The case of beers I put together with mail order company Best of British Beer to accompany my next book club event is designed to reflect the mercurial, elusive character of the craft beer world’s favourite beer style.
IPA is the most popular – and most argued over – beer style in craft beer. Everything about it, from its hazy origins to its colour, character and (increasingly murky) appearance, is debated passionately across social media and print publications. Its story has been mythologised, misunderstood, and endlessly redefined. Like the broader concept of craft beer itself, I’m not just fascinated by it, I’m fascinated by the fascination around it, by the varying degrees of passion, agitation and disdain it inspires.
This is why, for my third book, I undertook the frankly stupid endeavour of recreating its legendary journey by sea from Burton-on-Trent to Calcutta. This project almost broke me, in many ways, but hey – I got a great book out of it, and we’re discussing that book, and the story behind it, at my third Beer Book Club on Wednesday, 12th May.
For each of these book clubs, I’m attempting to put together a themed case of beers (or ciders, where relevant) that people attending may choose to order to drink along to the chat. Best of British Beer volunteered to help me out with a case for this one, and sent me a bottle of every beer they had in stock with “IPA” on the label. From that, I chose six beers that tell a potted history of the beer that used to be known as India Pale Ale – all quite different from each other, each excellent in its own way.
IPA was never ‘invented’ as such – it evolved from strong beers meant for keeping, and it has continued to evolve ever since. According to contemporary reports, in the 1780s it was quite dark, murky, and very bitter. In nineteenth century India, it was bright and sparkling, compared to champagne more than anything else. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, changes in taxation and drinking habits saw a steep drop in its alcoholic strength. A few years ago, beer geeks would rage that a beer such as Greene King IPA was not a “proper” IPA because it was only 3.6% ABV. Those critics should know that a few years ago, the original 1928 recipe for GK IPA was discovered, and it’s hardly changed in the almost century since. If you could go back to the mid-twentieth century, any British brewer would have told you that it was typical of what “IPA” was at that time. And anyway, the rise of “session IPAs” means that the strength argument can no longer be coherently made by craft beer scenesters.
The American reinvention of IPA only really took off in the UK a little over a decade ago, and since then the pace of evolution has sped up dramatically. What we now think of as ‘West Coast IPA’ is referred to by some as ‘Old School IPA’. If a beer style that can only be traced back in any meaningful sense to the 1990s is now ‘old school’, what does that make IPA’s 200-year-odd history up to that point?
In a very meaningful sense, the dominant style of the moment – New England IPA – is the opposite of what IPA was before it came along. India Pale Ale became the definitive beer style of the nineteenth century, and cast its shadow over the next, because it was designed to be stored and/or to survive a long sea journey in which it was subject to massive fluctuations in temperature, which contributed to its unique character, in which hop bitterness was assertive.
Now, IPAs have next to no bitterness at all, and we’re told that we must keep them cold from packaging to consumption and drink them fresh, because their delicate character disappears after a few weeks.
The British soldiers and clerks drinking IPA in Calcutta in the 1860s would have spat out a NEIPA claiming that it was too green, that it hadn’t ‘ripened’. The modern NEIPA fan would (and often does) dismiss traditional IPA as not being IPA at all, because it is not pale enough, not juicy enough.
The Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), commonly regarded in the craft beer world as the arbiter of beer styles, goes so far as to state: “The term ‘IPA’ is intentionally not spelled out as ‘India Pale Ale’ since none of these beers historically went to India, and many aren’t pale.”
So there we have it: IPA isn’t actually India Pale Ale at all, but an acronym without a home, or even a new word in its own right, a word commonly pronounced “eepa” by beer drinkers who’s first language isn’t English.
In 2014, Canadian beer writer Stephen Beaumont threw his hands up and said, “Fine, let’s face it, every beer is now an IPA.” With that in mind, here are the six beers I’ve chosen that all stake a claim to the title of IPA. I like them all – otherwise I wouldn’t have chosen them – but because of my age and experience, my heart will always be in the Old School.
Wold Top – Scarborough Fair – true to the traditional British style – crisp, bitter and balanced
Hafod – Freestyle – A great take on what we now call West Coast IPA, resiny and piney with a firm malt backbone
Mor – Ish – Mid-twentieth century-style IPA, gently bitter and clean, lower ABV.
Windsor & Eton – Conqueror – The tautology that is a Black India Pale Ale – a blend of fresh hoppy aromas and deep, chocolatey malt.
Loch Lomond – Zoom Time – Hazy, juicy and with low bitterness, a perfect example of the New England IPA style.
Stonehouse – Vanilla Milkshake – Brewed with vanilla and lactose for an even smoother, creamier body – is this the future of IPA?
The Hops & Glory six-pack is available to buy at £21.95 from Best of British Beer. Ticket-holders for my Hops & Glory book club event on Wednesday 12th May can claim a 10% discount code. Sadly the beers are for UK delivery only, but the event is on Zoom so you can come along wherever in the world you are, and bring your own IPAs, whatever colour, clarity, strength and character they happen to have.
Putting aside the arguments over restrictions, passports and David versus Goliath, now we do most of our drinking at home (even before Covid) why does the pub actually matter?
I took the picture above on 22nd July 2020 – the first time I had been in a pub (or even outside one) since 13th March, the day I came home from a week of beery events around the UK and went into two weeks of quarantine to make sure I didn’t give Covid to my asthmatic wife.
Neither of us left the house again until 21st June. Three-and-a-half months into lockdown, we had never seen perspex screens in shops, or floor markers and widened pavements to help maintain social distancing. We were curious about everything in the changed outside world.
The picture was taken on a table outside the Anchor & Hope in Upper Clapton, North London. The pub sits on the bank of the River Lea, opposite Walthamstow Marshes, where we’d just taken Mildrid for a long walk for the first time in months, and the tables outside offer views of canal boats puttering lazily up and down the Lea, ducks futilely attempting to direct traffic, and long green fronds dancing lazily in the currents. Even if we’d been allowed to drink inside, we’d have chosen a table out here.
Liz went inside to the bar, and returned with two of these pints. Because I am now supposedly an “Influencer”, before I could take a swig I felt obliged (and indeed was instructed) to take a picture and share it on the socials. The accompanying text was:
“First draft pint in a pub since 13th March. Yes it’s a mainstream lager. Yes it’s in a hopelessly inappropriate wrongly branded glass. No it’s not “craft”. Go on, ask me if I care.”
They asked.
I didn’t care.
It was a warm day, 22nd July 2020. But that’s not why I ordered a mainstream lager in a wrongly branded glass. In fact I didn’t order a mainstream lager in a wrongly branded glass. I got served a mainstream lager in a wrongly branded glass because that’s all the pub had, thanks to the inept way reopening had been handled by the government, without enough notice for small, local brewers to start brewing again.
At home, I had a cellar full of infinitely better beers than this – and in many cases, the glassware to match.
