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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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Dog Jumps Shark*

I hate having to write two consecutive posts about Brew Dog, especially when the first one was a satirical post in which I took the piss out of myself more than anything else.
But last night James Watt ruined my mood for the fireworks with the announcement of his latest wheeze.
Tokyo* has, allegedly, been banned by the Portman Group. But it turns out the complaint that led to this ban came from James himself, in order to show up Portman for how ridiculous they are. James’ Tweet explaining this simply said “lessons in marketing”, and linked to the blog post about the story.
When Portman announced they were to investigate Brew Dog back in August, Brew Dog fans threw up their hands in horrified outrage. At the time, I said on their blog:
“Careful we don’t all go for the wrong targets – if Portman have received a complaint they are obliged to investigate it – they are just doing their job. The substance of the complaint to me seems to be nonsense. If Portman uphold it, that is when to lay into them, because that would be a ridiculous decision. But if they throw it out, it could do loads to help get the right message about craft beers across.”
So is now the time to slag off Portman? Well, from our point of view we’ll always think they’re overreacting a tad. But this morning I’m afraid it’s Brew Dog who look like idiots. I wouldn’t mind that so much – but I fear their antics have damaged the entire beer industry, and the worst thing is, they couldn’t give a shit.
The thing is, Tokyo* hasn’t been banned at all, as James claims it has. Portman have not objected to the beer; they’ve objected to some inflammatory wording on the label – wording it now seems was written with the sole intention of winding up the Portman Group in the first place, given the only person who has complained about it was the person who wrote it.
I could go on here to point out that we have to have regulatory bodies overseeing alcohol promotion, that every market in the world has such regulatory bodies, and that by international standards ours is not that bad. I could explain that we need such regulation in order to stop fly-by-night small businesses – usually hawking nasty spirits – from packaging their gutrot in a way that overtly appeals to children, or links drunkenness with sexual success.
I could explain that the alternative to bodies like the Portman Group is direct government regulation. I could point out that this would be much harsher than what we currently have, that there are lots of floating voters who don’t like seeing drunk people in their nice middle class town centres, and that the Tory government-in-waiting – never known for their relaxed attitudes to people enjoying themselves – are murmuring about aggressively tightening restrictions on any beer over 5%, and that if they had direct control over alcohol regulation most of Brew Dog’s beers, as well as 90% of the speciality beers we love, could actually become illegal.
I could point out that this stunt not only damages the credibility of the Portman Group – its avowed intention – but also gives perfect fuel to those who believe the alcohol industry cannot be trusted and needs to be more tightly controlled.
But there’s no point. Because BrewDog James already knows and understands this perfectly, and he doesn’t care.
James loves the Portman Group. They are central to his marketing strategy. This is how he promotes the Brew Dog name and gets column inches. The fact that he refers to the blog post as “lessons in marketing” tells us all we need to know about the real reason for this stunt, whatever mealy-mouthed justification is trotted out on the Brew Dog blog over the weekend. This is about self-promotion. It does nothing to further the debate about great craft beer. It does no service to drinkers and Brew Dog fans, who were as duped by this as anyone else.
I’ve worked in marketing and consultancy for 18 years, most of that in booze. And in that time I’ve met a lot of talented, headstrong 26 year-olds who think they know everything, who think they can stick it to the man and usher in a new wave of cool. Every single one of them falls flat on their arse, usually with wider damaging consequences. I know, because I was one.
“Lessons in marketing”? So this is how we should all behave, is it?
The craft beer industry needs gifted brewers like Martin Dickie. And it needs edgy, iconoclastic brands like Brew Dog. It needs conventions to be challenged, and it needs fresh ideas. But it needs schoolboy pranks like this one like it needs a hole in the head. There’s no place in the craft beer world for someone who seeks publicity by winding up regulatory bodies just for the sake of it, sending an early Christmas present to neo-prohibitionist Op-Ed writers in the process.
What angers me the most is that even by writing this, I’m playing into James’ strategy. It’s what he wants. So let me state my opinion very clearly:
Brew Dog: either grow up, or get out.
My Equity for Punks prospectus has been refiled from ‘to do’ to ‘recycling’.

*If you don’t know, ‘jumping the shark’ is a phrase from the TV industry that refers to the episode when popular comedy Happy Days finally lost it and ran out of ideas, symbolised by Fonzie jumping over a shark on water skis.

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The biggest thing in beer. Ever.

