Categories
Beer history real ale

Moaning about Beer Culture: History Repeating

“I like Double Diamond, and Worthington E, and Younger’s Tartan and Watney’s Red, and Whitbread Tankard…You seem determined to inflict on beer drinkers the snobbery that has always bedevilled the casual enjoyment of wine.” Letter to the editor, R.G. Oliver, The Guardian, 01/11/1973

“Already gone are the long benches and white scrubbed tables. Gone is the oak bar polished with loving care, the sawdust, brazen spittoons and ruddy faced landlord who would quaff a quart in a couple of draughts. This pleasant scene has now been replaced by the ‘contemporary’ setting. Plate glass, chromium fittings, air-conditioning and taped background music is the order of the day, and the anaemic pinstripe-trousered barman in his impeccable white coat clinically serves a pint by pressing the button of a gleaming automatic machine which dispenses a liquid that is a travesty of brewing.” Letter to the editor, D. Gordon, The Financial Times, 14/12/1963

“Pubs have long since ceased to be places where working men went to get away from their slatternly wives and squabbling children — the New Pub is not only for all the family but particularly for the young, free ‘teens and twenties’, those as yet unburdened by H.P. agreements and small babies.” Derek Cooper, The Beverage Report, 1970.

“At times it has seemed Camra’s sole interest was means of dispense. It has been said that some members would drink castor oil if it came from a hand pump, and would reject nectar if it had no more than looked at carbon dioxide. Naturally they are at liberty to entertain whatever notions, and carry whatever motions, they like, but they have often denied themselves excellent beer in the process.” Richard Boston, Beer and Skittles, 1976

Sadly, we failed to find a nice, neat single quotation neatly summarising the endless debate about how to define ‘draught beer’….

 

 

Categories
Beer history

Look For Dates, Find Stories

Advert for the Barley Mow pub, St Albans, 1983.

In trying to pin down some more dates for our list of key points in the development of Britain’s alternative beer culture, we’ve found some fascinating stories and subjects for further exploration.

First, thanks to some very helpful input from commenters on the original post, Twitterers and the Pub Curmudgeon, we started looking into the Barley Mow in St Albans as an early, if not the first, ‘real ale pub’. That’s not a pub that has some real ale on offer, but a pub which specialiases in, and sells itself on the strength of, having lots of real ale. We now know, thanks to CAMRA Hertfordshire’s complete online archive of newsletters dating back to 1976, the full story of the Barley Mow and its various landlords and landladies (link to PDF).

Another name in the frame as an early ‘beer exhibition’ was the Hole in the Wall in Waterloo. This blog post gives us some personal recollections and a quote from the 1975 Good Beer Guide, but if anyone can point us to a CAMRA newsletter or any other source with dates and details, we’d be grateful.

One of the commenters on the original post mentioned the Litchborough Brewery founded in Northamptonshire by Bill Urquhart in 1974. Mr Urquhart’s story, from what we’ve been able to find so far, is fascinating and familiar: he worked for a big regional brewer which was taken over and closed but he wasn’t ready to hang up his wellies and so founded his own small brewery. He later acted as a consultant to other small breweries which followed in his wake. But, pioneering as he was, he certainly wasn’t a young, dangerous maverick on a mission to shake things up: the beer he brewed was a clone of the brown bitter he’d previously brewed at Phipps.

(The current outfit producing beers under the Phipps name, by the way, appears to be dedicated to brewing historic recipes. Anyone tried them?)

Finally, we were astonished to discover that the first completely new brewery to open in Britain in fifty years was Westbury Ales in Somerset, in 1973. (Selby, in 1972, was a re-opening.) A pilgrimage may be in order next time we go to visit Bailey’s folks.

Categories
Beer history pubs

CAMRA’s Own Pub Chain

Detail from the cover of the 1978 CAMRA Good Beer Guide.

Update 09/05/2019: this ended up being one of the seeds for our book Brew Britannia where the saga of CAMRAIL is covered in detail.

Our copy of the 1978 CAMRA Good Beer Guide (thanks, Bailey’s parents!) is full of interesting tit-bits, not least the page setting out the details of CAMRA’s investments.

The objective of CAMRA (Real Ale) Investments Limited is to acquire and run a chain of public houses offering a range of traditional draught beers in simply and unfussy surrounding.

In 1978, the company owned five pubs — the Old Fox in Bristol, the Salisbury Arms in Cambridge, the Nag’s Head in Hampstead, the White Gates in Manchester and the Eagle in Leeds — and was ‘on the look out for more’.

Across the chain there were beers from Marston, Crown (formerly the South Wales and Monmouthshire United Clubs Brewery), Wadworth, Courage (Bristol), Samuel Smith, Bateman, Adnams, Wells, Greene King, Brakspear, Boddingtons, Thwaites, Pollard and Theakston. Only one of those, Pollard, was a ‘new wave’ brewery.

The Nag’s Head we are told “is enormously popular among young people in North London and has made hundreds, possibly thousands, of converts to real ale in the lager generation”. All kinds of interesting language there.

Can anyone point us to an article explaining what happened to these pubs and the CAMRA investments chain?  And does anyone remember visiting any of them under the benevolent rule of the Campaign?

Categories
london

Cities of Beer

Logo for London, City of Beer

We asked recently if there is a Hay-on-Wye of beer or a British Bamberg. In particular, we were interested to know if any British towns or cities were promoting themselves as destinations for beer tourism.

Various people reminded us about Norwich, City of Ale — an annual celebration accompanied by year-round promotion of Norwich’s breweries and pubs.

And, only last week, CAMRA launched London, City of Beer. The idea behind this campaign is mostly to act as an antidote to sponsorship of the Olympics by Carlsberg, Heineken, Duff or whichever one it is, but it’s interesting for various reasons. First, it wouldn’t have been warranted five years ago.

Secondly, it’s a rare example of CAMRA giving away quality content to non-members, which we applaud: this will win more members.

Lastly, and arguably most importantly, it represents CAMRA doing the right thing re: ‘craft beer’ — keg-only Camden Brewery is listed, making this a true catalogue of London’s beer, not just its real ale — even though they have yet to find a way to represent this sensible approach in official policy.

Categories
opinion real ale

CAMRA members and keg

We heard the disappointing news today that some very reasonable suggestions by a CAMRA working group were rejected almost completely by the National Executive. This was followed by the rejection at CAMRA‘s annual general meeting of another sensible step towards supporting British breweries. (Though Motion 15 (more here) was carried.)

Neither bit of news was unexpected. Policy doesn’t change overnight and let’s not forget that, as others have pointed out, keg-friendly bloggers are not CAMRA’s core membership. It can’t afford to scare the die-hards away, even if that makes other members sigh and ponder cancelling their direct debits.

Anyway, here’s some thinking about where beer geeks stand in relationship to CAMRA and keg beer. We haven’t numbered the boxes this time, so apologies to those who like to label themselves. (But we’re in the fifth box down.)

UPDATE: changed the diagram. Better?

Attempt to map attitudes to keg beer against CAMRA membership.

We’ll get bored of these graphics soon. Probably. Maybe.