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