UK Craft Beer Marketing Ten Years Ago

In my garage, in a box, between the pages of a book, I've found a flyer my brother and I produced for Microbar*, our contribution to the new wave of beer appreciation and beer selling.

* Not to be confused with this Microbar in Manchester. They stole our name. If I cared, I'd do them. Just don't confuse us, our operation was far more stylish.

Beer-writing cliches

Ok, I'm not a great writer. I know that. Every time I click send or publish, minutes later, prompted by newly-spotted clunkers, forehead-slapping ensues.

I reassure myself with the reminder that I'm probably a better reader than writer.

Today I read a blogpost by an author who shall remain unidentified. He is a self-declared "creative writer". As a "creative writer" he should be ashamed of himself for using the exhausted boxing metaphor "weighing in at" when describing a beer's strength. It is time the phrase was retired. Or banned with a punishment of ten years consumption of Fosters for its use.

Which words and phrases would you ban from beer writing?

*Thanks to http://thesaurus.com/

Brewdog Newcastle

There's much I admire about Brewdog.

I particularly admire their realisation that selling beer to younger people and women is not the impossible fantasy that exists in the minds of those mired in the real-ale mentality. Divest your beer of twee traditionality and parochialism, give it contemporary branding, and bang on about being part of a backlash. Hey presto - otherwise hard-to-get-at demographics drink the beer you want to sell them. I know it because I've done it. 

I looked forward to the opening of a Brewdog bar in Newcastle, a city I'm fond of, having spent the late eighties and early nineties there. My brother and his family live there now and I'm a frequent visitor.

Steve and I paid our first visit to Brewdog's Newcastle bar last Tuesday. Having particularly fond memories of rather beautiful 77 Lager a couple of years ago that's what we went for. Both pints were served distinctly short. We politely requested top ups. With "don't waste my time you ignorant plebs" body language the barmaid took them back and went through the motions of topping up the pints. They came back to us still distinctly short. The beer line had gone up by a millimetre, or possibly not at all. We put this shoddy service down to teething troubles, the bar had only been open a week.

Two days later I babysat while Steve and his wife Jane went out. They went to the Brewdog bar. The same thing happened. Ste's pint was distinctly short. Jane had a problem-fee half in a lined glass. Ste requested a top-up. The barmaid turned the glass such that the Government Stamp was facing him. She pointed at the etch and said "it's a pint to the top of the etch; that's the way we're trained to serve pints." Steve persevered in his polite request for a top up but he says when it was delivered it was with "bad grace."

Here's a picture of the style of pint glass that we believe was being used. As you can just about see, the etch is some way down the glass and the absence of a line indicates that it is a pint-to-the-brim measure.

Steve, evidently annoyed, asked me to Tweet the annoyance.

Scandal: @BrewDogNewc barstaff trained to fill pints to the top of the etch. @s_pickthall is mighty furious.

Minutes later a reply came from @BrewDogNewc :

Well, @BrewDogNewcastle, I have news for you: when we pay for a pint, we pay for a pint of liquid. You are allowed a -5% error, which must be corrected if requested by the customer. And a request for a top-up "should always be received with good grace and should never be refused" in the words of the BBPA. A deficit of greater than 5% should be corrected automatically and should definitely not be served as a matter of policy. Newcastle Trading Standards will be delighted to have a word with you about the rules if you are in doubt.

The following day Steve and I were in the Free Trade Inn "Newcastle's Poshest Pub™". The subject of the new Brewdog bar arose. There various people including the FT's barstaff also commented that they'd experienced short measures from BD. A bespectacled barman whose name I don't know said he had even been refused a top up.

There are two possibilities: 1) An enterprising bar manager has decided to impress his employers with high yields from his kegs, 2) Short measures are Brewdog's corporate policy. Either way,  short measures are shoddy and deceitful and illegal.

Brewdog: sort it out. Don't take the piss out of your customers.



BTW, Steve and are not CAMRA pedants and we do not support the organisation's Full Pint campaign, so don't go tarring us with that brush. We just know a short pint when we see one.

Session #62: What Drives Beer Bloggers?

I refer you to this post: "Evangelise!"

