The news teams have been going on all day about chief medical officer Liam Donaldson’s proposal that alcohol should have a 50p per unit minimum price. And they focused upon “punishing the majority for the sins of the minority” (ie, binge drinking). However, the reason why I would support the move (and am very disappointed to hear that the Government may not take up the plan) is that it would help to level the playing fields between pubs and harly affect pub prices, if at all. The Government would still be getting plenty of tax payments in, and the 50p rise strikes me as a much more sensible plan than the 2% duty escalator heading our way inevitably in the forhtcoming Budget.
Don’t we all, members or not, have a love/hate relationship with CAMRA? Yes, there are a few things about that annoy me, infuriate me even. But Stephen Oliver, managing director of the Marston’s Beer Company, really has got himself wound up.
In today’s Morning Advertiser, in an article entitled ‘It’s hard to keep the gobby hobbits happy’, he takes issue with CAMRA members over – well, here’s a taster:
“Apparently, according to the malcontents of CAMRA’s sandal-clad, whisker-stroking storm troopers, a guest ale’s not a guest ale unless it comes from some oddball brewery down a country lane and is served with bits in it under a name like Knackered Old Cripplecock.”
He says landlords are being egged on to get a wider choice of guest ale “by the itinerant CAMRA bunch who go from pub to pub, looking for their next eclectic pint brewed in a cupboard with the dubious benefit of progressive beer duty. They’re a gobby lot, the beardies.”
Not content with having a go at CAMRA members and microbrewers, he even has a sideways pop at SIBA for not financially supporting Cask Ale Week.
Okay, the central tenor of Oliver’s argument – that a guest ale from a brewery such as Marston’s – or its Jennings or Ringwood brands, for instance – is as valid a guest ale as, from down my way, say, Coastal or Lizard breweries – is not an unreasonable point. But why then the invective?
Yes, as he concludes, Cask Ale Week is “a golden opportunity” to promote the sector, so why then round off by saying it’s a reason to “show that to enjoy cask ale you don’t have to have mislaid your razor, wear sock with your sandals or have a beer gut the size of Rotherham.”
For a senior player in the industry to have made such insulting remarks about so many of the people who are, frankly, keeping him in a job is unjustified and malicious. Yes, we all have a laugh now and again about the beard and sandals thing, but CAMRA has moved on.
I can only think of one reason why Marston’s doesn’t want to compete with the micros on an even bar – and that is because they fear the competition.
(Incidentally, in the same issue Roger Protz, CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide editor, enjoys Marston’s hospitality at Lord’s to launch the firm’s sponsorship of English cricket this summer)
Much as I criticise brewers of good beer who do the same thing, I’m giving Beer Today a bit of a tweak, with a view to a relaunch on April 6, the start of Cask Ale Week. I’ll still be updating the site as usual, but there will be a few running repairs going on at the same time, so apologies if a few links and things go awry in the interim. Hopefully you’ll enjoy the relaunched site.
Much debate over JD Wetherspoon’s decision to sell pints of Greene King IPA at 99p. Now JDW is not perfect as a pub group by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a perfectly reasonable company to deal with, and you can’t argue with the amount of real ale they shift during a year. On the basis that ‘any publicity is good publicity’, the high profile the company gives to real ale is not to be knocked. Because they are all locally managed, some branches are much better than others, both in terms of beer quality and customer service, but find a good one, with a good range at a decent temperature, and there are worse places to settle for a couple of pints and watch the world go by.
But … I cannot be doing with 99p pints of Greene King IPA. Okay, the beer has its critics and probably wouldn’t be top of most people’s list on a pub visit, but the beer itself is not the issue here, it’s the pricing policy. This will be the final nail in the coffin for many pubs who cannot hope to compete with 99p, let alone make any money on such a pint.
I’ve been in favour of minimum pricing for alcohol for some time now, not to create a level playing field between JDW and other pubs, but to end the scourge of cheap supermarket and off-licence alcohol, which is the single biggest factor affecting the viability of our pubs in the UK. Yes, I know there’s the smoking ban, too, but this has been ridden through to a degree by most pubs, and anecdotal evidence from hosts tells me the supermarket pricing is a bigger concern.
Minimum pricing isn’t going to affect the average, responsible, social drinker, unless the limit is raised ridiculously high by a government eager to claw back tax wherever it can; it will help to end the practice of youngsters with no respect for alcohol binge drinking and giving us decent drinkers a bad name.
