Out of the frying pan... – Part 2

July saw the fifteenth anniversary of this blog, which of course was originally sparked by the smoking ban. Sad to report that I have achieved a record low number of posts, even below the half-year of 2007. As I’ve said before, a lot of the brief comments on news items have moved to Twitter, so I’m never going to return to the heady days of 2011. The cancellation of my magazine column has meant that I no longer feel an obligation to write something about specific subjects, and there are only so many times you can say much the same thing about minimum pricing or advertising bans.

Nevertheless, I’ve come up with some substantial pieces on a variety of topics. The one I feel most proud of is this one looking at the demise of the inner-urban boozer, once a mainstay of the pub trade and the source of much of the beer volume of the past. The highest number of pageviews was actually on my post about the short life of the Fickle Mermaid, which exemplified a wider topic of how things seemed to have gone sour for the family dining pub, once hailed as a major growth area in the pub industry. It also continues to attract a healthy level of comments, sometimes much more than other supposedly higher-profile blogs.

I managed considerably more posts on my Closed Pubs blog, where I achieved the highest total after the first three years of “shooting fish in a barrel”. This serves as a sad record of the absolute devastation that has overwhelmed the pub trade in the past twenty-five years. A scattering of poky micropubs open for a few hours a week is scant compensation. For this I am indebted for the prolific input of Leeds resident Kyle Reed, and Yorkshire is rapidly catching up on Lancashire and Staffordshire as the county with the highest representation. I’ve never actually met Kyle, but a pint or two is certainly his if we can arrange to get together. I’ve also sourced many entries from the Fullpint news aggregation Twitter account, which often posts news reports of long-closed pubs about to be demolished and replaced by flats.

I’ve added a few more entries to my Campaign for Real Pubs blog, which celebrates some of the dwindling number of characterful “proper pubs” still remaining, although unfortunately at least one has fallen victim to the jackhammer during the year.

I celebrated the tenth anniversary of my Twitter account, and also exceeded the 100,000 tweets mark, which is about 27 per day. My follower count has increased from 5,900 to just short of 6,300, although it’s probably reached something of a plateau now. Mind you, I said much the same when I passed 5,000. I deliberately aim to steer clear of general political issues beyond the politics of lifestyle, and indeed some of the people who regularly interact are clearly not political soulmates, although “Opposed to the Nanny State in all forms” should give a clear idea that I’m not some kind of Commie. It’s always good to receive a bit of acclamation:

Beer writing should be slightly cantankerous and this makes @oldmudgie your best companion. He'll also introduce you to a host of pub tickers, beer snobs and cats.

— Simon Cooke (@SimonMagus) December 24, 2022

In the Autumn, Twitter was bought by tech billionaire Elon Musk. As I wrote at the time, he is perhaps more loose cannon than knight in shining armour, but the platform has not fallen over as many predicted, and indeed is recording record traffic. He has restored many accounts that were unreasonably suspended, and has released some damning evidence of political interference. And those who have noisily decamped to rival platforms have discovered their limitations. The big plus point of Twitter is the number and range of other people who are there.

Moving on to some more general points, Pub Vandals of the Year must be Robinson’s, for their destruction of the unspoilt heritage interior of the Armoury in Stockport. Previously I would have named this as one of my favourite Stockport pubs, but it’s now little different from hundreds of others. They have also (although I haven’t seen it for myself) made some pretty destructive changes to the Church House in Congleton, which had retained many original 1930s features.

Public Health Own Goal of the Year was the legislation to prevent the prominent display of so-called HFSS items in supermarkets, which has had the entirely predictable outcome of them being replaced by displays of alcoholic drinks, surely not what the purse-lipped wowsers intended. Never mind, no doubt they’ll be coming for alcohol next, as they already have in Ireland.

Pub Food Innovation of the Year was Wetherspoon’s ice cream. Very reasonably priced at only £1.55, going up to £2.30 in That London, and actually quite decent stuff and in no way obviously cheap. You could easily pay £4 for something similar in a restaurant.

Blogging Event of the Year was the return of Cooking Lager. While his activities were curtailed by family issues, he has posted some splendid stuff, particularly this account of his exploration of the keg pubs of Edgeley. He makes many wider observations about society in general and explores territory, both physically and conceptually, where few other beer bloggers dare to tread.

A major achievement of the year was Martin Taylor taking advantage of the removal of Covid restrictions to reach the epic milestone of completing the Good Beer Guide, which he did in September at the Taversoe on Rousay in Orkney. Although, once the new edition was released, he was back down the snake again with a few hundred more pubs to visit.

Around the time of the annual Cask Beer Week, there was a great deal of handwringing around the subject of cask beer quality. But commentators continue to pussyfoot around the central issue, that of excessive ranges leading to slow turnover and stale beer. Of course that isn’t the sole reason for poor quality, but at least if you shift it quickly you give it a fighting chance. Everybody recognises that there’s a problem, but it seems that nobody is prepared to actually do anything about it.

There was a significant crack in the Sam Smith’s edifice when card payments were finally allowed in the Autumn, although the absurd ban on any use of mobile devices remains in force. Glynn Davis wrote an excellent article setting out the contrast between the often praiseworthy way in which Sam’s run their pub estate, and the damage done by their pigheaded policies.

The beginning of the year brought the sad news of the death of Peter Allen, who was less than a year older than me. He was a keen canal traveller, and the author of the Pubs Then and Now blog which was mainly focused around his waterborne journeys. He accompanied us on numerous pub days out where he was always good company. The photo above shows him in happier times, on the left, in the Slubbers Arms in Huddersfield in March 2019. I am just to the right of the fire. Sadly, that splendid pub, which was my best new pub visit of 2019, is no longer with us either.

One noteworthy book I read during the year was Northerners by Brian Groom, which is basically a history of England seen through the lens of the North. For long a poverty-stricken backwater, it did nevertheless play a crucial role in many key historical events. Then the Industrial Revolution elevated it to becoming the most prosperous region of the country, only for it to be laid low in the last century by the decline of traditional industries. It is perhaps let down towards the end by an attempt to shoehorn in as many artistic, literary and showbiz figures as possible, whereas a more limited number of extended profiles illustrating particular themes might have been better. And the North now faces the question of how it can create a distinctive identity for itself without becoming merely a subsidised colony of the South, the contradiction that is inherent in the “Levelling Up” agenda.

I also read Municipal Gothic by Ray Newman, one half of Boak & Bailey, which is a collection of ghost stories with modern and everyday settings. Some of the stories are very good and are based on inventive concepts, particularly the increasingly creepy faux gazetteer of Modern Buildings in Wessex, but it did come across as rather too obviously written by someone who has pondered on the mechanics of how ghost stories work.

A year without Covid restrictions gave me the chance to get out and about and visit many more tourist attractions of various kinds. Undoubtedly the best new one was the Lady Lever Art Gallery at Port Sunlight on the Wirral, which celebrated its centenary this year. Although only twenty miles from where I grew up, unaccountably I had never been here before. It’s a very impressive purpose-built gallery, with a huge and varied art collection to which a single visit cannot really do justice. The paintings on display major on Pre-Raphaelite and early 20th century figurative art which are perhaps somewhat unfashionable genres nowadays.