Your last chance to contribute to the greater beer wisdom

Way back in October (was it really that long ago?) I set the ball rolling on some original something-ological beer research 

I'd really like to embark on some analysis. I was looking for a minimum of 100 responses to my survey. Currently we're on ninety-something. So, if you haven't done it already, take my survey, and please pass it on to your beer-drinking friends. The more responses I get, the better the overall data will be.

Here is the direct link to the survey.

Just shoot from the hip. Select responses that feel the least wrong to you. Don't dwell too much on the subjects of some of the questions - I'll explain it after I've closed the survey.

The Most Drunk I've Ever Been - Without Alcohol.

On Wednesday morning I was at my desk doing some preparation for the Lancaster Beer Festival.

I've had an annoying head cold for a couple of weeks. You know the kind of feeling - like someone's stuffed a cushion into your head.

While entering data into a spreadsheet I was struck by a strange sensation. The cushion seemed to expand and shift suddenly to the right. This preceded what, had I been standing,  would be described as a collapse.

I picked myself up. On my feet I crashed into doors, bannisters and furniture while my vision swirled anti-clockwise around a central point.

The calm and rational voice in me told me a head-cold can affect the magical workings of the inner-ear, the mechanism that looks after balance, amongst other things.

My inner-caveman grunted "PANIC: something terrible is happening!" while the calm and rational self looked on disdainfully.

I called a local friend who whizzed round and drove me half a mile up the road the A&E at Furness General Hospital. I staggered to the reception desk and hugged it close to keep me upright. As they took my name a wheelchair appeared behind me. In the waiting room I struggled to stay upright in the chair; I needed to be horizontal.

I was wheeled into a cubicle and heaved onto a trolley* with the cot-like side rails up.

Nurses plugged me into a machine that goes ping and inserted a catheter cannula at my wrist. I was asked if I minded medical students being present. The doctor delegated my examination to the students who were very thorough while being friendly and chatty. I suppose when a chap like me collapses they've got to think about serious things like heart attacks, strokes and aneurisms.

Despite the room spinning rather alarmingly and an increasing nausea I remained entirely lucid.

During the examination I started to feel sick. I've never witnessed the phenomenon known as "projectile vomiting" and I doubted such a thing existed. My doubts were banished. Several times.

An anti-nausea medication was injected via the catheter. A CT scan and blood sample were sent off for analysis.

The test were fine. Other problems were ruled out and labrynthitis confirmed. A very unpleasant ailment but far from being life-threatening. About three hours after arriving I was discharged. I was given a packet of prochlorperazine should the symptoms recur.

I missed the judging at Lancaster BF.





*The thing Americans call a "gurney". A word I find faintly disturbing.

Wanna Judge Beer? - Update

Here's the list of beers to be judged on Thursday 1st March for the Lancashire Cup. There will be others (including keg lager!) but being from outside Lancashire they don't qualify for judging.

Could those people who indicated via the comments on the previous post that they might like to judge please contact me by email to confirm? Thanks.

Bank Top	Gold Digger	4%
Bank Top	Dark Mild	4
Barngates	Red Bull Terrier	4.8
Barngates	Pride of Westmoreland	4.1
Coniston	Blacksmith's Ale	5
Coniston	No9 Barley Wine	8.5
Coniston	Infinity IPA	6
Coniston	Special Oatmeal Stout	4.5
Coniston	Bluebird	3.6
Cross Bay	Zenith	5
Cross Bay	Winter Moon	3.6
Cross Bay	Dusk	4.5
Cross Bay	Witching Hour	4.4
Cross Bay	Sunset	4.2
Cross Bay	Nightfall	3.8
Cumbrian Legendary Ales	Langdale	4
Cumbrian Legendary Ales	Loweswater Gold	4.3
Fallons	Hex Original	5
Fallons	Angelic War	3.8
Fuzzy Duck	Cunning Stunt	4.3
Fuzzy Duck	Pheasant Plucker	4.2
Greenodd	Best Bitter	4.1
Greenodd	Citra	4
Hopstar	Smokey Joes Black Beer	4
Hopstar	Dizzy Dannyale	3.8
JW Lees	The Governor	3.8
Kirkby Lonsdale	The Dark Arts	4.7
Kirkby Lonsdale	Stanley's	3.8
Lancaster	Red	4.9
Lancaster	Black	4.6
Lancaster	Blonde	4.1
Lancaster	Amber	3.7
Mayflower	Lancashire Stout	4
Mayflower	Lemon Head	3.9
Moorhouses	Blonde Witch	4.5
Moorhouses	Premier Bitter	3.7
Prospect Brewery	Nutty Slack	3.9
Prospect Brewery	Blinding Light	4.2
Rossendale Brewery	Halo Pale	4.5
Rossendale Brewery	Glen Top	4
Rossendale Brewery	Floral Dance	3.8
Stringers	No2 Stout	4
Stringers	The North Will Rise Again	4.9
Three B's	Stokers Slate	3.6
Three B's	Bobbins Bitter	3.8
Thwaites Brewery	Lancaster Bomber	4.4
Thwaites Brewery	Wainwright	4.1
Thwaites Brewery	Triple C	4.2

