Southport Beer & Cider Festival 2018

It's back after a two-year absence caused by some local whingers who moaned that they didn't like this venue and wanted another in the town centre - not that they had any suggestions themselves, of course. As this is the only suitable central venue, the festival has returned there. Tickets here - free admission for CAMRA members.

3rd Hillside Cider Festival

I've received this message from Andrew of Grasshopper fame about this forthcoming local festival in Southport:

"The 3rd Hillside Cider Festival is at The Grasshopper on Sandon Road, Hillside, Southport from 24th to 26th August and will feature 30 of the best Real Ciders and Perries from around the UK.

"We are pleased to have the CAMRA Champion Cider of Britain 2018 - Harry's Scrummage and also the CAMRA Champion Perry of Britain - Nempnett's Piglet Perry. We also have a range of fruit ciders including Rhubarb, Strawberry, Lemon, Ginger and Pineapple and many more. There will be a barbecue with a range of specialist sausages and entertainment in the evenings.

"The festival starts at 7pm on Friday 24th and runs until 10:30pm on Sunday 26th or until the cider runs out. The Grasshopper is a short walk from Hillside train station and is on the 47 bus route."

A true story

Not the dream woman!

I had a strange dream last night. A woman was holding up a Higsons "Famous Old Higsonians" beer mat with a sign that said: "Will exchange for sex."

This puzzled me for a while.

Then the truth dawned on me: until I'd had that dream, I had no idea that I had such an unrequited, deep-seated and subliminal desire to own Old Higsonian beer mats.

Peaky Blinders, Churchtown

Peaky Blinders, Churchtown

I decided to hop on the 49 bus to Churchtown to have a look at - and a drink in – the new branch of Peaky Blinders which opened in March 2018 in an old bank. It has an L-shaped bar with modern furnishings, including some tall tables and stools, and large windows overlooking the road. It is light and airy, with walls decorated with a reproduction of old newspaper adverts and cuttings.

There is a outdoor drinking terrace on two levels to the front where smoking is permitted. A disability ramp can be reached on the right hand side of the building as you face it, where there is also a cash machine, a relic from its days as a bank. One thing I didn't realise until my visit is that they offer accommodation.

It has four handpumps which, when I called in, were serving Timothy Taylor's Landlord, Black Sheep Bitter, Cross Bay Blonde and Bowness Bay Amazon Amber. I found all to be in good condition. This range does change, although I was told the Taylor's is often on.

Non-real beers included Löwenbräu and Weihenstephaner Bavarian-style Weissbier. They have a choice of wines and their own range of spiced gin, rum and whisky; I noticed on the hot day I was there that various gin drinks piled up with ice were flying over the bar. They serve food until at least 7.00 pm: reasonably-priced light bites, paninis, and cheese or meat platters.

When I rolled up, the friendly bar staff were cheerfully singing along to Beatles songs on the bar's sound system, although other musical eras are available. There is a television and free WiFi for customers; families, including your canine pal, are welcome.

Peaky Blinders is at 145 Cambridge Road, PR9 7LR, close to the 49 bus route and the buses on Cambridge Road. Its opening hours are 10am to 11.30pm every day. Website.

This is one of a series of articles that I write for the CAMRA column in our local papers, the Southport Visiter and Ormskirk Advertiser. Previous write-ups are here.

Supping nostalgia

An original R Cains poster

I see that the Cains name is to be revived with a new brewery set up within the old Higsons Brewery building where the most recent incarnation of Cains was brewed until 2013. Its disappearance wasn't much mourned, following as it did a drastic and sudden drop in quality; I wrote about it at the time here.

An entrepreneur called Andrew Mikhail, owner of bars and hotels in Merseyside including Punch Tarmey's, has acquired the name and states that the brewery will create 200 jobs and "partly model itself" on the Guinness Brewery visitor attraction in Dublin. If the 200 jobs do materialise, it would be a fairly sizeable operation.

The big old Higsons brewery building, Grade II listed, is being developed into a brewery village, which I wrote about in 2013 here. Mr Mikhail has given no indication yet whether he will revive the previous Cains beers or start from scratch with new recipes, as the latest manifestation of Higsons has done. I tried one of the new Higsons beers recently and didn't think it was anything special.

