The great craft beer "debate"

Definition of craft from my Cambridge dictionary: "(a job or activity needing) skill and experience, especially in relation to making objects."

Most beer drinkers won't have noticed because they've got better things to do, but in the extremes of the beer drinking world, there are snooty, superior beings who consider they are discerning iconoclasts: they drink craft beer. What is craft beer? Basically, posh keg.

My view is: fine - whatever turns you on. But that's not good enough for these beer snobs - they want the Campaign for Real Ale to embrace these new keg styles, or (they keep on saying), it will be left behind, and become an outdated irrelevance. Some write about this in a carefully cultivated "more in sorrow than in anger" manner, while others shower unrestrained abuse upon CAMRA and its members. You'd think it was an organisation of devil worshippers sacrificing virgins - in beards, sandals and Arran sweaters, of course - rather than a collection of quite disparate beer drinkers with only one thing in common: they all like real ale.

Definition of craft keg: well, there isn't one. Hard to rally to this particular cause, then: "What do we want?" "Not quite sure." But individual lovers of craft beer each know what they mean by the term. Then you have another "debate" as to whether real ale can be craft, with opinions going both ways.

The issue has arisen because some new breweries have decided to follow the American example and brew quality beer to put it in kegs. The main reason why American brewers do this is because they don't have an ongoing tradition of serving beer in real form after the Prohibition wiped out most old American beer styles; it wasn't a deliberate rejection of cask beer. Scottish brewery BrewDog produce only keg beer now, and Hardknott, Meantime and Thornbridge are some of the breweries producing the new keg beer alongside real ale. The beer is often sold in modern bars at inflated prices, but that doesn't matter because craft drinkers love to pay over the odds to show how discerning they are.

Looking again at the definition of craft at the top of the page, it's clear that real ale can't be excluded. Some craft drinkers argue that the term should apply to small, artisanal breweries, which ignores the fact that the term "craft brewer" was coined by the American Brewers Association, who define it as a brewery producing up to 6 million barrels of beer per year! And as one wag pointed out, artisanal is a good term because it breaks down into art is anal.

The craft drinkers yearn for a definition they can all rally around, ignoring the fact that, with no broad agreement, there'd immediately be a load of dissenters muttering terms like sell-out. Real ale has a definition that is not only in the dictionaries but has the backing of law, but there can never be a craft beer equivalent because there is no consensus as to what it is. To be fair, though, I'd bet most people who drink it don't give a stuff about a definition, don't ever go near a blog, and never give a thought to CAMRA policies or what real ale drinkers prefer. It is, after all, a beer style, not a movement, but you'd never know that from the way some people write about it.

Is there anything in their predictions, such as CAMRA going into decline? Membership is increasing year after year; a lot of organisations would welcome that type of decline. Craft is the beer of the future? Real ale is the only sector of the beer market showing any increase in market share, and it now outsells keg, craft or otherwise.

I don't have a problem with the existence of craft beer, including keg, and wouldn't refuse to try it, if I knew anywhere I could buy it, but the nearest place I'm aware of is in Manchester, 40 miles away. I become very annoyed when craft drinkers start telling the Campaign for Real Ale (clue in the name, chaps) that it should embrace a style that most of its members don't want, as proved by repeated democratic votes at its national AGM. Either form your own organisation - after all, CAMRA began with just four men in a pub - or join CAMRA, get active and try to change the system from within. But, for heaven's sake, just stop whingeing on blogs.  

Tandleman has posted quite sensibly on this subject, but some of the comments below his post are bizarre, while Meer For Beer decided that this disagreement wasn't one she wanted to engage in. I don't blame her.

Perhaps with me, it's fools rush in ...

Browned off

Squaring up for a fight

Occasionally you read an article and you not only disagree with the conclusions, but you also dispute all the premises upon which they are based. In other words, you think: what planet is this person on? So it was with this report in the Morning Advertiser of a speech by Pete Brown at the GBBF about the relationship between craft beer and real ale.

Personally I am bored to death with this issue, which really only vexes people who spend too much time in the world of beer (yes, I did actually write those words), but if we are going to discuss it, let's not set up fake arguments to inform our conclusions.

He asserted that some people claim 'craft beer' is a marketing term with no relevance. Really? I've never heard that in any conversation I've been involved in. It is certainly not something real ale drinkers on the ground are likely to say - only industry insiders, by which I include beer journalists such as Pete Brown.

The article then goes on to assert that "[Pete Brown] then ... shut down real ale fanatics’ defence that the brew only came in kegs and craft beer was just sold in bottles or cans." It's not clear whether the heavily loaded term 'fanatic' is Pete Brown's term or the Morning Advertiser's, but such language is uncompromising and certainly not suggestive of being open to discussion and debate. More relevantly, I have never heard anyone make such an assertion, not have I read it in anything written by a lover of real ale. I get the impression that real ale drinkers are fully aware that craft beer comes on tap as well as cans and bottles, so I regard the premise behind the conclusion to be flawed. I have heard the perfectly sensible argument that the term craft beer can be applied to some real ales. Not all, of course: no one would seriously describe cask versions of Tetley Bitter or Greene King IPA as craft.

We real ale drinkers are apparently are hostile to craft because, he asserts, of its American origin. Again, not an argument I've ever heard expressed. I am fully aware that some real ale drinkers regard craft as the new keg, and it is not entirely unreasonable for drinkers who remember with a shudder beers such as Double Diamond, Trophy and Red Barrel to be extremely wary of what they judge to be the attempted rehabilitation of something they utterly loathed. They had good reason: real ale was insidiously being replaced by keg in the 1960s and 1970s, even to the extent of getting rid of handpumps so that you couldn't tell whether a beer was real or not until it was served. I was a student for four years in the Warrington area, then a town with three breweries, and we knew of only one pub that had handpumps; what real ale there was almost always came through electric pumps that were identical to those used for keg. Pete Brown came of drinking age in 1986 and the microbrewery revolution took off while he was still in his twenties, so he cannot fully appreciate why the term 'keg' is a such dirty word for many more experienced drinkers.

