It’s interesting that Robinson’s have created a Facebook page here to campaign against High Strength Beer Duty, which for them is the “Old Tom Tax”. Rare to see a major company directly challenging a government policy in this way. However, although I have a page (under my own name, not A. Curmudgeon) I have to say I’ve never really “got” Facebook and would question how effective this is going to be – wouldn’t a simple petition on the brewery website be better? In reality, I would suggest it’s primarily a marketing tool. But good luck to them – it’s a fine beer.

Staggering uphill

2011-12-17T16:00:00.003Z

It is believed that the annual Hillgate Stagger, performed by the local branch of CAMRA, has been regularly held for longer than any other CAMRA event anywhere. Hillgate – divided into Lower, Middle and Upper – is a long historic street which stretches about three quarters of a mile south from Stockport town centre until it joins the A6 in Heaviley. It was originally the main road through the town, and would have been traversed by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745 on his ill-fated advance to Derby. However, it was bypassed in the early part of the 19th century by Wellington Road South and North, the current alignment of the A6. This must have been one of the very first road bypasses anywhere in Britain.

Over the years, there have been 19 different pubs included on the crawl, although I don’t think there have been more than 17 serving cask beer in any one year. Sadly, due to inner-urban decline and the general contraction of the pub trade, there are now only nine pubs on the route with real ale, plus a couple that are keg-only. Those nine include six Robinson’s, two Holt’s and one Sam Smith’s, a considerable reduction in beer choice compared with what was available twenty years ago. At some point around 1990, the direction of the crawl was reversed to go uphill rather than downhill, as problems had been experienced with some of the pubs near the town centre locking their doors after 10 pm due to the crowds of revellers. That isn’t a problem nowadays, but the uphill direction has become well established and does mean ending up at the Blossoms where Robinson’s Old Tom is available.

The 19 pubs, starting from the bottom end, are as follows:

Queen’s Head (Turner’s Vaults) (Samuel Smith’s), originally in the early years of the crawl a free house offering no cask beer. Currently open and serving cask beer.
Winter’s (Holt’s) – converted from a jeweller’s shop in the early 1990s. Currently open and serving cask beer.
Spread Eagle (Robinson’s) – now closed and used as brewery offices
Royal Oak (Robinson’s) – actually just off Hillgate on High Street. Currently open and serving cask beer.
Bishop Blaize (Tetley, then Burtonwood) – previously called the Gladstone, now closed, but still in pub livery
Red Bull (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer. Shown on the picture
Waterloo (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer. Actually on Waterloo Road, just off Hillgate
Black Lion (Boddington’s) – closed for some years
Sun & Castle (Tetley, then Holt’s) – currently open and serving cask beer
Pack Horse/Big Lamp (Whitbread) – closed for some years
Golden Lion (Burtonwood) – closed for some years
Crown (Corner Cupboard) (Wilson’s, then Vaux, then pub company) – currently open but not serving cask beer, although it has in the past
Star & Garter (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer
Ram’s Head (Wilson’s) – long closed, and now an Indian restaurant
Flying Dutchman (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer
Royal Mortar (Robinson’s) – closed for some years, still derelict and boarded
Bowling Green (Wilson’s, then pub company) – very recently closed. Actually on Charles Street, just off Hillgate
Wheatsheaf (Wilson’s, then pub company) – currently open but not serving cask beer, although it has in the past
Blossoms (Robinson’s) – currently open and serving cask beer

That really is a classic collection of British pub names. I made a few notes on this year’s event, held last night, and with a bit of luck will write them up and post them some time over the holiday period.

Incidentally, this is post #284 for this year, thus exceeding the record set in 2009.

That was the year that was

2011-12-16T12:12:00.000Z

I’m not someone who deliberately goes out seeking exotic and unfamiliar beers, and even if I encounter them I tend to forget the names. So I won’t be doing a “best of the year” awards including categories such as Best Black IPA (sub 6.5%). But I thought I might mention a few highlights of the past twelve months.

My best pub experience (in an unfamiliar pub) was the Barrels in Hereford, a city not generally known for the quality of its pubs. This is Wye Valley Brewery’s flagship tied house, selling the full range of their own beers, together with guests and cider, at notably good-value prices. It’s a spacious, four-square pub with a good choice of rooms, a lively atmosphere and a varied clientele ranging from Bohemians to businessmen. On a dry Monday evening it was noticeable how the extensive, part-covered courtyard at the rear was absolutely full of groups of smokers and their friends.

I’ll also congratulate Joules Brewery on their sensitive refurbishment of the Royal Oak in Eccleshall, Staffordshire, which I haven’t previously mentioned on here. This is a striking pub on the main street of this small town with a distinctive arcaded frontage. I don’t know what it was like before, but they have given it a very congenial, pubby interior with a main bar, snug and lounge/dining area making much use of dark wood. It sells Joule’s three cask beers – Blonde, Pale Ale and Slumbering Monk.

Most memorable pint of the year was a superb drop of Batham’s Best Bitter in the Great Western in Wolverhampton (currently featuring in a Sky Sports darts trailer). And an honourable mention to drinking BrewDog’s Avery Brown Dredge in the Magnet in Stockport. Brewery-conditioned bottled lager at a CAMRA meeting – whatever next?

Saddest event of the year was the closure of one of my local pubs, the Four Heatons (formerly the Moss Rose). While it had declined in recent years, in the 1990s this featured in the Good Beer Guide for a number of years and was a classic example of a thriving, down-to-earth boozer. It’s still standing, but with the windows now covered by metal, not wood. There can be little doubt that this pub was kicked over the edge by the smoking ban.

Extinction threatens

2011-12-16T10:03:00.000Z

The “alarming rate” of pub closures and the decline in beer volumes is a wake up call of epic proportions, claims British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) chairman and Molson Coors chief executive Mark Hunter…

…“Beer volumes have declined by a fifth in five years… while pubs continue to close at an alarming rate.”

How very perceptive of him. Perhaps he – or his predecessor – should have thought about that five years ago. And on-trade beer volumes are down by over a quarter.

In memory of the smoky pub

2011-12-12T18:59:00.002Z

Phil Mellows is normally someone who seems to have his finger on the pulse of the licensed trade, and has been alert to the threat from the anti-drink lobby. But this posting about the smoking ban is, sadly, the most ignorant and bigoted nonsense imaginable. He concludes:

I supported the idea that pubs might, by installing efficient ventilation and air-cleaning kit, ‘remove the smoke – not the smoker' as the slogan went. But over a number of years, as the pub trade fought a rearguard action against legislation, it became clear to me that the world was changing and that people – smokers and non-smokers alike – were ready for a ban.

And so it's proved. The smoking ban, it's true, was the last nail in the coffin for some pubs but the vast majority, and their customers, have adapted to the new circumstances.

Has it made pubs better places? I'm afraid you have to say it has.

It’s some adaptation when pubs have lost 25% of their beer trade in less than five years. And are all those pubs that have closed, and those that have lost most of their regulars and are now just running on empty, really better places?

And he repeats the old canard that, in the days before the ban, non-smokers felt obliged to throw their clothes in the washing machine after a night in the pub, whereas in reality I doubt whether even 1% did.

Edit 16/12/11: and four days on, no comments have been approved on that article, even though I and several of the commenters here have said they have submitted some. Are they afraid of open debate or something?

Dog in the manger

2011-12-12T12:18:00.000Z

Iconoclastic Scottish brewer BrewDog have recently opened their first “craft beer bar” outside Scotland in Camden, North London. Like the existing ones, it serves no cask beer, only keg. Despite this, beer blogger Mark Dredge reckons it will immediately become one of the go-to beer bars in London. BrewDog have also recently let it be known that they are going to discontinue cask beer production entirely in the New Year.

Now, from my perspective, BrewDog’s craft beer bars are very much an “urban beer bubble” phenomenon and of minimal interest or relevance to me as a consumer. However, by completely eschewing cask, they are very much throwing down the gauntlet to CAMRA. Is this a sign that the terms of discourse of the enthusiast beer market are increasingly moving away from CAMRA, or does it just show that the bubble is becoming increasingly disconnected from the mainstream?

Moment of truth

2011-12-11T11:32:00.001Z

A point I have made several times on here is that many “beer enthusiasts” seem strangely oblivious to the threat to their pleasure posed by the growing movement to have the State control and dictate individual lifestyles.

Not only do they refuse to accept the first they came for the smokers argument, but they seem to believe that their particular interest can sail on unscathed through the obviously increasing trend towards the denormalisation and demonisation of even moderate alcohol consumption. One day, though, something will happen to make them wake up and think “oh shit, this really does mean us!”

Perhaps it will be when the UK ends up with the highest beer duties in the developed world, which a few more years of the annual duty escalator will bring about. However, from the government point of view, we are already into the realm of diminishing returns on that one, with absolute revenues dropping and a substantial rise in smuggling and illicit brewing and distilling.

Or it could be when tiered beer duty makes selling anything beyond very weak beers prohibitively expensive.

Or maybe when restrictions on promotion and advertising (which is where I fear we are likely to see most action) make it impossible to carry on the activities of running beer festivals and producing local newsletters and render most micro-breweries unviable.

I don’t know, as I’m not in possession of a crystal ball. But one day it will happen, and the one thing that is absolutely certain is that it will be too late.

And, in case anyone still didn’t accept the “first they came for the smokers” argument, you only have to read this singularly vile article from Prohibitionist harridan Joan Smith in today’s Independent on Sunday, ably fisked by Chris Snowdon here.

Any suggestion that the principles behind the smoking ban be extended to junk food prompts near-apoplexy, as though we have an inalienable right to consume as much high-fat, sugary rubbish as we wish.

You do have to wonder what is the underlying motivation here. The hackneyed argument about “unhealthy” lifestyles imposing costs on the rest of society does not really wash, as it has been amply demonstrated that, over their lifetimes, those “healthy” people who live into extreme old age cost the NHS far more.

Or it is that we need to have a healthy population to fulfil our national destiny, something disturbingly redolent of the totalitarian ideologies of the 1930s? Or simply a desire to control others and stop them doing anything that the Righteous disapprove of?

And, for what it’s worth, although she says “filling your face with popcorn is not a human right”, in my view being able to choose your own diet and not have it imposed on you by the government is a fundamental human right.

Lifeless

2011-12-10T21:20:00.000Z

Redwillow Brewery from Macclesfield have been gaining a lot of plaudits for the quality of their cask beers. So I was interested to see a selection of their beers on sale in bottle-conditioned form. Now, I know I’ve had some bad experiences in the past with BCAs from micro-breweries, but these had to be worth a try, so I ended up with a bottle of their 4.1% “classic bitter – but a bit more so” Feckless. The bottles have attractive, stylish labels with the brewery’s distinctive branding theme.

