November/December 2019

Drying Out

There’s a limit to how far pubs can go in appealing to non-drinkers

A MAJOR problem for the pub trade is the growing proportion of young people who have chosen not to drink alcohol at all. In response to this, a recent report has said that 70% of “Generation Z” believe that pubs need to become “more inviting” to those who do not drink. This has to be taken with a pinch of salt given that it was sponsored by a coffee company, but it does make an important point.

Clearly it makes sense for pubs to widen their appeal so that they can be more inclusive of non-drinkers. Customers are increasingly likely to consist of mixed groups of drinkers and abstainers. This can be achieved by providing higher-quality tea and coffee and soft drinks, offering food and putting on events like quizzes and live music. And, to be honest, they have been doing these things to a greater or lesser extent throughout my drinking career. It’s nothing new or exactly a startling revelation.

However, there’s an important caveat here. The core purpose of pubs is, and always has been, socialising centred around the consumption of alcoholic drinks. Yes, over the decades they have needed to evolve and change in various ways, but that fundamental fact remains unchanged. If nobody drank alcohol, there would be no pubs. Non-drinkers may enjoy various activities and services provided by pubs, but they wouldn’t exist in the first place without drinkers. It’s rather like non-alcoholic beer – it’s only there to mirror to some extent the taste and experience of drinking alcoholic beer.

If they go too far down the road of changing their offer, pubs may well find themselves evolving into something entirely different – a restaurant, a music venue or a community centre. It also has to be questioned to what extent all this diversification is actually going to bring new customers into pubs. It may make non-drinkers happier when they are there, but will it encourage them to visit more often?

The reason that the pub trade has declined so much over recent years is essentially because, due to a combination of social and legislative changes, the demand for their core product has fallen. There’s a limit to how far they can go in catering for other needs. Realistically, the fortunes of the pub trade are closely linked to the proportion of people in society who enjoy drinking alcohol in a social setting.

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Under Pressure

It’s hard to believe that twentysomethings now feel more pressure to drink than previous generations

IN A SIMILAR vein, another survey has claimed that Millennials feel five times more likely to be pressurised into drinking alcohol when socialising than older generations. Again this was produced on behalf of a company with a vested interest in the results, but I find it very hard to believe.

Over the past twenty years, the pressure to drink alcohol on social occasions has greatly reduced, and in many situations not drinking has become the norm. This is particularly the case with anything connected with work, after hours as well as at lunchtime. Indeed, it is often the person who chooses an alcoholic drink who stands out and ends up being stigmatised. We also have initiatives like “Dry January” where not drinking is presented as virtuous.

Maybe one area where this does happen is in higher education institutions, but they provide a huge range of social activities, most of which don’t involve drinking at all. The fact that someone has organised a Carnage pub crawl doesn’t mean you’re under any obligation to go on it. This is an example of the common phenomenon of something attracting more criticism as it becomes less popular. Forty years ago, there undoubtedly would have been more social pressure to drink, but nobody complained about it back then.

September/October 2019

The Beer That Dare Not Speak Its Name

Bitter needs to stop pretending to be something other than what it really is

A COUPLE of decades ago, there was a trend for brewers to start calling their milds anything but mild, in the belief that the name itself came across as old-fashioned and was putting drinkers off. Now this tendency has spread to bitter as well. At first it was mostly confined to beers at the stronger end of the scale, with Young’s Special and Marston’s Pedigree dropping the “Bitter” and just going by their one-word brand name. But it has now extended to the classic “ordinary” bitters, such as Hook Norton Hooky, with many of them denying that they are any kind of bitter at all, often just calling themselves “amber ale”.

It has been suggested that one reason behind this us the undesirable flavour connotations of the word “bitter”, but I’m not convinced by that. After all, we’ve been happily drinking it for decades, and “sours” have become popular in the craft world without anyone finding that term offputting. I’m sure it is more the case that “bitter” is seen as the beer your dad drank.

But “amber” itself is just a colour, and in fact is generally described as a rich gold, whereas many beers calling themselves such are copper or even chestnut. And nobody ever, when asked the question “what type of beer do you enjoy drinking?” replies “Oh, I like amber ale”. At least, round here, if you go in a Holt’s, Lees or Sam Smith’s pub, you can still ask for a pint of bitter and that is precisely what you will get.