But this was in a pub. As is so often the case, the beer itself wasn’t the point.
When I’m interviewed by other journalists – which happens quite a lot each time pubs gear up for reopening after a lockdown – the questions I get asked more than any other are:
– Why is the British pub so special?
– What’s the difference between a pub and a bar?
– Why are pubs such a big part of British culture?
These are the questions I was thinking about long before I even knew about things like “craft beer”, beer styles, the hop profile of a West Coast IPA or the pros and cons of cask breathers. And I’ve just been asked them an awful lot once again, over what we must all hope has been the final week of Covid lockdown.
I’ve been thinking about them for 25 years now, and have devoted the best parts of at least three books to trying to answer them. If anything, this makes it much harder to try to give short, concise answers, because there’s so much to say. But on the day pubs reopen for outside drinking (in somewhat less clement rather than 22nd July last year) here are three of the main answers, written with the perspective gained from having been away from pubs for longer than I have ever since about the age of sixteen.
1. We are pack animals.
Mildrid, our dog, is spoiled rotten. I’m afraid she gets whatever she wants, even when what she wants changes on a second-by-second basis. If Liz and I are sitting together, Mildrid has to be there with us, preferably lying between us. When she’s happiest she zones put, almost catatonic. The amateur dog psychologist in me believes this is to do with dogs being pack animals, and that when she’s lying between us, Mildrid is mentally back in her litter of puppies.
Maybe it takes a lockdown to really realise this, but we’re not that much different – we need to be around other people. We want to be in a pub that’s reasonably busy. We feel happier if there are other people there, even if we have no intention of directly socialising with them.
The pub occasion I’ve missed more than any other is popping in for a swift one on the way back from the park with Mildrid. On these occasions, I want to read a book, usually for some research I’m doing, and not to bump into anyone I know or be bothered by anyone I don’t know. But I’d still much rather the pub was busy than not (so long as I can get still get a table to myself.)
I wrote in Shakespeare’s Local about how trends in pub interior design have moved counter to trends in our homes. In Chaucer’s time, homes consisted of one room with a fire in the middle. There was no privacy. Pubs, on the other hand, were divided and sub-divided by screens and partitions, the forerunner of the snug, so that couples – who could afford it – were able to converse in privacy.
Now, we’ve gone the opposite way. At home, families spend a lot of their time in different rooms looking at different screens, while many pubs have knocked down all their interior walls, so we can all be in one big space, not interacting with each other directly, but comforted in some way by the presence of others.
2. But we need help socialising.
I love the American bar experience approximately 75% as much as I love the British pub. It has its own unique attractions, and I miss it desperately if I haven’t been to the US for a while. But much in American society and culture is formalised, whereas rules in Britain from the constitution to the way we order a drink at the bar are informal and unwritten – people are just expected to absorb it and know them.
I once met an American journalist for an interview in a pub in the centre of London. She was just off the Red Eye, and had headed straight in from the airport, so to be fair she wasn’t in the best shape for her first-ever British pub encounter. I found her standing about five yards way from the bar, staring at it, trembling slightly. After we made our introductions she said, “How do you do…” and raised one arm in a weak gesture in the direction of the beer pumps, “…THIS?”
Much has been written about the invisible queue at the bar, about why you never ask for a Guinness at the end of your order, about the difference in hand gestures that are politely attracting attention versus being rude.
But the reason I love this arcane, unwritten pub etiquette is that pretty much all of it has evolved specifically to encourage sociability: the buying of rounds, the need to go to the bar to do so, the clinking of glasses – the whole lot.
The best illustration of this is the way that the central bar space is open territory, but tables, once occupied, are private. If someone strikes up a conversation with you at the bar, that’s friendly. If they then follow you back to your table without being invited, that’s weird.
(As an exception to British supremacy in this regard, the Germans have a wonderful custom called the stämmtisch, which I wish was ours. This translates as “regular’s table”, and anyone who wishes to join it when it is already occupied is expected to knock on the table to request admission.)
3. So the symbolic value of pubs is greater than their practical use.
Whenever a pub local to me closes, people invariably go, “Oh that’s a shame. They should have gone there more often to keep it open.” Who “they” are is never clear, given that the person speaking professes to love the pub in question, but last went there about three years ago. We want pubs to be there, even if we don’t want to use them ourselves. This can be a problem.
That’s because the pub is such an important part of the British landscape that it represents normality. In the First World War, Prime Minister David Loyd George was in favour of total prohibition, but was talked out of it for fear of a communist revolution. In World War II, the bombing of civilian targets meant morale on the home front was as important as it was on the front line. Churchill understood this. Beer was never rationed, and pubs were never forced to resrict their opening hours. So long as the pub could still open, that meant we hadn’t yet been beaten – even if the “pub” was a plank across two barrels in a bombed-out pile of rubble that had until the night before been a Victorian hostelry.
That’s why Covid has been so shocking. As far as I can tell from my research, there has never been another time in British history when pubs have been required to close their doors universally in this way. It’s like cutting off a limb of ordinary British life. For fans of Shaun of the Dead, our first instinct when the virus hit might have been to go down to the Winchester and wait until all this blows over. But the virus might as well have been designed to take out everything that makes pubs special – the informality, the ordering at the bar, the chance encounters, the chinking of glasses. The fact that the pubs had to close showed that this was not normal. That it was actually pretty fucking scary.
So that’s why, today, all the headlines are about pub gardens reopening, with al fresco restaurants, gyms and hairdressers coming much lower in the mix. It’s why I’m writing this on a bus – the first bus I’ve been on since March 2020 – on my way to the George in Southwark to give an interview to the New York Times, and why I’m talking to CBS’s Sixty Minutes down there after that. If the pubs are reopening, that means Britain is getting back to normal – and the whole world is watching.
So just for today, I’m not talking about how pubs were unfairly targeted by a lazy government, about how those without outdoor spaces still aren’t open, or about all the other problems and issues that are not going away.
Today, I’m going to the pub, wrapped up in fleece and scarf, and asking “What’s on cask?”
Most people who follow me online do so because they enjoy my books. So I thought I’d organise a beer book club on Zoom to revisit my backlist.
I’ve largely enjoyed Zoom events – I’m lucky, I haven’t had to do too many during the day at work, so they’ve remained a bit of a treat. I’ve also spoken to people at online beer events who actually prefer these chats to meeting up in real life – either because they can get to them more easily and cheaply, or because they feel more comfortable attending from the safe space of their home. I can’t wait to do physical events again, but even when we’re back at pub gigs and festivals, I still plan to both attend and run events online in addition to IRL.
Last week, I pushed an idea out on social media – what if I do a Zoom book club? Each session, we focus on one book from my backlist. I do a talk or presentation about it, then open it up to a Q&A. After we get to the end of the formal bit, if anyone wants to stay on and chat longer, we can. It got a great response, so here we go.