I'd be very surprised if this announcement will engender much excitement locally, but I'll save my judgement until I've tasted the product. This will be the second revival of the Cains name. The original Cains ceased to be brewed in Liverpool in the 1920s, but the name was called out of retirement in 1991. As for Higsons, we are now on the fourth version, if you include the original that was destroyed by Whitbread. I wonder how many times you can resuscitate a brand before its credibility evaporates completely?

Generally I don't see much point in using an old name and producing beers that have no resemblance to the originals; it's simply cashing in on brand nostalgia, but I suppose there's no harm in it because your beers will have to stand or fall on their quality: people won't sup solely for nostalgic reasons indefinitely.

Real ale in Southport - 1985 and now

While sorting out some books in preparation for a house move, I came across a 'Merseyside Guide To Real Ale', published in 1985, a booklet I'd completely forgotten about. It cost 50p (£1.53 now, so it was quite a bargain) and is a fairly slim volume which could easily slip into a coat pocket. As was usual in those days, the pub descriptions were rather sketchy, but I think it's safe to assume, in an age when beer choices rarely changed in pubs, that the beer situation was accurately described. This was published four years before the Beer Orders which turned the pub world in its head.

Looking at Southport, where I lived then as now, there were 25 pubs, bars, clubs and hotels listed as serving real ale. There were quite a few more non-real ale pubs, of course. In contrast, off the top of my head I have counted 41 outlets that currently serve real ale in the same area, and there may be one or two others that have slipped my mind.

Most of the beers sold in pubs were from the brewery that owned them and, as the chart shows, most pubs had only one or two real ales on. Nowhere had more than four real ales, and only one real cider was listed (Bulmers Traditional). In contrast, serving four or more real ales is quite commonplace in the town nowadays, with a few venues hitting the eight to eleven range. Real cider is still fairly uncommon in Southport, but at least we can do better than just one.

Unusual beers for the time in this area included:

• McEwans 70/-
• McEwans 80/-
• Youngers No. 3
• Boddingtons Bitter
• Marstons Pedigree
• Ruddles County
• Wilsons Original Bitter

All the rest were standard house beers from Allied Breweries, Bass, Burtonwood, Whitbread, and Matthew Brown/Theakstons. I know there was a couple of Greenall Whitley houses but I presume none sold real ale. As variety goes, this all looks fairly tame today, even the comparatively 'unusual' choices, although it's worth noting that in 1985, Pedigree, County and Boddingtons were much more highly rated than they are now.

It strikes me that, in all the doom and gloom over pub closures - and some venues listed in this guide have since been lost - we may forget that overall the situation is a lot healthier in terms of choices of beers and places to drink them than ever before, largely due to the numbers of micro-breweries and the rise of micropubs and other bars serving real ale.

I am not blasé about losing traditional pubs, and I know that some people consider the market is over-saturated with breweries and micropubs that may not survive in the long term, but despite all that, I can simply say that I much prefer to drink in today's Southport than that of 1985.

It's a gas!

Disappointed gas cylinders await the call

In case you haven't noticed, there is Europe-wide carbon dioxide shortage. I've been reading that brewers are running low or have run out of products because of the shortage; some have temporarily had to stop brewing and packaging altogether.

Some pubs and bars have been complaining that they cannot receive deliveries of popular beers such as John Smiths Extra Smooth, Amstel Lager and Fosters. It's not just the big boys who are affected: one craft brewery was uncertain they could get through the following week, while another has stopped packaging some of its beers to allow the brewery to continue working.

Any pubs and bars affected must be spitting feathers: it's been sunny and the World Cup is on - perfect conditions for beer sales. It's not just keg bitters, stouts, lagers, ciders and craft beers that are affected; the same problem applies to soft drinks as they too are served using CO2.

As a real ale drinker, I'm not too bothered in the short term for obvious reasons, but if this goes on, drinkers like me will be affected. As the Good Book* says: "Pubs shall not live on real ale sales alone". As we all know, keg products usually constitute a large percentage of a pub's turnover.

I'm reminded of the power cuts in the 1970s when pubs were lit by candles and none of the electric beer dispensers worked. Only in the very small number of pubs that had retained their handpumps could you still get a pint of draught beer when the power went off; the same applied to the only two pubs that I knew were still serving beer by gravity dispense at the time.

