Wirral wonder

Recently on my travels I came across this particularly magnificent example of inter-wars Brewer’s Tudor, the Coach & Horses at Moreton on the Wirral. According to this site, it was built in 1928 as a replacement for an older pub.

Since then, comparing the current view with the old pictures, the section on the left has been converted to shops, and the square stone-built extension right on the corner added, but the basic fabric remains of a building not far short of the well-known Black Horse in Northfield, Birmingham in terms of its scale and architectural ambition. Just look at those chimneys on the right-hand side.

It’s good to see it still in business, unlike so many similar pubs, although the modern Wetherspoon’s just up the road, the Mockbeggar Hall, can’t have helped its trade. Maybe, given their more recent approach to new acquisitions, if they were looking to expand in the area now they would buy up the existing pub.

Fruity duty

In the past few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the popularity of “fruit ciders”, i.e. those made including some fruit other than apples and pears. As Pete Brown argues here, to some extent they have taken the place of alcopops in the market, offering people a long and refreshing drink that, unlike conventional beers and ciders, is sweet to the taste. However, they have a much classier image than alcopops ever did.

It is noticeable that the vast majority of fruit ciders come in with a modest alcoholic strength of 4.0% ABV, and this is because anything containing fruit that is not apples or pears is taxed as “made-wine”, which suffers duty rates that are considerably higher than conventional cider, and indeed somewhat higher than beer of the same strength. This is explained by Matt of Cheshire cidermakers Nook’s Yard in this blogpost.

While it is sometimes claimed (not least by SIBA) that cider enjoys an unfair duty advantage vis-a-vis beer, it is not the ciders taxed at the lower rate that are enjoying growth.

The respective duty rates (exclusive of VAT) applying to a 500ml bottle for the two categories at various strength points are as follows:

4.0%: Fruit cider 41.1p; Beer 38.2p

5.0%: Fruit cider 56.5p; Beer 47.8p

7.5% Fruit cider 133.4p; Beer 71.7p

At all of these strengths, the duty on a bottle of conventional cider or perry is 19.8p. The massive step up in duty rates above 5.5% ABV means that it isn’t remotely cost-effective to produce fruit ciders in that strength range.

While it probably deserves a blogpost of its own, this also raises the issue of why there is still no requirement to display ingredients on alcoholic drinks, so that consumers are clear about what they’re actually getting.

Incidentally, in the article linked above, Pete Brown also makes some scathing comments about CAMRA’s attitude to cider, referring to their “hopelessly mistaken, unfit-for-purpose definition of ‘real cider’.”

Double bonus

Last Friday saw the welcome abandonment of two unpopular and illiberal government proposals in one day – minimum alcohol pricing and plain tobacco packaging.

Naturally this led to howls of outrage from the Righteous – Dick Puddlecote described them as whining like a 747 approaching Heathrow – and attempts to paint this as a triumph of corporate lobbying. However, in reality it was a victory for ordinary people over a powerful and well-funded health lobby that seeks to dictate ever more closely how we live our lives.

The alcohol industry was in any case divided over minimum pricing, with some companies like Greene King actually supporting the plan. Indeed, in a sense it would just have the result of transferring money from consumers’ pockets to Diageo and AB InBev. But, although the health lobby continued to claim it would not affect ordinary, moderate drinkers, the statistic that a 45p/unit minimum price would hit over 70% of off-trade alcohol units and thus affect a vast number of mainstream voters started to register with the politicians. Not to mention the fact that it’s almost certainly illegal anyway under EU competition law.

It’s certainly true that the tobacco industry did lobby strongly against plain packaging, but their main reason was not that it would cut consumption but that it would involve the effective confiscation of trademarks and brands built up at great expense over many years. There’s no evidence that it would reduce smoking rates, and it’s entirely possible that it could even lead to an increase as customers switch to the cheapest brands and the effective price falls.

But, in total, there were 665,989 responses to the government consultation on the proposals, of whom 427,888, or 64%, were opposed. That’s not something that could be achieved just by organised campaigning by lobby groups – it’s a genuine surge of grass-roots opinion.

All the government have done is to say they need to wait and assess the evidence from Australia before proceeding with the plan. Surely the health lobby wouldn’t want policies implemented on gut feel without any sound evidence base. Would they?