I’ll be going through the books in chronological order, starting with Man Walks into a Pub on 28th April. I’m charging a small ticket price of £3.50, and tickets are on sale now.
Obviously, we thought it might be nice idea to do this with a drink in hand. You don’t have to drink through the talk, but you may well want to.
My intention is to link up with an online retailer and try to come up with some kind of offer for event attendees. I want to try to make these, in an idea world, bespoke cases that fit with the theme of the book.
For Man Walks into a Pub, I have the perfect case ready to go, with a special offer for event attendees that’s a bit complicated, but very good. I’ve done a series of cases with Beer52 for a Master Beer Taster qualification. There are four cases in total, covering the classic beer styles associated with four great brewing powerhouses: the UK and Ireland, Germany, Belgium, and the USA. Each case comes with a short book covering the history, beer styles, quirks and trivia of brewing in that country. The UK case makes the perfect accompaniment to Man Walks into a Pub and is available here.
Beer52 would like to support this project but are not set up to give a discount on this case specifically. However, if you buy a ticket for any Book Club event, you’ll be given codes for some great discounts on other Beer52 stuff.
Here’s my provisional schedule for all the events. I’ll update details on this blog post as we go, and also post them on the events page of this website. In case you’re not familiar with my full backlist, the links on the book titles below take you to more information on each of my books.
The Apple Orchard – Wednesday 9th June, 7pm. My celebration of this overlooks, magical fruit.
Miracle Brew – Wednesday 16th June, 7pm. The natural history astonishing stories behind the four main ingredients of beer. There’s a range of beers put together with Bath Road Beers. Tickets on sale now.
Pie Fidelity – Wednesday 23rd June, 7pm. My exploration of nine different classic British dishes, and why they deserve two be celebrated. Tickets on sale now. Accompanying range of beers put together by Bath Rd Beers, with a 10% discount for ticket-holders.
Craft: An Argument– Wednesday 30th June, 7pm. My lockdown book about why the term ‘craft beer’ is completely undefinable, hopelessly misunderstood, and absolutely essential. Tickets on sale now. Accompanying range of beers put together by Bath Rd Beers, with a 10% discount for ticket-holders.
Beer By Design – Wednesday 6th July, details TBC. My visual celebration of the evolution of and recent revolution in how beer is sold to us on the shelf. Drinks offer still being finalised. Tickets on sale now.
I’ll probably play around with the format, maybe invite guests, and will always intend to have some kind of special offer on a beer or cider tie-up. Hope to see you there!
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In the late nineteenth century, a Romantic textile designer from Walthamstow invented the modern concept of “craft”. Yeah, it’s all his fault.
William Morris was born on 24th March, 1834. If you could have asked him him about that a few years later, and he would have told you this was 600 years too late. As a kid, he had his own suit of armour and would run around his family’s big garden pretending to be a knight. As a young adult, he vehemently rejected contemporary aesthetics in favour of medieval nostalgia.
Morris wasn’t alone. The Industrial Revolution may have started long before the Victorian era, but by the time Morris was at university the pace of progress was so rapid, and the human and environmental cost so great (it could also be argued that Morris was the godfather of the Green movement) that some people began to question whether it was “progress” at all.
He believed industrialisation had robbed people of dignity and purpose. Before factories and mills, if you made bread, or shoes, or chairs, or beer, you were a baker, a shoemaker, a furniture maker or a brewer, and your work was your own. Your craft involved the mastery of a number of different skills, and if you were any good, the way you combined them meant the end result of your skill and labour was unmistakably yours.
By contrast, when you went to work on a production line, you were reduced to doing one task over and over again, while the person next to you did another task, and so on, until at the end of the line, all the shoes or chairs looked exactly the same, and your contribution, your mark, was as invisible as everyone else’s.
Morris created workshops where skills were recombined, and individual craftspeople were allowed to make their own products as they saw fit. The craftsperson was given autonomy, control, job satisfaction, and ultimately, a sense of dignity that were not available to their counterparts in factories. The workers, the ideas they presented and the products they created became known as the Arts and Crafts Movement.
The word “craft” goes back to at least the 10th century, but its specific meaning today was invented by Morris. Before the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship was just the way things were done, the way they’d always been done. Arts and Crafts arrived at a time when industrialised productions had become the normal way things were done. “Craft”, in its modern sense, is an alternative, a choice, a reaction against mainstream industrial production, against the way things are normally done.
As we sit here, reading and writing on our personal electronic devices while sitting on comfortable chairs in heated rooms, it’s a point of view many of us might feel sympathy with. But Morris and his work exposed the problems and contradictions at the heart of the idea of craft.
The reason industrialised production took off is because it allowed products to be made quicker and cheaper, and therefore more affordable. Factory workers may have been miserable at work, but at the end of the week they could actually afford to buy a pair of shoes, or a loaf of bread. (A new chair used to be something out of the reach of most people. Now you can buy an IKEA IVAR chair with the proceeds of two hours working on minimum wage.)
If you’re going to allow individual craftspeople the time and space to make things themselves, how they want to, and pay them fairly for doing so, their products can only be more expensive than those made in factories. The great irony of the Arts & Crafts movement was that pretty much the only people who could afford to buy what they made were the wealthy industrialists who they stood against. The movement eventually fell apart under the weight of its own contradictions.
But Morris’s ideas stuck around. The idea that something produced by a craftsperson was somehow inherently better that something made in a factory takes many forms. We assume it will be better quality than something mass-produced – even though this is by no means always true.
(Mainstream lagers may be bland and insipid, but craft products are far more variable.)
But many people also believe there’s a moral dimension to it – it’s better for the maker, who has a more fulfilling, meaningful job, but it’s also better for the consumer, because they’re supporting a small producer rather than big corporation, a more sustainable and less moral dubious form of business, one that isn’t big enough to bully its competitors, strip-mine the planet of resources, or exploit poorly paid workers.
(“Craft beer people are good people” and all that.)
Interestingly, Morris had a revival of interest in the 1970s – precisely when CAMRA began campaigning in the UK and what would later be called craft brewers started mashing in in the United States. Today, as interest in what we loosely refer to craft beer shows no sign of abating, interest in arts and crafts more broadly is booming again – FFS, even macramé is currently hip.
The picture of Morris above was taken when he was 53 – a year older than I am now. I suspect I could get away with using it as a picture of a middle-aged writer about craft beer today and no-one who doesn’t recognise him would suspect me of foul play. Not only does William Morris look like an ageing craft beer hipster, he would recognise all the contradictions and frustrations at the heart of craft beer, the discussions around it, the incessant need to define it, to own it or protect it, and, increasingly, the desire among producers to abandon the term.
His legacy shows why that might be a bad idea. Arts & Crafts, like craft beer, was easy to criticise, easy for those who wanted to to exploit it and manipulate it to do so, easy to dismiss as being expensive and over-hyped. But a century after its supposed demise, both it and its founder remain culturally vital. As long as we have cheap, mass-market, industrialised production making goods for everyone, we’re going to have niche craft versions produced as a counter-cultural alternative – available for anyone who can afford to buy them.
