Category Archives: pubs

The Wrong Type of Income

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landlord_whitbread_1953

We have been thinking a lot about pub companies recently, not least because of the Fair Deal for Your Local campaign. We still don’t understand enough about the details of the business model to have a strong opinion on its rights and wrongs, but one thing has been puzzling us: why do pubcos bother selling beer?

Why do they bother maintaining a buying-sales-distribution network when they could just make money from renting at market rates to people who want to run a genuine freehouse?

We wonder if the answer is tax.

At present, our tax system distinguishes between trading income and letting income, with the former qualifying for many more ‘reliefs’ (tax breaks). This is because trading is seen to be generating ‘economic activity’ while letting and passively holding investments is not. So, from the pubcos’ perspective, rental is probably ‘the wrong type’ of income.

Can anyone who works in the industry, or at Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, confirm our deny our hunch?

A Cornish Village with no Pub

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Beer glass symbol from Ordnance Survey map key.

Gorran Haven is an interesting place — proper seaside, where many Cornish coves are more Sea Salt. It has cones of chips, ice cream, sandcastles, and families nesting behind windbreaks on the beach, just like the holidays we remember from when we were kids.

What we discovered as we waited an hour and a half for our bus yesterday, however, is that the little pint mug on the Ordnance Survey map is somewhat misleading: Gorran Haven doesn’t have a single pub. Several churches, yes, but no pubs.

When we said this to a local, he disagreed and pointed. ‘Up the hill there,’ he said, before conceding, ‘Well, hotel bar, really.’ There is indeed a ‘bar bistro’ but it didn’t look like the kind of place we could tramp into in walking boots, dusted with yellow pollen, thirsting for pints and pork scratchings.

‘Well, the cafes are licensed, too,’ said our local expert. This is also true, but drinking bottles of Betty Stogs or San Miguel at a picnic table wasn’t really what we had in mind on this occasion.

We’re not complaining, just surprised. We’ve been to similarly-sized villages with more than one pub, and it’s unusual to find a corner of the Duchy that doesn’t at least have a St Austell house.

In the end, we were perfectly happy with two mugs of strong tea which we drank on the beach as the tide came in.

A Scilly Pub Crawl

The Turks Head pub, Scilly.

There are pubs on four of the five inhabited islands in the Isles of Scilly and we couldn’t resist trying to visit them all.

First, in Hugh Town on St Mary’s — the nearest Scilly has to a bustling metropolis — we stopped in at the Mermaid, which sits on the harbour, not far from where the Scillonian drops off visitors from the mainland. Though it’s a pubco pub, it has special permission to sell local beer because of the challenge of keeping it supplied, and is decked out with gig racing paraphernalia. Unfortunately, on our visit, a beer from Ales of Scilly (Scuppered, we think) was just in the process of turning to vinegar, but a cosy atmosphere and Guinness saw us through.

Also in Hugh Town are Scilly’s two St Austell pubs. The Atlantic is huge but nonetheless has lots of corners to hide in. When freshly supplied, it has a decent selection of the brewery’s beers all of which were well looked after. We enjoyed a sarcastic pub quiz, surrounded by boaty types, along with pints of Trelawney and bottles of 1913 Stout.

Just up the road, the Bishop and Wolf (named after two lighthouses) offered an excellent pint of Proper Job along with the usual St Austell corporate interior decoration job. Nice enough but nothing to blog home about.

The last pub on St Mary’s is in Old Town and is called, obviously, the Old Town Inn. Being a little out of the way, we found it quiet, but, as the end of May approaches, were delighted to at last find a pint of mild — Triple FFF Pressed Rat & Warthog — in decent condition and tasty enough to stay for more than one. We were made to feel very welcome and, when we left, got a round of goodbyes and ‘take cares’ from the locals perched at the bar.

The New Inn, Tresco.

The New Inn, Tresco, Isles of Scilly.