It was crystal clear in the bottle, with the yeast firmly sticking to the bottom, and I was able to pour it clear without any difficulty. However, it was almost totally devoid of any condition, so I ended up with a glassful of flat brown liquid. Even though it was clear, there was a distinct yeastiness in the taste akin to poor-quality homebrew. Sorry, guys, you’ll have to do far better than that.

I’ve described drinking BCAs from micros as a bit of a lottery, but it seems that this is a lottery you are bound to lose. Wouldn’t it make more sense for breweries like Redwillow to just bottle one flagship beer and make sure they get the quality control right?

It’s worth noting that the label didn’t have the questionable “CAMRA says this is real ale” logo.

If anyone out there runs a micro-brewery and thinks I’ve just been unlucky, feel free to send me a sample of your beer. I’ll store it upright in a cold dark place for a week or so and then give it an honest tasting without prejudice. But if I can’t (with a bit of care) pour it clear, or it shows zero or minimal condition, then it won’t even get out of the starting blocks.

Jumping to conclusions

2011-12-10T10:30:00.000Z

Well, with 57 responses to the poll, there’s an exact 2:1 split between those who think “Beachy Head Christmas Jumper” is funny and those who think it’s insensitive.

A couple of niggles

2011-12-08T14:46:00.000Z

Two things recently observed in pubs that, while individually trivial, both contribute to a feeling of lack of interest in customers:

The pub isn’t busy, and a middle-aged guy who I presume is the licensee is the only one serving. He’s chatting on the phone, and carries on doing this even though he can see I am waiting to be served. This continues for maybe three minutes. Couldn’t he have either said “hang on, let me just serve this customer”, or said that he would ring back when more convenient? And no apology even when he eventually comes off the phone.
Another pub is nowhere near full, but ticking over reasonably. The landlady has allowed her daughter, aged approximately 10, to occupy what to my mind is the best seating position in the pub to do her maths homework on her laptop. There were other places to sit, but that, a comfortable corner bench with a clear view of the bar and a window behind, is where I always sit by preference in that particular pub if it is available.

Pilgrim’s Progress

2011-12-06T09:30:00.001Z

In a recent post, I referred to Hereford’s Pilgrim Cider, a new product on the market which makes a donation to Help for Heroes of 10p for each bottle sold. Unfortunately, I wasn’t too impressed, and was taken to task in the comments by Chris Newall.

So, to be fair, I thought I’d sample another bottle. It’s 5.0% ABV and £1.75 for a 500ml bottle at Morrisons, or 4 for £5.50.

In appearance it is clear, a pale straw colour with a very gentle carbonation. The flavour is fairly sweet, with subdued fruitiness and a distinctive, somewhat “floral” note, which is what I previously described as “perfumey”.

I make no claims to any kind of expertise on cider, but this isn’t really to my taste at all. Given that it is supporting a worthy cause I’m sorry I can’t be more enthusiastic.

(And no, I didn’t just drink it this morning...)

Steer clear of pubs this Christmas

2011-12-05T10:26:00.000Z

We have recently seen the launch of the annual advertising campaign against drink-driving over the festive season. Of course the sentiment is laudable, even if the means of delivering it is not always as well-focused as it could be, but surely for every person who says “better get a cab, then”, there will be another who thinks “better safe than sorry, stay at home and get some cans in”. Might it not be the case that, over the years, the subliminal drip-drip effect of these campaigns, however noble the intention, has had the unintended consequence of encouraging people to stay away from pubs, even if they are individuals who realistically are not going to become offenders? In effect, it’s a high-profile annual anti-pub marketing campaign.

The beer bubble

2011-12-03T15:35:00.002Z

Reading many beer blogs, you can’t avoid getting the impression that a “craft beer revolution” is taking place. The country, it would seem, is awash with new, exciting, challenging styles and flavours. But how far does that really spread beyond a handful of specialist outlets?

In the general run of pubs I go into, while you might see the odd guest beer or Peroni tap, that’s about it, and the vast majority of the beer drinkers are still necking Unicorn, Holts Bitter, John Smith’s Extra Smooth, Carling, Stella and Guinness. In Tesco, while there might be a little ghetto with a few BrewDog bottles and Belgian and American imports, much the same is true. I don’t really think the craft beer evangelists are giving a warm embrace to bottles of Spitfire and Warsteiner.

It’s also very much an urban phenomenon, confined to major city centres and the urban villages of the prosperous, liberal middle class. You might see it in Chorlton, but hardly in Levenshulme, let alone in Leominster. And, because London has quite a few neighbourhoods like Chorlton, it’s supposedly sweeping the board in the capital. But, beyond that limited sphere, it just doesn’t resonate at all. It’s a bubble of urban hype.

Back in the 70s and 80s, you would travel around the country and see plenty of A-boards and roadside signs proclaiming “The Red Lion -15th Century Inn – Good Food – Real Ale”. The concept of “real ale” is something that, at the time, had really caught the popular imagination. I never see similar signs advertising “craft beer”, and I don’t expect I ever will. And the Red Lion itself is probably now a private house.

“Real ale” connected beer enthusiasm with the wider drinking public. Far from evangelising to a broad audience, “craft beer” locks beer enthusiasts into a bubble of self-absorption and means they end up just drinking in their own exclusive venues and steering clear of any engagement with the hoi polloi.

A seasonal leap forward

2011-12-02T08:24:00.000Z

There has been an outburst of manufactured outrage about Beachy Head Brewery naming a seasonal beer Christmas Jumper. This, it is claimed, is offensive to those unfortunates who take their own lives by jumping from said headland.

In a sense that is true, but it isn’t referring to any individual, and in any case much of the best humour has a dark edge to it and to some extent plays on our inner fears. Very often the funniest things you see are the viral text message jokes you start getting a few hours after some “tragedy” in the news.

It seems today that the acceptable subjects for humour in public are becoming so circumscribed that you can listen to some so-called comedians without even raising a smile.

In any case, the brewery’s story that they originally named a beer after the well-known unwanted gift of knitwear and only then realised it had another connotation seems entirely plausible. If any other brewery had done it, nobody would have batted an eyelid or spotted the alternative meaning.

The people complaining about this are probably the same politically correct, humour-free “legions of the perpetually offended” who were whingeing yesterday about Jeremy Clarkson suggesting in obvious jest that public sector strikers should be shot.

Worth passing a few offies for?

2011-11-27T15:55:00.001Z

On a vaguely similar theme to the last post, I ran a poll asking whether people bought beer from specialist off-licences, the results of which are shown in the graphic.

It’s interesting that 50% of respondents said “occasionally”, which suggests that they will contemplate using a specialist, but for various reasons don’t do so regularly. I would hazard a guess that the main reason was not price but simply convenience – while people recognise the appeal of the specialist, they won’t go too far out of their way to visit one. This is reflected by Jesusjohn’s comment on the poll:

I perhaps would more often if there were one close by. I live in Hackney - and for all the proliferation of lifestyle bars and delis, we still lack a beer specialist. My nearest, I'd wager, is Utobeer at Borough Market - a very pricey offer, if understandably so. Even so, with Waitrose stocking Thornbridge, White Shield, Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams, it stocks enough decent stock for me to have something good in the fridge. Tesco's BrewDog Imperial IPA is also worthy of honourable mention. I would still go to a specialist - and indeed do on occasion - but it would have to be a local resource. With online purchasing also available for rare beers, it's simply too much effort for too little reward to go out of my way to a specialist. And bar selection has also improved immeasurably in the area. One final point - a beer shop that really does deserve more praise is Bacchanalia in Cambridge. Absolutely first rate.

As I’ve said before, I do call in about monthly at the Bottle Stop in Bramhall when I’m passing nearby, but, as it’s about six miles away in a direction I don’t routinely go in, I don’t feel it’s worth making a special journey more frequently. I would also say that their previously very impressive selection of German – especially Bavarian – imports has been rather reduced in recent years. It seems that German beers aren’t very fashionable nowadays. On the other hand, their prices are roughly on a par with undiscounted supermarket prices, so you’re not expected to pay an arm and a leg.

If you want to make a success of a specialist off-licence, it would seem you need to be careful to get both your location and social mix of catchment area right.

Worth passing a few pubs for?

2011-11-26T16:05:00.000Z

I grew up in an area of North Cheshire dominated by Greenalls, and so in the 1970s it made a refreshing change to head off a few miles to the south where, around Tarporley, there was a cluster of four Robinson’s pubs. And from time to time we would visit Chester and make a beeline for the Olde Custom House, one of the very few pubs this side of the English border selling Border beers from Wrexham.

At University in Birmingham, the city was dominated by a duopoly of Ansell’s and M&B, so the handful of Davenports pubs were an attraction, and a bus trip to the Black Country to sample Batham’s, Holden’s and Simpkiss was a virtual pilgrimage. Even finding a Banks’s or Marston’s pub in the surrounding areas (then two separate and very different companies) was something of an achievement.

After that, I worked in Surrey for a while, again an area dominated by two of the then Big Six, in this case Courage and Ind Coope. But the county was surrounded by a number of well-respected independent brewers – Young’s, King & Barnes, Brakspear’s and Gale’s (all now closed) – whose tied houses either spread into the edges or started not far beyond the border. Fuller’s had virtually no presence outside London in those days.

It was also very much the case back then that the tied houses of a particular brewery had a distinctive house character. Young’s pubs tended to be big, a bit posh, traditional and comfortable, with plenty of dark wood, whereas Brakspear’s were often small and Spartan with bare wooden benches and whitewashed interior walls. Around here, Holt’s pubs were noted for their busy, basic and boisterous atmosphere, often in an environment of some architectural splendour.

But times have changed, and over the past twenty years one of the most significant changes to the British pub scene has been the wholesale removal of brewers’ identities from pubs. It has to be questioned whether today there is any cachet gained from linking a pub with a particular brewery. The beer enthusiast is likely to be found in a multi-beer outlet working his way through fifteen different golden ales tasting of lychees, while looking down with scorn at the neighbouring Robbies’ house and its boring brown beer. While Robinson’s and Lees have been busy buying up pubs from the pub companies in the last few years, in general their main objective has been to acquire establishments with the potential to develop the food trade, not showcases for their beers.

It certainly does still have a cachet for me, as in any given area the tied houses of a family brewer are likely to my mind to be better run, more “pubby” and have better-kept beer than pubs belonging to pub companies. But, in the overall pub market, does being identified as “A Bloggs’ House” now give a pub any kind of USP?

The one exception to this is Sam Smith’s, who ironically don’t even paint the name of the company on their pubs. They have a very definite, even somewhat eccentric, policy of low prices, all products bearing their own branding and a no-frills, traditional atmosphere. It doesn’t always work, but at their best Sam’s pubs are examples of what good pubs are all about. In the London area, where they have a number of pubs, they must stand out from the general herd even more than they do here.