He asserts that Americans don’t discount real ale as "boring and British", and that the contrary is the case. I've not heard anyone assert that Americans do think that, but I have read British craft beer aficionados make exactly that point about real ale, so perhaps he should direct some of his criticisms in their direction. In the CAMRA circles I move in, craft is rarely mentioned: there isn't a real ale Taliban at work determined to root out all deviance from the path of real ale purity. When it is mentioned, it is more along the lines of "Fine if people want it, but not for me", which is pretty much my attitude. It seems to me that it's only people in the bubble of the industry and beer journalism who see a significant schism between true believers and heretics. They're too close to the subject - or perhaps like rock journalists in the late 1970s who all converted to punk overnight, decrying the Genesis albums they'd been praising 6 months earlier, they're anxious not to appear old fashioned and fuddy-duddy.

If Pete Brown was trying build bridges, he hasn't succeeded, but having come across his antipathy to CAMRA types previously (even though he actually joined in 2012), I'm not sure he was trying to. In general, I detect a certain impatience that some of us refuse to be persuaded by the arguments of those who regard themselves as experts. They seem to forget that customers can spend their own money on what they like, and if they don't wish to buy craft beer, they don't have to. Drinking beer - whatever form it takes - is meant to be a pleasure: it is not an evangelistic duty, nor ultimately is there any right or wrong. In my local which sometimes has up to 11 real ales, there are plenty of drinkers who choose lager or John Smiths Smooth. I would never berate them - it's what they want, after all - so why should we real ale drinkers be criticised for our choices?

Ignorant people would probably regard me as a real ale fanatic, because cask real ale is the only beer I really enjoy, but they'd be wrong because my preference is driven by my taste buds, not dogma. Even real ale in a bottle isn't to me as good as draught. I have tried craft beer a number of times, out of curiosity as much as anything else. I wrote in June last year about the Pied Bull, a brewpub in Chester: "They're also brewing their own craft beer of which they gave me a sample, which I found quite heavily hopped. Not my bag, but not too bad at all." To be more specific, I found it full of flavour, but as the half pint went down I could increasingly detect the carbonation. My few experiences of craft have led me to conclude that if I were in a social situation where such a beer was all that was available, I'd find it more than tolerable. However, I'd still prefer real ale.

Cheers!

Some other beer bloggers have broader tastes than I do: both Tandleman and the Pub Curmudgeon have written about having enjoyed a pint of lager in certain circumstances, whereas the last time I drank a pint of keg lager was more than a quarter of a century ago when my line manager bought me one in error. Before that was in the 1970s, but that's through personal preference rather than some fundamentalist principle. Each to their own.

I also like tea and drink quite a lot of it. I occasionally drink coffee. Personal choice, not tea fanaticism.

Perhaps The Twain

The Pub Curmudgeon has written a good post 'Never The Twain' on his blog comparing cask beer to craft, and pointing out that many handcrafted real ales could be justifiably called craft. While he's correct, it's an argument that's probably been lost because popular linguistic usage isn't always logical - for example, did you know that 'flammable' and 'inflammable' mean exactly the same thing?

In October 2012, I was able to write about craft:

I don't have a problem with the existence of craft beer, including keg, and wouldn't refuse to try it, if I knew anywhere I could buy it, but the nearest place I'm aware of is in Manchester, 40 miles away.

There were probably closer places that I didn't know about, but the point that craft wasn't generally available was correct at the time. However, such days are long gone and it is now commonplace. In the spirit of experimenting I have tried a few and, as I've previously written, have found that some have been well brewed and have a good flavour. The main difference concerns the method of dispense, and drinking craft is to me like drinking bottled beers, which is something I might do at home or at a party. In the pub I simply prefer real ale. 

When writing about pubs for the weekly CAMRA column in our local papers, I'll always mention craft beers if they're on sale; I have been writing these for more than three years now and none of our local 800 members have ever complained about it, which tends to counter the 'stick-in-the-mud' accusations against the campaign. Indeed, some CAMRA festivals have even been putting on a craft bar.

I know some drinkers who happily drink both styles regularly, and I expect that tendency will increase as the original craft drinkers grow older and the subsequent generations of beer drinkers simply see handpumps, craft fonts and bottles as normal components of pub or bar scenery - not as defining their personal identity. If I'm right, then 'Never The Twain' will become history.

Today I don't detect the hostility between vociferous cask and craft advocates that I certainly used to see on some blogs and websites, in the risible antics of BrewDog, and in the letters page of 'What's Brewing', the CAMRA newspaper - but, oddly enough, didn't tend to encounter in the real world.

CAMRA AGM ~ not just 'the beards club' after all

St Andrews Hall ~ AGM venue

I was at the CAMRA AGM in Norwich last weekend, which took place in the wonderful, if slightly overcrowded, old St Andrews Hall near the city centre. Most of the motions were routine and not especially controversial, but there were two issues that did get debate going: minimum pricing of alcohol and the craft keg issue.

