Curmudgeon's "Opening Times" Columns

January 2012

2012-01-01T10:20:00.000Z

Falling Off a Cliff

The risks of exceeding the official alcohol guidelines are too often greatly exaggerated

THE HOUSE of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee are currently carrying out an inquiry into the official government guidelines on alcohol consumption. Even though these were effectively plucked out of the air with no proper scientific basis, it is perhaps asking a bit much for them to be raised, although a move to restate them as weekly rather than daily limits might better reflect real-world drinking patterns.

However, a major problem with these guidelines is that, all too often, they are presented not as an ideal but as an absolute upper limit, above which the drinker falls off a cliff of risk. In fact, as pointed out by CAMRA in their submission to the inquiry, even taking the figures at face value, you need to exceed them by a considerable margin before there is anything more than a slight increase in the risk level. There is a wide gap between the recommended limit and the point where drinking is likely to have a severe health impact.

The way they are often presented, though, is on a par with suggesting that only eating four portions of fruit and veg a day will inevitably lead to contracting scurvy. It also results in skewed priorities in public policy, with health campaigns often giving the impression of trying to make responsible people drinking 30 or 40 units a week feel guilty, while in effect washing their hands of those drinking at genuinely dangerous levels.

An inconvenient truth of the statistics is that you have to drink around three times the official guidelines before your health risk reaches that experienced by total abstainers. The anti-drink lobby often try to claim that the figures are distorted by the inclusion of people who have had to give up drinking for medical reasons but, even allowing for this, there is still a huge body of evidence that moderate drinking is much better for you than abstention. It may simply be the case that moderate drinkers are more relaxed and less uptight, but the strong correlation is undeniable. This is a major problem for those wanting to promote the message that there is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol. But no doubt they are working on coming up with more dodgy figures to get round it.

Never Too Late to Stop

Giving up drink may not help you live to 100, but it will certainly feel like it

AND IT GETS even worse as you get older. A recent report from the Royal College of Psychiatrists says that the existing alcohol consumption guidelines need to be “drastically reduced” for people over 65. Apparently they should drink no more than one and a half “units” of alcohol a day, so even going to the pub and having a pint of bitter is bad news.

They point out that some older people turn to drink as a way of coping with changes in life like retirement and bereavement, or feelings of boredom, loneliness and depression. No doubt this is true, but the same can happen at any stage of life, and the vast majority of pensioners don’t seem to succumb. In my experience, most older people settle down to a regular routine of moderate drinking and rarely if ever overdo it. They have learned the difference between “just enough” and “too much”.

And, for many, a regular couple of drinks with friends in the pub is one of the few pleasures in life they’re still able to enjoy. Telling them not to drink will just lead to misery and social isolation. It’s also not going to cut much ice telling someone in their eighties that having that extra half-pint is going to reduce their life expectancy. Perhaps the doctors should concentrate on people with genuine drink problems rather than trying to cultivate anxiety amongst those engaged in normal behaviour.

December 2011

2011-12-01T08:20:00.000Z

Drinking in the Atmosphere

Preserving traditional pubs is just as important as preserving real ale

ONE OF THE best things CAMRA has ever done is to produce the National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, which lists just under 300 pubs across the country which have interiors that are still largely as built, or as remodelled before 1939. It is disappointing that less than 1% of all the pubs remaining in Britain fall into this category. Visiting one these pubs is always something special, and it is good to see a place with such a sense of history still functioning as a modern business, as opposed to being preserved in aspic by the National Trust. While it is perfectly possible to have a dismal pub operation in a superb building – and I have come across one or two that left me distinctly underwhelmed – in general the unspoilt historic interiors add to the atmosphere and stick in the mind.

Over and above these, around the country there are still maybe a few thousand pubs that, while changed over the years, still present very much a traditional layout and atmosphere. A few examples from the local area would be the Griffin in Heaton Mersey, the Armoury in Edgeley and the Boar’s Head on Stockport Market Place. Some may dismiss this as having an affection for outmoded “old men’s pubs” that have no place in the modern world except as museum pieces, but in reality pubs were designed like this because they worked, and still usually provide a far better pubgoing experience than their more modern counterparts.

Until relatively recently, when new pubs were built they still generally conformed to the established norms of layout. For example, Holts’ Sidings in Levenshulme is still recognisably a “proper” pub in the traditional mould. However, over the past couple of decades an entirely new design vocabulary has evolved for pubs and bars that throws all the traditional design concepts out of the window. The key features of this are:

Very long bar counters dominating the space in which they are installed
Wide circulatory spaces around the bar
An interior comprising a sequence of free-form interconnecting areas rather than defined “rooms”
Free-standing chairs and tables rather than fixed seating
High ceilings
A deliberate avoidance of warm textures and colours

While the success of their business model cannot be denied, Wetherspoons must be the single biggest offender in this regard. With few exceptions, their pubs are soulless, impersonal drinking barns largely devoid of pub “feel”. In my view this is a conscious policy to make their establishments look as little as possible like old-style pubs. They have often been praised for their sensitive conversions of impressive buildings, but in general it’s still just the standard Spoons layout and ambience and doesn’t really gel with the surroundings. If you put a works canteen on the floor of a cathedral, it’s still a works canteen.

This new design language removes any feeling of cosiness or intimacy and produces an atmosphere more akin to an airport lounge than a conventional pub. Unlike a shop, a pub is a place where, as well as buying goods, you are in effect buying time in a particular environment. No matter how good the food and drink on offer, if you don’t feel “at home” you’re not really going to enjoy yourself. And, even if the choice of beer is a bit limited, give me a proper pub any day with bench seating, geezers standing at the bar and one or two handpumps, over drinking some new-wave brew with an overpowering taste of tropical fruit while perched on a high, uncomfortable stool in somewhere resembling the interior of a warehouse.

November 2011

2011-11-01T08:37:00.001Z

Not So Ordinary

Rather than watering down premium brands, brewers should promote their existing lower-strength beers

BACK IN THE 1970s, most British brewers just produced Mild (at around 3.3% ABV) and Bitter (around 3.8%). Choice, and a contrast in flavours, was achieved by switching between brewers, not within an individual brewer’s range. There were a handful of premium beers, such as Ruddles County, Marstons Pedigree and Wadworths 6X, and these got the recognition as the beers you would go out of your way to sample, and became the standard-bearers of the “real ale revival”. The fact that they had memorable brand names rather than just being “Bloggs’ Bitter” must have helped.

But times change, and recently we have seen a number of brewers reducing the strength of these “premium beers” because they were losing sales in the current climate of sobriety and health obsession. You can’t really blame them for this, as they’re just responding to changes in customer demand.

However, wouldn’t it be better for them to do more to promote their classic “ordinary bitters” in the 3.5-4.0% ABV strength band? These beers, which manage to extract huge depths of flavour and character from a very modest, quaffable strength, are surely the most distinctive achievement of British brewing, and cover a vast spectrum of colour, flavour and character.

Locally, Robinson’s Unicorn at 4.2% is a bit too strong to qualify, but both Holts and Lees bitters are excellent brews when in good condition. Across the country, just considering the family brewers, a selection of Timothy Taylors Bitter, Batemans XB, Adnams Southwold Bitter, Harveys Sussex Best and Hook Norton wouldn’t disgrace any bar.

Incidentally, I was surprised to learn that the 3.8% Dizzy Blonde – perhaps more of a golden ale, but very much in the ordinary bitter strength range – is now outselling Robinson’s traditional mainstay, the 4.2% Unicorn. Originally just produced as a seasonal beer, this was initially a touch bland, but more recently it has gained more hop character and is now, when well-kept, a very enjoyable beer.

CORRECTION (added 15 November 2011)

In last month's column, I stated that Robinson's Dizzy Blonde was now outselling Unicorn. I was told this by a normally reliable source, and actually questioned it at the time, but was assured it was correct. However, following a recent presentation by David Bremner, Robinson's Marketing Director, it is clear that this is incorrect, and in fact Unicorn continues to outsell Dizzy Blonde by about 7 to 1, although sales of Dizzy Blonde are increasing. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Drinking with the Enemy

Brewing industry representatives are deluded to believe they have any common cause with neo-Prohibitionists

MY JAW DROPPED recently when I heard that SIBA – the Society of Independent Brewers – had become associate members of government-funded anti-drink pressure group Alcohol Concern. While Alcohol Concern may have been making some noises about pubs promoting responsible drinking, those are just weasel words when you consider that they define consuming two pints at a sitting as a hazardous level of consumption.

Over the years, they have opposed every liberalisation of licensing law, supported every increase in duty rates, and championed any proposal that would damage the interests of pubs and the British brewing industry. It is hard to conceive of any issue on which the objectives of Alcohol Concern and SIBA would not be diametrically opposed. I’ve heard of turkeys voting for an early Christmas, but this is more like them joining the board of the slaughterhouse.

October 2011

2011-10-01T15:53:00.000+01:00

Bar Humbug

New bar openings do not represent any kind of adequate substitute for lost pubs

“WE MAY have lost a lot of pubs,” the argument goes, “but plenty of new bars have sprung up in their place.” However, the reality is that it’s not remotely a like-for-like exchange.

For a start, the bars aren’t opening in the places where pubs have closed. In fact, they’re very much concentrated in middle-class urban enclaves. There may be a cluster in Chorlton, but they’re not spread evenly across the board. In recent years, the large Cheshire village of Helsby has lost two of its four pubs. Are there any new bars to replace them? What do you think? It’s not much use if you have to go eight miles down the road to Chester to find one.

Most of these new bars are targeted at the younger end of the market and have little to offer the more mature pubgoer. They don’t have the across-the-board appeal of proper pubs. And, although there are some honourable exceptions, most offer nothing of interest on the beer front. What is more, how can a small, boxy converted shop be regarded as any kind of acceptable substitute for an impressive Victorian or inter-wars building that was full of character and had served its community over several generations through a succession of licensees? Most will be fly-by-night operations with a limited lifespan and no continuity.

Realistically, the idea that the growth of new bars offers any kind of adequate replacement for closed pubs, except in very limited circumstances, is absurd. Chorlton is not representative of the rest of the world, and is very much the exception.

Supermarket Sweep

Making it harder to convert them to something else won’t save pubs if the underlying demand isn’t there

I REMEMBER on CAMRA trips many years ago a song being sung with the refrain “The brewery tap’s a supermarket now.” And in recent years that has proved all too prophetic, with a number of pubs in the local area closed and replaced with the likes of Tesco Express. This may be a cause for regret, but in reality it is a symptom of the decline of the pub trade, not a cause.

If you want to bulldoze the existing building and replace it, it requires planning permission, but if you want to create a supermarket in a former pub it doesn’t. But refusal of planning permission won’t guarantee the survival of a pub if there isn’t sufficient trade. Many local residents are likely to actively prefer a small supermarket to a scruffy, run-down pub that is a frequent source of late-night noise and fights, and councillors will inevitably listen to their views. If these pubs were thriving community hubs, then nobody would be looking to close them down and turn them into something else. But, sadly, they’re not.

It has also been suggested that local communities should be given the right to buy up closed pubs and run them themselves. This may work in close-knit villages in the Lake District, but it’s unlikely to be of much interest to the neighbours of large urban pubs like the Four Heatons or the Southern Hotel. The most likely result if some kind of “cooling off period” is introduced for people to try to raise the money to buy them is pubs remaining closed and blighted for months with no realistic prospect of ever coming back to life. In general, local communities are more likely to want developers to get on with it and build a block of flats or a supermarket as soon as possible.