(And for those too young to remember, “Worth passing a few pubs for” was an advertising slogan used in the 1970s for, of all things, Younger’s Tartan)

Beer battered

2011-11-25T11:23:00.001Z

Reports from Scotland show a 14% fall in volumes of beer sold in the off-trade following the Scottish government’s banning of multibuy discounts from 1 October. Obviously one month’s figures are not enough to establish a trend, and it is likely there was some element of stocking-up at the end of September. Part of the reduction is also probably attributable to the fact that the effective average price of beer rose, rather than simply multibuys encouraging people to buy more than they otherwise would. The supermarkets may also welcome the opportunity to increase their margins, as big-pack multibuys, while rarely sold at an actual loss, were often heavily discounted as a tool to get customers to visit one particular shop rather than a competitor.

Over time, the retailers will no doubt work out what combination of pack sizes and price points work best under the new regime to maximise sales, and it will be interesting to see what the figures look like over a full year. As I understand it, while you can’t sell two of something for less than twice the price of one, you don’t have to sell all pack sizes of the same product exactly pro-rata, so there’s nothing to stop you selling 4x500ml cans of Carling for £3.99, and a multipack of 10x440ml cans for £7.99.

It’s not something that would greatly bother me personally, and if Morrisons started selling single bottles for £1.39 rather than 4 for £5.50 I doubt whether I’d buy any less. But it’s another small salami slice of restriction imposed on the drinks trade, and it’s the direction of travel that should concern anyone interested in the brewing industry.

It also must be questioned whether, at a time of a flatlining economy and rising unemployment, reducing the revenues of a substantial business sector by 14% as a result of government action is really a sensible thing to do.

Edit: I see in today’s paper that ASDA are advertising 20x440ml cans of Carling, or 18x440ml cans of Stella, for £10. Including Scotland. Both under 30p per unit. That’s two fingers up to Salmond, then.

The ciderator

2011-11-22T14:38:00.000Z

Earlier this year, celebrity chef Marco Pierre White introduced his own branded beer “The Governor”, in conjunction with Middleton brewers J. W. Lees. Now, I’m no fan of his, but I suppose this must be praised as an effort to give beer more class and less of a downmarket image. However, having sampled it in both bottled and cask forms, I have to say it comes across as just another underwhelming brown beer from Lees.

Marco has now collaborated with Herefordshire cidermaker Weston’s to produce a “Governor” cider. It’s 4.8% ABV and retails in Morrison’s at £1.75 for a 500ml bottle, or 4 for £5.50. It is pale in colour with a slight greenish tinge. There’s a small amount of sediment which produces a moderately hazy appearance, although much less than Westons’ Old Rosie. It has a fresh, quite sharp taste, that probably qualifies as “medium-dry”. It only has a slight hint of carbonation and overall is probably the best bottled approximation to a traditional draught cider I’ve come across. As described here, the intention is to reproduce the characteristics of Old Rosie at a more moderate strength, which I would say they have succeeded in doing. I spotted the similarity before reading that article. However, as it is well-nigh still and a touch hazy, it might not appeal to those who are more used to Magners and Stella “Cidre”.

While I do enjoy the occasional bottle of “craft” cider, I’ve never really tried to review any on here as I lack the tasting vocabulary to describe them adequately. However, I recently sampled Hereford’s Pilgrim, which took my eye as it promises to donate 10p to Help for Heroes for each bottle sold. The company are rather coy about where it’s actually made, although the postcode links it to an industrial estate in Ledbury. However, even though it is supporting a good cause, I thought it was pretty unpleasant, with a dominant perfumey off-flavour. I won’t be trying that again.

Sheep and goats

2011-11-22T11:04:00.002Z

Although the protection of workers was often used as a “smokescreen”, the underlying motivation behind smoking bans has always been an attempt to reduce the prevalence of smoking in society through a process of “denormalisation”. However, in many places where bans have been imposed, that doesn’t seem to work, and very often the steady decline in smoking rates that has occurred until the ban has stalled or even reversed.

That has certainly been the case in Ireland – “there was a slight increase in the percentage of smokers since 2002, with 29% admitting to being a smoker in 2007, compared to 27% in 2002” – the Irish ban having come in in 2004. And the latest figures from Scotland show that the same is happening there.

The number of Scots smoking has risen since it was banned in public places – and the vast majority live in our poorest housing estates.

Arguably a key reason for this is that the bans in effect force people to identify as smokers, and once they have done that they become more committed to sticking with it. You can’t really be a casual smoker any more.

One of the comments rings all too true:

Billy Dunn, 68, Parkhead, Glasgow

The retired factory worker has smoked for 60 years.

He said: “Scottish people have always smoked and it’s not going to change.

“I still come out for my pint every other day and I still manage to have a cigarette.

“However, the pubs are a lot quieter now than they were about four or five years because a lot of people aren’t able to stand outside smoking like I can.

A lot of smokers have difficulty coming down out of their homes to go for a drink and the last thing they want to be doing is having to get up every 30 minutes and go outside.

It’s also quite instructive how readily smoking and drinking are linked together:

Also, people living in the most deprived areas have very few things to indulge in which are theirs. Smoking is one of them. They might say, ‘I can light up a cigarette or drink a pint – that’s my thing.’

They have become all too often joined in a figure of speech like the proverbial horse and carriage. And, while the aficionado of craft beer, or claret, or malt whisky, may jib at the suggestion, if the Righteous choose to tar you with the same brush there’s nothing you can do about it.

Also well worth reading is this article by Dave Atherton (a regular commenter here) on The Commentator in which he argues that “smoking bans in pubs and bars, and now proposed car smoking bans constitute the most sinister assault on private property rights outside of an authoritarian regime.”

Last of the independents

2011-11-21T09:08:00.000Z

Go in a typical major supermarket, and you will find a range of beers that would not have disgraced a cutting-edge independent off-licence fifteen years ago. A huge spread of British independent and micro brewers, German and Czech pilsners, Belgian specialities, American craft beers. That’s an amazing transformation from the time when all you’d get is cans of McEwan’s Export and Carling Black Label.

But that spells bad news for independent off licences, who increasingly see the supermarkets encroaching on their territory. The growth in the appreciation of beer has led to a huge rise in beer-focused pubs, but the specialist off licences have at best trod water. The big difference is that, when you go out for a drink, you are specifically looking for a drinking venue, but when shopping for beer most people tend to combine it with shopping for all the rest of the range of household essentials.

Clearly the primary aim of Tesco et al is to make money, but at the end of the day you will only make money by satisfying consumer demand. They know that alcoholic drinks are probably the biggest single category in the typical grocery spend and, if they fail to offer a decent selection of beer, their customers will take their business elsewhere. The supermarket beer range may not be quite the best in the world, but for most customers it’s good enough to ensure they don’t bother making a pilgrimage to the specialist.

All too often that leaves the independents scrabbling for the last 1% of trade amongst the people for whom “you can get it in Tesco” is a major reason for not drinking a beer. Those obscurantist beer geeks will always be there, but they’re not the foundation on which you can build a growing business.

I call in at my most local specialist – the Bottle Stop in Bramhall – about once a month, and pick up a few bottles. But that’s only because I’m passing it, and otherwise I wouldn’t be too unhappy to exist on a diet of what Tesco and Morrisons sell.

Ring my bell

2011-11-19T15:15:00.001Z

The ongoing decline of the pub trade inevitably leads to staffing reductions, so very often one person is left to look after a serving area which can’t all be seen from one vantage point. And, even if there is just a single bar counter, there are reasons such as toilet breaks and popping into the kitchen that mean the sole server is absent.

In these situations, it’s all too easy for staff to be distracted and fail to check regularly whether there are any customers waiting. I recall one occasion in a rural pub in Staffordshire, which had separate counters in the “dining” and “pub” sides, where I had to wait what seemed like an age before anyone noticed me, and less patient people might well have walked out.

So surely it makes sense to bring back the service bell, a staple of the old two-bar pubs, but rarely seen nowadays. At least that way you might stand a chance of actually getting served.

At the sign of the gallows

2011-11-17T08:38:00.000Z

On a non beer-related forum, the subject recently came up of pub signs that completely span the road. The best must surely be that of the Fox & Hounds at Barley near Royston in Hertfordshire, with its cast of fox, hounds and mounted huntsmen. Others that were mentioned were the Magpie at Stonham Parva in Suffolk, where the sign spans the main A140 road, and two coaching inns, the Green Man & Black’s Head at Ashbourne in Derbyshire, and the George at Stamford in Lincolnshire.

Are there any others to be found?

Stop panicking

2011-11-16T10:50:00.000Z

There’s an excellent article by Chris Snowdon of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist fame in yesterday’s Independent entitled We should stop panicking about Boozy Britain. Good to see a rare outbreak of common sense about alcohol in the mainstream media as opposed to the usual hysterical moral panic.

Pretentious, moi?

2011-11-15T18:53:00.001Z

On an e-mail group, we were having a discussion about the Brunning & Price chain of pubs. While they have much to be said for them (not least in doing exactly what they say on the can) it cannot be denied that they have an unashamedly upmarket aspiration and ambiance. They’re not places for darts and doms and crib and meat raffles.

One correspondent said “we have never felt out of place, even when we staggered in after a long walk dressed in mud-stained walking gear.” But isn’t rambling the absolute acme of the pursuits of the comfortably-off, real ale slurping, slow food chomping, liberal middle class whom they are trying to attract? You have to wonder whether they might have received quite such a warm welcome had they wandered in wearing football shirts or motorcycle leathers.

Nice beer, shame about the pubs?

2011-11-15T16:09:00.001Z

Last week, we were treated to an informative presentation by David Bremner, the Marketing Director of Stockport family brewer Robinson’s, in which he outlined the brewery’s plans for its beer range. These included tweaking the recipes of mainstream beers, more adventurous seasonal beers, short-run one-off “specials” and widening the bottled range, combined with a large-scale rebranding to give a more contemporary and less stuffy image. All music to the ears of the beer enthusiast.

However, he also made the point that focus groups had said that, while they recognised what Robinson’s were trying to do with their beers, all too often the pubs didn’t live up to that aspiration. In general they are either inner-urban and small town locals, or rural pubs that have increasingly gone over to dining. They conspicuously lack the kind of high-profile flagship pubs on sites with heavy footfall that have the potential to do well with an eclectic beer-drinking clientele. Many of them would struggle to sell any seasonal beer (and generally don’t even try), and very few can manage to shift anything more exotic than that. Do the brewery’s aspirations for their beers exceed what their pubs are capable of delivering?

Maybe it has to be accepted that a lot of pubs are, and are always going to remain, just “boozers”, and the scope for selling anything beyond the normal range of standard beers is extremely limited. I get the impression that quite a number of Robinson’s pubs would actually do better if they adopted the Samuel Smith’s business model of low prices, limited draught range and an unashamed pursuit of the traditional no-frills image.

