Two Nation Stories

Me - before the beer.

After the big march in London last Saturday 12 May, my friend Geoff, with whom I have collaborated on some songs, and I went to the Moon Under Water in Leicester Square. The beers were all right, and I had a couple brewed in the East End that I doubt I'll see in Merseyside. The prices, around £3.55 a pint, although cheap in London, were dear by Southport standards - and I don't mean Southport Wetherspoons where the normal price is £2.15 a pint.

I later met my niece in the Rocket in Euston where I was paying £4.40 a pint. Again, the beers were unfamiliar and were okay, if slightly lacking in life.

Breaking my journey home at Wigan, I went into Wigan Central, a bar under the railway arches, and was charged £2.95 for a much better-kept pint of real ale served by a much friendlier barmaid. I was recognised by Zoe who knew me from the Wigan beer festival, and I saw several other familiar female faces: it was the hen night of the Central's bar manager, Jo Whalley, whom I also know from the beerfest. All were dressed to the nines with hats and fascinators (see - I know sartorial terminology). Unfortunately, I had to dash for my train and so couldn't stay to chat.

Reaching Southport, I called in for the second half of the Bothy Folk Club cèilidh, where two good Southport beers (Golden Sands and Monument) were on sale at £2.50 a pint. After the event had officially finished, I asked for a half, thinking I didn't want to detain them. "You, a half?" he said chuckling incredulously, and proceeded to pour me a pint. This happened twice: it's good to be known.

Thank goodness I don't live in London.

That T-shirt looks pink in the photo. It was bright red when I bought it.

Beer quality - 2 out of 3 ain't bad

Quality counts

The recently-published Beer Quality Report 2017 shows us where the dirtiest pints are pulled in the country: it's in the South West where 40.8% of pints were pulled through unclean lines. The best area was the North East with 29%, which represents 3 pints in every 10, which I'd say is still too high.

A North-South divide is apparent in England, with the North East, the North West and Yorkshire in the top three, and the results getting worse the further south you go. This would seem to reinforce the Northern stereotype about Southern beer.

Poor beer quality is a major issue, one that too many licensees don't take seriously enough; according to these figures, across the country, a lot of pints sold - more than 1 out of 3 - are substandard. Quality is something that beer blogger Tandleman, among others, often bangs on about, and he's completely right. Most people, faced with a substandard pint, will tend to leave it, walk out and not come back: one bad pint can result in the loss of dozens of future sales. I wrote last year in greater length about beer quality here.

It's not as though beer is cheap: at more than £3 a pint, it isn't. In 1972, bitter was 13p a pint where I lived. Adjusted for inflation using the Bank of England calculator, that's £1.57 today. There are various factors that have caused the price of beer to increase at double the rate of inflation in the intervening years, but wages certainly haven't risen at the same rate during that period. In terms of the spending power of ordinary people, beer in pubs is much dearer than it used to be. Drinkers deserve better for their hard-earned cash.

Unclean beer lines - breakdown by region 

• 29% - North East 
• 31.3%  - North West 
• 31.6% - Yorkshire  
• 31.8% - East Midlands 
• 33% - West Midlands
• 34.3% - Scotland 
• 35.8% - London 
• 37.3 % - East England 
• 38.1% - Home Counties  
• 38.8% - South East 
• 39% - Wales  
• 40.8% - South West 

These figures relate to cider, stout, premium lager, standard lager, keg beer and real ale.
The Beer Quality Report is compiled using information from Cask Marque and Vianet.

Opinion becomes propaganda

I was quite surprised to see in the pub trade magazine, the Morning Advertiser, two articles about the statement by Pete Brown that he has mostly stopped drinking cask ale. One article was by Brown himself, and the other referred to the response by CAMRA national chair, Colin Valentine. Why the big fuss? Partly because Pete Brown is a regular beer columnist in the Advertiser, and partly because he has won awards from the beer writers' club, the British Guild of Beer Writers, including in 2016 Beer Writer of the Year for the third time.

Apparently Brown is fed up of getting poor real ale, which according to his article happens all the time. My thought is quite simple: he must be choosing the wrong pubs because what he's written doesn't reflect my own experience. Real ale is the one expanding part of the beer market; if he were right about the state of the product, I'd expect sales to be contracting.