Wanna Judge Beer?

Once again I'm leading the judging for the Lancaster Beer Festival awarding the "Lancashire Cup".

This beer festival was formerly know as the Lanacster Round Table Beer Festival, and it is now in its 23rd year.

The dates are March 1st, 2nd and 3rd. Here's the website: http://www.lancasterbeerfest.org/

The judging will take place at Lancaster Town Hall on March 1st – and we have vacancies for judges.

If you can be in Lancaster (at your own expense, sorry – it is a charidee gig) on March 1st and you feel you know your beer then get in touch.

Some things I look for in a beer judge:

Open-mindedness: If you've ever uttered something like "all lager is rubbish" or "all keg beer is rubbish" then you should think again. As it happened, last year we had no lager or keg beer but nonetheless, to be an open-minded beer judge you will NOT have written off beers in these categories purely because of some dogma you have swallowed.

Open-mindedness: If you live by restrictive self-impose rules, e.g. "I never drink beer that is over 4%" or "I never drink stout", you're probably not cut out to be a judge.

Open-mindedness: you are intrigued by every new beer you encounter, regardless of style or country of origin.

A willingness to treat beer judging seriously. If, upon reading this, you thought something like "great, that'll be a laugh, pissing it up on free beer for day, count me in" then we don't want you.

What is Craft Beer?

Like pornography, it's hard to define, but I know it when I see it (link).

National Winter Ales Festival

Some pictures.

It was a beer festival. Beer was consumed.

Golden Pints

I know soon as I click 'publish' I'll start remembering things I should have included, but hey ho, let's go....


Best UK draught beer: Joint winners here. I don't want anyone to think I have a particular loyalty to my home county, it just so happens that this year three of my most memorable, almost tear-in-the eye moments, have been from beers from my own turf. 


Coniston Brewery's "Blacksmith's Ale". This one snuck up on me. Although I've been drinking various Coniston beers for years, This one wasn't on my radar. In my fifteen London years, Coniston beers were eagerly anticipated on homeland visits. I think that I had been reacting viscerally to its misleading description "winter warmer", a term which suggests to me, moderately-hopped sweet toffee-ish beers. In reality it's a copper-coloured ale with abundant hops. It's magic is in the way the flavours hang together and integrate as a  coherent intelligent magical whole. Borrowing a word from the wine world, this beer has "length" – its flavours develop and mutate upon every sip, it lingers, it slowly reveals new nuances. There is no greater complement for a beer – from me anyway.


Cumbrian Legendary Ales "Rothay Red IPA" – A new one. Only appeared in recent weeks. Possesses all the complexity of "Blacksmith's" but with abundant use of some kind of reddish malt and (I'm guessing) some rye. 


Stringers "Furness Abbey" - Splendid Belgie-esque cask beer.


Camden Lager. Hugely quenching, biscuity. Everything you need from a standard lager. Intelligently conceived. Properly brewed. Nicely presented.


Best UK packaged beer: I'm struggling to think of any particular beer that deserves to be singled out as overall winner so I'm just going to mention some that I have found myself making repeated acquisitions of.


