Plenty Kisses and No Frogs

A few short weeks ago, my local CAMRA Branch had one of our days out by coach. This time - and we have been there before - Skipton in North Yorkshire - was the venue. No great distance from us, probably 45 or so miles depending on where you measure it from, and a busy market town with lots of pubs beckoned. What would it be like? Now, the way we operate, we aim to get to whatever venue it is by around 12 noon. On this chilly but bright Saturday, we were dropped off at the coach park bang in the centre, more or less on the dot of twelve.

On these events, our social secretary usually prepares a list of pubs to visit. These are recommendations, not a route to be followed, as naturally we are all free to wander where we choose, as long as we are back at the announced departure time. The bus does not wait around.  This time our list was around ten pubs and micropubs, and as soon as we were let loose, off we went, dragging our thirsts behind us. Of course, we don't visit pubs mob handed, people deciding with their cronies where and when they'll go first, if at all, but inevitably groups bump into each other and exchange information. That's always handy, and it is great to meet our lot along the way.

Skipton is a great mix of pub types and micropubs, café bars and micropubs, quite a few of which didn't exist on our last visit around four years ago, but my little group started at a couple of old canalside favourites.  These weren't lacking at all on the cask ale front. Another thing is that the town is compact and while there are pubs further out, such was the quality, ambience and friendliness, particularly of the micropubs, that we found ourselves enjoying the places so much, that sometimes a couple of beers were decided upon, so good was the place and company. In fact, we got nowhere near our list of ten before the witching hour of bus departure, but did in fact, on recommendation from fellow topers, venture off-piste with great success. It was a happy bunch of CAMRA members that departed back to Lancashire, although we left with great reluctance.

So, what does this all tell you? Firstly, when cask beer standards are so high - and I didn't hear of anyone getting a duff pint - as a pub or bar, you simply have to raise your standards, or you will be left behind.  Where standards are high, you can shift a lot more beer, which in turn means you can offer greater choice without diminishing quality. This is the virtuous circle that cask beer needs to thrive.

How does this apply elsewhere?  While nothing is certain, it all starts with having exemplary standards in serving cask beer. Do that, and you should get the custom needed to maintain it. Then, hopefully, others will follow. Cask beer dead? Not a bit of it. Just do it well and see how that helps it thrive and survive.

 This is happening in practice in my CAMRA branch area. Rochdale has an increasingly great cask offer - and it has been pretty good for years. There the pubs get together to offer weekly discounts, annual ale trails and more. Bury is up and coming and the Oldham real ale revival is well under way. 

Another point to make was the great welcomes we all had. Locals keen to chat, friendly bar staff and great beer. Dour Yorkshire folks? Not a bit of it. As always, get the offer right, and you are much more likely to succeed.  Get it wrong and you certainly won't.

I haven't mentioned craft beer. When cask is this good, why would you?

Rating Beer In Helensburgh

Our beloved Good Beer Guide Guy in our CAMRA Branch is always urging us to rate our beers for the National Beer Scoring System. I suppose, though almost certainly, less assiduous than our Andy, other branches have the same need, so I always try and rate my beers wherever I am, even if it is later. Alas, I don't always succeed, but while in Helensburgh, I had a 100% record. Not bad eh?  Of course that is made a lot easier if you only have one real ale in several days, but look, a 100% record is a 100% record.  Thus, on Sunday, I rated two very excellent pints of Fyne Ales Jarl in the Ashton Arms. A very good 3.5, or maybe even a 4.  It even inspired the lovely E to assert that the cask version was much better than the keg version we'd enjoyed in La Juppe on our day of arrival. Naturally I didn't contradict her, excellent though this had been - and so welcome after a two hundred and whatever mile drive. It was the sheer drinkability of the cask version that really swung it, though the keg version was actually pretty good - and clear. That always helps. Do remember this!

My other beery delights in Helensburgh were, in no particular order, Tennents Lager - taste best described as absent - and St Mungo  and West 4 lagers, from German brewers in Glasgow, who had perhaps, taken too big a leaf out of the Tennents book, erring on the Scottish side, rather than the German, in the taste profile of the beers.

