Sam's Again!

For a man that shuns publicity, Humphrey Smith, Managing Director of Sam Smith's Tadcaster Brewery, doesn't half manage to attract it. Some will recall his spat over the use of the Yorkshire Rose with Cropton Brewery and others may remember another ding dong with a licensee who was locked in the accommodation part of his pub following a dispute with the brewery and had to hire scaffolding to exit and enter via his bedroom window. All great knockabout stuff.

I am grateful to one of my CAMRA members for alerting me to yet another exhibition of oddballery. It seems Humphrey himself, to quote the dear old Oldham Chronicle turned up at a local Royton pub on New Year's Eve and closed it down pronto. "Staff and customers were stunned when one of the multi-millionaire owners of Samuel Smith’s Brewery (Humphrey) walked in and shut down Royton’s Junction Inn at 8.30pm on New Year’s Eve." According to the Chron, this was the culmination of a row over full measure pints. That is serving them, not for not doing so.  Sam's, (as I observed last night by reading the brewery signs on the wall in a different Sam's pub,) have a policy of serving 95% liquid and a creamy head and offer requests for a top up only  if spillage over the glass can be avoided. Given that most Sam's pubs offer nitrokeg beer, that might be tricky. In my case I was given a pint of Dark Mild with an inch and a half of head and a half pint glass with a smidgin of beer which I could then use to top up at my leisure. I won't name the pub though, in case Humph takes the hump and knocks on their door too.

It seems though this is the nub of the problem in the Junction, though of course there may be more to it than meets the eye. Things aren't always what they seem. I can't put Sam's side of the story though. The Chron obligingly tells you why: "The Chronicle contacted Mr Smith yesterday who said “we have nothing to say” before hanging up.

The wonderful Oldham Chronicle has the story in full.

 My pint of 3% smooth mild cost me £1.19 last night. Yes. £1.19.  If that is being achieved though by causing ructions with licensees, I'd rather pay a few pence more. Just a thought. 

Short Measure Riles

There are quite a few siren voices that complain about CAMRA's stance on full measure pints - a policy I don't particularly see the need for when there are bigger priorities - but I didn't know the Germans were concerned about this aspect too and that there is actually an organisation that you can join to combat it. Even more astonishing, to me at least, is that the group concerned is over 100 years old.

I have noticed a fair bit of short measure in Germany, even though oversize glasses are always used. Like most I have just put up with it, while noting grimly that the benefit of the doubt almost always seems to fall to the server of the beer rather than the customer. It varies a lot of course, with Cologne to my mind, being the worst culprits. Now the Oktoberfest is notorious for short measure. You just have to look at the photos to see that. It seems though the the VGBE (League Against Fraudulent Pouring) - don't the Germans just love a snappy title? - are kicking up a song and dance about it. With the price of a litre of beer at €9 each on average, it seems that many maßkrugs are only being filled to 90 percent. This is because Munich’s government allows a variance of up to 0.1 litre. I think it fair to say that this variance is rarely in the customer's favour.  Anecdotally according to one commentator, a kellner (pourer) can squeeze up to 200 litres out of a 100 litre cask,  though that seems more than a tad optimistic to me I have to say.

“The tolerance level has to go,” said the VGBE’s president, Jan-Ulrich Bittlinge, who called the results of the test “sobering.” “We ordered and paid for seven mugs in every tent. But, in fact, we received on average only six litres of beer.” Some results were particularly bad: In one tent the mug only contained 0.73 litres of beer, meaning the customer was cheated out of €2.43 worth of beer.

So, a couple of things.  Doesn't seem that the VGBE has been that successful in the last 100 years does it? And secondly, if you didn't have a good enough reason not to go to Oktoberfest (the only valid one to go is to see the lasses in dirndls) then you have now.

I like the sound of this though. The Beer Inspectors use a mobile phone app that measures the beer content by photograph. Handy. Pun intended.

Gratuitous dirndl photo and story details courtesy of the local.de