While both decisions have been criticised by the Labour Party, is there any guarantee that Labour would have implemented them if in office? And is it a good idea for the supposed champions of the working man and woman to go into the general election looking like the party that stamps on ordinary people's pleasures?

It will also be amusing to watch Salmond go ahead with his declared intention of trying to implement these policies North of the Border. I foresee a lot of egg on that smug face.

There is an important lesson to be learned from this, that there is nothing inevitable about the advancing tide of Healthist social control, and if you stand up and be counted and put your case across, these measures can be stopped. You may not win every battle, or even most of the battles, but every defeat you inflict creates another chink in the armour. And, even if something is just shelved for the time being, there is every chance that priorities will move on to something else and it will never happen. History is littered with ideas that at one time were regarded as part of the inexorable march of “progress” but are now buried deep in the long grass.

Hot stuff

Yesterday at around 1.45 pm I walk into an attractive, well-situated pub, although admittedly one that doesn’t tend to be a contender for the Good Beer Guide. I order a pint of what is usually their best-selling beer. It’s not very busy, and I suspect it is probably the first one pulled that lunchtime. It comes out at room temperature and downright cloudy. So I take it back, and get it replaced with a different beer, which is a bit cooler and only slightly hazy, but still really not much good at all.

On the local CAMRA e-mail group, someone reports on a bar in a building belonging to a charitable body (so not a pub as such) which “had two cask ales on this afternoon... Both were very warm, out of condition and totally undrinkable. The staff told me that they haven't got a proper cooling system in their cellar and gave me my money back.”

Yesterday was probably the hottest day of the year so far, but it’s certainly true that hot weather sorts out the sheep from the goats when it comes to cask beer. It’s often claimed that the long, hot summer of 1976 was a major factor behind the rise of lager in this country, and today there must be many people who throughout the year regularly include cask in their drinking repertoire, but at these temperatures unhesitatingly plump for the Carling tap.

Although there’s no shortage of cellar and line cooling equipment available nowadays, if anything the problem has got worse since 1976, due to the reduced overall sales of cask beer, the proliferation of handpumps and the fact that cask has gone into many non-traditional outlets that don’t have naturally cool cellars. The odds of getting a pint that has been festering in an uncooled line for an hour or more are disappointingly high.

If you’re serious about cask beer as an all-year-round product, it’s vital to ensure that you store it in an environment with a temperature consistently no higher than about 12°C and, unless you have a particularly high turnover, also make sure that your lines are cooled so it remains at that temperature right up to the point of dispense. Some pubs manage to do this, but sadly far too many fall embarrassingly short.

And there’s a good argument that marginal outlets such as wine bars, restaurants and college bars might well be better off putting on craft kegs rather than cask, as they would be easier to keep and less vulnerable to low and erratic turnover.

The customer is always rude

Last week, the story was widely reported how a Sainsbury’s checkout operator had refused to serve a customer talking on her mobile phone. The operator attracted a lot of public sympathy, and few would disagree that the customer’s behaviour was rude and ill-mannered, something that the widespread use of mobile phones seems to have encouraged. Shift the scenario to the bar of a pub, and 80% of respondents to my poll took the view that a barperson would be fully entitled to refuse service.

However, Ian Golding introduces a valuable note of caution in this blogpost. Is it really the role of staff to make value judgments about the behaviour of customers, provided that they are not actually being abusive? Attitudes as what is and isn’t acceptable have greatly changed over the years, and they should not be pulling people up for things simply because they don’t approve. It could all too easily turn into a slippery slope where customers were being told off for eating, chewing gum, showing their underpants or wearing T-shirts with dubious slogans. A checkout operator – or a bar person – is acting as the representative of their employer and it is not their job to make up policy on the hoof. It may be a cause for regret, but in the real world businesses may suffer for turning away customers for a lack of manners.

On the other hand, if you’re the licensee of a pub who is effectively running your own business, you are quite entitled to take the view of “my gaff, my rules” and ban anything you disapprove of so long as it’s not discriminatory. In the past there were some pubs that imposed a forfeit on any customers who allowed a mobile phone to ring, but they have now become so ubiquitous in society that such an attitude would probably be counter-productive.

Put the boot on the other foot, though, and there is no doubt that for a member of bar staff to be chatting on the phone while serving a customer is completely unprofessional and frankly indicates total contempt for those who ultimately pay their wages.