No amount of tinkering with planning regulations will save pubs in any significant numbers if the underlying demand isn’t there in the first place. If you are really concerned for the future of pubs, you need to look at the underlying reasons why people have stopped visiting them.

September 2011

2011-09-07T19:19:00.001+01:00

Caught in the Crosshair

The anti-tobacco campaign is now being retargeted on alcohol

THERE IS A curious – and ill-judged – tendency amongst many beer lovers to consider their chosen vice as somehow resistant to the attentions of the health lobby as opposed to tobacco. Even CAMRA have fallen for it. In 2004, they weakly attempted to defend pubs from the harmful effects of the smoking ban by playing right into tobacco control hands and suggesting that a diversity of outlets offering choice for all would “split the pub trade” [1]. In the end, they got their wish as all pubs were given no choice. Now, you can argue, if you like, that this has had no damaging effect on the hospitality trade (I’d heartily disagree) but it has certainly contributed to a big problem for pubs, and beer lovers, which is only now beginning to come home to roost.

In a rousing 1919 speech following the ratification of Prohibition in the US, “anti-saloon” campaigner Billy Sunday declared “Prohibition is won, now for tobacco!” [2] Because all the while campaigners for the prohibition of alcohol were tied up with that issue, their assault on smoking was left on the back burner. Once the war against alcohol was completed, resources were freed up to attack tobacco, employing the same personnel and moral pleading which was so successful against booze.

Nothing has changed from those days. Just as righteous crusaders tackled both substances around a century ago, so do their modern day equivalents act the same now. ASH have taken to coaching anti-alcohol campaigners on how to achieve the same demonisation of alcohol as has happened with tobacco [3], and the methodology is lifted from the successful anti-smoking playbook. Professor David Nutt was the first to suggest that “there is no such thing as a safe level of alcohol consumption” [4], a position which is increasingly becoming the default one. The Cancer Council of Australia certainly thinks that way, a couple of months ago advocating that total abstinence should be the only public health policy. In a chilling reminder of post-prohibition triumphalism in the US, the Australian press reported the campaign as “Cigs war won: now cancer campaigners set their sights on beer” [5].

CAMRA keeps ploughing this furrow, as in August last year where they tried to claim some form of high ground by declaring that “beer can supplement a healthy lifestyle if consumed in a responsible manner” [6], but this approach is doomed if they think that playing in public health’s self-constructed playground is going to do anything but invite ridicule. ‘No safe level’ leaves no wriggle room whatsoever, and the protestation that beer is somehow not that bad will be thrown back at them by the health lobby as an admission of guilt. Which it is.

No. The best form of defence, as always, is attack. And instead of back-sliding when the smoking in pubs debate was taking place, CAMRA would have been better served standing firm and resisting all legislation on tobacco. While that buffer was still in place, CAMRA were insulated against the worst excesses of an insatiable health lobby. Without it, resources are being withdrawn from tobacco in favour of new targets [7], and those who enjoy a pint or two are now squarely in the crosshair.

[1] http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=180806

[2] Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (Sander L. Gilman and Zhou Xun)

[3] http://www.ashscotland.org.uk/policy/scottish-alcohol-and-tobacco-policy-summit

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/mar/07/safe-level-alcohol-consumption

[5] http://www.news.com.au/national/cigs-war-won-now-cancer-campaigners-set-their-sights-on-beer/story-e6frfkw9-1226088686962#ixzz1RHTDSEKQ

[6] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/swap-wine-for-beer-and-save-calories-2041908.html

[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/health/policy/28obesity.html?_r=2&ref=health

(This is a special guest column by Top 50 political blogger Dick Puddlecote)

August 2011

2011-08-01T00:07:00.000+01:00

A Crafty Pint

The embrace of “craft keg” may prove a double-edged sword

BACK IN THE EARLY 70s, things were very straightforward. Real ale, the traditional beer of Britain, with all its rich palette of flavours and characters, was under attack from cold, bland, fizzy, standardised keg beer. This was always a touch simplistic, especially when people tried to apply it to beers from other countries that had no tradition of “real ale”. However, in terms of what was actually happening in this country at the time, it was a reasonable enough approximation to the truth, and it allowed CAMRA to mount a campaign that led to it being described as “the most successful consumer movement in Europe”.

For a long time much the same remained true. Keg beers were bland, mass-market brews produced by the big brewers, and in the 1990s they gained another dimension of unpleasantness with the soapy foam of nitrokeg “smooth”. But recently things have changed as we have begun to see well-regarded new generation breweries producing keg beers. Some, such as Lovibonds and Meantime, produce nothing but; the publicity-seeking controversialists of BrewDog produce some real ale, but much more keg, while others such as Thornbridge major on real ale but also produce keg versions of flagship beers like Jaipur IPA. BrewDog have even started to roll out a chain of specialist beer bars that serve no real ale, only keg.

Surely, it is argued, these new “craft keg” beers are entirely different from the old industrial keg and are worthy of recognition. Of course, there’s a lot of truth in that. It can’t be seriously argued that keg Jaipur is no better than Red Barrel, and to believe that there is a Manichean division between good “real ale” and bad “chemical fizz” has always been elevating a definition into an article of faith. It has never been the case that all real ale is good; equally, it has never been the case that all keg beer is inherently bad, although in the 1970s most of it was.

However, the problem with embracing “craft beer”, whether real or non-real, is that you then have to make subjective judgments as to what qualifies. If Timothy Taylors, a respected, long-established small family brewer, started making a non-nitro keg version of Landlord, would that be craft? Or Black Sheep, a very successful new brewery, albeit one whose cask beers are sometimes thought a little dull? And, if not, why not? How are those beers different in kind from keg Jaipur IPA? And, if keg Landlord, why not keg 6X, or keg Pedigree?

This is not to say that people shouldn’t drink and enjoy these new-wave keg beers, or that the editor of “Opening Times” shouldn’t say that they are available alongside real ales and might be worth trying, but to argue that CAMRA should metamorphose into a “campaign for craft beer” is a misguided and dangerous idea. It plays into the hands of those who advocate a much more narrow, élitist and frankly snobbish approach to beer, and dismiss out of hand anything that has achieved mainstream success amongst non-enthusiasts. They sneer at the “boring brown beers” from brewers such as Shepherd Neame, Wadworth’s and Robinson’s who in the early days of CAMRA were at the heart of what the campaign was all about.

“Real ale” is something that has a clear and objective definition, whereas “craft beer” is whatever people choose to call it, and can all too easily just become “beer from breweries that we approve of”. Real ale is a distinctive British tradition that is worthy of celebrating and preserving, although it is ignorant and narrow-minded to assert that it encompasses all that is good in the world of beer. To champion real ale shouldn’t mean you oppose everything that doesn’t qualify. As Michael Hardman, one of the four original founders of CAMRA, said in a recent newspaper interview: “I must point out that we’re not fighting against anything, we’re fighting for something.”

July 2011

2011-07-01T15:42:00.001+01:00

Joining Forces

The campaigns against alcohol and tobacco are two fronts in the same war

EARLIER this year, ASH Scotland and Alcohol Focus Scotland held a joint conference in Glasgow “to consider the progress of alcohol and tobacco control and explore what each sector might learn from the other.” This underlines the point that I have made in the past that the tactics used in the campaign against tobacco are increasingly being brought into play in the campaign against alcohol.. You may argue that the two are very different issues, but if the neo-Prohibitionists regard them as two sides of the same coin there is nothing you can do about it.

It is also instructive that, as has been the practice of the tobacco control lobby for many years, no industry representatives were allowed to attend or have a voice. Not just the likes of Diageo and Heineken, nobody. Even if you run the most low-carbon, organic, Fairtrade, recycling-friendly micro brewery in the world, as far as the anti-drink lobby are concerned you’re still engaged in a “toxic trade” and they’re not interested in any kind of dialogue or accommodation with you.

Soaking It Up

Why do so many pubs fail to provide such a basic item as beermats?

I WAS SURPRISED and disappointed recently to walk into one of my favourite local pubs – which in many respects is very traditional – and find they had decided to dispense with beer mats. It’s not going to make me take my custom elsewhere, but it’s another niggly little reason to feel the pubgoing experience is less than ideal.

It has baffled me for years why a growing number of pubs refuse to provide mats. Especially with the now-universal adoption of brim measure glasses, they perform a useful role in soaking up spilt and overflowing beer, stopping it staining tables and running off the edge to spoil your clothes. I’m convinced it comes from the same misguided school of “trying not to look like an old-fashioned boozer” that has led to the widespread ripping out of bench seating.

Given that so many commercial organisations and campaigns produce promotional mats, the argument doesn’t wash that pubs find them difficult to get hold of. Indeed, if they thought they were worth having it wouldn’t be a huge expense to obtain their own. No pub would refuse to provide table napkins on cost-saving grounds, so why should mats be any different?

Pale and Uninterested

Is history in danger of repeating itself over lighter, paler beers?

OLDER READERS will remember how, in the 1980s, Samuel Smiths introduced a beer called Tadcaster Bitter which was paler, hoppier and a little less strong than their standard Old Brewery Bitter. When well kept, it could be very good, but unfortunately it wasn’t well promoted and Sams’ conservative customers tended to stick with OBB. So Tadcaster Bitter began to suffer from a vicious circle of slow turnover leading to poor quality which further deterred people from drinking it, and after a year or so it was withdrawn.

I do worry that the same fate is likely to overtake the recently-introduced Holts IPA, which occupies a similar position in relation to Holts Bitter. This too is a good beer, with a pronounced hoppiness that to many brings back memories of the Holts Bitter of old. It has appeared in a number of Holts’ high-profile pubs, but unfortunately in my experience it seems to suffer in the same way from slow turnover, and I have had a few lacklustre pints in pubs where the Bitter is reliably good. If you think it will be a lottery whether you get a pint that has been festering in the lines for hours, you may well decide it’s best to avoid ordering that beer in the first place.

June 2011

2011-06-01T17:52:00.000+01:00

Driving Customers Away

The growing reluctance to drink a drop before driving is a major cause of pub closures

LAST YEAR yet another official report was produced, this time by Sir Peter North, proposing the reduction of the UK drink-driving limit from 80mg to 50mg. This offered no new evidence, and earlier this year it was rejected by Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, arguing that the vast majority of drink-related road deaths involve drivers well over the current limit, and cutting the limit by itself would do nothing to change their behaviour. For the first time, an official response on the issue actually acknowledged the potential effect on the hospitality trade. Licensees and customers of rural, suburban and small town pubs will no doubt have felt considerably relieved by this decision.

However, it could be argued that many of the supposed benefits of a lower limit have already been achieved, with a change in public attitudes over the past twenty or so years leading to a growing reluctance to drive after drinking even within the legal limit. In the early years of the breathalyser law, this was widely regarded as normal and responsible behaviour, and many pubs prospered on this “car trade”. Indeed, the ultimate high water mark of beer sales in British pubs was not reached until twelve years later in 1979. However, from the mid-80s onwards, there was a distinct shift towards the view that drivers shouldn’t touch so much as a half of lager, which has become commonplace amongst new entrants to the driving population.