I see no ships

2011-11-13T11:16:00.000Z

Apparently, the two-thirds pint “schooner” measure is being shunned by pubs. I had imagined that they would have been of particular interest to specialist beer pubs offering higher-ABV draught beers, but apparently not. I can’t say I’ve seen them on offer in a single pub. Indeed, the whole raft of changes in measures and beer duty that came in on 1 October have so far proved to be the dampest of damp squibs. 2.8% ABV Skol? Result!

Never coming back

2011-11-12T16:04:00.000Z

I was saddened to see recently as I was passing that the Railway at Heatley near Lymm was in the process of being reduced to a pile of rubble. I wrote about it earlier here. This former Boddingtons’ house had been a long-standing Good Beer Guide entry and was one of the very few remaining traditional, multi-roomed pubs in the area. The main bar, with fixed wooden benches lining the walls facing the counter, was one of the most congenial drinking spaces I knew. And that particular part of the pub had been non-smoking by choice long before the ban. Most pubs I know that have closed have, to be honest, at least in their latter days, been pretty dismal. But this had been a damn good pub almost to the end. It featured in the 2008 Good Beer Guide, which was published at pretty much the same time as it closed.

It closed its doors forever in the Autumn of 2007 (I wonder what could have happened earlier that year to cause that – Ed). For a while it featured in the sidebar as a touchstone of whether we were going to see any kind of revival of the pub trade. But, despite being situated in a prosperous area with no shortage of nearby housing, it was not to be. None of these people who are always bleating about what great opportunities there still are in the pub trade were prepared to put their money where their mouth was and take it on. Now any chance of that happening has gone. Outside the urban bubble, this is the reality of what is happening to so many pubs in the wider world.

Retreating into a niche

2011-11-07T14:38:00.000Z

Stockport town centre, depending on how you define it, currently has about 30 pubs open and trading. There are four or five standing closed and boarded and realistically unlikely to open as pubs, and a further ten or so that have closed their doors forever over the past ten or fifteen years and been demolished or converted to alternative use. A pattern that is fairly typical of large towns up and down the country.

For various reasons, Stockport isn’t renowned for its lively night-life and, being honest, although a few do well, many of those 30 are existing on very thin pickings. Two that are thriving, though, are the well-known specialist beer pubs, the Crown and the Magnet, which are only about four hundred yards apart near the bus station. Indeed, to get to either from the bus station you have to pass the very prominently-sited, and firmly closed and boarded, George.

Both these pubs are to be congratulated on doing well in a declining market, but it would be a mistake from that to conclude that a lot of other pubs would benefit from adopting that particular trading format. They are catering well for a substantial, but still ultimately limited, market of beer enthusiasts. Indeed it could be said of the customers of the Crown and Magnet that they are people for whom going to pubs and sampling different beers is a specific hobby that they pursue, rather than just something they do as part of the normal routines of everyday life.

So it could well be that in future the overall pub market continues to shrink substantially year-on-year, but the specialist beer pubs continue to thrive by catering specifically for beer enthusiasts. And those beer enthusiasts, and even people who just like the atmosphere of pubs in general, will increasingly gravitate towards those pubs as they alone will offer the choice of beers, and the congenial company, that they are looking for.

I have written in the past of the future of the pub trade (or the “wet” pub trade anyway) being one of increasingly retreating into a small urban niche. And you can see it happening before your own eyes in Stockport.

First they came for the Special Brew drinkers

2011-11-07T08:33:00.000Z

Well, I said that High Strength Beer Duty would be just the start, and it now looks as though they’re planning to extend the principle to wine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, in the next two or three years, they come back and have another bite at the beer cherry. Given that there aren’t really any mass-market beers in the range from 5% to 7.5%, I would expect to see the cut-off point at 4.5% or even 4.0%. Enjoy that Pendle Witches Brew while you can...

(H/t to Leg-iron)

Bitter harvest

2011-11-04T16:13:00.003Z

Apparently, Call Me Dave reckons that the smoking ban has been a success.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Cameron said: “As a former smoker and someone who believes strongly in liberties and someone who did not support it at the time, it has worked.”

Someone who believes strongly in liberties? Come on, pull the other one. And in what way has it “worked”? The long-term decline in the proportion of smokers in the population has actually slowed, while thousands of pubs have shut and their licensees and staff been deprived of their livelihoods. As he tours the country, does he see the legions of closed and boarded pubs and smugly think to himself “what a success”?

In contrast, no prizes for guessing which North-West MEP said the following:

Pubs are local parliaments and are a very important part of our society. Once the traditional pubs have gone they will never return.

There is no simple answer, but it is certainly time to rethink the smoking ban. The political powers of this country dealt pubs an absolute hammer blow four years ago with the total smoking ban. It has taken 20% off pub takings.

Well, absolutely, spot on Mr Nuttall.

Here we go again

2011-11-01T12:08:00.000Z

Not surprisingly, we read in the Daily Mail:

One in three middle-aged men are increasing their chances of developing cancer and liver disease through 'risky drinking.'

A study found 31 per cent of men aged over 45 regularly drank the equivalent of more than two pints of beer five times a week.

Whilst over the safe limits it is not classed as binge drinking and researchers said drinkers may not realise it could affect their health.

There’s no point in attempting to refute this, but the idea that middle-aged men drinking three pints five times a week (which I suspect includes many readers of this blog) is storing up some kind of health timebomb really does strain credulity to breaking point.

All of this rests on a complete misinterpretation of the concept of risk. As I’ve often said before, once you’re over the top of the bell curve of alcohol-related health impacts, you don’t suddenly fall off a cliff, but for quite a distance just experience a gentle downward slope. You have to go a long way before you get down to the same level as teetotallers, and in any case a 50% increase in a minimal risk is still a minimal risk.

You increasingly get the feeling that, rather than addressing genuine health problems, the medical profession are doing their best to spread anxiety, guilt and self-loathing amongst the broad spread of those who engage in statistically “normal” behaviour, on food as much as alcohol. As the great Dr Heinz Kiosk might have said, “we are all alcoholics now”.

Patterns of pubgoing

2011-10-29T10:11:00.004+01:00

OK, here are the results of my recent survey, which impressively attracted the maximum permitted 100 responses within 24 hours. Thanks to everyone who completed it. The number of responses obviously equate exactly to percentages.

A few points worth making. 89% of people live within half a mile of a pub, which is accepted as the maximum distance most people are prepared to walk to a pub. However, 35% never visit their nearest pub, and 27% never visit a pub on foot at all. And the high figures for people who go to the pub from work in the evenings, and combined with leisure activities, underline the importance of these sources of trade.

For 17% of people, there were over 50 pubs closer to their home than the pub they visited most often, although that is entirely feasible if, for example, someone from the south end of Hazel Grove was a regular in the Crown or Magnet in Stockport town centre.

And not a single person said that TV sport was one of the main factors influencing their choice of pub. Maybe it’s not quite the moneyspinner licensees believe.

1. How often do you visit pubs?

Daily: 5
Most days: 13
2-3 times a week: 30
Once a week: 15
Once a fortnight: 7
Once a month: 9
Less than once a month: 21

2. How far are you from the nearest pub?

400 yards or less: 53
Half a mile: 36
A mile: 5
A mile and a half: 1
Two miles: 3
Over two miles: 2

3. Do you regularly visit your nearest pub?

Yes, it is the pub I visit most often: 20
Yes, but I visit another pub more often: 10
No, but I occasionally call in: 35
No, I never visit it: 35

4. If you visit another pub more often than your nearest, how many pubs are closer than your chosen pub?

1: 7
2-5: 27
6-10: 9
11-20: 13
21-50: 4
51-100: 8
Over 100: 9

5. Would you say that you have a “local” pub, even if not the closest?

Yes: 64
No: 36

6. What methods of transport do you use to travel to and from pubs? (Choose all that apply)

NB: this refers to the main mode on each journey – by definition all will require at least a little walking

Foot: 73
Bus: 40
Train or tram: 27
Pedal cycle: 9
Motor cycle: 1
Taxi: 14
Car as driver: 18
Car as passenger: 28

7. On what occasions do you visit pubs? (Choose all that apply)

Directly from home in the evenings: 60
Directly from home at lunchtimes: 14
From work in the evenings: 44
From work at lunchtimes: 11
When shopping: 27
Combined with leisure activities (e.g. sports events, sightseeing, cinema or theatre): 49
Other (please give details): 10

After dog walking
Weekend days as a decision to go drinking
Folk club
Weekend afternoons.
days out specifically for pub crawling
Weddings,funerals,christenings
Political meetings once per month
I used to go but not anymore
Meeting up with friends
Wake

Some of these slightly missed the point, but “weddings, funerals and christenings” is a good one. In a past era “after church” might have been added too.

8. What are the main factors influencing your choice of pub? (Choose up to 3)

Range of beer: 48 Quality of beer: 68 Convenient location: 15 Choice/quality of food: 7 Comfort/ambience: 50 Value for money: 7 Smoking facilities: 21 My friends go there: 25 Live entertainment: 3 TV sport: 0 Other (please give details): 7

No TV
Interesting area
Good landlady
Quality of service
No smoking available, so I seldom go there anymore.
It's got a good smoking shelter and the service is really quick.
Choice of Lager!

Maybe “quality of service” would have been worth adding to the list.