Incidentally, the Real Ale Twats Facebook group reports on the Reproachment micro-pub in Deal, Kent, where there are 10 mobile phones stuck to the wall with large nails, and one pound fines for any devices that ring. There’s also a room marked “Lager made in here” which turns out to be the toilet. All funny in its way, but it does perpetuate a certain unfortunate stereotype of real ale drinkers.

The Fox and Hedgehog

“Customer experience” expert Ian Golding has taken an in-depth look at What makes a good British pub? In particular he reports on the contrasting impression given by four pubs in West London all owned by the same pub company. His conclusion is very clear: “it is vital that each and every pub that still exists in the UK does one vital thing…….CLARIFY its PROPOSITION!!”

He certainly makes very valid points that many pubs don’t seem to be sure what they’re really about, and that a grudging, off-hand welcome is still far too common. It is astonishing how many pubs that serve food still fail to make it clear exactly what is on offer, and when. However, there are a couple of important caveats that need to be made.

Unlike shops and restaurants, to some extent most pubs serve a variety of functions that sometimes come into conflict with each other. For example, my local pub, with varying degrees of success, combines the roles of alehouse, dining outlet, sports bar, live music venue and drink and chat haven. One of the keys to success is maintaining a balance between these different aspects and customer groups. Some pubs can be specialist alehouses or quasi-restaurants, but most can’t.

Pubs also have a sense of community that you don’t find in shops and restaurants. People meet up there to socialise, and often spend a lot of time in there. It’s a home from home, not just a retail outlet. Successful pubs are also often at the heart of their local social scene, as the hub of sports teams, hosting meetings and arranging trips. This leads to a sense of belonging that goes beyond just what food and drink is on offer on any particular day, and in a sense is comparable to the allegiance shown to football clubs. I’ve been in pubs where the customers have been grumbling “the beer’s not much cop today” – but they still sit there and drink it.

A further point is that the trade of pubs often results from a very specific combination of occasion and geography. Very often, the choice is not so much which pub to go to, but whether to go to the local or just not bother.

Some pubs even give the impression of trying a bit too hard, with a plethora of special offers, promotions, events, product launches and theme nights all advertised on brightly-coloured notices and chalkboards. Many of the best pubs, though, just are what they are and don’t have to shout too loudly.

The ancient Greek poet Archilochus is reputed to have said “the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” There are many pubs called The Fox, few if any called The Hedgehog.

A pint of two halves

There was recently a somewhat ill-tempered spat on the local CAMRA e-mail group about a particular bar that was charging more for a half than exactly 50% of the price of a pint. Some thought this was a disgraceful practice, while others felt that the licensee was perfectly entitled to recover the greater costs of serving halves. So I thought I would ask what blog readers thought.

I was actually expecting a strong vote for “Never acceptable”, but it seems the majority are fairly relaxed about it so long as pubs don’t blatantly take the piss. For many years standard in Ireland, it certainly seems to be something that is spreading on this side of the Irish Sea. For example, recently I came across a Hydes pub asking £2.70 for a pint of Original Bitter, but £1.40 for a half.

The usual reason given is that the overheads in terms of staff time and glass-washing are the same for a half as for a pint, and thus some kind of premium is justified. However, this stems from a basic fallacy of accounting, that what seems a reasonable method for apportioning costs is also what creates costs in the first place. In general, pubs serve far more pints than halves, and the fact that they do sell a few halves doesn’t in reality lead to any measurable extra cost.

Cost should never be the sole factor in pricing – you also have to bear in mind consistency and what people feel happy to pay. Pubs apply all kinds of different mark-ups to different products, and, while I’m never going to man any barricades about it, charging more for halves seems to me to be something that needlessly antagonises customers for little or no benefit to the pub. Also it’s not hard to imagine the anti-drink lobby getting up in arms over effectively giving people a discount for drinking more.

Be careful what you wish for

There has been a great deal of discussion in the media recently about the government’s plans for tighter regulation of pub companies. Now let me make it quite clear that I hold no brief for the likes of Punch and Enterprise – they are an essentially flawed and unsustainable business concept, driven by financial engineering rather than retailing in an attempt to keep alive the tied estates of the former Big Six breweries. They have geared themselves up to the hilt and found themselves in dire straits when it turned out they had taken a hopelessly over-optimistic view of the prospects of the pub trade. And it’s impossible not to feel a touch of Schadenfreude at the way they called the impact of the smoking ban completely wrong.