There are still plenty of people from their mid-forties upwards who continue to do what they have always done, although their ranks are steadily being thinned by advancing years. But, amongst their younger counterparts, the kinds of people who in the 1970s would have routinely gone to the pub in the car and drink a couple of legal pints haven’t, by and large, found an alternative means to get there, they have simply stopped going in that kind of regular, moderate way, although they may still have a weekend blow-out. Now it could be said that this is beneficial to road safety, although whether much additional risk is caused by someone driving after a couple of pints of ordinary bitter is questionable. But, over the past two decades, this change in attitudes has undoubtedly been a prime cause of the long-term decline of the pub trade outside of major urban centres.

I Don’t Like the Taste

If you don’t like alcohol, at least be honest about the reason why

FROM TIME TO TIME you hear people who don’t drink claim that they simply don’t like the taste of alcohol. If people choose not to drink because they are concerned about the potential effects, then fair enough, although they are missing out on one of the great pleasures of life. They are entitled to their view and I would not criticise them for it, although I would expect the same tolerance to be extended to those who do drink provided they don’t make fools of themselves.

But “I don’t like the taste” always strikes me as being a particularly feeble rationalisation. Alcoholic drinks cover a huge spectrum of different tastes, and many don’t really taste “of alcohol” at all. For example, I recently tried some alcoholic root beer which was impossible to distinguish from the soft drink version. Have they really tried everything from Liebfraumilch to cask-strength Laphroaig and decided that nothing appeals? People may be vegetarian on principle, but you never hear them claiming that they don’t like the taste of meat, especially when it spans such a wide range of flavours from venison to oysters. Non-drinkers would be respected more if they were honest about their motivations.

May 2011

2011-05-02T10:08:00.001+01:00

Cat to be Castrated?

Increasing duty on high-strength beers is a misconceived measure that will not achieve any of its objectives

AS WIDELY predicted, in this year’s budget the government announced that, as well as increasing beer duty across the board by 7.2%, from October it would impose an additional 25% duty on all beers over 7.5% ABV. The main target of this measure is the super-strength lagers such as Carlsberg Special Brew and Tennent’s Super which are widely associated with problem drinking. However, what you can easily see happening is the makers of these products simply reformulating them to bring them down below the cut-off point and avoid the higher duty. When a 500ml can at 9.0% ABV will attract duty plus VAT of 125p, whereas at 7.5% it will only be 84p, it looks like a very obvious move to make. And, ironically, at a reduced strength, these beers are likely to be more palatable and have greater appeal to mainstream customers, so the legislation could end up backfiring and leading to more strong lager being sold, not less.

You may not be too concerned for Special Brew drinkers, but the really bad news is that this duty rise will also affect many high-quality beers from independent breweries, not least our own local favourite Robinson’s Old Tom, together with Belgian imports such as Chimay and Duvel. These products, by and large, are consumed responsibly by discerning drinkers and are not a cause of alcohol-related disorder. Recent years have also seen a growing variety of innovative, distinctive beers produced at this kind of strength by the burgeoning craft beer movement. Yet this measure threatens to bring this to a juddering halt. A pint of Old Tom at the current 8.5% ABV will incur duty plus VAT of 134p – reduce it to 7.5% and the cost falls to 95p. The option of castrating the cat must look very attractive, especially as the alternative could be putting it down entirely.

It is also unfair to single out beer when pretty much all wines and spirits are stronger than 7.5% and can’t be claimed to be innocent of involvement in alcohol-related problems. The ultimate effect of this ill-considered measure will simply be to snuff out one of the most innovative and characterful segments of British brewing. It won’t raise more money for the Treasury, it won’t do anything to reduce problem drinking – in fact it could be regarded as a prime example of shooting yourself in the foot.

Watering the Workers’ Beer

Expect to see more and more well-known beers have their strength cut in the coming years

NOT ONLY are the government “encouraging” the reduction of beer strengths, but the brewers seem keen to do their job for them. As part of a “social responsibility” deal with the government, Heineken UK have undertaken to cut the strength of one of their main brands (believed to be canned and bottled Strongbow) by 1% ABV. This is portrayed as a “voluntary agreement” but in reality, if you’re having your arm twisted up your back, how voluntary is it? This is a further example of a growing trend that in recent years has seen a number of well-known brands having their strength cut, including Blackthorn cider, Caffrey’s and, most notably, Britain’s best selling beer brand Stella Artois.

These are not real ales, but there’s also a growing number of well-known cask beers such as Old Speckled Hen, Young’s Special and recently Batemans XXXB having their strength reduced to supposedly give them a wider appeal. Outside of specialist pubs, it’s now hard to find any cask beers above about 4.5% regularly available on the bar. The worry must be that, in the coming years, through a misguided desire to appear “responsible”, this will become a de facto ceiling for draught beer strength in the UK.

April 2011

2011-04-15T20:00:00.001+01:00

Doomed?

Can an international brewer be a sympathetic steward of a craft ale brewery?

IN RECENT YEARS, the major international brewers seem to have largely withdrawn from the cask ale market in the UK. So it came as something of a surprise to learn that Molson Coors had acquired Sharps, the rapidly growing Cornish micro-brewery best known for Doom Bar Bitter, which, although not maybe the most distinctive of beers, is extremely popular in the South of England.

At a time when mass-market lager is a declining and increasingly commoditised business subject to severe price competition, it makes sense for a major brewer to seek to get into the higher-margin section of the market aimed at the more discerning and generally better off consumer. Very often, it is much easier to do this by acquiring existing businesses operating in that segment rather than building your own brands from scratch. You can see parallels with Cadbury buying Green & Blacks, and Coca-Cola acquiring a stake in Innocent Smoothies. But you have to be careful that you don’t kill the golden goose by eroding the qualities that made the brand a success in the first place.

The profile of beer overall would benefit from Molson Coors and the other international brewers becoming strong competitors in the cask and premium bottled markets. Molson Coors have already taken the most positive attitude towards cask beer of all the “Big Four”, investing in a dedicated cask brewing plant at Burton-on-Trent, launching Worthington White Shield and the paler, lower-strength Red Shield on cask and announcing a wide range of guest ales.

However, if we look at what happened to Ruddles after being taken over by Grand Metropolitan, to Theakstons after going to Matthew Brown and then Scottish & Newcastle, or to Boddingtons after being swallowed up by Whitbread, the precedent of big brewers buying smaller ones for their brand name is not exactly encouraging. It’s not impossible for large corporations to be conscientious stewards of respected “authentic” drinks brands – this has certainly been the case with Scotch malt whisky distilleries. It never seems to happen with beer, though, but let’s hope this time I am proved wrong.

Not So Beautiful Game

Wall-to-wall football isn’t in the interest of the pub trade as a whole

A FEW WEEKS ago, the Manchester football derby was held on Saturday lunchtime. All of my local pubs were showing it on satellite TV, which effectively made them no-go areas for anyone who just wanted a quiet pint. Undoubtedly televised football has a strong following and draws many customers in, but on the other hand not everyone is a fan. Licensees seem to take the view that if they don’t have it, they will lose trade, but across pubs as a whole many potential customers will be deterred, and of course Sky Sports costs pubs a huge amount of money. It’s a case of waiting for the other guy to blink first. As with many other things, surely a diversity in offer is in the interests of the pub trade as a whole, rather than everyone trying to appeal to the same segment of the market.

It’s also noticeable that many of the people who come in to watch the football are never seen in the pub at any other time of the week. Pubs might be pleasantly surprised by the amount of business generated if they made a positive virtue of not having Sky rather than simply keeping quiet about it.

March 2011

2011-03-02T08:19:00.000Z

Sobering Statistics

The dramatic long-term decline of pub beer sales still isn’t fully appreciated

ACCORDING to the most recent figures produced by the British Beer & Pub Association, in 1997 total UK beer sales in pubs and bars were 25.6 million bulk barrels. In 2010 the figure had fallen to 14.2 million, a decline of over 44%. There hasn’t been a single quarter since 1997 when on-trade beer sales have shown a year-on-year rise. The biggest single year-on-year fall was 10.6% between the second quarters of 2007 and 2008, the first full year of the smoking ban. The average annual decline over the 13-year period was 4.4%. Over the past three years, that has accelerated to 7.3%.

These figures are thrown into even more sharp relief when we consider that in 1979, a year that history will come to judge as the all-time high water mark of the British pub trade, there were 37 million bulk barrels sold. The current figure is only 38% of that. The off-trade has taken up some of the slack, growing on average by 2.6% over the past thirteen years, but even so has only put back 3.6 million of the 11.4 million barrels lost by pubs, and has actually lost ground too in the recent recession.

Over the past thirty years, we have lost around a third of the total pub stock in Britain, but beer sales have plummeted by over 60%. Given this, it is perhaps surprising not that so many pubs have closed, but so few – and this must suggest that there is more pain to come. And before someone pipes up that “plenty of new bars have opened up to replace the lost pubs”, bear in mind that the sales figures quoted cover the entire on-trade including pubs, bars, clubs and hotels.

There is no simple, single-cause explanation for this long-term decline – it is the result of a variety of changes in society that have combined to greatly reduce the overall demand for pubgoing. These include, amongst others, the decline of heavy industry, increased gender equality, changing attitudes to drink-driving, the growing official demonisation of alcohol and, of course, most recently the smoking ban.

Even now, the sheer scale of the decline of the pub trade still isn’t appreciated anywhere near widely as it should be, and pub closures continue to be viewed as an isolated problem rather than symptoms of a general trend. Pubs will not disappear entirely, of course, and there are still opportunities for well-run pubs in the right location to thrive, but it is clear that in the future the appeal of pubs will be much more of a niche one than it used to be.

By the way, the figures I am quoting are shown in the “UK Quarterly Beer Barometer” produced by the BBPA, which can be downloaded from their website at www.beerandpub.com, so feel free to check them out there.

Cause or Effect?

The idea that pubs close because they were badly run ignores the wider picture

YOU OFTEN HEAR the view expressed that “I’m not surprised that pub X has closed. It had gone really downhill – it had stopped serving real ale and opening at lunchtimes, and seemed to appeal mainly to deadlegs. They ended up putting strippers on to try to attract custom.” Now, that may well explain why Pub X has closed instead of Pub Y, but very often such measures are a symptom of falling sales rather than a cause. Pubs often seem to get into a spiral of decline from which it is difficult to escape.

The reasons why the pub trade as a whole has seen such a dramatic decline over the past thirty years are not because pubs are badly run. Indeed the average pub now is probably much better run than it was in 1979. It is a result of the wider changes in society I mentioned above. This is not being a doom-and-gloom merchant, it is simply being realistic – you can’t tackle a problem without understanding it first.

February 2011

2011-02-01T19:32:00.000Z

Schooner to be Launched

The new two-thirds measure should be welcomed as giving drinkers more choice

THE GOVERNMENT have announced that, following a consultation, they are going to permit the use of two-thirds pint measures, often referred to as “schooners”, in pubs and bars. While it is currently legal to serve a third of a pint “nip”, it isn't legal to put two in the same glass. This apparently innocuous move has led to a wave of ill-informed and prejudiced comment.

It’s not going to lead to the demise of the pint, as there will be no requirement to drop pints, and the pint will undoubtedly remain as the standard beer measure in pubs. It won’t result in higher prices, as pubs will continue to price beer by the pint and presumably price smaller measures pro-rata as they currently do with halves. It isn’t a bureaucratic imposition, as it is in fact allowing something that was previously illegal, so it is a measure of liberalisation. Far from representing creeping metrication, it doesn’t correspond to any standard metric measure and indeed reinforces the traditional system by introducing a brand new Imperial size. And no pub or bar will be forced to offer schooners if they don’t want to.