I'm wondering whether this is another sideswipe at CAMRA, an organisation that Brown has consistently criticised, along with its members, even though he did actually join in 2012, as he wrote in this mea culpa piece at the time. Even as he signed up, he wrote about the "social [CAMRA] stereotype of the socially inadequate, visibly outlandish beer nerd, with his big belly, beard, opaque glasses, black socks and sandals, and leather tankard on his belt." That's a bit rich coming from someone with uncombed hair, a scrappy beard and untidy clothes. Whatever your views on Roger Protz, another prominent beer writer, you certainly can't describe his appearance in such terms.

I once took a beer blogger to task because I felt a description he gave of an unreasonable pub customer was implausible; I explained why I thought the described behaviour could not have occurred. He admitted the incident described had not actually happened, but was an amalgam of two or three separate incidents. So, in other words, it was made up, including the quoted dialogue. I think this matters. If he'd said that it was a hypothetical example of the kind of behaviour he'd come across, then there could have been no complaint - although in that particular case it would still have seemed improbable to me. Even hypothetical examples should seem credible.

I wonder whether Brown has done something similar. In my view, his antipathy to CAMRA has spilled over into his articles. In one, he described how he was drinking in a pub when a customer went to the bar, said he was a CAMRA member and suggested that he should get free beer because without CAMRA, the pub wouldn't be serving real ale. Even worse, he went and joined a friend and they began swapping videos about trains. Two stereotypes in one anecdote: a boorish real ale drinker with a sense of entitlement - and a train spotter to boot!

Another alleged incident was at a dinner put on by, I think, a brewery where the beer on the table Brown was sitting at ran out, causing a CAMRA member to complain loudly. The host went and brought some bottles from his own supply and placed them on the table, for which the CAMRA member gave no thanks, proceeding to claim them all for himself and not letting anyone else near them. Loud-mouthed, rude and greedy all in one!

I have no way of disproving such stories, but I find it difficult to understand why I, as someone who joined CAMRA when Brown was doing his 'O' levels, have never come across such bad behaviour by CAMRA members. In my experience, they tend to be just as well- or, if you prefer, just as bad-mannered as the general public. The difference is that I don't have a well-documented antipathy to CAMRA, which I'd be the first to agree isn't a perfect organisation, but then neither is any other on the planet.

In his Morning Advertiser article, Brown refers to "campaigners who insist cask ale is the highest quality beer available, while simultaneously demanding that it is cheaper than any other beer on the bar". Which particular campaigners might these be? Certainly CAMRA has campaigned for cuts in beer duty, but I can't recall any campaigns demanding that licensees cut their prices. Most CAMRA members would understand that pub profit margins on real ale are very slim. If price were their only consideration, then surely they'd all be drinking only in Wetherpoons and similar lower price establishments; this is quite clearly not the case, Wetherspoons vouchers notwithstanding.

Writing about beer - as in writing about music, come to think of it - should be a combination of facts and opinions. While accepting that genuine errors can occur, what you understand to be factual can shape your opinions, but opinions - or prejudices - shouldn't modify your perception of the facts, or else you'll be producing propaganda, not information.

Fined for hazy beer

I went into the Cock and Rabbit in Southport last weekend where there were two beers by Southport Craft Brewery; both pumpclips stated that the beer was meant to be hazy. They tasted fine, but that message got me wondering whether we place too much importance upon clarity in our beers. Even so, I hadn't thought to write about the subject until I came across this article posted today on the BBC website.

As is well-known among informed drinkers, beers are often cleared using isinglass derived from the swim bladder of fish, usually sturgeon, although not the Scottish variety. Cask ale cleared this way is not suitable for vegetarians, who can't easily work out what beers are suitable for them due to the exemption alcoholic drinks have from nutritional labelling rules.