Minimum pricing: the motion that CAMRA was on the wrong side in the minimum pricing debate was proposed by Peter Alexander and seconded by Graham Donning. Peter's main argument was that minimum pricing will not put a single extra bum on a pub seat, and thus was not relevant to CAMRA. He also pointed out that supporting minimum pricing made us unwilling allies of the anti-alcohol campaigners who are certainly no friends to beer drinkers. In his right of reply, Peter quoted a man who knows how to get people into pubs, Tim Martin, who has described minimum pricing as 'bollocks'. There was fierce opposition, both from the floor and from the leadership, but in the end the AGM voted to withdraw CAMRA's support for minimum pricing, a victory for common sense.

There were two motions on craft keg. The first stated that terms such as craft keg, craft beer, craft ale, etc, were meaningless and should not be used in CAMRA publications, local and national. If anyone felt they needed to use such terms, they had to put them in inverted commas and put the word sic after the term. My view of this is quite simple: dictating what words we can and cannot use is control freakery. I'm glad to say this motion was clearly rejected, as was a motion calling for CAMRA to run a campaign to educate CAMRA members and the public about the difference between real ale and what it termed "so-called craft", a dismissive description in three words. As part of the debate, Colin Valentine said several times that CAMRA is the Campaign FOR Real Ale, not the campaign against anything - including craft keg. This theme was taken up by other speakers in several debates.

I am very pleased that the Campaign has taken sensible decisions on two themes that I covered on this blog many times: not supporting minimum pricing and not taking a position of opposition to craft keg. This proves what I've always asserted: CAMRA is about choice, which means we have to accept it when people choose drinks that aren't real ale. My view is that our stance should be: "This real ale is good - why don't you try it?" and not: "Why are you drinking that rubbish?" People who write about 'zombeers' and 'chemical fizz', please note.

There are some great pubs in Norwich - I think I'll write about some of them them in a separate post.

Is keg beer the new cask?

A debate is taking place on certain beer blogs, but not in my experience in the real world among pub goers, about something called craft keg.  It has spilled over into What's Brewing, CAMRA's newspaper, with an article in the current issue by Roger Protz; I've reproduced it below because I can't find a link on-line to direct you to it.  A small number of craft brewers with their blogging fan clubs are in favour of this new type of keg beer, and they tell us it's far better than the awful keg beers that caused CAMRA to be launched in the first place, and superior to the smoothflow ales that adorn most bars nowadays.  I have absolutely no problem with craft keg - no interest, but no problem either.  I might try a glass if I ever find it in a pub, but I haven't so far and, as I've visited at least 15 pubs this month alone in 5 different towns, if it's the next big thing, how come I can't find it anywhere?

Be that as it may, I think Roger Protz, with whom I don't always agree (we were on opposite sides of a debate at the CAMRA AGM a couple of years ago), has got it absolutely right.  I vividly recall the beer scene in the early 1970s, the time I began going to pubs, and it was just as he describes it.  CAMRA does what it says on the tin - it campaigns for real ale, and to whinge that it doesn't embrace craft keg is like complaining that the Cats Protection League doesn't save dogs.  If the craft keg fans find CAMRA doesn't satisfy their beer campaigning requirements, why don't they just go and start their own campaign?  That's not pie in the sky: CAMRA was founded by four blokes in a pub 40 years ago this month, but I expect that sounds too much like hard work, so they'd prefer to gatecrash someone else's campaign and pervert it to their own purposes.  Here's what Roger wrote:

Drink to me only with thine eyes

An American study has shown that people said they preferred a glass of wine that they were told came from Italy over one that came from India, when they both came from the same bottle.  Similarly, they preferred chocolates supposedly from Switzerland over ones from China, when they in fact came from the same supermarket brand.  The full story is here.  We know that people will knowingly buy counterfeit goods and pretend they are the originals, but this goes much further - people detect differences that don't exist because their preconceptions, or prejudices, tell them one product is better than another. 

I wonder how far this applies to beer.  Judging by how some people write on the subject, probably quite a lot.  We have now moved beyond the realms of the real ale snob:  some real ale drinkers blithely dismiss what they call brown beer, meaning I suppose traditional bitters; some condemn many of the products of micro-breweries as being poor quality beers produced by hobbyists rather than serious brewers; some won't have anything to do with the old regional brewers; and some declare that the big brewers are incapable of producing anything worth drinking.  I'm oversimplifying for illustrative purposes, but I'm sure you get the general point.

There is some truth in all of these opinions, because the quality of products across brewers will obviously vary; the mistake is to generalise from them.  The current buzz word is 'craft', an undefined term imported from the USA, which is really quite meaningless in the British ale context, but is employed to imply a level of discernment:  if it's a craft product, it's good, but as far as I can see, we are simply replacing one set of assumptions and generalisations by another.  The problem with using undefined terms is that there is nothing to stop anyone from using them.  The term 'real ale' was invented and defined precisely by CAMRA and is now accepted to the extent that it's in most modern dictionaries; any brewer who described a beer as real ale when it wasn't could be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act.  This is not so with the term 'craft beer', which is often used to describe the new style of keg (which I wrote about in March - here if you're interested), and I can see nothing to stop Tetley's or John Smith's describing their beers thus, even their smoothflows.  Certain craft keg fanatics are so evangelical that they condemn CAMRA for not supporting the style, one which is almost certainly undefinable and is excluded by the very name of CAMRA. 

To me, all of these people, those who nitpick about real ales and those who advocate craft keg - whatever that is - remind me of those who took part in that wine and chocolate study that I opened this post with.  They like to draw lines and say, "This is what I like".  We all like boundaries; they make things easier to understand and defining what you do and don't approve of so much simpler.  However, if you go too far down that path, like the wine and chocolate people, there is a real chance that what you taste may be influenced by what you see, or what you've read on the pump clip or bottle label.