It’s easy to foresee this new measure being taken up enthusiastically by specialist beer pubs, which may have several stronger beers on tap, and where customers will want to sample a wide range of brews. But its potential appeal will spread much wider than that, to women, drivers and indeed anyone who just wants to have “a beer” but for whom a pint on that occasion is too much. While some women are happy to drink pints, many others find pint glasses inelegant and unwieldy. On the other hand, for drinkers of both sexes, half-pints often just seem too small and have an image of being something of a distress purchase.

This is a sensible move to give drinkers more choice and it would be a shame if it ended up running onto the rocks because of pigheaded resistance to change.

Not My Round

Suggesting that rounds should be discouraged shows a failure to understand British pub culture

GOVERNMENT adviser Richard Thaler, co-author of the influential book “Nudge”, has suggested that, to try to discourage “binge-drinking”, people shouldn’t buy drinks in rounds if they’re going to have more than a couple, but instead groups should set up a tab and settle it at the end of the evening. While the round-buying system may occasionally pressurise people into drinking more than they ideally want to, I can’t honestly see it as a major factor in increasing overall consumption, and if anything may just as easily lead to a party drinking at the pace of the slowest. Few ordinary pubs are likely to be willing to set up a tab anyway, and even if they did it would tend to lead to arguments at closing time over who had drunk what, not to mention being completely unsuited to visiting a number of pubs in the course of an evening.

This is yet another example of pointing the finger at pubs when they certainly can’t be held exclusively responsible for our supposed drink-related problems. It’s a naïve, Puritanical throwback to the days of Lloyd George in the First World War, when the “treating” of others was outlawed, even to the extent of banning a husband buying one for his wife. Buying rounds of drinks is a friendly and sociable custom that maximises the efficiency of bar service and is something that has become an integral part of British pub culture.

January 2011

2011-01-01T18:42:00.000Z

Roadhouse Blues

Why have purpose-built 20th century pubs been hit so hard by the recent wave of closures?

UNTIL RECENTLY, Stockport, outside the fringes of the town centre, had escaped fairly lightly from the tide of pub closures sweeping the country. However, in the past few months we have seen a surge of pubs going to the wall – the Bromale and the Greyhound in Adswood demolished, the Smithy in Cheadle Hulme in the process of conversion to who knows what, and the George on Mersey Square closing its doors “indefinitely”. Added to this, Hydes have put the Gateway just over the border in East Didsbury up for sale, claiming that they don’t see it as viable as a pub in the long-term. One factor that all of these have in common is that they were large, purpose built pubs from the 20th century, built between about 1930 and 1970.

This has raised eyebrows amongst some people, saying “but it was the only nearby pub for a large area of housing!” However, in reality, the idea that the typical pattern of pubgoing is that people come home from work, have their tea and then go out has always been somewhat wide of the mark, and applies even less now than it once did. It is noticeable that pubs in Manchester city centre, and on surburban drinking circuits like Chorlton and Didsbury, are doing much better than those in residential areas. Lots of nearby chimneypots is no guarantee of success for a pub.

Pubs like this have also fallen victim to social changes, with middle-aged and elderly people much less likely to go out to the local for a drink than they were twenty or thirty years ago, and new residents from ethnic minorities moving in who for cultural reasons are not going to be attracted to pubs. A further factor is that, compared with those that are part of a row of other buildings, pubs on large free-standing sites are much more attractive to developers looking to build new houses, flats or care homes.

The middle years of the last century were the great era of Planning, when it was believed that a scientifically designed environment could do much to advance human happiness. It was only later on that the downsides of this approach in terms of bleak and soulless places devoid of an individual human touch became apparent. This applied just as much to pubs as to other aspects of development. On paper, these new purpose-built pubs may have offered all the facilities customers wanted, but in practice they were often echoing, characterless barns. Even at the time, people often complained that the new, “improved” pubs were not a patch on the smaller, haphazard, homely ones they supplanted.

It is possible for inter-wars pubs built on a more modest scale to gain a more intimate and characterful feel – the Nursery in Heaton Norris is a good example – but these are very much the exception rather than the rule. With hindsight, it might have been better to allow smaller pubs to grow organically in areas of new housing, but that very much went against the spirit of the times. Some of these pubs have found a niche for themselves by using part of their surrounding land to add the increasingly popular lodge-type accommodation and concentrate on food – the Heald Green Hotel being a good example. But that isn’t a course open to all, especially those not situated on main roads.

Never greatly loved even at the best of times, the 20th century roadhouse and estate pubs have proved disproportionately vulnerable to the downturn in the pub trade in the past few years. As you travel around the country, it’s a depressingly common sign of the times to see these pubs, often impressive buildings in their own right on prominent corner sites, standing in a forlorn and derelict condition. And, sadly, the odds have to be that we’ll be seeing more of them in the coming years.

December 2010

2010-12-01T20:21:00.001Z

Freezing Your Drink

A freeze on drinks licences will hit responsible consumers while doing nothing to tackle alcohol abuse

A NEW high water mark has been reached in the anti-drink tide flowing through Scotland, with the news that West Dunbartonshire Council has decided to impose a complete ban on any new drinks licences, in both the on and off-trade, in 15 out of 18 areas within the authority. In the remaining three areas applicants for licences will have to prove that customers would not travel from an “overprovision” area to purchase alcohol.

Inevitably this will lead to stagnation in the market and act to the detriment of responsible consumers of alcohol by blocking any new entrants. If this policy applied in this area, we wouldn’t have any Wetherspoons, none of the innovative new bars in places like Chorlton, and no independent off-licences like Carringtons. The policy is also likely to hold back economic development in the area, as who would want to open a new supermarket, hotel or sports club if they were unable to get an alcohol licence for it? Patrick Brown of the Scottish Beer and Pub Association was quite right to say “The Board appears to be more interested in political grandstanding than it is in public health.”

The Chair of the Licensing Board, councillor Jim Brown, said: “We have far too many pubs, bars and off-sales shops given the size of the area.” You have to ask what right this self-important killjoy has to make judgments as what constitutes “too many” pubs or off-licences. Surely the number is determined by the level of business – if all are trading profitably, then there cannot be too many. And is there really any evidence is there that freezing licences is likely to reduce either consumption in general or so-called “problem drinking”?

It hasn’t been made clear whether existing licences will be transferable – if they are, the move will have the unintended consequence of handing a potential goldmine to anyone who has one, as they will be able to sell it on to the highest bidder.

Music to Whose Ears?

Bar staff should never impose their choice of piped music on pub customers

IT’S SOME TIME since I referred to the subject of piped music in pubs, but recently I encountered what to my mind is one of the worst offences, in a pub that I would have expected to know better, where hip-hop style music (possibly Radio 1) was being played at considerable volume. The average age of the customers was well over 50, so I doubt whether that would be their favoured listening, but the bar staff were all, by the looks of it, under 25. So no prizes for guessing who chose the radio station.

It’s my firm belief that most pubs are better off without any piped music at all. But surely, if there is to be music, it should make some attempt to match the preferences of the customers, not the bar staff. A jukebox does provide some customer choice, but it was a frequent complaint when they were more commonplace, that the staff could override customer selections and impose their own tastes. Of course, one of the big plus points of the main Wetherspoons chain (although not Lloyds No.1 Bars) is that they are music-free.

All Wrong

Staff give a poor impression greeting customers in an offhand manner

THE LATEST trend amongst bar staff is not to say the usual “Can I help you?” or “What can I get you?” but instead simply to ask “Are you all right there?” I know this is just a fad of contemporary speech, and I’ve heard it in shops too, but even so it comes across as offhand verging on rude. Rather than ordering a round of drinks, the obvious temptation is to reply, “I’m fine, thank you very much,” and put the ball back in their court.

November 2010

2010-11-01T20:58:00.001Z

Gimme Shelter

Providing decent accommodation for smokers is an increasingly important factor for pubs

THE SMOKING BAN has now been in force for over three years, but in its early days few pubs seemed to make much effort to provide covered shelters for smokers. Perhaps they imagined all the smokers would just give up, or that they would be replaced by crowds of antismokers who had previously shunned pubs. But, now that things have settled down, the more enterprising pubs have begun to realise that they need to cater for all their customers, and I’ve noticed quite a lot of investment going on in provision for smokers.

While obviously they are only two examples out of a growing number in the local area, the Railway at Rose Hill now has a very smart elevated, covered area of wooden decking at the rear, while the beer garden at the Armoury in Edgeley, once little more than a patch of grass, now has two substantial separate shelters and bears a distinct resemblance to a grotto. More and more pubs now have a sign outside advertising, amongst other facilities, “Covered, heated smoking patio,” while another proclaims “Plasma Screen TV for smokers” – so it’s becoming an important point of differentiation.

Although undoubtedly the smoking ban has put many smokers off visiting pubs, and made others visit less often, surveys have shown that smokers are still more likely to visit pubs than non-smokers, so it stands to reason that pubs should do what they can within the law to accommodate them. If you are a smoker, it is very clear which pubs extend a welcome to you, and which can’t be bothered, and that is obviously likely to influence where you take your custom, and indeed that of your non-smoking friends as well.

Marketers are always looking for that key factor which will determine which pub a group will go to, because one or two members will insist they won’t go anywhere that doesn’t have it. In the past, this has often been said of cask beer, but now it’s equally likely you will also hear someone say “I’m not going there, there’s nowhere to have a smoke”.

Problem, What Problem?

Britain doesn’t drink too much, but too often drinks unwisely

IF YOU BELIEVED the media, you could be forgiven for thinking that Britain was in the grip of an unprecedented wave of alcohol-related health problems and disorder, and that consumption was shooting through the roof. Indeed, it’s not uncommon to hear representatives of the anti-drink lobby claiming precisely that. However, once you look at the facts, the reality is entirely different. Average alcohol consumption has been falling steadily year-on-year since 2004, and in 2009 dropped by the sharpest rate since 1948, falling by 6% in a year. We are now drinking 13% less than in 2004, and our alcohol consumption is below the EU average.

It seems that people are really taking all the anti-drink messages to heart and curbing their intake. However, it doesn’t apply evenly across the board – those who wish to be responsible and health-conscious are reducing what is already often a very modest level of consumption, while problem drinkers of all kinds carry on regardless. In the process, drinking becomes increasingly denormalised and seen as something socially unacceptable, which is obviously bad news for the pub trade. Britain’s drink problem – if it has one at all – is not that we consume too much as a society, but that it is distributed too unevenly. What we need are more responsible, regular, moderate drinkers, but sadly the tide of anti-drink hysteria is driving us in the opposite direction.

October 2010

2010-10-01T20:32:00.000+01:00

Minimum Madness

The plan to impose a minimum unit price in Greater Manchester is ill-considered, illegal and unworkable

THE TEN Greater Manchester local authorities are proposing to implement a 50p minimum unit price for alcohol within the boundaries of the former county. In reality, there’s no chance of this happening, as they don’t have the power to do it in the first place, and in any case such a price-fixing scheme would be illegal under both UK and EU competition law. Given this, it must be asked why they are wasting so much time and money on a plan that is never going to be implemented.

Such a move would obviously lead to a vast amount of cross-border shopping for alcohol, including proxy purchases for friends and neighbours. And if you were going over the border to get your booze, you might well end up doing the rest of your weekly shop there, too. A better way of damaging the grocery trade within Greater Manchester is hard to imagine. It would also inevitably encourage black-market operators, who aren’t going to be anywhere near as scrupulous as legitimate retailers over underage sales.

