Author: PeteBrown

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The Red Hand Part II

Later in the same magazine from which I scanned yesterday’s pictures, there’s another side entirely to the Ind Coope & Allsopp estate.

Yesterday’s pics seemed to offer a window onto the golden age of the pub as a centre of the community. But this age was passing even as it was being recorded. A few pages on, we get a big feature on the new jewel in the company’s crown: the Hotel Leofric in Coventry.
The magazine uses the word ‘splendour’ to describe it. What word would you use?
While it was being prepared for opening, the manager slept on a mattress on the floor. 300 men were working on it, and their wives were bussed in from Burton to do the cleaning.

Pride and joy is the silver grill, where you can select your steak and watch it cooking:
If you don’t fancy that, there’s the snack bar, boasting a quick counter meal and “the longest bar in the Midlands”. This huge room is windowless, but “modern lighting and air-conditioning give it an all-the-year-round summer atmosphere”.

My favourite bit though is the cocktail bar, with its “unusual wall decoration”. Yes. Unusual. That’s a good word. This “intimate yet opulent” setting features a “cosy lounge atmosphere with a delightful Emmet-type mural.”
The thing is, last year I stayed in a hotel in Sheffield that looked pretty much identical to this one, clearly untouched for at least thirty years. It was so appalling, I went all the way through anger and disgust in a second, and came out the other side and actually enjoyed the tackiness, the sense of desolation, the broken dreams of mid-century modernism, the short-sighted folly of the architects who sought to build a brave new post-war world, futuristic and yet, at the same time, with no provision whatsoever for surviving in any decent shape beyond the present moment it was built.
Funny how the average boozers featured elsewhere in the magazine would still look appealing today, innit?

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Museum Brewery Queen’s Ale Part II

I’m getting shoddy. Just found my tasting notes for the Queen’s Ale I mentioned yesterday.

We opened a bottle in the brewery at around 9pm, twelve hours into our two day brewing session. It poured a dark chocolate brown with an acne-yellow head. Look, I know that makes it sound unappetising, but that’s the colour it was. Maybe it was just the weak light in the brewery office.
There was a dusty old ale aroma at first, followed by sherry, port, chocolate, chicory, and hints of leather and wet autumn leaves. And then, on the palate it went berserk. It did the whole lot – the sweetness and acidity of wine, a meaty umame taste in the middle and strong bitterness at the end. All these flavours got on with each other quite happily, united in a pleasingly smooth mouthfeel. Molasses and caramel were there, but only fleetingly. After the overture, a second mouthful brought out touches of honey, banana, cinnamon and espresso grounds.
Steve and Jo, who brewed the beer, hadn’t previously tasted one as old as this. They were shocked at how dramatically it had developed since its youth as a mere barley wine.
John Keeling, who brews Fuller’s Vintage Ale, talks about ‘sine waves’ in his beer, trying to explain how the character ebbs and flows over the years it ages.
I’ve no idea what kind of maths, physics, chemistry or plain old-fashioned juju is going on in Queen’s Ale. But you can understand why it’s perfect for a Christmas pudding. And why I was so upset about using it for this purpose.

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The Red Hand cometh

I got my scanner working again. This means I can scan in some pics from a couple of magazines I picked up from a tat stall (sorry – “breweriana” emporium) at the Great British Beer Festival in August.

Since doing Hops & Glory I’ve been fascinated by Allsopps – the forgotten man of Burton. By the mid-fifties they were Ind Coope and Allsopp and their days as the brewer of the first Burton IPA were almost forgotten. The industry was undergoing massive change, and you get a snapshot of this change in the pages of The Red Hand, the staff magazine they published. Some of these are fascinating, others unintentionally funny more than half a century since they were published. I’m going to mix them up and post a few over the next few days.
Here’s the opener, from a magazine published in 1956:
There’s all sorts happening in Ind Coope & Allsopp’s pubs. The barmaid at the Fox and Hounds has been “televised as one of the prettiest girls in the Leeds area”. It would be beneath you to make a crack about what this says about the standard of prettiness in Leeds.

Next, Mr and Mrs Parker enjoyed their Golden Wedding Party down at the local:
But my favourite has to be the Admiralty Tavern’s Easter bonnet parade:
The serious point here is that this all challenges the idea that pubs were until recently the preserve of blokes. These pics show the pub as the obvious place to go for any event, the beating heart of the communities they inhabit. Landlords – come on, we talk about all these pub closures and declining attendance – you can’t get an Easter Bonnet Parade with your 24 pack of Carling from Tesco’s can you?