Enjoyed reading this? There’s a much fuller discussion of the relationship between craft beer and the broader origins of craft in my book Craft: An Argument – named Best Beer Book at the 2020 North American Beer Writers Awards.
Also, please have a look at my Patreon and consider subscribing, from as little as £1 a month. It features exclusive and preview content and many other benefits such as free books, depending on your subscription level.
Beer – it doesn’t matter what the marketing is like, it’s the taste that counts, right? Not according to the outcry that’s greeted the Anchor Brewery’s rebrand.
When we were researching my latest book, Beer By Design, I approached Anchor several times, through various channels, to ask them for some artwork or photography of their labels and bottles. I was completely ignored – even though the brewery follows me on Twitter.
Now, I guess we know why.
This week, Anchor unveiled the most drastic rebrand in its 125-year history. The immediate reaction was a mix of shock and alarm, followed up shortly after by some vigorous defence. Love it or hate it, it has become one of the most talked about, argued about rebrands in craft beer history.
Anchor acknowledged the spirited reaction yesterday by issuing a statement acknowledging the depth of feeling among its fans and defending its position.
The engagement is welcome. The fact that they felt the need to issue the statement underlines the depth of feeling around the change, which is all the more fascinating when you consider how many craft beer fans insist that what’s on the outside of the package doesn’t matter – it’s what’s inside that counts. (Anchor even felt it necessary to reassure fans that the beer itself hadn’t changed.)
My personal reaction was immediate: as a standalone piece of visual design, I think it looks cheap and generic. From a more dispassionate branding point of view, I think it has broken a fundamental law of good branding by throwing away completely a distinctive and much-loved visual identity.
When I mentioned on Twitter that I was going to write this, Anchor’s PR team got in touch with me and offered to give me some more context and background for the change, so I delayed writing this until they could give me their side. They’ve been really helpful. They haven’t changed my mind about the result, but they’ve given me some valuable insight into the process of how they got there, and I don’t disagree at all with a lot of the thinking.
So I thought, for anyone who is particularly interested in branding, this might make for an interesting, long-read case study that has a bit more to it than me simply saying how much I dislike this new look.
Background: What is Anchor and why is it important?
Anchor is widely regarded as the first modern American craft brewery. It actually dates back to 1871, was named Anchor in 1896, closed during prohibition, and then struggled on afterwards until, on the point of closure, it was bought by Fritz Maytag in 1965. Maytag continued brewing the unique Steam Beer, taking years to get it right, and bottling it for the first time in 1971. Over subsequent years he reintroduced porter to North America, and after a trip to England, brewed a tribute to Timothy Taylor’s Landlord using an experimental hop that later became known as Cascade. Anchor stood alone as a small, independent brewery creating beers that didn’t taste like generic macro lager, and in Liberty Ale, arguably invented the style that would go on to become American pale ale.
Back when Steam was first bottled, its labels were hand-drawn and homespun by necessity. But they evoked an indie, rootsy aesthetic that increasingly made a statement against corporate brands that looked increasingly slick, shouty, and, later, computer-generated. This folksy, hand-illustrated style was also taken up by other craft beer pioneers such as Sierra Nevada, Anderson Valley, Samuel Adams and Full Sail.
That was over forty years ago, though. The craft beer shelves are now far more crowded than they were. Even if that were not the case, times change. Everyone needs to update their wardrobe every now and again, and brands are no different. On top of that, Jim Stitt, who started drawing Anchor’s labels in 1974, has now retired from doing so – at the age of 93.
So the packaging definitely needed a refresh, there’s no doubt about that. Having accepted that, there are two basic stages to the process:
Principles and strategy of rebrand – what are the aims of the rebrand? What do we want to achieve and how?
Execution of rebrand – how do we bring that strategy to life in words and visuals?
Principles and strategy of rebrand
There should be specific reasons for a rebrand rather than just “I fancy a change”/ “I need to put something on my CV”.
Anchor cites the need for greater standout on shelf, claiming even some of its biggest fans struggle to spot the existing design in a crowd. Also, it needed to sell an expanding range of beers and have greater coherence between them: “Many of Anchor’s fans only know us as ‘Anchor Steam Beer’ and aren’t aware that we brew other styles of beer,” the brewery spokesperson said. “While Steam will always be at the heart of the brewery, we designed the new look to create visual continuity between all of Anchor’s classic beers, as well as the new styles we’ll be debuting this spring.
Another key aspect from yesterday’s statement acknowledges that “the beer industry has evolved drastically in the last decade with a significant shift toward novelty over heritage,” and that as a result, “we’ve watched many of our friends and colleagues at pioneering breweries close their doors.” Anchor seems to be telling us here that they face a straight choice of looking more like the new kids, or being forgotten.
Strategically, this is the only part that bugs me, for two reasons.
The first is that Anchor is partly right – the craft beer market has shifted towards being more novelty driven. Some of the recent Twitter responses to the rebrand can be summed as “So what? They’re Old School. Fuck ‘em.”
Obviously, there’s a generational element in play. Obviously, innovation and new thinking are vital for any dynamic market to retain its energy. Cask ale in the UK foundered precisely because it didn’t move quickly enough to keep pace with changing tastes. But craft beer succeeds when it is a balance of tradition and innovation playing off each other. If you’re a craft beer fan for whom anything old is irrelevant and crap simply and only because it is old, then you’re not a craft beer fan at all. You’re simply a trend-chasing little kid who has just moved on from fidget spinners and Pokémon Go, and you’ll be out of here whenever some influencer tells you it’s now cooler to drink Hard Seltzer, or CBD-infused spirits, or, I dunno, space rock-infused liquefied cronuts or something. Don’t let your-sticker-loving, badge-encrusted, designer label-clad arse hit the door on the way out.
The second reason is that I think Anchor has drawn the wrong conclusion from the correct analysis, that conclusion being: if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. If you’re being put in the shade by faddy, dayglo brands, you have no option but to look like one yourself.
Weirdly, this conundrum seems to affect beer more than other markets. Levi Strauss is way older than Anchor. Sure, it’s had its ups and downs. But it remains relevant by staying in touch with contemporary issues, while never wavering from its core identity.
It’s the same for other “old-school” brands such as Coca-Cola, Rayban, Jim Beam or Jack Daniel’s, who all remain contemporary and yet true to their roots at the same time.
Updating your wardrobe is one thing. Throwing out a wardrobe of, say, bespoke Savile Row suits because they’re old and grey, and replacing them with a bunch of G-Star, Stone Island and Burberry, is quite another.
Execution of rebrand
When you’re deciding on how to execute a rebrand, you have the choice of gentle evolution or more radical revolution. Any brand needs to stand out from the competition – but at the same time, most brands obey category cues that make them fit in. You don’t see much laundry detergent that you could mistake for beer, and vice versa. Do you stand out by doing category cues better than anyone else? Or do you stand out by looking like no one else does?