Punch Taverns remains confident over UK smoking ban

Punch Taverns writes off 491 value-less pubs hit by the smoking ban

However, this saga of corporate disaster has produced a great deal of pain and misery at the level of the individual licensee, and there are plenty of stories of pub companies treating their tenants in a high-handed and bullying manner. So the calls for tighter regulation and a statutory code of conduct are entirely understandable. But it’s important to sound a note of caution.

Firstly, many of the complaints that licensees can buy beer cheaper on the open market than from the pubco come across as distinctly naive. That, quite simply, is how the pubco business model works, as does the business model of the traditional pub-owning brewery. They charge tenants a higher price for their beer in return for a lower rent – what used to be referred to as “wet rent”. Thus the pubco has a stake in the profitability of the pub, and the tenant is to some extent insulated against market fluctuations. If you convert all tenancies to free-of-tie, then the pubco becomes a pure property operation and no longer has any interest in maintaining the premises as a pub.

It’s also the case that, if you impose additional cost and regulation on any business sector, you inevitably tend to get less of it, as it becomes less financially attractive. Thriving sectors can often take it in their stride, but the pub trade isn’t exactly thriving, and, however well-intentioned, any new controls have the potential to backfire. There must be a danger that new regulations could lead to a further damaging shake-out, with large tranches of bottom-end pubs simply sold off, often for alternative use, and more successful ones converted to management. I’m not saying nothing should be done, but the government needs to tread very carefully if it doesn’t want to end up with another Beer Orders disaster on its hands.

Bladder wrack

One subject that seems to be largely ignored by beer writers and bloggers is the fact that drinking beer inevitably leads to a toilet visit.

I have been aware since I started going to pubs that my bladder capacity was maybe rather less than some other people’s, so this has always been a factor in considering pub visits. It’s not stopped me doing it, obviously, but I’ve always had to consider where the next piss is to be had. I have drawn an imaginary line around my house representing the maximum distance that can be walked home after consuming a few pints without needing a piss. I am a respectable, responsible, middle-aged, middle-class chap, so I really don't want to be relieving myself in alleyways.

The drastic closures of public toilets imposed by local authorities in recent years inevitably have an impact on this, although this doesn’t apply within my local zone.

One of the benefits of travelling by train is that, at least on long-distance journeys, toilet facilities are available, whereas on buses and Metrolink they aren’t.

One North-West based beer blogger seems to undertake lengthy journeys by bus to visit pubs that I wouldn’t remotely contemplate.

I also feel that public toilet closures have led to people in the over-40 age group being less willing to visit pubs and drink beer because they are uncertain of the after-effects, so this is a factor in the decline of pubs. In the past, councils provided large numbers of roadside urinals which have now been entirely shut down.

This also seems to be an area where concerns about providing equal-sex facilities, and accommodating the disabled, has led to a dog-in-the-manger attitude of not providing any facilities at all.

Let there be squabbling

Britain’s major brewers, with the backing of CAMRA, are planning to launch a generic advertising campaign entitled Let There Be Beer. Its aims are to raise the profile of drinking beer on all kinds of different occasions, and to urge people who are not regular beer drinkers to fall back in love with it. While the objective is laudable, first impressions are that it comes across more as a typical lager commercial, and that it fails to put much emphasis on pubs, points made by Pete Brown in this blogpost. It’s also hard to avoid the feeling that any such industry-wide campaign has a slight smack of desperation about it.

However, some in the brewing industry don’t feel able to give it any kind of welcome whatsoever. There have been some spectacularly negative comments on Pete’s post, such as “So, it's just another big bucks, ad-based, brand building exercise” and “So it's big brands coming together to promote supermarket sales of their mainstream products. Hmm, it might be a good idea from their point of view but it does nothing for my business.” This comes across as a very blinkered attitude.

The greatest success of beer industry campaigning in recent years has been the scrapping of the duty escalator, which was achieved through all sections of the trade putting aside their differences and speaking with one voice. Sadly, it seems this lesson has not been learned, and the squabbling and finger-pointing has started up again. Of course everyone has the right to express their own opinion and make constructive criticism. However, don’t imagine for a minute that it will cut any ice with the anti-drink lobby to say “we’re craft brewers. We’re different from the big bad boys.”