Most drinkers would probably agree with the statement that you should drink with your taste buds rather than your eyes, but I'm certain from what I've read that many do quite the opposite.  Well, that's their loss.

Craft breweries - take cover

I see in the Morning Advertiser that Carlsberg has announced that it intends to acquire a craft brewery in the UK. This is hardly surprising news, and quite a few beer writers and bloggers have suggested that craft breweries would become targets for takeover as the popularity of their beers grew. The fate of Meantime, taken over by SABMiller, and then sold on a short while later (as I wrote here), should make any small brewery think twice before agreeing to being bought out. They should also remember Sharp's, taken over by Molson Coors who subsequently moved all the production of bottled Doom Bar hundreds of miles north, while still putting 'Rock, Cornwall' on the labels. As I wrote in December 2015, "Selling out to a big beer corporation must be a temptation for the owners of a highly successful small brewery, but the problem is that you are instantly converted from a company to a brand, and brands are no more than commodities to bought and sold like any other."

I suppose if you've had enough and don't care what happens to your brewery after you've been paid the asking price, then fair enough, although your customers may not be so sanguine, otherwise you have to be very careful and yet could still come unstuck.

Those of us who remember the domination of the beer market in the UK by the Big Six (Whitbread, Scottish and Newcastle, Bass Charrington, Allied Breweries, Courage Imperial and Watneys) will be only too aware of the promises that followed brewery takeovers to keep the beer local, brewed to local tastes, etc, etc. In nearly all cases, these pledges were broken within a few years - months, sometimes - and a sizeable proportion of British beer ended being brewed in huge beer factories. Whitbread, who had the cheek to run an advertising campaign to try to persuade us that Trophy Bitter was brewed differently around the country to suit local tastes, were the worst culprits. The swathe they cut through the British brewing scene was mocked as the  'Whitbread Tour of Destruction', depicted on rock tour-style T-shirts and posters that listed all the breweries they'd taken over and closed.

The situation today isn't an exact parallel: in the Big Six days, takeovers were usually to acquire the target brewery's pub estate, which isn't a consideration now. I suspect that Carlsberg, despite their advertising campaigns, must know that their products lack any credibility: what better way to gain instant cred than buying an established, successful and well-regarded craft brewery?

It's becoming increasingly the case that well-regarded small breweries can provide an instant, off-the-peg solution for any mega-corporations who want to enter markets that their existing products could never reach. I don't see this just as a craft problem; the takeover of Sharp's shows that real ale breweries can go the same way. I'm not sure that ordinary drinkers can do much about it; let's just hope we don't sleepwalk into a repeat of the relentless cycle of takeovers that we saw in the 1960s and 1970s.

Craft beer & real ale

This is an article I wrote for the CAMRA column in our local papers. It probably simplifies the issue, but it is written with the general reader in mind, not beer enthusiasts who read beer blogs - such as me!

I know that some of the terms used by beer lovers can be confusing, particularly 'real ales', 'keg beers' and 'craft beers'. To begin with real ales: these are brewed in such a way that they finish their fermentation in the barrel, are not filtered or pasteurised, and are served without gas pressure.

Old-fashioned keg beers were brewed to a certain point, pasteurised to stop the fermentation process, filtered, and served using carbon dioxide (CO2) pressure from a gas cylinder. Modern smoothflow beers are similar, except that the gas is a mixture of CO2 and nitrogen.

Why did brewers go for keg beers? They could be produced in huge quantities, were never cloudy, and there was little waste. They were easy to serve and their taste was consistent: at best bland, or at worst downright unpleasant, depending who'd brewed it. At one time it looked as though keg might take over the whole beer market, which led to the founding of CAMRA in the 1970s.

So far so good: real ales are naturally-produced products, while keg beers and smoothflow are not, which was quite straightforward to understand until the arrival of craft beers in recent years. These beers are skilfully brewed using good ingredients without filtering or pasteurisation, and most would qualify as real ales until the point when they are served, which is done using gas pressure. Because of this, they do not fit the description of 'real ale' as defined, not only by CAMRA but also by most modern dictionaries. This means that the main difference between real ales and craft beers is not the production process, but simply the method of serving.

Does this make a difference? This is a controversial question even within CAMRA, and the answer is that it's a matter of opinion. In the spirit of experimentation, I have tried some craft beers: I've quite enjoyed them, and found they were far superior to old-style keg beers. However, to me they were very like bottled beers, which can be very enjoyable but do not match my personal first choice: draught real ale. Why not go out and have fun deciding what you prefer?

New mini-pub - Tap and Bottles

I discovered Tap and Bottles while strolling through Cambridge Walks in Southport town centre last week; it had been opened the previous week in a former lingerie shop by Julian Burgess whose family has a long association with the licensed trade. It is a small bar, attractively furnished, with four handpumps selling Southport Golden Sands and Liverpool Craft American Red when I visited, with more on at weekends. Beer is available in thirds of a pint if that's what you want. The Liverpool Craft was on good form when I tried it.

The fonts on the wall sell beers from Dortmunder, Pilsner Urquell and Duvel, a craft beer White Fox from Liverpool Craft Brewery, and a raspberry cider from Orchard. There are also more than 100 different bottled beers on sale from Britain, America and Europe which you can drink in or take away. They also sell bottles from the new Parker Brewery in Formby.

Wines, spirits, and soft drinks complete the drinks on sale, and there are plans to sell coffee and light snacks soon. They hope to get permission for seating outside, which would be all-weather seeing that the bar is in a covered arcade; there is some additional seating upstairs. The bar is open to 11.00pm, later if the demand exists. Julian is considering the possibility of some unamplified music in the future.