Whether you like it or not, Bitter, while it covers a wide spectrum of colours and flavours, is perhaps the quintessential English beer style, and stands in the pub alongside other major categories such as mild, stout and lager. To try to deny its existence and break it down into a myriad of sub-styles just sows confusion and leaves drinkers adrift as to what it actually is. So maybe it’s time for brewers to say, loud and proud, that what they’re producing is Bitter, and stop trying to suggest that it’s just some fuzzy, ill-defined category of “Ale”.

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Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

Might handpumps be putting people off real ale as much as attracting them?

HANDPUMPS have become an unmistakable symbol of real ale; if you go in a pub and see them on the bar, you know exactly what to expect. However, this can cut both ways, and, for many drinkers who have had too many bad experiences, they may mark it out as something not even to be considered. So it’s interesting to hear that Sharp’s Brewery are trialling a keg-style tall font for cask Doom Bar. There’s a clear statement on the mounting that it is cask beer, so nobody can claim that they are being deceived.

Thirty years ago, plenty of real ale was dispensed via electric pumps of various kinds, so in a sense it’s a case of the wheel coming full circle. There may be a strong association between real ale and handpumps in the public mind, but it no more needs to be served through them than it has to be delivered on horse-drawn drays or kept in wooden barrels. And the fashionable “keg-conditioned” beers are dispensed through taps indistinguishable from those used for normal kegs.

Of course there’s always the possibility that drinkers are so wedded to the concept of handpumps that it will deter more than it attracts. But it must be worth a try, to see whether it helps to make cask look more like everything else on the bar rather than something “other” to be avoided at all costs. It could also eliminate some of the variability caused by incompetent bar staff having little idea how to use handpumps. I’d certainly be keen to try it if I saw it.

July/August 2019

When is a Pub not a Pub?

It’s hard to pin down the difference between a pub and a bar, but you know one when you see one

WHEN it’s a bar, of course. While there’s no specific legal distinction, the two carry very different connotations. This is not to say one is better than the other, but they’re certainly not interchangeable. However, it’s notoriously difficult to come up with a hard-and-fast definition separating one from the other. Beer writer Martyn Cornell has recently had another stab at it on his Zythophile blog, where he suggests that a key distinction is that pubs tend to have a bar at right angles to your path when coming in through the entrance door, whereas bars have their counter running along a side wall. Often, this is indeed the case, but it rather breaks down when you have a multi-roomed interior with different entrances. But perhaps bars don’t tend to have multi-roomed interiors anyway.

In general, while you can point to various characteristics that pubs usually have, and bars don’t, it’s always possible to come up with exceptions to the rule. Overall, it’s often a case of “you know one when you see one”. Pub names usually start with “The”, but bar names seldom do. Pubs are often specific buildings designed for the purpose, while bars tend to be part of a larger building. Pubs make use of the upper floors of the building, while a bar may be underneath something entirely different. The licensees of a pub are likely to live on the premises, but with a bar they hardly ever do. Bars are often aimed at a specific, identifiable “crowd”, while pubs seek a wider and more general clientele. And, at least outside urban centres, pubs often have car parks, but I can’t think of a single bar that does. A pub retains its identity through various changes of ownership, while that of a bar is very much tied up with its current trading format.

Sometimes it’s less a question of physical aspects but how businesses choose to define themselves. On Stockport Market Place there are two recently-opened establishments right next door to each other – the Angel and Project 53. Both have a somewhat “crafty” ethos, but the Angel definitely comes across as a pub, whereas Project 53 is unquestionably a bar. With a new name and different decor, the Angel could be considered a bar, though.

The different connotations of the two categories will often influence how an establishment wants to be seen. One well-known London craft beer place took exception to being considered for a “Pub of the Year” award, because they identified themselves a bar. To them, a bar was modern and progressive, while “pub” suggested something stuffy and old-fashioned and very possibly belonging to Greene King or Punch Taverns.

Some Wetherspoon’s, particularly those in their more modern design idiom that are conversions of former retail units, do very much say “bar” rather than “pub”, whereas others that are in existing pub premises, such as the Gateway in East Didsbury, are definitely pubs. However, their general atmosphere and wide customer mix are very much those of pubs regardless of their design. And, while their name says otherwise, I’d say that the vast majority of micropubs, going by the criteria set out above, are in reality small bars little different from the keg-only “box bars” often found in similar premises.

At the other end of the scale, there’s also the vexed question of when a pub actually turns into a restaurant. Most restaurants obviously aren’t pubs, but quite a few have the outward appearance of pubs and indeed might once have been one. Strictly speaking, if anyone can come in and have a drink without needing to buy a meal, it doesn’t qualify as just being a restaurant. However, I’d say there also needs to be a test of whether any meaningful number of people actually do, and whether non-diners are made to feel welcome.