Coniston's "Thurstein Pilsner" is misleadingly named; if it wasn't a protected designation of origin "Kölsch"would be more appropriate. Then again, no resident of Cologne would mistake it for one of their own. It's flavour is more savoury than a Kolsch. Whereas Pilsner hops are often described as "grassy" I might be inclined to described Thurstein's as "celery salty". And I like celery salt. A lot. By the way, according to Wikipedia "The lake [Coniston] was formerly known as "Thurston Water", a name derived from the Old Norse personal name 'Thursteinn' + Old English 'waeter'.^[2]This name was used as an alternative to Coniston Water until the late 18th century."


Hardknott's "Queboid". Dave may be busy trumpeting about his new "Vitesse Noir" but I think this is his best beer.


Best Overseas packaged:


"Boont Amber" by Anderson Valley and "Anchor Bock" by Anchor of San Francisco.


Best Overall Beer: 


It has to be the aforementioned Coniston Blacksmiths

Best Pumpclips: 


Dunno

Best UK Brewery:  


Coniston

Best Overseas Brewery: 


Dunno

Pub/Bar of the Year: 


The Free Trade Inn, Byker, Newcastle and the Jolly Butchers, Stoke Newington.

Beer Festival of the Year:


GBBF, simply because of the import selection and that I get to see almost all of the friends I've ever made in beer.

Supermarket of the Year: 


Booths, but I really wish they would do more interesting imports. [Booths – if you're reading this – I am available for consultation]

Independent Retailer of the year: 


BeerRitz

Online Retailer of the year: 


Dunno, haven't used any.

Best Beer Book/Mag: 


Beer. If only it was more widely available and not so on-message of the CAMRA narratives.

Best Blog: 


For being an elegant writer and for not being someone who endlessly posts links to their own utterances on every bloody medium known to man http://www.beerbirrabier.com/


Not sure it counts as a blog but I rather like http://desdemoor.co.uk/

Best tweeter: 


Do me a favour.

Best Online Brewery Presence: 


Dunno

Food and Beer Pairing of the Year: 


There have been many. If I recall a particularly outstanding one I'll come back and edit this.

What I'd like to do in 2012:


More of what I've done in 2011 but with a healthier bank balance. 


Open Categories:-


Worst Pumpclip:


http://pumpclipparade.blogspot.com/2011/11/smart-brewing-company-smart-arse.html


Most Over-Rated Brewery: buy me a couple of pints and I'll tell you.

Heresy? (Hardknott Dave, avert your gaze)

I've tasted Hardknott's mad bonkers Vitesse Noir a few times now.

It has a fantastic complex aroma of coffee and multitude of malt nuances. It's a beer that needs sipping, it's so rich and juicy and strong it defies a decent gulp. Its carbonation is barely discernable.

So in the pub recently I quipped it would benefit from a dash of Coke. The veins in Hardknott Dave's neck bulged as he forced a laugh at my heretical utterance.

At home last night I realised I was in possession of some Coke (a-Cola, that is) and a VN. So an experiment was in order.

I poured VN into two glasses. One as a control, one to receive the heretical mixer.

In the second glass I started with Coke:VN at 1:1. Yuk. The Coke overwhelmed the beer and a perfectly acceptable soft drink was ruined.

I upped the beer. 1:2, 1:3, 1:4, 1:5, 1:6, tasting the mixture at each stage. By 1:6 the overwhelming Coke sweetness was suitably diluted whilst some of its carbonation gave the cocktail a lift.

Tasting the control beer in the other glass came as a shock; it seemed extra rich, cloying and intense. The mix was lighter and easier drinking whilst the VN's abundant flavours remained. But the Coke flavour seemed to fight above its weight. Further dilution was necessary. I poured the control and the mix into one glass. Finally it was spot-on. I guess the ratio was about 1:10.

Clutching At Straws For A Silver Lining

I've signed the beer tax e-petition. I hope you have too.

I don't suppose that it will have any impact whatsoever, but, what the hell, we've got nothing to lose have we?