Thereafter, we were reliant on boats to reach pubs elsewhere in the archipelago. The New Inn on tropical Tresco, which we reached in the mid-afternoon, was all but empty. At one point, a bird hopped in through the door, ate some crisp crumbs under the pool table, and hopped out again. We found more mild — the lesser-spotted Black Prince! — along with Ales of Scilly Firebrand, which we found pleasant enough, if not earth-shattering. The real highlight, though, was kegged Harbour Brewing Pilsner which reminded us of really fresh, flowery beer from Würzburg or Regensbury. (It was, however, £2.50 for a half — ‘craft’ tax+tourist prices+Scilly supply premium?)

The Turks [sic] Head on St Agnes is yet another cosy nautically-themed tavern, though with a touch of Hampstead about it. Its house beer, Turks Ale, brewed by St Austell, has a pump clip designed by a former member of staff, and tasted to us as if it might be a blend of Proper Job and Tribute, though we stand ready to be corrected. St Austell’s seasonal special, Prince Albert, is a brown ale, and its accent on middling-dark malt flavours made a pleasant change. Skinner’s St Piran’s was in very good condition and is yet another decent golden ale from a brewery whose brown beers we don’t really like.

Fraggle Rock on Bryher almost didn’t make this list. It’s a cafe, really, but it does have draught beer and a pool table, and, at any rate, businesses on this small, quiet island have to do double duty. The views, especially from the garden, are stunning.

In conclusion, there are no bad pubs on Scilly, and, despite being out in the Atlantic, it offers a wider range of beers than most Cornish towns, and certainly more mild, in May at least. Don’t go there for the beer, but don’t worry that you’ll go thirsty, either.

Did we miss any? Let us know below and we’ll make sure to visit them next time.

Think You’re Hard, Then?

William Badger Pope c.1930.

William ‘Badger’ Pope c.1930.

William ‘Badger’ Pope, born in around 1878, was a psycho who caused trouble in the West Country city of Bath in the years before World War I. Local papers from around the turn of the century are full of stories about his ‘foul mouth’, and of him stealing, sleeping in dustbins, assaulting people (both men and women), and, in particular, chucking them in the river.

He was, of course, perpetually drunk, and most often found in the pub. It was there that, in his most benign moods, he entertained people with fairground side-show tricks — biting the heads off live rats he kept stuffed in his shirt, or stealing ladies’ hatpins and driving them through both of his cheeks. When he was feeling punchy (which seems to have been most of the time) he would find a bloke he didn’t like the look of, snatch his beer glass and empty it on to the pub floor, before taking a seat to wait for the fight to begin.

He was almost as good at evading the police as he was at drinking and fighting. He might, for example, climb up the maypole outside the Waterman’s Arms like King Kong and wait them out, or, even more effective, dive into the river and swim to the other side.

With characters like Badger about, landlords had to be hard, too, and even Badger is said to have respected (feared) Septimus Smith, who ran the The Shamrock. He was famous for wrestling customers, with a free pint on offer to anyone who could get their hands around both of his wrists at the same time. He could also carry three sacks of cement at once.

Yikes. If you need us, we’ll be in the lounge at the hotel, in our Sunday best, sipping sherry.

We read about Badger in Kegs & Ale: Bath and the public house, published by Bath Industrial Heritage Centre and Millstream Books in 1991. It’s out of print but our secondhand copy cost 1p.

Pubs as Alien Territory

Dominoes in the pub, 1940.

Men playing dominoes in the pub, LIFE, 1940.

Reading old editions of American magazine LIFE on Google Books, we were delighted by the various attempts to explain Britain to Americans, especially when those articles touched on the pub. Here are a few bits and pieces, but you ought to check out the original scans for the wonderful photographs that accompany them.

Robert Barlow Neve is the most self-respecting, self-satisfied man on earth — an Englishman… He goes to the pub on Sunday night for a beer and a chat. He likes his fellow men and, unlike the Frenchman, he gives his fellow men the same respect he demands from them… [PHOTO CAPTION] ‘Mild and bitter’ ale from mug quenches all England’s thirst. Neve takes it at the more refined Saloon Bar, not workingman’s Public Bar. Taps are for expensive, mild and bitter ale.

24 April 1939, ‘An English family is self-satisfied‘

What was on the ‘expensive’ tap? Presumably not an imported Scandinavian double IPA with Himalayan vanilla.