Supporters claim that moderate drinkers would “hardly be affected”, but this could easily make a couple £300 a year worse off without even approaching the official “recommended” drinking levels. In fact, studies have shown that it would impose significant costs on less well-off households, while heavy drinkers would be likely to cut down in other areas to fund their alcohol intake. The claret and malt whisky swigging middle classes would, of course, be unaffected. A more broad-brush, ineffectual and poorly targeted way of addressing problem drinking is hard to imagine.

And if you think that imposing a minimum unit price would do anything whatsoever to bring more customers into pubs, when the reasons for the decline of pubs are far more varied and complex than simply price, you are sorely deluded and indeed playing into the hands of the anti-drink lobby.

Swatting Flies

Blocking access to the serving counter is one of most obnoxious and selfish behaviours encountered in the pub

I RECENTLY went into a local pub and found the entire L-shaped counter in the main bar was blocked by people sitting at bar stools and others stood chatting to them. Nobody made the slightest attempt to move to let me or others get through, so the only way to get served was to attract the attention of the staff through a thicket of people and then manhandle your pints over their heads.

Deliberately blocking access to the serving counter always strikes me as a highly selfish and antisocial practice. It can’t be much fun either sitting or standing there with other customers constantly jostling you, passing pints over your shoulder and potentially spilling them over your head. If there’s a very long bar counter, it might be tolerable for part of its length, but where space is limited surely pubs should encourage people to move away once they have been served to make room for others. It’s also very offputting to walk into a strange pub and find an unbroken screen of people blocking your way to the bar – often when the rest of the pub is deserted.

September 2010

2010-09-01T18:41:00.000+01:00

A Charter for Killjoys

Seemingly minor changes to licensing law have the potential to cause serious problems for pubs

HIDDEN within the small print of the Coalition’s licensing reform plans are two proposals that have the potential to cause serious problems for the pub trade. It is planned to drop the “proximity rule” that requires objectors to licences to live reasonably close to the premises in question, and also to formally add the “promotion of public health” to licensing objectives.

So this will give some miseryguts in Stockton the right to object to a pub licence in Stockport simply because it’s a pub and therefore in his mind a source of moral degeneracy.

And how on earth is a pub supposed to “promote public health”? While it may create a lot of human happiness, and thus improve people’s state of mind, it can’t really be said that a pub, especially a wet-led one, promotes health, especially when two pints at a sitting is now officially regarded as “hazardous drinking.” Does any other type of business have such a pious aspiration loaded on to it? Are butchers required by law to promote healthy eating, or car dealers to promote road safety?

In combination, these two measures could open the way for alliances of public objectors, ideologically motivated by a general dislike of pubs, drinking and people enjoying themselves. Indeed, the germ of such an organised force already exists in the form of an innocent-sounding body called Licensing Aid, set up by the temperance-funded Institute of Alcohol Studies.

As with many other such things, in the short term this may seem as though it’s nothing much to be worried about, but in the long run it must have the potential to come back and bite pubs with a vengeance. While it is described as “rebalancing” the licensing laws, in reality it is tipping them very steeply against the pub trade. And the more pubs become sanitised temples of health, the more their customers will turn to the arms of Tesco and informal social gatherings on private premises.

Flat-Track Bully

Beer quality is not just for Friday nights

SOMEONE was recently singing the praises of a particular local pub. It seemed to be very much on the up, and the beer had certainly impressed on a Friday night Stagger. However, I had later called in at a quieter time and had a couple of pints that were both indifferent verging on poor. Beer quality is not something just for busy times, but needs to be maintained throughout the week. It is one thing to tap a cask and serve it quickly when the pub is heaving, but something else to have a sensible policy of stock rotation to match demand and to understand the rituals of hard and soft pegging so that the beer will still be in good nick when trade is much thinner, which nowadays is most of the week. The fact that a pub is quiet is no excuse for lacklustre beer.

Many years ago, there was a local pub – now long since closed – that was notorious for this. On Friday nights it might have a range of fresh, tasty beers, but by Tuesday it was offering ten different varieties of Sarson’s Best. The truest test of whether a pub genuinely knows how to keep beer well is to try it out not on Friday or Saturday night but early doors on a Monday or Tuesday evening. And you have to wonder how many highly-regarded pubs get their reputation purely from the times when the beer is gushing through the pumps.

August 2010

2010-08-01T15:34:00.002+01:00

What’s the Cost?

Banning below-cost selling of alcohol is not the easy panacea that it may seem

A LOT OF CONCERN has been expressed recently about supermarkets selling alcohol below cost, so the new government have said that they will outlaw the practice. But, when you look into it, it’s not as simple as you might think, and there’s no guarantee that it will prove to be the panacea some imagine. While a certain amount of below-cost selling undoubtedly goes on, there’s probably a lot less than may appear, as many of those low prices will be result of the supermarkets exercising their bargaining power to extract eye-watering discounts from suppliers.

There’s also a question mark as to whether such a ban could make it impossible for retailers to slash prices to shift surplus or short-dated stock, with the result that perfectly drinkable products would end up being poured down the drain. That might lead to a move to make producers of alcoholic drinks that weren’t guaranteed best-sellers supply their products on a sale or return basis, making it more difficult and risky to get unusual or specialist products on the shelves and reducing choice for consumers.

It’s not even straightforward to define what “cost price” is. The government have put forward four different options for consultation. One, just defining cost as duty plus VAT, is seen by many as too low as it excludes any production or distribution costs. Another, defining it as the invoice price paid, would mean opening up retailers’ accounts to expensive and time-consuming audits. And the remaining two simply seem to give the industry carte blanche to define cost themselves, thus creating a cosy price-fixing cartel that would effectively end price competition at the lower end of the market.

Vaulting into the Lounge

Getting rid of separate rooms in pubs doesn’t turn customers into one big happy family

MANY YEARS AGO, the vast majority of pubs had a separate public bar – round here generally called a vault – and lounge, reflecting distinctively different groups of customers who used them. But, over the years, this division has steadily been swept away, reflecting a supposedly more democratic and egalitarian society, and a desire to use the space in pubs more flexibly. Nowadays, it’s relatively rare to find a pub that does have a completely separate vault, although some do have a plainer section at one end of their drinking space.

But that doesn’t mean that the customers have become homogenous too, and sometimes you end up with the former vault customers in effect colonising the lounge. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of boisterous behaviour and robust banter, and indeed in the past that “vault trade” was the heart of many pubs. But if that’s what you encounter when walking in through the front door in search of a quiet pint or a bite to eat, you may well think you’ve wandered into the wrong place. Indeed there’s one pub I can think of that still has a perfectly serviceable separate vault, but where all the vault-type customers congregate on the lounge side, leaving the vault empty.

Setting aside separate sections of a pub for different groups of clientele is something that has a practical justification of keeping everyone happy and is nothing to do with antiquated class divisions. Many pubs, for example, would benefit from having a separation between areas where children were permitted, and areas that were adults-only. And, during the recent World Cup, many potential customers might have appreciated a football-free zone.

July 2010

2010-07-03T14:51:00.003+01:00

Lost in Denial

Claiming that the smoking ban has not led to pub closures reflects a head-in-the-sand attitude

A couple of months before the General Election, then Home Office minister Gillian Merron made the astonishing statement that: “The pub trade does have challenges and I am aware of that but it isn’t the case that the (smoking) ban had led to pub closures.” Really? Not even a single one? This comment flew in the face of the vast weight of anecdotal evidence that the ban has had a severe impact on the trade of pubs, and the statements from virtually every brewer and pub company reporting their results that it has hit their sales and profits.

In the words of one licensee, “The smoking ban has certainly caused most pubs, especially those that were traditional drinking outlets (like mine, for example), a lot of pain – and it has caused a lot to close, too. To say it hasn’t is, frankly, ridiculous and shows a severe lack of knowledge of the problems the pub trade is facing right now.”

Even if you disagreed with her, she might have commanded a modicum of respect if she had said, "We accept that the smoking ban has resulted in some pub closures but we believe that this is a small price to pay for the sake of the nation's health,” or words to that effect. But she didn’t. It was gratifying, then, to see her lose her seat in Lincoln on May 6th with an above average swing against Labour.

Before the ban, we had to endure similar nonsense from its supporters claiming that non-smokers would be attracted back to pubs in droves, and that there was no way that the anti-smoking campaign would metamorphose into a similar campaign against alcohol, both of which have proved to be completely unfounded. Anyone who wants to stand up for pubs and responsible drinking in the future must honestly confront the political and social climate affecting them rather than continuing to deny the reality.

Gone East

Is the large-scale conversion of pubs to ethnic restaurants viable in the long term?

A noticeable feature travelling around the North and Midlands is the large number of former pubs that have been converted to ethnic restaurants, sometimes Chinese but more often than not Indian. Recently we have acquired two local examples, with the Robin Hood at the south end of Hazel Grove becoming a “Thai Fusion” restaurant and the Wrights Arms at Offerton – a pub in a good location that never seemed to make the most of its potential – currently in the process of being converted to an Indian.

You do have to wonder, though, exactly where all the custom for these conversions comes from. Surely the factors that have affected the pub trade in these kinds of locations apply equally to restaurants. Restaurants benefit, perhaps even more than pubs, from clustering together in town and village centres rather than being on isolated sites. Also, people tend to look for a kind of intimacy of scale in restaurants – sitting in splendid isolation in an echoing room on a Tuesday night in November isn’t going to be very appealing. And they’re essentially more limited in their trade – you can have a full sit-down meal in a pub, but people don’t visit restaurants for just a quick drink or a snack.

Obviously there must be a superfically attractive business case for these conversions, or they wouldn’t happen, but it’s sad to see so many once-thriving pubs lost. And are out-of-town ethnic restaurants really all that viable anyway? I’ve seen a fair number of former Little Chefs converted in this way that have closed again within a couple of years, although the one on the A6 at New Mills Newtown does seem to be trading again after a period of closure.

June 2010

2010-06-01T19:59:00.001+01:00

Cheaper than Water

The claim that beer is being sold cheaper than water is grossly dishonest

THE ANTI-DRINK lobby and the likes of the “Daily Mail” have often been heard to claim that supermarkets are irresponsibly “selling beer cheaper than water”. But, when you look into this, it is highly misleading, because they are not remotely comparing like with like.

In Tesco, you can buy four cans of “value lager” for 92p, or 52p per litre. But this only has a strength of 2% ABV, which would have made it legal under US Prohibition. Given the sheer amount of liquid you would need to consume, it would be well-nigh physically impossible to get in any sense drunk on the stuff. Indeed, it baffles me why anyone would want to buy it. They are then comparing this with the price of premium branded bottled waters – the most expensive multipack I found was Highland Spring at 76p a litre. Again I can’t understand why anyone would spend so much on water, but if people do that’s their choice.

A far more honest comparison would be with the supermarkets’ “value” bottled water. When I recently checked on Tesco’s shelves, their still water was 13p for a two-litre bottle, and the fizzy water a mere 10p, or only a tenth of the price per litre of the lager. Even the more reasonably priced branded waters are far cheaper than the lager, and Tesco’s standard own-brand lager would be considerably dearer than any water. Yes, it may be true that the very cheapest and weakest lager is a bit cheaper than an expensive designer water, but as a general statement the claim that beer is being sold cheaper than water just does not stand up. You can no doubt buy an expensive racing bike for more than the cost of an old banger, but that does not mean in any meaningful sense that cars are cheaper than bicycles.