According to the 2017 CAMRA Good Beer Guide, increasing numbers of brewers are looking at vegetarian-friendly alternatives to isinglass to clear their beers, such as products derived from seaweed, Irish moss (a small sea algae), or silica gel. The Centre for Bio-energy and Brewing Science at the University of Nottingham is investigating using the hop plant as a clearing agent. Guinness announced last year that it would be phasing out the use of isinglass, and quite a few smaller breweries already advertise their vegetarian status. It seems to me that a momentum is building up that will in time render the use of isinglass obsolete, and perhaps even unacceptable, but we're not there yet.

The question remains: should non-vegetarians be bothered about isinglass? I utterly loathe any form of fish or seafood and consequently notice fishy smells even when others can't, but despite that strong aversion, I cannot detect any such flavours in beers where isinglass is used. I've always assumed that it doesn't affect the taste of beer, but GBG editor Roger Protz quotes the opinion of Justin Hawke of Bristol's Moor Beer Brewery who doesn’t use finings at all because he thinks they remove some of the flavour from beer. As a former fairly large-scale home brewer who has made beer both with and without isinglass, I'm not convinced that's true. However, as there are now alternatives to isinglass, I think I'd prefer it if fish didn't have to be killed simply to help clear my pint.

Some people argue further: that we should abandon our expectation that beer should be clear, but I'm not convinced by that either. I'm prepared to accept that certain types of beer are likely to have a haze, but I don't agree that we should expect beer to have a haze as a matter of course. My own brewing experience was that beers will clear without finings, although they might take slightly longer.

Aesthetically, I like the appearance of a clear pint. I understand what some drinkers mean when they say they drink with their mouth, not their eyes, and while I'll go along with this to a point, it is not a general truth. If we don't like the look of what is put before us to eat or drink, we usually don't touch it, which is why presentation is so important in restaurants: a lot of people expect beer always to be clear, which is not unreasonable with most beers anyway, and if that's their preference, they won't find a 'cloudy' pint appealing.

My main concern about the hazy pint is that it can be used as an excuse for badly-kept beer, or beer that is being served too soon. A while ago, I was told that a beer I was familiar with was meant to be hazy when I knew very well that it wasn't. A drinker who is given a poor quality, hazy pint with the excuse that it's meant to be like that might well decide that real ale is not for them and switch to another drink, or perhaps take their custom elsewhere. We all know it happens.

If a beer is meant to be clear, I prefer it to be clear. I'll accept a haze as long as the flavour isn't impaired, especially if it's a style where lack of clarity is not seen as a fault. I am, however, concerned that haziness can be used as an excuse for serving beer prematurely, not looking after it properly, or even foisting beer that's past its best on customers. In such cases, drinking with your eyes is eminently sensible.

Quality Counts

A popular refrain among some real ale drinkers is quality. In a way, this is obvious: poor quality doesn't attract customers, but real ale is different from many other drinks and foodstuffs in that the vendor is an important part of the process. It's not an exaggeration to say that knowing how to prepare, keep and serve real ale after it has been delivered to the pub can make the difference between a good pint and an undrinkable one. It's also important to know when to stop serving it once it has passed its best.

This latter point can be a major part of any problems concerning quality. To stop using a barrel which isn't empty involves a financial loss; the beer is usually just poured down the drain, and the cost comes out of the licensee's pocket. The temptation is to leave it on longer to squeeze out a few more pints, but a poor quality product will not encourage repeat purchases, so the problem is likely to get worse.

So why might beers go off?

• There simply isn't a market for real ale in the pub.

A few years ago, I asked a licensee why she had stopped selling real ale, and she replied that we CAMRA members hadn't supported it. I didn't ask her how she would know they hadn't, seeing that not all CAMRA members conform to an obvious stereotype, or have CAMRA stamped on their foreheads. Instead I simply explained there weren't enough CAMRA members in the area to keep every real ale outlet going, and that she needed to build up her own custom for real ale if she wanted to serve it. If a pub does try that through publicity, announced launches, perhaps even tastings, but still gets nowhere, then perhaps it's time to give up on the idea. That might seem like heresy on a blog partly devoted to real ale, but rather than serve real ale that's off, it's better to have none at all.  

• There are too many real ales on.