England’s public house or ‘pub’ is more than a counterpart of the US saloon. It is every man’s club — a meeting place for rich and poor, high and low. Next to the Church it does more than any other institution to solidify English life. Most Englishmen have their favorite pubs and there, besides their tastes for alcohol, they liberally indulge their inclination for conversation. Talk in pubs comes closer to reflecting English thought than all the editorials in London.

3 June 1940, ‘Backbone of England is Public-House Bar‘

With local elections in a couple of days, politicians would do well to bear that last point in mind.

The Bath House pub in Dean Street takes a righteous attitude of censure toward teetotalers. A sign over the bar reads, ‘You don’t undress when you come to this Bath House. So don’t drink water.’ At the same time Vic, the publican, would frown on any guest who misjudged his capacity. At both dinnertime (noon) and supper the people from nearby offices drink mild and bitter ale as they wait for a seat at the small wooden tables or on an old-fashioned stool at the food bar. While they wait, Harry Leon, composer of popular songs, pounds the upright piano in the corner and another customer sings… At the food bar Vic or his wife, Mrs Ruffell, ladles out soup, bread and butter (not margarine), rabbit, roast beef or ham (not Spam), potatoes and cabbage or fresh crisp lettuce with a tomato, and follows with a hot dessert of jam roll or suet pudding or not too biting cheese. The bill 2/6 (50c).

8 November 1943, ‘Life Among the Ruins‘

‘Not too biting’ — fairly bland?

The Yellow Restrained Chili Peppers

Harbour Beers at the Hand Bar, Falmouth.

On Friday, with some effort and multiple forms of public transport, we managed to make it to Falmouth for the tail-end of Harbour Brewing’s ‘meet the brewer’ event at the Hand Bar. We snagged a couple of ‘tasters’, but actually had much more fun afterwards drinking proper measures of beer we’d paid for, without the slightly awkward school assembly format and the heckling hipsters.

Aji Limon Pale Ale (6%) was interesting: aged in bourbon barrels, though that didn’t come over in any way we could detect, and with the addition of a particular variety of chili pepper chosen in consultation with a chef to provide additional citrus flavour. It gave only a very faint burn (to us, anyway, but then we’re fairly immune to chili heat) followed by a lot of dry spiciness — lemongrass and dried coconut came to mind. We think we liked it; we certainly found it interesting; and we were impressed at the thoughtfulness and restraint with which the brewers had employed a ‘non-beer’ ingredient.

Harbour IPA (5%) has come on a long way since we first tasted it, though it still doesn’t quite measure up, in our view, to the aromatic intensity of Brewdog’s Punk, which it has increasingly come to resemble. [UPDATE: said we weren't taking notes! We had IPA No.2.] What it lacked in perfume, however, it made up for to some extent with the very faintest roasted spice and seed flavours, presumably from the yeast. Nice. We’d drink more of this, if the chance arose.

Finally, a beer that we were surprised to be impressed by: No. 2 Pilsner (5.5%). Though Eddie from Harbour seemed keen not to talk it up too much — it’s intended as a middle of the road crowd-pleaser — we were delighted by its golden gleam, shaving-foam head and, most importantly, crisp cereal snap. It struck us as remarkably precise, with no bathtub brewery twang. It was better than both the big brand lager we’d ‘enjoyed’ with dinner and St Austell’s Korev, and is perhaps, we think, Harbour’s best chance at elbowing their way into the locked-down Cornish market. Too strong to drink by the litre, perhaps, but we wouldn’t giving it a shot if there was a decent beer garden anywhere nearby.

Harbour is a still a brewery finding its feet, but all the beers we tasted were well-made; and a couple were excellent. We’d certainly like to see more of them about.

Now here’s a thing: because the various pale ales and IPAs were coming from font-type taps, and we weren’t taking notes, we don’t know which were kegged and which were cask-conditioned, and certainly couldn’t guess.

World Beer in Penzance

Brooklyn Lager and Duvel at the Lamp & Whistle, Penzance.