A word too about Scottish pubs in the dog days of Covid-19 restrictions. Enforcement of mask wearing was universal and seemingly accepted by all. Table service was almost always astonishingly quick and always very friendly and engaging - even in the Henry Bell - a Wetherspoons pub, where we sipped pre-prandial gins and tonic. To be honest, taking into account the number of coffee and breakfast places, it was notable that service was invariably chatty and cheerful, but I suppose that's a small town for you.

Being Scotland, they have their own NHS app there. It includes all in your party. It wasn't known to us, though, that you have to sign out too. That took a couple of days to discover, though it seems a subsequent sign in assumes the sign-out in the previous one, and it also supposes that you don't stay in the venue overnight. Wonder then why they bother? Or do they? Certainly, while the sign in QR Code was pointed out to us, nobody seemed to ensure you actually used it.

I'll mention our Glasgow experience in a later piece, but frankly, it was just as good. It really is pleasant where excellent service is the rule rather than the exception. It makes a difference.

I did lose most of a large Gin and Tonic in the Henry Bell, when I knocked mine over, leaping up to try and stop a frail looking elderly woman who had tripped, falling over. I didn't manage to, but it turned out she and her companions were completely pissed and were all then ejected by the manager. Failure in detecting drunks is maybe a downside of table service?

 

Balloch Blues

It must be hard being a real ale campaigner in Scotland and I take my hat off to those that do it. This is a rocky and uphill road and it has much ability to give disappointment and duff pints in equal measure. Though there must be compensating pleasures, I'm glad I do my bit for CAMRA in the relatively green, sunny and real ale rich pastures of Rochdale, Oldham and Bury.

But the campaign is about quality as well as choice, so how does Balloch measure up?  Firstly, why Balloch? Well simple really. It was the only handy place I could get a train to. Balloch is at the bottom of Loch Lomond, though in shivering cold, its banks and braes were anything but bonny. The road wasn't that bonny either, being around two feet of slushy snow. It has three real ale outlets - I say outlets rather than pubs - as none is a pub in the accepted English sense, two being hotel bars and one, just a typical Scottish one room bar*.  It has one other advantage as a small real ale crawl - all the boozers are within a three minute walk of the station and consequently of each other.

*The Dog House is a typical one roomed bar - or so I thought - but seemingly there is another bar within. Nonetheless I was in the one with the real ale, though as might be expected, everyone was drinking Tennents or cider, which may well explain the slightly stale and oxidised pint of the local brew, Southern Summit from Loch Lomond Brewery, carefully served in a Belhaven Best glass. The room was roughly rectangular with some bench seating and a small row of tables and chairs placed strategically in front of one of the dominating TVs.  It was friendly enough in that nobody stabbed me, but it was clearly a locals bar, with banter flying freely about as the denizens battered back the TL and walloped down the vodka.  I stayed for one only and was gratified that another recalcitrant ordered the cask before I left. Maybe it would be better than mine?

Just 50 yards away on the other side of the road was a place, Balloch House, I'd been to before without having a particularly good time.  I wrote about that here.  Hoping for improvement, I went in. Firstly it was busy.  Two guys were playing traditional (not Scottish) music and a few stood at the bar though like me they held their coats awkwardly under their arms, as there was nowhere apparent to hang them. The handpump selection was, one (empty), one (Doom Bar - off,) one (Bitter and Twisted) and the other Deuchars IPA. There might even have been another, but I can't remember. I selected Bitter and Twisted which was unsparkled and definitely uninspiring - average at best.  Looking around the pub had been furnished with various useless tat by modern pub central and although plenty people were in, it strikes me as the kind of place that couldn't generate atmosphere if you sealed all the doors and windows and pumped laughing gas in. (Your mileage may vary.) I was additionally annoyed by the free Wi-Fi which required - and didn't get - a huge amount of intrusive information as a matter of course. Having failed to enjoy this place on two visits, I must bravely face the fact that I like nothing at all about this Mitchells and Butler's outpost. Sorry.