Particularly handy for a drink after a strenuous shopping trip, if you like that sort of thing (shopping, I mean).

This is part of a series of articles that I am writing for the CAMRA column in our local paper, the Southport Visiter. Previous reviews are here.

Blonde Ambition

A nice surprise when I went into the Guest House in Southport last night was the sight of Samuel Adams Blonde Ambition on the bar. This is a real ale, 4.5% strength, produced by Shepherd Neame in collaboration with the American craft brewer, the Boston Beer Company. The website states that beer uses equal measures of American and British Cascade hops, with Yakima Valley Cascade, also from America. As you'd expect, it was fairly dry, golden-coloured ale which I found slipped down very easily, some might say too easily considering its strength. Judging by the way the hand pump was being hammered, quite a few other drinkers felt the same way. It has more character than some golden beers produced by regionals, such as the popular Thwaites Wainwright, a beer I like well enough but don't find exceptional; or Robinson's Dizzy Blonde, which borders on the bland.

I found it interesting that the term "craft beer" was unequivocally featured on a real ale pump clip: two fingers to those who wish to differentiate between real ale and craft beer. This beer also demonstrates that the stuffy old regionals can match the micros when they choose to. In July I briefly alluded to a similar co-operative venture between Adnams and the Firestone Walker Brewing Company of California. While the regionals' main money is still in producing the standard beers we associate with them - and it's easy to forget in our real ale bubble how popular those beers are - it's good that they're willing to give something different a try, and doing it so well too.

Lazy thoughts

It's not the enemy; it's a very naughty lager.

"It is generally acknowledged that lager and keg beers are the enemies of “proper” beer aka ale" is the opening sentence of an article in the Morning Advertiser (the newspaper of the pub trade). It's a typical journalistic technique to create a false disagreement and present it as fact; in this case suggesting that there are ranks of ideologically opposed, implacably hostile drinkers. The writer, Robyn Black, was referring to the fact that two big regional brewers noted for their ale had launched keg lagers - Marston’s Revisionist and Fuller’s Frontier.

As a real ale drinker, am I shocked? Not particularly. My actual reaction was, "So what?" But that's not how Ms Black sees it. She wrote: "The beard and sandal brigade will no doubt be up in arms. CAMRA has fought a long, hard battle to rid the world of bland keg beers and to champion real ale." There's that false disagreement again: where are these people who will be up in arms? I don't view the pleasure of having a drink in such confrontational terms, and I do not choose my friends by their taste in drinks; while many do drink real ale, others prefer the likes of smoothflow, Guinness, lager, wine, or even diet Coke.

Ms Black does refer to the fact that real ale has in recent years had a modest growth while sales of all other types of beer have fallen, but nonetheless, the biggest selling style of beer remains lager. It might look as though real ale has "won" some kind of war as it is now available in more than 50% of pubs, but that doesn't mean it constitutes 50% of sales: in reality, sales of real ale are nowhere near such levels. With the resurgence in recent years of craft keg beers, it's hardly a surprise that brewers might turn their attention to producing a better quality lager than what's on offer in most pubs. I'm assuming that's what Fuller's and Marston's are trying to do - Fuller's describe Frontier as a "new wave craft lager" - because it isn't worth the time, trouble and money to produce yet another lager along the lines of Carling and Fosters: you might as well just buy in a well-known brand.

So why is Ms Black wrong? Because CAMRA, as I have written before, is about choice, and it always has been. In the early days, it was about campaigning for real ale drinkers to have the choice of drinking real ale, but the logical consequence of such a position is accepting that other drinkers have a choice too. Choice is something that Colin Valentine, the CAMRA national chair, strongly emphasised at the national AGM in Norwich last year.

Her reference to "the beard and sandal brigade" is simple stereotyping - neither I nor most CAMRA members I know wear beard and sandals - and is no more than another cheap trick from the Ladybird Book of Lazy Journalism.

P.S. I've just realised that Robyn Black's article was written a while ago, and therefore isn't latest news. However, I haven't seen either of these craft lagers anywhere, not even in Marston's houses (there are no Fuller's houses around here that I could comment on).

In the Meantime ... divorce

What's a poor, spurned craft brewery to do? London craft brewery Meantime was taken over by SABMiller in May this year. Like most marriages, SABMiller promised to love and honour its new craft bride, assuring its customers that Meantime wouldn't be forced to change and would still be allowed to get on with doing what it did best: loyal customers need not fear.

But, heartbreakingly, SABMiller has found a new love in AB InBev, and not only is the honeymoon period with Meantime over, but divorce papers have already been served. AB InBev is looking to sell Meantime, as well as brands such as Grolsch and Peroni. They promise to look after these brands until the decree absolute comes through, but the question of maintenance afterwards must be a worry, especially for the staff at Meantime brewery. Unlike when they sold out to SABMiller, they won't have any say over who owns them in future, which must be unsettling to say the least.

Selling out to a big beer corporation must be a temptation for the owners of a highly successful small brewery, but the problem is that you are instantly converted from a company to a brand, and brands are no more than commodities to bought and sold like any other.

You'd think the example of Sharp's, taken over by Molson Coors who subsequently moved all the brewing of bottled Doom Bar hundreds of miles north, would have rung a few warning bells, but obviously not.

The Vestry Tap Room, Tarleton

The Vestry Tap Room in Tarleton

I first learnt about the Vestry Tap Room after they had contacted the local CAMRA branch. It has been open for around six months.

I caught the 2 Stagecoach bus on Lord Street and about 40 minutes later was dropped off right opposite the pub. It was empty when I arrived except for Lisa behind the bar, although it did fill up later. Lisa was very helpful and patient as she answered all my various questions.