Anchor has clearly gone for a revolutionary approach. But there are many examples in beer of brands that maintain their relevance by a process of gentle evolution.
To those who say Anchor needed to change because it hasn’t done until now, it has in fact evolved gently over the years:
Clearly, Anchor no longer felt evolution was enough. But brands such as Budweiser proudly make a point of constant evolution:
Bud’s newest redesign actually found greater relevance by going more old-school, having everything redrawn by hand rather than created via desktop publishing. Here’s a before and after:
It’s won every design award going, and had a dramatic uplift in sales as a result.
On the point about needing to make design work for the range rather than one flagship beer, Anchor’s peer Sierra Nevada had no problem making this work in a gentle evolution of the original illustrated style:
Within craft beer in the UK, Vocation answered the same problem Anchor was facing with regard to clarity and standout on crowded shelves, while retaining all the key elements people were familiar with, but just cleaning them up and making them stand out more:
When Camden Town was bought out by a macro, it managed a rebrand that made it bolder, clearer and more commercial without sacrificing any of its “Camdenness”:
Even if this is not enough – if you decided you had to be more drastic about it – that still doesn’t mean throwing out everything you had. Harvey’s latest rebrand was pretty drastic, but it still looks more like Harvey’s used to look than it looks like anyone else.
Lancashire brewery Moorhouse’s old world was hopelessly outdated, perhaps the closest example in my recent memory to where Anchor imagines it was.
The new stuff looks nothing like the old stuff – but it still draws from the same inspiration, and more crucially, it doesn’t look like any of its competitors:
Be yourself
The key point for me is that a brand has to be true to itself and not try to be someone else.
In its follow-up, Anchor makes a spirited defence that it has done exactly this. And when you actually pick up a pack to have a closer look, it has a point.
Firstly, there’s a new strapline, “Forged in San Francisco,” and reference to Anchor’s heritage. The brewery says:
“For the first time, we are showing our original brewery on all packages, so every lifelong Steam drinker and new drinker has an understanding of our San Francisco roots and heritage. The illustration is inspired by an archival shot of the Gold Rush-era Anchor brewery showcasing the steam that billowed off our rooftops as the wort cooled.”
The pack also tells the story of Steam beer itself:
“Until now, we’ve never told our fans what makes Steam so special. People only knew the story of Steam and why it tastes the way it does if they went on a tour at our brewery in San Francisco (or did research), so part of preserving our legacy was aimed at sharing our stories via our packaging.”
And then there’s the big anchor on the front itself. There are many different anchors in San Francisco’s port heritage, and the new logo “is a combination of many of them, but it is most directly inspired from our 1909 brewery signage when we were located in the Mission District.”
This is all great. I have no problem with any of it in theory (apart from whether or not that is the real story about how steam beer got its name, which is by no means certain). But in order to appreciate any of this, you have to pick up the pack in the first place. And if this is what you’re going to see on shelf, I’m not sure how many people will:
It’s got an Anchor on it, but it doesn’t have Anchor’s values, Anchor’s tone of voice.
The strategy is fine, the execution flawed. Maybe it’ll look different on shelves in San Francisco – maybe the visual aesthetic is different there. But by UK standards, as many have pointed out, with its simplicity and blocks of primary colour, it resembles generic supermarket own label craft beer:
I also worry that a big, simple anchor reminds people of all those generic clip-art logos you can buy by the dozen:
Here’s Anchor’s old logo, next to the new one:
Compare this to the last rebrand on Guinness in 2016, where they felt the world-famous harp logo had become too simplified over time, too desktop-publishing, and redrew everything by hand, to put the craft values back into it:
As other big, established brands learn from craft that people want authentic, handmade cues, Anchor has moved in the opposite direction. Its packaging may now be telling the brewery’s story better, but a visual identity built up over almost 50 years has been trashed at a stroke. The real problem is not that it looks different from how it did, but that it looks too much like everything else, and is too easily replicable.
I hope I’m wrong, but I still think a more rigorous evolution would have been more successful than this drastic revolution, which succeeds in damaging existing brand equity, without providing enough new, ownable, distinctive memorable equity to replace it. I have been wrong about branding many times. Let’s hope this is one of them.
Beer by Design, published by CAMRA Books, is out now.
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My latest project is a book written in lockdown about writing books in lockdown, written specifically to help anyone deciding – or trying to pluck up the courage – to take the plunge and start their own.
We all have our lockdown routines, the bits that are functional and the bits that are dysfunctional. A key part of mine – and I’m not sure which category this falls into – is to get my doomscrolling done early. As soon as I wake up, I scan the headlines first, then check in on Twitter and Facebook, and read until the despair hits some kind of internal alarm that kicks me out. Then, I get on with my day.
While I was doing this on Monday this week, a tweet on my timeline caught my eye. It said something along the lines of “Yay. The start of another week of my life on hold.”
This made me incredibly sad on behalf of the person who had written it. Of course I get it: the sacrifices we are having to make are not easy for any of us. But I found the idea of not being able to go anywhere, not to see people and hug them, not to go to the pub or a party or go browsing in shops, adding up to not having any life at all, to be unbearably sad.
If you’re lucky, lockdown offers opportunities as well as limitations. I can’t speak for key workers who still have to risk everything by going to work, or parents who are now having to home-school their kids for at least five hours a day while trying to hold down jobs and run a household. They all have my sympathy and admiration. But what they are experiencing is anything but life on hold. If you’re not in these groups, or even if you are and you’ve managed to work out a system that gives you free time, then there can be more to lockdown than working your way through box sets.
Maybe it’s time to start writing that book that you keep thinking about.
During the first lockdown, there was plenty of middle-class frottage about how to use this time to learn a language, start your sourdough culture, read Ulysses, or make an Airfix diorama of the D-Day landings (OK, that last one may have come from a drunken Zoom call rather than the pages of the Guardian.)
I’m not talking about these things, these “self-improvement” initiatives that you feel like you should do. Back when I was in therapy, Andy banned me from using the word “should”. To paraphrase Yoda (which Andy didn’t – he was a serious therapist) “Want to. Or want not to. There is no should.”
I think there are probably very few people who feel they “should” write a book, in the way we might feel like we should get healthier, or we should declutter the wardrobes or the book shelves, or we should learn to speak better Spanish before we go on holiday again. But I meet (or at least used to meet) a lot of people who want to to write a book. I used to get asked how to do it at every live event I ever did. Even people who haven’t got to the stage of wanting to write a book will often tell me they could write a book, that they have an idea for one kicking around in their heads and demanding their attention.
I made the transition from wanting to write a book to having written a book by taking annual leave from work and, instead of going on holiday, locking myself away somewhere quiet with no distractions and staring my desire to write in the face. Now, we’re all in a similar situation. If you really do want to write a book, there have never been better circumstances to start – and hopefully, all other things considered, there never will be again.