9. How many pubs do you usually visit on each drinking occasion?

1: 70 2: 11 More than 2: 19

10. Any other comments?

24 comments received, reproduced verbatim below:

The good old 'boozer', and the attendant characters, are virtually extinct. Sad, so very sad.
Having been a very regular pub goer (5-6 times a week) I no longer visit pubs unless away on business. This is a direct consequence of the smoking ban, no other reason.
More than two unless it's my local. Then one.
Also visit other pubs for meetings & socials on a regular basis. My answers as to location transport & no of pubs would be different for these visits
How different this survey would have been in 2007. I used to go out several times a week but now I struggle to even bother visiting the restaurants near me which are laughably called pubs.
I stop going in winter
Two main reasons I don't visit pubs more is the cost, and the demise of so many of my favourite breweries. What's the point of going on a pub crawl of Henley nowadays, or Wandsworth? I've yet to find a new brewery that can produce ordinary bitters that are a patch on Brakspear's or Young's - let alone Batham's or Harvey's... (OK, pub crawls of Brierley Hill or Lewes are still very agreeable, thankfully.) All of which is a bit of a pity really, as pubs themselves are more pleasant to visit now you don't come out of them reeking of fag smoke!!
My nearest pub was once very good but is sadly now a filthy drugs den.
Used to go to pubs 3-4 times a week before the ban.
And my visit to the pub is entirely dependent on the weather. eg NOT RAINING
I have days when I just visit my local, other nights out are pub crawls.
Now once a month at the most Between 1961 and 2007, 7 nights a week
Used to go quite often but with no more smoking available I stopped except for once in a while. Most others have stopped too so I'm not alone. We tend to visit one anothers houses now instead of the pub. It is more friendly plus we can smoke and drink at the same time.
Used to go 5 nights a week, since smoking ban down to two.
Basically, the only time I visit a place with a bar (not a pub) is when we have a local BNP meeting. Then I MIGHT have a bottle of wifebeater (not that I have a wife to beat, these days).
I have been to a pub three times this summer and not at all last winter, due to the smoking ban. Why should I pay the same price of a drink, when if I want to use a legal and taxed product I am forced to sit outside in inferior facilities at most pubs.
I’m not friendly enough to have a proper local, I like to try different pubs everytime I go out.
I do live in Cyprus so there is a bit more "slack" in the situation! :-))
My nearest (give or take a hundred yards) pub is excellent, and is part of the reason why I bought a house where I did, but my friends live on the other side of town so that's where I normally go to drink.
Used to go to a pub every Friday and Saturday night then came the smoking ban - nuff said
Mumble mumble smoking ban mumble.
I walk past a w/mens club and a pub on the way to my local club (men only,that should have Harriet Harpie spitting blood) PURELY for the smoking facilities.The 2 closest to me have been visited less than 10 times since that fateful day.I give them the same support as they gave me,and have told them so.
Keep up the good, Hail to the ale.
I would go more often but...........the smoking ban!

I like the one about not being friendly enough to have a proper local ;-)

Frightened of your own strength

2011-10-28T19:48:00.000+01:00

RedNev pointed out this article about Health Minister Anne Milton giving evidence about alcohol policy to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. In this, she said in relation to High Strength Beer Duty, “Already, there has been a response from the industry. Already they are dropping the alcohol strength to get below that duty level.” Yet I have seen no evidence of that at all, and the new duty regime has been in place for a full month now. I’ve checked on the supermarket shelves, and Special Brew and Tennent’s Super are still there at 9.0%, and Gold Label at 8.5%, albeit at a considerably higher price than before.

I’m sure the brewers are watching the situation closely, but there seems to be a strange kind of ossification in this segment of the market, whereby established products continue to be brewed, but there is a total avoidance of any kind of product innovation – or indeed any advertising or promotion. Presumably they fear that, if they did so, the Daily Mail would be screaming down their necks. Yet the cask and premium bottled ale sectors seem to happily sail on under the radar, with a number of new launches of higher-strength beers like Old Crafty Hen and Pedigree VSOP.

If I was the brand owner of Carlsberg Special or Tennent’s Super, what I would be tempted to do is to keep the existing product at 9.0%, but introduce a new brand at 7.5% which would sell for considerably less, and let the market decide which prospered and which failed. Yet there’s no evidence of that at all. It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few months.

On a related subject, it’s long been my view that there is a gap in the mainstream beer market for a premium lager of around 5.5-6.0% ABV. However, for the same reasons, no major brewer would touch this with a bargepole for fear of denting their image of social responsibility. To some extent the Polish imports like Tyskie and Zywiec fill this niche, but there’s nothing brewed in this country. In a sense, when it was 5.2%, that little extra kick was a major selling point for Stella. A couple of years ago, the much-trailed launch of the 5.5% Stella Black was pulled, and the name was later used for a weaker “premium” brand extension which now seems to have died the death.

Pubgoing survey

2011-10-27T15:10:00.005+01:00

I’ve created a new survey about blog readers’ pubgoing habits and preferences which can be taken here.

Edit: the survey is now closed having reached the maximum of 100 responses. I will post the results tomorrow (Saturday). Cheers to all those who took part.

Cat wins mouse welfare award shock

2011-10-26T15:04:00.000+01:00

I was amazed to read that JD Wetherspoon has been named as Britain’s best pub operator for customer satisfaction. Now, my usual experience of Spoons has been that you put up with service that varies from just about adequate through to execrable in return for the low prices, wide choice and consistent offer. It’s a trade-off between one and the other. The same has been reported by many friends and other bloggers – there never seem to be enough staff, and unless it’s virtually deserted it’ll take you a long time. See here, for example.

Earlier this year, when I was out at lunchtime with work colleagues, so time was limited, but going elsewhere wasn’t really an option, I had to wait about fifteen minutes before even attracting the attention of a barperson. And a Spoons was the last pub I walked out of after despairing of ever getting served, when there only seemed to be one member of staff on duty, and a long, complicated drinks order from another customer was then followed by what seemed like it was going to be an even more time-consuming food order.

The only explanation I can think of is that amongst nationally recognisable pub chains there isn’t much competition – the best service is likely to be found in independently-run pubs.

Rat leaves sinking ship

2011-10-26T08:37:00.000+01:00

The Board of Alcohol Concern has announced a restructuring of its senior management following the loss of core funding, with the role of the CEO becoming part time for a year alongside the recruitment of a full time Director of Fundraising and Campaigning.

This means that after more than six years at Alcohol Concern, of which three and a half year have been as Chief Executive, Don Shenker has decided to leave the organisation in order to take a full time position elsewhere.

Crack open a bottle!

Perhaps SIBA will make up the missing funding.

Failure breeds failure

2011-10-25T12:45:00.000+01:00

There’s been a lot of talk recently of the decline of traditional high streets, with retail guru Mary Portas being appointed to head a government task force looking into how to revive them. Inevitably, this has a knock-on effect on the business of town-centre pubs. In reality, the various parts of town centre economies have a strong degree of interdependence and can’t be considered in isolation.

The Centre for Cities has looked at second-rank provincial towns and cities like Sunderland and Preston (a category that would also include Stockport):

In Sunderland’s case the city centre suffers from a lack of scale – out-of-town employment sites limit the number of commuters into the centre each day. This limits footfall which in turn limits lunch time and evening demand on the High Street and in restaurants and bars.

It seems fairly obvious that a thriving employment sector will benefit both shops and pubs. However, they argue that simply limiting out-of-town development is unlikely to have much impact, and that much more attention needs to be given to the positive factors that will increase activity in town centres.

It works the other way, too, as Leg-Iron points out here. Deter people from visiting pubs, and they won’t visit the nearby shops either.

It also doesn’t help when local councils take measures, for whatever reason, that lead to a reduction in town centre footfall. For example, I saw the following comment on another blog:

In my local town the council have:

- raised all the car parking charges
- closed one large car park completely
- pedestrianised the High Street
- lowered the speed limit on all the approach roads
- installed loads of speed bumps
- installed loads more traffic lights at minor junctions
- closed all the public toilets
- closed the two theatres
- demolished the ice rink

and there's probably more that I can't think of just now.

And guess what (1) - the High Street is full of empty shops, charity shops, pound shops, and short-term tat generally and also guess what (2) the same council is wringing its hands wondering how it can save the High Street.

It's a cliché, but you couldn't make it up.

One would expect that particular town (which I think is one of the London boroughs) has also experienced numerous pub closures, although no doubt one of the more down-market Wetherspoons is doing OK next to the 99p store. Pedestrianisation of town centre streets, while it may create a more attractive retail experience during the daytime, can all too easily turn them into intimidating dead zones once the shops have closed.

It also has to be recognised that, just as with pubs, a range of social changes are working against high street shopping. Most of the closed pubs are never coming back, and neither are most of the 25% of shops currently vacant in some town centres. There needs to be a focus on what works in the 21st century context, not a naïve belief that a bit more stimulus will bring the good old days back.

Another idea that has been expressed to me is that the revival of residential development in town and city centres has proved beneficial in sustaining the pubs in those areas. However, I’m not entirely convinced that’s a particularly strong factor. As I’ve argued before, the idea that the typical pattern of pub use is to come home, have your tea and go out for a few pints is very much exaggerated, and the presence of nearby chimneypots is no guarantee of trade. To a large extent, people visit pubs because they’re out and about doing other things. That pubs in Manchester city centre are conspicuously thriving when in many other places they’re not is a function of the city centre being a strong hub for retail, employment, entertainment and public transport, not because a lot of new flats have been built there.

Trundling down the slope

2011-10-25T11:05:00.001+01:00

The latest edition of the UK Quarterly Beer Barometer produced by the BBPA confirms the trend of the past two quarters, with a continued steady decline in on-trade beer sales, although not as steep as those often seen over the preceding three years. Over the past year, they are down by 5.2%, compared with an average of 7.4% in 2008-2010. This is more a steady trundle down a slope than a precipitate fall off a cliff. However, even this will lead to a halving of the figure in thirteen years.

Off-trade sales, which are always much more affected by seasonal fluctuations, are down by 3.6% in the year, although slightly up compared with the year to June 2011. The overall beer market is 4.4% down, which no doubt will give Don Shenker some cause for celebration. This may defer the arrival of the “tipping point” when off-trade sales exceed the on-trade, as the retailers seem to have largely passed on the recent duty increase, which has perhaps slowed the rate of change.

Is no cask better than bad cask?

2011-10-22T16:37:00.000+01:00

Last night, we were out on a CAMRA pub crawl of the southern fringe of Stockport town centre. We went in one particular pub, a bog-standard, modernised Robinson’s local. The only cask beer available was Unicorn, and it was utterly vile. Not cloudy, not vinegary, but with an overpowering appley off-flavour. Had I been in the pub on my own, I would just have left it on the table and sneaked out, but when you are out in public as the identifiable “CAMRA posse”* you are conscious of the impression you may make, so most of us forced it down.

But if a pub like that can’t keep cask beer in decent nick, then surely it would make sense not to bother at all. Bear in mind this was Friday night, supposedly one of the busiest sessions of the week. The time when “all their pubs serve real ale” was seen as a brewery virility symbol is long gone.

It also must be said how good the atmosphere was in the final venue, Sam Smith’s Queen’s Head – and the Old Brewery Bitter was only £1.52 a pint! This must be a future candidate for the Campaign for Real Pubs.

Incidentally, this was a repeat of the pub crawl described here.

* Only one person present had a beard, although the average age was undoubtedly well north of 40.

Crisis, what crisis?

2011-10-22T15:32:00.000+01:00

According to the Portman Group, “alcohol consumption continues to decline, in a trend that has been continuing since the early to mid-2000s”.

The report found that consumption per adult head of population is 10.2 litres – 11% lower than the 2004 peak of 11.5 litres.

The average number of units consumed per week by those who drink is continuing to fall from 18.7 for men and nine for women in 2006, to 16.3 and eight respectively in 2009 – well within the government’s guidelines.

The proportion of men and women drinking hazardously – more than 50 or 35 units per week respectively – peaked in 2000 and has been declining since 2002.

The proportion of pupils who had drunk alcohol in the past week was 13% – its lowest level since records began in 1998.