The main room is light with wooden walls to waist height and wooden furniture, including bench seating along the walls. There is also a comfortable room upstairs with easy chairs, and an outdoor drinking area to the rear of the building.

Lisa behind the bar at the Vestry

Three hand pumps were serving Avid Brewing Co. American Pale, Hawkshead Windermere Pale and Brewsmith Bitter. These beers are always changing and those due on next were from Polly's Brew Co., Tiny Rebel, Siren Craft Co. and Squawk Brewery. A real cider, Lilley's Rhubarb Cider, is also available. On Sundays, the real ales are reduced by 25% between noon and 4.00 pm. All three real ales were in good condition.

There are also lagers and craft beers, including a rhubarb milkshake pale called Rhubarbra Streisand! Other drinks offered include a large gin selection, canned craft beers and bottles of BrewDog Punk IPA.

On Tuesdays at 8.00 pm, a speed quiz is held, and Lisa had to explain to me what that actually was! Live music is presented once or twice a month between 5.00 and 9.00 pm on Sundays – next time is 29 September - and occasionally free cheese boards are offered, also on Sunday. Live sports are sometimes shown. 

On Friday 4 and Saturday 5 October they are putting on an Oktoberfest with an oompah brass band, imported German beer, gins, authentic German street food, live music and a DJ in a large marquee. It is a ticket-only do, and there aren't many left so if you're interested phone 01772 301976 to check.

The premises are not suitable for under-18s, but dogs are admitted. They have free WiFi, and are on Facebook where you can check the opening hours which do vary through the week. You'll find it at 109 Church Rd, Tarleton, Lancashire PR4 6UP.

► 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. Older articles on local pubs are here.

Has CAMRA had its day?

We found little to smile about in
Greenall Whitley pubs in the 70s.

Does CAMRA have a purpose any more? It seems that I've been reading articles and blog posts on this theme almost since I first joined CAMRA in 1985. At their least contentious, they say that there are now loads of different real ales from a record number of breweries, so it's job done. Others, often written with a 'more in sorrow than in anger' tone, prefer to twist the knife. They went to a CAMRA meeting once, and found a load of bearded weirdos who were loud about their likes and dislikes, while ignoring outsiders, which is usually interpreted as a deliberate snub. Everyone else in the pub was apparently annoyed by the CAMRA types, and the writer concludes by shaking the dust from their feet and swearing never to attend a meeting again. This attitude has recently been astutely parodied in the Seeing The Lizards blog. Another group of detractors are a vocal minority from the 'craft' beer tendency who don't like the Campaign because it won't endorse a beer type that doesn't fit CAMRA's definition of real ale. This is a bit like ranting against the Cat's Protection League because it won't take in dogs.

Beer font? Or the headstone
over many lost breweries?

I am not an undiscerning member of CAMRA, and I have criticised the organisation quite a few times here. I do, however, take issue with suggestions that the Campaign is now redundant, or even that it's insular and exclusive. CAMRA members are not all of a type, no more than the members of any other voluntary mass membership organisation, although there are always those who do fit the stereotype. To present an analogy: Lefties often stereotype Tories, but in my years of local political activity on the Left, I have come across local Conservatives who are likeable people who, in their own way, want to do the best for the local community. From my perspective they're misguided, of course, but the point remains. Reality is always much more multi-layered and complicated than simplistic generalisations suggest - it's also much more interesting. CAMRA is no exception to this. Most CAMRA members don't go round boorishly taking over pubs, insulting lager drinkers and demanding privileges from licensees. Even more shockingly, most male CAMRA members I know don't even have beards. But recycling these myths provides sufficient excuse for some of these writers to feel justified in not playing a more active role in the Campaign. If you don't want to be involved, fine, but don't justify that by peddling hackneyed misconceptions.

The mainstay of
1970's parties

Is the Campaign's work done? We have a record number of breweries and most pubs not only sell real ale, but many have a good selection on offer. We've become so accustomed to this that people sometimes turn their noses up at selections of 'the usual suspects', forgetting that in the 70s and 80s we would have been delighted with such offerings. The snobby attitude to Wetherspoons is a good example of this: when I was a student in 1970s Warrington, we would have thought we'd gone to heaven if we'd come across a pub like Wetherspoons. I recall in the 1980s finding myself in a pub in Hampshire which had six real ales on handpump, mostly from the Gales range. I thought it was wonderful, but today there are some who would turn up their noses because of the lack of variety. 

This is all good, isn't it? Yes, of course, but in the long term there can be little room for complacency. The number of brewers is constantly increasing, but the market is shrinking: pubs continue to close, and beer consumption overall is going down. At some point, these two contradictory pressures must collide, resulting in many small brewers closing, though a few may be taken over by bigger concerns. In ten or twenty years' time, we may look back on the present situation as a golden age. Campaigning to save pubs is a logical response to this problem, because fewer pubs will mean less cask beer, the growth of micro-pubs notwithstanding. Those who short-sightedly argue that CAMRA has no business campaigning for pubs should bear that in mind.

In general, no advances can ever be taken for granted: what was hard fought for can be lost again. The current attacks on workers' rights, the trade union movement, the NHS and the benefit system bear testament to that. Whether or not you agree with such measures is irrelevant: the point is that nothing can be seen as safely in the bag. Progress is not inevitable. In the case of real ale, there are many threats that I've covered many times before, so here is a brief reminder of some of them in no particular order:

• Attacks by the anti-alcohol brigade, aka the health lobby.
• Predatory property companies buying up pubs for redevelopment.
• Debt-ridden pub companies overcharging tenants and redeveloping sites to offset debts.
• Punitive tax levels.

