July 2010

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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…