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Hops and History

The Westerham Brewery recently launched a new beer. The story behind it really fired my imagination and tickled my history muscle. So I wrote about it in this week’s Publican, and you can read it here.

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As posh as the queen

I spent two days in Burton-on-Trent last week, brewing No.1 Barley Wine and P2 Stout in the White Shield Brewery with Steve Wellington. I’m spending today writing up the story – complete with some exciting news about the future of the brewery – for a piece in CAMRA’s Beer magazine. It’ll be running in the Spring 2010 issue, out around February.

Anyway, while I was up there, Mrs PBBB – sorry, The Beer Widow – phoned me to discuss Christmas pudding plans. We’ve never made our own Christmas pudding before, and she’d been rooting around for recipes. This is the week you ‘traditionally’ make your pudding, apparently. Anyway, she’d found a Delia recipe which called for some barley wine and stout. Hey, I was brewing barley wine and stout! There was no barley wine near to hand, but I was sure Steve would let me have a bottle of P2 for the pud.
But Steve went one better than that. Yes, he gave me several bottles of P2. But when I told him what I wanted it for, he also gave me a bottle of Queen’s Ale.
This is a special brew of No.1 Barley Wine brewed in 2002 to commemorate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. There are not many bottles left lying around the brewery, and we’d just polished one off for elevenses because Steve hadn’t tasted it for a while. It was sublime – dark and rich and sherrylike but not too aggressive. The age on it had done wonderful things, creating a beer that was still a beer but as soft and mellow and deep and satisfying as a vintage Bordeaux.
The thing is, Buckingham Palace use it to marinate the fruit they put in the Royal Christmas pudding. And that’s why Steve very, very kindly gave me a bottle to bring home for TBW.
This was one of those crises of conscience. All I wanted to do was stash it safely in my cellar, or maybe sneak it up to the study to enjoy to myself on a dark and stormy night. But Steve had only given it to me because of the pudding story. It seemed like a waste for such an amazing beer. But I wouldn’t have it in my possession otherwise. With a heavy heart and some anguished mewling noises, I gave it to TBW. On Friday night, after a few tweaks to the Delia recipe, she poured it over some fruit.
Well, at least our Christmas pudding will be as posh as the Queen’s.
Yesterday was the final mixing of the pudding before cooking. Its traditional to gather round and let each family member have a stir, and make a wish as they do so. I wished I could have some more Queen’s Ale.
Later, I went down to tidy the beer cellar and try to make some room – it’s a bit overfull at the moment. And lo, as I tried to make sense of the barley wine and vintage ale shelf, I found not one, but two bottles of Queen’s Ale that the generous-to-a-fault master brewer of Burton must have given me when we were working together brewing Calcutta IPA, my Hops and Glory beer.
The magic of Christmas is at work already.

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Open plea to the beer and pub industry: please stop behaving like a bunch of teenage dickheads

Sitting very closely outside the industry looking in, I sometimes want to beat my head against a brick wall repeatedly until I simply don’t care about anything any more. Today is one of those days.