May/June 2019

The Squeezed Middle

If we are concerned about their long-term survival, mid-sized brewers deserve a little more love

THE SALE of Fuller’s brewing interests to Asahi underlined the exposed position in which many of the established, medium-sized firms find themselves. As a mid-sized brewer, Fuller’s said, it was being squeezed between the global giants and the 2,000 smaller brewers across the UK. The tax breaks given to microbrewers and the power of the big global drinks firms have left little space at the bar for those in the middle.

Progressive Beer Duty was introduced in 2002 by Gordon Brown with the aim of stimulating the number of small breweries in the UK. It has certainly succeeded in this objective, with over 2,000 now in operation. However, as with many such well-intentioned measures, it has had unintended consequences. The 50% duty relief on offer starts to be clawed back above an annual production of 5,000 hectolitres (3,055 barrels), and entirely disappears at 60,000 hl (36,661 barrels). Many of the established family brewers are above this figure, or only just below it. Fuller’s, who were one of the biggest, were producing about 200,000 barrels a year.

In practice, some of the new small brewers have used the duty relief not to bolster the finances of their business, but to sell beer more cheaply, putting the established brewers at a severe price disadvantage. The overall market share of these small brewers is relatively small, and to the likes of AB InBev they are no more than a pinprick on an elephant’s backside. But they have a much higher share of the market for cask beer in the free trade, and if you go in any pub that is able to buy beer on the open market it is likely that most of its cask lines are from microbreweries. Many of these beers are very good, but the main reason some of them are there is that they are cheap to buy.

The mid-sized brewers found that the general decline of on-trade beer consumption and the rise of lager greatly reduced the amount of beer they were producing from their own breweries. But, at the same time, the rise of up-market dining provided an opportunity for some of the pubs in their tied estates, and many of them bought more as cast-offs from the debt-ridden pubcos. This essentially turned them into pubcos with an under-utilised brewery as a sideline. Fuller’s reckoned that 85% of their profits came from their pubs and hotels, so it is perhaps understand­able that they decided to concentrate on that part of their business and accept an attractive offer for the brewing side.

It’s also debateable whether you can make such a clear distinction between the brewing and pub sides of the business, as to some extent they support each other. If you separate them, both will be diminished and their viability undermined. A brewery produces a unique, identifiable product that is recognisable to customers and may command a great deal of loyalty, but a pubco is, well, just another pubco, and in the long-term that must make them more vulnerable to takeover. Fuller’s stood out from the crowd both because of the high profile of their beers and the valuable redevelopment potential of their site. But the announce­ment of this deal will certainly have given many directors of family brewers cause for thought about their long-term future.

It’s often the case that people attract warm tributes when they die while having a much more equivocal reputation during their lives, and it’s hard to avoid the feeling that some of those shedding crocodile tears over the sale of Fuller’s were happy a year before to dismiss London Pride as “boring brown beer”. Maybe if we want to help the prospects of the family brewers, beer enthusiasts should give them a bit more love as upholders of a unique British tradition, rather than constantly chasing after the novel and trendy.

March/April 2019

Sense of Place

We have lost something valuable with the erosion of the link between beer and locality

WHEN I first became interested in real ale, perhaps what fascinated me most was how there was a patchwork of independent breweries the length and breadth of the country, ranging from regional giants such as Vaux and Wolverhampton & Dudley to tiny firms like Bathams and Burts. Each had its own territory, its own distinctive beers and very often its own style of pub. It was a lesson in geography, with strongholds, heartlands and outposts.

To visit an area and sample the beers of one of the more obscure breweries for the first time was a voyage of discovery. You could go to a city only fifty or sixty miles away and be presented with an entirely different selection of beers, such as Home and Shipstone in Nottingham or Mitchells and Yates & Jackson in Lancaster. One of the pleasures of going on holiday was sampling the local brew such as St Austell in Cornwall or Adnams in Suffolk. Progress on a long road journey was marked by the changing brewers’ names on the pub signs.

It wasn’t confined to the independents, either, as all the Big Six national brewers retained some kind of regional identity in their beer range and pub branding. Indeed, in the early 1980s we saw a revival of local names, something especially marked with Allied Breweries, who created dedicated pub estates for old brands such as Peter Walker, and Benskins. Overall it provided a rich tapestry of local and regional identity in beer.