There are many excuses for not writing the book you want to write. Not having the time is one of them. You can always make time if you’re serious about doing it, and now, time is one thing many of us have in greater abundance than we have had for a very long time.
Another cloud of excuses surround the idea of not knowing how to do it – how to start out or plan it or see it through. Will it be good enough? Does it make sense?
The flippant answer to these questions and fears is simple: just sit down and write. Any problems with a piece of writing can be sorted once it’s down on the page far more effectively than they can while it’s still in your head. The act of writing clears up a lot of them in the process, as well as giving you the confidence to challenge those that remain.
I’ve provided a somewhat longer, more detailed answer to all these questions and more in my latest lockdown project. When I wrote Craft: An Argument last year, I did a series of blog posts about the process and the experience of writing a book in lockdown in 13 weeks. I decided to gather these blog posts together, tidy them up a bit, and turn them into a little book. The collected blog posts came to about 11,000 words. The “little book” is now 43,000 words. I’m nearing completion of the second draft, which will probably top at at 45,000.
This in itself is an illustration of the point the book is making – that writing can be a joy, a distraction, a catharsis. Everything I’ve learned from writing eleven books and having them published, plus all the other attempts at books that never did get published, poured out of me and found its way into this manuscript. Back in late November, when I started it once Beer by Design had been published, I couldn’t stop the words coming out of me.
I’m mostly resisting the temptation to read and incorporate other people’s advice on the subject, to make it as comprehensive a guide to writing non-fiction as I possibly can. It’s based entirely on my personal experience, with a little help from one or two writers much more famous than me. But as I’ve had books published by big publishers, smaller publishers, crowdfunded publishers and self-publishing, with an agent and without, successes and failures, I figured I could cover the subject pretty comprehensively.
We’ll be self-publishing this through our own Storm Lantern imprint in early February, and it should be up for pre-order by the middle of next week. Towards the end of February I’ll be running a training course for members of the British Guild of Beer Writers based on the first half of the book, which covers developing ideas and voice, getting into a routine, and not giving up. This too will be officially announced towards the end of next week. I’m planning further online courses which I’ll be running independently – more details to follow.
You can of course write your book without any more help from me or anyone else. And even if you are thinking of buying my book and/or attending a course, you’ll get a lot more out of it if you already have an idea of what you want to write, and you’ve spent a bit of time developing that idea.
So I urge you – for your own sake and no one else’s – if you kinda want to write but have been putting it off, start today. I promise you, as I finish my third book since March last year, that losing yourself in writing is about as good a way of surviving lockdown as you’ll find.
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As new Covid tier rules in England threaten to decimate the pub industry, there’s no neo-prohibitionist conspiracy here: just an indifferent government that’s too lazy to help.
N.B. Updated 3rd December with new information regarding “contracting arrangements” with food providers for pubs that don’t have a kitchen.
From tomorrow, 32 million people – 56% of the population of England – will be living under Tier 2 restrictions. In this tier, they will be allowed to drink in pubs, but only if they are also eating a “substantial meal”.
This has led to an increasingly entertaining/depressing/frustrating (delete according to how much skin you have in the game) national conversation about what constitutes a “substantial meal.” Government attempts to clarify the rules over the last few days have revealed a shocking lack of thinking behind them.
Most people I’ve seen discussing the issue in both mainstream and social media assume that the rule is in place to discourage immoderate drinking, which could in turn lead to a loss of inhibition and lower willingness to comply with social distancing rules.
That’s a big assumption – when pubs reopened after Lockdown 1 on 4th July, the media universally predicted a wave of drunken behaviour that would lead to a surge in new cases. That wave never materialised. But let’s run with the assumption for a moment.
The Science Bit
Alcohol is absorbed into the bloodstream slowly from the stomach, and rapidly from the small intestine. Having food in the stomach slows down the passage of alcohol to the small intestine while also allowing enzymes in the stomach more time to break down and deactivate the alcohol. So drinking on a full stomach doesn’t just slow down your alcohol absorption; its means you end up absorbing less alcohol overall.
So there is some logic here: if you believe (despite lack of solid evidence) that drunker people are less likely to observe social distancing and other measures to prevent potential Covid spread, mandating that they can only drink while eating would help reduce – or at least slow down – potential drunkenness.
Getting eggy with it
So how much food do we have to consume to get this effect? Well, this is where it gets complicated. Not to mention utterly ridiculous. Because the government appears to have no idea.
In October, we were told that a Cornish pasty was a substantial meal, but only if you order it with chips or a side salad – as you do. Yesterday, another cabinet minister told us that a Scotch egg counts, only to be swiftly contradicted by the Prime Minister’s office, which was in turn contradicted again by Michael Gove half an hour ago, after I had already started writing this. Evidently, the government cannot agree on what is and is not a substantial meal.
Another problem is, what’s substantial for one person is different for another. I have friends who would be full after one Scotch egg, and others who could eat a platter full. The amount of food needed in the stomach to slow down the absorption of alcohol varies from person to person.
If we were looking for an average though, let’s say we were to split the calorific difference between a Scotch egg (around 300-340 calories) and a Cornish pasty (700-900 calories) we might get to, say, an average of 500 calories (a Ploughman’s or a cheese and tuna panino, but not a chicken fajita wrap) as the boundary between what’s substantial and what’s not.
But we’d be wasting our time.
The reason it doesn’t make sense is that it’s got nothing to do with the size of the meal
As pub operators have asked for clarification, more rules have been made up – sorry, made clear.
Firstly, you can’t have another drink after you’ve finished eating. This makes no sense at all. You can order your first drink when you order your food. You can also presumably order more drinks while you’re waiting for your food to be delivered to the table. These drinks will, by definition, be drunk on an empty stomach, the alcohol flowing straight into your small intestine and from there into your bloodstream within minutes. But once you’ve finished eating – when your stomach is at its fullest and therefore when you will absorb alcohol at the slowest rate – you’re not allowed to drink alcohol any more. Notwithstanding the fact that eating a meal can break down a small amount to the alcohol already in your system (but not enough to make much difference) this makes nonsense of the idea that these measures will have any effect in reducing the drunkenness that arguably wasn’t going to be there to begin with.
Secondly, it seems the calories are only substantial if they come from the pub’s own kitchen. Wet-led pubs that have takeaway menus allowing you to order from nearby pizzerias or chips shops have been informed that these meals don’t count. Neither are you allowed to take your own packed lunch to the pub, no matter how substantial it is.
One bit of good news, however, is that, despite some contradictory messages over the last week or so, the official guidelines state that “pubs that don’t normally do food may enter into a contracting arrangement in order that they are able to do so and remain open.” There’s no detail offered beyond that, and I’ve heard that some taprooms have been told the money must got through the pub’s till rather than the food provider’s, but with a bit of jiggling, it looks like, for example, tap rooms that have arrangements with food trucks could remain open.