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that five-sixths of draught beer is lager and keg, so promoting Carling and John Smith’s is, in effect, championing pubs. Surely it’s better for people to be drinking Carling in the pub than prune juice at home.

Full credit to CAMRA for signing up to a broad-based campaign such as this.

I’ll be happy to put a link in the sidebar once it’s up and running.

Seen but not heard

Well, the poll on admitting children to pubs has now closed, with an impressive 89 replies, although not quite as many as the Spoons poll. 49% of respondents took the view that children should not be allowed in bars under any circumstances, and 82% reckoned they should at least always be restricted to defined areas. And, for the six people who thought there should be no restrictions at all, do you really think it is responsible parenting to have your toddler in a pub at 10.30 pm?

There’s been an extensive and, er, lively discussion on the previous post, so I will just make a couple of further observations. It is not in any sense anti-children to not want to be in their company every hour of the day. And I just don’t get the argument at all that bad behaviour from adults is far more common. Maybe I go in the wrong pubs, but I’m struggling to recall the last time I witnessed adult misbehaviour. The other night I attended a CAMRA Pub of the Month presentation in a pub in one of the more down-to-earth areas of Manchester. The pub was packed, a lot of beer and other drinks were consumed, yet I didn’t notice a single person step out of line.

And, if you think it’s OK to drag your child into a pub so that you can have a swift pint, why shouldn’t it also be OK to take them into the bookie’s for a quick flutter on the 3.30 at Market Rasen? There is nothing for kids in pubs (unless eating) and nothing in betting shops either. But, oddly, I don’t see those who are keen to allow children in pubs campaigning for the principle to be extended.

Plus, as someone said in the comments, you don’t tend to find young children in gay pubs and bars. Only trouble is, they’re not exactly thick on the ground in the Stockport suburbs.

Pint size

This article by Keith Wildeman was published in the fourth edition of Doghouse magazine and is reproduced here with the editor’s permission. I’m sure it will strike a chord with many.

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Pint Size

“A loud child has the unique property of being louder than a loud adult. Not only louder, but more annoying. Grating. Like a slipping fan belt driving down the street at 3am when you’re in bed.”

I’VE NOT GOT ANY kids, nor do I have any real desire to imminently have any. I appreciate that for the human race to continue, there is a need to procreate and bring the next generation into the world. It’s a biological necessity. For this I am grateful, it means there will be future generations to empty our bins, mend our cars, and run off with our money in the banking sector. The world will keep turning just as it is now. What I don’t understand is the need, carried through by some parents, to introduce their young offspring to the haven for all that is adult. The public house.

We’re fortunate in this country that we have a variety of places families can visit. Parks, cinemas, theatres, shops, museums, cafes, swimming pools, public transport – probably about 99% of the public realm – is available for those with children. So why, with all these riches, are some parents not satisfied and decide they need to take their kids to the pub?

There is nothing for kids in pubs. They may find the lights on the fruit machines amusing for a while, be intrigued by the blokes swearing at the bar or investigate the aerodynamic capabilities of a beer mat... or worse half pint glass. But they will inevitably get bored very quickly. They will inevitably lose interest in the half pint of lemonade they’ve been bought to occupy them, and they will inevitably begin to get loud. A loud child has the unique property of being louder than a loud adult. Not only louder, but more annoying. Grating. Like a slipping fan belt driving down the street at 3am when you’re in bed, or James Corden appearing on your telly.

Pubs are meant to be noisy, but the kind of noise generated by hard working men letting off steam at the end of the day, pointlessly arguing about politics or football or which is the best local curry house. Not the screeching noise of a bored child. The noise of a pub also includes plenty of swearing, in the tap room at least. Swearing is not compatible with children. Why should I have to mind my language simply because you chose to inflict your child on me?

Children will also run around. The pub is not a place to run around. If you’re carrying four pints back to your table, and a bloke runs into you, then you’d be rightly aggrieved. He’d be quite correct to expect either a slap round the chops, or an invitation to purchase a new round, or more likely both. Post haste. Children, being less than waist height, are a lot harder to spot, and seeing as giving someone else’s kids a clip round the ear these days appears to be frowned on, parents should take heed not to put their kids in peril of this potential scenario in the first place. By not bringing them to the pub.