* GBG.

Gig in the Guest House

Pleased to say that I've been booked - 

at fairly short notice, but better than never!

Three Lions in the pub

I have just written an article for the local papers about watching the World Cup in pubs; it was largely derived from this article on the British Beer & Pub Association website. My article, like the original upon which it was based, was quite upbeat, but in reality I'll be avoiding any pub where football is being shown. I'm simply not a fan.

Someone suggested to me that I was being slightly two-faced in writing positively about something I didn't really care for, but I don't agree. The articles in the paper are not about me or my preferences, but are intended to push real ale and pub-going to the general reader. My sole criterion when writing about a pub or bar is whether the real ale is in good nick, or at least reasonably so. Thus far I have changed my mind and decided not to write about four pubs after I had tried their beer. If the pint I am served is acceptable, I will write about it, even if the pub or the beer is not to my personal taste - again, it's not about me. 

As for sport in pubs, if fans can be encouraged to go to the pub and share something of a collective experience instead of sitting at home going through a slab of lager alone, it might conceivably encourage them to go at other times, although I understand there is little evidence that such a cross-over actually happens. While football fans watching in a pub can be very noisy and take up a lot of space, some don't drink very much while the game is on; one licensee told me that a few can make a single pint last the whole match, and vanish as soon as it's over. That to me does not look like getting into the spirit of things.

However, if my little article encourages just a few more people to watch football and drink beer in the pub rather than at home, it will will have done its job.

An alcohol-free GBBF?

I've received this in an e-mail from CAMRA about the GBBF:

Thanks to Dutch-based Braxzz Brewery we're offering an alcohol-free beer range for the very first time at the festival. A recent newcomer into the alcohol-free & low-alcohol category, they'll be bringing their alcohol-free IPA, Amber Ale and the world’s very first alcohol-free porter at 0.0% ABV. You will have a chance to sample this and the rest of their core range throughout the festival week, so don’t miss out.

I have nothing in principle against the idea of alcohol-free beer being available, but the cost of a day ticket to the GBBF is £11 (plus booking fee) or £14 on the door; I really do wonder how many people are going to pay that much to enter a festival just to drink alcohol-free beer?

What's a reasonable price for a pint?

This is from an article I wrote for the CAMRA column of the local papers. Text in italics was left out of the article as printed for space reasons.

The internet market research company YouGov asked more than 40,000 people what they thought would be a reasonable price for a pint in the pub and compared the responses to the actual prices. Unsurprisingly, the responses across the country vary as much as pub prices do. Nationally, the average price that we think is reasonable is £3.00, 60p less than the actual average price.

The biggest gap between actual price and what people thought reasonable was in Surrey, home of the dearest beer in Britain at £4.40: they thought £3.36 would be reasonable. At the other extreme, Herefordshire, where the actual average price is £3.31, people thought a reasonable price would be only 30p less. Here in Lancashire and Merseyside, the gap between actual price and what drinkers considered reasonable is 70p. 

The price of bitter in 1972 was around 13p to 14p, at least in this part of the country. This is equivalent to £1.75 to £1.88 today, using an inflation calculator. Obviously, beer costs considerably more than that today, even in places like Wetherspoons, so the price we pay now for a pint cannot be attributed to inflation alone. A major additional factor was the massive sell-off of pub tied estates after the Beer Orders of 1989.

When the big breweries sold off most of their huge pub estates, pub companies (pubcos) moved in to hoover them up. They paid for the pubs by mortgaging them to the hilt. The immense debts they acquired in this way were made much worse by the financial crash of 2008. The pubcos survived, being too big to fail – if they went under, so would the mortgage providers. 

To service their debts, pubcos told their pubs that they had to get most, if not all, their supplies through them, imposing huge mark-ups along the way. Several local licensees have told me in confidence that the mark-up on a cask of beer can be between 33% to 50% above the price on the open market. Licensees who look elsewhere for supplies risk losing their livelihood, so the cost has to be passed on to the customer.

A few pubcos such as Wetherspoons have a much more sensible business model, not saddled with gigantic debts, which is why their prices can be lower. Also, independent pubs and bars can also charge less for similar reasons, but regrettably most of our traditional pubs are now owned by pubcos.