Lastly the Tullie Inn. This is a bit of a barn and was clearly redeveloped some years ago from its former more traditional look to aim for the summer trade. In winter, it just looked, big, soulless, cold and empty.  I was greeted at the door by an A board where "George and Mildred" - or whoever - assured me of a warm welcome. I find though that if you have to write the welcome down, it is sure to be wholly absent within. And so it came to pass.  Funnily though my Cask Marque accredited pint from Fallen Brewery of Stirling was pretty good, even though the beer, Grapevine, fell several hurdles short of its description of "New World Pale" and was a mighty £4 a pint. Time was against me and that one would have to do. My train and, unknown to me, a very disturbed night ahead, awaited me.

Balloch is probably best experienced for its views of Loch Lomond and the Ben. Stick to them and you'll be quite happy. Expect a lot from the local pubs and sadly, you may well be disappointed.

I don't recall any keg craft as such in any of the pubs, so that avenue was pretty well closed. 

The rail line to Helensburgh is now restored and with luck I can nip down there later for a decent pint. I might even get home tomorrow.

Carry On CAMRA

Tempting though it has been, I have refrained until now from writing about CAMRA's Revitalisation Project, but having read yet another treatise on the subject, I though I might as well chip in what I think. I'm not exactly an insider, you'll find that CAMRA has quite a few layers of influence above me, but I do know how many beans make five real ale wise and to some extent CAMRA wise, so here goes.

Firstly, what has prompted this consultation exercise?  Is it internal pressure to change? No, it is very largely external, but there is one vital change that has prompted this. It isn't the fanciful idea that CAMRA is frit about craft beer  - though there is a perception that's the case -  or that there is a membership concern about our lack of support for craft keg - there isn't  - and of course many of our members supplement their drinking by having the odd craft beer or three.  Crikey, even I drink lager and craft beer from time to time and apart from a small minority, I reckon most CAMRA members do.  It can't really be a hatred of keg then surely? Or non real ale - I repeat our members by and large drink it. So what is behind it?  My perception is that the answer, at least in part, is that we have a new Chief Executive (Tim Page) that wants to look at the Campaign with fresh eyes and ensure that under his tenure that CAMRA is doing the right thing, that it is taking its members with it and is fit for purpose.  Ah these words.  Some may recall that I was involved in the last review, the Fit for Purpose Review and I was pleased that Tim mentioned, when he spoke to me in Liverpool this weekend, that he had thoroughly read the Fit for Purpose Review document and its recommendations on taking up appointment and that he saw the Revitalisation Project as very much an extension of the work of that committee, of which I was a member. 

Bloggers have been banging on about this for a bit, but here's a thing.  By and large they don't really influence anyone but other beer bloggers and fellow travellers - aka readers.  Most CAMRA members aren't blog readers. Hell, I'm sure most of my 1800 CAMRA members have never read my blog despite me banging on about it from time to time. In short, we don't really matter and the pressure exerted by most of us, no matter how well written or closely argued, can safely be ignored.  CAMRA needs to set its own course and it is the members that are most important here and to whom this review is really addressed. Ultimately they will decide. It is their campaign, but that isn't to say that blogs haven't generated some interesting stuff. They have, but reading through some of the blogs on this subject, I am struck repeatedly that most people, CAMRA members or not, seem to lack any real insight into why most people within CAMRA don't just see the light and campaign for all beer. A Campaign for Good Beer if you like.  The answer isn't all that complex. It is simply that on the whole, by preference, they drink and support real ale, like it better and are worried that it will disappear without CAMRA.

So as it has all been done for me, I'll quote a few bits from blogs which I think get to the heart of things:

Oh Good Ale

Phil made this rather pertinent comment in his blog:

"At its core CAMRA is a single-issue campaign – and, despite how specific it is, ‘real ale’ is the best way to give that single issue a focus. But it’s a campaign, not a cult. What we want, if we’re members of CAMRA, is more, widely-available, good-quality real ale. That’s probably also going to be reflected in what we drink, given the choice – but if we do range more widely, frankly that’s nobody’s business but ours."

The Beer Father

Ed wrote:   A common criticism of CAMRA is that it was a big mistake to focus on dispense method rather than beer quality. On this, like so many other things, the critics are wrong.  By tying their definition of real ale to cask conditioning CAMRA made real ale easily recognisable in any pub in which it is served: just look for the hand pumps. This has served well as an indicator of what to drink in a pub for decades now, and continues to do so today. No specialist knowledge is required, and people with only the faintest interest in beer nerdery can easily pick out the real ales.

He went on to say, tellingly: "Craft beer on the other hand is in a horrible mess already. In Britain attempts at defining craft beer have been even less successful, and many beer geeks have had to settle for "I know it when I see it", which I'm sure if of great help to the average beer drinker.  In a local supermarket craft beer is now another ill defined category like world lager."

Boak and Bailey

Chip in with that most pernicious and incorrect of arguments: "Personally, we think the battle over cask-conditioned beer has been won — most people who want a pint of cask ale in decent condition know where to find one, and the situation is better than that in many parts of the country."

This is the old CAMRA has done its job argument. It hasn't. Real ale is not in as much danger as it was for sure, but the continuance of real ale requires eternal vigilance. Paul Spearman writing a comment on Zythophile's Blog wrote a very good counter to that notion here and as I’ve argued elsewhere, all the pressure for change within CAMRA is external. I detect little real wish within, other than tweaking around the edges. And the battle for real ale is never won. We are just at a fairly high point in the war. Quality is still the key at both the brewing and dispense end of things and we still haven't got this remotely right.

Curmudgeon

Is taken with a notion expressed on Boak and Bailey's blog:" I was also much struck by this comment by Ian H on Boak & Bailey’s blog: "CAMRA is a people-powered cultural heritage organisation in all but name. Traditional drinking culture is what links real ale, real cider/perry, historic pub interiors and community pubs. Embrace it! By all means show craft more respect (the same respect shown to Belgian beers and quality German and Czech lagers, for instance), but don’t water down the central purpose of CAMRA. 

He is right to be so taken.  The link Ian outlines between the various strands of CAMRA is neatly summed up and  gathered into a cohesive whole as written above. Maybe, just maybe, CAMRA isn't nearly as far off the mark in its current campaigning as some allege. 

CAMRA started out as a single focus organisation, but has acquired many more bits and pieces as it went along. But it has never really lost that single focus and that's what gets on the nerves of those outside that say we should change. Most members say no such thing. It is focus that brings relevance and I am pretty sure that most CAMRA members will see it that way. The Campaign is its members and if the members want to continue that single focus that's just what we'll do. It is also worth pointing out that with nearly 180,000 members, CAMRA isn't going anywhere soon and members provide relevance by their sheer weight of numbers.  Focus on what you can identify, define and defend and you will gain followers. A woolly message doesn't do that. It is the single focus that has made CAMRA the organisation that it is. To change it might be suicidal. To paraphrase Mao about the French Revolution "It is too early to judge whether that single focus has worked or not!

Now of course my critics will say I have just chosen quotes to suit my own stance. Well too true I have, because they actually make sense. While it is certainly wise for CAMRA to review its activities from time to time and make adjustments - and I have been involved in the making of a few of them - but it is too glib to simply say CAMRA should campaign for all types of good beer. What is good beer? Define it. My best attempt will be "Beer I like" but if you include beer most people like - and why wouldn't you? - we'll have to include the most popular beers in the UK. Those are massed produced lagers. Unless you drink basic commodity lager, in the UK, you are a minority drinker. We shouldn't overlook that. 

Finally for now, I wrote this on Stonch's Beer blog and I'm happy to stick with it:

"All the pressure for change within CAMRA is external. I detect little real wish within, other than tweaking around the edges. I personally want to move CAMRA to be more concerned about the quality of real ale at the point of dispense and to protect traditional pubs and, yes cask conditioned beer. We shouldn't worry about the rest too much. And the battle for real ale is never won. We are just at a fairly high point in the war. Quality is still the key at both the brewing and dispense end of things."

So we carry on and if we eventually disappear up our own arseholes as we all die out, so be it. I've enjoyed the ride and so have most of our members.

Now of course it may not all pan out this way, but I reckon I won't be far off the mark. There is a possibility that the campaign may change in a way that will cause it to implode. What won't happen I'll bet, is that we become a Campaign for Good Beer. It isn't what the members want and in a members organisation, if you don't take your members with you, then you are scuppered.

And I repeat. Most CAMRA members drink all kinds of beer, but they campaign for real ale.  As always, the clue is in the name.  Should a major change take place, I imagine that a much weaker campaign for real ale would emerge. So maybe CAMRA is in a bit more of a cleft stick than Tim Page realises.

Lees Brewery, Middleton Junction, Manchester

 
After an early morning of short tempered exchanges on Twitter I needed some shopping.  I took these photos while waiting at traffic lights, to and from the supermarket.  The clock is wrong though, by two hours!

Hopefully nothing to argue about there.



Click the photos to enlarge.

Cask conditioning?  If it is all done in the brewery, I have one simple question.  How come there is so much badly kept  cask beer about?

Creating Demand

I was in Scotland last week and as always I try and observe the beer scene there, remote though I am from it.  I usually pop into three pubs for a half or two on the way to or back from Dumbarton.  I've written about the Drum and Monkey (part of the Nicolson's chain) before and it does a good job of presenting interesting beer in good nick, though a glance around the pub shows as many, if not more supping Tennent's Lager.  When I called last week they had a "Beer Festival" on and the approach of a few well chosen beers isn't a bad one at all.

Nearby on the way to Queen Street Station are two Wetherspoons.  The Counting House is a huge and impressive ex banking hall and is interesting for that and while the range of beers is expansive, I have never really found it that good quality wise, though it has improved.  My CAMRA colleagues from Glasgow say it is on the up, but it is in and out of the Good Beer Guide(currently in) indicating an ambivalence at best.  Nearby - across the road in fact - the smaller Camperdown Place has a smaller, but probably better chosen range and the beer is always good.  I do tend though to spend a fair bit of time in both watching what people drink in there and gratifyingly, there is a fair bit of real ale sold.  You simply can't deny that without JDW there would be a lot less cask beer drunk in what remains a lager stronghold. Then again, the West of Scotland always has been a lager stronghold, so perhaps that is all the more remarkable.

My home town has no real ale outlets.  Yet.  I was reminded forcibly of this when out with my old mother. Tennent's Lager which is ubiquitous, has no discernible taste other than carbonic acid, but is everywhere.  Smooth beer (Belhaven usually) and Stella complete the range.  Bottles? Yes. Becks or Corona.  The thriving real ale scene in Scotland is actually very small and is hard to find, other than in its key strongholds such as Edinburgh. So where is this going?  I was in Helensburgh meeting an old friend.  Helensburgh is a posher and slightly less depressed place than my home town, with a fair sprinkling of people from rUK.  Well, England really. Some are Royal Navy from the huge Faslane base and many just live there for reasons of business or perhaps a liking for wind and rain.  The local JDW, the Henry Bell, was selling a lot of real ale.  I chatted to the manager who was worried they'd run out of festival beers.  Quality was good and she said that there was no problem selling cask, though of course, she still sold more Tennents. Oh well, but the point is that where there is a constant availability and choice of real ale, it not only turns over, but it sells.

Back in Dumbarton I looked at the new JDW being built. It is the old Woolies I remember so well from my childhood and of course it will sell real ale. Now Dumbarton is a lot harder a nut to crack.  I remember the Cutty Sark trying it years ago and the many pints of vinegar I was offered,  but if I'm right, real ale will gradually gain a toe hold here.   Even in depressed Clyde Coast Towns, beer isn't cheap and I have no doubt that in the Henry Bell, many will have gone for cask on price, but they wouldn't stick with it if they didn't like it.  So keen pricing in the new Captain James Lang will be a key factor, but it will be the constant availability and commitment that will slowly raise sales.

I'll be back in Dumbarton in July about a month after the new JDW opens.  I await it with great interest as it will bring cask beer back to a real ale desert. That to me is a good thing.

Of course JDW haters will think that a lot of bollocks, but they have a choice usually.  It will mean that there will be food available until ten at night.  That's good too. Pubs in the town are already complaining.  They'll really have to up their game.