This claim is not far short of an outright lie, and is typical of the dishonest tactics used by the anti-drink lobby. It is on a par with their constant references to “24-hour drinking” when in fact the number of pubs open for the serving of alcohol 24 hours a day can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Given this, it is regrettable that it has been taken up by some people seeking to champion pubs, who really should know better.

Because Nanny Says So

Made-up targets do the cause of health promotion no good

A WHILE BACK I highlighted how the official guidelines on safe drinking levels had been plucked out of thin air with no scientific basis. Now it seems as though the message of eating “five-a-day” portions of fruit and vegetables falls into the same category. A massive study covering over 500,000 people has shown that the reduction in cancer risk is a mere 2.5%, which falls well short of being statistically significant. And apparently the figure was dreamed up in California in 1988 for no better reason than it was double the average consumption of fruit and vegetables.

Now, obviously in a broad sense eating fruit and vegetables is going to do you good, so it’s easy to say that even an unscientific target can’t do any harm. However, if taken too seriously, it can lead to the inappropriate targeting of resources on people who are only falling a bit short of the target, and can be harmful if applied strictly to children who need plenty of protein and calcium to help them grow. Also, it is likely to undermine the credibility of all health messages, however sound the scientific backing. When you were a small child, if you were told not to do something, but given no better reason than “because mummy says so”, you would never have found it very convincing.

If we are to be given official health advice, it must be based on good scientific evidence and treat us as responsible adults, not naughty children.

May 2010

2010-05-01T15:23:00.000+01:00

Nature or Nurture?

What happens in the pub cellar is the key factor affecting the quality of beer in the glass

GREENE KING IPA is possibly the biggest-selling cask beer in the UK, and is often dismissed is irredeemably dull and bland. But, when it is well kept it can be a very good and distinctive beer, something that I have experienced on the rare occasions (generally on its home turf in East Anglia) I have encountered it on top form. But this raises the important question of to what extent the drinker’s enjoyment of a pint of cask beer derives from the intrinsic characteristics of the beer, and to what extent from the general standard of cellarmanship in the pub.

It has long been noticeable that a few pubs manage to coax depths of flavour and character out of beers such as Tetley Bitter which most others signally fail to do. And I would argue that the vast majority of beers (or at least those that have become reasonably well established and are not produced by short-lived micros) have the potential to be very good indeed in the right hands. I will admit that there are a few, however, such as Websters Yorkshire Bitter and Worthington Bitter, that do seem so intrinsically bland that they can never get there however well looked after, although an example where all the tick-box aspects of good cellarmanship are there can still be recognised.

All the regular beers from the four Greater Manchester family brewers, although seen by some as rather dull, are capable of scaling the heights when well looked after. Indeed probably the most memorable pint of beer I have ever had was a pint of Robinson’s Unicorn (Best Bitter as it was then) in a Stockport local towards the end of a pub crawl when you might have expected tastebuds to be getting jaded. So I would say the relative contribution of cellarmanship to the quality of the beer in the glass is considerably more than is often acknowledged.

Some of the beers that enthusiasts rave about only tend to appear in specialist outlets where they can expect to be well looked after, and might fare differently if made available to a diverse cross-section of pubs. Even a Thornbridge product might not be too impressive if turning over a bit too slowly on a lone handpump at the end of the bar of a family dining outlet. It is far too simplistic to say that Beer A is wonderful and Beer B is rubbish when so much depends on what happens in the cellar.

Going Dry

A major pub operator divesting wet-led sites sounds an ominous death-knell for the pub trade

MANAGED house operator Mitchells & Butlers have announced that they are planning a rapid exit from wet-led pubs, and intend to focus their efforts on dining brands such as Harvester, Toby Carvery and Sizzling Pub Company. Hopefully this will provide opportunities for other companies to acquire some of their wet-led sites and run them in a more enterprising manner. But I can’t help thinking it represents a further step in the steady erosion of the original concept of pubs as essentially places to drink and socialise, with food at most as a sideline.

In a growing number of areas, the proportion of pubs of that actually are pubs rather than “dining outlets” is rapidly dwindling, and the welcome to customers who don’t want to eat can be grudging in the extreme. Indeed, in many cases where a pub has been turned over to a food-led operation, the removal of public bars and meeting rooms has led to the expulsion of what wet trade there still was in the place. They may serve up a tolerable meal, but would anyone even cross the street to a Toby Carvery to savour its atmosphere and drinks range?

April 2010

2010-04-05T14:44:00.001+01:00

Labelling Away Diversity

Mandatory health warnings will reduce the choice of alcoholic drinks

THERE HAVE been numerous calls recently to bring in compulsory “health” labelling on alcoholic drinks packages. Fair enough, you may think, it’s not banning anything, it’s simply providing drinkers with information, but in practice such a scheme could lead to a significant reduction in the variety of drinks available in the UK. One major importer has already stopped bringing in a particular beer brand because they didn’t think it was practical to include the necessary labelling elements on the bottles. If you look at a selection of bottles and cans, you will see that the mass-market ones already have the health warnings, the more interesting and unusual ones by and large don’t.

Mandatory labelling will impose an extra burden on small producers entering the market, and it is likely to deter people from importing low-volume specialist drinks, whether beers, wines or spirits, as they will have to either spend money redesigning the labels or put unsightly extra stickers on bottles or cans. And does it really matter in terms of the overall message that a handful of small-selling products don’t have the labels when the vast majority, including all the big brands, do?

It doesn’t help that the contents of the labels are highly questionable anyway – the official unit guidelines, as this column has pointed out before, were plucked out of thin air without any scientific justification, and neither is there any evidence that drinking small quantities of alcohol will harm unborn babies. The recommendation that expectant mothers should abstain from alcohol entirely was adopted because it was clear and simple, not because it was true.

And, of course, as we have seen with tobacco, mandatory labels will inevitably be the start of a slippery slope. They will get bigger, they will have to appear on the front of bottles, they will have to appear on wine lists and menus, they will have to appear on adverts, they will have to be prominently displayed on all bars, they will have to include pictures of diseased livers and car crashes. The anti-drink lobby will never say enough is enough.

All that Glisters

A surfeit of golden ales can make visiting a free house all too predictable

I RECENTLY went into a well-regarded multi-beer pub and was struck by the fact that over half the beers on offer had something along the lines of “Pale”, “Gold” or “Light” in their title. It was a cold winter’s night and, to be honest, I was looking for something a bit more robust and warming.

The past few years have seen a very definite trend towards golden ales, and up to a point they have been a refreshing antidote to predictable “brown beers”, but you can have too much of a good thing, and sometimes it seems impossible to get away from them. It would be good to see a few more milds, stouts and old ales on sale, and even some of the old-fashioned English bitters with generous helpings of both malt and hops and a rich copper hue.

Last year on holiday in East Sussex I enjoyed a number of pints of Harvey’s Sussex Best, a true classic beer with a highly distinctive flavour that certainly meets the above description. A few more beers like that on the bars of free houses would make a welcome change from a long list of identikit golden ales.

March 2010

2010-03-05T20:44:00.000Z

Majority, What Majority?

The smoking ban in pubs has never been supported by a majority of the population

It’s often claimed by supporters of the smoking ban in pubs that it is supported by a majority of the population. Sometimes the likes of fake charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) go so far as to say that it enjoys “overwhelming” support.

However, this quite simply isn’t true. The latest edition of the annual British Social Attitudes survey says: “In Britain as a whole, the majority support a smoking ban, with just seven per cent saying that smoking should be freely allowed. However, the level of restriction, whether a complete ban or simply restricted to certain areas, divides the public. While just under half (46 per cent) support a ban on smoking in pubs and bars altogether, a similar proportion (41 per cent) prefer limiting smoking to certain areas of pubs and bars.”

So, nearly three years after the ban took effect, less than half of those surveyed support it. In fact, this survey – which is carried out by a government agency and thus can’t be accused of having an anti-ban axe to grind – has NEVER shown a majority of people to be in favour of a blanket smoking ban in pubs and bars. This suggests that they do not regard them as genuinely public areas in the way that, say, station concourses are, but rather see them as part of the licensee’s space where customers are allowed in as guests.

Mandatory Madness

The new government code of practice will impact on responsible and irresponsible pubs alike

The government have announced the introduction of a new mandatory code of practice for pubs and bars. All you can drink promotions and speed drinking competitions will be banned from April, and pubs required to provide free tap water, while from October smaller measures of beer, wine and spirits must be offered and any customers appearing to be under 18 must be asked for identification. Now, I’m not going to rush to the barricades to defend all you can drink promotions, but it is naïve to think that well-run pubs have nothing to fear from this. Taken as a whole, these measures represent an unprecedented degree of interference in the way licensed premises are run, which will impose new burdens on responsible and irresponsible licensees alike.

While in reality I can’t see it happening very often, requiring pubs and bars to offer free tap water opens up the opportunity for bloody-minded people to occupy space and use glassware while contributing nothing to the overheads of the establishment. If you were running a pub in the Lake District and a party of eight thirsty hikers came in and demanded eight pints of tap water with ice you might not be too impressed.

I’ve no problem with requiring pubs and bars to offer 125ml glasses of wine, which after all are roughly equivalent to a half of 5% beer or a 35ml measure of spirits. But I’m puzzled as to what they mean by requiring them to serve smaller measures of beers and spirits. Do any pubs actually only serve beer in pints? Or do they mean they’re going to make pubs offer nips, which will involve a costly investment in glassware and possibly dispense equipment to meet a negligible demand? And, likewise, does it just mean pubs will have to offer single measures of spirits, or that a single must be defined as 25ml rather than 35ml, which will require all those pubs that have gone over to 35ml to replace all their optics?

February 2010

2010-02-02T19:40:00.000Z

Fancy an Ersaztenbrau?

The idea of a “safe” alcohol substitute completely misses the point

SCIENTISTS led by the appropriately-named Professor David Nutt, who was sacked from his government post last year for suggesting ecstasy and cannabis were safer than alcohol, say they have come up with a form of synthetic alcohol that they claim will eliminate many of our supposed alcohol problems. Apparently it replicates the effects of alcohol but can then be reversed by an antidote, leaving people hangover-free.

However, this completely misses the point. Alcoholic drinks have been enjoyed for thousands of years – they are part of our history and culture. Even when produced on an industrial scale, they are essentially made from natural ingredients rather than being synthesised in a laboratory.

It often seems to be believed by members of the drug lobby that people only, or primarily, drink alcohol to get drunk, whereas nothing could be further from the truth. People consume alcoholic drinks, even the bog-standard ones, because they like the taste. Beer and cider in particular can be extremely refreshing, while whisky may raise your spirits on a chilly day. And wine in particular, but beer and cider too, can be an excellent complement to food. If people purely wanted to drink for the effect, they would drink vodka diluted with the mixer of their choice. But, in general, they don’t.

It’s also probably true to say that, on a large majority of occasions when people drink alcohol, they experience nothing more than a slight glow. Of course people are not indifferent to the effect of alcohol, but it is not consumed solely for the effect in the way that cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine and LSD are. Despite what the drug lobby claim, it is not “just another drug”. And I can’t honestly see beer, cider, wines and spirits disappearing any day soon.

