Slightly Grudging Praise of Tennents Lager

I was in Scotland last week to see off my late mother's flat - you know - help my sister with all the  remaining bits and pieces  and discuss old photos of goodness knows who, as not only are the subjects of the photos all deceased, everyone who knows who they were are too. Very sobering and a reminder - hardly needed - that all paths lead ultimately in one inexorable direction.

Sounds like an excuse for a drink eh? Well I certainly thought so. I started off on the first night with a visit to the Captain James Lang, our local Dumbarton JDW.  Cask to me has been hit and miss in there, despite its Good Beer Guide status, but they had Adnams beer on. I like Adnams. Proper beer it is.  Adnams Nut Brown Ale and rather good it was too.  Typical Adnams taste and more complex than I'd reckoned on it being. A beer that made you think. Chatting with my non drinking sister, I found three pints weren't a hardship. For a proper description of the beer, see the Beer Nut here. I concur with his findings, even though these days, I'm more of a "good or shite" beer describer and as a rubbish blogger, I rarely take notes; rather I rely on my phone for photos of what I drank and my memory for how much I liked them. Not an entirely reliable modus operandi. Trust me on that one. 

Due to an unexpected funeral which I wasn't involved in, family plans were put aside the next day. I decided a little trip to Glasgow would fill the hiatus.  Charing Cross area was just a hop away on the train, chosen mainly for the State Bar and the Bon Accord - where - and I have mentioned this before - I had my first ever cask beer in 1974. But firstly the Griffin opposite the Kings Theatre. Years since I've been in there - all wood and glass with an old and comfy interior and a horseshoe bar.  One other customer in only, reading the paper and drinking a pint of Tennents, so at least I knew it had been recently poured.  Duly ordered from a silent barmaid - no warm welcome there - it was cold and gassy, so I swirled to release some carbon dioxide, knowing that if the pipes are clean, there was a chance to get something good from this Scottish standard. It wasn't bad after an atmosphere of CO2 was dismissed, but not hitting the mark. My solitary drinking companion left with no goodbyes exchanged. I entertained myself by watching a glum faced stocktaker, take all bottles down from the gantry and solemnly inspect by eye before noting the contents on a sheet. It was soothing stuff as he tutted his way around the bar.  Finally, my pint finished, I slunk out casting my eye without success for the now disappeared barmaid.  Like my erstwhile fellow imbiber, I too, left unnoticed for pastures new.

Just up the road is Henglers Circus, a large, bright L shaped Wetherpoon bar, which although it has a fair bit of low level chairs and tables, would be much improved by some bench seating. It was quite pubby with plenty of folks of varying ages dotted around, chatting, eating, reading the paper or just watching passers by through the large windows looking out to Sauchiehall St, where, and this happens a lot, they were digging up the street in my honour.  The greeting was very warm and friendly and unbidden the barman after ascertaining I wanted beer, rattled through the offerings.  By way of compare and contrast, I had a very decent pint of St Mungo from West Brewing in Glasgow.  I took in the pleasant atmosphere and enjoyed a leisurely people watching. I didn't have the cask, but some did and I know from past visits it is reliable enough to deserve its GBG entry.

A mere hop and a skip away is the State Bar, renowned in real ale circles. Well Glasgow ones anyway. I used to regularly sup there in 1976 when I did my Supplementary Benefit training in nearby Pitt St.  Then it was an all chrome and black keg bar and looked nothing like the traditional pub it is now. Odd if you think about it.  Only half a dozen in and again not much of a greeting, but GBG form Fyne Ales Everyone Loves Simcoe made up for that as did bumping into an acquaintance of mine. The beer world is small really.

My intended final stop was the Bon Accord just over the M8.  Busy and welcoming - big smiles and hellos - and beer from one of my favourite breweries, Stringers. Yellow Lorry was in Good Beer Guide form as I was drawn into a discussion on an inadvertently locked down laptop.  This widened with plenty of people offering solutions, but it still wasn't working when I left 45 minutes later. This pub never disappoints even if Hewlett Packard laptops do.

Now I know you are asking yourself. "What about the Tennents?"  I had intended to go back to Dumbarton at that point, but seeing a pub sign down a side street by the Mitchell library,I couldn't resist. The Avalon is odd. Just check out the reviews. Inside, like a souped up scene from Still Game, a few denizens chatted to each other by the simple process of bawling  in jokes and asides at a volume wholly incommensurate with the size of the pub. The barmaid was friendly enough and as the range of beers on offer was more than limited, I opted for Tennents Lager.  It was a cracking pint. Clean, fresh and very enjoyable. CO2 levels were good and as I surveyed the slightly down at heel boozer, I felt content, swigging mouthfuls of TL and listening to the patter.

Resisting the temptation for more I headed for home. Back in Dumbarton as I left the station I entered what used to be McCafferty's Railway Tavern.  I was a regular there many moons ago when it was actually run by Hugh McCafferty. Many a pint of McEwan's Export was consumed in there back in the day. Now it is a recently opened Indian Buffet Restaurant called Haveli having been closed for a number of years.  Now I'm not the biggest fan of this kind of eating, but it was handy and five minutes walk from home.  Apart from four women it was just me, but I had one of the best lamb bhunas I have ever had and one of the best pints of, you've guessed it, Tennents Lager.  The welcome was great too from the waiter and his dad who had cooked the bhuna.

Tennents Lager is no Augustiner Helles, but when not over gassed it is a full bodied, clean beer with a slight ting of hops.  Sadly too often it is not sold at its best.

 I met with a pal the next night in the Henry Bell in Helensburgh. This normally reliable GBG entry offered me two pretty undrinkable pints, though both charmingly exchanged. I reverted to gin and when the crew from RFA Fort Victoria arrived mob handed from HM naval base at Faslane, we avoided the hordes at the bar by using the  JDW app. Brilliant.

My last disappointment was on the way home when the Smoking Fox just outside Central Station had swapped the delicious Heidi-Weisse from West for Blue Moon. WTF?

CAMRA and the Future

Tim Webb, guru and author of all thing beerily Belgian, has set the cat among the pigeons by suggesting in a letter to CAMRA's esteemed organ, What's Brewing, that CAMRA needs to change and concludes by saying:

"The challenge for the Campaign is how to adapt to the much-improved world of beer it helped create. Luke warm acceptance of, or being not against the greatest improvements to beer tastes in a century, is not a good enough stance. To younger eyes it makes CAMRA look like a much-loved grandparent who wants to keep driving even though they can’t make out the road ahead."

When you examine Tim's letter, it is a bit of a mixed bag with much to agree about.  There are some gaps in his arguments though. He says "Luke warm acceptance of, or being not against the greatest improvements to beer tastes in a century, is not a good enough stance." Sorry.  What are these "greatest improvements to beer tastes in a century". Tim doesn't say, so it is somewhat difficult to know what he is driving at here, other than CAMRA should in some way give more ground to those who believe in beer other than real ale.  Actually that is most of us and most CAMRA members. A few die hards maybe stick entirely to cask, but most of us drink other beers too, so to some extent this is a moot point for CAMRA members, though there is a growing number of younger end beer drinkers that may need a little more convincing from their side of the argument. The divide isn't just a CAMRA affair.

He does make some very valid points about brewing practice and has concerns with the word "traditional" in the CAMRA definition of real ale, implying it harks to a non existant golden age where things were done "properly".  He is right of course and partial conditioning of beer in the brewery is nothing new at all. As for "traditional", I rather fancy it came from the name that the trade used to call real ale - cask conditioned beer if you like - rather than any attempt to imply beer had always been made in an artisanal and time honoured way, as Tim suggests. The trade used the term "traditional" to distinguish it from keg and other bright beers. His assertion that the CAMRA definition would implode if the word "traditional" was removed is somewhat unsupported by any evidence.  I would be most suprised if real ale drinkers were, or are, purely or substantially attracted to real ale due to tradition.  I suspect the answer is much more prosaic and that most feel that (to them) it just tastes better.

I do agree with him in other ways though.  The genie is out of the bottle in that there are many more good beers out there, that are neither traditional, nor cask conditioned, so it does need to be addressed.  How to co-exist with this is a dilemma.   To paraphrase Marx, "The problem is not in identifying what is wrong with the world, but how to change it." Tim says in his letter about the Good Beer Guide "CAMRA has championed a bureaucratic device to inform its members what sort of beer is good – as in the term Good Beer Guide. Thirty years ago this mattered little, as decent beer and cask ale,in Britain at least, were synonymous. But then things changed."

Tim offers no solutions as to what should be done, so, eating this elephant bite at a time,  here's a thought: The Good Beer Guide may not be the all inclusive, unambiguous title that it once was, (as Tim Webb points out) but it has recognition and value which make a change in the short term not only unlikely but commercially suicidal.  Why not though run a bold strapline under the title to say "The definitive guide to real ale and where to drink it"? CAMRA would then, if nothing else be nailing its stated real ale colours to the mast and be clearlyclaiming no more than the GBG is a guide to real ale.

The vexatious question of what CAMRA should do about craft keg is one that needs a bit more careful thought. But by my suggested subtle change to the Good Beer Guide, we'd have a starting point.   CAMRA campaigns for real ale. Just accept that and build on it and modernise it, including our definition of real ale and a full explanation of how the term arose. We should be unafraid where we encounter a mixed economy of cask and keg. Most good craft beers bars already do this. We should provide better education and words about other beers and better definitions of them too.  We need to include more about craft keg beer in our publications, including the GBG, while still emphasising our commitment to real (cask) ale as uniquely British and a fantastic product in its own right. The fact that by and large it can only be consumed in the pub is a good point to emphasise too, as should the fact that cask beer still has its dangers to face. (Which is another reason to support it strongly). We in CAMRA do need to improve what we do  and how we do it in a changing beer world (despite the urban nature of most of the changes).

There are other areas too where we need to up our game. But we aren't as broken, out of touch and irrelevant an organisation as Tim implies.  Not by a long chalk. But maybe it is time to demonstrate that to the doubters.

Actually the Good Beer Guide often mentions in its entries the fact that craft keg and bottles are sold.  I also recommend both Curmudgeon and Paul Bailey who cover this subject too.