It’s taken a while but, at last, we can now go to the pub in Penzance and drink Belgian and American beer, at the Lamp & Whistle, five minutes walk from the central station in the centre of town.

When we first moved to Penzance proper, we went to ‘the Lamp’ quite a bit, partly because it tended to have St Austell Proper Job in excellent condition, but also because it is one of the few places in the area not trading to some extent on the ‘cosy Cornish inn’ image. In fact, it feels as if it has been transplanted from a street corner in a trendy bit of South London. Then Proper Job disappeared, and we decided we preferred the atmosphere in the Dock Inn, and haven’t been back for a while, though we always peer through the window when we walk past.

When Tom Goskar tipped us off to the availability of Brooklyn Lager, however, we thought we ought to investigate, and we found quite a few changes. The ceiling has been fitted with what are technically known as ‘dangly stem glass holding rack things’, festooned with Chimay, Duvel and Bacchus branded glassware; a towering, ostentatious Brooklyn Lager font adorns the very centre of the bar; and there’s a brand-new-vintage Anchor Steam plaque fixed to the wall. It would seem that the James Clay rep has been.

These aren’t beers at the cutting edge of the import market (Chimay Rouge first hit Britain in 1974, Anchor Steam c.1979, at the start of the ‘world beer’ boom) but, come on, this is the wild west, and a town with a population of c.21,000, so they’re out on a limb going even this far. We’re delighted, at any rate.

We didn’t enjoy the keg Brooklyn Lager especially — it seemed less floral than the bottled incarnation with a lot of additional toffee flavour and, yes, actual rising, burp-inducing bubbles aka ‘fizz’. Chimay and Duvel, on the other hand, were a real treat, and scarcely more expensive than they are in supermarkets these days at £4.30 a bottle. (We paid £7.50 for a 330ml bottle of local ‘craft’ stout in Truro recently, so this question about the price of Belgian beer remains.)

There was also cask ale from the lesser-spotted Penpont Brewery, and evidence that the publicans’ real passion is for spirits in the wide selection of vodkas, rums and whiskies on the back shelf. (Żubrówka!)

If you’re in the area and fancy something a bit different, in terms of both ambience and beer selection, the Lamp might be just what you’re looking for.

We should mention that the Renaissance Cafe — not a pub! — also had Duvel with lovely glassware last time we went in.

Give Your Pub a Makeover

Victorian beer engines.

When we’re sitting in a pub, we spend quite a lot of time talking about what what works, and what could be improved. We know, however, that many publicans have little cash at hand and that their options are often limited by the terms of their lease. Nonetheless, we think there a few things that more pubs could be doing which are free, or at least very cheap.

1. Ditch the net curtains — we want to see into a pub before we enter it. Unless there really is something illicit going on, they block the light and our view, and gather dust.

2. Tear down tatty posters — whether they’re your own or put up on behalf of local community groups or clubs, posters quickly curl, rip and fade. Take down old ones regularly, even if they are confined to a noticeboard. (2b – political posters of any description will probably alienate 50 per cent of your potential customers.)

3. Sweep up outside – crisp packets, pasty wrappers, leaves and fag ends on the pavement outside and in the doorway give an impression of abandonment and decay.

4. Smile and say hello as a matter of policy – other than great beer, the thing that makes us feel warmest towards a pub is a friendly greeting from the person behind the bar when we walk through the door.

5. Identify a ‘unique selling point’ — which pub doesn’t offer a ‘friendly welcome, real ale, good food’? You can’t rely on those to help potential customers decide between your pub and the nearby King’s Legs. So, be specific: name the real ale you are selling; mention that your famously wonderful chicken and leek pie is made to your grandmother’s recipe; big up your collection of comics, vintage photographs of the town, sports memorabilia or board games.

6. Control the crowd — you can’t make your regulars smile at people, but be prepared to have a quiet word if they’re downright rude. Regulars are already regulars; newcomers are potential regulars, and need looking after.

7. Get a fresh pair of, er, nostrils – we have been in some very smelly pubs that would benefit from a shake’n'vac, but you’re in the pub all the time and might be immune to its ‘perfume’. Get someone you trust to check the place out and let you know if it needs airing and/or a squirt of deodorant.