So what is it that you were bleating about, Mr Shenker?

The ravages of drink

2011-10-21T10:11:00.000+01:00

This article so conveniently brings together two of the favourite themes of the Daily Mail – hysterical scaremongering about alcohol and making women feel bad about themselves – that it verges on self-parody. It really is beyond credulity that drinking a daily amount that at most is only slightly above the official guidelines is going to have such an effect on you. You might as well say from comparing the pictures that alcohol will stop you from going grey.

In any case, it is not realistic to expect women in their fifties to all look like Andie MacDowell.

It’s also an urban myth that rosacea and “boozer’s nose” are solely or primarily caused by drinking: “Although alcohol may be a precipitating factor or trigger for rosacea, the stigmata that all patients with the large overgrown nose seen in rhinophyma are in fact alcoholics or "boozers" is absolutely wrong.”

Axe the tax!

2011-10-19T22:33:00.000+01:00

The latest addition to the sidebar is a button asking you to sign the petition created by CAMRGB to scrap the 7.5% beer supertax introduced at the beginning of this month. As I and others have argued, this is half-baked pandering to the anti-drink lobby that will do nothing to stop problem drinking, will inhibit innovation in the brewing industry, will harm well-established products that have no link with irresponsible consumption and is potentially fraught with unintended consequences.

Yes, it may turn out to be p*ssing in the wind, but at least by signing it you will have made your voice heard, and hopefully it’s something the entire beer community can rally around.

The petition could have done with a later closing date than 14 January 2012, though.

Supermarket sweep

2011-10-18T11:10:00.000+01:00

Here are a couple of photos of prominent local pubs that have recently been turned into supermarkets – the Chapel House in Heaton Chapel (top) has become a Tesco Express, while the rather splendid White Lion in Withington is now a Sainsbury’s Local. It must be said that neither was a recent closure – the White Lion had probably been shut for well over five years, and the Chapel House went through several barrel-scraping incarnations as the Tut’n’Shive (sometimes referred to as the Tub’o’Shite) and Conor’s Bar before finally closing its doors a couple of years ago.

As I discussed here, this seems to be a growing trend. However, obviously it wouldn’t be happening if the pubs had been viable and thriving in the first place. Tesco et al are not causing it, they are simply coming in afterwards and picking up the pieces.

Binge-drink Britain

2011-10-17T11:00:00.000+01:00

In a shock revelation, a poll of 101 readers of the Pub Curmudgeon blog showed that, in the past year, 81% had consumed at least 6 pints of beer in a single session, with 35% having drunk a literally staggering 10 pints or more. Don Chancre, Chief Bansturbator of fakecharity Pubs’R’Evil, raged: “This is utterly appalling. Why aren’t these people dead? This only serves to illustrate what a bunch of hypocrites these so-called beer bloggers are when they go on about moderate drinking and yet are happy to condone such disgusting excess!” He then collapsed in a heap, foaming at the mouth, and had to be revived with a refreshing glass of sarsaparilla.

The 2.8% solution

2011-10-15T16:05:00.002+01:00

Don’t let anyone tell you that Sam Smith’s aren’t on the ball – the other day I was in one of their pubs and spotted a little sticker on the font for the keg dark mild saying “Alc. Vol. 2.8%”. I think it was previously only 3.0%, so that won’t make much difference to the drinking experience. I wonder if they’ve dropped the price or are keeping the duty saving for themselves. Has anyone else spotted a 2.8% beer on sale in a pub since the duty cut? For that matter, has anyone spotted a pub offering to sell you beer in a two-thirds pint “schooner”?

A super tax

2011-10-13T19:22:00.003+01:00

I spotted on my most recent visit to Tesco that the new High Strength Beer Duty had now been applied to the beers over 7.5% ABV, so 4x500ml of Carlsberg Special Brew was £7.68 (43p per unit) and 4x330ml of Gold Label £5.67 (51p per unit). It remains to be seen whether the regular customers of these products will stomach these higher prices, or if their strength will end up being reduced. Ironically, during October Tesco are re-running their generous 4 for £5 offer on a wide variety of British bottled beers, so I could have got 4 500ml bottles of the 6.7% ABV Pedigree VSOP (had they not run out) which would be a mere 37p a unit. I should have checked the price of Duvel – I’ll have to remember that next week.

Forbidden fruit

2011-10-13T11:10:00.000+01:00

There’s an interesting article here by Kate Fox – surprisingly on the BBC website – in which she argues that, to a large extent, “the effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol.” She points out that in many societies – specifically those bordering the Mediterranean – per capita alcohol consumption is higher than the UK, but there isn’t the same association with violence and sexual abandon. In the 1960s, the French on average drank getting on for four times as much as the British did then, but the streets weren’t full of drunken yobbery and girls throwing up.

I have read that there is a major alcohol problem amongst aboriginal people in Australia, but their typical response to alcohol is apparently a state of zonked-out stupefaction that in this country you would more associate with smoking cannabis.

In recent years, although overall alcohol consumption has been falling in Britain, at the same time we have become more disapproving and censorious about it, so the association with irresponsible and uninhibited behaviour has if anything increased, resulting in lurid exposés like this in the Daily Mail. Perhaps if we were more accepting of moderate drinking in an everyday social context we would have a more mature and relaxed attitude to alcohol in general. Fat chance of that happening then.

Youthful enterprise

2011-10-11T20:25:00.000+01:00

12-year-old Tommie Rose from Salford sounds as though he has just the kind of entrepreneurial spirit we need to revive the moribund British economy. But unfortunately he was taking £60 a day selling chocolate bars and fizzy drinks to his schoolmates. Inevitably, this contravened his school’s “healthy eating” policy and so he ended up being suspended.

Now, the school are perfectly within their rights to prohibit trading on school premises, although if his business had been in collectable toys I do wonder whether they would have been so concerned. But, as the school spokesman said, “Activities which undermine our healthy eating policy cannot be tolerated.” Now, where have I heard that kind of sentiment before?

And if the “healthy” school dinners weren’t such unappetising slop, then there might not be the demand for Tommie’s services in the first place.

I also can’t help thinking that the adjective “healthy” has metamorphosed from a description of a state of well-being to a definition of an official ideology of hair-shirted self-denial and restricting oneself to government-approved activities.

Creatures of habit

2011-10-11T19:08:00.000+01:00

It used to be a staple anecdote about pubs that you’d wander into an unfamiliar pub and plonk yourself down in a cosy seat only to be told “Sorry mate, you can’t sit there, that’s old Bob’s seat, and he’ll be in in a few minutes!”

It’s probably less likely nowadays, as there are fewer regulars who are in pubs most nights of the week, and despite our ageing population it also seems less common to see groups of pensioners gathered in pubs. But, as with many things, you imperceptibly find what you once dismissed as the habits of the elderly creeping up on you. It’s certainly the case that life tends to settle into more of a routine.

I can’t say that there’s any pub I visit often enough to call myself a “regular”, but there are maybe five or six that, for various reasons, I find myself calling in at least once a month. And, if I think about it, assuming that spot’s available, I always sit in the same place. It’s not the the end of the world if it’s taken, and in most of them there’s somewhere else that’s almost as good, but it’s interesting how these things turn into a regular pattern of behaviour.

I also recall that, in his last years, I would often take my late father in one particular pub where he found the atmosphere congenial. And yes, it was what some would call a “dumpy old men’s pub”, and all the better for it. We would always sit in the same corner and if, for some reason, it wasn’t available he would be a touch discomfited.

Bringing it all back home

2011-10-10T19:13:00.001+01:00

A wide spread of responses to this poll on how much off-trade beer people drank. There was 75 replies, of whom 6 did not drink beer at all. Of those who did, 29 (42%) either did not drink at home at all, or only drank the odd bottle. 18 (26%) drank between 3 and 10 bottles or cans, 13 (19%) between 11 and 20, and 11 (16%) over 20. Mind you, assuming that’s all you drink, it’s only an average of 3 pints a day. Not sure whether it really illuminates anything, though.

The fat of the land

2011-10-07T11:27:00.002+01:00

Denmark has recently introduced a fat tax imposing an additional levy on all foodstuffs containing over 2.3% saturated fat (an oddly specific figure – how did they arrive at that?). Our esteemed Prime Minister has indicated that this is something he might be willing to consider for the UK (h/t to Leg-Iron for the poster).

This has been extensively discussed already in the blogosphere, but the following points are worth making:

There is an inherent contradiction in any such Pigovian tax as, by definition, if it is successful in its objective it will yield little or no revenue. Using the tax system as a means to promote changes in behaviour is a blunt and inefficient instrument that is highly prone to unforeseen and unwanted consequences.

While it’s hard to see people smuggling crisps, any tax system that imposes arbitrary cut-off points will inevitably lead to action by producers to get around it, as we are seeing with the new beer duty regime. Look forward to a whole raft of products in Denmark coming in at exactly 2.3% fat. These may well be even more “processed” than those they replace, and less palatable to boot.

It goes completely against common sense to stigmatise such natural, traditional and wholesome foods as butter and cheese, especially as many experts (as quoted in the BBC report about Denmark) believe that “salt, sugar and refined carbohydrates are more detrimental to health”. It is a dangerous game to try to sort foodstuffs into the “healthy” and “unhealthy” as in reality, as has often been said, there are no unhealthy foods, only unhealthy diets. You might perceive fatty burgers as “unhealthy”, but you’d live a damn sight longer on a diet of fatty burgers than on a diet of lettuce and celery.

At a time when we are in the middle of a global debt crisis and have been experiencing riots in the streets, to regard this as any kind of important political issue suggests a highly inappropriate choice of priorities, and indeed is indicative of a yawning disconnect between the political class and the general public, as Brendan O’Neill suggests here:

Cameron’s comments about a fat tax – which would target those great scourges of our age: ‘milk, cheese, pizza, meat, oil and processed food’ – were particularly striking, because they gave an insight into what this oligarchical political class thinks of those who live outside its bubble. We are not political subjects to be engaged with, apparently, but rather bovine objects to be physically tampered with, punished for our gluttony, pressured to ditch those gastro-pleasures which the political and media elites, as they discuss the horrors of sexist language over wine and vol-au-vents, have decreed to be ‘fattening’.

You do have to wonder if eventually the worm will turn and give the politicians a nasty bite on the no-doubt well-padded and fat-laden bum.

Edit: there’s an excellent article here by Basham and Luik in which they arge that “fat taxes” and “sugar taxes” quite simply do not work, and indeed may lead to people eating less “healthily”, not more.