A long row of handpumps seems to gladden the hearts of some real ale drinkers, and if all the beers are selling enough, it is a welcome sight. If, as can happen, the turnover isn't sufficient to keep all the beers turning over quickly enough, then you'll end up with either a flat, flavourless pint or, worse, one that smells like vinegar. The solution is to reduce the number of handpumps operating. With better quality beer, the sales may well climb in time and those spare handpumps might come back into use when the pub has a sufficient market to justify using them.

• The pub doesn't know how to keep real ale.

There are other reasons why failures in beer quality occur, such as it being served too cold or too warm, whether the lines are cleaned often enough, and so on, but the cost of serving sub-standard beer for a pub can be considerable. The Cask Marque’s Beer Quality Survey of 2016 said that 61% of people would not drink poor quality beer if they were served it in a pub; instead they'd complain about it and tell their friends, which is not enviable publicity. The answer is surely refresher training.

I've had a couple of undrinkable pints in recent months in two different pubs; in both cases, it was because it was the end of the barrel, and both pints were changed without any problem. This has been my experience for a long time now, and I can't remember the last time I had an argument about taking beer back. Some drinkers say that returning a pint leads to replies from the pub such as: "No one else has complained," and "It's real ale; it's supposed to taste like that." Obviously I can't contradict what they say, but for my part, I last had the former response at least 25 years ago, and I don't recall hearing the latter at all.

Now and then, I read of sarcastic comments addressed to bar staff about unsatisfactory beers, such as, "If I wanted vinegar, I'd have asked for chips," or, in relation to the size of the head, "I didn't ask for ice cream" (or shaving foam, or similar). Some people seem so proud of their witticisms that occasionally they send them to the letters page of What's Brewing, the CAMRA newspaper, or record them on social media. Here's an idea: be polite and friendly when returning a pint and don't raise your voice so the whole room can hear - that's just bad manners. If you do face resistance, then that would be the time to get stroppy.

One response to a bad beer that I don't understand is simply to leave it, walk out and then whinge afterwards - often on social media - without having given the pub a chance to address the problem. If they don't deal with your complaint well at the time, that's a different matter and they deserve to be criticised accordingly; otherwise, be fair. I can only conclude that some real ale drinkers have money to burn if they can afford to abandon something that can cost more than £3 a pint without even a murmur of complaint.

As has been said by Tandleman and Curmudgeon, who have both covered this theme recently, you don't go into a pub for an argument, just for a convivial night out. I agree, but on the odd occasion I've politely taken a pint back, there hasn't been a problem - certainly not an argument. Perhaps I've just been lucky, but I doubt that's the reason.

Second best place to have a beer

Both of our local papers, the Visiter and the Champion, have been excitedly reporting that in the Beer Quality Report 2016 produced by Cask Marque, Southport has been declared the second best place in the country to have a pint. We lost the top spot to Doncaster. Here are the rankings:

Most likely to get a good pint
1. Doncaster 2. Southport 3. Chesterfield 4. Warrington 5. Derby

Least likely to get a good pint
1. Reading 2. Hereford 3. Plymouth 4. Andover 5. Swindon

The report goes into some details as to why failures in beer quality occur, such as it being served too cold or too warm, whether the lines are cleaned often enough, too many real ales on for the level of throughput, and so on, some of which I've touched on before, and which have been written about in more detail by other beer bloggers such as Curmudgeon and - especially - Tandleman. An interesting fact is that the region that scores worst for beer quality is the one where it is most expensive: the South East.

A couple of quotes from the report:

"In my opinion there are far too many pubs who are happy to let the customer do their quality control for them and just wait for beer to be handed back when deemed unsatisfactory, but how many customers say nothing and never return?" Neil Bain, Brewery Director of Joules.

"The industry could be losing up to £333 million of profit per annum through poor beer quality management." Pail Nunny, Director, Cask Marque.

I have very occasionally been asked my opinion by licensees about real ales. One point I have made is that is better to have fewer served well than many that are mediocre. I do not claim this as a profound observation; it simply makes no business sense to overstock a product with a very limited shelf life.

For the moment, we Southport drinkers can enjoy our place in the sun, while it lasts.

Visiter report here. Champion report here. The Champion even sent out one of its reporters to test the beer in a local pub; nice work if you can get it.

