News, nuggets and longreads 3 August 2024: Quiet City

Here’s our regular round-up of the best writing about beer and pubs from the past week, from Goth pubs to questions of authenticity.

First, an update from Germany. Berlin-based journalist Nicholas Potter has rounded up various items of evidence pointing to a diminishing interest in beer, and drinking more generally, among younger Germans:

[In] modern Germany… abstinence is on the up – and boozing is in decline. One example is Die Null (The Zero). Before the world-famous beer festival kicks off this year on 21 September, a new alcohol-free beer garden has opened in the heart of the city, inaugurated by the mayor of Munich himself. The venue serves a variety of non-alcoholic beverages, from mocktails to alcohol-free lager… It’s the latest in a string of sober ventures across the country, reflecting a wider trend in German society: beer consumption has been steadily declining since the 1990s, standing now at an average of just 88 litres per capita a year, compared with almost 143 litres after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The decline is also noticeable at Oktoberfest itself: in 2019, 6.3 million visitors drank some 7.3m litres. Last year, a record-breaking 7.2 million people attended, but consumed a comparatively meagre 6.5m litres.

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It’s always interesting to be made aware of an entirely different type of pub. We knew about the Gothenburg System, and mentioned it in our book 20th Century Pub. What we didn’t know (because Scotland is not our beat) is that ‘Goth pubs’, as they are known, live on:

The Scottish Goth pubs were found in pit towns and their aim was to discourage heavy drinking and funnel 95% of their profits back into their local community… At one stage, there were as many as 50 Goth pubs in Scotland but now there are only four left that stick to the Gothenburg system… Fiona Holborn, treasurer at the Goth in Armadale, West Lothian, says they see themselves very much as a charity first, ahead of being a business… “All the profit we make we tend to give out to the food banks,” she says… They also sponsor things like local football teams and sports events but reaching older and vulnerable people remains a key driver for the committee.

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For Pellicle David Jesudason profiles brewer Danny McColl with a particular focus on the rocky early days of his brewery (“I brewed shit [cask] beer. I brewed it on the new kit … because I’m an idiot.”), his struggles with his mental health, and the strategic choice he made to turn the business around:

Danny’s mental health suffered because there was no long-term strategy, just day-to-day drudgery. Graft instead of focus. “I couldn’t make good decisions,” he tells me… He was running the entire operation by himself: brewing, selling and even delivering the beer to customers. It was far too much to take on, his mental health suffered and Gemma, his wife, became worried about him having suffered from depression herself… “Covid came along and it was a line in the sand. It was blessed,” he says. “This was the time to make the right decisions. If you’re going to come through Covid and make a go of it I thought ‘don’t fuck up again’.”

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When we wrote Brew Britannia we researched and profiled quite a few microbrewing pioneers but didn’t have the time or space to write about everyone. And, in all honesty, Geoff Mumford wasn’t someone about whom we were at all aware. Roger Protz has an obituary of the co-founder of Burton Bridge Brewery, who sounds like an interesting character:

Geoff was the chief engineer at Ind Coope’s brewery in Romford, Essex. He met and became close friends with another engineer, Bruce Wilkinson, and the two played rugby together… “Bruce and I were heads of our departments at Romford and we could see the writing on the wall,” Geoff recalled. “Allied had closed Ansells in Birmingham and Romford was treated as the Siberia of brewing, so we decided to jump ship.”… They went on a small business course in London and planned their own brewery. Geoff was visiting the Ind Coope plant in Burton one day, drove over the historic Burton Bridge across the Trent and saw a For Sale sign on the Fox & Goose pub… They bought the pub, renamed it the Bridge Inn and installed brewing kit where they produced their first beer, Bridge Bitter, in 1982… “We’d seen the cheap ingredients used at Romford and we wanted none of that,” Geoff said.

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There’s been a lot of chat recently about the preference among younger drinkers for ‘normal’ beers like John Smith’s and Guinness. Now, Jeff Alworth at Beervana has written about the concept of authenticity and how it shifts over time:

For Baby Boomers and Gen Xers raised on dismal factory products like Wonder Bread and Velveeta, whole grain bread and artisanal cheese seemed more authentic. But late Millennials and Zoomers were raised in the world the Boomers begat, with lots of stodgy organic foods and twee “artisanal” offerings… So to them, a return to something simple and straightforward, with a long history of continuity looks authentic. The little breweries that teem in their neighborhoods and peddle a psychedelic array of inscrutable products are the inauthentic ones as they vie with each other for consumer attention, willing to offer literally any product that will get customers through the door.

And you should chase it with this from Katie Mather on the subject of ‘underconsumption core’ which “exists because even the most exuberant of haulfluencers are starting to feel the constrictions of what is basically a national money shortage… Beer turns into slabs of whatever tinnies are on offer at Tesco…”

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A good creative exercise is to study the same subject from different angles, to keep sketching it, over and over, until something new emerges. Adrian Tierney-Jones has spent the past while writing about pubs, ahead of an upcoming book on the subject, and the longer he stares at them, the more he finds to say:

Then there is another kind of wayside drinking, the act of surprise and choosing spontaneity and spinning the wheel and taking a chance and coming upon a pub you have never seen before and going inside without much hope that you will find something to drink that makes you wish upon a star. However, you choose well for this wayside pub is gorgeous in its reality and earthiness; the locals growl with friendliness rather than aggression and the staff help themselves to your custom with pleasant ease. There is a beer that you adore being served and so you settle down for an hour or two, occasionally joining in the conversations and laughing with the rest of them or you are left alone to take your book into the corner and now and again lift up thine eyes and hear a selection of joined up words that speak of the assurance of the pub.

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Finally, from BlueSky…

The Old Ground, Ballyglass, County Mayo. From a couple of years ago, it doesn't appear to have ever reopened.

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— Blurred_Lens (@lensblurred.bsky.social) Jul 25, 2024 at 11:04

For more good reading check out Stan Hieronymus’s round-up from Monday and Alan McLeod’s from Thursday.