This is adapted from one of a series of articles that I write for the CAMRA column in our local papers, the Southport Visiter and Ormskirk Advertiser. Some previous articles are here.

Beer Street 2018

The Beer Street festival returns to Southport town centre from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 June. Described as a "Cask Ale & Craft Beer Street Party", it will be once again hosted by the Tap & Bottles, Cambridge Arcade, Southport, close to Lord Street and the railway station.

They're hoping to build on last year's success by providing a huge selection of more than 80 cask ales, keg beers and ciders, including special collaborations and one-off brews. The festival will extend into the Arcade, which is covered so you won't need your brolly. More information here.

AB InBev's anti-union aggression in India

HBLM members demanding union rights in Sonepat, India

AB InBev is known for many international brands, including Beck's, Budweiser, Castle Lager, Cerveza Corona, Hoegaarden, Leffe and Stella Artois.

Although for some time now the company has been attacking trade union rights at the brewery in Sonepat, about 27 miles north of Delhi in India, it has recently been escalating its anti-union pressure. In response, the union has since February been defending its members with a permanent protest at the factory gate.

For the past two years, local managers have refused to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the Haryana Breweries Limited Mazdoor Union (HBLM) and opted for repression, suspending active union members and dismissing four elected union leaders, including the president and the general secretary.

When selective victimisation failed to break the union's struggle for rights and recognition, management orchestrated a physical attack on a peaceful union protest on 28 April outside a Sonepat government office in which a union committee member was seriously injured. They then made a false complaint to the police against union members alleging assault; this resulted in the arrest of the union leaders who have since been released on bail.

AB InBev Sonepat workers and their families are continuing their 24-hour protest at the factory gate in support of their right to union recognition and collective bargaining free from harassment and victimisation. Send a message to AB InBev, insisting they reinstate all HBLM union leaders and members, withdraw the false assault allegations, recognise the union and negotiate in good faith.

And once you've signed, why not boycott AB InBev products?

The fest that never was

This beer glass is one of the more interesting ones in what I laughingly call my collection. I picked it up a long time ago at another festival, possibly Bury. There's nothing special about the glass itself: it's just a standard nonic with an attractive logo for the Stockport Beer Festival of 1988, exactly thirty years ago.

Except it's not: this festival never took place. Among the organisers, there was apparently a conversation along the lines of:
"Did you apply for the licence?"
"No, I thought you were doing that."
Oh dear!

By the time they realised they had no licence for the event, it was too late. Unfortunately it was also too late to cancel the order for the glasses, and I picked up one for the novelty of having a glass for the beer festival that never was.

I went to the Stockport beer festival a couple of times a good few years ago; it was held in Stockport Town Hall in those days. On the last occasion, we caught the train from Southport and rolled up for the Saturday afternoon session. Unfortunately, they had almost run out of beer so we strolled along to a pub underneath the viaduct which you can see in stylised form on the glass. The pub was the Crown where, as I recall, we had a really good afternoon before going home happy. Checking on What Pub, the Crown still looks like a great pub.

In case you're wondering, although you probably weren't, it's not made of white glass; 
I put paper inside to show the design more clearly.

The Arion, Ainsdale, Southport

I wrote this for the local papers about one of our suburban pubs in Southport.
It's one of those pubs that serves the residential community that surrounds
it, but perhaps tends to be overlooked by many of us 'beer stalkers'!

The Arion is a modern, airy pub on Kenilworth Road, Ainsdale, Southport. It has one large room sub-divided into several separate areas and a long conservatory on the front. At the entrance, there is etched in the glass an image of Arion, a legendary ancient Greek musician holding a lyre being rescued by a dolphin. It is furnished with standard pub chairs and tables, plus a few settees for those who prefer a 'Friends' vibe.

The pub serves two to three real ales, with Marston's Pedigree usually on, although it had run out when I visited; there were two guest ales, Marston's Fever Pitch and Adnam's Lighthouse, which were both in good condition. As you'd expect, the bar stocks the usual range of other drinks.

Food is served every day at lunchtime and in the evening with Sunday lunch offers; families are welcome and there is a children's menu. Also for the children, there is an outside play area, and for everyone else, beer gardens to both the front and rear. Inside, areas can be reserved for your private function.