The pub industry, as we all know, is in crisis – 52 a week closing and all that. And while real ale is heading for growth, the beer market is still well down overall and in seemingly irreversible long term decline. We’re beset on all sides by neo-prohibitionists. Alcohol is the new tobacco, more dangerous than heroin, crack, or walking out in front of a runaway bus.
This is the time to pull together and put on a brave face, a united front, such as happened in the 1930s when beer volumes were plummeting and the industry came up with the ‘Beer is Best’ campaign, promoting the beverage with iconic ads that still look cool today.
So what do we do in 2009? Form a cross-industry lobbying group? Take pre-emptive action against tighter licensing restrictions and more duty rises? Fight back against the misinformation about binge drinking with a concerted, positive campaign about the benefits of moderate drinking and the truth of our wholesome pub culture?
Do we fuck.
The front page headline of this week’s Publican says it all: Industry at War.
The BBPA has been consulting with other trade bodies about a set of guidelines ensuring transparency of pub leases. The Fair Pint campaign don’t like what they’re saying, and have published these guidelines without BBPA’s consent, and may now face legal action for doing so. Meanwhile, there’s another new body, something called the Independent Pub Confederation, that’s also weighing in and attacking the BBPA, saying they don’t speak for the average publican. Given that Greene King, one of the largest regional brewers and a decent-sized pub co in its own right, is giving up membership of the BBPA, they might have a point. Although why anyone thinks this furthers the cause of beer and pubs in any way is a mystery to me.
And it’s not just them: a few months ago Nigel McNally of Wells & Youngs began a war in the trade press by accusing SIBA brewers of not doing anything good, of being amateurs who piggyback on the investment of big regionals to further their own amateurish aims. On the other side of this particular fence, the Great British Beer Festival continues to hike rents, making the big, colourful stands of the regionals prohibitively expensive, meaning the festival loses a lot of its experiential interest. CAMRA and SIBA members start to accuse the big regionals of producing bland, tasteless beers, using language previously reserved for fake European lager and ratty keg bittermongers, grumbling that “we don’t need the regionals now”.
Brew Dog of course are at war with the Portman Group, seeing dark conspiracy in every corner because this industry self-regulating body is funded by The Man.
The trade press themselves are not above criticism – everybody seems to have their own proud of pubs type campaign, or fight against whatever. There’s never even a ghost of a hint working together to achieve greater impact.
Everybody namechecked in the above paragraphs is talking shite.
Christ knows how many times I’ve said this – clearly I’m talking to myself and no one agrees with me – the beauty of this industry is its diversity. We need microbrewers. We need big regional brewers. We need pubcos. We need some version of the tie. We need the opportunity to exist outside the tie. We need freeholds. We need managed pubs and tenanted pubs and leaseholds. God help me, we even need Wetherspoons. We need trade bodies. We need regulatory bodies. We need people to challenge regulatory bodies and we need to keep each other on our toes. We need interest groups. But most of all, we need to remember that in the broadest and most important sense, WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE.
My first column for the Publican, back in January, compared the beer and pub industry to the scene in Life of Brian with the Judean People’s Front. Clearly no one read it – the industry is getting more like that every day.
Yes, I’ve slagged off Brew Dog, I’ve slagged off CAMRA, I’ve slagged off other people too. But I’ve always – always – balanced it with due praise and suggested actions they could do to counter my critiscism, if it mattered to them. And anyway, I’m just a writer, an opinionated individual with no actual stake in the industry.
I was drawn to beer writing because I believe beer is the most sociable drink in the world. And because of that, I believe beer people are among the friendliest people in the world. Not since first year at university have I made so many friends so quickly as I have on the last few years.
But our industry is tearing itself apart. Government policy, the neo-prohibitionist lobby, public opinion and the might of mainstream media may be difficult targets to attack, but they are the real dangers. Still, it’s so much easier to have parochial squabbles, isn’t it?
I only swear in writing when I’m angry. And right now I’m fucking furious as the industry I love and have now devoted my life to embarrasses the hell out of me with its increasingly childish, short-sighted, blinkered, stupid behaviour.
Fuck ’em all. I’m off to think about something else for the weekend.

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Letting the girls in: The Beer Widow speaks

It’s all been getting quite sentimental in beer blog land this week. Young Dredge over at Pencil and Spoon posted a few days ago a heartfelt tribute to the patience and fortitude of his girlfriend in the face of what seems to be, even by my standards, a fair obsession with drinking, talking and writing about beer.
The following day Lauren (for it is she) posted her response on his blog. What could have turned into a rather twee and sickly public love-in was smartly avoided by her giving him a right pasting before admitting that she is, at the end of the day, quite proud of him.
This set off a bit of “let’s invite the family to work”, with other bloggers’ partners having their say in response to Lauren’s post. In what may be an unrelated move, Mrs Woolpack Dave even signed up to Twitter in her own right. Rumours that this is so she can keep an eye on her husband are unconfirmed, but his first tweet back to her was telling her to make the tea, so whatever happens, this one promises to be very entertaining.
I first became alerted to all this while brewing no.1 barley wine in Burton (sorry to drop that in), when I received an email from Mrs PBBB suggesting Young Dredge could teach me a thing or two about writing. I pointed out that I’ve written similar passages in the acknowledgements to my books, but this received short shrift.
When Lauren replied to Young Dredge’s post, I suggested Mrs PBBB might enjoy doing something similar round here. This received even shorter shrift. There was some talk about boiling my head. And as the ancient copper of the White Shield brewery, on a rolling boil with a dark sugary mash that reminded me of a pan of boiling jam, was only yards away from my head, this was a threat I didn’t take lightly. (She was a hundred miles away, but I’m sure Steve Wellington would have done anything she asked. She can be persuasive.)
Anyway, it turns out that I can stick my blog up my arse. Because Mrs PBBB is no longer Mrs PBBB at all. Or not just Mrs PBBB anyway. She is, officially, The Beer Widow. She’s been developing her own blog on the sly, a place to vent her feelings about what it’s like to live with Britain’s second best beer blogger, peripatetic beer explorer, beer author, beer drinker, beer obsessive – yours truly.
About what it’s like to wait at home for me when I’m off somewhere with vague reassurances about when I’ll be back (which range from “about tenish” to “in about three months”.)
And about what it’s like when she actually comes out with me to places like the Rake and meets the eccentric – sorry, that should have read ‘fantastic’ – characters that inhabit Planet Beer.
There aren’t many posts yet. She was hesitant about sharing. But now Mrs Pencil and Spoon has led the way, Not-Just-Mrs PBBB is ready to announce to the world her haven for the forgotten, neglected, long-suffering partners of the growing band of beer geeks and obsessives who are cluttering up the internet. Think of it as a female equivalent to the male creche some department stores have. And read the first post, written back in June, if you’re interested in how she really manages to put up with me.*
(This was a question she was asked an awful lot when she met many of my beery friends at the beer writers bash in August. “Oh, you’re THAT Liz.” *Sympathetic face* “What’s it like?” Below we see Robert Humphries, Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Beer Group, consoling her as only he can.)
IMG_1015 by vlizzie.
*She actually likes it. They all do, really).