The trouble is, strong beer is a soft target. The bigger problem is that governments want to keep on being governments rather than shadow governments. In order to do so they must keep their voters on side by being seen to punish those core voters' "out groups" (psychology speak for subjects of bigotry or prejudice).

The core voters for the current government are Daily Mail readers (well, not for the Lib Dems, but let's forget about them, everybody else does). They're not a constituency known for letting facts get in their way of their opinions. Strong beer has no hope of gaining favour with these people; and it is these people to whom the government would have to justify a drop in duty on stronger beer. The Daily Mail would stir up a storm of wrong-headed indignation.

The problem is multi-faceted:

1) It's beer – this voter demographic is keen to be regarded as middle-class. They regard beer as a working-class drink and binge-drinking as a working-class habit.


2) It's strong – Binge drinking is spiralling out of control, is it not? (remember what I said about not letting facts get in the way of opinions?).


3) Al fresco drinkers are the public face of strong beer.


4) Much strong beer is foreign. The voter demographic is notoriously xenophobic.


Our defence has two facets, neither of which I fear will have much impact :

a) The duty rise affects beers favoured by connoisseurs who generally go home quietly, failing to trouble the emergency services. 

This is not likely to have much impact as connoisseurship is a euphemism for snobbery. In Daily Mail land snobbery is a very bad thing.

b) The new beer duty has a negative impact on Britain's new wave of craft breweries and pubs and bars. 

This is not going to create sympathy amongst Daily Mail readers. When the Daily Mail reports on binge drinking the comments sections fill up with suggestions that the breweries should be clamped down upon. Mired in a model that is at least thirty years out of date, the DM reader uses "breweries" to mean all producers and retailers of alcohol, any alcohol. Binge drinking is increasing so "breweries" must be punished.


All in all, I fear we are stuck with this stupid tax rise. The best we can do is to gird our collective loins for action about any further duty increases.

The only silver lining I can see is that higher priced stronger craft beer may induce the higher price = higher quality perception in more people.

This was the principal used so cleverly by the marketers of Stella Artois in their "reassuringly expensive" slogan. Psychologists and economists have repeatedly demonstrated that people prefer wine they are told is expensive to wine they are told is cheap, even if it is identical – or inferior. People want to be seen as demonstrating taste and discernment, and higher price is the biggest clue available that an item is superior.

This can only be good for beer. It may even draw more people into sharing our pleasure in beer. Beer may shake off some of its downmarket reputation.

Some Armchair Beerology

Please take my survey:   goo.gl/gFYQo

I don't want to give to much away at the moment. I don't want to give you any prompts that affect your response, so please bear with the lack of info for the time being.

I'm aiming to get a minimum of 100 responses so please pass the link on to your beer-drinking friends.

Craftiness from CAMRA or Daily Mail being it's usual vile self?

You may have noticed that I am not CAMRA's number one fan. The dogmatism, the prickliness, the thinly-veiled politics, the intransigence, the self-congratulation: you get the picture.

Nor am I a fan of the Daily Mail. The lies, the distortions, the misinformation, the racism, the bigotry, the homophobia, the misquotation, the sexism, the abuse, the entirely unveiled politics. They are all thoroughly taken apart by my favourite non-beer blogs: Tabloid Watch, Press Not Sorry, Angry Mob, Enemies of Reason, Liberal Conspiracy, Five Chinese Crackers, Buff the Banana and Mail Watch.


I know it's not good for my blood pressure, but I regularly scan the outpourings of both CAMRA and the Daily Mail.

Yesterday the Daily Mail ran a non-story about a non-contoversy (nothing unusual in that) about the Good Pub Guide charging pubs for listings. This isn't news. The DM's rubbish "story" also contradicts its previous glowing coverage of the Good Pub Guide.


The story is here. I've saved it for all time in Freezepage as the DM does have a habit of disappearing stories from its website when commenters point out glaring wrongnesses.

The interesting bit is the penultimate paragraph:

Could this keen pub-goer be the Iain Loe who is CAMRA's Research Manager and National Spokesperson? CAMRA are, of course, publishers of the Good Pub Guide's arch-rival the Good Beer Guide.