The “substantial meal” rule has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with slowing the absorption of alcohol into the bloodstream. Trying to define what counts as “substantial” via calorie counting or physical volume – as a reasonable person would – is a waste of time because it is absolutely irrelevant to the definition of a substantial meal. The Scotch egg thing is simply a side-show.
You know perfectly well what the rules are
Obviously then, many pubs set to enter Tier Two have been seeking clarification on what is going on – only to be told they already know. This was a consistent line across several interviews yesterday, when ministers were asked what constitutes a substantial meal.
“There is, to be serious, there is a well-understood definition of what a substantial meal is,” said Michael Gove, seconds after demonstrating that this was emphatically not the case, in what is sure to become known as #ScotchEggGate. The PM’s spokesman with whom he was disagreeing also insisted that “Bar snacks do not count as a substantial meal… It’s well-established in the hospitality industry what does.”
As confused publicans urgently seek clarification in order to determine whether they can reopen or not in Tier Two, desperately trying to avoid breaking the rules if they decide to, the government’s response is basically that old stereotype of a passive aggressive argument in a relationship:
“What’s wrong? Why are you angry?”
“You know why.”
“No I don’t. What have I done?”
“You know very well what you’ve done.
“If I knew, I won’t be asking, would I?”
The pub industry is asking what constitutes a substantial meal, only to be told it knows perfectly well what a substantial meal is, even though the government can’t agree with itself on what counts as a substantial meal.
This is not a stereotype from a relationship. This is not the argument you had with your little brother when you were twelve. This is the British government, guiding the country through a pandemic while trying not to crash the economy. Makes you want a drink, doesn’t it?
Reading a little more closely though, and we can see not only what they’re talking about, but why.
Are you sitting comfortably?
According to the Covid-19 winter plan, “Venues that serve alcohol can only remain open where they operate as if they were a restaurant, which means serving substantial meals (and accompanying drinks).”
This is where the phrase “substantial meal” comes from. This is why it’s important. It’s got nothing to do with the speed of alcohol absorption; it’s saying effectively that pubs are not allowed to operate as pubs: they are only allowed to operate as if they were restaurants.
The guide goes on to define a substantial meal as “a full breakfast, main lunchtime or evening meal”. Eat your Cornish pasty (with side salad, obvs) between noon and 3pm, and it counts. Between 4pm and 5pm, I’m guessing it doesn’t.
As well as the time of day, the key thing that makes a meal substantial or not is how it is served. When George Eustice was bullshitting on the hoof, what he actually said was, “I think a Scotch egg probably would count as a substantial meal if there were table service.” (my italics).
This is why bar snacks, packed lunches and takeaways don’t count. If a pub behaves as a restaurant, customers remain seated and have table service on plates (I’m guessing boards, baskets and those wanky miniature shopping trolleys count here too) of food cooked in the restaurant kitchen. As ministers continue their public argument about Scotch eggs, the one thing they’re all consistent on is that it has to be table service. People have to be sitting down and have their food brought to them. The pub must behave as if it were a restaurant.
From this, it seems the “pubs must behave as restaurants” wheeze is all about restricting movement around the pub. That’s fair enough. But before Lockdown 2, pubs were already table service only. If you wanted to move around, you had to put on a mask. If you didn’t have a table, you couldn’t be served. So the substantial meal rule is designed to create a situation that was already in place. Unless there is good reason to believe that the previous regulations were not working – and I’ve not seen anything that suggests they weren’t – the substantial meal rule is not just devastating, not just nonsensical, but also completely unnecessary.
So why is it being introduced?
There have been suggestions of a conspiracy to destroy pubs, driven by the neo-prohibitionists. While I’ve written about their skullduggery many times, I don’t believe they’re behind this. With most conspiracies, where you suspect some secret organisation behind the scenes, it’s really just crap people fucking things up.
As it dishonestly claims to “follow the science,” this government has in reality allowed public opinion to guide its Covid response to a significant degree. The strategy of leaking ideas for Covid measures to mates in the press, and then gauging the response before deciding whether to implement them, is both cowardly and grossly irresponsible, but it has been the consistent strategy of Johnson’s government throughout the pandemic.
We occasionally hear nonsensical sentences like “We’ve got to close pubs to keep schools open,” as if allowing people to go for a pint makes kids more likely to come home with Covid after double maths. What it actually means is that all Covid restrictions are unpopular, but the public will accept some before others. Going to the pub is seen as a luxury – a sin even – especially by people who never go to pubs and have no idea what they’re like. The government has to be seen to do something. And we’ll just about accept pub closures because, despite my protestations to the contrary, it does make logical sense to some people that we might behave more irresponsibly after a drink (but not if we buy it from Tesco of course.)
The substantial meal rule came in simply because it sounds like a tough restriction, one that seems to make sense, even though the logic we all might assume actually has nothing to do with the decision. The lazy-arsed thinking behind such a cynical move also led to them to not think it through properly, and not bother to come up with a coherent set of answers to questions people were obviously going to ask.
That’s the problem with being lazy – you just create more work for yourself down the line.
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With around 2500 breweries in the UK, many of whom sell core ranges, seasonals, limited editions and collabs, it’s never been harder to stand out from the pack. That’s why the look of beer has become the most creative and diverse of any packaged product. And that’s why my wife and I did a book about it while (white) shielding.
Before I was a writer, I worked in advertising – and enjoyed it for a time. I was fascinated by the idea of brands: originally a simple mark of ownership, they evolved into carriers of additional meaning. At first, they were symbols of trust, of consistency and quality. Every tin you buy with a Heinz logo on it, every Cadbury’s chocolate bar, is going to taste the same as the last one. If we like that taste, we remain loyal to most things that carry that logo. Then, brands took on a more abstract sense. If lots of people who are like you all think that a certain brand is cool, then by extension, in their eyes, you’re cool if you wear it. Over the last thirty years we’ve all learned to use this abstract quality of brands, whether we do so consciously or not. We use brands and logos to build an idea of ourselves that we want to project to the world.
After Bass became the UK’s first registered trade mark, beer brands developed certain stylistic conventions that remained fundamentally unchanged for over a century. The oval, or “racetrack” shape, use of a simple symbol, various cues of quality. It all started to look a bit… samey.
In the 21st century, craft beer tore up the rulebook of how successful beer branding was supposedly done. It set itself directly in opposition to conventional design to prove that it wasn’t part of the mainstream.
This led to an extraordinary explosion of creativity. Among people who insisted they were influenced by the beer and not the marketing, like mainstream drinkers were, some enormously powerful brands were built.
Not all of it works as successful commercial branding, but most of it is gorgeous to look at, and some of it works as art in its own right.
And this branding revolution has affected the whole beer market, inspiring even established mainstream brands to rediscover the craft and art of design. This was pretty welcome for some older cask ale brands that had previously started to look dated and out of touch, and could now look contemporary in ways they never would have dared before craft moved the goal posts.