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Priorities

On Saturday night me and Mrs PBBB and our Welsh rellies went to Alexandra Palace for the fireworks.

We’d seen an ad for a German Bierfest in the building itself, and decided to check that out for a couple of hours beforehand.
We were promised authentic German beer, authentic German sausages, and authentic German music. I still have flashbacks to my time at Oktoberfest five years ago, like a Vietnam vet, only in a good way. While there, I realised that it wasn’t a celebration of beer per se, but a celebration of communion and friendship that had beer at its heart. For three days we were up on our seats forming conga lines and toasting people we had only just met, and the oompah bands – never something I had previously listened to voluntarily – drove the atmosphere and buzz in each tent as adeptly as any superstar DJ.
It didn’t take long to realise that Ally Pally wasn’t going to be quite the same.
At least the beer was Paulaner. And I wouldn’t have minded the £4 a pint price tag if it hadn’t been served in the cheapest possible plastic glasses, with no sign of the characteristic thick, foaming head it should be served with. (If you didn’t want decent beer, you could have had Fosters for £3.60). Attractive bar staff served us at our tables, which was good. But the flimsy glasses and their lack of experience meant the only way for them to carry the beer was in cardboard carriers of four pints each. As they walked they tended to swing these, leaving trails of spilt beer in their wake.
The tables and benches were incredibly flimsy and clearly would not have supported anything other than sitting politely.
The ‘authentic German food throughout the venue’ turned out to be one stall selling Bratwurst and sauerkraut for £6 a pop – or piddling Herta Frankfurters at £3 a go. The other alternatives were overpriced and frankly inedible looking authentic Bavarian pizza, or the authentically Bavarian Fine Burger Co.
The oompah band played none of the big hits from Munich, the tunes that really get the crowd going. They came from Ipswich, and alternated with an authentic Bavarian Irish folk band.
The whole thing was a bit mystifying – why go on about how authentic it’s going to be and then not even try?
And why can’t the English organise something like Oktoberfest? I caught myself at one point thinking, “Ah, but there’s thousands of people here. You could never have proper glassware, proper service, proper food, proper chairs and tables at an event this size. You just wouldn’t be able to police it properly and guarantee people’s safety”. And then I remembered that Oktoberfest does exactly that – this gathering was small compared to any one of the giant tents in Munich, which managed to serve more people better food at better table in proper glasses.
I was feeling decidedly grumpy, pissing off the others with my inability to just accept it for what it was.
And then, we went outside and the sky lit up, and for half an hour cynical middle-aged beer writers and small children alike went “ooh”, and “aaah”.
And I realised that sometimes – just occasionally – the best thing you can do is shrug and say, “So what? It’s only beer.”

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Sleeping with the enemy

Amid cries of “sell out!” (mostly inside my own head), today sees a long reportage piece by me in the Mail on Sunday’s Live! magazine, about the perils of marketing premium lager. It’s pretty critical of Stella. (Perhaps it would have been less critical had the brewer agreed to talk to me and accepted the opportunity to put their side across.)
I’ve justified writing for the Mail to myself in many ways – Live! is the mag for blokes to read in what is a very female-oriented newspaper and doesn’t share the main paper’s reactionary political agenda. They pay about ten times more than most publications I write for. But the excuse I’m sticking to is this: deep inside a paper I’m usually slagging off for its rabid disapproval of drink and drinkers, I’ve succeeded in making them print the words:

“Despite reports that Britain is drinking itself to death, in reality alcohol sales in the round are falling faster than at any time since the Forties.”

As far as I can tell this is the first time those words have been printed inside a British newspaper (well, in that particular order, anyway). And it’s in the Mail – the worst culprit for disinformation about binge drinking.

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