Pouring the slops back into the beer

An autovac beer pump, with the pipe
from the drip tray to the line clearly visible

For a long time, it was often claimed that the beer in pub drip trays was poured into the mild, as it was usually the darkest beer. Although this was dismissed at the time by some licensees and even some drinkers as a malicious rumour, it was often true, frequently done on the instructions of the brewers who used to own most of our pubs. (Other money-saving measures they might recommend included removing undamaged slices of lemon from used glasses for recycling in later drinks.) By the time the beer was poured into the mild, it could have been sitting in open steel buckets for quite a few hours, plenty of time to be contaminated and then infect the whole barrel. No wonder cask ale in general, and mild in particular, didn't have a particularly good reputation in the 1950s and 1960s: keg with its characteristic consistency must have been very welcome, despite never being better than mediocre. Mediocre is preferable to bad. If we could travel back to those times in the TARDIS, while I'm sure we'd find some good cask beers, I'm certain we'd be disappointed with much of what was on offer.

Another practice I have never been able to understand is when drinkers insist on keeping the same dirty glass, even though an identical clean glass is available. I can't see how traces of old beer and head in the glass will enhance your next pint, and the accumulation of fingerprints on the outside over an evening won't improve its appearance either, although I can see why pubs might have liked having fewer glasses to wash. It's an utterly pointless ritual that could pass on infections when the nozzle is inserted into the beer in a dirty glass and then into the next customer's beer. Unlikely, you might say, but what if the previous customer had a dripping cold or a cold sore? What if they had a more serious illness that can be transmitted by bodily fluids? "Unlikely" isn't good enough when the simple expedient of a fresh glass removes the risk altogether.

I also recall that pubs would pour beer from drip trays into pint glasses and keep them under the bar by the relevant handpump. If you'd ask for a pint, they'd lift out the partly filled glass, top it up and sell it to you as a fresh pint. They might say that they'd just poured this in error for another customer, and was that okay? Until I learnt better, I used to say yes. Once I realised the trick, having witnessed it a few times, I developed the habit of leaning right over the bar to be certain a clean, empty glass was being used.

With the modern emphasis on health and safety, you'd think such practices would have died out, and they mostly have. One exception still exists: the autovac. I was reminded of this device's existence by a recent post on Tandleman's beer blog. The autovac automatically drains the beer in the drip tray back to the lines for recycling into the next customer's pint. I regard this as a disgusting practice as the beer will have run over the pourer's hands and the outside of the glass before reaching the drip tray. If just one dirty glass is reused, the beer is contaminated. But it goes further than that: the beer will be contaminated anyway if the bar staff's hands aren't spotlessly clean, which is impossible unless they wash their hands every single time they use the till, handle money, wipe tables and collect dirty glasses. If a barman dipped his finger into your pint as he gave it to you, you'd probably refuse to accept it, but that is precisely what happens with the autovac.

I'm surprised the autovac isn't illegal. I understand that pubs where it is still used, which are mostly in Yorkshire, are obliged to use a clean glass every time, but that only addresses one of the problems, and not even that if busy bar staff succumb to a drinker's demand to reuse the same glass. I've been even more surprised when some Yorkshire real ale drinkers, even CAMRA members, have defended the autovac, seeing it as essential to the alleged unique qualities of the Yorkshire pint. This is nonsense: health objections aside, I am utterly unable to see how returning beer that has already been poured, and thus lost some of its condition, into fresh beer will improve the quality of the next pint, and I've never seen any explanation how it would. In fact, you'd get a pint that, despite a thick, foamy head, has less condition, i.e. it's more flat. But then, there's none so blind as those who will not see.

Goodbye Cains? Probably

When the old Higsons brewery was closed down by Whitbread more than twenty years ago, there was a genuine sadness among local beer drinkers because everyone thought that was the end of a long tradition of brewing in the city. When a Danish brewing company reopened the brewery and relaunched the old Cains name, there was a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm and - pleasingly - the beers were good. Unfortunately, the company became loss making, but was saved from closure by the Dusanj brothers. Initially this was something that was welcomed, especially as the brothers announced their commitment to real ales: I recall that at the CAMRA AGM in Southport in 2004, one of the Dusanj brothers gave a speech and a powerpoint presentation reiterating that commitment, declaring that Cains was a friend of CAMRA. What happened a couple of years later I've copied from Wikipedia:

A reverse takeover of ... pub operator Honeycombe Leisure PLC was agreed by the company’s board in June 2007, giving Cains access to Honeycombe's 109 outlets ... On 7 August 2008 the company was placed in administration following problems caused by an unpaid tax bill. Negotiations with its bank failed to reach a conclusion that would have avoided administration. The brewery and eight original pubs have since bought back by the Dusanj brothers.