8. Get online – Twitter and Facebook are great ways to promote not only your latest offers but also your ‘brand’. If you’re resilient enough to take it, online is also a good place to find frank feedback from bloggers, Tweeters and reviewers, perhaps highlighting easy-to-fix problems you didn’t know your pub had. (See nostrils, above.)

9. Details make a difference – we notice little things like beer mats and coat hooks. They don’t cost much, but they’re extremely convenient.

10. No such thing as too much product information – some pubs have small glasses of each beer in front of the pump so you can see what colour it is before your order. Others have ‘point of sale’ material from the brewery at hand so you can read about the beer. Chalkboards, inside and outside the pub, are great ways of explaining and selling what’s on offer. Having said that…

11. Tidy signage, tidy pub — you don’t have to design your own font, but take a little time to make sure your chalkboards are neat, consistent and fresh-looking. At the same time…

12. Avoid corporate – unless a pubco or brewery insists otherwise, try to minimise the amount of branded or off-the-shelf bumph on display. Menus printed at home on A4 usually look ten times better than wipe-clean, glossy ones, covered in stock photography.

13. Do what you can with the bogs — you might not have the cash to completely renovate and, yes, customers, especially blokes, can behave like animals, but, as a bare minimum, have soap and water.

If your reaction to this is a bitterly sarcastic ‘Aw yeah, I hadn’t fought of dat!’, then we might well quite like your pub.

The Pub as Quasi-Happy Eater

Good George Pacific PearlOur local Wetherspoon’s isn’t a very good one. It rarely has anything other than Doom Bar, Ruddles or Greene King IPA on offer, usually a degree or two too warm, served in an ambience that brings to mind a faux-pub on a cross channel ferry. We pop in from time to time, though, just in case something exciting might be available and, yesterday, we were tempted to stop for a couple of pints from the international beer festival range.

Pacific Pearl, brewed by Good George of New Zealand (Kelly Ryan (PDF link)) was very good indeed though, yes, a bit warm. A sort of a black IPA or citrusy porter, like an oily Terry’s Chocolate Orange melted in a very posh coffee, it was certainly worth £2.15. Fly by Night, brewed by the chap from La Trappe in the Netherlands, on the other hand, was all sweaty socks and cardboard — bad rather than off, we think. Swings and roundabouts, eh?

As we drank, we talked about why, apart from the beer, we didn’t like the pub. Our conclusion: it feels like a fast food restaurant with some pub-like features — very convenient and obviously good value, but naff. Then, coincidentally, last night, we came across this passage in the 1985 CAMRA Good Beer Guide, on the subject of Host Group, Grand Met/Watney’s newly announced pub chain:

‘The Host packaged pub enterprise is as much of a threat to those who love individuality and consumer choice, as the packaged beer phenomenon was in the last two decades,’ says Peter Lerner of CAMRA’s Pub Preservation Group. ‘We cannot let our pubs decline to become chains of look-alike quasi-Happy Eater, Kentucky Fried Chicken bars or motorway service stations.’

A quasi-Happy Eater is a very good description of our local JDW.

Best Cornish Pubs 2013

Beer Wolf pub in Falmouth

Last year, we came up with a list of our favourite Cornish pubs, all of which remain worth a visit, but there has been a lot going on in the last year, and we’ve explored more, too, so it’s time for an update.

This list is personal and prejudiced — we do not have a team of inspectors in bowler hats making multiple visits with thermometers — but we hope beer geeks on holiday will find it useful.

The Driftwood Spars, St Agnes
The perfect place to end a coast walk, this pub, sitting on a beautiful cove, and with its own nearby brewery, has multiple rooms, wonky wooden beams, and plenty of cosy corners. On really nice days, the beer garden is a wonderful spot to sit and enjoy the big blue sky and the sound of the sea. (Blog post.)

Star Inn, Crowlas (Penzance)
CAMRA Cornwall pub of the year for 2013. It’s a little out of the way in a village between Penzance and St Ives, but buses in either direction stop right outside, and it does have a car park. No food, unless you count Caramacs and pork scratchings, and not remotely poshed-up, but the beer, brewed on site, is astoundingly good. Potion 9 is the one to go for. (Blog post.)

