March 2012

Tipping Point Approaches

Can anything be done about the remorseless increase in off-trade beer sales relative to the on-trade?

IN 2011, just over 47% of beer drunk in the UK was sold in the off-trade, as opposed to 53% in pubs, bars and clubs. This compares with a mere 32% ten years earlier. The British Beer & Pub Association reckon that 2012 might well see the “tipping point” where off trade sales exceed on-trade for the first time, possibly after the quarter including the European football championships. To the lover of pubs, this may be a cause for regret, but is there really anything that can be done about it?

This shift is often laid at the door at the growing disparity between pub and supermarket prices. But it has to be remembered that pubs are selling an experience, not just beer, and over time, as real incomes increase, the cost of services will tend to rise relative to that of goods because of their greater labour content. I doubt whether many of those complaining about this disparity are advocating a reduction in the minimum wage, and any attempt to rig the market by artificially increasing the price of off-trade alcohol is likely to bring only a short-term respite.

There is also of course the smoking ban, which over the period since its introduction in 2007 is reckoned to have reduced drink sales in pubs by about 15% over and above the long-term trend. But, while this has undoubtedly accelerated the relative decline of pubs, it was still happening well before 2007.

Beyond those two factors, there are a whole range of wider changes in society that have contributed to the rise in at-home drinking. The decline of heavy industry has meant that there are far fewer manual workers for whom going in the pub every night and drinking numerous pints is a way of life. Plus there has been an erosion of traditional gender roles, meaning that it is no longer acceptable for the husband to go out to the pub while the wife stays at home with the kids.

There has been a long-term trend away from beer towards wine. Historically, pubs have done wine very poorly and in any case it is something generally drunk with a meal rather than simply during a drinking session. This has been associated with the rise in eating out, which tends to replace simple drinking sessions and is often not done in pubs.

Mass car ownership makes taking loads of cans or bottles home a much more practical proposition than it used to be. At the same time, while more people have cars, they are increasingly reluctant to drive after drinking even within the legal limit, thus reducing the number of potential opportunities to go for a drink in a pub.

There is a much wider and more interesting choice of drinks available in the off-trade than there was thirty years ago, whereas, unless you're a cask beer fan, the range of drinks in most pubs can be somewhat limited. Homes themselves are much more congenial places than they were in the 1970s and offer far more in the way of entertainment, with central heating, multi-channel TV, DVDs, internet and computer games.

Employers are in many cases much less tolerant of even light lunchtime drinking by their staff. In addition, the ever-increasing public demonisation of even moderate drinking means that, when people do drink, they are more likely to do it outside the public eye, to the inevitable detriment of pubs.

The conclusion must be that there are a whole range of factors contributing to the shift from pub to at-home drinking. While a good pub will always offer a better drinking experience than the living room, realistically the days when pubgoing was a routine part of most people’s everyday lives are not coming back, and any Canute-like attempt to stem the tide is unlikely to meet with lasting success.

(And yes, I know very well that Canute was making the point that he couldn’t stop the tide)

February 2012

When is a Beer not a Beer?

To claim that well-known IPAs are not “true to style” is unenlightened pedantry

THE TERM “India Pale Ale” or IPA originates from strong, heavily hopped beers that were specifically brewed for export to India in the early part of the 19th century. By the middle of the century, beers of this style had become popular on the domestic market, and the export trade eventually died away as local breweries were established. The First World War saw a dramatic cut in beer strengths across the board, and for much of the 20th century IPA became a common name for a relatively light bitter, mostly, but not exclusively, in the South of England. Thus we had beers such as Darleys IPA, Wadworths IPA, Bass’s Charrington IPA – which must have been one of the sweetest and least hoppy bitters known to man – and Greene King IPA, which has now become probably the best-selling cask beer in Britain.

In recent years, though, there has been a move by some of the new breweries to revive something more like the original style of IPA, and this has led to accusations that existing beers bearing that name are in some way fake or inauthentic. However, the meaning of words changes over time, and for many decades of the last century the weaker, lighter IPAs were the only game left in town. To claim that something is not “true to style” because it differs from something that had died out but has recently enjoyed a small-scale revival is nitpicking obscurantism comparable to that of people who bemoan the change in the everyday meaning of the word “gay”.

One of the best things about the current brewing scene is the willingness of innovative brewers to experiment and mix and match styles and traditions rather than rigidly sticking to formulas dating back two centuries. For example, I was recently reading about a “White Stout” which would have been totally unheard of in the Victorian era. And, given that most milds in the early 19th century were well over 5% in strength, it could be argued that anything under 4% calling itself a mild nowadays is equally inauthentic.

Brass in Pocket

Only in the distorted world of anti-drink campaigners are children buying alcohol from their pocket money

YOU OFTEN hear representatives of the medical profession and other anti-drink campaigners moaning about alcohol being available at “pocket-money prices”. However, they’re always vague about exactly what they are talking about. It would be illuminating to get them to name the specific products they are referring to, and to demonstrate that they have some kind of disproportionate involvement in alcohol-related health problems. In any case, the average weekly pocket money for a child is reported to be almost £7, which would comfortably buy a four-pack of pretty much any beer in the off-trade, a half-bottle of spirits and the vast majority of wines, not to mention a couple of pints in the pub.

And are they talking about the price per individual pack, or the effective price per unit? Tesco will sell you a single bottle of Czech lager for 99p, but in terms of bangs per buck that is a lot dearer than a 20-pack of Fosters for a tenner, and the latter is beyond reach of even a weekly £7.

In reality, the UK has about the third-highest alcohol duties in the European Union, and in no meaningful sense can alcoholic drinks in this country overall be regarded as cheap. If anything really is available at “pocket money prices”, then that suggests one or both of it being very weak and in a very small measure. This is a dishonest and emotive use of words that is only too typical of the anti-drink lobby, and regrettably is occasionally taken up by some claiming to represent the interests of drinkers who really should know better.

January 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.