There was muted piped music when I was there; Tuesday is quiz night, and Sky Sports are sometimes shown. They like to hold fundraising events, and the notice board displayed several letters of thanks for the sums raised. There is a pool table in one corner.

On-line: they offer free WiFi, are on Facebook and Twitter, and their website is here. Sorry: no dogs. There is a car park and the 49 bus stops right outside.

This is one of a series of articles that I write for the CAMRA column in our local papers, the Southport Visiter and Ormskirk Advertiser. Previous write-ups are here.

Maghull Folk Club - new venue

Thwaites Brewery evicted by travellers

Illegally excluded from their own premises

I find this quite extraordinary. According to the Lancashire Telegraph, staff at Thwaites had been due to turn up for work in Blackburn on Monday for a normal working day but a group of around 100 travellers in 30 vehicles were occupying the site, having arrived at around 8.00 pm on Saturday. A spokesperson for Thwaites said:

We have effectively been evicted from our head office and brewery site by a group of up to 100 travellers who are now denying us access in an aggressive stand-off. They are putting our family business in real and present danger.

We have been in Blackburn for over 200 years and have never experienced anything like this. They have no business on our site and are carrying out criminal damage as we speak. We are in discussions with police who have supported us during the course of the day and have the powers to evict this group immediately under Section 61 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which they have not yet exercised. We desperately need their help to remove these people as soon as possible.

Hourly the site is being degraded and in the space of a day has become a disgusting mess. We call on the police to act now to address this situation. We have established a crisis centre to ensure our customers can continue to do business with us, but every hour's delay, or awaiting the courts opening on Tuesday after the bank holiday to get an eviction notice will mean further criminal damage to our site and our business.

We find ourselves powerless victims in this situation and I find it incredible that these travellers are allowed to get away with this sort of behaviour.

Many years ago at the Cambridge Folk Festival, a plain-clothes police officer didn't want me standing where I happened to be loitering: he assaulted me, dragged me backwards by the neck and threatened me with arrest. I was in a public place which happened to be near the police drug squad tent, although I wasn't aware of that fact until the next day when I had a chat with the people on the 'Legalise Cannabis Campaign' stall.

They could act aggressively against a lone, peaceable, and rather drunk music lover when it suited them, but faced with determined opposition, it seems they become powerless. Strange: they weren't so bashful at Orgreave.

• For the record, I don't take illegal drugs: you don't have to be a cannabis user to support the principle of legalisation. 
• I'm not anti-traveller, but actions like this reinforce the hostile attitudes that many people do have.

Postscript: the police have at last persuaded the trespassers to move. My friend Sam who works for Thwaites reported her impressions on Facebook as she returned to her desk:

Today I had to walk a gauntlet of broken glass, dirty nappies, burnt out pallets, and trash just to reach my office. Couldn't see my desk, because the contents of my drawers had been rifled through and thrown around, along with my colleagues' possessions, photos and work. Our proud brewers watched as their last week of hard work brewing was destroyed and poured away ... everyone has rolled up their sleeves and cleared up the damage left behind by travellers, filling 3 skips in the process. I seriously can't believe how much damage can be caused in 24 hours.

Britain's most popular beers by region

I found the beer map below on the Morning Advertiser website showing the beer most likely to be ordered in different regions of Britain. As someone from the north west of England, I'm disappointed to see the most popular drink in my area is Fosters lager. The Scots also have lager, but at least it's a local one.

This puts all the beer geekery, including the pointless and ludicrously hyped-up cask v. craft debate, into perspective: most pubgoers aren't affected by it and, if they thought of it at all, would probably regard is as a fuss about nothing. For most beer drinkers, including many of us who would consider ourselves to be to any degree knowledgeable on the subject, beer is usually an adjunct to other social activities, such as meeting friends, a pub quiz, watching a football match or a live band in a pub, or special occasions like weddings. Most people don't want to experiment: they prefer to find a drink that's acceptable to them and stick to it.

I occasionally used to hear from old CAMRA types the sentiment that if only people could be persuaded to try real ale, they'd be converted. They might, or they might not: we all taste things differently. Some time ago in the Old Ship in Southport, I heard a customer order a pint of Tetley's Smooth and the barman say that they only had the cask version. "That will have to do then," was the reply, accompanied by a sigh. As he supped it, he didn't appear to have a Road to Damascus moment.