They had overreached themselves and, as bad creditors, they had to buy their ingredients wherever they could for cash - credit was not an option. The end result was that their beers were brewed on the cheap with whatever ingredients they could lay their hands on, and quality went through the floor. Beers that I had previously enjoyed, such as Cains FA, Sundowner and Raisin Beer, became utterly mediocre.

Cains has now mothballed its brewery, pending the ambitious redevelopment plan that I wrote about here. They have completely abandoned the supermarket own brand trade, once crucial to its financial stability, but now loss-making, and are looking to find someone else to brew their real ales under contract while they redevelop the site. 38 jobs have been lost, but with the promise that their plans will create 800 new jobs; the Liverpool Echo reports on the story here. Unfortunately the track record of this management team cannot inspire the people of Liverpool with confidence. The worry is that, once they have contracted out the production of the beers, will they ever come back to Liverpool? A bigger worry for Cains must be whether anyone will want them back? Liverpool now has several small breweries producing beer that is far superior to anything from the Cains stable. Just owning the old Higsons brewery site will no longer ensure loyalty to Cains beers, whether they are brewed in Liverpool or elsewhere under contract. Closing their brewing operation down and getting their beers brewed under licence is precisely the wrong thing to be doing. Having beer brewed under contract elsewhere doesn't inspire confidence among real ale drinkers: outsourcing mediocre brews is a double risk. To regain credibility among beer drinkers, they should be developing good recipes locally.

My view is that this may well be the end of the line for Cains as a brewer. I can't claim to be surprised, but I am disappointed that yet again Cains seems to have made a complete hash of running its business.

CAMRA's conceit

In most editions of the Good Beer Guide, you'll read something like, "if a pub landlord cares about the quality of the beer in the cellar, then everything else - the welcome, the food, the wine and ... the toilets - will fall into line. In keg-only pubs, on the other hand, you are likely to find micro-waved food, stale sandwiches, Blue Nun and Lambrusco, and toilets that answer to the name of bogs." (2003 GBG)

On what planet is the writer of this off-repeated tosh living on? I'm sure many people have been in pubs with great beer but no wine to speak of, a couple of stale clingfilm-wrapped sandwiches and ancient, unhygienic toilets. I also know I've been in keg pubs where everything was fine except the beer. One revered Liverpool pub has the wash basin in the short passage that leads to the gents, with the hand dryer over it; the dryer is inaccessible while the wash basin is in use. Using these means no one can get in or out of the gents, so if you value hygiene on a busy Friday night, you can cause quite a hold-up in both directions. On my last visit to the Lower Angel in Warrington, I enjoyed a great pint but found there was no water in the gents, which any case were well overdue for refurbishment. In general, I've often heard women complain about the state of the toilets in real ale pubs.

In a real ale pub in Uppermill, I waited for an hour for a lasagne, only to find it was still frozen inside when it arrived. Although the beer was nice, that food certainly didn't "fall into line." In Ormskirk last Friday, I went into a pub that sold real ale, had a horrible decor from an expensive but utterly tasteless refurbishment, and uncontrolled children running wild. I turned around and left.

So where does this nonsense come from? It could be that some drinkers can't see past the beer, but I think it goes further than that: it's really a form of PR trying to convince us all that real ale pubs are the best in every respect, and that keg pubs are always the poor relations. As a member, I do expect CAMRA to promote real ale, but talking up real ale pubs with such demonstrably false claims does the campaign no favours. Whether a pub is well-run or not has little to do with the type of beer it sells, and wishing won't alter that. Let's just stick to what we cask beer drinkers all know is true - that real ale is the best and most natural form of beer - and not let drinking it blind us to reality.