A few days ago, I figured out how to include the Wikio rankings badge on my blog, up there top-right. As I was number one, I was quite pleased with the result. I enjoyed looking at it. But only days later, I’m staring at a big fat number two. The Brew Dog Blog has overtaken me to become Britain’s most influential beer or wine blog. I wish I’d never suggested to Wikio that they include them, now. I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all. I want my top spot back. But how? I’ve been giving this some thought, and the answer is obvious. Brew Dog are experts at generating publicity, and this last month has seen their most ambitious scheme yet. They promised us they were going to change the world, trailed it weeks in advance. And while Equity for Punks may not have been the miracle it promised to be, it generated endless discussion online, with countless links to the Brew Dog blog, where it was hotly debated. That’s surely the reason Brew Dog succeeded on overtaking me. Well, two can play at that game. Soon – at a date I’ll think of in a minute – I’m going to announce something that’s better than changing the world forever. It will make changing the world forever look like changing your position slightly in a leather armchair to make yourself more comfortable, emitting a slight farting sound as you do so. What I am going to announce won’t just change the world. It will change the very laws of the universe. Time will run backwards. The speed of light will slow. Light itself will become liquid. Gravity will reverse. Dinosaurs shall walk the earth once more. Base metals shall turn into gold. You will believe a man can fly. Yea, New Order shall reform and even rediscover the ability to write a decent tune. Just you wait and see. I’m not kidding. I’m not exaggerating. (OK, maybe I am just a little with the New Order bit.) What I am about to announce – at 2am on 25th December, that’ll do – will rock the foundations of existence to their very core. In fact it’s so incredible, it can’t be held back. I can’t stop myself. I’m going to announce it right now. Right here. Brace yourself. What Brew Dog don’t understand is that Punk is now really old. It was 33 years ago, guys! Sid Vicious is dead. John Lydon is advertising butter on TV. Sham 69 are… well, I’m not sure what Sham 69 are doing. But equity for punks? That’s equity for blokes in their fifties with slightly waxy pallor after too many years hard living, who now mainly drink mineral water. Lame! Equity for Punks is also divisive – not everyone likes punk rock. It’s really noisy! They’re shouting, not singing. You can hardly hear the words. So here’s my universe changing idea: Equity For People With Interesting And Varied Mixes On Their iPods That Might Contain Some Punk And Alternative Stuff But There’s Probably A Bit Of Coldplay On There Too If You’re Honest. EFPWIAVMOTiTMCSPAASBTPABOCOTTIYH for short. Or maybe just Equ-i-Pod, thinking about it. Equ-i-pod gives you the chance to become part of Pete Brown’s Beer Blog. That’s right: I’m offering shares in what is currently – according to the judges of last year’s beer writers’ awards and now Wikio – Britain’s second-best beer blog. Equ-i-PodBlog then. No, Equ-i-PodBlogTM. That’s more like it. Equ-i-PodBlogTM will give you a 0.01% share in Pete Brown’s Beer Blog. As a shareholder, you’ll be able to leave comments on my posts – literally becoming part of the blog itself! You can even make suggestions for things you’d like me to write about if you like. Cynics may argue that because Pete Brown’s Beer Blog has no monetary value whatsoever then your shares are worthless. But don’t listen to them. That’s not what it’s really about. It’s more about being part of something exciting that’s got something to do with beer. And anyway, that’s not all you get. I’m also offering a lifetime discount on purchases of my books (conditional on you buying them through Amazon – it’s currently 40% off Hops & Glory I think). So: Equ-i-PodBlogTM is more up-to-date and inclusive than Equity for Punks. Equ-i-PodBlogTM gives you something even better than a genuine stake in an exciting, iconoclastic and rapidly expanding brewery. And thirdly, Equ-i-PodBlogTM is way, way cheaper than what Brew Dog are doing. I’m not going to ask you for £230 a share. I’m not going to ask you for £100 a share. I’m not even going to ask you for £50 a share. A tenner. Oh go on then, a fiver. A crisp fiver, and tell you what, I’ll give you three shares. You can’t say fairer than that. I’m robbing myself blind here. I’ll be having a pint to launch it at the Rake, probably, some time over the weekend. Tell your friends. Link to my blog by any means possible. Have a heated debate in the comments section. Twitter as if your life depended on it. Drive more traffic to my blog. Because now, it’s your blog too. And James and Martin – enjoy the view from up there at number one. Enjoy it while you still can, boys.

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Hops and Glory in the US

People are still asking me about a US release and I promise I’m still working to try and make that happen.

In the meantime, my Google alert this morning notified me that the book is available here from Abebooks in the States at a decent price.

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Oh, for fuck’s sake

From an article in today’s Sunday Times:

“A forthcoming audio adaptation of Doctor Who dropped a reference to a character being drunk, partly because it could encourage children to hit the bottle. The character was instead described as being merry and cheerful.”

From yesterday’s Daily Mail (thanks Jeff Pickthall):
“Deals like M&S food and wine for two ‘fuelling middle class alcohol abuse’.”
Can the least person leaving the planet please turn out the lights?

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