There’s also something slightly depressing about kids in pubs. I remember a trip to Rotherham a few years back with City. The pub at the junction of the main road and the road that lead down to Millmoor was called The Miner’s Arms. It was a place that felt trapped in the 70s and had the air of an old working man’s club about it. Formica tables, polystyrene tiles on the ceiling, one large rectangular room with a long bar down the side and a pool table at the end. Racing was on the telly. It was empty. Bar us and a fella with a kid. He had the paper open on the racing pages and was staring intently at the telly whilst also half-heartedly flicking his fingers on some kind of plastic assembled tabletop children’s game, involving a small ping-pong ball, that he’d picked up at the corner shop with his fags. The kid would run after the ball as it kept falling on the floor, place it back in the game, only for it to be disinterestedly flicked onto the floor again. A grim spectacle indeed.

There are also parents who take a haughty affront to their spawn not being allowed on a licensed premises. Not too long ago, in my local – which clearly has a sign by each door stating that children under 18 are not allowed in after 7pm – a woman came in with a toddler around half 7. When told there were no children allowed, she turned on her heels and bellowed with disgust: “What is this, the middle ages or summat?” No love if it was the middle ages your kid would either be doing something useful like ploughing a field or more than likely bedridden with consumption; not disturbing me whilst I’m enjoying a nice pint of Ossett Silver King. This event was trumped some time later when a young lass walked in at half midnight, clutching a baby to her chest and asked if they were still serving.

‘But Keith’, you may be saying. ‘What about dogs? There’s lots of pubs with dogs in, aren’t they an equal menace? Are you happy for dogs to be in pubs and not children?’ Yes, of course I am. Dogs are great, they add to the atmosphere, they don’t suck the life out of it.

Most importantly, dogs know their place, they know we’re their masters. Children on the other hand demand to be in charge and in these days of rampant consumerism and increased competitiveness between parents to have the latest pram/toys/trampoline abomination in the garden, they call the shots. This, quite simply is not compatible with a pub environment. Pubs are a refuge away from such things. That’s why they’re there.

So, if you’ve got kids, do us pub-goers a favour, don’t be so selfish, think of others and don’t bring them. Enjoy the 99% of other places you’re free to visit, and leave the pubs for the adults.

In the Doghouse

Boak and Bailey recently did a post entitled Considering a good beer magazine which looked at why, apart from CAMRA’s members-only BEER, there were no decent British-based beer magazines. In the comments someone mentioned Doghouse, although he said it was primarily a pub rather than beer-related publication. I have to say I had never heard of this before, but a quick look at their website suggested it was something that was right up my street, so I took out an annual subscription as a birthday treat to myself. The first issue arrived through my letterbox very promptly a couple of days later.

It’s described as “a quarterly print magazine about British pubs: a love-letter to bar stools and fixed settles: discovering & celebrating history, architecture, stories from the bar, the mystery of the cellars below and the ghosts that rattle around upstairs.” It’s an attractive A4-sized publication, perfect-bound on high quality paper, smooth but not over-glossy. It has a clean, elegant design very different from the rather fussier would-be trendy approach of BEER, and features many magnificent full-page or double-spread photographs.

It’s basically divided into two halves. The first features general articles about pub life and culture including, in this, the fourth issue, anecdotes from a pub regular and licensee, a long piece about cask-making centred on Hereford Casks of Stoke Edith in the Herefordshire countryside, and an opinion piece about children in pubs with which I heartily concurred – “a loud child has the unique property of being louder than a loud adult. Not only louder, but more grating”.

The second half then features specific pubs, taking the approach of starting from a particular town and looking at around ten pubs within a twenty-mile radius. In this issue it is Cheltenham and there is a long article about the Adam & Eve, a classic backstreet Arkell’s pub in the town. It also features classics like the Red Lion at Ampney St Peter, the Daneway Inn at Sapperton and the Five Mile House at Duntisbourne Abbots, all illustrated with high-quality interior and exterior photos that really make you want to pay the pubs a visit. This is an area of the country that I have often visited or passed through over the years and so I am familiar with many of the pubs mentioned.

I’ve still to read it all in detail, but I particularly enjoyed the description of the Three Kings at Hanley Castle in Worcestershire – “one of the last of that old generation of English drinking houses, where the barbarous tide of ruthless sanitisation and garish incivility is held at bay, for now”, and where “a collection of old boys hold court, huddled around the fire of a winter’s eve, swapping the same old stories, but who will strike up a conversation with visitors at the drop of a hat”.

The editorial team appear to be based in Shropshire and so far the focus has been very much on the general area of “West Mercia”, with the three previous issues being centred on Ludlow, Stourbridge and Hay-on-Wye. The fifth apparently is to focus on Rhayader and Mid-Wales – home to some true unspoilt classics – and perhaps they could then turn their attention to Staffordshire and pubs like the Anchor at High Offley and the Red Lion at Dayhills.

The emphasis is firmly on the traditional end of the pub spectrum, and you won’t find any echoey, uncomfortable urban craft beer bars within its pages. But these are the kind of pubs that are intimately bound in with our history and culture, the pubs that Hilaire Belloc described as representing “the last of England”. Let us hope they are still there to be enjoyed when the hipsters have moved on to the latest fad.

I was so impressed that I’ve put a little advert into the sidebar, for which I must stress I have received no payment. It’s not cheap, at £22 for a four-issue subscription, but if you love British pubs and pub culture, it’s a must-read, and something you will keep and return to again and again. I would also suggest it would be a good idea for many pubs to stick a copy in their magazine rack for their customers to read and talk about.

Blowing hot and cold

The British weather is notoriously fickle, and the past few weeks have been a perfect example of this, with some days getting pretty warm, while others turned out surprisingly cool, often with little advance warning. It seems to be a characteristic of pubs nowadays to over-react to changes in the weather, flinging all the doors open at the first sign of sunshine, yet turning the heating on as soon as we get a dull day.

Recently I’ve been in a couple of pubs where all the doors have been wedged open because the sun was shining, but it actually wasn’t all that warm, and on the side of the pub away from the sun there was a chilly draught. I’m sure pubs never used to do that thirty years ago, or at least not until the sun was actually cracking the flags. On the other hand, on a day which was overcast in comparison to the previous one, but still quite close and muggy, one pub had turned its heating on, making the atmosphere pretty stifling.

In one branch of Wetherspoon’s, again on an overcast but muggy day, the under-seat heating was on full blast in one corner. I went to the bar to complain and was told the system was controlled by Head Office and there was nothing the bar staff could do about it. It turned out that other areas of the pub were unaffected and I was able to move to somewhere more comfortable, but even so the entire situation seemed bonkers.

Surely it would result in a more equable climate inside, and save money on energy bills at the same time, if pubs were less eager both to open all the doors, and to turn up the thermostat.

Quality drop

Tandleman is a regular visitor to London, and often reports his disappointment at the proportion of cask beer he finds there that is a bit warm, tired and lacking in condition. Maybe that’s mainly a London phenomenon, but I have to say that in the past year or so I’ve gained the subjective impression that standards of cellarmanship have been slipping around here too.

More and more, I find myself going in pubs where the beer, while not bad as such, or remotely returnable, is nowhere near as good as it could be, and exhibits the flaws mentioned above. This tends to happen more in the tied or pub company outlets with five pumps than the specialist pubs with fifteen, probably because in the latter most of their customers are there for the ale and they also have a better idea of how to look after it.

Partly this must be down to a question of turnover – both stocking more beers than you can actually sell in a reasonable period of time, and also leaving beer festering in the lines for too long at times when trade is slack. If you have five pumps, but only sell ten pints during the lunchtime session, how can you realistically ensure that all of them will be in good nick? Recently, I went in one pub to have some lunch. During the forty-five minutes or so I was there, while there was a reasonable scattering of customers, I didn’t see a single pint of cask pulled apart from mine. So what chance the next one dispensed will be flabby?

In the past, swift throughput has often compensated for flaws in cellarmanship, but they are now becoming increasingly exposed. I get the feeling that the basic principles are becoming less well understood, in particular the need to use hard spiles to maintain condition in your beer. Maybe also the ending of afternoon closing denies beer a bit of recovery time. It’s also inexcusable in a pub where throughput may be slow at quieter times not to keep your beer lines cool as well as your cellar. Cask beer should not be flat, and it should not be lukewarm.

In contrast, I recently visited a rural free house with just a single cask beer. I doubt whether they have any modern cellar management equipment, or have even studied the subject beyond picking it up from the bloke who did it before. But each group of customers included at least one person drinking it, and it was fresh, delicious and cellar-cool, just as it should be.