The Plough, Southport, in the
process of being demolished.

There is also the fact that multinational beer corporations want to move in on the market that is currently dominated by micro and regional breweries. I can see nothing that would prevent a repeat of the infamous Whitbread Tour of Destruction which swallowed up so many local brews, replacing them with Whitbread 'Big Head' Trophy Bitter, the deluded pint that thought it was a quart. Sharps and Meantime have already been hoovered up, and I have no doubt that other breweries are currently being eyed up for takeover. A proliferation of new small breweries suggests our beer scene is healthy but it can do little to combat such threats, whereas a campaign of 174,690 members has more of a chance.

The Sir Henry Segrave (JDW), Southport.
If only we'd had pubs like this in the 70s.

CAMRA is often dismissed as just a drinking club. This may be true for some members, and the Wetherspoons vouchers are often cited as proof of this, but most members that I know did not join for the vouchers. Another shocking fact: quite a lot of members don't use their tokens. In addition, I've known even 'drinking club' members become activated when faced with a threat to something dear to them, such as a local brewery or much-loved pub. If there's nothing local to campaign on, they are keeping a network of local branches going so that if a campaign is needed at any time, the structures are already in place. Okay, it might take a bomb to get some people moving, but it's massively better than trying to build a campaign from scratch in the future, should one be needed.

CAMRA's list of some of its successes can be found here - link provided to save me just repeating what they say - and some of these are recent, which refutes the suggestion that the Campaign no longer has a purpose. Many attempts to rubbish CAMRA are motivated by people who are hostile, often with agenda of their own, such as talking up 'craft' beer, and decrying real ale as old hat. CAMRA is not perfect, but then neither is any other mass membership organisation. I should know: I've belonged to quite a few over the years. Despite the fact that I sometimes get impatient or annoyed with certain things in the Campaign, I'll stick with it. People who sit around waiting for the perfect organisation that suits them in absolutely every respect will end up belonging to nothing. For me, this one is still worth belonging to.

References to craft beer advocates in this article refer to a partisan vocal minority. Most drinkers, whether of real ale, craft beers or both, are tolerant and don't mind what others choose to drink.

Liverpool's Dispensary to shun real ale

You can see part of the original sign (top left) from when the
pub was called the Grapes. ('Borrowed' from the Liverpool
Echo, just as they've used my photos without asking)

I was chatting to Dave in the Lion Tavern in Liverpool on Tuesday; I was there for our monthly singaround. He was telling me the the current licensee of the Dispensary on Renshaw Street, also called Dave, is retiring.

I wrote about this pub almost exactly 6 years ago on 19 September 2013: "This pub has won Liverpool CAMRA's Pub of the Year award in the past, and I have spent happy afternoons and evenings there. The licensee once took the mickey out of me when he saw me at the bar writing down all the beers that were on. He obviously didn't believe me when I told him I was making notes for my beer blog."

He actually declared in a loud voice that "We've got another ticker in!" One thing I am not is a ticker, but I took it as banter, even though Dave's reputation was such that I doubt he'd have been bothered if I had been offended. His approach to customer service has been described as eccentric, but I always found that the beer was on good form.

Dave in the Lion told me that the Dispensary will now be focusing on craft ales and cocktails and that no real ale has been included in the next order. This is a shame, and I see no reason why a pub cannot sell both craft beer and real ale, as the Tap & Bottles in Southport does.

► P.S. on 8.11.19. I went in last week (31.10.19) and they do still have real ale on and it was in good condition. It seems that the reports of real ale's demise in this pub were premature.

The price ain't right!

There are some interesting statistics in this article in the Morning Advertiser on a variety of beer-related issues. One set of stats covers the fact that lager sales are declining in favour of ales and craft beers, about which they state:

While some Brits are losing their love of lager, there is a rise in styles such as IPAs (Indian pale ales) in particular.

• One fifth of UK drinkers are not willing to pay more than £2.99 for a pint. 
• Three in 10 (29%) beer drinkers are prepared to pay more than £4 per pint.
• In London, 27% are willing to pay more than £4.50. 
• More than one quarter (27%) of Brits drink ale or bitter.
• One in five (20%) drink any type of craft beer.

I found the first point of particular interest. I have long felt that £3 is particularly difficult psychological barrier for many drinkers, and I have wondered whether that's the reason why my local has kept its cask ales below that figure for some time now, except for beers over 5%. I'll pay £2.95 without a thought, but if the cost is over £3, I'll always notice it. It won't stop me paying, of course, but if the price is more than £3 a pint for ordinary beers, I tend to feel it's dear.

One drinker in five is a sizeable proportion of beer drinkers, and this stat suggests to me that it may be a cut-off point for some who may feel driven to join the join the supermarket set. This point is reinforced by the fact that, although lager sales are suffering more than cask ale, the overall consumption of beer in pubs is in slow decline: the market is shrinking.

Pub owners, such as brewers and pub companies who tend to have little compunction about pushing up the prices they charge, should take this psychological price barrier into account, or risk biting the hand that feeds them.

On a related issue, I note that CAMRA is campaigning for another cut in beer duty; let's hope the government heeds the call.

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.

A small brewery far away ...

A choice of good real ales
in the Guest House, Southport

The decision of the Cloudwater Brewery of Manchester to cease brewing real ale seems to have evoked a variety of reactions from "Is this the beginning of the end of cask beer?" to "It's no big deal - move on." In the latter category you'll find Tandleman and the Pub Curmudgeon.