Bigger Spoonfuls

Wetherspoons’ expansion is a double-edged sword

BEFORE Christmas, J. D. Wetherspoon announced that over the next five years, they planned to open 250 new pubs, which would create over 10,000 new jobs. At a time when much of the pub trade is struggling, you have to give them credit for knowing what they are doing and creating a chain of busy, successful pubs. They offer a wide range of food and drink at reasonable prices in a welcoming, non-threatening environment, and now sell more cask beer than any other pub company. And Chairman Tim Martin is one of the few industry leaders who is willing to question the prevailing anti-drink orthodoxy.

However, you have to wonder how many of those 10,000 will be a net gain for the pub trade, and how many will simply replace jobs in other pubs that end up closing because of the competition from Wetherspoons. And it’s difficult not to feel a twinge of regret for the loss of small, quirky, individual pubs, however grotty they may have been, to be replaced by what often come across as bland, standardised drinking emporiums.

But independently-run pubs can’t be sheltered from the realities of competition, and if they want to continue to exist alongside Wetherspoons, and justify charging higher prices, they need to offer something distinctively different and better in terms of atmosphere, standards of service and quality of food and drink.

January 2010

2010-01-05T09:09:00.001Z

Another World

The drinking scene of thirty years ago showed some amazing contrasts with the present day

As a new decade dawns, it is interesting to look at just how much the pub and beer scene has changed over the years. So here are a few points of the drinking and pubgoing experience of the start of the 80s that are very different from today:

Most pubs here in the North-West just served standard mild and bitter. Apart from the odd sighting of Pedigree or Draught Bass, there was nothing that could be called a premium beer
Beer was often sold from unmarked handpumps
Electric beer dispense was commonplace, typically using diaphragm meters, which were generally unmarked too
Free houses were virtually unknown and there were no guest beers. It was just the regular products of the owning brewery
Across the board, there was a lot of choice, with substantial tied estates belonging to Border, Higsons, Burtonwood, Oldham Brewery, Boddingtons, Matthew Brown, Mitchells and Yates & Jackson that have now largely vanished from the face of the earth
But in many local areas there was a marked dearth of choice, in particular with large areas such as Warrington being dominated by Greenalls
It was considered a point worthy of note that in Macclesfield you could get beer from eight different breweries (Ansells, Bass, Boddingtons, Robinsons, Marstons, Greenalls, Tetleys and Wilsons)
Central Manchester was, surprisingly to the outside observer, virtually devoid of pubs tied to the local independent breweries – it didn’t have a single Holts pub
Many older drinkers still drank splits – a half of draught beer topped off with a bottle of brown or pale ale
Although there was a compulsory afternoon closure (around here, generally 3-5.30), most pubs stuck fairly closely to the standard permitted hours. Weekday lunchtime closure was very rare
Closing time was 10.30 pm Monday-Thursday, with 11 pm closing only on Friday and Saturday
Sunday lunchtime opening was a strict 12 noon – 2 pm, during which many pubs were packed
There was a lot more lunchtime drinking by office and factory workers
Middle-aged couples would just “go out for a drink” in the evening in a way they don’t tend to now
There was much less food served in pubs, especially in the evenings. Many of today's high-profile country dining pubs did not serve evening meals at all
On the other hand, food was much more varied and there was more of a sense of experimentation with styles and formats. It had not yet settled into today’s standardised “pub menu”. For example, a number of pubs had extensive lunchtime buffets – something you never see nowadays
A lot of the bottom-end pubs were extremely scruffy in a way that is very rare now
There was a clear hierarchy amongst country pubs of “No coaches”, “Coaches by appointment only” and “Coaches welcome”. Does anyone (apart from CAMRA) actually organise coach trips to pubs any more?

In some respects the present-day drinking scene is far better than it was then, but in others it is much worse. And pubs in general are certainly a lot less busy than they were.

December 2009

2009-12-03T20:24:00.001Z

Nutts About Drugs

The argument that cannabis is safer than alcohol seems to be a very hazy one

THE FURORE over the sacking of Professor David Nutt as Government chief drugs adviser has overshadowed any serious debate about his very questionable argument that many illegal drugs are in fact less harmful than alcohol.

Those advancing this view invariably cloud the issue by confusing the overall impact on society with the effect on individuals. Obviously, given the prevalence of alcohol in society, it is perhaps not surprising that more people in total experience harmful effects, and nobody is denying that, if consumed to excess, alcohol does you no good. But is it true that it is more dangerous on a proportionate basis? I really don’t think so. Indeed, when interviewed on the radio, Nutt refused to be drawn on whether the harm caused by ecstasy, proportionate to the number of users and the frequency of use, was less or more than that caused by alcohol, and indeed seemed to waffle and prevaricate on the issue.

Many people drink alcohol as much (if not more) for the taste as for the effect. I’m not aware that you can say that for any other drug. And, more importantly, alcohol can be consumed regularly in moderation throughout an adult lifetime without any adverse health effects, and even with some small benefits. Can that really be said for cannabis, ecstasy, LSD or cocaine? Many other distinguished scientists have questioned Nutt’s stance on this, for example Professor Robin Murray of King’s College, London, pointing out that regular cannabis use, even at a very “moderate” level, has been proved to impair memory.

Professor Nutt also said that “parents should be aware that the drug that is by far the most likely to harm their children is alcohol”. Across the whole of society, that may be true, but no drug can harm you unless you actually use it. Obviously parents don’t want their teenage offspring either drunk on Diamond White or stoned on skunk, but on an individual basis I’m sure the vast majority would prefer them to have a glass or two of wine or beer rather than a daily joint.

Everyone Must Suffer

You would not believe from the media that alcohol consumption was falling rapidly

IF YOU WERE to believe the media, Britain is in the grip of an unprecedented alcohol crisis, with consumption rocketing upwards to record levels. However, when you look at the facts, they tell an entirely different story. Despite the introduction of “24-hour drinking”, average consumption has been falling steadily for the past five years, and indeed at present is now dropping at the fastest rate since the late 1940s.

This does not seem to tally with reports that drink-related liver disease and hospital admissions with a link to alcohol abuse are both rising, and in some town and city centres there is a continuing high level of alcohol-related disorder. It is often argued by anti-drink campaigners that reducing the overall level of consumption through higher taxation and other curbs will bring about a proportional reduction in social and medical problems. However, it is clear this is not happening in the UK, and it seems that all the adverse propaganda dissuades responsible people from even moderate drinking, while the irresponsible continue undeterred.

Surely this suggests that, rather than hitting all drinkers with a big stick, we need a much more targeted approach to alcohol problems that leaves the sensible majority alone.

November 2009

2009-11-03T20:42:00.000Z

Keeping Drinkers in the Dark

An alcohol advertising ban would favour big producers, not small ones

THE BRITISH Medical Association have recently called for drastic restrictions on the sale and promotion of alcohol, one of which is a total ban on advertising. It’s highly questionable, though, whether this would have any effect on consumption levels, as there is plenty of evidence that while advertising may affect brand choice, it doesn’t change people’s minds as to whether or not to have a drink. You don’t need an advert to prompt you to go to the pub or to pick up a few bottles from the off-licence. Tobacco advertising has been banned for a number of years now, yet smoking rates have hardly fallen off a cliff.

You wouldn’t be reading this if it wasn’t for alcohol advertising, as that’s what pays for this newsletter. And how could you run a beer festival if you couldn’t tell people that you were actually going to be selling beer? Would a pub be able to say outside that it belonged to Robinsons or Holts, or even that alcoholic drinks were available at all within? Subject to a basic requirement of honesty, surely the ability of manufacturers of products to provide consumers with information about them is a central aspect of free speech.

Some people naïvely assume that banning advertising would help small-scale producers by preventing the big boys from mounting expensive promotions. However, in reality it is likely that the effect would be exactly the opposite, tending to prop up established players and well-known brands. If you can’t advertise products, it makes it extremely difficult to introduce new ones, so a market without advertising ends up stagnating and becoming ossified.

In the absence of any other information, people inevitably would end up asking for familiar products they had had before, or which their friends were drinking. Those brands that had been well-known before the ban came in would benefit from continued recall and recognition that no new entrants would be able to challenge. There could also be a return to simply ordering generic products such bitter, white wine or whisky, which again would militate against anything new or different.

Chopping Down the Grapevine

Informal promotion of alcoholic drinks would inevitably be targeted too

THERE ARE, of course, other ways of promoting alcoholic drinks apart from paid advertising. An important feature of the alcohol market, and one in which it differs markedly from tobacco, is the enormous amount of information disseminated about drinks that is not paid for directly by producers. There are societies devoted to the appreciation of beer, wine and spirits, magazines, guide books, newspaper columns and a growing number of internet listings and blogs.

Most people with a serious interest in alcoholic drinks will probably get much more information from these informal sources than from conventional advertising. Obviously, though, there is plenty of scope for behind-the-scenes manipulation by drinks producers, which would assume more significance if advertising was outlawed. But do the doctors really want a situation where the “Good Beer Guide” became a banned publication and you would be committing an offence if you wrote in a newspaper article or on a blog that you had a good pint of Robinson’s in the Arden Arms? Given the immense possibilities of spreading information through the grapevine, it’s hard to believe they would be happy to leave it alone.

October 2009

2009-10-03T16:10:00.001+01:00

Don’t Castrate our Cat

Conservative plans to triple duty on “high-strength” products are ill-considered and indiscriminate

Robinson’s Old Tom is a beer of which Stockport can be justly proud, a complex, high-quality strong ale suited to considered sipping rather than reckless bingeing. It has been voted CAMRA’s Champion Winter Beer of Britain on several occasions and recently won an award of World’s Best Ale. Yet its future would be threatened by Conservative plans to triple the rate of duty on “strong” beers and ciders above about 5.5% ABV.

While it is true this category includes some cheap, high-strength products that are favourites with problem drinkers, it would also affect many beers from independent breweries in the same vein as Old Tom, Belgian imports such as Chimay and Duvel and the products of pretty much all of Britain’s independent cidermakers. These products are consumed responsibly by discerning drinkers and are often already relatively expensive in terms of price per alcohol unit. In any case, it is not usually beers and ciders in this strength band that fuel alcohol-related disorder, or feature in supermarket discounting.

This is an ill-considered and indiscriminate plan that would not achieve its stated objectives and would penalise many respected products that in general are not consumed irresponsibly. It also unfairly singles out beer and cider when wines and spirits cannot be absolved of all blame for our alleged drink-related problems.

The present government, especially over the past few years, has been very bad news for the pub trade and for responsible drinkers, but at a time when there seems to be a general tide of anti-alcohol sentiment in society it may be naïve to assume that an alternative would necessarily be much better.

Don’t Knock It Till You Try It

The hysterical reaction to a beer for connoisseurs exposes the hypocrisy of the anti-drink lobby

The difficulties involved in blanket targeting of “strong” beers are highlighted by the reaction to Tokyo*, a limited-edition brew produced by iconoclastic Scottish brewers BrewDog. This is an imperial stout weighing in at a mammoth 18.2% ABV, but at the same time priced at an eye-watering £9.99 for a 330ml bottle.

BrewDog have established a reputation for ruffling the feathers of the drinks trade establishment and the anti-alcohol lobby, and, rather predictably, Jack Law of “Alcohol Focus Scotland” frothed: “It is utterly irresponsible to bring out a beer which is so strong at a time when Scotland is facing unprecedented levels of alcohol-related health and social harm. Just one bottle of this beer contains six units of alcohol - twice the recommended daily limit.”

This seems more than a little hypocritical when for £9.99 you could easily buy a bottle of cheap whisky or vodka containing 28 units of alcohol, and a price of £1.67 a unit is surely enough to satisfy even the most ardent anti-drink zealot. This no more contributes to problem drinking than does a bottle of cask-strength Islay malt retailing at £40.

