AB InBev to offload Bass

The Times has reported that the famous Bass brand, along with the Boddington and Flowers brands, are likely to be sold off by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the biggest brewing conglomerate in the world, which apparently wants to concentrate on its international brands, such as Budweiser, Stella Artois and Becks. The Times describes Bass as "the beer that Britain forgot". I don't believe this is true.

Real ale drinkers remember Bass with fondness from its glory days when it was one of the best-selling cask beers in the country, and was one of the few stronger beers available when most bitters were just session beers of around 3.5%. I remember going to the White Star in Liverpool (around the corner from the Cavern Club) just to drink the Bass. This pub had an enormous, beautiful, old Bass mirror in the back room, completely covering the rear wall, which was accidentally smashed recently by a drunk. Bass was available in Southport in the Rabbit in Manchester Road, and an old family friend who lived in Formby used to come to the Rabbit just for the Bass. 

I was a student near Warrington, a town awash with mediocre Greenall Whitley beer, and my mates and I sometimes used to catch the train to the first pub we could find that sold Boddingtons. Although of ordinary strength, it was very drinkable with its straw colour, very rare in those days, and good flavour.

Like many old beer brands, Bass isn't a patch on what it used to be. I read in a CAMRA publication about 20 years ago that with Bass, you used to expect the Rolls Royce of beer but it had become just another Ford Cortina ~ the decline in Bass has clearly been a drawn out process. The current owner has allowed the brand to wither on the vine by neglecting quality and failing to promote it properly. Boddingtons, once a well-loved Manchester beer, has similarly been allowed to slump, and far from catching trains to drink it, I wouldn't cross the road for it now. Britons didn't forget about these beers; they simply stopped drinking products that had become shadows of their former selves. Both beers are brewed under contract nowadays, Bass by Marstons of Burton and Boddingtons by Hydes of Manchester.

If you've got around £15 million to spare, you can buy the brands for the UK market, but AB InBev will keep international rights and the famous Bass red triangle trade mark, which was the first trade mark ever registered in the UK. It's difficult to see what might attract someone to buy these brands, which have no longer have much credibility with real ale drinkers, and have long lost their former mass appeal.

The picture is "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère" by Edouard Manet. A bottle of Bass can be seen in the bottom right hand corner, and less obviously in the bottom left. You can click on the picture to enlarge it.
The slogan on the pub ashtray is definitely from a former era, as is the ashtray itself.

Pub news around the town

I went for a stroll the other night along Eastbank Street, Southport, where I used to drink regularly, firstly in the Old Ship in the 80s, then in the Wellington in the 90s. Bernie Blaney and I used to run a folk club in the Old Ship in a good little function room upstairs. Unfortunately attendances were never very good, so we pulled the plug on it in 1985, but I continued to go to the pub as it had become my local and I'd made quite a few friends there. It was a Walkers pub in those days and was noted for its good beer, especially the Ind Coope Burton Ale, or in winter the Walkers Warrington Ale, which was wonderful.  It hasn't sold real ale for a while and was closed down in February. It has reopened, but when I looked in there was no real ale, and the handpumps have been removed. I think that constitutes a statement of intent, but it's better open without real ale than closed altogether.

The Volunteer just a few yards away is a Thwaites pub. It was the last pub that I knew of to serve real ale through electric pumps, but now there is a handpump serving Thwaites Bomber, perfectly acceptable on my visit. This is a popular local and has regular music of the old-fashioned pub singer style, plus karaoke, which really isn't my cup of tea. However, they were queuing to go on, so it's popular with its own locals. There are murals of 50s rock & rollers and 60s pop stars on the walls.

The Wellington on the other side of the street used to be a Tetley Festival Ale House, which meant they filled it with old tat which inevitably gathered loads of dust, stripped out the carpets, wallpaper and comfortable seats and painted all the usual quotations on the walls. They also marked up the price of the beers. I fell out with it when they installed TVs in every part of the pub, often on different channels, and had the jukebox on at the same time. However, despite that, the beer was always well kept. Nowadays, another refurbishment down the line, the tat has been removed, but so has the cask beer.

So, out of the three pubs in Eastbank Street that all used to serve real ale, only the Volunteer continues to do so.

Elsewhere, the Rabbit on Manchester Road remains closed after two months, and I can see no sign of activity there. I remember when this was a Bass house, serving the famous draught Bass and Bass mild. I often used to pop in for a pint or two on my way into town.

The Albert on London Street has reopened and I learned at the CAMRA meeting the other night that it is serving Black Sheep Bitter and Timothy Taylor's Landlord. I also learned that the Baron's Bar has settled down to 5 regulars beers: Moorhouses Pride of Pendle, Tetley, Black Sheep, a Southport beer, Flag and Turret (the house beer) and a changing range of 5 guests. They usually have a real cider on too.

Massive bonuses for AB InBev executives

AB InBev, makers of Bass, Bodddingtons, Stella, Becks, Budweiser, Tennents, and Castlemaine XXXX, among many others, are planning to award top executives excessive bonuses, such as 70 million euros (£65.5 million) to CEO Carlos Brito. Rather makes our expenses-grubbing politicians look like lightweights, doesn't it? At the same time, cost-cutting and staff reductions are the order of the day further down the ladder ~ naturally. Understandably, workers are up in arms about this, and so should drinkers be, although I can't see swillers of bottled Budweiser rice beer combining to form an InBev consumer action group.

If nothing else, this shows that it's not just tax and greedy PubCos pushing up prices. Thank goodness AB InBev don't make much that's worth drinking.