I suspect this lack of honesty is the fault of the Daily Mail. It has a history of lazy and feckless journalism and non-existant fact-checking all for the sake of whipping up its readers into false rages.

I suspect – and hope – Iain Loe and all at St Albans HQ are furious that the Daily Mail has brought their integrity into question.

Beer List

In the previous post I hyped up a pub beer festival I've had a hand in organising.

The good news is: it's going to be great anyway.

The bad news is: due to the remote location and short notice we haven't been able to get as many of my wish-list beers as I would have liked.

Here's the list (updated in real time as more info comes in. If anyone can provide any info on the blank bits please comment):

You are all invited to a beer festival I'm helping to organise

If you're looking for something to do in the forthcoming Bank Holiday weekend – look no further, there's a cracking beer festival requiring your presence.

It's at the Queens Arms, Biggar Village.

My role is selecting the beers. I've themed the event "Britain's Got Brewing Talent". We are busily sourcing beers from the more progressive of the country's craft-breweries. We will even have some rather interesting keg beers.

Here's the location of the pub. As you can see, it's a bit off the beaten track. I've got a spare room (single bed). Drop me a line if you fancy a visit.

A Bit of Brewing History.

I was in the Stagger Inn, Stainton a few days ago for a family do, making use of Monday's happy hour and two-for-one deals.

The food is remarkably good given the low prices. Coniston Bluebird could have been a little fresher and cooler. The coloured lightbulbs add nothing to the place except to make it look a bit of a tart's boudoir. Nonetheless, it should be on your radar for a reasonable pub feed if you're visiting South Cumbria. It's a couple of miles from Cumbria's biggest tourist attraction – the South Lakes Wildlife Park – where the food offering is abysmal, so it's worth making a note of.

Hidden away on the wall of the gents' toilets are two old photographs. They aren't dated but in the corner of each is the inscription "Bass, Burton."

I managed to get a snap of one of the pics, but loitering in toilets with a camera isn't my preferred occupation, so I left the second one.

I might be mistaken, but these pictures looked like very old, possibly original, prints. Does anyone know if this picture has appeared anywhere else? Have I discovered a significant snapshot of Britain's brewing heritage, or did they pick it up at Athena?

Beer Festival Fun

It's that time of year again. The GBBF is nigh.

No doubt I'll be bumping into many of you at Earls Court next week.  If I haven't made your acquaintance before, please do introduce yourself. You'll find me not unadjacent to the Bières Sans Frontières bar.


I usually gravitate toward the foreign bars at the big festivals. So it was at South West London CAMRA's Battersea Beer Festival in 2003. The venue was Battersea Arts Centre, a short walk up Lavender Hill from legendary craft beer bar "Microbar".


I was there with my friends Alex (who later went on to run Microbar) and Sarah, a regular customer.


We spied some unfamiliar weiss beers which obviously needed testing. We ordered three different ones. The chap serving ticked many of the CAMRA cliche boxes – scruffy, straggly hair and beard, keys and gadgets attached to his belt etc. I used to know his name but it escapes me now. I'll point him a out at Earls Court if you like.


Anyway, he opened the three bottles. He handed Alex and me our bottles to pour ourselves. He took Sarah's glass and was about to start pouring.


"It's OK thanks, I'll do it myself"


"But it's a German weiss bier"


"Yes, I know. I'll..."


"It's meant to be poured in a particular ..."


"I do know how to pour it. Just give me the bottle"


"You know it 's brewed with wheat malt and special yeast that imparts..."


"Yes I know"


"You have to pour it very caref..."


"Yes, I do know. Please could you give me the bottle"


By now Sarah was reaching across the bar. Her hands were on top his on the bottle and glass and they were sliding backwards and forwards across the bar.


But you don't understand, It's a German weiss bier, You need to...


Sarah could stand no more. Her voice raised to a "don't mess with me" level she met his gaze and said:


"I AM FUCKING GERMAN. I AM FROM FUCKING MUNICH. STOP FUCKING PATRONISING ME."


He let go of the bottle pretty sharpish.

HardknottDave on Radio Cumbria this morning.

Click HERE to listen to the excerpt.