Sometimes, creative use of type, combining heritage typefaces with a few modern tricks, can make a brand look cool while still remaining true to its roots: a hard thing to pull off when it’s much easier to look like you’re desperately dad-dancing in a market you no longer understand.
Alternatively, a distinctive style of illustration can establish a common look across a wide range of beers at the same time as marking them out as different from everyone else.
Even the biggest brands realised there was more to the broader idea of craft than being small and independent, and rediscovered an idea of craft in their design that was firmly based in their heritage and longevity.
My wife Liz, who spent years working in the design industry, worked as picture researcher on this book. She had countless conversations with designers, artists and people working for breweries, and eventually gathered artwork from over 220 different breweries. When it came to making a book that looked as beautiful as a tome on design should, we didn’t have room for all of it. (We feature about 145 breweries in the book in total.) That’s why Liz will be launching a new blog – BeerByDesign.co.uk -tomorrow, and has also set up @BeerByDesignUK on Twitter and Instagram. This book is only the start of a conversation about design in which we aim to show some work in more depth, give behind the scenes peeks at how things develop, and interview designers and brewers about their work.
There’s still a lot of shit design out there, and there are conversations to be had about what should or shouldn’t go on a beer label, how it’s regulated, and whether or not it works. But for now, we’re keeping Beer By Design to the good stuff, things we like to look at, and things we believe help sell beer. If there is a job to do on the poor stuff, then maybe by showing the good stuff, we can inspire others to raise their game.
So please, if you’re a brewer, artist or designer who thinks your work should be featured, or if you’re a big fan of someone you believe should be here, go to BeerByDesign.co.uk and let us know!
You can of course buy the book from Amazon, but I’d prefer if you bought it from the CAMRA bookshop, for two reasons. Firstly, I think it’s great that CAMRA were prepared to publish a book like this. It’s a real sign that the organisation is taking a more modern, inclusive approach to beer than it has in the past, so it would be nice to show them how right they were to do it. And secondly, I get a significantly higher royalty on copies sold through CAMRA than through anywhere else.
Finally, we’re holding the official launch party via Zoom tomorrow night, Thursday 26th, at 7pm, and you’re invited. If you’d like to see me and some of the featured brands and designers talking about the book, and have a chat, sign up here. It will almost certainly end with one of these.
Beer By Design: it’s the saviour of your Christmas shopping list.
There’s a longer, more in-depth preview of the book over on my Patreon. You can sign up from just £1 a month. But sign up at the £25 level, and you’ll get a free, signed copy of the book as a thank you. same goes for any future book I publish while you’re still signed up at that level.
Saving Britain’s Pubs with Tom Kerridgestarted its four-week run on BBC2 last night. I was asked to interview Tom about the series for the Radio Times, and got a sneak preview. He brings out the human stories behind the stats better than anyone.
There’s a moment ten minutes into the first episode of Saving Britain’s Pubs with Tom Kerridge where the viewer’s emotions are flipped, as if someone has performed a metaphorical judo move that leaves you momentarily flat on your back.
Tom is eulogising the great British pub, or as he calls it, “the neighbourhood’s living room,” as he heads for the White Hart Inn in Chilsworthy, Cornwall. This award-winning country pub – it was CAMRA’s Cornish Pub of the Year in 2019 – has stunning views down the Tamar Valley, excellent food, a mouth-watering range of local beers, and most of all, the lively atmosphere generated by landlady Amy. Amy is a human dynamo who, if she had to, could probably pour you a perfectly kept pint, cook your dinner, host the pub quiz and change a barrel in the cellar all at the same time.
Tom looks on in wonder, his grin a mile wide, like he’s just found his new local. And then he sits down with Amy, (who only took over the pub with her partner Ian in 2017) to talk about how business is going.
At first, she’s as bright and focused as she was behind the bar, and then suddenly she says, “Oh. I’m going to get emotional”, and collapses into the kind of racking sobs that only come from total despair.
Hang on.
We know how programmes like this work: a famous TV celebrity goes into businesses that are failing. We, as viewers, get a vicarious thrill from observing how crap some of these places are. Jesus, even we could do better! Gordon Ramsay’s entire schtick is built around pretending to throw up some horrible food prepared in a filthy, rat-infested kitchen by some idiot foolish enough to let the cameras in.
But the White Hart, along with the other two pubs in the first programme (the Prince Albert in Stroud and the Golden Anchor in Nunhead, South London) are perfect pubs, run by people who clearly love what they are doing and know how to do it. How can these pubs be in trouble?
Each business has its own issues, but if there’s a common theme running through all four pubs in the series, it’s that the people running them need to add a keener, shrewder business eye to the the long list of talents they are already displaying in running pubs that are popular, but not profitable.
The remedies may not always got down well with the regulars: the first thing Tom tells the Prince Albert to do is put up the beer prices. The domino players nursing one beer all night in the Golden Anchor are shifted to the back room to make way for the craft beer-drinking hipsters who are gentrifying the local area. And the White Hart is turned into a building site, somehow remaining open and doing its best to keep brick dust out of the punter’s pints.
But when I spoke to Tom, the first problem he brought up was the pubco tie. Although I’ve written about this issue many times over the last ten years or so, both here and in the trade press, I generally try to avoid it these days because even if I write a piece attacking the tie, as far as anti-pubco campaigners are concerned I’m attacking it in the wrong way. No matter what I say, I get scorn and often abuse from campaigners, because I just don’t understand the issue, apparently. This is the same reason why most of my fellow beer writers avoid the pubco tie altogether – they feel it’s just not worth the hassle. (According to some campaigners, though, the real reason none if us write about it is that we, along with various trade press titles and bodies such as the Office of National Statistics, have been paid off handsomely by the evil pubcos to keep quiet.)
Whatever side you’re on, Tom Kerridge does understand the issue – his own three pubs are subject to the same tie as any other Greene King tenant. “The business model is supposedly that you pay inflated prices for beer in return for a cheaper rent than High Street rates. But it doesn’t work out like that, and it’s not sustainable,” he tells me on the phone (speaking about the tie generally rather than his own situation.) Interestingly, he tells me he feels “we’re now rapidly finding that those rents will be very much decreasing” thanks to Covid.
The pubco tie is the most complicated issue I’ve come across as a writer on beer and pubs. On the TV programme, Tom Kerridge presents it, without allowing his genuine anger to cloud the issue, as clearly and persuasively as any campaigner could hope for, in a way that is clear to BBC2 viewers and persuasive to mainstream journalists.
Anti-pubco campaigners, we beer writers are never good enough for you even when we try. I say this without any snark or hostility intended: Tom Kerridge is the man you need to make meaningful change.
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Pete Brown is a British writer who specialises in making people thirsty. He is the author of twelve books and writes widely in the drinks trade press and consumer press.