The striking portrait above is Jeunesse Dorée, painted in 1934 by Gerald Leslie Brockhurst and depicting his muse, and later wife, Kathleen Woodward.

I was also able to renew my acquantaince with a number of places which in many cases I had not visited for decades. Two that stand out are Rufford Old Hall in West Lancashire, a fascinating Tudor and Restoration house in a tranquil, wooded setting by the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, and Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire, which is far less immediately spectacular than Stonehenge, but where the National Trust have done a very good job of explaining its origins and significance.

As for 2023, who knows what it will bring? It could turn out better, but it could be a lot worse. And dare I suggest that one thing that would bring about an improvement in the situation around the world would be a swift return to peace in Ukraine?

See here for Part 1.

Out of the frying pan... – Part 1

This time last year, pubs had been spared the Covid restrictions that had been reimposed on large sections of the economy due to concerns about the Omicron variant. However, this led to a wave of cancellations of Christmas bookings, meaning that the trade had a dismal festive season for the second year in a row. As many of us had predicted, the fears of Omicron proved to be greatly overstated, and the general restrictions were all lifted at the end of January, perhaps accelerated by the embattled government wishing to avoid a backbench rebellion. The abhorrent plans to impose vaccine mandates on NHS workers lingered on into the Spring, but they were eventually scrapped too. The lockdown narrative has steadily crumbled as the sheer scale of the economic, social, educational and medical harms it caused have become increasingly clear, and many politicians have rushed to dissociate themselves from it.

There were, however, one or two pockets of the pub trade that, like Japanese soldiers in the jungle after 1945, continued to cling stubbornly to the old religion. The Bailey Head in Oswestry, run by a chap called Duncan Borrowman, was insisting on the ludicrous and oppressive rule of requiring masks unless seated well into this year, even though this had been officially lifted in July 2021. I assume it has now been dropped, but that’s certainly one to add to the list of pubs to avoid, at least under their current management.

This cleared the way for a year of unrestricted trading for pubs, which was helped by some hot summer weather. Although it certainly hasn’t been uniform, many have reported sales figures approaching those of 2019 or even, in some cases, exceeding it. However, they have then been hit by a wave of inflation which has increased their costs, especially energy prices, while at the same time reducing their customers’ disposable income. This leaves many pubs in a very precarious financial situation going into the New Year, and has already led to a number of closures which have spread to breweries too. To a a large extent, this inflation was the inevitable consequence of the borrowing and money-printing to finance the Covid bailouts and furlough, although the Bank of England seemed remarkably myopic in failing to foresee it. The Ukraine conflict has exacerbated it to some degree, but it’s really no more than the icing on the cake. The situation of pubs in town and city centres has been further worsened by the wave of rail strikes in the run-up to Christmas.

During the year, I have visited 128 different pubs, of which 40 were new to me. This compares with 79/18 in 2021 and a mere 60/17 in 2020. Obviously I could have visited more new pubs if I’d really set my mind to it, but I didn’t really do more than take the opportunities that were available to me in the course of my travels. A couple of highlights were a day out in Burton-on-Trent for the first celebration of National Bass Day that was actually able to take place, and being kindly taken on a tour of rural pubs in West Berkshire by Tim Thomas of the local CAMRA branch.

My best new pub was the North Star in Steventon, Berkshire, one of the most unspoilt pubs on CAMRA’s National Inventory, with no bar counter as such and a snug formed by a high-backed settles.

Runner-up was the Magazine in New Brighton, with its spectacular views over the Mersey estuary towards Liverpool. This is one of those classic pubs that is in my general part of the world, but I’d never been near enough in recent years to think, “oh, let’s go there”. Although known as a Bass shrine, unfortunately due to the supply difficulties that have plagued Bass this year there was none available when I called. I’ll also give honourable mentions to the Boat and Horses in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and the Heatons Bridge at Scarisbrick in West Lancashire, both of which have a canal connection.

On the other hand, there were one or two horror stories, the most memorable being one pub, which shall remain nameless, where my experience was completely spoilt by what appeared to be the landlord and his cronies engaging in bout of Chubby Brown-level swearing in one of the rooms. This was a pity as otherwise it was a very appealing place that came across as more genteel than rough, which made the crudity even more incongruous.

My best revisit was undoubtedly the Bell at Aldworth, again in Berkshire, another classic unspoilt pub that has won CAMRA’s National Pub of the Year on two widely-separated occasions. I had been there once in the early 80s, but never since. This was on the aforementioned tour with Tim Thomas. I was also able to renew my acquaintance with a number of pubs not visited since before Covid, such as the “symphony in brown” Cross Foxes in Shrewsbury, and the Red Lion at Dayhills in Staffordshire, a simple rural pub attached to a working farm.

Amongst all those pubs, sadly I haven’t encountered a single pub cat, although I have continued to follow the activities of Arty at the Olde Cottage in Chester, and Fiddle Pub Cat, whose pub has now closed down, but who seems to be enjoying a comfortable retirement with plenty of rodent-hunting opportunities.

To be continued...

A franchise affair

A significant development of the past few years that has perhaps not received the attention it deserves is the rise of franchise models for operating pubs owned by the major pub companies. These are a kind of halfway house between a managed pub and a traditional tenancy, under which the publican remains self-employed, but the pubco pays all the bills and takes all the sales revenue, leaving a cut of typically between 18% and 22% to pay themselves and employ staff.

All of the major pubcos now offer deals of this kind, as explained in this article in the Morning Advertiser, with Marston’s being the leaders in the field with 637 sites currently operational. Probably the most visible is Stonegate’s Craft Union, which has been positioned as a standalone brand, with the pubs painted in a distinctive livery. Most of them tend to be wet-led pubs, but some of the deals allow the licensees to run their own food operation.

From the point of view of the pubco, they avoid the commitment and administrative burden of a fully managed operation while still retaining a high degree of control over how the business is run. Most significantly, all the sales are put through their own books.

The prospective publican may find this kind of arrangement an easier introduction to the pub trade than a traditional tenancy, and it requires much less of an initial financial ingoing. It provides a much more structured operating environment, which may suit many people, although others will find the lack of opportunity to use their initiative to develop the business limiting. Running a tenancy is much more complex now than it was fifty years ago. There’s a direct relationship between the success of the business and your own remuneration, although of course that is a double-edged sword.

An important aspect is that all the bills are paid by the pubco, including the energy costs, which is a massive attraction in the current climate. However, concerns have been expressed that these deals may in practice leave people working for a pittance and can be regarded as exploitative. People are effectively entering into unsatisfactory contracts just to get a roof over their heads and their bills paid. On the other hand, several people interviewed in the Morning Advertiser article seemed happy enough with the situation. No doubt the shrill anti-pubco lobbyists will find much to criticise, but they never seem able to come up with any constructive suggestions about how pub operating companies should actually function.

When I first heard about this kind of arrangement, my initial thought was that they were a way of pubcos avoiding the possibilities of seeing their pubs lost to tenants claiming a Market Rent Option and going free-of-tie. However, that hasn’t in practice proved to be a major problem for pubcos, and in reality franchising is more a way of finding a system that works for smaller, lower-end pubs that have proved difficult to let on a traditional tenancy basis. But, whatever its pros and cons, franchising certainly seems to be here to stay as a significant part of the pub landscape, and is only likely to expand its share at the expense of tenancies. Marston’s certainly see it as a key driver of future growth.