The Front, Falmouth
Though it now has competition, this large cellar pub still offers one of the more impressive ranges of local beer and cider in Cornwall. Though the beer sometimes lacks condition, most of it served on gravity, ‘bring your own food’, cheery bar staff and a warm atmosphere more than make up for it. Some ‘craft keg’ and posh bottles, too. (Blog post.)

The Dock Inn, Penzance
Our usual port of call in Penzance — one of the few places you can get Spingo beers other than at the Blue Anchor, often in better condition than on their home turf, with a very friendly welcome and good food. (Blog post.)

The Blue Anchor, Helston
This pub, with a brewery out back, is a must visit. Popular with locals and tourists, its multi-room layout still includes a bar/lounge divide, though we’ve always felt welcome in both. The best place to find their special seasonal brews, too. (Blog post.)

Old Ale House, Truro
This is as near as Skinner’s get to a brewery tap. It’s cosy with some lovely period features — not only Victorian, but also faded relics of the ‘real ale revolution’. Their best beer, Porthleven, is usually available. (Blog post.)

Beer Wolf Books, Falmouth
Opening just before Christmas last year, this pub-bookshop in a charming half-timbered building, has quickly gained a reputation for its unusual (for Cornwall) range of beer. Recently, alongside carefully chosen Cornish ales such as Potion 9 from the Penzance Brewing Company, there have been beers from Dark Star, Marble and other well-regarded ‘up country’ brewers. (Blog post.)

The Galleon, Fowey
This pub took us by surprise: despite being in a modern building, it is a free house, and offered a slightly more interesting range of beers than usual, all in very good condition. There are several pubs in Fowey and they all seem fine but, if you’re bored of St Austell’s beer, which you might well be after a few days, this is the place to come. (Blog post.)

The Lifeboat Inn, St Ives
Owned by St Austell and sitting on the harbourside, this pub is nicer illuminated by St Ives’ famously gorgeous natural light than it is in the evening, when it becomes a bit ‘orange’. We’ve been in several times in the last year and been impressed by the staff and the quality of the beer, even out of season. A good place to find St Austell seasonals, too.

The Top House Inn, Lizard (village)
A nice enough pub which we’re recommending chiefly for its location and the chance to find a few St Austell rarities (this is one of two places we’ve found their old-fashioned <4% IPA). The perfect place to finish a long walk, sitting outside with a pint of Proper Job and a bag of crisps, watching the bus stop in the village square.

 

General tips

  1. In any given Cornish cove, there will usually be more than one place to drink, but don’t assume by default the ‘traditional pub’ is the best option: sometimes, the contemporary beachside cafe/surf-shack is where you’ll find all the life, a warm welcome, and better beer.
  2. St Austell are utterly dominant. If they own several of the pubs in a town or village, and they usually do, the managed houses (usually with the newest signage and uniformed staff) tend to offer (of course) a more reliable experience, but the slightly run-down pubs with tenant landlords, though they can be a lottery, are often more characterful and cosy.
  3. Newer Cornish breweries such as Harbour and Rebel are hard to find in pubs, thanks to the St Austell lockdown, but seem to be making inroads into delis, cafes, restaurants and bars with their bottled beers at least. But check prices before you commit: we were charged £7.50 for a 330ml bottle of Rebel Mexicocoa in a bar in Truro.
  4. Cornwall does have some proper rough pubs, but they’re usually very easy to spot. We went in one once by mistake and weren’t murdered, though we did get asked, with curiosity rather than menace, whether we were undercover police officers on a drugs sting.

This is the type of blog post that rarely gets many comments, but which lingers in the Googletubes forever. When we’re in a new town, we always search ‘[TOWN X] beer blog’. Even if all it turns up is one post from 2009 with spelling mistakes, written by someone with different tastes to us, it still tells us more than any number of guide books. So, with that in mind, we’re also trying to put together a list of such posts, organised by region. Here’s what we’ve got so far. Let us know if you’ve seen any other good ‘uns.