As Mrs N and I spent Christmas Day with flu (that’s the illness, not some visiting relative) we had our Christmas dinner today at my mother-in-law’s. Very nice: chicken, and all the trimmings, and with it one of my Christmas gift bottles of beer, Rudolph the Red Nosed White Horse, from the White Horse Breweryin Oxfordshire. What a great beer. It’s a classic winter warmer, but not too heavy, not too sweet. Chestnut red in colour, the 4.8% ABV ale is smooth and well balanced, with a hint of honeycomb from the malt and lots of tasty but not overwhelming hop balance, with nuttiness and some seasonal candied peel offering some deep citrus fruit freshness. The finish is quite long and well rounded. I’m tempted to see if I can get any more of this winter warmer, from Morrison’s where it appears to be exclusively available.
Winter … don’t you just love it? Jack Frost nipping at your vitals, scraping the ice off the windscreen, the cold virus circulating around the office air conditioning system. But then there’s always the beer!
In winter I revert to type. I shake off my carefully cultured image of Mr Hoppy, happy with a glass of something golden and fresh, and seek out the big, dark, chocolately, Christmas cake fruity brews that are the signature of the season. And the coming of the Exeter Winter Beer Festival next weekend is a great date in the West Country diary. Nothing but winter brews. Heaven in Devon.
I have enjoyed two excellent examples of winter beers lately. The Bath Ales Barnstormer in the Copperhouse, Hayle (see below), and over the past few days the Penzance Beer Company’s excellent Liberty (5% ABV) which has that waming dark, chocolate malty, taste, with some rich fruit in the background. I’ve drunk a lot of this over the past three days or so and can’t recommend it too highly. I understand it’s going to be a regular brew at The Star.
As it says on my Facebook status at the moment, I’m still reeling at handing over £4.50 for what was not even quite a pint (500ml bottle) of Skinner’s Betty Stogs at my wife’s works do in Penzance last night. Okay, it was a hotel, but even so that’s some mark-up on a bottle I can pick up for £1.70 or so in a supermarket. And yes, it’s a free world and I didn’t have to buy it, but I had to have somethingto drink and it was the best option on offer. I’ll be glad to get back to The Star (Crowlas Bitter £2.30 a pint).
Tuesday, December 16, 2008: one of those very rare moments when you’re poured a beer that makes you go “wow”. Bath Ales Barnstormer (4.5% ABV) in the Copperhouse, Hayle, about half a mile away from my home. It had loads of fruit, it had loads of malt, but neither overdone, and with enough hop coming through to send me back to the bar for two more! Good body, and the beer was in absolutely A1 condition. A five in anybody’s book on the old CAMRA beer scoring system. This is definitely a pub I’ll be pushing for for Good Beer Guide inclusion for 2010.
I’d assumed it was a Punch or Enterprise House, but it turns out it’s owned by Trust Inns, who seem to have a firm commitment to real ale. There are four handpumps at the Copperhouse, two with Skinner’s beers, one with Skinner’s cider, and the fourth is reserved for what, more often than not, is an interesting guest. Cameron’s Strong arm and Young’s Winter Warmer were recent highlights, but the Barnstormer knocks both of them into a cocked hat!
If you’re in Hayle, I urge you to give this pub a try. And if you’re in there after 9pm on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday look out for the excellent live music for which the pub is gaining a good reputation.
After much public lambasting, I’m back again, with an early new year revolution to keep the Beer Today blog up to date. I’ve been spurred on by joining the Must Love Beer community, based in the US, and also by being put to shame by some of the excellent UK beer bloggers there are around now. So if beer’s so damn popular, how come I’m only reading about wine 99% of the time in the weekend supplements. Let’s look to put this right.
At the beloved Star we are lucky enough to have St Austell beers now and again that one doesn’t tend to find generally in the brewer’s own pubs. This week there were two such delights on at the same time. Admirals Ale (5%) is rarely seen in a cask at all, let alone within the St Austell estate, and is a bronze, flvoursome and satisfying treat. With Cornish Gold malt balanced with Styrian Goldings and Cascade hops, this is a deceptively drinkable strong beer.
However, I want to talk about the Black Prince. What was served was a very nice, smooth, dark ruby red beer, very moreish, but what it wasn’t, in the collective opinion of those at the bar, was Black Prince. It wasn’t , well, black (yes, I know it never was ‘blackas yer ‘at, but it was much darker, with a rugy red edge when held up against the light in the way that us beer folk do), and you’d be hard pushed to say it was a mild. Now, I know it isn’t branded as a mild, and this may be the get-out clause if this is, indeed, a new incarnation of the beer. But it was developed originally as a slightly stronger version (from 3.6 to 4%) of St Austell’s old 4X Mild, rebranded on the premises that it would sell better without the baggage of that old-fashioned ‘mild’ monicker.
Black Prince has always been one of Cornwall Campaign for Real Ale’s favourite St Austell beers, and there has been a long-standing campaign to get it made available in more of the brewery’s pubs, to little avail. Perhaps a change of recipe heralds a new marketing push, but for all the good qualities of this new beer, I’d rather see the proper Black Prince ride again.