Beer writer Pete Brown sampled a bottle and, while finding it deep, rich, complex and satisfying, said “The idea of anyone binge drinking a bottle of this beer, of knocking it back quickly, is utterly absurd. I defy anyone to drink a bottle in under an hour. You actually don't want a full bottle of it.” It’s frankly impossible to visualise Tokyo* taking the place of Tennent’s Super in the hands of Rab C. Nesbitt lookalikes stumbling around the streets of the Gorbals. They’re unlikely to have even heard of it in the first place. A beer such as this is to be savoured, not poured down your neck.

And you have to wonder whether Jack Law actually tried it before rushing to condemn it. Almost certainly not – he’s probably a teetotaller anyway.

September 2009

2009-09-02T21:21:00.002+01:00

A Weak Argument

The call for promotion of very weak beers fails to understand the realities of the beer market

CAMRA’s call for duty to be scrapped on low-strength beers of 2.8% ABV and below was a predictable publicity ploy to coincide with the launch of the Great British Beer Festival. But I can’t help thinking that this is a misguided idea that shows a failure to appreciate the realities of the beer market and panders to the current climate of anti-drink hysteria.

It is difficult to brew beers of such low strength with much flavour and character. Many of the old-style milds and boys’ bitters were very bland, and were designed to be drunk in large quantities by industrial and agricultural workers wanting to restore fluid levels after a hard days’ work. However, as society changed and people became more prosperous, they started switching to bitters which were more expensive, but had more taste and body. In the early 1990s, some of our local brewers introduced cheap “economy” bitters at around 3.2% ABV, such as Hydes’ Billy Westwood and Boddingtons’ Old Shilling. When well-kept, these could in fact be surprisingly tasty, but they never really took off in the marketplace and were dropped after a year or two.

People drinking in pubs are not generally motivated to choose cheaper drinks to save money, otherwise mild would still be all the rage, and it has to be recognised that one of the main reasons people drink beer is because it actually does contain alcohol. Ordering a cheap, weak beer is hardly a very “aspirational” choice in the pub and comes across much more as a distress purchase. If people want to cut their alcohol consumption they will tend to drink “less but better” rather than making a conscious decision to go for weaker drinks. And the idea that micro-brewers would be able to sell 2.8% beers for substantially less than stronger ones is misplaced anyway, as they benefit from Progressive Beer Duty and thus pay a greatly reduced rate of duty in the first place.

Standing Room Only

Why are pubs so reluctant to provide an adequate amount of comfortable seating?

In another area, I recently called in to a pub – more a bar really – that had been chosen by the local CAMRA branch as their Pub of the Year. There was a good range of mostly local real ales and a wide selection of interesting bottles, so you could understand why it won the award. But I was struck by just how little decent seating there was in the place. One section had a few high-level posing tables, another expansive, low-level sofas that allowed one to sit where five could normally be accommodated, and only the third a scattering of tables with loose chairs. If the pub had standard wall-mounted bench seating in all three areas it could probably cater for three times as many seated customers.

Surely the lack of seating must impact on trade – it baffles me why pub owners sacrifice capacity in this way in the interest of appearing trendy. Maybe late at night they are packed with standing customers and too many seats would get in the way. But, for most of the day, customers are likely to be looking for somewhere to sit, particularly if they want to eat as well as drink, and in this particular establishment could easily conclude there was no room even if there were only about four groups already in the place. Wetherspoon’s are another major offender on this score – many of their pubs have vast areas of floorspace with a few freestanding tables dotted around, and often don’t seem busy even when all the tables are taken.

August 2009

2009-08-01T23:33:00.002+01:00

With Friends Like These...

The professed sympathy of anti-drink groups for pubs is just weasel words

With the pub trade under so much pressure nowadays, you could be forgiven for thinking that pubs would welcome any friend they could get. So step forward Don Shenker, chief executive of anti-drink pressure group and fake charity Alcohol Concern. He says he wants to work alongside CAMRA to look at ways of helping well-run pubs to survive. Unbelievably, he says Alcohol Concern is “not an anti-pub organisation. What we are in favour of is responsible drinking, retailing and selling of alcohol.”

He went on to say “We share the concern around the high degree of pub closures in the country and want to see protection for pubs that are well run. I really want to support the community pubs. It’s important to support a pub where alcohol is being regulated; the problem with drinking at home is it isn’t regulated.”

This is all a bit rich coming from an organisation that has opposed every liberalisation of licensing laws over the past three decades, championed every piece of anti-drink and anti-pub legislation going and consistently campaigned for higher alcohol taxes and prices and a drastic reduction in overall alcohol consumption. You have to wonder whether he choked on his sarsaparilla as he said this.

Even in the best-run community pub, you will routinely see people drinking enough alcohol to qualify as a “binge” in the government’s description, some of whom will end up getting boisterous, or even a bit “worse for wear”. It is hard to see how this conforms to Shenker’s view of “responsible retailing”. And if every customer stuck to Alcohol Concern’s recommended maximum of a pint and a half per sitting it is difficult to imagine many pubs staying in business.

Of course, the real nature of his agenda was exposed when he went on urge pubs to offer smaller servings of drinks, and to lower the alcohol content of drinks so people can consume the same volume but take less alcohol. I'm sure people will be flocking down to the Dog & Duck to drink thimblefuls of watered-down beer.

In reality, Shenker loathes pubs and all they stand for with every fabric of his being. He would like to see as many as possible closed down and the few that remained turned into anodyne, emasculated eating houses. Anyone seriously concerned about the future of pubs should avoid at all costs being seduced by his weasel words.

Never on a Saturday

Why are pubs so quiet at a prime leisure time?

The proportion of people who work from Monday to Friday and have the weekend off is a declining one, but it’s still a majority of the working population, and includes me. So I often like to relax over a couple of pints on Saturday lunchtime, but I'm struck by how quiet pubs are then. Apart from those right in town and city centres, most do a very thin trade, and many are virtually empty, including ones in prominent, busy locations offering extensive food menus, and others only a stone’s throw from busy shopping streets.

I've remarked in the past how people don't go in pubs like they used to, and certainly not at lunchtimes, but even so, this still applies to establishments that are heaving on Friday and Sunday lunch. The only conclusion must be that people tend to be out and about doing various bits of business on Saturdays, and look upon Sundays much more as a day for relaxing. And Sunday lunchtime is often quieter than it used to be, too…

July 2009

2009-07-02T22:30:00.003+01:00

Is the Price Right?

The idea that supermarket prices are killing pubs does not stand up to analysis

“THEY’RE SELLING Carlsberg at 30p a bottle at the supermarket down the road,” an aggrieved licensee complained to me. “How can I hope to compete with that?” You can understand her concern, and of course she can’t come close to competing on price terms, but in reality she doesn’t have to.

Throughout my drinking career, alcohol in the off-trade has been cheaper than that bought in pubs. The gap may have widened a bit over the years, but it has always been there. A licensee has to pay business rates, utility bills and staff wages, none of which you include when thinking how much the can or bottle you’ve just got out of the fridge has cost. The overheads a pub has to carry mean that it is always going to be dearer than just sitting at home, and surely all pubgoers realise that. A pub is far more than just an alcohol shop and in reality its main competition for people’s leisure spending is restaurants, cinemas, sports grounds and bowling alleys.

Nobody claims that restaurants are suffering because you can buy ready meals at Tesco for a third of the price of dishes on the menu, so the idea that pubs are suffering because cans of Stella are dirt-cheap doesn’t really stack up. People don’t sit down and make a calculated economic choice between going out to the pub and staying in with a few cans. If they want to go out, they will go out, and going to the pub should be as much about socialising as simply drinking alcohol. Many pub visits happen when people are out of the house anyway, at work, on holiday or shopping, so the option of drinking at home is not available to them. Obviously, if intoxication is the sole objective, the most cost-effective way of doing it is with cheap cider or spirits from the off-licence, but should pubs be targeting people who just want to get drunk anyway? On the other hand, cask beer, which is generally of moderate strength, is a unique selling point for pubs that cannot be replicated in the home.

Of course price can have an impact on the margins, maybe leading people to go out a little less often, or to tilt the balance a little from on to off-trade consumption. But relative price isn’t even the biggest single factor leading people to drink less in pubs. There are many other reasons leading people to drink more at home and less in pubs, such as the decline of heavy industry, the increasing popularity of wine and the tendency of employers to discourage lunchtime drinking by their employees. Lifestyles have changed and society has moved on. And the idea that raising the price of alcohol in the off-trade will do anything to encourage people to visit pubs is totally misplaced.

In Continental countries such as France and Germany, off-trade prices are considerably lower than ours, and the gap between on- and off-trade greater, but they do not have the same problems associated with off-trade consumption as we supposedly do, and in many cases have much more thriving bars. This suggests that the root causes are in social factors rather than simply price levels as such.

June 2009

2009-06-06T15:40:00.002+01:00

Night Half-Life

Is Stockport’s night-time economy in need of revival and, if so, how?

A RECENT Friday night pub crawl around central Stockport found a couple of perfectly decent pubs very quiet, and the Underbanks eerily deserted at around 10 pm. Some pubs such as the Crown, Railway and Arden Arms do well, but overall Stockport very much lacks the vibrant “night-time economy” of many of the other major towns in Greater Manchester. There’s also a marked dearth of restaurants in the town centre over and above the usual fast food outlets. It seems as though, if people want a good night out, they head off to Manchester rather than remaining in the town.

So what could be done to make the town centre a bit more lively and welcoming in the evenings? One major factor must be the effective banning of traffic in the town centre streets. Pedestrianised streets may work during normal shopping hours, but in the evening they turn an area into a dead zone. If the dreaded rising bollards on Underbank were permanently retracted after 4 pm, and traffic was allowed along Princes Street after 6 pm, it could well make a big difference.

However, you have to be careful what you wish for, as it is highly likely that a revitalisation of night-time Stockport would mostly just lead to the spread of chain bars and takeaways. As an alternative, maybe what Stockport needs to do is to promote its unparalleled collection of high-quality traditional pubs rather than just trying to ape every other town centre in the region. “Stockport - the civilised night out” might not be too bad a slogan.

Punch Drunk

The recession has exposed the pub company business model as unsustainable

FOR A NUMBER of years, I’ve held the view that the giant pub companies were ultimately unsustainable. The key reason for this was that they had no unique selling proposition. It’s quite clear what differentiates a Robinson’s pub, or a Wetherspoon’s pub, from the competition, but what does a Punch pub have that an Enterprise Inns one doesn’t? They were far more driven by financial engineering than pub retailing.

Now, with the recession, the chickens are really coming home to roost, with Enterprise and especially Punch Taverns in an increasingly precarious financial position. Apparently Punch’s debts now exceed the total value of their property portfolio. In these circumstances, it’s not surprising that they’re engaged in a fire sale of their crown jewels to various family brewers. In the South-East, Fullers, Charles Wells and Adnams have benefited from this, and now in the North-West first Lees and now Robinson’s have bought tranches of pubs from Punch.

In the longer term, this is likely to lead to a major shift in the balance of power in the pub trade away from the pub companies as heirs of the former Big Six national brewers towards the family brewers, who were once derided as an anachronism. You have to wonder whether the heirs of defunct companies such as Home and Vaux might feel a twinge of regret about selling out. And how long can we expect the giant pub companies to survive in anything like their current form?