Two pints of milk and a packet of rusks

2011-10-05T23:04:00.000+01:00

The Daily Mail reports that the King’s Fee Wetherspoons in Hereford has started running a baby and toddler group in the bar area. It’s only from 10 am to 12 noon one day a week, so isn’t really going to bring about the end of civilisation, although you do have to wonder how well the kiddies will mix with the typical JDW early-doors clientele. But it’s hard to decide which is worse – the fact that it is happening at all, or the ludicrously sanctimonious comments expressing horror at children being taken into such a den of iniquity as a pub.

And it’s not so long ago that Prue Leith was proposing that pubs should be used for serving school dinners in rural areas.

Mischief’s afoot

2011-10-02T15:32:00.002+01:00

Badger’s Tanglefoot was arguably the first of the wave of golden ales, being introduced well before the usual suspects of Exmoor Gold and Hop Back Summer Lightning. It was 5% ABV, but much lighter in body and more quaffable than the heavy, malty brews like Ruddles County and Royal Oak which in the mid-1980s were typical of beers at that strength. Not for nothing did the brewery for many years label it as “dangerously drinkable”.

Some time later, that was changed to “deceptively drinkable”, which is a bit more politically correct but still conveys essentially the same message, and the following legend appeared on the back of the bottles:

Many years ago, the Head Brewer invited his staff to sample his latest creation and coin a name for it. So successful was the sampling that several tankards of the ale were consumed. On rising to go, the Head Brewer experienced a sudden loss of steering, and so unwittingly fell on a name for this legendary ale. Now, as then, Tanglefoot remains “deceptively drinkable”.

However, what’s this now? I buy a bottle sporting the new label design, and the wording round the neck has been changed to “Mischief’s afoot”. And they’re now blaming it on the dog:

Many years ago, the Head Brewer, John Woodhouse, invited his team to sample his latest creation. On rising to go, his mischievous companion, believing a walk was imminent, tangled his owner up with the lead, and Woodhouse fell upon the perfect name for this new beer.

It seems it’s no longer considered acceptable to admit that beer has any effect on you at all. Mind you, when it’s all cut to 2.8% ABV, it won’t. Also note the politically correct change from “staff” to “team”.

The picture shows the old label, by the way.

The Art of Suppression

2011-10-02T11:15:00.000+01:00

I’ve just received a signed copy of The Art of Suppression: Pleasure, Panic and Prohibition Since 1800 by Chris Snowdon.

The prohibition of alcohol in the USA was a notorious fiasco. The War on Drugs has been a deadly failure. Bans on alternative nicotine products keep people smoking cigarettes. Attempts to suppress legal highs result in more drugs hitting the market. Prohibition doesn't work but the world is filled with prohibitionists. Why? Christopher Snowdon's new history of prohibitions is a panoramic study of how bans begin, who instigates them and why they fail. It is a story of moral panics, vested interests and popular hysteria, driven by people who believe that utopia is only ever one ban away. Includes:
The campaign for alcohol prohibition in the USA
The worldwide ban on opium and the dawn of the War on Drugs
The curious case of the European Union's ban on oral tobacco (snus)
The 1920s crusade to suppress drinking worldwide
The prohibition of Ecstasy and the rise of designer drugs
The enduring appeal of prohibitionist policies today

I’m only part way through it, but it’s an excellent read - lucidly written and leavened with a sense of humour. I would also strongly recommend Chris’ two previous books – Velvet Glove, Iron Fist and The Spirit Level Delusion.

Although not officially published yet, it can be ordered directly from the author.

Chris’ blog is also well worth reading – don’t dismiss it as “just another blog about the smoking ban” as it’s at least as much about the anti-alcohol movement and other aspects of prohibitionism.

Bog off to bogofs

2011-10-01T16:22:00.001+01:00

Alongside all the fuss about the likely damp squibs of 2.8% beers, schooner glasses and High Strength Beer duty that have been introduced today, the Scottish Nannying Party government north of the border have sneaked in a ban on any form of price promotion or multibuy discount on alcoholic drinks. So no more two slabs of Carling for £12, or four PBAs for £5.50.

The thinking behind this is deeply patronising, that people are so weak-willed and foolish that they end up being seduced by these offers into drinking more than they otherwise would. However in reality the vast majority of people have limited budgets and use these offers simply to purchase a set amount of drink in the most cost-effective way. The idea that it will do anything to reduce overall alcohol consumption doesn’t really stand up. It may also act against the interest of less well-known brewers and winemakers, as shoppers will no longer have the chance to choose something unfamiliar to top up their 3 for £10 or whatever.

Presumably this also means that all those small off-licences that will sell you an individual can as well as a four-pack will have to price them exactly pro-rata. Yet I’ve seen the argument that selling single cans encourages problem drinking as it lowers the minimum price point for getting a drink, which is on a par with saying that selling fags in packets of 10 encourages smoking. Which way do they want it – big packs or little ones? And will a 35cl bottle of Scotch, pocket-size favourite of the street drunk, have to be exactly half the price of a 70cl one?

Anyone capable of a bit of forward planning will still be able to take advantage of these offers by purchasing from England via the Internet, or simply by calling in to Carlisle ASDA as they are passing.

Mind you, one trivial benefit will be that pubs will no longer be able to charge more than 50% of the price of a pint for a half...

Light begins to dawn?

2011-09-27T10:29:00.000+01:00

The Morning Advertiser reports that CAMRA has called upon the government to revise the official advice on daily alcohol units.

In its submission to the Science and Technology Select Committee inquiry into alcohol guidelines, the consumer organisation argued that the current guidelines fail to take into account the latest medical evidence.

CAMRA also claims that the Government is failing to adequately communicate the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption.

Is this a belated recognition that more has to be done to resist the tide of pseudo-scientific anti-alcohol claptrap, especially when the underlying message put across by the anti-drink lobby is increasingly moving towards “there is no safe level of alcohol”?

It is significant that CAMRA also said:

The guidelines seem to portray the recommended allowance as an absolute upper limit, which is not the case. There is, in fact, a wide gap between the safe recommended limit and the point where drinking will have a severe health impact.

That is one of the key problems with the current advice. The guidelines themselves are not bad advice as such, except in terms of needless over-caution, but it often seems to be assumed that exceeding them leads to falling off a cliff of risk. This is on a par with suggesting that only eating four portions of fruit and veg a day will inevitably lead to contracting scurvy.

It also results in skewed priorities in public policy, with health campaigns often giving the impression of trying to make responsible people drinking 30 or 40 units a week feel guilty, while in effect washing their hands of those drinking at genuinely dangerous levels of 100 units a week or more.

Psst, wanna buy a pub?

2011-09-24T15:25:00.001+01:00

The Pollyannas of the beer blogosphere are always telling us that, despite the gloomy headline numbers, there are still great prospects in the pub trade if you get the formula right. So here’s a golden opportunity for you – the Nag’s Head in the large south Cheshire village of Wheelock.

It’s an attractive freestanding pub by a road junction at the south end of the village, which appeared in the 2010 Good Beer Guide. Currently closed, but not yet boarded up. Maybe a bit tatty at the moment, but nothing a lick of paint couldn’t sort out. There’s no shortage of houses nearby, so plenty of potential walk-in trade. It’s a fairly prosperous part of the country – certainly no run-down urban wasteland – and not too far from Crewe which is a major centre of population. Surely a great chance to mix a cask-led local with a bit of destination dining trade, or maybe a showpiece tied house for a local micro-brewery. And currently available, freehold and completely free of tie, at a knock-down £125,000.

The estate agents’ fact sheet can be seen here.

In practice, for any budding pub entrepreneur, there are plenty of pubs on the market in promising enough locations at very reasonable prices. But there’s little evidence of people being prepared to put their money where their mouths are.

Let a thousand flowers bloom

2011-09-24T09:33:00.001+01:00

My local branch of Tesco has recently started selling two highly-regarded US beers – Goose Island IPA and Brooklyn Lager. Now, I can’t really say that American craft beers are my thing – those titchy 355ml bottles don’t help, and Germany tends to be my import source of choice. But I’ve read good things about both of them in the blogosphere, and the examples I had of each were very enjoyable.

However, it raises the question of where the demand has come from for Tesco, not some exotic specialist retailer, to stock these beers. They’re both filtered and brewery-conditioned, so not something CAMRA would directly champion, and indeed I struggle to recall any mention of either in a CAMRA publication. Neither is there any Campaign for US Craft Beer trumpeting their virtues, nor any newspaper columnist banging the drum for them. And how many of Tesco’s customers read beer blogs? It’s a kind of subtle percolation of word-of-mouth that has brought these beers to a mainstream supermarket in a Northern industrial town.

There has been a lot of debate recently as to whether CAMRA should widen its remit to support non-real “craft” beers such as these and their British counterparts. In response to this, two new organisations have been set up to promote a more wide-ranging and inclusive approach to quality beer - Craft Beer UK, and CAMRGB, the Campaign for Really Good Beer. There’s a long comment thread about this on Zak Avery’s blog.

However, do these beers really need any formally constituted body to lobby for them? This change is happening anyway, as more and more of the beer market slips away to the off-trade, where CAMRA wields minimal influence, and non-real “quality” beers slowly but surely make more inroads in pubs and bars. The growth in the appreciation of wine in the UK over the years hasn’t needed any Campaign for Good Wine.

Earlier this year, I wrote here:

"The result is that there is a large and growing territory in which CAMRA and “beer enthusiasm in Britain” no longer overlap. This in future may well become a problem if potential recruits with a wide-ranging interest in beer are put off by the fact that the organisation ignores and indeed sometimes denigrates many of the brews they appreciate and enjoy drinking. In the beer landscape of twenty years hence, CAMRA could have become an irrelevance."

Now, I see no reason why CAMRA needs in any formal way to embrace “craft beer”, and indeed have argued in the past that such a move would be fraught with pitfalls. But, as well as championing “real ale”, it needs to be much more accommodating in being prepared to accept merit in beers that fall outside that remit. In practice, many (probably most) members already take that view. In the coming years it is going to be a major strategic challenge to come to terms with the concept of a landscape where a passion for “real ale” is only one of a number of overlapping “beer enthusiasms”. To say that Goose Island IPA is “processed muck”, or “not worth drinking”, or even “nothing to do with us, mate” is not a credible stance.

Taste the difference

2011-09-23T17:05:00.001+01:00

On a couple of blogs, I’ve made the comment that, thirty years ago, food in pubs was often more varied and innovative than it is now. This has been met with incredulity and people saying “from what I remember it was absolute rubbish”.

So it’s worth trying to explain what I mean. I ought to start with an important caveat – I freely admit to being a somewhat picky eater, with a number of irrational dislikes, so I don’t remotely claim that what I say about food is in any way authoritative or applicable to the general population. In particular I can’t stand the bad side of “traditional English” – the gristly meat, lumpy gravy, tasteless spuds and soggy veg.