Ailing ale

A couple of months ago, I wrote about how the unintended consequence of banning displays of “HFSS” foods in supermarkets had been a mushrooming of the quantity of alcoholic drinks in prominent view. But one thing that has been conspicuous by its absence from all these mountains of bottles and cans is beers in traditional British styles. Yes, there is Guinness, and there are Punk IPA and Hazy Jane, but the vast majority of it is lager of various kinds. There is nothing remotely resembling a Bitter. Not too long ago, there would have been slabs of John Smith’s Extra Smooth, Boddingtons and Tetley’s, and even, a few years before that, Stones. But now there is nothing.

While these beers are still available in four-packs in the alcohol aisle, their absence from the piles of seasonal drinks shows that they are no longer ranked amongst the big hitters of the beer world. And yes, those styles are well covered by the Premium Bottled Ales sector, but that again is a niche market playing several divisions below the Premier League.

In the on-trade, it is overwhelmingly cask that is carrying the standard for British ales. When cask disappears from a pub, it doesn’t get keg Landlord and London Pride, it is likely to end up with an apologetic cowl on the T-bar for John Smith’s or Tetley’s Smooth, and maybe a throwback keg mild if you’re lucky. These products are now zombie brands, receiving no advertising or promotion, and selling to a dwindling band of downmarket older drinkers. Maybe there is still some love for keg ales in pockets like the North-East club trade, but in general they are unloved and overlooked.

When Cooking Lager did his tour of the keg pubs of Edgeley earlier this year, he didn’t even mention the keg ales available. I’d assume they all stocked some form of smooth beer, but I’d guess these accounted for no more than 10% of draught sales. It wouldn’t surprise me if some of the more modern-themed pubs and bars that have dropped cask now no longer stock any British-style keg ales at all. I don’t tend to frequent such establishments, but earlier this year I stayed in a slightly upmarket hotel where there were eight kegs on the bar. One was some kind of craft IPA, but none were British ales.

When I started drinking in the late 70s, ale (mostly bitter, but still with a large component of mild) was the dominant category in the beer market. Lager was a trendy, upstart interloper. However, it steadily gained on ale, probably overtaking it at some time in the mid-80s, and has now for most people become the default beer. If you visited the house of someone who wasn’t a beer enthusiast, and they offered you “a beer”, odds on it would be a lager. As the Scottish Licensed Trade Network reports, lager has now become the quintessential pub product.

British-style ales are now on the verge of falling back from being a lower-volume mainstream product to something that is definitely just a niche. Over the next couple of decades it will become increasingly common in the on-trade to find them entirely absent, while in the off-trade the shelf space allocated to them will steadily diminish. Yes, there will still be places where they enjoy strong sales and appreciation, but they will be limited pockets in the general landscape. While cask may mount a determined rearguard action, its distribution is only going to contract, not increase. And, if you run a brewery that specialises in British-style ales, you may have a bleak future.

Of course it is a simple fact of life that customer preferences change over time. Porter disappeared, mild is now a tiny niche and bitter is going the same way. But it is a matter of regret that we are losing something that was the absolute cornerstone of the once-mighty British brewing industry. And you can’t help thinking that other nations such as the Germans and the Czechs would be more committed to cherishing such an important part of their heritage.

Yes, there has been a rise in craft IPAs, mainly on keg, but they are not ales of the traditional British style and their market share remains minuscule in comparison to lager.

Getting the bird

Regular readers will know that I’m an enthusiastic user of Twitter. In recent weeks, there has been a mixture of excitement and consternation following the $44 billion takeover of the platform by billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. I’m no cheerleader for Musk, and in some respects he seems more of a loose cannon than a knight in shining armour. After peremptorily sacking a substantial proportion of staff, there was much speculation that the platform might fall over, but that hasn’t happened, and indeed Musk has reported record traffic and user numbers.

Many of the dismissed staff seem to have been engaged not in actually running the site, but in “content moderation”, i.e. censorship. It was widely felt that the previous regime on Twitter had pursued a very heavy-handed and partisan approach to throttling and banning accounts expressing conservative viewpoints or questioning the official narrative on Covid and lockdowns. People felt that they were constantly walking on eggshells, and many accounts have been suspended purely for the opinions expressed.

Musk has said that he will give an amnesty to all banned accounts with obvious exceptions such as illegal conduct and harassment, and they seem to be slowly returning, most notably that of former US President Donald Trump, although he has engaged in his own subtle form of trolling by not actually tweeting anything so far. Another is the satirical account The Babylon Bee.

Some people, alarmed by this sudden outbreak of free speech, have taken refuge in an alternative platform called Mastodon. Now, I don’t know much about this, and have no intention to open an account, but it appears to be a decentralised network of servers, each of which applies its own policies. I have already heard reports of heavy-handed moderation, and of someone being banned for supposedly being “a capitalist”. And surely, if the whole thing links together, there must be problems when someone on one of the more tolerant servers ends up interacting with those on one of the more censorious ones.

A platform like Twitter needs a critical mass to succeed – there is no point in being there if all you’re doing is shouting into a void. This is likely to be a problem for Mastodon, just as it was for conservative-minded people who set up accounts on Gab, Parler or GETTR. Maybe some parts of it will become a cosy echo chamber for like-minded people, but that’s really missing the point. And if you are trying to operate two accounts in parallel it becomes more like hard work and you will lose some of the spontaneity.

It must be remembered that the key point about free speech is that it needs to be extended to people with whom you profoundly disagree, and indeed whose views you may find obnoxious. If it is only allowed to those you find congenial, there is no free speech. And a key feature of Twitter and similar platforms is that you can tailor it to your own tastes by your choice of who to follow, and who to mute or block so, if you so choose, you never need to be exposed to opinions that make you feel uncomfortable.

It’s also worth mentioning that Musk has reportedly carried out a major crackdown on the exchange of child porn material through Twitter, which apparently had been widespread under the old regime, although I have to say it’s not something I’d ever noticed personally.

Think of the children

The Scottish government must be disappointed by the effect of the raft of anti-alcohol measures they have already introduced, so they have decided to double down by launching a consultation on restricting or banning alcohol advertising. The full document can be read here. It covers a variety of options from prohibiting sports sponsorship all the way to placing alcohol products behind curtains in shops as with tobacco. It’s unlikely that all of these measures would be implemented at once, and in any case in a national market the scope for Scotland-only curbs is limited, but the desired direction of travel is clear.

I’ve written about this at length in the past, so I don’t propose to go over old ground. But it’s generally accepted that the primary function of all advertising is to encourage brand switching and to bring new products to the public’s attention. The effect on the overall level of demand for the category is minimal. This is especially true of problem drinkers, who will go for whatever they can get their hands on at an affordable price. Over time, removing alcohol brands from the general public consciousness might have a moderate effect on dampening demand, but it would be a very slow process. We can see this with tobacco where, despite a total advertising ban, above-inflation price hikes and severe restrictions on where it can be consumed, the total level of sales has only gradually declined.

The authors of the document seem particularly concerned about the impact of advertising on children, and indeed have come up with a cringe-inducing “easy-read” version of it, from which the image above it taken. Being exposed to alcohol images apparently has a pernicious effect on children, even though they must regularly see people drinking in pubs and restaurants.. But surely young people start drinking alcohol because they are introduced to it by family or peer group members, not because they see a poster for Madri or Smirnoff. It seems to be a case of recruiting children as soldiers in the war on alcohol.

The public health lobby must be well aware that they are exaggerating the impact of advertising restrictions on consumption levels. But it serves their purpose to foster a climate of moral panic to promote a long-term process of denormalisation.

Some smaller producers may have a sneaking sympathy for measures to prevent sports sponsorship and TV advertising. Surely that will hurt the big players and help the little guy. But that is embarking down a dangerous road. Advertising restrictions will always work against new products and new entrants to the market, and reinforce establish brands that people are familiar with. They serve to ossify the market in its previous form. Tobacco brand choice now relies entirely on word-of-mouth and folk memory of how things were before the ban. It would be completely impossible now for a new company to enter the market, or to introduce an entirely new cigarette brand.

Drinks retailers have reacted with alarm to the prospect of having to put alcohol products out of sight. And it should not be forgotten that whisky is Scotland’s biggest export earner, and I can’t imagine the industry being particularly pleased about being prevented from advertising their product in its home country.

Losing your deposit

Next August, the Scottish Government will introduce a Deposit Return Scheme under which buyers of all glass and plastic bottles and cans used to package drinks, both alcoholic and soft, will be required to pay an additional 20p deposit which they will be able to reclaim when they return the empty container, the objective being to achieve a substantial increase in the recycling rate. While this is well-intentioned, it is likely to cause significant practical problems for both businesses and consumers which is the last thing they need at a time when everyone is struggling with a cost-of-living crisis.

Any business supplying these products in Scotland will incur additional costs in designing Scotland-specific packaging, as obviously the affected items will need to be clearly identifiable. The two categories of product will then need to be kept separate in the distribution chain. Some producers for whom Scotland only accounts for a small part of their business may well conclude it is no longer worthwhile to supply it at all, thus reducing the choice for Scottish consumers.

Retailers will need to adapt their point-of-sale systems to cope with the deposits, and there is also an unresolved question as to how they will be treated for VAT purposes. They will have to separately account for the revenue and pay it over to the government. And there will be further administration associated with repaying the deposits on returns, and storing them until they can be collected. The collections will require the creation of a whole new logistics system. Fortunately many smaller retailers have now been exempted from the need to act as collection points.

It’s all very well saying that you can reclaim the deposit when you return the container to where you bought it from, but it’s not always as simple as that. If you have a car and routinely drive to the supermarket it may not be too much trouble, but you will still have to gather the containers together and queue to have them redeemed, particularly at busy times. Each container will need to be individually checked to confirm that it falls within the scheme. With the best will in the world, there will inevitably be many car trips specifically undertaken just to return drinks containers.

There will inevitably be pressure to sign up to some kind of scheme to have the refunds paid directly into your bank account, which will further undermine the use of cash and result in more tracking of people’s activities and movements.

If you don’t have a car, you will have to physically lug all your bottles and cans to a collection point, or get someone else to do it for you. If someone else does your shopping for you, it creates a layer of negotiations between neighbours and relatives as to how the deposits are handled. If you give someone a gift of a bottle, you’re effectively gifting them the deposit too.

Where groceries are ordered online and delivered directly to the home, presumably there will be an expectation that the delivery driver will have to collect the empties too and arrange credit to your account, as it would clearly be unreasonable to expect shoppers to physically return them somewhere. That, though, will make the logistical task of deliveries much more complex, with an inevitable increase in costs.

While in theory you will be able to reclaim the deposit and so not be out of pocket, increasing the headline price of products will produce the perception that the cost of living has gone up even more. There is a question mark over whether it will affect the official inflation statistics. And it will undermine Scotland’s minimum alcohol pricing scheme by increasing the headline differential across the border. The sticker price of a 20-can slab of Tennent’s Lager will be a further £4 cheaper in Carlisle than in Dumfries.

Obviously I don’t live in Scotland, so won’t be directly affected. Currently my local council gets me to collect all bottles and cans in a brown bin which is collected monthly. There may be a question mark over how many of them actually get recycled, but it isn’t particularly onerous and seems to work smoothly. They would still need to do this, as it covers a lot of items such as milk cartons and coffee jars which won’t fall within the scope of the DRS.

I would need to separate out the items with deposits and then store them securely within my home, as their value would make them attractive to thieves. From my point of view, it would make life much simpler if someone, either the council or a private company, could collect all the deposit items directly, even if they charged a commission on it.

Many of the most thorny issues revolve around online ordering and delivery, which particularly affects the small brewery sector. I’ve not been able to find any clear answer to this in the literature I have read, but I would assume that any deliveries physically made from outside Scotland would be excluded from the scheme, as otherwise it’s likely that many vendors would simply refuse to supply Scotland entirely because of the cost and administration involved.

However, that isn’t an option for small brewers in Scotland delivering directly to customers, and that is what SIBA have been rightly concerned about and have made strong representations. Apparently the legislation includes a requirement to arrange for physical takeback of online orders, which seems completely impractical in general, but particularly for small producers. It does seem that they have achieved some progress on this, but there is still a long way to go.

“It is therefore encouraging that the Scottish Government has today recognised some of the issues facing the scheme in the Emergency Budget Review and have indicated a willingness to amend the online takeback element which currently would prevent any small producer from selling online in Scotland next year.

“However we would urge the Scottish Government to look again at the requirements for small producers which, as currently designed, are threatening business closures and jobs in Scotland and will lead to reductions in choice and an increase in price. Many small breweries have already told us they will have to stop selling beer in cans and bottles in Scotland because of the multi million pound costs of the scheme to small producers.”

Maybe there needs to be an exemption for smaller producers based in Scotland, which would predominantly be brewers, although inevitably there would be grumbles about unfair competition and edge effects.

It may be that all these issues prove to be just teething troubles, and the system will work well enough once it is bedded in. However, given the SNP government’s past track record on delivering such projects, I wouldn’t hold out too much hope.

Last orders for lout?

At the beginning of this year, Wetherspoon’s carried out a substantial revamp of their beer range, one of the major elements of which was delisting products from the Heineken Group. This meant the disappearance of two 5.0% ABV draught lagers, Heineken itself and Kronenbourg 1664, leaving the only product remaining at that the strength as San Miguel, owned in the UK by Carlsberg.

5% premium lagers were once one of the leading segments of the British beer market, but recently seem to have become very much eclipsed. What was once its flagship brand, Stella Artois, has been reduced in stages from 5.2% to its current strength of 4.6%. The draught lager range in my local Spoons is now San Miguel, Stella, Corona and Budweiser (both 4.5%), the “premium standard” Coors at 4%, Carling (4%), Carlsberg (3.8%) and Bud Light (3.5%)

There’s nothing inherently wrong with beers of any particular strength, although it’s probably fair to say that few beers are improved by being made weaker. Obviously there is a duty saving to brewers, but it may well be that less strong premium lagers suit customer preferences in making them more sessionable and keeping a slightly clearer head.

When I have written about this in the past, I have suggested there might well be some degree of customer kickback, but this doesn’t seem to have happened. But, whatever the motivation, it certainly represents a major shift in the beer market. There has been a similar movement in the cask market, where beers of 5% and above don’t find many takers nowadays, and a number have had their strength cut.

A new product category has been devised for these products – Mediterranean Lager – which encompasses those of both Spanish and Italian identity. To get a share of the action, in 2020 Molson Coors launched a new product, Madri Excepcional, which has been very heavily promoted in the succeeding two years. While this may appear to be of Spanish origin, it is in fact an entirely concocted brand that bears no relation to anything actually sold in the Spanish market, as explained in this article, which is basically a recycling of a press release.

This will cause much harrumphing amongst those still outraged by the fact the Wainwright is brewed in Wolverhampton, but the fact of the matter is most drinkers are no longer particularly concerned about authenticity and provenance, as I wrote back in 2011. This is a point reinforced by this article hanging on the recent closure of Jennings. Nobody is being deceived, as having a product with the vague trappings of Spanish or Italian style is sufficient. There are plenty of examples in the general food and drink field of products that lay claim to a particular national identity but in fact have little or no presence in their supposed home markets.

I was recently in my local convenience store where the two lager brands being heavily promoted were Madri and Moretti (owned by Heineken), both 4.6%, which certainly would not have been the case five years ago. And I suspect in the current climate it would be very difficult for any major brewer to launch a new mass-market 5.0% lager brand. If you do want an authentic British 5% lager, though, you could do a lot worse than Samuel Smith’s Pure Brewed.

Nature abhors a vacuum

From the beginning of October, new regulations were introduced in England to restrict the display and promotion of HFSS foods (“high in fat, sugar and salt”) in larger shops. While this has been disingenuously promoted as only affecting “junk food”, in fact it covers a huge swathe of everyday food items including chocolate, sweets, crisps, cereals, cakes, biscuits, sausages, pies, cooked meats and full-fat dairy produce. It means that such products can no longer be displayed on aisle ends or free-standing islands, and have to be confined to the body of aisles.

The purported objective is to reduce the rate of obesity, although there is little evidence that it is likely to prove effective. Experience shows that advertising and promotion may affect product choice, but have little impact on the total quantity purchased. And, even if it did work to some extent, should we really be treating adult consumers like naughty children who cannot control their urges? As stated by Tom Harris in this article, which in general has been very much superseded by events:

I must accept that no one forces me to eat pizza or Mars Bars; those are my choices, made by an adult with the full knowledge of the consequences. To assume that other, mostly poorer citizens have no such agency strikes me as unforgivably patronising.

However, it has come into force, and shops have to rejig their displays to comply and find something else to replace the HFSS items. One obvious candidate is alcoholic drinks, which are not covered by the same restrictions, and Grocery Gazette reports a significant increase in such displays, something borne out by my own observation.

🍾Research by CHEP found that across the UK’s 7,000 #supermarkets, there is now an estimated 70,000 off-fixture alcohol displays including wine, beer and spirits.https://t.co/aq2YulScbp

— Grocery Gazette (@GazetteGrocery) October 24, 2022

Instead of walking in through the door and being confronted with a pyramid of Quality Street and Celebrations tubs, you will now find a pile of Corona and Madri packs. This will inevitably raise the hackles of the public health lobby, leading to them stepping up their campaign for further curbs on the placement of alcoholic drinks, something that has already been done in the Irish Republic.

At the time of the smoking ban fifteen years ago, I and many other of its opponents argued strongly that similar restrictions would inevitably be applied to alcoholic drinks sooner or later. However, in practice very little has happened in that direction, although the Irish Republic and other parts of the UK have gone somewhat further down the road than England. I wrote about this at the beginning of 2020.

What I would never have predicted is that so much of the energy of public health lobbyists would be redirected towards so-called “unhealthy” food. And there is more to come, with severe restrictions on the online advertising of HFSS products to come next year, which will make it very difficult for smaller producers to promote their businesses. So far, alcohol has escaped relatively lightly. But it would be very complacent to assume that will always be the case.

Many unhappy returns

I recently had a somewhat unedifying experience in one of my local Wetherspoon’s:

Oh, I’ll try one of the beers in the Spoons real ale festival. Twelve pulls on the pump and, surprise, surprise, it’s a pint of murk. To their credit, they changed it willingly and took it off sale. But it’s hardly surprising people are put off drinking cask 🙄

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) October 16, 2022

One or two people suggested that I shouldn’t have complained about it, as the pint was changed without demur, which indeed it was, although the novice barperson had to consult with his supervisor first. Indeed, Wetherspoon’s in general have a very creditable policy of changing duff beer without quibble. You never get “have you tasted it?” or “real ale’s meant to be like that”.

But surely having to return a pint is something that should only be necessary on very rare occasions. The customers shouldn’t be expected to do the pub’s quality control for them, and it shouldn’t be regarded as a regular hazard of choosing cask beer. Indeed, that was the second time in a row when ordering a guest ale in Spoons had resulted in it going straight back.

The whole business of taking beer back to be bar is fraught with difficulty. Many people are understandably very reluctant to do, on the grounds that they’ve gone out for a drink, not a confrontation. I wonder how many drinkers would have struggled through that duff pint and ordered a Shipyard or a Guinness next. On CAMRA pub crawls, when the group have returned poor beer, I’ve occasionally seen an old boy in the corner pluck up the courage to do the same.

I’m normally pretty dogmatic about it if there’s an obvious fault such as the beer being cloudy or vinegary. Beer is so expensive nowadays that you shouldn’t have to put up with poor quality. But it’s more difficult if the problem is a more subjective one, such as the beer simply being in general a bit stale, flat and warm. If I knew the landlord, I might mention it, but there again the pubs where I know the landlord are not those likely to serve poor beer very often.

In an unfamiliar pub, though, discretion can often be the better part of valour. If it’s a pub that I’ve just visited for the one pint, and am never likely to visit again, just leaving the beer and walking out may be a better option than having an argument. When making a complaint, you always need to have a clear view of what your objective is. If it’s getting a replacement, that’s fair enough, but in a pub with only one cask beer you may not want any of the replacements. A refund is also a valid aim, although that can leave a sour taste in the mouth. But if you just want to have a bit of a scene it may be wise to count to ten and walk away. And I’ve heard other customers remark “some people just come out to complain!”

Most of us who enjoy cask beer will choose most of the time to drink it either in familiar places where we have a reasonable expectation of a good pint, or in those recommended to us by friends, social media or publications such as the Good Beer Guide. But we have to recognise that our experience can be very unrepresentative. Once you venture “off grid”, the experience of drinking cask beer can too often be pretty dismal, as I found back in 2011 in and around Hereford.

I do make a point of sometimes seeking out new pubs, or ones I haven’t visited for years, and I have to say sometimes it’s very disappointing. For example, I recently called in at a pub that had been described as a community local but in fact was more of a smart dining pub. Four beers on the bar, all good ones from the better-known micros. I chose my favourite amongst them, but it was terrible – hazy, no head, full of bubbles, slightly off aroma. It was changed for another, which to be honest wasn’t all that much better. But it always takes a lot of moral courage to return two beers in succession as frankly, however, justified, it tends to make you look like a bit of an arse. So I drank it and went on my way, and I don’t think I’ll be going back there in the near future. That isn’t at all untypical of going “off grid” and, very often, the pubs where that happens also have the dearest beer.

And, every time someone feels the need to return a pint to the bar - or indeed chickens out of it - the reputation of cask beer takes another little knock.

(There are some reflections on the issues around returning beer on this post by Martin Taylor.)

Closed for you

In recent years, we have seen many pubs and bars adopt much shorter opening hours than in the past, often opening at what may seem odd times of the day and not at all on several days of the week. Given the financial and staffing pressures pubs are under, no individual pub should be criticised for doing this, provided that they publicise their hours clearly and don’t vary them on a whim from day to day.

However, they need to be aware that they are limiting their appeal to regulars who are in the know, and deterring casual trade. You may feel that there is little value in being open for certain hours of the day, but in fact giving potential customers the confidence that you are going to be open at all is likely to increase trade overall. Although it relates to cafés, this is a point made in this article by Rory Sutherland in the Spectator.

It cannot escape the notice of café operators that one reason why both chains and immigrant-run businesses do well is that they are open consistently and open late. But this isn’t simply because they sell more stuff later in the day by dint of being open: the reality is more complicated. If you stay open two hours more, even if you sell little in those two extra hours, you will still profit over time, because you will get far more business in your core hours. Firstly people are more confident that you are open: nobody plans to rendezvous in a café where there is a 20 per cent chance it’ll be shut. And no one really enjoys eating in cafés in the hour before closing, because once the staff start ostentatiously delactating the nozzle on the coffee machine, it ruins the vibe.

An important factor in Wetherspoon’s appeal is that they are open all day, every day. You can arrange to meet someone in Spoons at any time and have the confidence they will be open. You don’t need to go online to check what their hours are. The same is true of other managed house chains – locally, for example, with Holts.

And the increasing unpredictability of opening hours must be a factor deterring people from visiting pubs in general. Limited hours may make sense at the level of the individual venue, but overall it results in a kind of “tragedy of the commons”. “Pubs? You’re lucky to find one open!”

As an aside, fairly recently a craft beer shop opened in my local suburban shopping centre. I’m sure they open the hours that they feel suit their business. But most times when I’m visiting the area, it’s closed, so I can’t even have a browse.

Reculer pour mieux sauter

Pete Brown has weighed in to the discussion about the future of cask by suggesting that one of the best ways of improving its perception is to take it out of a whole swathe of marginal outlets. He correctly identifies that poor turnover is the single biggest problem it faces.

One of the biggest of the many issues facing cask is throughput... This is a huge problem, and it’s getting bigger. Brewers would love it if publicans who don’t sell a cask in three days take it off sale. But as cost pressures on the publican mount, that’s the last thing they’re going to do. Only 24% of pubs selling cask sell enough of it to guarantee a maximum three-day shelf life. If you were to just look at the peak selling time of Thursday to Sunday, that number is 54% – but that’s down from 62% since 2019. So pubs that can’t sell cask fresh enough are actively driving people away from drinking cask.

He has used data on beer flow produced by the Oxford Partnership to divide pubs into segments depending on how much cask they sell and what proportion of their overall draught sales it represents, as shown in the graphic below. This shows that 39.1% of pubs stocking cask only represent 13.9% of total cask volumes. Surely removing cask from these pubs, where it doesn’t sell much, and isn’t given a high priority, would do wonders for its overall perception for relatively little loss of volume.

While this kind of approach may seem persuasive, it’s important not to confuse becoming leaner and fitter with just wasting away. 13.9% is a seventh of the total market, which would leave a gaping hole that would not be solely felt by the bigger brewers. It also has to be remembered that most people who drink cask are not dedicated cask drinkers. They visit pubs for a whole variety of factors, but happen to choose cask from the range of drinks presented to them. Take it away, and they would drink something else rather than making a beeline for the nearest cask pub. It would have the further effect of reducing cask’s overall visibility, so they would see it less often, and be less likely to choose it even when they did encounter it.

The biggest problem with Brown’s analysis, though, is that he has made a fundamental schoolboy error that frankly I find surprising from someone with such long experience of writing about the industry. The figures that he is quoting look at total cask turnover in a pub, not turnover per cask line. It is entirely possible for a pub to only sell 24 pints a day, yet still keep it in decent nick if they only have one beer and get it in firkins. Indeed plenty of small rural pubs do just that and achieve entries in the Good Beer Guide. On the other hand, a pub can be selling 72 pints a day, but if that is spread over five or six different lines, customers are going to end up with a lot of stale dishwater.

Yes, you do come across a fair number of family dining pubs and sports boozers where there’s one apologetic handpump for Doom Bar or Wainwright at the end of the bar and you have to wonder how much of it they ever sell. Losing these outlets would not do cask much harm. But it is possible (although usually not the case) that these pubs have a group of dedicated regulars who provide ample turnover for that one beer.

But the true problem is all the pubs whose eyes are bigger than their belly, and put on far more lines than they can actually shift. It’s not a single type of pub – it covers the high-profile urban managed pub belonging to the likes of Stonegate or Mitchells & Butlers, rural gastropubs and of course Wetherspoon’s, many of whose outlets really don’t seem to have much cask turnover at all. As an example, I was recently in one of their local branches, admittedly not the one in the Good Beer Guide, where there were ten cask lines. Thinking I would use some of my CAMRA discount vouchers, I ordered one beer, which was cloudy and went straight back. It was replaced by another that was at least clear, but was plainly well past its best. Frankly, I approach ordering guest ales in Spoons with considerable trepidation.

The problem even spreads to the well-known specialist beer houses which we are regularly assured have the turnover to maintain freshness. But when you see a pub with more pumps than customers on a Monday or Tuesday you do have to wonder, and I have sometimes had very poor beer in multi award winning pubs. To some extent, I tend to think this is done knowingly to provide a wider choice, a trade-off that is accepted by many of their customers who are prepared to take somehing of a risk in seach of variety. But the occasional punter will still be unimpressed by getting a poor pint in the Connoisseur Tap where his mates assure him the beer is brilliant.

What is needed to improve the perception of cask is not so much a cull of outlets, but a cull of lines. We need to see a dramatic reduction in the range of beers offered by many pubs. There is no reason why this should impact on volume, as the same level of sales will simply be spread over fewer beers, thus improving quality. As the choice offered often seems to consist of a multitude of similar pale beers, it doesn’t necessarily need to result in a loss of stylistic variety either. We should get away from the poster image of cask as an array of different colourful pumpclips stretching along a bar, and move to one of two or three handpumps standing proud in the middle of the counter with a row of kegs on either side.

Virtually the whole industry recognises that cask turnover is a major problem, but everyone thinks it’s up to someone else to do something about it, and so nothing ends up getting done. Having a very fragmented industry is a good thing in many ways, but it does reduce the scope for one operator to make a move that will shift the market.

A year on from now, that drastic cull of lines won’t have happened. Cask volumes will have declined further, and the chorus of complaints about stale beer will continue unabated. So it seems to be stuck in an endless cycle of rinse and repeat as it slowly disappears down the sink.

A crack in the edifice

Last week, I was taken aback to go into a Sam Smith’s pub and find that they had started accepting card payments. On everything too, not just food orders, and with no minimum spend. I had heard a rumour that this was in the pipeline, but it still comes as a shock to see it actually happen. I’m not sure whether it applies to all their pubs, or just those serving food.

There’s maybe something to be said for wet pubs being cash only, as it’s a good way of keeping twats out. But, when it comes to ordering group meals costing over £30, many people will find it much more convenient to pay by card, and if a pub will not accept that form of payment they may well take their business elsewhere.

Indeed, I once saw the licensee of a Sam’s pub give a couple a personal cash advance, which they then refunded by a payment into her own bank account made by online banking using their phone – outside the pub, of course. That’s no way to conduct a business. And it seems that Humphrey Smith has finally noticed that this policy was damaging his bottom line and decided to relent. (It’s worth noting that, beforehand, there was a minimum spend that effectively restricted card payments to food orders, plus a surcharge. Card payments were discontinued when surcharges became illegal in 2018).

However, a policy remains in force that arguably is even more offputting to customers , namely the complete ban on using smartphones or any other kind of electronic devices. This is something that most people will regard as completely ridiculous, and is a regular source of friction between staff and customers. I’ve heard staff apologise for having to remind people about it, but they have said they’ve had a warning from Humphrey and are left with no choice.

It would be fair enough if customers were asked to keep devices on silent, and take any animated conversations outside. But to pounce on them for simply checking the time of their train home is absurd. It is just the prejudice of an eccentric old man who seems to be living in the past. I’m prepared to put up with it while I read the paper over a pint or two, but it’s hardly surprising that it leads many people – including pensioners – not even to cross the threshold of a Sam’s pub.

Being put in a position of being expected to enforce ridiculous rules is unsurprisingly a major disincentive to people wanting work for the company as managers, and at least a third of the estate is currently boarded up, including some very attractive properties in prime locations. This piece about the lovely-looking Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in North Wales underlines the point. The whole sorry situation is described in this article by Glynn Davis, although it has since been superseded by the relaxation of the card payment ban.

Life would be very dull if all pubs were much the same, and for many years Sam’s have sought to cultivate a distinctive appeal, which is summed up by Anthony Avis in his book The Brewing Industry 1950-1990: “The custom is aimed at the older person, who relishes a good pint, with home-produced food if he wants it, and the surroundings to sit down and talk with his companions in unfashionable comfort – just like the brewery industry advertising of forty years ago represented pubs to be”. And, as I wrote back in 2017, which still holds true today:

What really makes the difference is the pubs. What I’m basically looking for in pubs is to be able to enjoy a quiet drink and chat in comfortable surroundings, and Sam’s deliver that much more reliably than any of their competitors. There’s no TV football crowding out everyone who isn’t interested, and no blarting piped music played for the benefit of the bar staff. I can’t recall a single example of a high-level posing table in a Sam’s pub, while bench seating and comfortable chairs are the norm.

While plenty of Sam’s pubs serve food, you never get the overwhelming concentration on dining that makes anyone just wanting a drink feel out of place. And, while there’s no general ban on children, you don’t tend to come across too many infants screaming and running amok. Yes, a well-kept pint is important, but I don’t really want to go chasing after a slightly better beer or a wider range in otherwise uncongenial surroundings.

It should also be added that Sam’s have been very respectful custodians of their pubs’ architectural heritage, particularly in contrast to a certain Stockport brewery. They have carried out a number of very high-quality refurbishment schemes in their London estate, and other parts of the country have benefited too, such as the Queen’s Head (Turner’s Vaults) in Stockport, which is a superb example of pub conservation with a unique interior.

Humphrey Smith is now in his late seventies, and one can only hope that when the time comes that his successors will respect the company’s distinctive heritage and appeal while removing the obstacles that deter people from both visiting their pubs and working for them. But there must be a nagging fear that they will end up throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

A fresh approach

This week is Cask Beer Week and, as Roger Protz reports, the Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) have launched a new initiative to promote cask entitled Drink Fresh Beer. At first I thought this was just another glib marketing gimmick, but on looking further there’s a lot more to it.

The Achilles heel of cask beer has always been inconsistent quality over the bar, and by far the biggest problem is slow turnover, leading to tired, lacklustre beer. At its best, fresh cask is great, but all too often it falls far short of that, and you just don’t know when ordering it. Most people in the industry acknowledge this issue, but are always very reluctant to put it into practice because they are too attached to offering a wide range of beers. As I have written in the past, it’s a case of waiting for the other guy to blink first.

Now, this SIBA scheme is seeking to address this issue head on by providing customers with the details of when a beer was put on sale.

Once they reach the bar, an AR-scannable pump clip will help beer drinkers learn more about their favourite drink, how far it has travelled to the pub and when the cask was freshly tapped.

Hopefully this information will be made more obvious than having to fiddle about with a QR code, but the principle is there. This is something that I have suggested in the past in a somewhat mischievous spirit, and I probably never thought it would actually happen. The report goes on to say:

To ensure the quality of beer across the venues involved, pubs participating in the campaign will be asked to sign up to the Fresh Beer Promise. Alongside campaign materials at the Point of Sale in their pub, they will commit to stocking at least two handpulls with a rotating third cask on tap and ensure a high standard of freshness by promptly replacing casks and take part in initiatives to improve quality.

Maybe it needs to be extended to those pubs that only have the turnover for one or two lines, but the intent is very clear. It’s unpredictable as to what effect knowing when a cask was tapped would have on customer behaviour, but people would soon find out through a process of suck it and see. They wouldn’t automatically choose the one-day beer over the two-day one, especially if it wasn’t their preferred style, but if there was nothing on the bar under five days they’d probably be looking at the lager and Guinness pumps or going elsewhere. It would give pubs a rocket up the backside and lead to a substantial and overdue curtailment of over-extended beer ranges.

It’s probably wishful thinking, but it would be good to see this initiative rolled out across the entire industry, particularly to Wetherspoon’s, who in my experience are the biggest culprits when it comes to selling stale beer. And, if a pub operator won’t sign up, it will be a clear indication that they have something to hide.

Obviously, rapid turnover is not the be all and end all of beer quality, and there are other issues that need to be addressed such as hygiene, temperature and conditioning time. There is no guarantee that a fresh beer will be a good one, but it’s pretty certain that a stale beer won’t be.

Over the summer there been an initiative called The Cask Project which has sought to promote the category while at the same encouraging debate about the issues surrounding it. While much of it has been very worthwhile, it has to be said that some has failed to appreciate the fundamental nature of the product. For example, one strand was “There’s a cask beer for everyone” which, in the reality of the typical pub there simply isn’t, as they won’t have the turnover to stock more than a couple, which will probably be a hoppy golden ale and a classic brown bitter. If you want that 8% mango sour you’ll have to look for it on keg.

What is needed, surely, is to go back to basics as to exactly why people should choose cask ahead of other beers. Back in the early days of CAMRA, the main priority was trying to convince people why cask ale was better than its keg counterparts. Nowadays, mainstream keg ales are a sector in steep decline, and the issue is more of how to appeal to people who drink lager, Guinness or cider. The key USP has to be saying that, at its best, cask offers far more richness, depth and complexity of flavour. And, of course, although this is very much in conflict with the current zeitgeist, it is a link with this country’s brewing traditions.

No doubt it will turn out to be a damp squib, but if the fresh beer initiative took off it could be a real shot in the arm for cask beer.

A picture of health

It seems an age away now, but it’s only two weeks ago that we saw the installation of a new Prime Minister and with it the selection of a new Cabinet. One appointment that raised a few eyebrows was that of Thérèse Coffey as Health Secretary. Ms Coffey is what might be politely described as a “larger lady”, and has been known to enjoy a drink and a cigar, leading some people to suggest that she would not be setting a good example. One the other hand, others felt it might not be such a bad look.

People keep sharing this picture of Thérèse Coffey presumably to shame her but I just think she looks badass 🤷🏻♀️👍 pic.twitter.com/Z19u6av5m0

— Jordan Tyldesley (@PippyBing) September 6, 2022

I’m the last person to criticise others for their lifestyles, and it has to be accepted that some people are simply naturally more solidly built than others. All the dieting in the world isn’t going to make her look anything like Kate Moss. Surely it is better to have someone who will get to grips with the political and administrative challenges of the job rather than simply acting as a role model. And she must be a vast improvement on the egregious Matt Hancock, who may have been more svelte, but always came across as if he was giving a middle management pep talk. It’s also interesting to note the words this week of one of her predecessors, Ken Clarke:

“I’m not denying that smoking is the biggest single cause of lung cancer. But life has risks and smoking is one I’ve willingly incurred because it’s a nice part of my lifestyle – I’ve never made any attempt to give up.”

Maybe one could compare her with Barbara Ferrer, the Los Angeles Director of Public Health, who resembles nothing so much as one of Dracula’s victims, and can hardly be regarded as a picture of health or vigour. And it’s not hard to guess who would be more fun on a night out.

Basstories

Earlier in the year, I reviewed Harry White’s very interesting and informative book on The Story of Bass. However, I pointed out that wasn’t a history of the famous beer itself (although that would surely make for a very interesting volume) but a survey of the complex history of the giant corporation that came to bear its name. I’m not the person to write that history of the beer, but I thought it would be worth setting down a few personal memories and reflections on it.

The business model of the original Bass company was to a significant extent based on selling its beer into the free trade across the country. Before Draught Guinness, Bass was the first nationally-distributed draught beer. This still lives on to some extent in areas like the West Country and North and West Wales, in pubs like the Seven Stars in Falmouth, the Dyffryn Arms at Pontfaen, the Black Boy in Caernarfon and the Bull’s Head in Beaumaric, none of which have ever actually been Bass tied houses. The late Rhys Jones recalled how, in the 1950s, Stockport brewer Robinson’s bought up a number of free houses on Anglesey that had previously sold Bass, something that was resented locally for decades.

Another aspect of this approach was concluding trading agreements with family brewers to sell Draught Bass in their pubs, giving them another string to their bow and Bass more sales. Most of these were swept away by the merger mania of the 1960s, but one that survived into more recent time was with Higson’s of Liverpool. They owned the now-closed George in the centre of Stockport, and I remember before the takeover by Boddingtons in 1985 being able to drink Bass in what was then a very characterful interior. Another pub stocking Bass was the Carnarvon Castle in Liverpool city centre, which is fortunately still with us.

In the mid-70s, the original gravity (OG) of Draught Bass was increased from 1039 to 1044 so as to be able to compete better with the popular premium beers of the time such as Ruddles County. This was a very rare example of a major beer brand increasing its strength. This was before my time, but there must be some older drinkers around who can recall what difference it made to the flavour and character of the beer. It should be remembered that, across large areas of Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, Bass was sold as the pubs’ standard bitter, as was its Burton rival Pedigree. This is still true to a limited extent.

In the early 70s, there were only seven cask beers available in the whole of the city of Birmingham and one of them was Draught Bass, which was only sold in six selected Mitchells & Butlers pubs. One of these was the Bull’s Head on King’s Norton Green in the south of the city. This wasn’t the nearest pub to where I lived as a student in the late 70s, but sometimes we would pass the local to go and drink there as something of a treat. Bass was served in oversized dimpled mugs from electric metered pumps.

The cowls for these had a distinctive design reflecting the look of a Bass mirror, used for both metered and free-flow dispense. I don’t think the image is an actual font, but it gives an impression of the general look. I believe these survive in a handful of Bristol pubs where there is a tradition of drinking “flat Bass”, usually direct from the cask, which to some extent sails under the CAMRA radar. I don’t know Bristol well, but I have experienced this in the tiny Myrtle Tree in the Hotwells district, a few doors down from the better-known Bag of Nails “cat pub”.

The Bass company had a scattering of pubs in the Stockport area which had mostly come via the Charrington branch of the mega-merger from Hardy’s Crown Brewery of Hulme. In the late 80s, they decided to promote cask Bass by introducing it into the Bull’s Head and the Reddish Vale in the downmarket suburb of Reddish. While on one level this was an initiative to be welcomed, in practice it seemed to be an experiment designed to fail. The locals tried it, but complained that it was expensive, and gave them a bad head, because it was that bit stronger than the keg Stones Bitter they were used to. Not surprisingly, it didn’t last long. If they had been serious about reintroducing cask beer, it would have made more sense to switch the Stones from keg to cask. Both pubs have long since closed, and of what I think were at one time eight Bass pubs in Stockport only two now survive.

The beer itself has gone through a number of changes in production method and location, with Bass themselves abandoning brewing in the Union system in the late 80s, and contracting it out to Marston’s in the 2000s. Pedigree is still brewed in unions, but not Bass. Inevitably some people will say it’s now a pale shadow of its former self. However, which beers can really be said to be the same as they were forty or fifty years ago, and people’s memories of what beers tasted like back then are inevitably hazy and coloured by memories of their own lives in general.

Bass had always been a beer I quite liked, but I always tended to pigeonhole it as just another brew from the Big Six national brewers. My memory of the old union Bass was that it could sometimes have a rather cloying character that is absent from the current version. It is significant that the great beer writer Michael Jackson considered that Pedigree, not Bass, was the classic of the style.

I’ve given it more attention in the present century when it has become something of an endangered species, and I have to say that to my tastebuds the current incarnation is an excellent beer that preserves its distinctive bittersweet character and does not disgrace its honourable heritage. It stands up very well against its direct competitors. If it’s not the kind of thing you like, fair enough, but if you think it’s a poor beer compared with others in the same category that really says more about you.

It’s also significant that, as it is not actively promoted either by AB InBev or by pub companies, every pub that serves it has made a positive decision to stock it rather than having it foisted on them. Compare this with Taylor’s Landlord, another excellent beer in top condition, but all too often poorly looked after and extremely lacklustre when actually drunk in the pub.