Since those days, the number of independent family breweries has more than halved, with ten being lost in the North-West alone. Very often, those that remain see themselves more as pub companies that happen to have an ale brewery as a sideline. The disruption following the Beer Orders resulted in the transfer of the former tied estates of the Big Six to pub companies and the loss of their distinct identities. Increasingly, pub company outlets have come to offer the market-leading beers regardless of supplier, and the drinker of mainstream kegs and lagers has less choice overall than there was prior to 1990. .

Against this has to be set the dramatic rise in the number of microbrewers, and in the sheer variety of beer styles being produced. In theory, there is more choice than ever before, and for many beer enthusiasts it has opened up a cornucopia of delights. But each pub is limited in the number of lines it can stock, especially of cask beer, and what you’re actually going to find in the pub often becomes a lottery. You can’t exercise choice in a meaningful way if you don’t know what to expect, and in effect, “beer range varies” has in itself become a single option.

Some of the new generation of breweries have established a strong regular foothold in pubs, but there’s no sign outside to say so, and thus the visible identification between brewery and pub is broken. In 1978, if you wanted to sample an obscure beer, you might have a long journey, but you could probably find it in one of its brewer’s pubs, whereas now it can become a wild goose chase. Of course we have gained something through the massive increase in both the number of breweries and beer styles being produced. But we have also lost something valuable in the way the link between beer and place has been eroded through the decline of tied estates.

On a brighter note, it is good to see the trend being reversed in a small way by brewers such as Joules, Titanic and Wye Valley building up their own pub estates, And of course that is exactly what BrewDog are doing by opening a chain of bars in big cities majoring on their own beers.

January/February 2019

What Goes Around, Comes Around

After ripping out all the internal walls, compartmentalised pubs are coming back into fashion

SIXTY years ago, most pubs in the UK had a compartmentalised interior layout. Typically, they would have the standard demarcation between public bar and “best room” – the term “lounge” was not yet in general use. Some had a three-level division between public, saloon and lounge, with subtle gradations in clientele and ambiance between the three. Plus, there could be a whole variety of other rooms such as news rooms, tea rooms, games rooms and, at the time, ladies’ rooms.

But, since then, pretty much all this has been swept away by knocking pubs through into a single-bar layout. The main reason always given for this was that it reflected a more democratic and egalitarian society in which the old class divisions no longer applied, and there’s certainly some truth in that. But it also made pubs easier to manage and supervise, plus in the 1960s and early 70s there was the factor that public bar prices were subject to government price control, which could be circumvented by turning the entire pub into a lounge.

However, it didn’t always work out quite as intended. In many cases, rather than everyone happily mixing together in the same pub, the class division moved from one between different bars to one between different pubs. The middle classes used one pub, the working classes another. But, according to a recent report, a growing number of pub operators are realising that there is a need to cater for different audiences within a single venue, and are thus returning to the concept of pub “zoning”. It’s all too easy if you’re not careful for one aspect of a pub to take over the whole place and alienate many potential customers.

There are two obvious divisions between different customer groups that often rankle in pubs today. One is showing big-screen TV sport, which brings in a specific crowd who may well put a lot of money across the bar, but deters those who just want a quiet drink. And allowing children, while key to the concept of family dining, is something that that those who prefer an adults-only environment feel uncomfortable with. Plus, if legislation permitted, there would be a strong argument for a division between smoking and non-smoking areas.

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Cashing Up

There are dangers in the rush to relegate cash to history

A GROWING trickle of pubs and bars are deciding to go entirely cashless and stop accepting any payments in cash. Cashless payments are a growing feature of the financial landscape, and obviously it makes business sense for many pubs to accept them. But to refuse to take cash entirely is something entirely different, and comes across as an attempt to practice social selection of your clientele.

This may not be a problem in a rural gastropub, but in inner-city boozers it’s a common sight to see the pound coins being counted out on to the bar to pay for a pint. It is estimated that there are 1.6 million unbanked workers in the UK, and there must be many more pensioners and benefit claimants, not to mention people who simply prefer to avoid using cards for routine transactions. It’s effectively saying that you’re not interested in the business of the poor or the old.

There are other reasons to be wary of adopting cashless payments. They make budgeting more difficult and make you vulnerable to power cuts and computer failures. You are also putting yourself in the hands of corporations that may not have your best interests at heart. And someone is able to track exactly where you have been and what you have spent your money on. By all means use cashless payments where they are convenient, and allow them in your pubs, but there are dangers in the headlong rush to relegate cash to history.