The doom mongers will always be among us, of course, often comprised of people who favour craft keg over real ale, sometimes despising CAMRA into the bargain: while they are fully entitled to their own preferences, their views should be taken with a large pinch of salt as they've an axe to grind.

I'm not the only person to have suggested that at some point the contradictory phenomena of ever more breweries and fewer pubs will collide - see my post from June 2016. One licensee I put this point to last year told me he thought that process had already begun, and pointed out that hobby brewers add to the problem by their ability to undercut those who need to make a living out of their breweries. 

So: apocalypse? Or damp squib?

Some breweries can cut production in the face of fierce competition, but not all. Brewers who either go to the wall or abandon real ale production will not necessarily be those who brew the least interesting cask beer. It is logical to assume that we will lose some good real ales in a process of consolidation that seems almost inevitable. Quite a few of us have been predicting this for a while, so I don't quite understand the apparent shock the Cloudwater decision has made in some quarters. They're a business, not a charity, and therefore have to make a profit - although even charities need to balance the books - and if their current business structure does not enable a profit to be made, then it is not surprising if they discontinue the product with the slimmest profit margin.

This will probably happen again elsewhere, but it would be incorrect to assume this means the beginning of the end for real ale. If the number of breweries producing real ale does decline, it will reach a new, lower point of equilibrium, a position that should be more sustainable in the longer term. The unfortunate consequence is that in the process we may lose some of our favourite beers.

While there is an overlap in the markets for real ale and craft keg, there is also quite a level of separation. Because of its longer shelf life, keg can be transported further and can supply small volume venues better than cask beer with its need for quick turnover. On the other hand, small real ale brewers tend to supply within their local areas. I doubt the two products will ever be wholly separate, but there can be circumstances when they'll meet different requirements.

Not an apocalypse, but not a damp squib either. Long term predictions about the beer market by people more knowledgeable than I am frequently prove wide of the mark. While pubs are still closing, micropubs, café bars and other small venues are opening in large numbers, and many do stock real ales; they may not be able to compensate for all the pub closures, but they should mitigate the situation, especially as they often go for locally-brewed real ales. Furthermore, many of the pubs that are closing were not real ale venues anyway; that's not to say such closures don't matter, but they won't affect real ale sales.

This decision by Cloudwater is part of the evolution of the beer market, and where we will end up in the long term is anyone's guess - and I use the word 'guess' intentionally.

A crafty snack for SABMiller

Craft beer enthusiasts will be weeping into their beer (assuming they can find anywhere that sells it) at the news that the London-based Meantime Brewing Company is to be taken over by SABMiller, producers of such varied beers as Fosters, Grolsch, Miller, Peroni and Pilsner Urquell. SABMiller operates in 80 countries on every continent on the planet, so it's not exactly a merger of equals.

I can't help feeling that becoming part of the second biggest brewing corporation on the planet rather destroys the rebel image that many of these small craft brewing capitalists like to cultivate. With any luck, it might put ideas in to the head of Anheuser-Busch InBev: there's an irritating little brewery in Ellon, Aberdeenshire, that might suit their portfolio nicely.

Keeping mum costs money

It might be simpler just to do this

In February I wrote a piece called Tell people what you're up to, in which I explained how some pubs don't see the need for accurate and timely publicity, even when they've gone to the expense and effort of putting on a beer festival. A month earlier I had written about the lack of notice the Freshfield Hotel gave for its Winter Ales Expo, something the new licensee there has recently done (see previous post) by giving less than a fortnight's notice for a festival that begins tomorrow.

This weekend has seen the Funky Beer Festival at Southport's Pleasureland which began on 30 June and ends today. It was, I believe, run in conjunction with Cross Bay Brewery, but the problem is that the first publicity as far as I could see was on Thursday in the local paper, the Southport Visiter. I think it had been on Facebook a bit longer, but unless you're already linked to the relevant page or someone points it out to you, you're unlikely to see it - not forgetting that quite a few people aren't on Facebook at all.

The local CAMRA branch, to which I belong, wasn't given any more notice. As I wrote in January:

Oddly enough, most drinkers, including CAMRA members, have lives outside of pubs, such as families, jobs, other commitments, social activities and hobbies, and can't always drop everything at short notice.

It's no good just giving a festival a snappy title and 'cool' video and then expecting drinkers to turn out in droves. It also doesn't make sense to be imprecise about what you're offering. The Funky Beer Festival advertised it would be selling 'craft beers', along with gins and Prosecco, but with no mention of real ales. I'm told that in fact it had around 30 cask beers, but this wasn't clear from the publicity. I'm not the only one who would have little interest in going to a craft-only festival, especially when I can get a good range of real ales in the town centre with no admission charges and real glasses.

The organisers seem likely to lose money, which may cause them to conclude that there's no market for beer festivals in Southport. This simply isn't true, as the recent Beer Street festival organised by the Tap & Bottles showed. Even the last CAMRA festival in the town, despite being dubbed a failure by some (maliciously in my view), managed to make a small profit.

I've tried to think of any other types of events, such as sport, concerts, drama and so on, that expect people to turn out with little or no notice, but most aren't so complacent that they take their customers for granted. On the contrary, they are usually publicised well in advance so that people can make their plans around them. Beer festivals take months to organise, so no one can say there isn't enough time.

It's a cliché that there's no such thing as bad publicity (try telling that to our hapless prime minister), but it's obvious that little or no publicity multiplies the chance of failure. With beer festivals, financial losses can be large: unopened barrels can be sold on, assuming you can find a buyer, but once they have been opened, they can't be moved and have to be used or poured down the drain. Twenty half-full barrels at the end of a festival can lose an organiser close to a thousand pounds.

There's another cliché that can be applied here: spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar.