Out with the old

Well, another year draws to a close, which has been very eventful both in the sphere of beer and pubs and the wider world. The idea that we are ever going to return to calmer waters seems like wishful thinking.

During the year, I have made 61 posts on this blog, including this one, the highest figure since Covid. (it’s possible, although unlikely, that I will do another one between today and New Year) I had a particular rush of blood to the head in February and October, with 8 posts in each month. By far the most pageviews were for my post about the pending retirement of Humphrey Smith, which for some reason has attracted more than three times as many as any other. Other popular topics included Fresh Ale (which never seems to have amounted to much), the perennial issue of children in pubs, and the recent one about the implications of using Digital ID for age verification in pubs. I’ve continued to attract a healthy volume of comments, many enlightening and constructive, others unfortunately less so.

I’ve continued to add entries to my Closed Pubs blog, although not at the same rate as in the past few years. As I mentioned last year, the disappearance of the Fullpint news aggregation Twitter account deprived me of a source of material, but to some extent this has been replaced by GB Booze, which also posts pub-related news items. This originated as Southampton Pubs, but subsequently widened its scope, which helps explain why there have been a number of entries from the Southampton area over the course of the year.

One interesting pub that I visited for the first time this year was the Cross Keys, a traditional canalside local in Penkridge, Staffordshire. It’s a congenial pub in its own right, but it has the distinction of still dispensing cask beer through electric metered pumps, something I don’t think I’d experienced in the previous decade. I know this is a lost cause, but I just think this is a preferable system, producing better condition and mouthfeel, and not knocking the stuffing out of the beer, as can all too easily happen with handpumps. Not to mention reliably guaranteeing full measure.

In the summer, I had a holiday in South-West Scotland. This was essentially a sightseeing trip, not a drinking trip, but even so my experience with cask beer fell short of my limited expectations. The worst was in the Good Beer Guide listed Douglas Arms in Dumfries, where in the evening of what had been a sunny but not particularly hot day, I was served a pint of cask that was crystal clear, but absolutely at room temperature. I didn’t take it back, as it would have been pointless, and I’m extremely unlikely to ever go there again. In contrast, I found a very congenial atmosphere in the keg-only Hole I’The Wa’ (pictured), a traditional pub located down an alleyway off Dumfries’ High Street, which was one of my best pub discoveries of the year.

In July, there was a general election and a universally expected change of government, although the incoming Labour administration enjoyed a much larger majority in seats than it did in votes. It is beyond the remit of this blog to stray on to wider political issues, but I predicted at the time that there was likely to be an intensification of the trend towards lifestyle restrictions that had characteristed their predecessors.

It didn’t take long to float a proposal to ban smoking in outdoor drinking areas of licensed premises, something that would have dealt a severe blow to wet-led pubs. After a wave of objections, they abandoned the idea, but the response was not that they thought it was wrong in principle, but that this wasn’t the time to bring it in. Then, health minister Andrew Gwynne, one of my local MPs, stated that pubs should be made to close earlier to address alcohol-related problems in society. He was pretty swiftly slapped down, but again this illustrates their train of thought.

The government confirmed that they were going to press ahead with Rishi Sunak’s plan to introduce a creeping smoking ban that would prevent anyone born after a set date from purchasing tobacco. This is a measure that is not only appallingly illiberal in principle, but would encounter serious practical problems in its application. It would create a two-tier society, discriminate against the young, and over time effectively hand the tobacco trade over to the black market. While the idea had originated in New Zealand, after a change of government in 2023 they dropped it, leaving the UK as trailblazers in this particular form of insanity.

However, a much more immediate threat to the pub trade emerged from Rachel Reeves’ first budget in October. This presented pubs with a quadruple whammy of increased costs and regulation – increasing employers’ national insurance, increasing the minimum wage by well above the rate of inflation, slashing the rate of business rates relief, and giving workers full employment rights from Day 1. Offsetting this with a marginal reduction in draught beer duty was an insulting sop. The worst aspect of this was reducing the threshold for employers’ National Insurance from £9,100 to £5,000, which will hit a sector employing many low-paid and part-time workers particularly hard. So expect to see many more pubs struggling, cutting hours and closing entirely in the New Year.

The tide of beers being reduced to 3.4% ABV to take advantage of a much lower duty rate continued, with John Smith’s Extra Smooth, the country’s biggest ale brand, succumbing in February. However, it now seems to have run out of steam, and presumably all the major brands that people just drink as a matter of routine without giving it much thought have now fallen into line. Plus, as I wrote in October, despite the brewers’ claims that it is responding to a trend towards healthier lifestyles, in reality it is entirely driven by tax considerations, not consumer demand. It is significant that Carlsberg lager continues to be brewed at 3.8% for Wetherspoon’s, who must be its biggest customer by far. And there was perhaps a straw in the wind when Marble Brewery restored the stremgth of their Pint to 3.9%, having cut it late last year.

There was a steady drip-drip of negative news from the Carlsberg-Marston’s conglomerate – abandoning use of the Burton Union system, Carlsberg buying buying out Marston’s remaining minority stake, closing the Wolverhampton brewery and withdrawing a long list of cask ale brands including the once iconic Banks’s Mild. Obviously all of this was a cause for sadness, but a lot of the anger in response to it seemed misplaced. It is simply not realistic to expect a large commercial business to keep brewing systems, plants and beer brands in existence purely out of sentiment.

However, something was salvaged, as Thornbridge brewery managed to obtain one of the Union sets and proceeded to use to it brew both a version of their signature Jaipur IPA, and a dedicated English-style IPA, the latter of which I can confirm was excellent. This illustrates how what may no longer make commercial sense for a large company can attract a following in more of a niche, enthusiast market. Maybe they could also consider brewing a 4.5% Burton-style pale ale that would be a direct replacement for Union Pedigree.

As I mentioned above, my post about Humphrey Smith retiring from Samuel Smith’s Brewery gained by some way the highest number of page views over the year. In theory, this should have happened by the end of this month, but only time will tell to what extent it affects the company’s often eccentric and self-defeating approach. The two issues that need to be urgently addressed are sorting out the endemic problem of recruiting new licensees, and dropping the absurd and counter-productive mobile phone ban. But hopefully change can happen without destroying the pubs’ highly distinctive character. The Guardian recently published a very interesting long-form article looking into the Sam Smith’s empire.

There has been the usual unfathomable merry-go-round of pub openings and closings. The Swan in Holmes Chapel, which briefly reopened in the summer of 2023 but swiftly closed again, has reopened, but the Boar’s Head, in a prominent location on Stockport Market Place, abruptly closed in November of this year, and the highly characterful Queen’s Head remains firmly shut. Several attractive properties in Cheshire, such as the Bird in Hand at Mobberley and the Cheshile Midland in Hale, remain long-term closed.

But, where Sam Smith’s pubs do stay open, they can offer a very congenial and welcoming atmosphere. It was a pleasure to be able to present in November, on behalf of the local CAMRA branch, a Pub of the Month award to the Sun in September in Burnage, Manchester (pictured), where the licensees have worked hard to built a community spirit in area otherwise denuded of traditional pubs. And, the following month, a second award went to the Blue Bell in Levenshulme, the other of the two out of five Sam’s pubs in the branch area that is still open. I wonder if any other CAMRA branch has ever made two such consecutive awards.

During the year, a particularly interesting book that I read was Historic Building Mythbusting by James Wright. In this book, the author, a qualified building archaeologist, debunks many of the common myths that surround historical buildings. One chapter that will be of specific interest to pub-lovers is where he shows that many well-known pubs’ claim to great antiquity rest on very shaky foundations, but there are others, often less-known, whose origins in mediaeval times can be reliably authenticated. He also holes below the waterline the claims of many old pubs that they are built from salvaged ships’ timbers, often taken from the Spanish Armada.

Probably the single most significant point made in the book is debunking the common theory that spiral staircases in mediaeval castles were almost always built with a clockwise rotation to give an advantage to right-handed swordsmen defending them against attackers. This is widely prevalent, and is often found in official sources, but has no verifiable foundation whatsoever.

And what can we expect for 2025? I’m not going to make any predictions, beyond confidently saying that it won’t be uneventful…

Big Brother in the pub

The government have announced that they are going to trial a scheme to allow people to use a form of digital ID held on smartphones for age verification in pubs.

Young people will be able to use government-backed digital ID cards to prove they are old enough to drink alcohol under legal changes to take effect next year. They will be able to sign up to digital ID companies that are certified against Government-set standards for security and reliability and then use the app on their smartphone to prove they are over 18 when visiting pubs, restaurants and shops.

It is part of a wider effort to move more state functions online so that people can prove their identity for everything from paying taxes to opening a bank account using the government-backed app. It will use a “single sign-on”, rather than the two-step identity verification currently needed online, for all government services including applying for benefits.

It will also allow older people to avoid the need for a member of staff to confirm their age when using self-service checkouts.

It is likely to be integrated into supermarkets’ and shops’ check-out scanning systems which will end the delays for customers when they have to call over the attendant to physically confirm they are old enough to buy alcohol – even if they are pensioners.

That sounds all well and good but, despite government denials, it is impossible to avoid the thought that it is being used as a stalking horse for the general introduction of Digital ID. Such a scheme would initially be sold to the population on the grounds that it would make their lives easier.

This has long been a pipe-dream of people of an authoritarian bent, such as Tony Blair. However, many commentators have expressed serious concerns on grounds of government overreach, loss of privacy and social exclusion. These concerns are summed up here by Big Brother Watch. Some may dismiss this as the argument of a tin-foil hatter, but the experience of the Covid Track and Trace app shows these fears to be entirely valid. This was, by definition, a system of government surveillance, and many businesses chose to use it as condition of entry even though that was not a legal requirement.

The period of lockdowns underlined that there was a significant subset of pub licensees who obviously missed their vocation as a prison guard, and were keen to gold-plate every regulation and add some more of their own. If they demanded that all customers check in with a digital ID, it would absolve them of any requirement to carry out age verification and thus make their life easier.

The government have said that use of these IDs would not be mandatory, but would that extend to ensuring that venues did not insist on them as a condition of entry? It seems highly likely that anyone who was either unable to have one due to not having a smartphone, or chose not to on privacy grounds, would end up being treated in various respects as a second-class citizen. Business and government departments prefer not to have to deal with awkward non-conformists.

A further consideration is what happens in the event of a power cut, which seems increasingly likely in the future due to Ed Miliband’s deranged energy policies. If it disabled digital IDs, it would bring society to a halt even more completely than it would at present.

So, while it may seem convenient to simply swipe your phone to get served in the pub or at the self-service checkout, it could be a further step down a very dangerous road. To say that “the innocent have nothing to fear” displays a touchingly naïve faith in the ultimate benevolence of government.

Not getting your oats

As a key plank of their strategy to combat child obesity, the government have announced restrictions on the advertising of so-called “unhealthy” foods, including a ban on TV adverts before the 9 pm watershed, and a complete ban online. A similar policy had been proposed by their predecessors, so I am not making a partisan point here.

Their press release makes extensive use of the meaningless term “junk food”, which can basically be taken to mean “any food items we disapprove of”. Perhaps people were expecting a ban on junk food adverts to apply only to the likes of pizzas, burgers and Wotsits but, unsurprisingly, the net has been drawn much more widely and encompasses many of what would be regarded as normal everyday foodstuffs. It’s rather like the disingenuous claim that Minimum Unit Pricing would only affect “cheap, high-strength alcohol”.

A taste of the scope of the restrictions is given by the except from the policy document shown above. Two particular examples that have received widespread media coverage are porridge and crumpets. Come on, you really didn’t think porridge was an unhealthy food, did you? Even Keir Starmer has been prompted to say that he doesn’t believe porridge is bad for children, but that isn’t going to stop him banning it from being advertised.

In any case, many of the items on the list are things that have no intrinsic appeal to children. You can’t really image a child pestering their parent for some M&S Seafood Linguine, but no, all advertising of ready meals will be banned, regardless of their nutritional content.

Christopher Snowdon has filleted the plans in his usual forensic style and points out that, even on the government’s own figures, they will result in the average child consuming a mere 2.3 calories less per day, which is neither here nor there. So, even taking the most charitable interpretation, it is a very heavy sledgehammer to crack a tiny nut. For some campaigners, though, it does not go far enough, and they object to companies being able to advertise at all if they sell any products that fall foul of the restrictions.

The ban on any form of paid online advertising is arguably far worse than the TV watershed rule, which by definition will only affect large companies. The internet is now integral to daily life, and will form a key part of many companies’ advertising strategy. Items such as cakes, chocolates, yoghurts and cooked meats may not be good for you if eaten in excessive quantities, but they are entirely legitimate products enjoyed by most adult consumers. Yet they are being treated as a “toxic trade” in a similar way to tobacco.

There is a coherent case for restricting advertising that is directly targeted at children, but surely it should be permissible to advertise legal products to adults. Advertising bans tend to result in ossification of the market they cover, with a reduction in competition, choice and innovation. They are bad news for consumers. Plus they will lead to a reduction in revenue for media organisations and could cause some of them financial difficulties.

When I started this blog seventeen years ago, I would have never expected that much of the fire of public health lobby would be diverted from alcohol to food, but that is how it has turned out. But there must be a strong chance of similar restrictions being applied to alcoholic drinks in the coming years. So don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Crying over spilt beer

Hard on the heels of the announcement of the closure of their Wolverhampton brewery, Carlsberg-Marston’s have informed us of their plans to discontinue a large number of mostly cask ales. These including, most strikingly, Banks’s Mild, the cornerstone on which the original Wolverhampton & Dudley company was built, and Bombardier, which maybe fifteen years ago seemed to crop up all over the place in the way that Doom Bar does now, and was even advertised on TV by the late Rik Mayall.

The full list of discontinued beers is:

Cask:
Banks’s Mild
Banks’s Sunbeam
Bombardier
Eagle IPA
Jennings Cumberland Ale
Marston’s Old Empire
Marston’s 61 Deep
Ringwood Boondoggle
Ringwood Old Thumper

Keg:
Mansfield Dark Smooth
Mansfield Original Bitter

However, some of these, including Banks’s Mild, will live on in keg or packaged form, so all is not entirely lost.

The combined company had inherited a sprawling portfolio of often overlapping brands, so some degree of rationalisation was inevitable. In particular, they had Cumberland Ale, Boondoggle, Sunbeam, Hobgoblin Gold and Wainwright Gold which all occupied much the same territory in the beer market. I’m not sure exactly where, but I’m sure I once went in a pub where the entire cask range comprised three beers from that list.

It is understandable that people will feel sadness and disappointment at this news, but a reaction of anger and betrayal seems misplaced. Whether it is pubs, beer brands or breweries, large companies have little room for sentimentality or considerations of “heritage”. People may feel an attachment to pubs or beers that they do not towards brands of chocolate or soap powder, but at the end of the day they are commercial products, not government services.

This applies further down the scale of size too – my local family brewer Robinson’s a few years ago dropped its Hatters Mild, to considerable outcry, and have also ruthlessly culled about a third of their pub estate, including some properties that at one time would have been regarded as jewels in their crown.

No doubt some twerp will pop up in the comments to say “You call yourself the Pub Curmudgeon, but you’re acting as an apologist for the international brewers.” However, all I’m doing is putting across the perhaps unpalatable truth. It has always been thus. If you sell your offspring to the crocodile, you should not be surprised if he ends up devouring some of them. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that, at least subsconsciously, some people seem to feel that the British pub and brewing industry should have been frozen in about 1955, and all discontinuation of brands, takeovers and pub and brewery closures should have to go through some form of statutory process.

It also seems ironic that some of the same people who, only a few weeks ago were urging us to drink independent beers whenever possible, are now lamenting the loss of big brewery products which presumably they considered to be inferior. If you won’t stand up for Eagle IPA, don’t be too surprised when its owners stop brewing it. On the other hand, some commentators have said that we should look to the future and concentrate on the wide variety of often excellent cask ales that are still available, rather than getting too upset about the loss of beers than many people didn’t think much of anyway. Boak & Bailey definitely fall into this camp.

It’s important to remember that Carlsberg-Marston’s is now a pure brewing operation under different ownership from the Marston’s pub company. What they produce is entirely dependent on what their customers want to order and, while to some extent they can promote particular products, they can’t dictate whether they appear on bars. If they’re selling less Banks’s Mild, it’s because customers aren’t drinking it and thus pubs aren’t ordering it.

On the other hand, a vertically integrated brewer and pub operator can decide which beers are sold in its pubs, which can provide a cushion against the fickle tides of fashion, while at the same time what appears on their bars is a reflection of the company as a whole. This virtuous circle is broken when the relationship is severed.

To some extent this is a hangover from the 1989 Beer Orders which did much to break the connection between brewer and pub operator, and have continued ever since to exercise a negative influence over the industry.