In the early 80s I was living in a bedsit in Surrey where the facilities for cooking for myself were somewhat restricted, so I had a strong incentive to get out round the pubs to find something decent to eat. However, I would say my experiences then were not dramatically different from what I found in other parts of the country when on holiday or visiting friends and relatives. While Surrey has a prosperous Home Counties image at least back then there was no shortage of surprisingly down-to-earth pubs.

Pub food was more in its infancy, and to a large extent licensees were left to their own devices. Even in managed pubs, food was usually the licensee’s perk. The chain dining pub was virtually unknown. There was a huge disparity amongst what was on offer – some was dreadful, some was superb, and so going in new pubs could be a voyage of discovery. It could well be described as a wide variety of simple, informal food, more food for drinkers than food for a destination meal out.

You were much more likely to see substantial snacks alongside main meals, for example Cumberland sausage with crusty bread or smoked mackerel with bread and butter. The White Hart at Chobham did “Mushrooms Bistingo” – breaded mushrooms with garlic mayonnaise and bread – which I still remember now.

Quite a few pubs offered extensive cold buffets, something you never see nowadays. The one at the Bull’s Head in King’s Norton, Birmingham, particularly sticks in my mind. And you were much more likely to get a proper Ploughman’s than the cheese salad with a roll that often passes for it nowadays.

Back in those days, many pubs served pizzas, which at the time were in the vanguard of the reaction against old-fashioned stodge. I remember having excellent pizzas, for example, at the Horse & Groom in Merrow near Guildford. While often derided nowadays, pizzas still form the core of the menu at fashionable restaurant chains like Pizza Express and Ask. But when did you last see a pizza on the menu in a pub?

And some pubs made a speciality of particular national cuisines from around the world. I remember one featuring Austrian and Balkan dishes, and several with a Mexican-themed menu, again something you don’t see now. The modern focus on locally-sourced ingredients, while laudable in some ways, tends to restrict the range of dishes that is offered.

Thirty years ago, there was certainly less pub food around. Fewer pubs did food overall, and it was harder to find food in the evenings and Sundays. Some pub food was dire, although that’s still the case today. But there was more variety in terms of approach and styles of presentation, and more of a sense of pubs trying new and different things to see if they worked rather than just settling into a comfort zone. And, across the spectrum of pubs, I undoubtedly found it easier then than now to find food that appealed to me on a personal level.

A tavern in every town

2011-09-22T13:06:00.005+01:00

Not so long ago, a comment was made on the CAMRA web forum that the Good Beer Guide will “increasingly give you the local equivalent of the Kelham Island Tavern. It will not simply tell you where to find good real ale.” The Kelham Island Tavern being a two-time winner of CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year award and a classic example of the multi-handpump specialist beer pub.

I was recently browsing through the entries in the 2012 edition for the county of Cheshire, an area I know reasonably well. It was very striking that a large majority of the pubs listed seemed to be ones where a range of rotating guest beers and “Locale” accreditation were regarded as important criteria. The tied houses of the family brewers – Robinson’s, Hydes, Holts, Lees and Samuel Smith’s – were conspicuous by their absence. Indeed there are only four listed out of the 80-odd pubs for the entire county, while, across the border, there are four out of eight in Stockport.

Well-known classics such as the Harrington Arms at Gawsworth and the Hawk at Haslington are nowhere to be found. Now, I wasn’t privy to the selection process and there may well be very good reasons such as change of licensee why these pubs and others like them were not included. But it does seem to reflect a somewhat one-eyed approach to pub selection where those that keep a limited range of beers consistently well do not get a look-in. Is there now a single Sam Smith’s pub with its solitary cask beer in the Guide, even though many of them are highly characterful establishments that keep that one beer in excellent nick? There isn’t even one in their home town of Tadcaster.

If I was visting a part of the country where family brewers still had a strong representation, such as Palmers in West Dorset, I would want the Good Beer Guide to tell me where I could find their beers in the best condition (which, to be fair, it does). I’d also expect it to point me to other pubs that provided a contrast, but if it majored on establishments offering Pedigree, Bombardier and London Pride I might feel a little short-changed. It should also be pointed out that many free houses settle on two or three beers that suit their regular customers and are not always changing them around.

Yes, the pub scene is changing, but as well as the multi-beer pubs, a guidebook concentrating on beer quality surely also needs to give due recognition to the more traditional two or three beer establishments that for long were the backbone of what CAMRA stood for.

I think locally it does, but I do get the impression that more and more branches are putting choice ahead of consistent quality when making their pub selections. The risk is that this approach will alienate the non-member buyers of the Guide, many of whom will be primarily looking for a good pint, combined with decent food and/or congenial surroundings, rather than the widest absolute choice of beer.

More where that came from

2011-09-20T15:05:00.000+01:00

Some more interesting snippets from the BBPA Statistical Handbook...

2010 average price of a pint of beer in the UK off-trade:

Supermarkets: £1.02 (= £3.16 for 4x440ml)
Off-licences and convenience stores: £1.29 (= £4.00)
Average: £1.08 (= £3.35)

2010 average price of a pint of beer in the UK on-trade: £2.69

Average number of alcohol units consumed per week by social class:

Managerial and professional: 14.6
Intermediate: 13.4
Routine and manual: 10.6
Average: 12.5

(thus giving the lie to the common notion that the poor drink more)

Average strength of beer produced in the UK:

1900: 1054.9 OG
1910: 1053.0 OG
1918: 1030.6 OG (low point during WW1)
1920: 1042.6 OG
1930: 1042.5 OG
1940: 1038.5 OG
1946: 1032.6 OG (1940s low point, actually after the end of the war)
1950: 1037.0 OG
1960: 1037.4 OG
1970: 1036.9 OG
1980: 1037.3 OG
1990: 1037.7 OG
2000: 4.17% ABV
2010: 4.22% ABV

In fact, from 1950 to the end of the original gravity system in 1992, the average OG was always within the range 1036.9-1038.2, although this masked the long-term decline of mild and an offsetting reduction in the strength of bitter.

In 1900, there were 34.3 million barrels of beer produced, as opposed to 28.0 in 2010, at a considerably higher strength, and for a much smaller population.

We are all gastro now

2011-09-19T09:20:00.002+01:00

It was reported recently that the Good Food Guide had banished the term “gastropub”. However, this is not because there has been a swing back to a wet-led model, but because the upmarket dining pub has become so commonplace that it no longer needs a special term to distinguish it. In the more prosperous parts of the country, like large swathes of Cheshire, it’s getting increasingly difficult to find any other kind of pub. In a sense “we are all gastropubs now”.

So, in view of this so-called pub food revolution, I thought I would ask blog readers how often they ate out in pubs in their daily lives when not on holiday. The results didn’t really bear out the received wisdom, with 65% replying either “very occasionally” or “never”, and only 13% saying they did it at least weekly. Even accepting that there is a proportion of smoking ban refuseniks, these results certainly don’t show a huge enthusiasm for eating in pubs from a population who typically probably visit pubs more than average.

Now, I have to admit that in some respects I am a rather picky eater, so I am reluctant to pontificate on the general subject of food, whether in pubs or elsewhere. But it has to be said that a lot of pub food is extremely dull and uninspiring, and if you want something interesting and imaginative you are far more likely to find it in a restaurant or a bistro/wine bar type establishment.

This perhaps merits a more detailed post, but it is certainly my recollection that, thirty years ago, there was much more variety and experimentation in pub food than there is now. So often today, pub food has settled down to a predictable, standardised menu, whether exemplified by the steak and kidney pie in the family dining outlet or the braised lamb shank in the would-be gastropub.

There’s also a posting on this subject on Martyn Cornell’s Zythophile blog.

Be careful what you wish for

2011-09-18T13:51:00.000+01:00

I have made a few posts recently about the reduced rate of duty for beers of 2.8% ABV or below which is being introduced from October 1st. Several commenters have said this concession would be much more meaningful if extended to beers of 3.5%, and indeed CAMRA have argued for this.

That’s not going to happen because of the potential loss of revenue. However, such a move could prove to be a double-edged sword. I'm old enough to remember when there was very little draught beer available in the UK (or any kind of beer really) over about OG 1040, so I can imagine how a 3.5% cut-off point might be tolerable. In the days when it was brewed at Henley, the 3.4% Brakspear's Bitter was one of my favourite beers, and there were plenty of other flavoursome beers at that strength.

A pint at 3.5% would save 29p in duty and VAT over one at 4%, which would translate to at least 50p at the bar. That would make the 4% category completely unviable. Inevitably, the big hitters like Carling, John Smith’s and Guinness would be brought down to that level, along with all the well-known cask “ordinary bitters”.

It could easily end up imposing a ceiling on the strength of mainstream beers, with only a small number of speciality products available at higher strengths. It could even effectively kill off draught beer at a higher strength – the 5% pint would incur a surcharge of 41p over the 3.5% one, and to choose to buy one in the pub would brand you as a bit of a pisshead.

Of course the absolute level of duty is too high, but in principle the current British beer duty system that directly links the level of duty to the amount of alcohol is a sensible one. Introducing arbitrary cut-off points for higher tiers of duty will inevitably distort the market and may well end up having undesirable and unintended consequences.

On the other hand, as Cooking Lager argues, the wide range of beer strengths may serve to sow confusion in consumers’ minds. Spirits are effectively all either 40% or 37.5% (which is the difference between a 4% beer and a 3.75% beer, i.e. something you wouldn’t really notice), and the overall range in table wine strengths is no more than the difference between a 4% and a 5% beer. You don’t hear constant calls for the strength of spirits or wine to be reduced, and maybe if beer was all the same modest strength it would to some extent insulate the category from criticism. Not an argument I really agree with, but an interesting point nonetheless.

Figuring it out

2011-09-17T17:40:00.001+01:00

I was recently kindly sent a complimentary copy of the British Beer & Pub Association’s annual Statistical Handbook. This may come across as dry reading, but it contains a wealth of information about the brewing industry and the overall drinks market.

It shows that in 2010, the UK had the second highest beer and wine duties in the EU (only Finland being ahead) and the fourth highest spirits duties. UK per capita alcohol consumption was well below the EU median level, and less than France, Germany or Spain. But you’d never imagine that if you listened to Don Shenker and Sir Ian Gilmore.

No doubt my friend Cooking Lager will be pleased by the breakdown of the relative market share of ale and stout vs lager:

1970: Ale and stout: 98.0; Lager: 2.0
1980: Ale and stout: 69.3; Lager: 30.7
1990: Ale and stout: 48.6; Lager: 51.4
2000: Ale and stout: 36.4; Lager: 63.6
2010: Ale and stout: 24.6; Lager: 75.4

One of the most telling tables is the one breaking down on-trade draught beer sales by category, from which I have created the extract shown below.

From 1980 to 2010, cask ale lost over three-quarters of its volume, and keg ale and stout over four-fifths. Even lager, although greatly increasing its market share, lost volume in absolute terms over that period.